P-51 Ace Shoots Down an ME-262, Becomes a POW, then Joins the Russians to Fight the Nazi's

welcome to veterans chronicles i'm greg corumbus i'm honored to be joined today by retired u.s air force colonel joe peterburs and sir thank you very much for being with us you're welcome he's a veteran of world war ii korea and vietnam more than 36 years in uniform to our country sir let's begin with where you were born and raised well i was born in uh saint paul minnesota on the 30th i mean on 25th of november 1924 i'll be 95 next month and however uh when i was about four or five years old we moved from uh minnesota to wisconsin this is of course uh just prior to the depression and uh i mean yeah the depression did the job opportunities were better there for my father so we moved to wisconsin i grew up in suburb west allis wisconsin went to catholic school there for uh say uh holy assumption and uh was a a top-notch server at mass and stuff and i had a vocation to become a priest and after graduating from grade school that we called it at that time i went into the seminary uh satanisians wisconsin salvatorian seminary and started my long journey to become a a priest what happened well the 7th of december 1941 happened right i was coming back from uh at the seminary uh coming back from sunday mass over to the gym you know to place a pool with the my buddies and uh the pool was in the basement and there's a staircase going down and the speaker right on top of the staircase that about halfway down the stairs i the announcement came across saying uh the japanese had bombed pearl harbor and uh we were going to war and at that time i knew i would be leaving the seminary and joining the military why did you choose the air corps well uh it was the quickest way to get a commission and uh i've i you know i had no previous background or inclination toward aviation but uh i'd watched all the old new movies world war one movies and i really loved uh the aviation movies uh dawn patrol and things like that and i thought that would be a good uh a good way to go so anyway i did leave this at the the uh the seminary uh at the end of the semester i was 17 at the time and i tried to get into the navy but because they were taking recruits at 17 and i failed the eye exam and uh so and i'd heard that the carrots were good for your eyes so i started eating bushels and carrots and then and on my birthday 25th of november of 1942 i took the competitive exam for aviation cadet acceptance and i passed that and was sworn in on the 30th of november as an aviation cadet so you failed the navy eye test but the air core was i believe well by that time i guess all those characters paid off yeah they actually worked that's fantastic so where did you train and what did you fly in training well i started out with the primary training in the with the pt 17 the steering the biplane open cop cockpit got it solo did i think it was six hours a little under six and a half hours and uh uh got about 65 hours in the pt in the steerman and then went on to basic and basic was the pt 17 which was a all a metal aircraft and a single wing and uh but no not uh retractable gear and uh we've got about 85 hours there and got set back a class because there was no room in the in the uh advanced uh at that time so we had to wait another month before we could go into advanced training and went to advanced training in dothan alabama find uh the steerman i'm not disturbing the texan the 86 and uh graduated as a second lieutenant fighter pilot on the 15th of april 1944 at 19 years old amazing amazing so you arrived in england in november of 44 that's correct uh we after graduating we went to what we called an rtu of replacement trading units and i was sliding p-40s i got about 150 hours in the p-40 and then i got my assignment to uh to england and was assigned to the 20th fighter group 55th fighter squadron flying the p-51s i checked out in the p-51 and got about 20 hours i flew the b c and d models and then after about 20 hours i was combat ready and started flying combat wow i've heard from other pilots that the p51 was their favorite plane compared to the ones that came before it oh yes yes actually the the group that i went to had p-38s and they had just converted to the p51 and of course it was a little more difficult for the the 38 pilots because they had no torque they had the twin engine counter rotating props and uh the 51 had a lot of torque and it was a difficult aircraft to transition to if you had no prior but we the the group that i went with the and there were seven of us that had one training together and we always arrived in uh at the 20th at the same time and uh it was from the p-40 to the p-51 was really no problem when did you first enter combat i got i had my first mission on the 12th of december 1944. and it was a routine uh escort mission and uh i flew uh uh 48 more missions and uh the last of which was my 49th and the most exciting i had a lot of i had a a a lot of really good missions i was uh i used to i loved the strafing