In the afternoon of November 20th 1944, Captain Jack Ilfrey led five P-51D Mustangs of the 20th Fighter Group to a rendezvous with two F5As (P-38 Lightning photo-reconnaissance aircraft), to protect them while they photographed Berlin and the surrounding area.
The weather was reasonably good, with 7/10 cloud cover, and the flak had been light thus far. When the F5s finished their primary assignment they headed south-west along the route of the Autobahn towards Magdeburg, taking more photos and attracting more intense flak.
They were to fly to Bonn, where American bombers had attacked airfields and synthetic oil facilities earlier in the day. However, the F5s were low on fuel and film and radioed that they were going to head for home. The overcast was becoming solid with only an occasional glimpse of the earth appearing.
It had become standard practice after escort missions for the Mustang pilots of the 20th to drop down on the deck and shoot up targets of opportunity on the way back to their base at King’s Cliffe in the English Midlands. They had begun their operational tours of duty in the P-38 Lightning and had been completely sold on the plane. Many of them had resented having to convert to the P-51, but now, after several months with the Mustangs, they appreciated this finest of American fighters. “The P-51 made us feel like hunters in the skies over Germany. Our morale was high during ground strafing, chasing, or evading their fighters, during dogfights or just firing the guns. We also got an adrenline high.”
The fighters spiralled down through a hole in the cloud cover and found an abundance of enemy trucks, tanks and other equipment heading for the front lines.
They flew west under the massive weather front, shooting at various targets, expending a lot of ammunition and most of their fuel.
Captain Ilfrey told them to form on him and they would head for home. It was shortly after four p.m. Darkness comes early in northern Europe at that time of year. Uncertain of their exact position, Ilfrey set a course for England but figured that, with very little fuel remaining, they might have to land in Belgium or France. He decided they would stay low, below the weather front, as a stream of bombers might still be heading home through the overcast.
“We were in a good, tight formation. I was still trying to get my bearings when we came up on Maastricht, the Netherlands, which was still in German hands, and those hands began firing at us. We were headed north-west, so I veered right to get away from the city and all that ack-ack, but we were still picking up heavy fire, so we turned right again [east] to get away from all that ground action. At that point my wingman, Duane Kelso, radioed that he had been hit and was losing power. We were at around 700 or 800 feet in poor visibility when I happened to see a clear stretch which appeared to be a small emergency strip surrounded by trees. There were a few bombed-out buildings and a few wrecked aircraft scattered around. I pointed out the strip and told Kelso to try for it, and that I would cover him. Knowing we were almost out of ammunition and very low on fuel, I told the other pilots that they were on their own. They all made it OK to Belgium.”
Ilfrey then instructed Kelso to use his own judgement about whether to try a wheels-down landing and, if he decided to do so and thought that Ilfrey could make it in there as well, to give him a “thumbs-up” signal as Ilfrey circled the field.
Kelso approached the short strip amidst heavy ground fire and made a rather hairy landing with wheels down, stopping near the edge of the trees. He ran from the Mustang as Ilfrey watched from overhead and continued to attract ground fire. Captain Ilfrey came around in a circle above the trees and Kelso gave his leader the thumbs-up signal.
Ilfrey: “I must have been out of my mind, but the thought of not going in never occurred to me. He was a good pilot, an excellent wingman. He would have followed me anywhere and I couldn’t help feeling very close to him at that moment. Flashing through my mind was how Art Heiden and Jesse Carpenter had tried to pick me up when I had been shot down on a mission back in June, but they couldn’t land because of the trees and the glider barriers where I had come down . . . what they must have thought when they had to leave me there deep in enemy-held territory. Friendships forged in combat are never forgotten.”
Jack Ilfrey lowered his wheels and flaps and took his fighter, Happy Jack’s Go-Buggy, in for an equally risky landing on the little strip. The Germans in the area were now firing on Kelso’s plane and he quickly put a hundred yards between himself and the Mustang. He ran to the end of the strip, where Ilfrey would stop and turn around, ready for an immediate take-off, regardless of wind direction.
