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jettisoned his canopy and bailed out.” The battle
was far from over, as Howard defended the 401st
Bomb Group in what is considered one of the epic
fights any American fighter pilot was ever in.
According to the official account, Howard was
up against 36 enemy fighters and was the only
American fighter in position to oppose them.
He flew straight at them, attacking first one, then
another as he twisted and turned for several
minutes in their midst. His “one man air force”
attack forced the enemy fighters to break away
and saved the B-17 formation.
After forcing several enemy fighters to
break of their attacks, Howard closed on one of
the lead 401st B-17s. He was now down to one
working machine gun. “I had already been with
the bombers for nearly thirty minutes, and there
were still enemy planes around. So I decided to
bluff by making feints in their direction to scare
them off. I still had the one gun working.” Howard
chased away a persistent Ju-88 three times
before the enemy dived away for good. “After the
Ju-88 finally dived away, I saw no more enemy
planes So I set course for England, picking up
a couple stray P-51s as I did.”
The 354th claimed 18 destroyed, eight
probably destroyed and 16 damaged, with no
American losses. The actual losses for the
three formations that bombed targets were 60
missing and presumed shot down by fighters or
flak. Howard himself claimed two destroyed, two
probables and two damaged.
On February 14, each of the Fourth’s three
squadrons received a P-51B when the fighters
were delivered to Debden. Blakeslee informed
the pilots he expected all to check out in the
new fighter between flying combat missions.
There would be no down time to permit pilots to
transition en masse.
The Mustang was so easy to fly that little
thought was given to extensive conversion
training before entering combat. When the 352nd
Fighter Group received their new Mustangs on
April 7, 1944, pilot Robert “Punchy” Powell
remembered, “We were coming back from
ARTICLES
Johnny Godfrey (l) and Don Gentile after the March 4, 1944 Berlin mission failed due to bad weather. The 4th had
adopted their red nose marking on March 1, but Gentile and Godfrey left the front of their spinners white as an
identification. Blakeslee told them to have the noses painted by the next mission on March 5. (USAF Official)
P-51Bs of the 354th “Pioneer Mustang” group take off
from their base at Boxted, England in the Spring of
1944. (USAF Official)
INFO Eduard
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May 2024