part of it what was our primary mission was to escort the bombers of course to protect them to and and from the target however we did have uh fighter sweeps sometime and then we also had some depending upon the combat environment we would uh be allowed one squadron of the uh of the other group would be allowed after the bombers hit the target would be allowed to go down and look for targets of opportunity that's what i loved in the uh strafing the things that i was nicknamed the streaming kid so i like it i like it did you see much uh resistance in the air from the germans by that point uh yes there were oh well i think it was a [Music] it was the 17th the 14th of january we had put up uh another eighth air force had put up about a little over two thousand uh b set of bombers and nine hundred fighters for targets in central and uh uh eastern germany and uh this was my first encounter and uh we were hit by some [Music] 300 plus 109s and 190s and uh it was really uh bombers being shot down the the german tactic was that the 109s would come in and hit and run hoping to draw the fighters chasing the uh chasing them you know and drawing them away from the uh the bomber protection and then the 190s would be circling up and after the the one 109s went through the 190s would come down and chew up the bombers so we had a lot of losses of b-17s that day and of course there was engines and wings and parachutes in the air and you had to worry about not hitting somebody and then you had the other fighters coming in i had a head-on with a 109 there was a it was uh coming at me and i was a chicken basically chicken and we were headed towards each other and my uh flight leader he was on a tale of the of the 109 but he couldn't fire because i he may have hit me so we passed about 50 feet i passed about 50 feet under him and as soon as i left i i got some hits on his on his wings but uh nothing enough to just to destroy it but after i'd passed under uh my uh flight leader he zapped him and got him so that was my first encounter but it did remind me of how brave the the b-17 pilots were i mean they would just plow in there 150 160 knots onto the target flacked all around you hear this expression uh the flag was so thick he could walk on it well that was how it was and uh and then have their bombers their buddies of going falling from the left and to the right and they would be on to the target valley i thought then that they're the bravest of the brave it's a very very perilous job yes right and at one point even didn't have the fighter escorts that's correct that's right that's when the 51 came into its uh the savior basically they were able to my longest mission was seven hours and 20 minutes wow and uh my longest combat day was nine hours uh when the over the uh we were crossing rambogan uh bridge i was doing spiders i did two fighter sweeps of missions that day over the bridge and protecting the forces okay i had flown uh the 30th of march had the [Music] first second third fourth 6th 7th 8th 9th and my 49th mission the 10th of april and the uh the air force had put up about i mean 8th air force had put about a force of about 1500 bombers and to get about 900 or so fighters and they were bombing uh targets in the magnaburg berlin uh uh potsdam and uh uh orianni and burged areas and as we approached the target we of course we uh we rendezvoused uh near magdeburg and then the the the box of bombers that we were escorting were about 450 with about 90 fighters and we were our group that had the high cover find about five six thousand feet above the bombers and our target was a random bird which is a just north uh of uh berlin and uh it was uneventful until we got over the target and then uh uh just about the time the bombers were letting go of their uh their loads uh we were hit by a swarm of ma262s and i latched the verb visually latched onto a m8262 turbo jet fighters and uh i latched on to one that and he blew up a b-17 and i of course as soon as i saw my roll over and started at him and he pulled into another b-17 just about the time i was getting there and blew it up and then i got onto his six and and was able to get his a left engine i got some hits in his left engine uh i saw a little smoke and a little flame but he rolled over and started down to the deck to and uh i chased him and of course i was losing my speed advantage uh because uh i had the speed advantage because of my altitude i had five six thousand feet on them and throttle's wide open and uh going down anyway in fact i almost hit compressibility which would have been bad but anyway he went down and disappeared about 3 000 feet he disappeared into some clouds and uh 60 years later i found out who this guy wasn't it all came soon but anyway he he tells he told me that after he went into the clouds he made the 90 degree turn and then his engine started disintegrating and uh he had to bail out anyway of course this is all unknown to me so yeah i've uh break off i'm not going to follow them into the clouds it's fruitless so i pull off