P-40 Kittyhawk – Literary Art and Illustration

Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 (Chapter: “Wool of the Russian Ram”) [Lloyd Howe]

This is the third post presenting an excerpt from Colonel Robert L. Scott’s 1944 Damned to Glory, which covers the service and use of the Curtiss P-40 fighter plane in the air forces of the United States and Allied nations during the Second World War.

While my two prior posts about Damned to Glory pertained to the use of the P-40 in the United States Army Air Force (51st Fighter Group, in Assam Dragon) and South African Air Force (during the “Cape Bon Massacre” of April 22, 1943, in Desert Rats), “this” post moves to Europe: It presents Colonel Scott’s chapter about the use of the P-40 in the Soviet Air Force (“Военно-воздушные силы”, or Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily (a.k.a. VVS)) in a chapter entitled “Wool of the Russian Ram”. Scott relates accounts of the experiences of Soviet pilots (Aleksey Stepanovich Khlobistov, Petr Andreevich Pilootov, and Stepan Grigorevich Ridniy), and also mentions Pyotr Afanasyevich Pokryshev, all of whom piloted the Curtis P-40 in battle against the Luftwaffe.

The chapter’s very title is a double entendre, for it’s illustrated by Lloyd Howe’s depiction of a Soviet pilot committing a “taran” – a controlled aerial ramming – against a German Me-109 fighter. The illustration is based on an account Aleksey Khlobistov’s destruction of an Me-109 on May 14, 1942, while defending the city of Murmansk.

“Wool of the Russian Ram” follows below…

I have flown beside the Russian
At the siege of Stalingrad,
It was there I met the Prussian,
Heard the Hun cry “Kamerad!”
Impotence and rage might rankle
When my guns would freeze and stall,
Till I learned to ram the Heinkel,
Slashed his tail—and watched him fall.

WOOL OF THE RUSSIAN RAM

THERE’S a story that’s just about as wild as the winds of the frozen steppes of Siberia, a story vouched for by Johnny Alison and Herbert Zempke [Hubert Zemke]. Incidentally, these two and the same Phil Cochran of the Red Scarf Guerrillas once lived together as bachelors at Langley Field, around 1936. How in heaven’s name this came about no one will ever know; the only good that could have come from this consolidation of talent was that one telephone-number could reach the three most eligible bachelors on the post. Even then they branched out as the individuals and leaders they really were, and the house must have been as distinctly Alison, Zempke and Cochranish as were their respective techniques in flying.

From the 8th Pursuit Squadron at Langley, which was the first real P-40 squadron in the Army Air Forces, Alison went with Harry Hopkins to Russia. Zempke joined him at Archangel in September, 1941, while poor Phil sweated the war out as he trained fighter pilots in the States.

P-40’s arrived at Archangel aboard transports, and Alison and Zempke helped put them together under a hard-fighting Russian officer, Col. Boris Schmirnoff. Boris had fought the Japs in Mongolia, the Germans and Italians in the Spanish Civil War, and had operated against the Finns. In his black Russian boots, which were always shined like a mirror, he was an inspiration of aggressive nature even to such stalwarts as these two Americans.

Here at Archangel, Alison and Zempke checked out 120 Russian pilots in ten days. They were amazed, back there in 1941, at the ability of the Russian pilots to absorb instruction, and at their keen interest to get to combat and kill the Hun. As a pilot’s joke, though, Johnny said the Red pilots knew only two positions for a throttle – “closed” and “full open.”

These Russian flyers were destined for great things. From the check-out school, the Russian P-40 pilots were sent to Rostov-on-Don, where they lived in railroad cars when they were not in the air against the Germans. One of these pilots was Senior Lieutenant Stepan Grigorievich Ridny, aged twenty-three. Ridny’s squadron was equipped entirely with P-40’s, and it fought on the Moscow front. There, in the first week, his squadron shot down nineteen Huns and lost three men and three ships.

In that early period of the war Ridny was one of the best-known pilots in Russia; he had been in the Soviet Air Force since becoming seventeen years of age, and he had been decorated with the Order of Lenin and had been created “A Hero of the Soviet Union.” Short and strongly built, as he sat in the cockpit of the Kittyhawk, with his light brown hair blowing over his face, he looked the part of a great Russian pilot. Born near Kharkov, he had met a few Americans and liked them.

