Morning Patrol
Text: Jan Zdiarský
Illustration: Piotr Forkasiewicz
Cat. No. 84214
D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the weeks that followed were an extremely demanding period, not only for the Allied ground forces, but also for the British and American air forces. Soldiers in ground and airborne units naturally bore the brunt of the entire invasion and suffered the greatest casualties; anyway, the crews of bombers and the fighter pilots of the RAF and USAAF also did their part. For them, the invasion had actually begun much earlier in the form of direct combat deployment. In the final weeks before the invasion, Allied attacks—in addition to the relentless strategic bombing missions into the heart of the Third Reich itself—increasingly focused on supply routes, airfields, and other targets of military significance along the entire Atlantic coast of the Old Continent. Everyone knew what this meant. The reasons for these operations were clear to pilots, residents of the French coast, and the German Army itself.
The final phase of the secret preparations for the fighter units on D-Day began in the early evening of 5 June, when the bases were sealed off, the mechanics started painting the invasion stripes quickly, and the flight crews started attending briefings. This also applied to the 357th FG, the first unit of the VIII Fighter Command to be equipped with P-51 aircraft. The first invasion briefing took place at the unit's Leiston base at 23:00 on 5 June 1944. For their first mission of the day, the unit's pilots took off in very bad weather at 02:10. Their task was to patrol the Bay of Biscay. Taking off in pitch darkness and forming up proved an extremely difficult task. They failed to form the planned formation. After passing through the clouds, the aircraft broke up into smaller groups; some continued independently, setting course for their assigned area. Navigation was difficult — the bad weather and low clouds that had aided the landing troops so much that morning now caused the pilots great difficulty.
The commander of one of the 363rd FS, Captain Clarence E. 'Bud' Anderson, forgot to perform the necessary engine cooling procedures while taxiing. As a result, glycol from the overheated engine sprayed onto his windscreen through a safety valve. Anderson corrected his mistake and prayed that the engine would cool sufficiently so that he wouldn’t have to abandon the mission prematurely. Fortunately, he didn’t lose much coolant and was able to take off into the tense night. He recalled the following moments himself:
“In the dark, we got the three squadrons together. I locked my flight onto that of Don Graham, who was leading the Group, and we headed out over the Channel. The only resistance we met over France was a little flak. Although the glowing tracers looked closer at night, and much scarier. When we reached our sector, Graham ordered lights out, and there was only the blue flame from Graham’s exhaust to home in on. I’d lose him from time to time, and despite radio silence, I’d call out, ‘Red Lead, flash your lights,’ to find him. We circled for hours like that.
Dawn broke, and there were Colonel Graham, his wingman, me, and ‘O’Bee’ O’Brien—four planes. There wasn’t another plane in the sky. I’d locked onto Graham, and O’Brien, leading another flight, had locked onto me. Either we were in the right place, or the other 44 planes were.
Some guys got so lost they ended up over Spain. Jim Browning said later that when the sun came up that morning, he looked down and saw he was over a coastline that ran east and west. He decided it had to be Spain, turned north, and flew for more than two hours to get back to England.
The four of us flew circles until it was time to go home in midmorning. Flying home, we had a quick glimpse of history through the breaks in the cloud cover; the vast armada of ships, the beaches under siege. Six hours and 50 minutes after takeoff, we landed at Leiston with plenty of fuel in reserve.”
The 357th FG flew a total of eight missions that day, with some of its pilots taking off repeatedly. Bud Anderson recalled that this was the longest he had ever spent in the cockpit of a P-51 on a single mission. It lasted a full seven hours minus five minutes. In the following days, the focus of the missions shifted from patrols to ground attacks. Between 6 and 15 June 1944, the 357th FG alone dropped more than 469 bombs, primarily on road and rail transport targets.
Like his entire 357th FG, Bud Anderson returned to the routine work of escorting bombers on missions deep into the continent. On 11 July 1944, he completed his operational tour with a score of 12.25 confirmed kills. After a period of rest, he returned to his group and began his second tour. He finished this on 15 January 1945 with a final total of 16.25 enemy aircraft shot down, two probable kills and two damaged aircraft.