WWII Dogfight

and other stuff up in the air
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Frans
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WWII Dogfight

Post by Frans » Sun Dec 17, 2006 11:17 pm

An old retired South African Air force pilot friend of mine gave me a box full of old magazines. Among them I found a very interesting WWII article that I would like to share. It is about a South African pilot in a desperate struggle to evade the repeated attacks of a jet-powered Messer Schmitt ME262. Here it is:

In the middle of 1944 the end of WWII was not yet in sight. In the mid-summer Allied aircrews experienced “Mosquito weather”. That is to say, those fortunate enough to be in Mosquitoes had a fine old time in the sky, dodging German fighters with remarkable success.

The Mosquito was then the fastest, highest-climbing fighting plane over Europe. The Mosquito pilots were able to fly on a heading way of their target (for confusion) and turn in the last moment, because they knew anything the Germans had would take a long time to catch up with them.

All summer long the reconnaissance Mosquitoes flew unarmed and unescorted over German territory. Those were balmy days.

Then, toward the end of summer, the Allies began losing Mosquitoes over the Black Forrest in Germany. Underground information pieced together by Allied intelligence services indicated the Germans were testing a new secret weapon in the Black Forrest and the following order was issued to Allied air forces:
“Locate and destroy the enemy secret weapon on the ground before it can become operational.”

The secret weapon the Germans were testing was the now famous Messer Schmitt Me 262, the world’s first jet fighter. The Me 262 was an awesome fighting machine to which the Allies had no answer.

The latest secret weapon of the Germans had been in development since 1938 and although the plane completed satisfactory test flights by the end of 1942, it was not immediately ordered into series production. Why the Germans failed to press this formidable weapon into immediate service, remains a mystery.

The Me 262 first started operating as a fighter late in 1944 and its superiority was emphasized strikingly by the fact that only one plane was lost for every hundred sorties flown.

But in August 1944 the Allies still knew nothing about the Me 262. No Allied pilot had yet survived an attack by a Me 262 and therefore no one could tell the story.

On August 15 a young South African pilot flew a Recce Mosquito from San Severo, near Foggia in Italy, to try and locate the so-called “secret weapon”. He was Captain Pi Pienaar, DFC, AFC, then of 60 Squadron, SAAF.

That day Capt Pienaar volunteered to stand in for a pilot who had a bad cold and so became the first Allied pilot to survive an attack by a Messer Schmitt Me 262.

It was the fastest, highest dogfight of the war and at the end of it Capt Pienaar’s Mosquito was able to limp home with the first accurate report on the performance and characteristics of the German jet.

Capt Pienaar’s incredible engagement with the jet-powered Messer Schmitt is one of the great air stories of the war. Here follows his personal account of the incident:

“I wasn’t due to fly that day at all. Intelligence had called for a quick, urgent flight over the Black Forrest area. But no real gen.

Normally in the squadron you would never volunteer for another man’s flight; it was considered very unlucky. But the pilot due to fly that day had a rotten cold and the other who might have stood in for him was at the end of his tour, so we were keeping him for the milk runs, which was also squadron tradition.

The Mosquitoes of that day were just slightly pressurized- about a half a pound or so- and I knew that was not enough for the chappie with the bad cold: his ears wouldn’t have stood it. So I volunteered for the flight in old 520, my plane.

We were on a photographic mission at 30 000 feet, Liepheim airfield near Munich. Nice afternoon it was, too, warm with a little broken cloud as myself and my navigator, Archie Lockhart-Ross, headed up the Adriatic towards Prague.

We normally used to fly on a heading way off our target, then turn back, because the fighters we knew in those days used to take a long, long time to get up to us. We had already lost a few Mosquitoes in the Black Forrest area, some from the RAF and one from us, but otherwise we had no information about this secret weapon, and intelligence only had underground information to go on.

We turned off north north east of Munich and flew over an airfield named Nemigen but I wasn’t feeling happy at all: it was too quiet, no flack, no enemy fighters. We knew the enemy fighters of those days well and they were no match for the Mossie, but this new fighter was something else again; all we knew was that they were game to go at anything.

Archie was over at the bomb-sight directing things for the six-inch and 12-inch mapping cameras, but we were also carrying the big 36-inch camera, which is for detail, and with that camera in operation you have to fly dead straight and level, otherwise you blur the photographs.

At the next airfield, just a strip, in fact, and very well camouflaged, Archie shouted: ‘I can see it …. There’s a fighter taking off at a helluva speed!’ I asked Archie to keep an eye on it because I was going nice and straight and level but a few minutes later I picked up a speck in my rear-vision mirrors, directly behind the tail, but just a speck.

