Dogfighting demanded the sum total of all your strengths, and exposed any of your weaknesses. Some good pilots lacked the eyes; others became too excited and lost concentration, or lost their nerve and courage, a few panicked in tight spots and did stupid things that cost them their lives. The best pilots were also the most aggressive, and it showed.
We quickly learned basic do's and don'ts. If the enemy was above, we didn't climb to meet him because we lost too much speed. When in a jam, we never ran. That was exactly what he expected. It was important to always check your back when popping out of the clouds: you could have jumped out in front of a 109. We avoided weaving around cumulus clouds; they're like boulders and you could have been easily ambushed. And we were particularly alert while flying beneath high thin cirrus clouds. Germans could look down through them and see you, but you couldn't see up through them. Whenever possible, we carefully timed our turns in a head-on attack, to avoid being caught sideways and becoming a direct target. We also tried to avoid overshooting an enemy plane, which put you in front of his gun-sights, it was like shooting yourself down. One of the guys once asked Colonel Spicer, our group commander, what to do if caught by a large force. "Rejoice, laddie," the old man said, "that's why you're here."
Some of our guys fought that way. In the middle of a vicious dogfight, I heard one of them say: "Hey, I've got six of them cornered at two o'clock. Come on up and have some fun." But one time I also heard the most horrifying scream blast into my headphones. "Oh, God, they got me. My head, my damned head. I'm bleeding to death." That night at the officers' club, the shrieker showed up wearing a Band-Aid, a goddamned Band-Aid, taped to the back of his neck. He had been nicked by a piece of Plexiglas. So, our squadron ran the gamut. If you wanted to stay alive you kept an eye on the weak sisters as carefully as you watched for Germans. The worst of them would get so shaken in a dogfight that they'd shoot at anybody, friend or foe. I remember how pissed we were when the worst pilot in the outfit became the first of us to score a victory and won a bottle of cognac. He was in a flight of four that got bounced by some Germans and crawled in behind his leader, only to discover he was on the tail of a 109 hammering his leader. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.
There were guys who became so terrified being in the same sky with krauts that they began to hyperventilate and blacked out; a few actually shit their pants. Some were honest about their fear and asked to be relieved from combat duty. There were others who talked big during training, but once in combat turned tail at critical moments. Of course they were screwing the rest of us. We also had a few abort artists, guys who would fly with you until a gaggle of Germans was sighted and then radio they were turning back with engine trouble. There were still others who would fire a burst, then quickly break off; or watch somebody else hammer an airplane, then, when the German was already windmilling and going down, dive in and fire a quick burst, then try to share credit for the kill. I had a guy do that to me. Believe me, he never did it again. Worst of all were wingmen who left you naked in a tight spot. A wingman's job was to stick like glue to his leader's tail while his leader did the shooting. He was your damned life insurance, his reliability a matter of your life or death. If he failed you, there was no second chance. You got rid of him in a hurry. Eddie Simpson was Andy's wingman until Eddie got shot down. Before they flew together, Eddie said to Andy, "Let's go to London and get drunk together. Then, I'll follow you into hell." I had five or six wingmen during my tour; some had better eyesight or more discipline than others, but since I never got shot down flying as an element or squadron leader, they were competent enough, I guess.
The special closeness between the best of us- Anderson, Bochkay, Browning, O'Brien, and myself- existed because we fought the same way. Andy especially. On the ground, he was the nicest person you'd ever know, but in the sky, those damned Germans must've thought they were up against Frankenstein or the Wolfman, Andy would hammer them into the ground, dive with them into the damned grave, if necessary, to destroy them. So would I. We finished what we started every time. That's how we were raised. We did our job. We were over there to shoot down Germans, and that's exactly what we did, to the best of our ability and training. We were a pack of untested kids who grew up in a hurry. Andy called it the college of life and death. I don't recommend going to war as a way of testing character, but by the time our tour ended we felt damned good about ourselves and what we had accomplished. Whatever the future held, we knew our skills as pilots, our ability to handle stress and danger, and our reliability in tight spots. It was the difference between thinking you're pretty good, and proving it.
WINDING DOWN
Clarence Emil Anderson, better known as "Bud" or "Andy," was now a twenty three-year-old major, while I was promoted to captain a few months short of my twenty-second birthday. Wartime promotions came fast, and we figured that if the war lasted another year or more, the Air Corps would have a bunch of baby generals on its hands. In addition to flying, I was now squadron maintenance officer, which meant that I checked out all of the overhauled Mustangs; Andy was now the squadron's operations officer, and he woke me at six one morning to tell me I made captain. I reached into my bag and found a bottle of champagne I'd been saving. We were smashed before seven, hung over before lunch-a first for us.
"Chuck," Andy said, "we're gonna need new livers if we make it through this damned war." I don't think any of us actually flew missions in a falling down condition, but flying with a hangover was not unknown. You'd die when your engines cranked and swallow a couple of aspirins, swearing you'd never do it again. We sent guys up to Scotland on whiskey runs, and when that ran out we drank rotgut rye or British beer. There was always something to celebrate: a friend's kill or the fact you were still alive.
We threw a blast the last week in November to mark our first anniversary in England that nearly wrecked the officer's club. We brought in London strippers and maybe a few local amateurs, too. Those twelve months in Leiston seemed a century, and I found it hard to believe that only a year had gone by. So much had happened, so much adventure and hellraising since we stepped off the Queen Elizabeth as green and eager fighter jocks. Of the original thirty who arrived at Leiston as a squadron, a dozen had been killed, and eight more were missing in action. Six others had finished their tour and gone home. Four of us were left from the original group, and without saying so, I wondered whether all of us would actually make it back. As it turned out, one didn't; Jim Browning was shot down a few days short of going home.
My own tour was winding down. I had only eight more missions to complete. Being a short-timer was a strange feeling. I wanted to score as many victories as possible in the time remaining, but somehow avoid getting my ass busted at this late date. And from time to time, we all had nasty reminders that the war was far from over. One night, we had just turned out the lights to go to sleep when we heard an airplane coming in low. We knew the sound of American and British fighters, but this deep-throated roar was different. Man, we hit the deck. That German was directly above our little Nissen when he began firing into the roof of the empty mess hall. We waited for the bomb, but it was never dropped. When it was over we giggled neryously, because there was Obie O'Brien flopped under his mattress, pointing his forty-five at the ceiling.
I wrote to Glennis a couple of times a week and received a couple of letters back. Andy was also writing regularly to his childhood sweetheart, Eleanor. Both of us planned to get married as soon as we got home. I had already written to my mother telling her that, but I didn't tell Glennis. I didn't have to because our letters said everything we were feeling about each other, and, to tell the truth, I was a little superstitious. There were still combat missions to fly. I knew I was getting married, but that's about all I knew about the future. At twenty-two, my idea of heaven was to be reassigned to the same base as Andy, where the two of us could dogfight every day. Being in the Air Corps was all he ever wanted since boyhood. I loved to fly, but whether the Air Corps would want to keep me, I had no idea. About all I could promise Glennis was a cabin in a holler. Things usually worked out in their own way, and I wasn't one to spend much time planning a future. I tried to make the most of each day, get through a mission in one piece, and leave some time for fun. I might be getting married before long, but there were still a few girls to chase, a few bottles left undrunk, and more than likely a few krauts to shoot at and some bullets to duck until then.