Inhaltsverzeichnis für January/February 2024 in Flight Journal

ALMOST ALL OF THE AIRCRAFT featured in this issue are combat survivors and represent a broad range of purpose and missions. However, their uniqueness didn’t exempt any of the men who flew them from the never-ending perils and danger of aerial combat. In Jim Busha’s story, “Long Way to Victory,” you’ll read about Pacific P-51 Mustang pilots like Jerry Yellin, who flew Very Long Range (VLR) B-29 escort missions from Iwo Jima to Japan. These fighters’ enemies also included time and distance that would push them to the outer edge of endurance. And in “Rescued at Sea” by Rachel Morris, First Lt. John V. Lapenas and his PBY Catalina crew are the only hope of salvation for downed Allied pilots in the brutal North Sea and English Channel. Besides enemy…

The Zero raced through slanted columns of tropical light, prevented by high cirrus from leaving its shadow while skimming the slick New Guinea rain-forest roof. The Zero was dirty green with a black cowling and might have been hard to pick out except, “You could always see that red ball,” Richard Kirkland said—referring to the hinomaru or national emblem painted on Japanese Navy fighters. Catching one of them unawares happened almost never: the Zero pilot didn’t know Kirkland was behind him in a P-38 Lightning. It was a sure kill. Just 20 years old, First Lieutenant Kirkland was at the controls of the aircraft that captured the imagination of every American youngster. Sleek, twin-boomed, twin-tailed and oh, so silvery (until warpaint arrived), the P-38 was the kit model every small…

AS A SOLDIER DURING WORLD WAR I, Don Luscombe became fascinated with aviation. It wasn’t until 1927 that Don produced his first airplane: a side by side, high-wing Monocoupe. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, Luscombe developed a series of Monocoupes that included the Phantom. A 1930’s brochure from the Luscombe Airplane Development Corporation included the following excerpt about the new Luscombe Phantom: “America’s superfine, small airplane. High performance with the economy of low horsepower. The added strength, safety and durability of metal. Designed to offer ready accessibility to accessories and to minimize maintenance. Here for the first time, high performance may be placed safely in the hands of the less expert.” In 1933, Luscombe began building the first few Phantoms in Kansas City, Missouri. By 1935, he had moved his company…

ALTHOUGH CONCEIVED IN 1941, by the time the twin-engine Grumman F7F Tigercat hit the streets, it never saw action in WW II. The XF7F prototypes first flew in December 1943, and the first production models were delivered to the Marines in April 1944. Some F7F-3N and -3Ps did deploy to Okinawa during the very end of the War but never tangled with the Japanese owing to the then diminished threat. It was fast and powerful and would have been a formidable foe to enemy aircraft. Although the F7F was too late for the “Big One,” it did see intense action some five years later in Korea. Species of cats and their fangs The Marines initially ordered 500 F7Fs from Grumman, and the two prototypes were designated as the XF7F-1. The…

ONE KOREAN-ERA VETERAN PILOT who flew F7Fs in action was the late Maj. Carroll E. “Snuffy” Brown, USMC (Ret.), who joined the Marines in 1942. In his career, he flew the Dauntless, Helldiver, Hellcat, Corsair, SNB, Tigercat, Duck, R4D, R5D and eventually the Hercules to amass 9,800 total flight hours. He flew Tigercats for nearly six years and had flown the -1, -2, -3, and -4 models plus the photo model. The Korean War broke out in June 1950 and lasted until July 1953. Snuffy flew F7F-3Ns into harm’s way countless times, had flown 100 F7F-3N combat missions in Korea, and had more than 3,000 Tigercat hours. In Korea, he was attached to the VMF(N)-513 Nightmares, and they were joined by VMF(N)-542 to form a composite unit flagged by 513. When…

When a run of-the-mill B-25 went into combat in the Pacific, it carried an assortment of flexible .50-and .30-caliber machine guns in its Plexiglas nose. This was not a heavy-duty punch by any means, but the aircraft’s role was as a medium-altitude bomber. That all changed when Pappy Gunn and his cohorts experimented with heavier weapons. In addition to the eight, forward-firing .50-caliber machine guns that became the trademark of the B-25 strafer, cannon were installed. In spring 1943, one 20mm cannon was installed in the front nose section of a Mitchell. The 20mms had some teething problems early on because their firing trajectories had to be synchronized with those of the nose guns. Instead of giving up, North American Aviation installed a bigger cannon in the B-25G nose in…