From Rostov, Ridny was transferred with his squadron to Moscow, for the defense of that city. There in P-40’s they shot down 29 German planes in two weeks.

On the Leningrad front, Major Peter Adrievich Piliutov took a lone P-40 aloft for a check flight and was attacked by six Heinkels. He shot down two of them and damaged a third. At the start of the new year of 1942, Piliutov’s squadron of Tomahawks supported the Russian ground troops and helped them to recapture three hundred square miles of territory from the invaders. During the five-day drive over the frozen wastes of this northern section near Finland, the Tomahawks functioned perfectly. Four of them shot down eight Messerschmitts and routed others at low altitude under the clouds. On missions of a certain type the P-40 was successfully used there on skis.

But the prize air exploit took place on the Murmansk front, above the jagged ice of the frozen sea, where the P-40 squadrons were used to keep the Nazi dive bombers from attacking munition and food convoys. It was near there that one of the Soviet pilots, Alexei Khobistoff, showed himself a man of stern determination, and proved too that his ship could “take it.”

The first time he “rammed” an enemy ship, Khobistoff declared it was an accident. He had been trailing a Heinkel bomber for about fifty miles as it darted in and out of the low clouds of the north country. When finally he pressed his trigger for the kill, nothing happened – the guns were either frozen or jammed. He drew away and made another attempt, with the same negative result. In the meantime, the German gunners fired at him, and his ship was hit repeatedly.

Undaunted, Khobistoff approached the Heinkel through one of its few blind areas and tried once more to make his guns fire. As he took his eyes from the larger ship to turn the hydraulic charging instruments again, he struck the Nazi plane with the wing and prop of his P-40. There was a noise like the end of the world, sparks flew from the friction of the steel propeller cutting into the Heinkel’s wing – and then the Tomahawk skipped on over, and into the low clouds. By the time Khobistoff had regained control of the fighter, the Heinkel had crashed. The Russian flew home to his base, where the American fighter was patched up and again flown into combat.

Later this same Russian in a P-40 again found himself in a desperate position directly astern of a German bomber. He drew closer and closer to the tail of the enemy ship, and by expert flying passed his prop into the fabric rudder of the Hun. Once again the German crashed, and again Khobistoff returned to his base, where mechanics repaired the plane.

About a week later, as he flew top-cover out over the harbor to protect a convoy arriving from America, his squadron engaged many Messerschmitts. In the hotly contested battle, Khobistoff shot down two Huns, but was in turn wounded, and his Tomahawk was set on fire. I imagine that right about there any other man would have opened the hatch and jumped. But not this Russian. He turned the burning fighter and dove straight down on the tail of an Me-109. As the whirling propeller of the P-40 made contact, the tail of the Hun flew into pieces – Khobistoff had rammed to destruction his third enemy aircraft. Then he jumped clear of the burning Tomahawk. As his ‘chute opened, he saw the Messerschmitt strike the muddy beach of the harbor, and his flaming P-40 streaking like an avenging devil right after it.

Alexei Khobistoff was in the hospital a few weeks, but here’s hoping somebody sent him another P-40 when he was released.

To substantiate these three collisions, two of which were intentional, there are official Soviet records. Moreover, the Russian Air Force has published for its pilots a directive on “Ramming Procedure.” In several instances during the siege of Stalingrad, there were other pilots who rammed German planes and not only escaped with their lives, but in some cases flew their damaged planes back to the home base. One of these was Russia’s outstanding Ace, Major Alexandrevich Pokryshev (Pyotr Afanasyevich Pokryshev), who has fifty-nine German planes to his credit.

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Comments…

Herbert Zempke is almost certainly – well is certainly! – “Hubert Zemke”. (Veritably: “Oops.”)

Stepan Grigorievich Ridny is Hero of the Soviet Union Stepan Grigorevich Ridniy (Степан Григорьевич Ридный). Born in 1917, he was killed in action on February 17, 1942, while serving in the 126th Fighter Aviation Regiment.