Ilfrey: “God, what a hairy landing, dodging holes, muddy as hell, but the Go-Buggy made it. I taxied a short distance up to Kelso, set the brakes, and jumped out on the wing. I took off my ’chute and dinghy and threw them away. Kelso got in and sat in what now was just a bucket seat lowered all the way down. We immediately discovered that four legs were not going to fit in the space and allow me full rudder control, so I stood up and he crossed his legs under him and I sat down on them.
There was not time to try other positions or adjust the seat and shoulder harness. I nearly scalped myself trying to close the canopy. Thank God it was a ‘D’. So, there I was . . . head and neck bent down, knees almost to my chin. As I closed the canopy and turned the P-51 around to start the take-off roll, we were well aware that ground troops were firing at us and we were very tense. I yelled back at Kelso, ‘Don’t get an erection or it’ll push me out of here.’ ”
Ilfrey thought they were not going to clear the treetops. He threw down more flaps and the Mustang pulled up just over them. Fortunately, she had been light in fuel and ammunition. They made the short flight to Brussels and yet another wild and difficult landing. That night they celebrated.
The next morning, hung over and still without a parachute and dinghy, Captain Ilfrey brought the Go-Buggy back to King’s Cliffe. Kelso arrived a few days later by transport. At King’s Cliffe, Colonel Harold Rau, the group commander, gave Ilfrey hell for “pulling a trick like that”, jeopardizing himself and his aircraft.
In all the ensuing years, Jack Ilfrey has not seen or heard from Duane Kelso.
The motto of the famous American 4th Fighter Group of World War Two was “4th but First.” They could never have made that claim were it not for Don Blakeslee taking charge as their Commanding Officer in January 1944. Until then they were second in every respect . . . in achievement, in scoring against the German Air Force, in attitude and in morale. Clearly, they needed someone to pull them into shape, goad them into action, drive them into discipline, and pound them into performance. Blakeslee was that man and the Mustang was the plane for them. He saw to getting Mustangs for his boys at the earliest possible date, and took them into combat with their new planes that very day.
In his campaign to equip the 4th with Mustangs he was not simply after a new toy for his boys, he had pure logic on his side. When he compared the other Allied fighters of the day, he pointed out that the Spitfire lacked range, the Hurricane lacked power and speed, the Lightning lacked manoeuvrability, and the Thunderbolt lacked speed in the climb and vital manoeuvrability against the German fighters. Only the Packard-Merlin Mustang was superior to its opponents in every respect, being faster than both the ME-109 and the FW-190 at practically any altitude and able to beat them both in a dive and a climb.
Before Blakeslee took command, the 56th Fighter Group, Hub Zemke’s Wolfpack, was flying rings around the 4th, racking up records right and left and making the 4th look no better than second-rate. But all that was about to change. In the 4th, Blakeslee knew he had a rather rag-tag collection of talented, spirited, highly capable fighter pilots who simply needed what he could give them from his extensive experience. He brought them along rapidly, leading from the front, and was a magnificent role model in many respects. He and Zemke were, without question, the finest fighter leaders in the Air Force and with Blakeslee running the show, things soon turned around for the 4th. At the end of the European air war, the final scores were: 56th Fighter Group—976 enemy aircraft destroyed-air and ground, 4th Fighter Group—1,016 enemy aircraft destroyed-air and ground.
One of Blakeslee’s greatest fighter pilots was Lt. Col. Jim Goodson, who remembered his commander: “Blakeslee was on every mission. Each pilot had only one thought in mind—not to let down Don Blakeslee. The new pilots put their faith in him; old hands like those of us who commanded the squadrons and often led the Group knew instinctively what he wanted; we were always where he wanted us and he was always where we knew he would be.
“When Blakeslee said ‘Horseback here—I’m going in’, he knew he would be covered. When any of us took our squadron into the attack, we knew we were covered. The disciplines of the RAF were ingrained in him.”
