Allied Jet Killers of World War 2 Read online

  Moments later, the aircraft he had been pursuing – which Barnhart had still not identified – turned north, allowing the P-51 pilot to cut him off and close the distance. It was obvious to Barnhart that the bandit was unaware of ‘Vortex Blue’s’ presence. His Encounter Report detailed what happened next;

  When Capt Bryan shot down the Ar 234 over Remagen on 14 March 1945 he was not flying his assigned P-51D-10 44-14061 Little One III, but P-51K-5 44-11628 BASHFUL BETSY, normally flown by Capt George A Middleton. This Mustang was unusual in that is carried two names. On the left side it was christened WORRA BIRD 3 (the name given to it by Middleton) and on the right side crew chief Sgt Joe Shenk applied the name BASHFUL BETSY (352nd FG Association)

  ‘Unable to identify it, I closed until I saw the open jets and German markings. Knowing that I had him cold, I slid under him and came up on his right, about 30 ft from his right plane. I could not identify it then, but have since recognised it from drawings as an Arado 234. The pilot of the jet looked over at me and immediately jettisoned his canopy and bailed out.’

  Despite now being pilotless, the bomber maintained its altitude and right hand orbit, allowing Barnhart to make a series of gun camera passes – he also filmed the pilot hanging beneath his parachute. Figuring the jet would eventually crash, Barnhart reformed his flight, but as he looked back the Ar 234 was still in its orbit. He returned to the jet, made several more gun camera passes and then opened fire, sending the Arado down a vertical dive until it hit the ground. Barnhart later noted that the jet ‘exploded violently’. The Ar 234 was Barnhart’s second of two aerial victories.

  The following day (15 March), the USAAF claimed its final Me 163 victory. Since Capt Arthur Jeffrey had downed the first Komet to fall to the Allies on 29 July 1944, USAAF fighters had destroyed an additional four rocket fighters, with the most recent pair falling to the guns of 4th FG aces Freddie Glover and Louis Norley on 2 November. On 15 March, the only USAAF pilot to engage a jet was ranking 359th FG ace Capt Ray S Wetmore of the 370th FS, who was leading ‘Red’ Section near Wittenberg in P-51D 44-15521 SCREAMIN DEMON. Flying at 25,000 ft with a formation of heavy bombers, Wetmore spotted a pair of Me 163s circling at 20,000 ft and promptly dived on the rocket fighters. As he closed to within 3000 yards, one of the Komet pilots spotted the incoming Mustangs and lit his motor, pulling into a 70-degree climb. Wetmore later noted in his Encounter Report;

  Although he was not an ace, 1Lt Robert E Barnhart of the 356th FG had an unusual encounter with an Ar 234 on 14 March. After pursuing the Arado eastward for nearly 15 minutes, the jet turned, which allowed Barnhart to close the distance. He approached unseen from below and joined up in formation off the jet’s right wing. Upon looking over and seeing the Mustang, the pilot bailed out without Barnhart firing a shot. When the Arado continued to fly by itself, Barnhart decided to shoot it down (Peter Randall collection)

  ‘At about 26,000 ft his jet quit, so he split-essed. I dived with him and levelled off at 2000 ft on him at “six o’clock”. During the dive my IAS [indicated air speed] was between 550-600 mph. I opened fire at 200 yards. Pieces flew off all over. He made a sharp turn to the right and I gave him another short burst, and half his left wing flew off and the plane caught fire. The pilot bailed out, and I watched the enemy aircraft crash into the ground.’

  Flt Off Russel E Shouse was flying as ‘Red 3’, and having witnessed Wetmore’s engagement he wrote in his confirmation report that the enemy pilot bailed out at just 500 ft. Even with available German records, the identity of the Komet and its pilot remain a mystery. As previously noted, this Me 163 was the last example to be shot down by the USAAF, and it was also Capt Wetmore’s final victory, taking his tally to 21.25 aerial and 2.333 strafing victories. He was the fifth-ranking USAAF ace in the ETO.

  Both Me 262s and Ar 234s were active once again on 19 March, with two Arado bombers falling to three non-aces from the 82nd FS/78th FG who had all previously made claims against jets. A short while later, 200 miles southeast of where the 78th had downed the Ar 234s, the 359th FG was patrolling south of Dessau. Leading the 368th FS in P-51D 44-15717 WILD BILL was unit CO, Maj Niven K Cranfill, who had so far shot down four enemy aircraft, including three fighters during a single mission on 27 November 1944. While patrolling at 18,000 ft, Cranfill spotted three Me 262s passing overhead. The Mustang pilots jettisoned their tanks and started to climb in pursuit. Shortly thereafter Cranfill saw ten more jets fly beneath the squadron in a southerly direction. He immediately broke off the pursuit of the trio above him and went after the larger formation. The Mustang pilots were unable to close the distance on the jets, however, and Cranfill watched helplessly as they attacked a box formation of B-17s.