Up to that time nothing could get at the Mossies, but this fighter must have climbed well over 5000 feet a minute, so I didn’t dismiss this from my mind at all.

Archie said: ‘that’s the fighter!!
I took my eyes off that speck for only a few seconds, but when I glanced again there he was right on my tail, climbing into the attack a little, and it didn’t look like a normal aeroplane; that’s for sure. This wasn’t a normal fighter at all.

Tactics in the Mosquito squadron in those days were to turn left, because of the pilot’s position, then attack either in a drive or from a climb. The Germans were well aware of this, too, but had nothing that could test the Mosquito.”

That day was to be entirely different: in the air at that time was another 262, captained by Wolfgang Schenk. He was listening in to the attack on Mosquito 520, expecting the left turn and the catastrophe that would greet that maneuver from four 30mm cannon mounted in the 262’s nose.

“So instead of turning to the left I took the throttles, pitch levers and at the same time I hit the drop tank button and then turned it to starboard. Just as I did that he fired and he hit the left aileron and blew it away completely.

The 262 pilot (I once had his name on record and I know that he was later killed in a 262 on the Russian front) started his turn too so that his next burst hit the rail and the one shell, fortunately not an explosive shell, but about six inches long, skimmed the fuselage and buried itself in the main spar, which was all made of wood.

I was still in the turn to the right when this lot came off. I could see it out of the corner of my eye but I didn’t want to look too closely. Suddenly the aeroplane flicked to the left … it was losing all the lift on the left aileron, and the next moment I was in a spiral.
In a spiral normally the first thing to do is to roll it and get power off, and I had the throttles right back, but it didn’t make any difference: the boost was way up there and I could hear the engines screaming, but the plane was still going. I had full right aileron on and full right rudder and when I pushed the stick forward, it just made a little ripple … that’s all.

It was just down, down and when I heard the high blowers cut out, I knew I must have been down to 19000 feet. Then I saw the two throttles way back and the two pitch levers way up forward, so I pulled back the starboard engine pitch lever, an as I did so I could hear the revs come down and the plane just came back.

So I was flying it with the stick right over to the right, right rudder full on and the left engine screaming its head off and boiling. The right engine revs had fallen, but the boost was still way up at the top.”

All this time Archie Lockhart-Ross was pitching inert in the plastic nose of the Mosquito, held there by G and half conscious, because his oxygen tube had pulled out. Pi could see this but do nothing to aid him. Lockhart-Ross finally made it back alongside Pi when the Mosquito straightened out. His first news wasn’t heartening.

“I was still trying to get things straight when Archie shouted ‘Look out, here he comes again!’ So all I did was to let go everything and the aeroplane just flicked, to the left this time, and I saw him go past.

I could see the 262 pilot looking back at us … but every time I turned to stay inside him I had to loose a bit of height.”

Pi called for a course to Switzerland, knowing that in their present area the local populace was very likely to kill an Allied airman, especially because of the weight of bombing over the Munich area. In the next half an hour the ‘Jetbug’ as Pi had named his attacker, made ten more attacks, some not as determined as others, but at least four more from astern and two abeam. The ‘Jetbug’ never managed to score another hit with his cannon, but each time Pi had to loose altitude.

“The third really concentrated attack was made when I was down to seven or eight thousand feet, but I was already making a little progress towards Switzerland and there was some low cloud around, so I dived into it.

But I realized that each time I evaded I had to loose some altitude, so as he made the second last run in I said to Archie: ‘Well, here goes,’ and I flipped the aircraft round and headed straight for the 262. after all, if we had to go, we might just as well have taken him with us. I saw him go straight over me … could just see his belly … then I dived into low cloud again. This was somewhere near Lake Constance, where there was a big German base.

The head-on gave me a little time, because the 262 had quite a wide radius of turn, but when I got into the clouds and looked at the artificial horizon, it was lying perpendicular. Then I looked for the turn-and-bank indicator, and I couldn’t find it. Man, it’s amazing how you can loose an instrument you know is there. Eventually when I found it, it was parked way down here to the left. And my battle dress top … well you could have taken it off and wrung it dry.

The final attack came at 500 feet, but I think by then this chap was running short of fuel and I just saw him go over me and break off. It was just as well because I couldn’t fly the Mossie above 500 feet or the left engine would boil. The throttle was jammed full on and the linkages were damaged by that shell in the main spar. The right engine was still at full boost, but reduced revs, and that’s the way we made it out, just skimming the hills, then loosing altitude.”