and i look over and i see an airfield just loaded with aircraft well what does a 20 year old with a 2 000 horsepower engine and a 650 caliber machine gun so i decided to start strafing and i made five or six passes i can't remember but in the process i destroyed five aircraft at least five aircraft on the ground and uh the start of the hangar on fire and of course i'm by myself so all the guns are and i got a couple hits in the wing which didn't affect the aircraft so i come around for my last pass and it's the uh me 200 a condor big four engine uh part of hitler's feet the fleet which in fact i found out later it was part of editor's fleet and i came in on it and i felt a thud as i was coming in and i fired it blew up and i was pulling off and i felt another thunder then i started getting an oil stream across my my windscreen my uh and uh i got up to about 10 000 feet and the i was able to by manipulating the foddles and mixtures the technical stuff that i was able to keep it sort of flying so i decided to head out head back to the uh the west i had the east was closer the russians were closer but i felt that my chances were better if i went to the the west so i started back towards magdeburg which was about 90 miles away and uh are slowly losing altitude but then by the time i got to a little town about berg uh which is probably 15 20 miles uh from uh magdeburg uh i was down to a thousand feet and i've decided i'll i'm gonna have to uh uh bail out so i unstrapped my stuff and then that's when i've been strapping myself i look off to my three o'clock position and uh there's a 190 coming in at me so i just been able to turn my aircraft by this time my aircraft is starting to burn i turn into him and he fires his rockets and misses and by the time i complete the turn i'm down to 500 feet i think i'm too to load the bail out and so i'm looking for a place to land and then it's of course there's all milliseconds you know taking place i think well i'm on top i'll kill myself if i try to build it i'm not strapped anymore because i unhook the bail out earlier so i decided to bail out so i'm over the side about 350 seats i figured i let loose in the aircraft and i have to go out to the wrong side to go out to the right because the torque would throw me away from the aircraft but the right side was burning so i have to go out the left side so i go out the left side and as published i hit my knee on the horizontal stabilizer and then pulled my rip cord shoot open i swung once it hit the ground hard and it was uh fortunately it was the spring and it was a big farmer's field and it you know banged up my back a little bit and my legs and but i had birds on my arms and legs so i get up i see what the situation is and i'm in this middle of of farmer's field you know nothing no trees nothing for 100 yards all around and i also see about 10 15 farmers come rushing at me with their and about the time uh they are just probably uh 20 yards away a motorcycle comes tearing up behind me and a luftwaffe sergeant the german air force sergeant who's stationed in the area got off his motorcycle booked took off his luger fired a couple shots in the air and held the crowd off and about the same time a group of uh big monkey monks from the to the town probably the burgermeister and i know the chief of police and several others and they were talking to the the luftwaffe sergeant and he agreed to take me into town to start questioning me and this sort of thing and uh so that's we went into town went into probably the local city hall building and uh started questioning me and the chief of police was probably a world war one guy i remember this like it was yeah and he had a the right hand that was a black leather hand i don't know if you've seen all some of the old uh movies and affording but that that's how they almost depicted and he had a green green uniform and a real leather funny hat i knew he was the police of chief and he pulled out his luger and wanted to shoot me on the spot and i then the the uh flooftop excited you know out of this and the crowd was starting to gather and making a ruckus outside his assignment says we're going so he takes me to the local airfield that he was stationed at which put probably oh 20 25 minutes away and so i'm putting the brig there then question for a day and a half of uh gestapo questioning no no physical stuff just relentless questioning and uh during the two three days i was there the british were bombing doing their night bombing a lot this time and i was sitting there in the bomb shelter with all these germans they were getting the hell down out of them so you know it wasn't very comfortable anyway after about i think it was uh on the third day uh they took me uh to the rail station uh and uh uh put me on a train to uh to uh stall like 11. another pow camp was all british and as i was standing uh there wait for the train uh to put me on a train at one of the workmen at the at the station he had me a bottle of schnapps and gave me a swing and she i never tasted it was