  One of the jets then made a 180-degree turn that put Cranfill in a position to bounce the Me 262, as his Encounter Report explained;

  1Lt Ray Wetmore of the 370th FS/359th FG scored his first aerial victory on 10 February 1944, ‘made ace’ on 19 May, double ace (as a captain) on 2 November, triple ace on 1 January 1945 and quadruple ace and ‘ace in a day’ on 14 January. He scored his final victory, an Me 163, on 15 March 1945. Wetmore finished the war as the fifth highest scoring ace in the ETO with 21.25 victories, 17 of which were claimed in the Mustang (359th FG Association)

  ‘I saw one ME 262 on the tail of a P-51 and bounced him. He broke off when I fired several bursts from line astern, getting strikes in the wings. I claimed this one damaged. I followed him north and saw he was passing another 262. I opened [the throttle] wide open, indicating 380 [mph] straight and level at 12,000 ft, and was able to close on the latter. I started shooting from astern, a little below, 600 to 800 yards, and got good strikes on the bottom of the fuselage. The enemy aircraft then started a diving turn to the left, from which he did not recover.’

  As Cranfill levelled off at 5000 ft he saw another Mustang make a pass at the jet, but failed to get any hits. The Me 262 crashed in a vertical attitude and exploded. After review Maj Cranfill was awarded full credit for destroying one Me 262 and damaging another, thus finishing the war as a five-victory ace.

  After claiming just 2.5 jet victories in 1944, the 357th FG had racked up six victories in three engagements in January and February 1945. On 19 March ace Maj Robert W Foy and Capt Robert S Fifield of the 363rd FS added to that score whilst on an escort mission to the Ruhland, with ace Lt Col Andrew Evans leading the group. Just after 1400 hrs, the 357th witnessed the largest concentration of jet fighters yet seen – 36 – attack the bombers near Chemnitz. The Me 262s came in from ‘six o’clock high’ in nine flights of four, with the final two flights approaching at a slower speed than the rest. Ace Lt Col Tommy Hayes, who was leading the 363rd FS, broke into the last two flights. The jets broke away from the bombers and split up into two-ship elements, which easily out-ran the Mustangs. By breaking up the last two flights, Hayes had certainly saved some bombers, for the third flight of jets had succeeded in shooting down four B-17s – single aircraft from the 96th and 385th BGs and two from the 452nd BG. There were 40 men aboard the four Flying Fortresses, but only 19 parachutes were seen.

  Capt Ray Wetmore’s P-51D-10 44-14733 Daddy’s Girl (seen here at East Wretham) is well-known, but when he shot down his Me 163 on 15 March 1945 he was flying P-51D-15 44-15521 SCREAMIN DEMON. Wetmore followed the Komet into a split-s manoeuvre at 26,000 ft and pushed his Mustang to nearly 600 mph in a dive, before levelling out at 2000 ft. He then fired several bursts from 200 yards astern that blew the Komet’s left wing off. The pilot bailed out and the fighter spun in and exploded (359th FG Association)

  While Lt Col Hayes was doing his best to disrupt this devastating attack, Capt Robert S Fifield demonstrated incredible tenacity in his encounter with one of the Me 262s;

  ‘I was leading the second element of “Cement Blue” Flight when 20+ 262s attacked our box from “six o’clock, slightly high”. I dropped my tanks and tried to beat them to the bombers. I got there just as they hit. I shot at about four different ones and finally singled
one out. They were all diving to the left. They were getting away from me, so I tried lobbing some long-range shots in and finally got some black smoke trailing from one of them. After that he slowed down and I started closing in on him. They seemed to split into elements of two. After I got some more hits, his wingman got up close to him and then took off again when I got some more hits. I closed up to about 400 yards and got many hits. He trailed some smoke and then went straight in and exploded.’

  During this action, 1Lt Joe Cannon got his one and only shot at becoming a ‘jet killer’. When he spotted the Me 262s coming in on the bombers, he broke into them and latched on to the tail of one of the jets, closing to within 200 yards. Cannon fired a short burst and saw strikes on the tail, at which point the light bulb illuminating his K-14 gunsight blew out. After firing several more bursts, without effect, the Me 262 broke left and dived out of range, leaving Cannon with a mere ‘damaged’ claim.