Peter Adrievich Piliutov is Hero of the Soviet Union Petr Andreevich Pilootov (Петр Андреевич Пилютов). Born in 1906, he died in 1960.

Alexei Khobistoff is – as alluded to above – Hero of the Soviet Union Aleksey Stepanovich Khlobistov (Алексей Степанович Хлобыстов). Born in 1918, he was killed in action as a Guards Captain on December 13, 1943, while serving in the 20th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (1st Composite Aviation Division, 7th Air Army).

Major Alexandrevich Pokryshev is twice Hero of the Soviet Union Pyotr Afanasyevich Pokryshev (Пётр Афана́сьевич Покры́шев). Born in 1914, he attained 30 or 31 aerial victories, eventually commanding the 159th Fighter Aviation Regiment (275th Fighter Division, 13th Air Army). He died in 1967.

The painting below is a depiction of Major Pokryshev flying his P-40E (“white 50”, bearing stars indicating 15 aerial victories) during an attack against a pair of Heinkel He-111 bombers, during his service in the 154th Fighter Aviation Regiment. The painting, entitled “Curtiss P-40 – One of many Lend-Lease P-40 used by the Soviets in WWII, claims a He 111 over the Eastern front“, is by aviation artist Darryl Legg.

An abundance of information exists about the tactic of aerial ramming as practiced by the Soviet Air Force in the Second World War. Notable sites include Aeroram.Narod.RU, AirAces.Narod.RU, and TopWar.RU. Valeriy Romanenko covers Soviet use of the P-40 in “The P-40 Fighter in Soviet Aviation” (“Истребители Р-40 в советской авиации”) in a very detailed 5-part series, commencing at AirPages.RU/US/P-40.

Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 (Chapter: “Assam Dragon”) [Lloyd Howe]

Sabre-tooth shark-mouths were an emblem of P-40 Warhawks in the 51st Fighter Group’s 25th Fighter Squadron. Colonel Scott describes the use of 25th Fighter Squadron P-40s as a (highly) improvised method of delivering 1,000-pound bombs on Japanese bridges in Burma. Lloyd Howe’s illustration nicely complements the text…

There’s a steamy river country
Rimmed by mountains all around,
Where the world humps up its backbone
Full five miles above the ground.
Flying there with Assam’s Dragons
Into India’s mold’ring clime,
“Brereton’s Bhamo-Busting Bombers”
Were “B-Forties”—every time.

ASSAM DRAGON

IT WAS the steaming month of March, up there in eastern Assam, where one finds Dinjan, Chabua, and Debrugarh and all those tea plantations strung along the Brahmaputra. This was India’s most easterly extension, right into the horseshoe loop which the Himalayas make as they form the Naga Hills. To the north the Great Mountains rose abruptly, in less than a hundred miles, to twenty-five thousand feet; then, further back, they jutted to the top of the world at twenty-nine thousand feet. Out to the east was the “Hump,” where even the low hills were thirteen thousand feet and the higher ones were eighteen thousand. To the south the jungle-covered hills were lower, but they were just as mean to cross. On to the west there was low land, and it was all of India – some 2200 miles of arid, flat country to Karachi. That is to say, it was dry now, for this was March, but in less than two months the monsoon would come and then everything would be as wet as the Brahmaputra.

But this was no time to let your imagination play over those things about mountains, and whether or not the annual rainfall was really 968 inches a year, as the missionaries and tea planters at Sadiya claimed. No, for there was work to be done.

There were Jap supply lines radiating into northern Burma, and these must be severed. About to tackle the job, Johnny Barr, operations officer of a P-40 fighter group, shrugged his shoulders and walked to his ship, on which was painted the wildest-looking, biggest-bottomed dragon any of us had ever seen. Under this weird portrayal were the words “OUR ASSAM DRAGGIN.”

The P-40 roared down the runway with a pretty, yellow five-hundred-pound bomb and set its course toward Burma and the Chindwin, aiming for a railroad bridge over which Jap supplies were flowing. Barr was determined to make that nice American bomb do a good job of ripping out that bridge.