a pick me up anyway i hopped on well i was put on the train and ended up at the stalek 11 and all the there was only about 200 prisoners left because of they had moved out uh the uh the ones the main body of the prison camp several thousands and there were about 200 tommy's british tommies there and then the next and i spent the night the next morning we started a force march back to uh to to towards berlin and uh it was about five probably five days four five days on the uh the the march and it was just pandemonium you know as thousands of people going east and thousands of people going west the roads were clocked uh uh clogged motorcycles german you know uh military up and down trying to get some kind of of uh of uh of sense out of the pandemonium uh vehicles of german army vehicles stopped and stalled and that sort of stuff and in addition we were being strafed every day by my buddies they didn't know of course that we were uh sure uh powders in the group but anyway we ended up at lucan baldy a starlight 3 which is mostly uh russian pows and lukenvald is just outside of berlin so i'm there for uh probably three four days and uh i decided to escape and by escape i mean it was you know minimal uh security at the prison uh uh basically just had to go under the fence and so i did that and went down and started uh down the uh road and uh oh probably five miles down the road i heard this rumbling and i hide in the ditch and look up at this uh russian tank in it and so i jump out and i wave them down and the little i could communicate with them unfortunately the guy that was the lieutenant that was in charge of the column i could speak a little english and i basically told him i uh american pilot so then he said yeah come on and he gave me a rifle then hop on and i hopped on the tank and then we started towards wittenberg who fought the battle of utterbug i went on several patrols with the russians at that jitterbug and then it's like fighting for another country's army even though that you're on the same side oh yeah right but it's got to be a little bit weird well well it was important because these guys were wild uh yeah this one instance uh uh we were we went into a a large housing complex and it was really really nice you know uh and uh there's the sergeant that was really leading the patrol he would get into this room and it's furnished real real nice that's what he tells us all to get out get out he stands in the middle room with this burp gun and just said there's a circle laughing like hell just shooting the thing up like oh why i better watch myself here you know i didn't say anything not how the americans would do it yeah but anyway then we started on the thing and we had a an insurance you know i think it was probably six seven seven eight days by the time we got to uh to wittenberg then the battle had just subsided in wittenberg and uh but we had several skirmishes underway which okay and then that wittenberg of course at this time the uh there's some political uh tensions between uh the east and west and uh and uh i i i felt sort of like i was being secured or watched over a little more than than necessary unusual then when the american patrol came across to meet the russians after the hell that wouldn't hurt they had to be sort of hidden away in the back however the the sergeant in charge of the american patrol he saw this flight suit back there and he knew that was an american fighter so he started to discuss it in a little argument but then he finally uh released me and uh to the patrol so i returned uh from the uh with the with the uh the group uh uh the patrol the american patrol and they were stationed at holley and uh a holley used to be a major uh luftwaffe base and then from there i went out on several patrols with the uh with the uh with the army and uh you know just rounding up uh uh munitions we'd go to the to a town and have them all pile up all their in the town square and i picked up some pretty nice souvenirs and and then back and i was probably there for three days with the army and i got kicked off because they were getting me drunk and and winning all my souvenirs anyway i'm 20 years old now you're still 20 and i decide well i've i'm relying i'm going to try something else so i said sayonara and take off and uh walk well probably seven 600 miles and uh see the c-47 uh in the field and uh a bunch of uh guys dressed in striped suits as you know it's a striped prisoner uh suits and walk walk over to the two lieutenants were flying the uh c-47 said where you going he said well we're returning these uh political prisoners to paris and uh i said well paris that sounds good so big mistake i said can i have a right yeah so we get comparison i immediately get stamped and lost and all that sort of stuff and i'm back under control so my days wandering were over and uh so i go through a bunch of processing and this sort of stuff and end up on a convoy back to the to the u.s and i land in new york on the 1st of june back to fort sheridan on the go about the 6th of