My first one wasn't boring, but it wasn't terribly frightening, either.

My most memorable mission: It came just before the war was over and the Germans were in rout. The were filling the roads with rolling stock, trying to get to the relative safety of the Italian Alps to the north. The only problem was a thing called the Po River which bisected the Po valley for it entire length. But that was a problem, because we had long ago bombed all the bridges so they were piling up on the river, hoping to get across on pontoon bridges at night.

It provided a field day for us P-47 jocks and we lost count of the vehicles we destroyed. On one of these missions we had cornered a bunch of them in an orchard right next to a canal and were giving them holy hell. On one pass I heard a 40mm AA gun firing but could not locate it. I told my wingman about it and he said, "Aw, hell, Jack, you can't hear something like that over the sound of our planes."

But I knew I had, and on the next pass I heard it again and looked back. I could see the smoke trails behind the tracers and was fascinated as they caught up with me. There was a loud clanging noise and a definite jolt as two of them hit me on the underside of the wing.

I immediately wheeled the plane around to the south and started climbing in case I had to bail out. My wing man came up under me and reported I had some fire and smoke coming from the right wheel well area. Gad...the thing I feared most was fire, and I had to get as far away from where we had been shooting the Germans up or I knew I wouldn't make the ground alive if I had to bail out.

My wing man suggested I lower my gear so he could see what it looked like, so I lowered the gear handle and the gear came down with a jolt. That meant I had no hydraulic pressure and the gear had fallen by gravity. That meant, also, that I couldn't get them back up and if I had to make a landing anywhere but on a prepared runway I would have some unwanted problems. It was reassuring to hear the wingman report that the fire was blowing out, so I decided to stay with the plane.

We called the radar station nearby and asked for a steer to the nearest allied airfield, and were offered the facilities at a British Spitfire base near the eastern coast of Italy. It was probably 40 miles away and I kept climbing so as to have plenty of altitude for a bail out if necessary. Meanwhile I was assessing my problems and coming out with some sort of plan.

Click to continue . . .

The facts were that my hydraulic lines had been cut, which meant that I had no flaps, the tire on my right gear was flat, and I was down to only residual hydraulic fluid for braking. So I had to land at about 125 mph instead of the 95 to 100 mph because I had no flaps. Then I had to land at that speed with a flat tire and minimum brakes.

But hell, that was better than what I thought I would have to do just a few minutes before!

In a little over 10 minutes I was in contact with the airfield controllers, told them my problem and asked for immediate landing. A beautifully accented British voice came back, saying something like, "Roger, old chap, would you mind holding off while we get some 'chickens' (fighters) off?" My response was something like an irate, "Hell, no...I wanta get this crate on the ground...I have a goddamed emergency. Their response was, "Roger, Yank, please make a fly-by of the tower so we can observe the damage."

In my anger, I flew the "Jug" right at their tower and slightly off center, then when I got close I lifted one wing so they could see at "close range," probably something like about 20 feet. Then I queried them and asked if that was close enough for observation. Their answer was a slightly quavering, "Indubitably, Yank."

The landing was hairy, but because of the characteristics of that beautiful old Jug, it was done without too much problem. I landed on the left wheel and held the right wing as long as I could, then used what little brakes were left on the left wheel. The plane slewed off to the right, but stopped just short of running off the runway...which irritated the British all to hell...their "chickens" STILL couldn't get off the ground because I was on the runway.

I will have to add that the British guys took it all in good grace, and their whisky was of good quality and in plentiful quantities.

As the Brits would say..."Good show, Yank!"

My most memorable mission, and I guess you can see why.

Go to Part IV