[Music] well beginning in World War one when aircraft first started firing at each other with the s' pads and the Newports and SC fives those airplanes were relatively slow in most cases under a hundred miles per hour the machine guns they used fired very slow and they were small 30 calibers and they had to do most of their dogfighting entail on chases and get in very close in order to either kill the pilot or hit the engine or some part of their airplane it was critical and from there we went into World War two with faster airplanes approaching 500 miles per hour and larger guns 50 caliber machine guns 20 millimeter cannon 30 millimeter cannon and that became a little more lethal and also since the airplanes were faster our initial dogfighting in World War 2 a lot of the shooting was instinctive you didn't have a lead computing gun sight so you really didn't know how much the lead the airplane when you were firing at it and about the middle of World War two we came out with lead computing gun sights that worked on the gyroscope principle and the pilot it was up to the pilot to put the proper range into his gun sight to get proper lead and that made it relatively easy to shoot down 109s and 190s with these lead computing gun sights during world war ii and pitting the p-51 against the focke-wulf 190 and me-109 the p-51 had both advantages and disadvantages number one the p-51 had long range on the other hand it made the airplane extremely difficult to fly when you had a heavy fuel load we had a eighty five gallon fuselage tank in the p-51 and until you got that tank about half-empty you've had a very after center of gravity which made the airplane unstable and since you did have roughly eight hours of fuel it lets you stay with the Bombers all the way in now they speed between the two airplanes the p51 was a little faster than the 109 190 and could turn with it if you were down on fuel if you had a full load of fuel you were in trouble the p-51 carried 650 caliber of machine guns that fired around 850 rounds per minute and they were armor-piercing incendiary bullets that penetrated deep into the me-109 or 190 that you were fighting and it did a lot of damage to the internal mechanism in the airplane some of the other advantages that we had in the p-51 we wore G suits which gave us a capability or kept us from blacking out it at about 4 and 1/2 G's you could see to shoot another airplane down while pulling as high as five and a half to six G's whereas the German fighter pilots never received g-suits and we're at quite a disadvantage in dogfighting at high G loads also the p-51 that was equipped with the lead computing gun site by the summer of 1944 which made it relatively easy to hit the guy at high angle offs of deflection shooting I can't think of any disadvantages that the 109 and 190 had there were good airplanes but as I mentioned before they were not as fast as a p-51 they didn't have the range of the p-51 and you got to remember the me-109 and 190s were designed as interceptors to shoot down bombers they were very good in between fighter to fighter because they were quite maneuverable but since they were firing against bombers they used cannon shells more than the smaller calibre guns that we used in a p-51 and those cannon shells such as a 20 millimeter cannon and the 30 millimeter cannon had a lot of explosive shrapnel when they hit the in skin and the b-17s and b-24s and consequently during aerial combat I think we were at a big advantage with the p-51 by firing 50 caliber machine guns which were armor-piercing incendiary that penetrated deep into the internal organs of the human 109 or 190 whereas if we got hit with a 20 millimeter shell it merely shredded the skin on your airplane and you didn't have very deep penetration into the internal organs of your p-51 and as far as the capability of the airplane the p-51 that airplane probably more than anything else changed the tide of the war in World War 2 during the Korean War for the first time we pitted jet against jet primarily the f-86 Sabre against the mig-15 the speeds of these airplanes were much faster than during World War two they were approaching the speed of sound and as far as the two airplanes were concerned the f-86 Sabre had a big advantage over the mig-15 in it that it had a flying tail and meaning the whole horizontal stabilizer moved up and down when he moved the control stick and what this did it gave the f-86 the capability of maneuvering in the region of the speed of sound whereas to make fifteen had a fixed horizontal stabilizer and an elevator to control the airplane and anytime if the airplane was above about 93% of the squeeze sound lost us elevator effectiveness and couldn't maneuver and this gave the f-86 a big advantage since a lot of the dogfighting was done in endives above point 9 3 Mach number basically the f-86 had a big advantage over the mig-15 speed wise but on the other hand the mig-15 had an advantage in it that it could turn tighter than the f-86 and had a better acceleration rate because it had more thrust versus the weight of the airplane but on the other hand the f-86 was a faster airplane when it was stabilized as far as their armament on the airplanes the f-86 still carried six 50 caliber