American volunteers Don Gentile (pronounced Jen-tilly) and John Godfrey flew together as leader and wingman respectively, with the 4th Fighter Group and, at the end of their missions, the pair had accounted for at least fifty-eight enemy aircraft destroyed. Major Gentile had scored twenty-two air and six ground kills before he was returned to the United States to help raise money for the war effort. Major Godfrey was credited with eighteen air and twelve ground kills before he was shot down and made a prisoner of war.
Gentile recalled his combat flying in Mustangs with the 4th at Debden in 1944: “To show how a team works even when a big brawl has boiled the team down to two men flying wing on each other, Johnny and I spent twenty minutes over Berlin on March 8th and came out of there with six planes destroyed to our credit. I got a straggler and Johnny got one, and then I got another one fast. A Hun tried to out-turn me, and this was a mistake on his part. Not only can a Messerschmitt 109 not out-turn a Mustang in the upstairs air, but even if he had succeeded, there was Johnny back from his kill and sitting on my tail waiting to shoot him down. He was waiting, too, to knock down anybody who tried to bounce me off my kill.
“There were Huns all around. Berlin’s air was cloudy with them. The gyrations this dying Hun was making forced me to violent action, but Johnny rode right along like a blocking back who could run with the best. After two Huns had blown up and another had bailed out, Johnny and I formed up tight and went against a team of two Messerschmitts. We came in line abreast and in a two-second burst finished off both of them. They were dead before they knew we were there.
“Then a Messerschmitt bounced Johnny. Johnny turned into him and I swung around to run interference for him. The Hun made a tight swing to get on Johnny’s tail, saw me and rolled right under me before I could get a shot in. I rolled with him and fastened to his tail, but by that time we were very close to flak coming up from the city. The Hun wasn’t so worried about the flak. I was his immediate and more desperate woe, but flak wasn’t my idea of a cake to eat, and I didn’t dare go slow in it while the Hun took a chance and put his flaps down to slow to a crawl.
“Then I got strikes on him. Glycol started coming out of him, and I had to pass him. But Johnny had fallen into formation right on my wing and he took up the shooting where I had left off. He put more bullets into the Hun while I was swinging up and around to run interference for him. Then he said his ammunition had run out and I said, ‘OK, I’ll finish him’, and I followed the Nazi down into the streets, clobbering him until he pulled up and bailed out.
“The whole thing goes in a series of whooshes. There is no time to think. If you take time to think, you will not have time to act. There are a number of things your mind is doing while you are fighting—seeing, measuring, guessing, remembering, adding up this and that and worrying about one thing and another and taking this into account and that into account, rejecting this notion and accepting that notion. But it doesn’t feel like thinking.
“After the fight is over you can look back on all the things you did and didn’t do and see the reason behind each move. But while the fight is on, your mind feels empty and feels as if the flesh of it is sitting in your head, bunched up like muscle and quivering there.
“I remember . . . after I had run my score of destroyed to thirty, we were over Schweinfurt. and there were three Messerschmitts just sitting up there in front of me and not noticing me—just presenting themselves as the easiest shots I have had in this war so far. I was positive I was going to get all three.
“Then I saw a Hun clobbering a Mustang mate of mine. I dropped my easy kills and dove on the Hun to bounce him off that Mustang. I didn’t think about it at all; it was just a reflex action—nor do I regret having such reflexes. If the feeling for team action had not been developed as a reflex in me—something I and all the other boys can do without thinking—then I would have been dead or a prisoner of war a long time ago.”
Major Walter Konantz was flying Mustangs with the 55th Fighter Group based at Wormingford, England, on September 11th 1944. The group was escorting B-17s to Ruhland and were approaching the rendezvous point at 25,000 feet when he had to use the relief tube. In order to use the tube (which is vented overboard), it was necessary to unbuckle the lap belt and shoulder harness as well as the leg straps of the parachute, and slide well forward on the seat. He was in this position when a voice came over the radio shouting, ‘ME-109s. Here they come.’