june and then home to marry my lovely fiance josephine who i'd named my aircraft after uh who and uh so we make all the preparations but i had to get my mom's permission to get married because i hadn't turned 21 yet so but you did yes and so you are married and um one of the things i want to get to is what happened to you in korea but i want to skip ahead by about 60 years because you mentioned that you eventually found out who the pilot of the me262 was so explain what it was like to meet that person so many years later well the the background is was that there was a 13 year old boy at berg hiding in the ditch watching all the air battles like you would have expected and he saw he saw all the action at at burn uh where i bailed out the new one on attacking me and this sort of stuff and uh of course berg is in east germany and they weren't able to do anything of course uh until the research or you know interaction with the west until reunification to germany and then when that happened then there are a lot of uh uh they were trying to catch up of course a lot of tv programs were doing uh commercials i mean uh the programs yeah on uh uh about uh recovering uh uh were the aircraft that were lost during world war ii and uh and so verder his name was verno dietrich he went to the tv said hey i know exactly what told him the story where this aircraft so he got to the tv company went ahead and did a special and they've got their big old backhoes and their big metal detectors and stuff and they found it and they excavated by aircraft josephine and for 18 months verner was trying to locate the pilot eventually did in 97 is uh and i got a i got a letter uh from uh from sand explaining he says was that you he said i said wrote back and of course he didn't have a computer so it was all snail mail and so i wrote back i said yeah everything's i'm sure that was my aircraft so then i get a call uh that the tv states they want to do a follow-up of the uh of the uh or excavation and i wanted me to come to uh to germany and uh my wife had had a stroke and i was a sole caregiver and i said and i said no i can't leave it so they the whole crew packed up and with burner and they came over to colorado springs where they did the follow-up during the follow-up they're talking to herner all he knew was he saw me bail out at burn he didn't know where the action did i tell him the story about 262 and this sort of thing and he said i'm going to go when i go back i'm going to find that signed a 262 pilot and they go back and about two months later he i got a letter from him said in eureka i found him that's walter shook a top germination with 206 confirmed victories 198 of them and the 109 and eight of them in the uh me262 and i said yeah yeah okay and he says yeah he's everything seems a jive and i said well i'll give it a 50 you know the fog war and all that i said a 50 chance so i took him with a grain of salt and then a couple of years later i get a an email from this norwegian no swedish swedish the researcher and author christopher bergstrom and he's in the process of writing walter shook's biography and he said i understand that you uh after the war you wrote down a narration of that the last mission i said yeah he said would you mind sending it to me i said okay i sent it to him three days later i get an email back saying definitely 100 sure you're the one that shot down walter shuck i thought how could he be a hundred percent he said everything jived perfectly all the timing and everything and places and where you were yeah but i'll go maybe ninety percent but still that thought he says yes positive because you s in your narrative not knowing anything about chuck or anything else that's going on you say that you see this in this uh [Music] me 262 shoot down two bombers well in fact walter shook is the only person the only pilot the only 262 pilot that you shot down two pilots i mean two b-17s in a row during that mission in fact he shot down four because he had shot down two in an earlier box that he he attacked and then he came over to your box and he said 100 so i accepted it and and uh and uh on in may they were doing a walter was coming to the united states and he was visiting the old uh uh mate uh from the la floppy who had migrated to the states in the in the 50s anyway they were coming to visit him so uh they uh i have i went on the 18th of may 19 i mean 2005. we met in vista california for the second time and we had an immediate uh uh report report with them and i became close friends and for the next until he parted in 2000 and 16 16. he was four years older than i and uh so he was and he was an id for when he passed away and i'm 94 now so it's four years ago whatever do the math but uh anyway we we did many mayor shows and i visited his home in uh germany and he visited me and uh in uh california and uh we had a great time and a lot of he told me all his tactics and this sort of thing during the whole war and he was he was really a gentleman he was known as the the uh the eagle of the north