Over his point of attack, Barr looked down on the high spans of the steel bridge. These things are hard jobs for fighter ships and he knew it. They have to be hit just right, too, or the bombing must be done over and over. Johnny circled once; then he got the nose of his ship down and began to dive at the bridge like a comet. His altitude needle started to spin round and round as he concentrated his aim – seven thousand, five thousand, two thousand – then at five hundred feet, Johnny cut his bomb loose. Just as he began to climb, there was a blinding flash, and then a terrific explosion. Parts of the bridge were blown high into the sky.

“That wasn’t a bad job,” he thought, and the big-bottomed dragon on the Warhawk probably grinned. Anyway, Johnny turned it northwest and home, satisfied with the day’s work.

Two days later, Barr went over to appraise the damage his bomb had done. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, astounded. There, below him, was the bridge, showing no signs of having been blasted by a direct hit just forty-eight hours before. Jap crews had repaired the damage and supplies again were flowing across. It made Barr madder than hell. Something had to be done – this couldn’t go on if the Japs were to be stopped from bringing in vital supplies to their North Burma bases.

As he dejectedly winged his way home Johnny’s mind was so immersed in thought that he couldn’t even hear the roar of his Allison. What to do? They certainly couldn’t afford to divert the few B-24s from their long-range objectives to blasting bridges near the American bases. And the little P-40 certainly couldn’t carry any heavier bomb than the five-hundred-pounder she was already carrying. Sure, the old pea-shooter was the most versatile plane of the war – it had been used for everything except as a lawn mower. But a thousand-pound bomb! Well, that was a little too much to expect even from such an accommodating standby.

Then the thought flashed: After all, why not? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to try.

Barr could hardly wait to land his ship. The moment the plane had stopped he crawled under the belly of the P-40 and meticulously studied every part of his ship’s bomb-rack, even the rivets. Some of the boys who were standing around wondered what Johnny was up to now.

In a few minutes, Barr emerged from under the Warhawk. He was all grin. He signalled his crewmen to bring him one of the half-ton bombs that the mediums used, and as the enlisted men carted the heavy missile toward the ship, they probably grinned to themselves too. Well, now, it just couldn’t be done – the Warhawk would never get off the ground with such a heavy load. But they knew their commanding officer to be a determined man; so under his supervision they installed the thousand-pounder under the belly of the little fighter. Why, it nearly touched the ground! But perhaps they remembered then that not long ago another Warhawk had hauled one thousand pounds of cargo (unofficially known as “C-40”) in a bangalore drum strapped to its belly. Maybe it could be done after all.

The next day, as Barr approached his ship, the P-40 looked to him as if it were very pregnant, and great beads of perspiration seemed to be dripping from the tongue of the dragon painted on the nose of his ship. The “B-40,” like most bombers, would have to have fighter escort; so Johnny assigned one of his pilots to fly on his wing, and then he climbed into the cockpit of his plane. As he taxied the new “medium bomber” into takeoff position – rather slowly and very, very cautiously – the men on the ground noticed that the heavy bomb missed touching the ground by a couple of inches. It would take all of Barr’s long experience to take his ship off the ground without a mishap. Their Commander was too good a man to lose in foolish experimentation – but hadn’t he insisted on taking the ship up himself?

While Barr “revved up” the plane, the boys said a silent prayer and held their breath. As Johnny poured the coal to the little ship she groaned, hesitated for a few seconds – then she was off. Slowly, she gained altitude and was airborne. Johnny circled the field. He saw that the men were waving a frantic “good luck” to him, and he dipped one of his wings in salute.

Soon the “B-40” and its fighter escort were mere needle-points in the deep blue sky, and then they disappeared on a course towards Mogaung. Johnny knew the exact spot he had reserved for his thousand-pound bomb. After carefully checking around, he nosed the “B-40” down and then pulled his bomb-release.

The terrific explosion nearly flipped the little fighter on its back. Somehow, Johnny felt that his bomb had done the job, but he couldn’t be sure until the “recco” photos came out of the lab. They showed that the explosive had done more than wreck the trestle; one abutment no longer existed – there was a huge gap in the steel structure where the thousand-pounder had connected. The attack had been a complete success. He was certain that now it would take the Japs more than forty-eight hours to repair that bit of “dental” work. You see, after this mission, the “B-40” boys became known as “the dentists” because of the devastating work they had done on enemy bridges.