Konantz looked up and saw about fifty 109s diving through the American formation and firing. One crossed in front of him in a dive and was firing at a P-51 below and to his left. This was the first time he had ever seen an enemy aircraft and, with a case of ‘buck fever’, Konantz peeled off and went after him. The German saw Konantz chasing him and steepened his dive to the vertical. Konantz was also headed straight down with full power. Both aircraft descended from 25,000 feet at extremely high speed. Being completely unstrapped, Konantz was a free-floating object in the cockpit and his body was at zero gravity. The slightest movement of the stick would cause him to leave the seat and hit the canopy. The airplane was very touchy at this speed and at times he felt like a basketball being dribbled down the court.
“We both started to pull out at about 8,000 feet. I glanced at my airspeed indicator which, at that moment, was showing 600 miles per hour, 95 miles per hour over the red line speed. The ME-109 had only completed about 45 degrees of his pull-up when his right wing came off through the wheel-well area. He spun into the ground in a few seconds with no time to bail out. Even though no one else saw this victory, and I didn’t have any of it on the gun camera film, I still got credit for it as one of the other pilots had counted the fires on the ground after the huge fifteen minute dogfight and reported to the debriefing officer that he counted thirty fires. There were claims of twenty-eight ME-109s shot down with the loss of two P-51s. After landing, when I had stepped out onto the wing, my crew chief remarked, ‘Better zip up your pants before you go in for debriefing.’ ”
Not all the heroes of the Mustang fighter groups were pilots. Master Sergeant Merle Olmsted was a crew chief with the 357th Fighter Group at Leiston, Suffolk, and recalled the routine there.
“Most Eighth Air Force fighter units assigned three men to each airplane. In addition to the crew chief, there was an assistant crew chief and an armament man. On arriving at the plane their first job was to remove the cockpit and wing covers and the pitot tube cover. Then the propeller was pulled through its arc and the pre-flight inspection began. The pre-flight is quite lengthy, consisting mostly of visual inspections, many of which were completed during the post-flight inspection the day before. All reservoirs were checked for fluid level, coolant, hydraulics, battery, engine oil and fuel. An inspection was always made under the aircraft for coolant leaks, which frequently occurred due to temperature changes. It was often difficult to tell coolant from water, but tasting a bit of the fluid will reveal the difference, as coolant has a bitter taste (and is poisonous if consumed in quantity).
“If all the visual and servicing checks were satisfactory, the engine was run, using the battery cart to save the airplane’s internal battery. Because the seat is rather deep to accommodate the pilot’s dinghy pack, a cushion in the seat helped the ground crewman to reach the brakes and to see out from the cockpit. Now the brakes were set and the seatbelt fastened around the control stick to provide ‘up elevators’ during the power check. The flaps were left down, the fuel selector was set to either main tank, the throttle cracked open, and the mixture control set to the idle cut-off position.
“After yelling ‘clear’ to be sure no one was near the nose of the plane, the starter switch was engaged (the P-51 has a direct-drive starter), along with engine prime. As soon as the cylinders began to fire, the mixture control was moved to ‘run’. The propeller was already in ‘full increase rpm’ for the warm-up. Various additional checks were carried out, including checking that the engine oil and coolant temperature instruments were registering in ‘the green’. The engine was run up to 2,300 rpm and the magnetos checked. With each mag off, the maximum allowable rpm drop was 100. The propeller governor was also checked at this rpm. The maximum rpm was 3,000, but this was for take-off and was not used on the ground run.
“After everything had checked out OK, the engine was shut down. The fuel and oil trucks cruised the perimeter track and all tanks were topped up. Now the windshield, canopy and rear-view mirror were all polished—and polished again. The armament man had long since charged his guns, so all aircraft on the field had ‘hot’ guns long before take-off. The gun switches in the cockpit were off, of course, but occasionally one was left on and the pilot gripping the stick could fire a burst, terrifying everyone within range, including himself.
