Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, From the Red Baron to the F-16 (92 page)

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  It took about forty cranks to raise the I-16’s gear, and this resulted in some truly interesting one-handed takeoffs.

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 Actually developed by Frederick Handley-Page, a British designer; more or less in concert with Gustav Lachmann, a German aerodynamicist.

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 The World War I–era Fokker Triplane had a wing loading of 6.5 pounds per square foot, and the Spitfire would have a load of about 27 pounds per square foot.

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 The Republicans had oxygen masks and hoses in their I-16s—but someone in the Soviet Union had forgotten to ship the regulators that manage and control the system, so it was useless.

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 Ironically, much of this gold had been pillaged by the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru. In mid-1937 Soviet aid totaled nearly $120 million, compared to $1.5 million in early 1939.

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 The Fokker D-VII had a 160-horsepower Mercedes engine in 1918.

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 Pilots left after a year or after shooting down five aircraft.

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 Modern jet fighters routinely pull 9 g’s. But this is with advanced equipment, including g suits, and a much, much higher level of pilot physical fitness.

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 Prisoners and condemned criminals dressed in Polish uniforms.

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 These were the 85 (Lille), 87 (Senon), 607 (Vitry-en-Artois), 615 (Le Touquet), 3, and 79 (Merville) Fighter Squadrons.

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 These were the 1 (Wassincourt), 73 (Rouve), and 501 (Bethenville) Fighter Squadrons.

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 Hitler’s train was named
Amerika
.

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 Unlike their Allied counterparts,
Fallschirmjäger
(paratroopers) were not army units—they belonged to the Luftwaffe.

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 Not without heavy cost, though—the German assault force suffered nearly 30 percent casualties.

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 Unlike the rest of the world, full power with a French throttle was all the way aft. Full forward was idle.

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 This doesn’t include gliders but does include losses to the Belgian and Dutch air forces as well as the RAF.

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 Actually he was born Adolph Gysbert Malan in Wellington, South Africa.

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 Johnson would survive the war with thirty-four confirmed kills—all either Bf 109 or FW 190 fighters.

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 Not all from fighters, but the myth of bomber invincibility was buried.

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 Knochlein was hanged on January 28, 1949, for war crimes.

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 According to the British War Office.

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 Sixty-seven of these were Spitfires.

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 Roughly equivalent to four American Medals of Honor or four British Victoria Crosses.

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 Identical in concept to the American National Guard system.

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 One such commander’s conference was mostly dedicated to showing off his new model train set.

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 An He 178 with a turbojet engine could reach a speed of 380 mph.

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 Mitchell was likely influenced by Heinkel’s He 70 design. One such Heinkel was used to flight-test the Rolls-Royce Kestrel engine during the Spitfire’s development period.

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 Forty years later F-16 designers would angle the pilot’s seat backward for the same reason.

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 The Bf 109 combined armament put out 18 pounds for the same burst.

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 The Bf 109 carried enough ammunition for about fifty-five seconds of firing.

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 The de Wilde bullet used in combat had been completely redesigned by Major Dixon of the Woolworth Arsenal.

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 Tilly held a doctorate in engineering, raced cars and motorcycles, and refused to marry her fiancé (George Naylor) until he had been awarded the Brooklands Gold Star racing award, just as she had. Incidentally, George was a bomber pilot and RAF wing commander during the war. Not surprisingly, Tilly was an outspoken advocate for women’s rights.

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 From all causes: killed, wounded, missing, and temporarily relieved.

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 Leigh-Mallory’s limited tactical depth would cause the deaths of more than five hundred RAF pilots in 1941 as they were forced into fruitless “sweeps” over France. He would die in a plane crash on his way to Burma in 1944. Douglas Bader was shot down in 1941, possibly by another Spitfire, and sat out the war in a POW camp.

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Pauke
means “tally-ho”—a visual sighting of an enemy.

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 Battle cry of Luftwaffe fighter pilots. It roughly means “Fear me” or “I’m a horrible one and you’re going to die.”

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 Four days earlier Churchill had said, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots.”

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 Gestapo (acronym for Geheime Staatspolizei), the state secret police.

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 Mussolini declared war on the Allies when the Wehrmacht marched into Paris on June 10, 1940.

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 The Battle of Britain Day had just ended the previous evening, September 15.

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 Just as the Americans believed Pearl Harbor was too shallow for such a threat.

^‡
 Fiske was an amazingly talented officer who designed more than 130 technical innovations, including naval telescopic gunsights, range finders, and the aerial torpedo.