he did most of his kills in the uh and the uh the eisenberg which is the north sea area they were stationed out of uh a uh a base up in northern sweden and uh i mean northern uh finland and uh they uh uh they were interdicting the uh the uh traffic uh a led lease sort of stuff that was uh entering uh murmansk and so he had a hundred and most of them were russians 198-109 and then he was transitioned to uh the 262 the turbojet and then on his first mission he destroyed three aircraft on his first training mission so anyway he was he was a great great guy after after the war uh i went into administrative type jobs and uh it was a uh just a flu for proficiency uh and so uh and i i flew b-25s and g6s and uh c47s and stuff like that all uh no fighters and in 1951 i got the orders uh to korea and uh arrived and uh actually they uh at the 18th fighter bomber group at busan north korea and i had been a finance officer prior to getting my orders uh accounting and dispersing and uh the the uh the commander general rogers uh her knew that i had two brothers uh killed uh in the war and he didn't want me to fly combat and i was uh very very upset about that and and uh so after some just he was sort of basing it on the the sullivan thing where they you know you and i told him i said look at that is for the last surviving son that you can exercise that but not i still have several brothers left so and so anyway he really didn't i i checked out in the 51 i got the little five hours or something did it and then uh and it started my first uh combat mission with uh bombs and rockets and stuff and i'd never fired a rocket never dropped a bomb so anyway that must have been my instincts were pretty good so i did a pretty good job on that mission and and flew [Music] 75 76 missions a couple of them uh battled them but i got one mission which i uh got a 50 caliber right through the prop i i didn't know it and uh i mean i i didn't know it was through the prop i got this big flash in front of me and then my aircraft started just you know vibrating like and so i didn't know if i'd have to be allowed or not but we our base was only about 50 miles from the dmz and this this was in the punch bowl just across the dmc so i've made it back to base and uh landed and taxied into my space and uh turned off the engine and the pop poop and there's the blade is it a big 50 caliber hole right wow that's okay and then uh another mission uh i was uh leading a flight of uh four with napalm against uh uh enemy troops uh dug into longer uh in trenches along the uh the mountain bridge so we went ahead we had a day palm and rocket so we did a good napalm run and then uh came in uh for the rocket run and of course the nothing was guided you had to get you know you had to have your aircraft straight and leveled because the rocket will go as as your aircraft is going uh and if you were to slip the rocket will slide anyway you had to go i popped off my first two rockets and i was popping off my third and i got a small arms cup through the wing root through this kick blew the canopy and uh a big explosion inside the cockpit i reach out and my face is full of my hands full of blood i said i don't know what the heck's going on so my wingman i wobbled him he lost his radio during the thing so i couldn't communicate with him so i communicated back to the home base and uh not knowing what the extent of my damages said it was coming back and it wobbled my wingman and he come pulling it next to me and so we went back and get the base so we go to the base and we peel off and my wingman peels off before i do and he comes in the lens and all the meat wagons are down there the fire engines began following him so i landed no fans or anything and so i taxied the taxi to my uh parking uh a little sl slot and uh crew chief jumps up on the on the wing i'm down getting my maps and stuff off the floor and uh and he said he is startled and slips off the way he almost breaks his leg but what what happened of course when the the projectile went through the the canopy plexiglas is splattered so i had my place was just full of plexiglass and so i had a several hours with a flight surgeon picking that out of my face and then i flew i think the two days later so i was back flying again so that was the korea we could talk about vietnam if we had the time um joe it's been an honor to meet you sir um you were telling us before we started 36 and a half years of service in uniform to our country thank you very much for your service it was my pleasure to serve and do it all over again thank you we're grateful for your service united states air force colonel retired joe peterburs this is veterans chronicles

Channel: American Veterans Center

Views: 394,076

Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, veteran, veterans, history, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, military, navy seal, world war ii, wwii, world war ii veteran, wwii vet

Id: RwzUo9FrDnI

Length: 42min 42sec (2562 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020