“The pilots usually arrived fifteen to twenty minutes before engine start time, via an overloaded jeep or weapons carrier. After the pilot was strapped in with the help of the ground crew, his goggles and the windshield were given a final swipe. Engine start time came and sixty Merlins coughed into life around the airfield hardstands. Then the wheel chocks were pulled and, with a wave of his hand to the ground crew, each pilot guided his Mustang out to the proper place on the taxi track in a snake-like procession toward the active runway. The ground crews, and everyone else in the airfield area, sought a vantage point to watch the take-off, always an exciting event. The sight and sound of sixty or more overloaded Mustangs getting airborne was impressive.
“Much of the weight the planes were carrying was represented by two long-range fuel drop tanks, so vital to the success of the U.S. fighters in Europe. Most of these tanks were made of paper composition units, each holding 108 U.S. gallons and built in huge quantities by British companies. They were installed on the wing racks for the next day’s mission the night before and were filled at that time. During operation they were pressurized to ensure positive feeding at altitude, by the exhaust side of the engine vacuum pump. The piping for this and the fuel flow is rubber tubes with glass elbows, which broke away cleanly when the tanks were dropped.
“Even though the drop tanks are pressurized, it was necessary to coax fuel into the system during the pre-flight. After switching to the ‘drop tank’ position, the engine would often die and the selector switch had to quickly be put back to ‘main’ and then to ‘drop tank’ until they fed properly. On the mission they were always dropped when empty, or earlier if combat demanded it. With all fifteen fighter groups operating, Eighth Air Force fighters could require 1,800 drop tanks per day.
“At mid-day, while the mission aircraft were out, the line crews were in a state of suspended animation. It was mostly free time, time to attend to laundry, read the squadron bulletin board to see when mail call was, and to see if your name has appeared on any unwanted, but unavoidable, extra duty rosters. There was also time to drop into the post exchange for a candy bar, and to take in noon chow at the big consolidated mess hall.
“Regardless of what they had been doing while the mission was out, the aircraft ground crew would always ‘sweat out’ the return of their particular aircraft and pilot, and when both returned safely it was a great relief.
“Whether a crew had a close relationship with their pilot depended on several factors—how long they had been together, the pilot’s general attitude towards enlisted men, and if he was an outgoing individual. Although the word ‘hero’ probably never occurred to the ground crews, they were well aware that it was their pilot who was doing the fighting, and sometimes the dying. In most cases, there was considerable affection for their pilot and they were proud of his achievements. There was always a period of depression when an aircraft and pilot failed to return from a mission, and often the cause didn’t filter down to the ground crew. In a day or two, a new P-51 arrived, and a new pilot, and the war went on.
“An average mission of the 357th Fighter Group lasted about four to five hours and by the ETR (estimated time of return) everyone was back on the hardstands. If the group came into sight in proper formation and to the rising snarl of many Merlins, it was probable that there had been no combat. If they straggled back in small groups, or individually, it was certain that there had been some kind of action. Missing red tape around the gun muzzles was a final confirmation.
“As each P-51 turned into its parking place, the pilot blasted the tail around and shut down the engine, the wheels were chocked and the mission was over—one more toward the completion of his tour.
“Now he brought any aircraft malfunctions to the attention of his ground crew, and left for debriefing. For the ground crews there was considerable work ahead to complete the post-flight inspection and repair the aircraft. If luck was with them, their airplane could be ‘put to bed’ in time for evening chow, and the work day would have come to an end. Often, though, it did not work out that way, and their jobs continued into the night.”
Few people in Merle Olmsted’s fighter group had been to the UK before being sent there in wartime. The personnel of the 357th FG found everything there different, the food, the cars, the people, and especially the weather. They had trouble understanding the English, and being understood by them; and they had difficulty with the money, but soon adjusted to both.
The first Mustangs received by the 357th were secondhand aircraft, B models passed on to them by the 354th FG, while Olmsted’s group was still stationed at Raydon in Suffolk. Later, while based at Leiston, they would be equipped with P-51Ds which would proved extremely successful in their hands. But at first, the Mustangs were an unknown quantity to the pilots and ground crewmen of the 357th, all of whom had trained on the Bell P-39, an aeroplane they had come to know and not love. They soon came to appreciate, admire and respect the Mustang as they advanced through a variety of P-51 training schools including an RAF Merlin engine school.