machine guns and the MiG carried a couple cannon which had slower cyclic rate of firing than the f-86 had basically they were very close and really pilot proficiency didn't enter in to the Korean War as much as it did during World War one and definitely during World War two during Vietnam when we used the f4 phantom ii and the f-105 against airplanes like the mig-17 big 19 and mig-21 you have to go back a little bit after Korea what we did we built dual role airplanes meaning these airplanes were designed for both air-to-ground and air there and by designing these airplanes with dual role mission we handicapped them in both roles meaning they weren't as good as an airplane it was purely dedicated to air-to-ground and obviously weren't very good in air-to-air combat because they had weight disadvantage now the mig-19 and the mig-21 that the North Vietnamese were flying obviously had a big advantage in air-to-air combat over our f-4s and f-105s because they were dedicated strictly to air superiority they get out out turn outmaneuver both the f4 and the f-105 one other disadvantage we had was that we had left the gun off of the f4 phantom 2 because we equipped it with missiles and then we caught ourselves during the end of the Vietnam conflict with gun pards added on to our airplanes to give us some capability in aerial combat and indicates of the f-4e phantom we put the 20 millimeter Gatling gun and the nose of the airplane the f4 phantom 2 was designed with air-to-air missiles such as the aim-7 radar beam riding missile in the aim-9 infrared heat-seeking missile consequently during the development of both of those missiles they operated satisfactorily meaning you took off and flew them on one mission and fired them but when we used those missiles in Vietnam at taking those missiles up on many many sorties to 40,000 feet 60 below zero and then bringing them back to in the high humidity of the general environment after many many missions these missiles then begin to fail and our success rate in the missiles fired within the correct envelope was less than 10% which is very very sorry and consequently another disadvantage that we had not necessarily in aerial combat that was the capability to deliver a weapon with precision on a target on the ground those weapons guidance systems that were designed for the f4 and the f-105 were designed for nuclear weapons whereas if you hit within a mile of where he aimed it was satisfactory and when we were restricted to using iron bombs in Vietnam we didn't have the capability in those airplanes to deliver that iron bomb precisely and afterward did any damage and this brought about of course then smart weapons or laser-guided or evil guided weapons that we saw you so successfully in Iraq the best combat pilot that I ever flew with I think was was bud Anderson there were we had a lot of good fighter pilots in our squadron in the group but I think the best was bud Anderson and the reason was he had excellent eyesight was really aggressive and could fly very good on the ground the guy was a you know just almost mildest could be but you get him in the air and he was a real vicious individual when he got in the cockpit of an airplane but that eyesight he had was comparable to mine we could see things many many miles farther than any of the other pilots in the squadron and it paid off and II used to refer to World War two combat in our case the college of life and death meaning that you matured very fast and also it just so happened at about half the pilots have went over with you got killed you can't let your emotions affect what you're doing whatsoever duty enters into the picture probably more than anything else it's you know you have to do the job and you don't let you're worried about the outcome enter into it because any time it you don't have any control over the outcome of something forget it you're wasting your time worrying about it or even thinking about it you better concentrate on what you're doing at that time to stay out of that fatal in that you could think about and another trait that you saw happened in in a fighter squadron such as ours that there's no close friendship whatsoever because if you got close to a guy he got killed and it hurt very bad so you didn't get close to anybody you were strictly professional you admired guys for their professionalism and combat capability but you most certainly didn't get close to on the ground or in the air and it did it was a good college to teach you how to stay alive if you were able to the first time I shot down an airplane obviously he was on my seventh mission we'd been escorting bombers in the p-51 be some in occupied France we were getting into Leipzig Germany and on March 4th 1944 we made the first daylight raid on Berlin weather was very bad and I ended up with one other pilot on my wing and we picked up the box of b-17s that we were supposed to escort and I really didn't see any other p50 ones around but they were all scattered out and we took this box of bombers all the way to Berlin and I'd spotted me-109 s and 190s on a couple of other missions but we were never able to get to them before they got into clouds or got away from us and on this particular day I had a wingman with me and we