  Shortly thereafter, in the vicinity of Giessen, Maj Foy spotted three Me 262s closing in on a flight of Mustangs. Leading his own flight down in an attempt to intercept the enemy jets, he set his sights on the Me 262 on the left side of the formation. Spotting the P-51s closing on them from the rear, the German pilots began to accelerate out of range. Foy, however, used his K-14 gunsight to good effect by hitting the left engine of his quarry with a well-placed burst. The fighter, trailing smoke, rolled over into a split-s and crashed near an airfield. This success took Maj Foy’s tally of aerial victories to 14, and he claimed his 15th and final victory five days later.

  On 19 March 1945 eight USAAF pilots combined to shoot down two Ar 234s and four Me 262s, but only two of those pilots were, or became, aces. Amongst the latter was Maj Niven K Cranfill, CO of the 359th FG’s 368th FS. He scored his first victory on 16 August 1944 and added three more on 27 November. On 19 March Cranfill initially damaged an Me 262 that was chasing another Mustang. Minutes later he bounced a second Me 262 and fired a burst from 800 yards that sent the Me 262 into a diving left turn from which it did not recover. This was Cranfill’s fifth, and final, victory of the war (359th FG Association)

  The fact that the vast majority of jet victories were scored by pilots with less than five kills was highlighted over the next three days (20-22 March), when 13 Me 262s were shot down by 12 non-aces, four of whom were multiple jet killers, from the 55th, 78th, 339th and 361st FGs. The highest scoring non-ace in this group was 1Lt John A Kirk of the 83rd FS/78th FG, whose Me 262 on 21 March near Meiningen was the last of his four aerial victories – he also claimed six strafing kills. The sole ace to make a claim during this 72-hour period of intense action was Capt William J Dillard of the Italy-based 308th FS/31st FG. Escorting Fifteenth Air Force bombers over the Ruhland area, his Me 262 victory on the 22nd gave him ace status. He would claim a Bf 110 destroyed southeast of Prague three days later for his last kill.

  On 24 March the Allies launched a massive airborne assault on the eastern side of the River Rhine, codenamed Operation Varsity. Its objective was to assist Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s 21st Army Group in securing footholds along both sides of the Rhine. In order to draw pressure off the Varsity offensive, the Fifteenth Air Force launched its longest mission of the war – a 1600-mile round trip to the Daimler-Benz engine plant in the heart of Berlin.

  Among the fighter pilots tasked with escorting Fifth Bomb Wing B-17s that day were the Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd FG. The latter duly relieved the P-38-equipped 1st FG over Kaaden, then in southern Germany and now part of the Czech Republic. When the 31st FG was subsequently late relieving the 332nd, the Tuskegee Airmen were forced to continue flying their P-51s on to Berlin. As the bombers neared the German capital at 1208 hrs, they were attacked by 15 Me 262s from Parchim-based 9. and 10./JG 7, thus signalling the start of a ten-minute dogfight that eventually ended with eight jets destroyed by the Mustang pilots of the 31st and 332nd FGs. Amongst the trio of successful pilots from the latter unit was 1Lt Roscoe Brown, who was leading the 100th FS on this occasion. Stephen Chapis interviewed Dr Brown in 2013;

  When Maj Cranfill claimed his ‘ace-making’ victory over an Me 262 on 19 March he was flying P-51D-15 44-15717, which is seen here in this rare aerial shot of a flight of 359th FG Mustangs on a bomber escort mission near war’s end. This aircraft was later assigned to Cranfill’s replacement as CO of the 368th FS, Lt Col James W Parsons, who named it WILD WILL (Peter Randall collection)

  ‘We saw the jets about five minutes prior to the target, and the engagement lasted about ten minutes. I was about 500 ft below the bombers when they were attacked. We tried to catch the jets as they were climbing up. I was leading the entire squadron – 16 airplanes – and was the first one to identify the jets. I said “Drop your tanks and follow me”. We made a hard turn to the right and I got on the tail of one of the Me 262s – in his blind spot. He was climbing, and failed to see me. I got the K-14 circle on him and held it there as I pulled the trigger, and he blew up.’

  The pilot of the Me 262, ten-victory ace Staffelführer Oberleutnant Franz Külp of 10./JG 7, was so severely injured when he bailed out of his burning jet that he was still hospitalised at war’s end. Moments prior to being shot down, Külp had claimed a B-24 destroyed.