Barr now called for five volunteers to build up a team, and the moment he had finished his talk five pilots stepped forth. From that day on, Jap bridges have no longer offered a problem for the P-40 boys of the Assam Draggin Group – they have simply been atomizing them.

Yes, that’s one of the ways time is passed over there in eastern Assam, where the tea plantations flourish under the shade of the smaller jungle trees. It’s where the rainbow and the supply line come to rather disappointing ends, and where we have to use substitutes for everything. Here some inspector may some day find an airplane landing-light being used in a movie projector; he may find some salvageable item, perhaps a copper and asbestos gasket, being worn on the ear or the ankle of some local head-hunter tribesman. For everything is an item of barter.

The point of this story is not just that Peashooters carry bombs, for they do that all over the world – bombs, and cargo, and extra people in baggage compartments. But out here these same Peashooters have operated successfully for a year now as medium bombers specializing in carrying the thousand-pound American bomb payloads in addition to their full service of fuel and ammunition. It’s not a fair-weather occupation, but it’s just as much a part of the business of Assam nowadays as is the curing of the finest tea in the world.

When the first “B-40” raids went into Burma, the Jap radio in Rangoon broadcast that we had a “new type medium bomber.” But after the Japs had lost a dozen or so Zeros to these “bombers,” which maneuvered as fighters when they had dropped their bombs, the entire subject was promptly dropped by the radio commentator. Out there now it’s taken very much as a matter of course that P-40s can carry anything from bathtubs and refrigerators to half-ton bombs. Sooner or later some pilot is going to get a two-thousand-pound bomb on a P-40 – probably has already, but no one knows definitely of its having been done.

Nothing in this war surprises anyone any more. Oh, periodically some new “Joe” may show mild astonishment – some head-hunter, when he sees a P-38 go over and observes the double tail and hears the whistle of the wind through the tail boom, may mutter: “Big bellied bird – havum two tails – huntum Jap Feller.” Then perhaps they speak of the thousand-pound bomb-loads on the little Warhawk, but they show only mild wonder too. “Double airplane bird which drops half – BOOM!!”

So the Yanks are off with their P-40’s and their “Assam Dragon.”

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An excellent photograph of a 25th Fighter Squadron P-40K: Aircraft 42-9870, “Mimi”, assigned to Earl J. Harrington, the squadron commander. The caption of the image (Army Air Force Photograph A-56074AC / A2508) “Received on March 9, 1944, from the 16th Army Air Force Combat Camera Unit,” states: “Installation of the mail belly tank on a Curtiss P-40. Left to right: M/Sgt. William C. Land of Montgomery, La., line chief, supervises S/Sgt. Wilbert W. Froelich of St. Louis, Mo., crew chief, in installing the tank, while 1st Lt. Southwell (in cockpit) receives a last minute official letter from Cpl. Harold O. Pendergrass of Lexington, Ky., clerk in the Operations office.” (China.) (Information from Gmasher: https://www.fold3.com/profile/Gmasher)

Reference

Rust, Kenn C. and Muth, Stephen, Fourteenth Air Force Story, Historical Aviation Album, Temple City, Ca., 1977

Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 (Chapter: “Desert Rats”) [Lloyd Howe]

This illustration, for the chapter “Desert Rats”, illustrates the “Cape Bon Massacre” of April 22, 1943, when a force of Royal Air Force and South African Air Force Kittyhawk fighters shot down 14 Me 323 transports of Kampfgruppe zbV [“zur besonderen Verwendung” – “For Special Use”] 323.

As described by Colonel Scott…

The Warhawks of the 57th had taken a terrible toll from the enemy that day. [April 18, 1943] Intelligence figures showed that some fifty-eight transports and sixteen Messerschmitts had been destroyed, in addition to the three Snappers which the Spitfires had shot down.

The next day was the first anniversary of the organization of one of the South African squadrons of the 7th Wing, and Col. Doug Loftus, the Wing Commander, decided to lead the patrol. Shortly after dawn the Springbok lads ran into another Axis convoy and practically annihilated it. Out of some twenty transports they destroyed fourteen, and again enemy carcasses were strewn on the sea and along the beaches of the Bay of Tunis.

