大象传媒

I was a fighter bomber pilot with the 12th Tactical Air Force, 27th Fighter Bomber Group, 522nd Squadron in Italy, Corsica and Southern France from November 1943 through August 1944. I flew 94 missions in the A-36A, the P-40 and the P-47.
When I had over 60 missions it came time for our squadron to furnish a pilot for the courier service from Naples to the Anzio Beachhead. They had two UC-78's, little twin engine 5 passenger planes sometimes called the "bamboo bomber". Few fighter pilots had any multiengine training or experience so anybody was fair game. I volunteered and it was a most interesting week, possibly the most dangerous week of my tour.
For a few days I was at the disposal of General Mark Clark at his front line headquarters. One day he released the plane to a Colonel Lee to go to the beachhead. He said he was an old Cessna pilot so he climbed in the pilot's seat and I went to the co-pilot's seat. We were on a very dangerous airport, short, with obstructions. I was nervous, but he did fairly well on takeoff except that he started adjusting the engines before we cleared the high tension lines at the end of the strip. At the last minute, I grabbed the wheel and jerked it back, hitting him in the chest. He looked at me and I pointed out the window and he could see the wires sliding by, too close.
When we got to the beachhead, he dropped it in about four feet and I thought we were going to have to swim back. Then he went off to do his business without giving me any information. i didn't know if he was going to be 10 minutes or ten hours so I didn't dare leave the plane. What's for lunch?
A couple of British soldiers in a nearby foxhole took pity on me and offered me lunch. It was a chunk of bully beef, or desert chicken and a half cup of weak warm tea.
Col. Lee returned in mid-afternoon. I had been stewing for six hours trying to figure out how to tell him that if he was going to fly it back, I didn't want to go because I had zero confidence that he would be able to land it on that dangerous strip. But when he arrived he said, "You fly it back." Wow, my court martial just disappeared.
I believe I thanked the Britishers for their lunch.

Later in the week on the way back from Anzio, I landed at my base at Castel Volturno to check my mail. While parked, one tire went flat. Being a fighter base they had no repair facilities for a UC-78. So I jumped into my P-40, flew to Naples, got the second UC-78 and flew back to Castel Volturno with a mechanic and his equipment. I picked up the three passengers and some other stuff. There was a war correspondent, rather short with curly black hair as I remember. There also was a British Squadron Leader, a pilot equivalent in rank to our Major and a South African Ground Captain. He was a steroeotypical overweight man with probably little experience in flying and a perpetually surprised look on his face.
When I took off the left engine almost quit. It wasn 't doing any harm but it also was not helping. I couldn't get much higher than the trees ahead of me for thirty miles. I was doing everything I could, pushing every button and lever trying to get a few more feet of altitude. What was worse, the ground rose ahead of me for the next thirty miles to Naples. I couldn't even bank to go somehwere else or we would have lost altitude and be in the trees.I think I'm the only one that ever managed to climb in a UC-78 at stalling speed with three passengers and some packages.
I had to bump us over a tall tree several times with a small amount of flaps. Then the plane would shudder and I would nurse it and it would finally continue flying. If I could have found a small field, I think I would have put it in.
But finally, I broke over the ridge at Naples and could see the wide grass field, Capodochino. I had been heading for the end of the runway that I had just taken off from hoping to be able to go straight in. But they had reversed traffic in the meantime and I was coming in the wrong way. I wasn't about to try to go around. I called in for an emergency landing. There was a C-47 taking off on the far side of the runway and a P-39 poised to take off on the near side. The tower told the P-39 to hold for an emergency landing.
As I started getting close to the ground the P-39 started going right toward me. I wasn't going to go around. I couldn't. I heeled over and landed across the field at an angle, behind the C-47 and in front of the P-39.
Actually, that was probably a good thing because I couldn't taxi with only one engine and this way I was able to stop just off the active runway.
I seem to remember the South African Ground Captain getting out, kneeling down and kissing the ground. The Squadron Leader just got out. casual and smiling. I noticed he didn't have a seat belt and I asked him what he would have done if we were going in. He said he would have gotten down on the floor
The war correspondent was pea green all the way down. He stretched forward, the whole way watching the trees flick by underneath us. I suppose he wrote a story about this somewhere. I wish I could see it
As for me I remember a drop of sweat on the end of my nose. It tickled but I just didn't have time to reach up and brush it off. I was too busy!!

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