In a recent interview, World War II fighter pilot William Gregory was asked, “So you did not shoot anybody down, and no one shot you down, right?”—as though those two events could summarize the combat service of any pilot of that time and place. With an evaluating glance, and after making a mental entry about the questioner, “Greg” said, “That’s right.”
Over the long course of the war, most fighter pilots did not score an aerial victory, let alone become aces, and most were not downed in combat. And even pilots who did shoot down an enemy aircraft in combat often did not view that event as the defining moment of their combat careers. Harold Harper, who flew with the 49th Fighter Squadron alongside William Gregory, is credited with two aerial victories, but he himself claims only one and readily admits that he has no recollection of that action. But if you ask him, seventy years after the events, about “routine” combat operations in North Africa, or about living conditions on base, about the food or the effects of dysentery, or about his fellow pilots—those who survived combat and those who did not—he would have a full recollection and a ready answer.
While many spectacular and heroic episodes of aerial combat have been well served in literature and film, the wartime experiences of the vast majority of combat pilots, like those in the 49th Fighter Squadron, are largely unrecognized. In part, that may be because of the pilots’ reticence. For many pilots, the thrill of flying and the fact of having survived combat were intensely personal and little shared. Few kept diaries or wrote memoirs. Even following combat, in the security of home and family, these pilots often kept silent about their experiences, leaving their loved ones to wonder if their service had been too mundane, or perhaps too horrific, to share. Fighter pilot Bob Vrilakas noted that “everybody in the military has a story,” but he had been reluctant to relate his experiences until very late in life because he did not want to bore anyone.
This book reveals much of the Sturm und Drang of American combat flying, focusing on one P-38 fighter squadron during the hot summer of 1943 in North Africa. It gives a broad accounting of how these young men came to be part of an extraordinarily diverse cast of highly trained and lethal pilots. It explains how they were selected for pilot training, where they received their flight instruction, and what types of planes they flew. It follows the arrival of these newly minted second lieutenants to North Africa and records their reactions to the alien world in which they now lived, and which some would never leave.
Volunteers to a man, most of the 49th’s cadre of fighter pilots had joined the Army Air Corps in the days immediately following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. What follows includes many firsthand accounts by those men, all of whom are now quite aged and most of whom would describe their service as “just doing my job.” Also included is a careful description of the context of their service—the military strategies adopted by President Roosevelt and his staff and implemented by General Eisenhower and his. It relates the state of war from the perspective of German pilots bent on resisting the Allied advances from myriad airfields in Sicily and Italy. And it describes how wrong a carefully planned mission can go, and how luck sometimes favors the prepared pilot.
As with any squadron, the pilots of the 49th were of different types, and the squadron quickly became a melting pot of ethnicities, cultures, backgrounds, and educations. Some were naturally aggressive; for them combat was a release of sorts. Others were surely less so. Some developed as leaders within the squadron. A few were natural fliers; for others flight was always a challenge. While few had planned a life in the military, all shared a commitment to their wingman and a willingness to stand up to their duty, to complete the dangerous task before them.
The following account explains how quickly any swagger or feeling of privilege fell away upon reporting to their new squadron and describes the final combat training they received from pilots who, after just a month of combat flying, were already considered seasoned veterans. It gives witness to the sometimes execrable living conditions, the sun and dust, the scorpions and the malaria. Importantly, it records the mutual dependence that developed among the pilots, their reliance on each other during a mission, on friends back on the ground, on ground crews and maintenance specialists, on the mission planners, and on the mission leaders.
In the early days of the war, the skies were lethal. A third of the flight cadets in their cohorts had already been killed in training accidents. About half of the pilots who reported for duty in North Africa during that time did not survive. Combat losses rose at an alarming rate, and squadrons were further weakened by losses during routine training flights between missions, and even by apparent suicides.
For these young men, it was a time of duty, of inevitable sacrifice, of coping with the unavoidable and constantly increasing physical and emotional stresses in the air and on the ground, of facing death and meting it out on every mission. It was hearing the near-constant drone of nearby aircraft, waking to a tap on the shoulder: “You’re on.” And for some fighter pilots, their tour became a starkly terrifying routine, fraught with anxiety, grief, and sometimes guilt.
The pilots lived in two different worlds. On missions against the formidable Luftwaffe, and in the face of withering flak, they had to forget about everything that had come before, even the losses, in order to concentrate on the task at hand. On good days, the pilots might reflect on a successful mission, quietly giving thanks that no one was lost. On other days, after other missions, the young men might find the living conditions especially harsh, or their dysentery worse. They might be plagued by thoughts of recent close calls or frustrated by incomplete or unsatisfactory missions. On these days, it would be difficult to cope with the now-empty cot next to them or to be civil to the even younger replacement pilot who would now occupy it.
Fear was a constant, and each man reached an accommodation to that fear in his own way, and within his own limits. As losses within the squadron mounted, so too did the grief felt by the men over missing friends and tentmates. Always there was the next mission, and yet despite all the flying, the end of their combat tour often seemed to be no closer.
This work will answer some of the questions long unasked and give to many a better understanding of the war and some men’s role in it. In the spirit of truthfulness and full disclosure, the person who posed the myopic question to William Gregory was me. This book has become both my penance and my reward.