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 Italo Balbo was made an honorary Sioux Indian in the 1930s and named Chief “Flying Eagle.” He also opposed Mussolini’s racial laws and thought Italy should side with Britain instead of Germany. While landing near Tobruk in June 1940, he was mistakenly killed by anti-aircraft fire from the cruiser
San Giorgio
.

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 By 1945 twenty-three pilots from JG 27 would receive the Knight’s Cross.

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 No. 6 Squadron was made famous during the Great War by Major Lanoe Hawker (see page 42). Hugh Dowding was also a squadron pilot.

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 One of her most famous Great War fighter pilots was William Stephenson, who was now Britain’s top spymaster and would go down in history as the “Man Called Intrepid.”

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 About 2,100 feet per minute, vs. 2,600 feet per minute for the 5,800-pound Bf 109.

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 Heaton and Lewis believe the shooter was Flight Lieutenant Clive Caldwell, 250 Squadron RAF.

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 Case Blue—Operation Fridericus. See page 295.

^*
 The Knight’s Cross was the German equivalent of the U.S. Medal of Honor or the British Victoria Cross. “Oak Leaves” denote a second award, “Swords” a third, and “Diamonds” a fourth.

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 Very ably commanded by Marie-Pierre Kœnig, about 2,700 of the original 3,600 French soldiers slipped through the German lines at night to rejoin the British.

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 The Hurricane Mk II’s came from No. 1 and No. 3 Squadrons SAAF, while the Spitfire Mk VC’s belonged to No. 92 Squadron RAF.

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 The P-40’s were from No. 2 and No. 5 Squadrons SAAF.

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 This would be surpassed by only one other pilot: another Luftwaffe ace, Emil Lang, on the Eastern Front in 1943.

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 His remains were later reinterred at Memorial Gardens in Tobruk. There is a one-word epitaph: “Undefeated.”

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 Initially from the Russian, Byelorussian, Transcaucasian, and Ukrainian republics.

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 Literacy in the United States for the same time was 94 percent.

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 They’d planned to fly from Moscow to Komsomolsk on the Pacific Ocean side of the Soviet Union but ditched en route. They were all saved and became the first women decorated as Heroes of the Soviet Union.

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 About 1.5 million former Soviet POWs were put into “filtration” camps after repatriation as a result of surrendering or being captured.

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  Chelyabinsk.

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 Including variants and its successor—the IL-10.

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 Sorge had also warned Stalin that the Germans would invade on June 22. Ian Fleming called Sorge the Soviet James Bond.

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 Another ironic twist, as Engels had been the capital of the Volga German Republic—an autonomous concentration of German immigrants established in the 1920’s to encourage agricultural development.

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 Ilya Ehrenberg, a well-known war correspondent.

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 German sources admit to 488. As with most wartime figures the truth probably lies in between.

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 It was actually a lily, not a rose, from her nickname of “Lilya.”

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 By the end of the war nearly 10,000 kills would be credited to JG 52—enough to fill 50 Allied squadrons.

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 Pokryshkin was blunt, honest, and as apolitical as one could be in the Soviet Union. Despite his heroism and sacrifices he was largely passed over following the war because he had once stated that he preferred to fly non-Soviet aircraft.

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 It certainly didn’t hurt that Navy and Marine aircraft had pelted the
Ostfriesland
with over 50 bombs the day before—but the point was made that capital ships were not safe from air attack.

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 After the war Tojo unsuccessfully attempted suicide and was incarcerated in Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison. A new set of dentures was provided by an American dentist with the phrase “Remember Pearl Harbor” drilled into the teeth using Morse code. Tojo was hanged on December 23, 1948—still wearing the dentures.

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 Capital ships are battlecruisers or battleships.

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 Fuchida was a Naval Academy graduate and the epitome of a pilot samurai. He would survive the war and eventually become a Christian evangelist in the United States.

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 USS
Saratoga
,
Lexington
and
Enterprise
.

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 Taylor initially had two kills with two probables that were later confirmed based on Japanese records.

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 The fact that these aircraft all had their lights on and were coming in to land, not attack, should have been a huge clue that they were friendly.

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 Japanese Special Naval Landing Force—Marines.

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  Pye was relieved shortly thereafter and sat out most of his remaining years at the Naval War College—far from combat operations.

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 The fast frigate USS
Elrod
(FFG-55) was commissioned in his honor in 1985.