Olmsted, a long-time friend of this author, said that in the Mustang they knew they had a winner. He recalled no major maintenance troubles with it. Relating it to the far more sophisticated fighters of the 1960s and 1970s, he referred to the P-51 as primitive and relatively trouble-free, compared to other fighters of the time such as the P-47 Thunderbolt. They did have some minor problems such as coolant leaks, but the only significant one they faced was engines running roughly due to the spark plugs of the time. He remembered that the British plugs were the best, but would give only about fifteen hours of fairly reliable operation, and that changing the intake plugs on a hot engine was always a difficult, demanding procedure.
Changing an engine on a P-51 was meant to take place after every 200 hours of operation, but Olmsted said that they rarely lasted that long under combat conditions. The engine life was reduced further after the group converted to 150 grade aviation fuel, which brought additional valve trouble and that in turn reduced engine life. But he was mightily impressed by the Merlin engine that powered the Mustang.
The workday of the ground crews on an American fighter field began early, usually before dawn. At Leiston, Merle and his fellow ground crewmen lived in huts a mile from the airfield. They made their way to the hardstands where their Mustangs were parked, by hitching rides on passing jeeps, weapons carriers or trucks. Some made the trip on RAF bicycles common found around the base, while others walked to work. For shelter on the normally brisk, blustery hardstands, it was common for ground crews to construct small shacks from the boxes in which belly tanks had been shipped. Some of the shacks were quite elaborate, containing bunks, workbenches, windows, and a few even had stoves that burned aircraft engine oil, but after a spate of line-shack fires caused by these contrivances, they were forbidden.
Olmsted: “The fourteen months on Eighth Fighter Command’s Leiston airfield was a unique experience for the ground crews, and probably the high point of life for many. Most of us, however, did not appreciate this at the time, and wanted only to get it over with and go home. Only in later years did some realize what a fascinating time it had been, and many of us have returned several times to the now tranquil land that once housed a fighter group at war.”
Mustang pilots of the 357th Fighter Group return to their base at Leiston in Suffolk, England, after escorting bombers of the Eighth Air Force on a deep penetration raid into Germany in 1944.
A cannon-armed factory-fresh P-51A at Inglewood, California, awaiting delivery to the U.S. Army Air Force. The same North American Aviation plant had produced the B-25 Mitchell bombers in the background.
A North American Aviation factory assembly line with early Mustangs under construction.
At left, Captain John Godfrey, who flew as wingman to Captain Don Gentile in the 4th Fighter Group at Debden, Essex, England during the Second World War. Godfrey was credited with downing eighteen enemy aircraft. Above: Armourers reloading the .50 calibre guns of a P-51 Mustang.
Duke, the 334th Fighter Squadron dog at Debden, in the seat normally occupied by Ralph “Kidd” Hofer, who is being interviewed by American newspaper reporter on the wing of Hofer’s Salem Representative; right: Eighth Fighter Command mission board with wing assignments.
The other principal American fighters in the European Theater of the Second World War were, top left, the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt and, bottom left, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Above: Colonel Don Blakeslee, commanding officer of the 4th Fighter Group, Eighth Air Force.
Major Pierce McKennon, 4th Fighter Group, with his P-51, Ridge Runner. Right, the clean, efficient design of the Focke Wulf Fw190 cockpit.
P-51Ds of the 4th Fighter Group in formation over England in 1944. Right, Captain Jack Ilfrey of the 20th Fighter Group based at King’s Cliffe, England. In one of the most daring acts of the war, Captain Ilfrey landed his Mustang in a small field to rescue his downed wingman, Duane Kelso.
At right, Bob Hoover who, for many years, demonstrated the company-owned Mustang for North American Aviation. Bottom right: Batty Betty, a postwar P-51 racer.
In the dispersal hut of the 336th Fighter Squadron, 4th Fighter Group at Debden, England. It is the oddly quiet, nervous time before a mission.