  Maj Robert W Foy of the 363rd FS/357th FS also claimed a jet victory on 19 March when he used his K-14 gunsight to fire an effective long-range burst that struck the left engine of an Me 262, which then rolled over and crashed near an airfield. This was Foy’s only jet victory, although he had claimed another Me 262 damaged on 9 February. Foy finished the war with 15 confirmed aerial victories (© IWM FRE 3111)

  Just as the Tuskegee pilots disengaged, the 31st FG, led by group CO Col William A Daniel, finally arrived on the scene. Daniel stated the following in his Encounter Report;

  ‘At 1225 hrs, from 28,000 ft just south of the target, I observed two Me 262s headed towards the bombers from “eleven o’clock”. The bombers were headed north, the enemy fighters were headed east and I was headed west, putting me 180 degrees from the enemy aircraft and 90 degrees to the bombers. As I saw the two enemy aircraft turn into the bombers from astern, I turned in and started to close and fire. However, I then observed four more enemy aircraft turning in. I waited for the No 6 enemy aircraft to turn in, then closed in on him from about “4.30 o’clock” to 500 yards and fired. No strikes were observed, although the enemy aircraft snap-rolled and went into a spin. I observed a parachute and four blobs of smoke.’

  This Me 262 was Col Daniel’s fifth, and last, aerial victory.

  For all the 24 March victors, with the exception of Col Daniel, these Me 262 kills were their only victories of the war, and the last that the 31st FG would score against the jets.

  On 25 March, all three air divisions of the Eighth Air Force were tasked with hitting German oil refineries, but only the B-24s – 243 of them to be exact – from the 2nd Air Division were able to reach their targets. The Liberators were escorted by Mustangs and Thunderbolts from the 56th, 339th, 352nd, 361st and 479th FGs, which were met by Me 262s from both JG 7 and KG(J) 54. The jets wreaked havoc on the B-24s of the 448th BG in particular, with a formation leader being shot down just after reaching the Initial Point (when the aircraft was under the lateral control of the bombardier on the run in to the target). Two more were lost over the target itself and another was so badly damaged that the crew bailed out shortly after dropping their ordnance. An additional ten bombers received significant damage from the Me 262’s quartet of hard-hitting MK 108 30 mm cannon.

  1Lt Roscoe Brown watches Sgt Marcellus Smith working on the Packard V-1650-7 fitted in his P-51D at Ramitelli airfield, in Italy, in the spring of 1945. Brown was one of three Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd FG to down Me 262s on 24 March 1945 during the group’s marathon 1600-mile escort mission to Berlin (NARA)

  As this carnage was erupting, the first fighters to arrive on the scene were from the 479th FG, including 1Lt Eugene H Wendt, who duly scored his fourth, and final, victory of the war when he shot down th
e Me 262 of Feldwebel Fritz Taube from 10./JG 7 shortly after he had himself destroyed a B-24.

  When the jets first attacked the Liberators, Capt Raymond H Littge of the 487th FS/352nd FG, leading ‘Yellow’ Flight, had quickly latched on to an Me 262. After a 15-minute chase, he broke off the pursuit as they closed on Rechlin-Lärz airfield, near Müritz Lake, and loitered in the area in the hope of catching a jet in the landing pattern. He did not have to wait long, spotting Oberleutnant Schatzle, a former bomber pilot recently assigned to 9./JG 7, approaching the field. Littge’s Encounter Report described what happened next;

  ‘After I circled it [Rechlin-Lärz airfield] for five minutes, an Me 262 came over the field – presumably the same one I had chased before – and peeled off. As he was lowering his wheels I made a 100-degree pass at him, seeing no strikes. He levelled off then and I got behind him and fired several long bursts. I saw quite a few strikes, several of which set his right jet on fire. His evasive action consisted of gentle left and right turns. He jettisoned his canopy, pulled up to 2000 ft and bailed out. His ’chute did not open.’

  Schatzle’s Me 262 took Littge’s final tally to 10.5 victories – he also claimed 13 strafing kills.

  The Thunderbolts of the 56th FG were part of the escort force that day, and 63rd FS CO Maj George E Bostwick was leading his flight in P-47M 44-21160 “Devastatin Deb”. The Thunderbolt pilots pursued a number of jets as they fled eastward towards their base a Parchim, where Bostwick lined up on an Me 262 that was on its final approach. Instead of landing, however, the jet continued flying down the runway and passed directly over another Me 262 that was taking off. Bostwick shifted his sights to the second aircraft and fired a burst just as the pilot broke left. Instead of turning out of Bostwick’s fire, the pilot dug his jet’s left wingtip into the ground, causing the fuel-laden Me 262 to cartwheel before exploding. Bostwick then turned his attention back to his original target, firing an ineffective burst from more than 800 yards as the jet sped out of range.