were above the Bombers and fact we were ranging out in front of the Bombers stream they dropped her bombs and we're coming back out of the the target area and I spotted a me-109 down under us about 5,000 feet basically going the same direction we were going and with the p-51 be that I was flying at 450 caliber guns and being was my first combat I opened up full power on a p-51 started diving down to this 109 and and before I knew it my overtake speed must have been a couple hundred miles an hour faster than his and and so I was closing up way too fast I didn't have time to shoot or anything so I pulled pull the power back and pull the airplane up just as tight as I could into a big spiral and rolled over and it's dropped down under him and pulled the nose up from about a hundred feet back and opened up with the 50 calibers and just chewed the whole bottom eyelet P fit or the me-109 and it was it was interesting since it was the first airplane I shot down the pieces that come off and the first thing I knew I was in a hazardous position being back under this thing with all these pieces fall by and I pulled out to the side and then the airplane started burning in the pilot bailed out then I pulled back up and my wingman joined me and we split up or we scattered out and started coming back and I spotted a Heinkel 111 K a twin-engine bomber down low to going in and out of the clouds so we dropped down and I started closing in on this one 11 K and it was a top turret gunner shooting and I pulled in pulled out to the side and was kind of zigzagging back and forward so he couldn't see me and I pulled him behind and opened up and I don't had 150 caliber firing but the others were jammed and I did get hits on the engine and and part of the fuselage and probably killed the tail gunner and the airplane then went into the clouds and I never saw it any more but then we worked our way back to England and the mater led down in bad weather and finally found our base and landed and that was the first airplane I shot down and the combat film was very good so I got confirmed and my wingman confirmed that the guy bailed out of it and it was my first kill and the next day was March the fifth we had a mission down in Bordeaux and and I tangled with the a bunch of focke-wulf 190s made a head-on pass with him and I got hit with a bunch of 20 millimeter cannon shells and lost the canopy part of the left wing and the prop and the engine caught on fire so I bailed out of it and and and came down and then the next many months elapsed the next kill i got was a ju 188 and it was sort of illegal really i was not cleared to fly combat i had evaded and came back to england to Gibraltar and they were moving me back to my squadron waiting on permission to go back on combat in the meantime we were getting in new pilots so I picked up three new pilots and I was taking them up training them in combat tactics and we were up by the base just fooling around and got a call from from base ops on the radio that there was b-17 had ditched just off a helgeland in the Balkans and would I take my flight at 3 up there and circle the dinghy while the British sent our rescue boat out to pick them up and we did and we're up there circling at about 5,000 feet above the din you had to be 17 crew in it and I spotted a Ju 188 twin-engine fighter bomber coming out on the right very low on the water towards the dinghy and so when I spotted him I was flying a p-51 D for the first time which had 650 s and so I told my wingman to scatter out to spread out so they could watch about my tail and their tail - so other aircraft were coming in and I headed up towards 188 he saw us coming he turned around and headed back for the helgeland that's low and as fast as he could go and I closed end up under him and blew him up just as he crossed over the coast in the airplane rolled up on the beach and they were shooting flak at us and we peeled back up and then got down on the low on the water and got out of there came back and landed and and I had to give the airplane to another pilot because I wouldn't authorize the flop combat but it was an interesting mission then at the new pilots got to see an airplane in combat and it sort of got them hardened a little bit - it on the particular mission where I got five me-109 s in one days I was leading the squadron we had a mission to escort two boxes of b-17s and since there were three squadrons in my Fighter Group I put one squadron on the lead box and the other squadron on the second box and then took my squadron of 16 p-51 and ranged out in front of the Bombers stream 50 to 75 miles and it just normally that's where the German fighter pilots would form up into goggles and I spotted 22 me-109 s climbing up at about 21,000 feet we were sitting up around 30,000 feet since we were up Sun from them I don't think they saw us at the time and I just kept my squadron together and started trailing them and closing up on them and when we got within a couple hundred yards or firing distance i holed up on one 109 and hit him and he broke and hit another 109 and had a collision with him and then at that time when the 109 has realized that we were p-51 they all broke and we got into a dogfight and I recall being on the closing