But this day was only a prologue for the Safricans. Three days later, they spotted what looked like a convoy of monstrous ships – a formation of some thirty-one giant, six-engined, six-wheeled Messerschmitt-323s, and fifteen-plus fighters, over the same spot. The ensuing battle – if you care to call it such, for it was nothing but wartime murder – offered an incredible sight. The huge ships looked like so many defenseless birds.

The Spits, commanded by that legendary American figure, Lance Wade of Arizona, who had fought in the Battle of Britain, in the East African campaign, and in the Western Desert, took on the enemy fighters and Lance chalked up his twenty-first confirmed victory. The Springbok pilots were led by Major Jack Parsonson of East London, South Africa.

This enemy aerial fleet had just that morning left its base in Sicily; they were winging their way toward Tunis when the British pilots jumped them. When spotted they were near the coast, just about fifty feet above the water. Parsonson immediately ordered a head-on attack to break up their tight formation. The Allied pilots dove into their ranks, and within seconds five of the huge flying locomotives hit the sea in flames.

Then the Safricans went in from all sides and hunted them down like wolves until they had destroyed every one. It was a terrible slaughter – the sky was filled with a welter of propellers as the lumbering transports went hurtling down into the sea. Looking over the nose of his ship, Rosie DuToit saw hundreds of enemy soldiers spilling out of their planes into the water, struggling in vain to get away from the gunfire of the Kittyhawks.

It was just like shooting pigeons, only a bit easier. The fight had been going on for about five minutes when DuToit heard someone call over the radio: “There are three of the blighters left. Has anybody got any more ammunition?”

Someone had.

Meanwhile the Spit boys were busy with the fifteen-plus enemy fighters, and dogfights were going on up above. But the fight seemed to have been knocked out of the Messerschmitts, and they fought half-heartedly. This was a big day for a number of the Polish boys flying Spits – they went after the enemy fighters with vengeance; three of them accounted for two apiece out of the ten shot down.

As DuToit and his fellow-pilots left the scene, all they could see was great patches of burning oil, and hundreds of Nazi soldiers struggling in the water. By the flame that surrounded the wrecks the boys could tell that the transports had been loaded with gasoline; some of them might also have been carrying light tanks and other armor to reinforce Von Arnim’s ground forces. With the transports had gone down some 60,000 gallons of badly needed gasoline – all within a few miles of the Axis panzers on the Tunisian wedge.

By coincidence, the Spitfires of No. 1 Squadron were over the nearby coastal city of Hergla at 7:55 a.m., waiting to escort Warhawks of the American 79th Fighter Group. But the Americans were late that morning, and when the similar-looking Kittyhawks flew by, the Spitfire pilots mistook their identity and joined them as escort instead.

Off Cape Bon there was a slight mist over a perfectly calm Mediterranean. At 8:30 a.m. about 10 miles out, a Spitfire pilot beheld a remarkable sight: 15 giant Me-323s flying in V formations made up of 11 in front with a smaller V of five tucked behind, like a chevron. They were losing altitude rapidly, preparing for a landing on the peninsula.

Somehow the Kittyhawks missed the transports at first, so the Spitfires made a fast diving attack that downed two Me-323s. Then, with No. 2 Squadron’s Kittyhawks joining the Spitfires to fend off a dozen Messerschmitt Me-109 and Focke-Wulf FW-190 escorts, the Kittyhawks of Nos. 4 and 5 Squadrons came around to take their turn at the transports.

I first ordered a head-on attack to break up their tight formation, and at once five of them crashed into the sea, recalled Major John E. Parsonson, leader of No. 5 Squadron. Then we went in from all sides and hunted them till we had shot them to bits. Amplifying on that last part, Parsonson said, we hunted them like wolves.