Pi decided that if he was going to sleep that night at all, it would be in his bed back in Italy, at 60 Squadron, San Severo, and he asked Archie for a course back home. As they swept into Italy, a big airfield lay dead ahead of them, and there could be no turning. Pi and Archie recognized it instantly –Udine, strongest German air base in the north of Italy, full of fight and fighters and well avoided by Allied airmen. There would be no avoiding it this time:

“All I could say to Archie was ‘hold tight.’ I pushed the Mossie all the way to deck and just held it over the runway. I could see the Germans making for trucks to get to the flack positions, then just scrambling out and ducking in all directions. Mossie 520 must have been making a helluva noise then, with that right engine screaming and the other one way back on revs; the Germans must have wondered just what sort of an aircraft this was, but by then we were over the airfield and heading out to the safety of the Adriatic.”

That dice over the German airfield was the one and only laugh of the trip back for Pi and Archie. They were down to 150 feet at that stage, over the Adriatic and almost abeam of Ancona, where a network of airfields changed hands between Germans and Allied forces with pendulum-swing regularity.

Archie spotted four fighters coming down to have a look at them and Pi froze on his precarious controls until he recognized them as RAF Spitfires. Three of the Spits turned away, but one stayed alongside Pi, making furious signals and inviting them to land. What he was trying to tell them was that Mosquito 520 had a damaged elevator main spar and the right elevator was not operating- apart from that port wing that had shed its aileron and, inboard, was just a series of bare ribs.

Pi gave the Spit pilot the thumbs up sign and kept going to a familiar landmark just south of Leghorn that indicated the low-level run to San Severo.

On the way, and at 150 feet, he tested for stall and got an alarming result.

“Normally a Mosquito at that height would land safely at 110 knots, but this thing started going (out of control) at 168 knots, so I parked the figure of 170 knots in my mind and did a wide circuit.

The problem here was that I had no hydraulics, no landing gear and no control over the throttles, so the only thing I could do was to cut the switches, knowing full well that, having done that, I couldn’t switch on again. So it was going to be a wheels-up landing and no engines!

I made a wide, low approach over the dirt runway and I could see the whole squadron rushing down the runway to help me. I also warned Archie to free the top hatch and let it go the moment I touched the runway.

The approach was at 200 knots until I could see the runway. To come down a further 25 knots with that drag was nothing, but I nearly underestimated that, too. When I was over the trees, I cut the switches and the speed fell of in a second or two, so all I could do was to hold the nose down all the way to the runway.

There was a cloud of dust and when I next looked for Archie he was gone- he was standing alongside the plane and shouting ‘get out, man, get out!’”
Archie and Pi were able to provide Intelligence with the first detailed information of the Me 262, the aero plane that, had it been used solely as a fighter and in greater numbers, might have changed the whole character of air-war over Europe.

An additional bonus was discovered when the cameras were unloaded- they had kept operating throughout the attack over the Alps, providing valuable information on altitudes and turns, one frame disclosed a complete silhouette of the 262, the first in Allied hands.

For their exploit, Pi and Archie were awarded the British Distinguished Flying Cross. But that came later their immediate celebration was that they were going to spend that night in their own beds- just as Pi had wanted.


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Robert Tofson
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Post by Robert Tofson » Mon Dec 18, 2006 9:35 am

Wow, what a story.............
Bob
I have a 1945 MB, DOD 16 Jan 1945, MB # 407049, Hood # 20673717 S, Engine # MB 537670, Body Serial # 178043
MVPA # 21201

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Frans
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Post by Frans » Tue Dec 19, 2006 3:59 am

And I found this here:

http://www.saairforce.co.za/news01.htm
21 January 2001: 'Pi' Pienaar passes away
Captain "Pi" Pienaar, DSO, DFC, passed away on Sunday 21 January 2001. Probably best known for his encounter with a Messerschmitt Me262 while flying a Mosquito during World War II, his achievements however stretch much further than that.

Most definitely one of the most outstanding of SAA's "Royal Family", he was involved in the acquisition and delivery of virtually all SAA's post war airliners, attaining an unheard of score at Boeing when converting from propliners to Boeing 707's. He was also largely responsible for the
smooth almost overnight transition to the enforced "round the bulge" flights in 1963. Prior to retirement, he served as SAA's Chief Executive.

With his passing, another chapter in the history of aviation in South Africa closes. His absence leaves a great void, not only in civil aviation, but
also amongst the legion of SAAF personnel who held him in such high regard.

Derek Eddlestone
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Post by Derek Eddlestone » Tue Dec 19, 2006 2:47 pm

Fantastic.

:shock: :shock:

Derek.

Olav
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Post by Olav » Thu Dec 21, 2006 8:46 pm

:) Wonderrful history, thank you.

Olav


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