in on another 109 getting hits on him and his wingmen cut his power was backing up when I cut my power and kicked full rudder and pulled in very close to him and sort of sawed him in two and then we broke out again and I started chasing another 109 took him down to the deck and probably killed the pilot because the airplane flew into the ground blew up and then in climbing back out we spotted 16 focke-wulf 190s that actually got into the clouds before we got within firing range of them and I think the one thing that happened I think the me-109 since we were sort of working out of the Sun on him thought we were sixteen focke-wulf 190s trying to rendezvous with them and they let us get in among them before they realized we were one own we were p-51 one of the most interesting missions that I flew was brush shut shut down the four focke-wulf 190s I think the reason was was the people that were involved in the mission but Anderson who was leading the squadron Jim browning was leading white flight Don Baca was leading blue flight and I was leading green flight were the four of us were roommates in a Nissen Hut and between the four of us we had 63 Germans shot down and basically our mission on that particular day we had 48 p-51s or three squadrons of sixteen each and we were escorting 48 other p50 ones which had a drop tank and a 500-pound bomb and we were going deep into Poland to hit some underground fuel storage areas and our job was just to escort the p50 ones that were occurring the bomb and evidently we were up around 35,000 feet above the bomb carrying p-51s at max range cruise which meant we were slowed down and evidently the German radar and intelligence thought it was one large gaggle of B Seventeen's with no wescourt and they scrambled a pretty good fighter force to hit it and that fighter force consisted of about a hundred and fifty focke-wulf 190s and about 50 109s and the first time we spotted these fighters coming out they were around eleven eleven o'clock was 11:30 position and andy and i were were watching it looked like a cumulus cloud because they were pulling contrails and coming but then we started seeing the little spots in the contrails and we knew they were germans and when we first began to see this thing get bigger bigger bigger it looked like a real gaggle of fighters which it was and what we did they were coming at about 11 or 11:30 and since I'm sitting over your green flight ba Ches and blue and Andy leading the squadron in a flight over here when we came in on our left and he told us to punch off our tanks which we did and then everybody broke into the the gaggle and that put me right in the middle of him and it was it was a good dogfight there's airplanes going every way and I don't remember in what sequence I shot down the four 190s anyway he was it was in some of the combat film 16 millimeter combat film you could see as high as 38 airplanes going all different directions both p-51s and and 190s and 109 and in the dogfight you know you get one guy getting burning or the pilot bails out and then you pick another one or try to get on his tail and in the meantime your wingman is with you and trying to keep German fighters off your tail and his tail - so a lot of chatter going on and a lot of maneuvering and after the last 190 that I took to the deck was trying to get away from me finally either killed the pilot or damaged his airplane to point where it hit the ground blew up after shooting again the last focke-wulf 190 it was a clear day and you could see all of the burning fighters just scattered you know for a long stream down through towards Leipzig Germany and it was a one of the better dogfights anyway I ended up all by myself my wingman got lost in the hassle he didn't get shot down he just lost me and then ended up back at the base later on but the interesting thing was while I was climbing out by myself I still had some ammunition left and and I climbed back up to 36,000 feet started heading west to get back to England and I spotted these three little tiny airplanes up north and I since I had ammunition left I just started turning heading up north the minute I turned my p-51 up like that I heard Andy say there's single bo-boogie South Ness asked him did he have two airplanes with him and said yes and I asked him to waggle his wings and that was Indian Baca and browning left and I joined up with him and we came home before flight leaders came home together and I think between the four of us we had about 11 or 12 airplanes during that period the fall of 1944 we probably were at our peak because we flew every day 6 7 hours in the same airplane and we shot down quite a few German airplanes and we probably were the most highly experienced fighter pilots that ever existed and you knew you could handle anything that the Germans could throw at you and you could handle any any German [ __ ] that came up in any kind of an airplane because it you know you demonstrated it and since you flew so much in one particular airplane you really peaked out in it and probably that combination the pilot and the airplane no other time prior to or sense in of a bunch of fighter pilots really been proficient in doing their mission and we really felt at home in the sky [Music] you