Since many of the Me-323s were carrying fuel, the South Africans found it frighteningly easy to set them ablaze. One good machine-gun burst was usually all it took to set fire to the wing fuel tanks of one of the transport’s six engines, after which the flames inevitably spread to the cargo of metal drums. Whole burning planes plunged nose-first into the sea, making enormous expanding ripples on the calm surface. One Me-323, catching a full blast from a Kittyhawk at a 250-yard range, simply disintegrated in midair in a blinding flash. Still others broke in half at the wing, and the two pieces spun crazily down.

The transports that were carrying troops were harder targets, and the South Africans expended a great deal of ammunition bringing them down. Lieutenant Britten recalled that when he slew his giant it didn’t catch fire all that easily. But when they finally did go down, scores of troops would tumble out into the water, trying to escape.

By 8:50 a.m. the massacre of the giants was over. In that short 20 minutes, 14 of the 16 Me-323s had been destroyed. The Germans lost 119 airmen; only 19 crew members were rescued from the waters off Tunis. And during the encounter, Nos. 1 and 2 squadrons contributed to shooting down six of the escorting fighters, so Nos. 4 and 5 squadrons finished off the transports almost undisturbed.

It was only afterward that a few 109s and Fw-190s found their way down to our level, Britten recalled, and I clearly remember doing a head-on attack with an Fw-190. Fortunately for both of us neither of us was able to get our guns on to each other, but the Fw-190 passed so close above that I heard his engine.

For the price of one fighter lost in action on April 22, the South African Air Force had achieved a decisive victory in the battle over supplies. A few days later, one of the surviving Gigants was destroyed in an Allied strafing attack on Tunis, leaving only one Me-323 to return to Trapani airfield. Kesselring was aghast when he learned what happened to his Me-323s. He was forced to stop all daylight air convoys immediately and to switch to a smaller number of night flights. Even those convoys, however, were subject to attack from night fighters based at Malta.

Further information about the “Cape Bon Massacre” can be found at History.net and WW2Aircraft.net, while Colonel Rosy du Toit’s obituary (he died in April, 2009) can be found at the Telegraph.

Reference

Green, William, The Warplanes of the Third Reich, Doubleday and Company, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1972

Damned to Glory, by Colonel Robert L Scott, Jr. – 1944 [Lloyd Howe]

Though primarily known for his 1943 book God Is My Co-Pilot, Colonel Robert Lee Scott, Jr., was the author of some twelve other works, the central themes of which were his experience as an Army Air Force fighter pilot (which included command of the 23rd Fighter Group), and, military aviation and flying “in general”.

Scott’s second book, Damned to Glory, was published by Blue Ribbon Books in 1943. Probably inspired by a central aspect of his experiences in China – flying the Curtiss Warhawk fighter plane – the book is a literary paean to the P-40: The aircraft is presented as a symbol and embodiment of American technology, industry, and democracy, through accounts of the plane’s use by the air forces of the United States and its Allies (Royal Air Force, South African Air Force, and the Soviet Air Force). The book’s chapters are thematically arranged, each covering use of the Warhawk in a specific theater of war, or, by a specific military air force, with some of the chapters (you’ll see in three following posts) being introduced by a brief poem, likely of Scott’s authorship.

Strikingly, given that the book was published in the midst of WW II, the dust jacket clearly – and I believe intentionally – shows a damaged P-40, its pilot dead or mortally wounded, as the aircraft enters an uncontrolled dive while under the guise of other pilots. Perhaps this depiction fits the book’s very title: Damned – to Glory. Perhaps – this will remain conjecture – Colonel Scott and Blue Ribbon Books wanted to visually convey the message that despite the (by then) reasonable confidence in an eventual Allied victory, that victory would not arrive without sacrifice and cost.

Particularly notable are Lloyd Howe’s interior illustrations. One per chapter, reproduced in black and white, perhaps the original works were done in water colors, or, were pencil and / or charcoal sketches.

While these illustrations are not accurate in terms of dimensions and proportions of aircraft (either Allied or Axis), they solidly convey a sense of action and location, and are stylistically similar to the “box art” of plastic model kits – ahhh, remember Airfix, Aurora, Monogram (my favorite), and Revell? – of the 1950s through the 60s.