IN THE COLD, crisp spring air at 18,000 feet on March 30, 1945, First Lt. Dan Meyers suddenly found himself flying in a cloud, in an otherwise blue and completely cloudless sky. The mysterious fog was generated by the engine failure of his P-51D Mustang 44-72328. With the shore of Northern Germany behind, and the Frisian Islands beneath his port wing, Meyers was forced to bail out and take his chances with the uninviting mass of the North Sea. After checking that his dinghy and Mae West were in position, he pushed himself out into the biting slipstream, narrowly avoiding his Mustang’s tail. From under his chute, he watched his aircraft spiral down and crash into the heavy swell of the rough sea. When he too hit the water, the…

THE BOMBING CAMPAIGNS OVER EUROPE AND JAPAN were as different as tea and sake, with one exception: Mustangs were the escort of choice for both—and for obvious reasons. While the B-17s and B-24s reigned supreme over fortress Europe, the distances in the Pacific--especially to the Japanese mainland—were greater, and only the B-29 had the range to make the trip with a big bomb load. And only the Mustang, with its long legs and fuel efficiency, could escort the bombers to the target area and still have fuel for combat. Follow along with one Pacific Mustang pilot as he endures flak, fighters and over eight hours of solitude in the cockpit of a P-51. Itching to fight I had been interested in aviation ever since Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. As a…

Previously owned by Mike Brown, “Big Bossman” is one of three flyable Tigercats in the world and about only 10 or so remain in existence. “Big Bossman,” now known as the silver-painted “La Patrona,” was the first F7F ever to race at the National Championship Air Races in Reno, Nevada. A pair of more powerful Pratt & Whitney R-2800-CA3 engines (utilizing water injection) were added, which brought the power to the 5,000hp (combined) mark. It outruns many aircraft including run-of-the-mill P-51 Mustangs, with the competition being Sea Furies, Bearcats and specially modified hybrid Mustangs. The F7F’s air-race speeds range between 370 to 380mph at an almost constant 3 to 4G pulls in the turns. Straight and level, the old Cat can get up to 400mph and about 440 in a…

DESIGNED TO BE A LAND-BASED, medium altitude bomber, the B-25 was tasked with one of the War’s most spectacular missions. On April 18, 1942, 16 heavily laden B-25s took off from the USS Hornet’s pitching deck and headed towards Japan. Led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle, these aircraft and their brave crews proved that Japan was susceptible to the U.S.’s wrath. After the success of that mission, the B-25 was tapped to fly a variety of bombing and strafing raids. Nowhere was the B-25 more dominant than in the South Pacific Theater. Capt. John Bronson survived flying the B-25 Mitchell in the South Pacific on an even more dangerous mission than Doolittle’s. Here is his story. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, thousands of young men around the…

IN ONLY 30 MISSIONS, Capt. Ralph S. Parr downed 10 enemy aircraft, becoming the 11th double jet ace on the last day of the Korean War. Having just landed from a combat mission, the four of us were walking casually from our squadron’s sandbagged revetments towards the operations building, when the deafening engine whine of another returning flight of F-86 Sabrejets caught our attention. At the time, all fighter-interceptor pilots instinctively checked the gun ports of returning flights for the dark gray soot, indicating their guns had been fired. This would imply contact with MiGs. And sure enough, the .50-caliber blast shields of one aircraft showed the unmistakable signs. But something else about it looked odd: The ship’s entire fuselage was very badly scorched from nose to tail as if…

To commemorate the brave wartime crews operating in dire conditions over the English Channel, UK-based PBY-5A Catalina G-PBYA was repainted as USAAF 5th Emergency Rescue Squadron OA-10A 44-33915. While the majority of the scheme was easy to reproduce, the wartime aircraft’s nose art, or in this case, hull art, remained unknown for six years. When photographic evidence surfaced in 2011, aircraft operators Plane Sailing realized the “Miss Pick Up” artwork on ‘915 was closely based on the luscious Miss Lace — a character created by legendary cartoonist Milton Caniff. Aviation photographer John Dibbs volunteered his creative services to painstakingly reproduce a “Miss Pick Up” artwork. The culmination of months of hard work came together on a blustery evening at Duxford when the art, on large vinyl stickers, was applied to…