It’d been my intention to present scans of each image in Damned to Glory through a succession of posts, but – (!) – my copy of the book is too fragile to scan each of these illustrations without damaging the spine. So, while only three interior images are presented in the following posts, these images are representative of Lloyd Howe’s artistic style. Each image is accompanied by text from its relevant chapter.

Click ahead, and enjoy.

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A P-40 “sharkmouth” emblem is embosed upon the front cover…

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…while here is Scott’s introduction…

Ghost Ship

WHILE the thunder of her sixteen hundred horses shook the earth, she stood quivering with anticipation, her lines as graceful as those of any living thing. She was poised for action. The pilot who caressed her controls could feel under his hand the throbbing pulse of her life as the mighty Allison in her vitals roared its defiance. From the pointed nose of the spinner, back along her streamlined breast, she was a thing of beauty. Small as she looked to the casual observer, the pilot knew that there was tremendous power enclosed within her delicate skin.

Man had labored for years over drafting-boards to work out her design, that she might be ready when war should come to threaten his way of life. Man had formed with loving care the engine which was her heart, the wings which were her means of sustentation, the driving prop which was her means of motion through space. Then man, now become her creator, had trained himself again as a specialist, that he might become her pilot and thus become her very soul.

She drank her food from great tanks of high octane gasoline which had the potentiality of an explosive. And within her slender wings, that seemed hardly large enough to support her weight, were enclosed six fifty-caliber guns, which, when discharged at their rated normal of over six thousand rounds per minute, gave her the fire-power of one entire infantry battalion. Underneath these slender wings she could also carry nearly a ton of deadly bombs, which could blast a capital ship from the seas or deliver a city to destruction. From her twelve beautifully flared nostrils, she exhaled thousands of staccato explosions per minute, and her breath, hot with the passion of battle, pushed her to greater speed by the jet effect produced. When master pilots rode her into combat at high speed, the tips of her laminar-flow wings would sweat a gauze-like vapor which became a frozen mist behind this rocketing projectile.

Her function in life, the prime reason for her existence, was to carry her guns into range of a hostile bomber, hurtle it from the skies, and by this same method destroy all who came out to oppose her own bombers. It was her destiny to die, if need be, in gallant battle, that her bomber convoy might go on with its terrible cargo of death to wreck the industry of the enemy. In case she must carry the bombs herself, after their delivery she must become a fighter again, ready to use her guns and sting the enemy with death.

Her every feature had a strangely feminine beauty, an arrogant grace like that of some high-born vestal who, by her very place in life, knows her own destiny. Standing there atremble, she seemed like some aristocratic priestess who, though selected’ to die, would know how to make her sacrifice worth while.

She was an American fighter plane, the ten thousandth of her line. Constructed from elements which had come from every part of the globe, she was the creation of American minds, of skillful American hands – more than that you could not ask. Pilots called her “Warhawk,” and the Army charts spoke of her as P-40. Friends called her tender things that were sacred to them; her enemies, Jap and Hun, called her terrible names that meant tough, strong, fast, wicked and dirty. The pilot who flew her, whether he was an American, a Russian, a South African, or any other of the Allied Nations – for they all flew her – became her animating spirit.

These pilots, and they are legion, have fought the enemy with her on every front in this war. They are her judges; throughout this story they will bear witness that those ten thousand P-40s have fought a glorious fight. The materials which made her were gathered from the many countries of the earth, and now, on battle scenes around the world, they have been returned as debris and the rusting dust of war. Dust shall return to dust. But by actual statistics, for every one of these Warhawks destroyed in battle, thirteen and one-half enemy planes have paid the penalty. With no disparagement of other American planes, this gallant, global ship must be considered one of the greatest American fighter planes. She was in production when the trial of war came and other fighter ships were merely on the plotting boards. Her test was made in battle.

Now when faster and higher-climbing fighters are taking over, she merely salutes them, as they go climbing into the very heavens beyond the stratosphere with the knowledge she helped to teach them. If she were human, which she very nearly is, she would have tremendous stories to tell of her fighting days and of her continuing battles, for P-40’s are still roaming the skies of nearly every battlefront.

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…while the rear dust jacket has an excellent image of Colonel Scott seated in a P-40N.

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Here’s a better view of Scott’s portrait. (Notice the absence of a gunsight.)