Gordon M. Graham (Part 3 of 4)
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The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Gordon M. Graham (Part 3 of 4) Interview Date: circa 1990s 2 Abstract: In this four-part oral history, fighter ace Gordon M. Graham discusses his military service with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. In part three, he continues to describe his experiences as a fighter pilot while serving with the 355th Fighter Group in England. Special focus on a bomber escort mission over Germany on December 25, 1944. Biography: Gordon M. Graham was born on February 16, 1918 in Ouray, Colorado. In 1940, he graduated from the University of California with a degree in petroleum engineering and shortly afterward joined the United States Army Air Forces. After serving for several years as a flight instructor, Graham joined the 355th Fighter Group as commander of the 354th Fighter Squadron in England. He remained in the military after World War II and held a number of command positions with the Air Force. He also flew missions in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War; between the three wars, he accumulated over 1,000 combat hours in fighter aircraft. Over the course of his career, Graham served with the 31st Tactical Fighter Wing, the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, the Nineteenth Air Force, the Seventh Air Force, the Ninth Air Force, Tactical Air Command, and the Sixth Allied Tactical Air Force. He retired as a lieutenant general in 1973 and passed away in 2008. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services 3 Index: Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4 Service details ................................................................................................................................. 4 Bomber escort mission over Germany (December 25, 1944) ......................................................... 5 More service details and conclusion ............................................................................................... 8 4 Gordon M. Graham (Part 3 of 4) [START OF INTERVIEW] [Begin Side A] 00:00:00 [Introduction] GORDON M. GRAHAM: …Graham, Mr. Hammel. G-O-R-D-O-N, M as in Mike, G-R-A-H-A- M. I’m responding to your recent correspondence—well, it’s a couple of months old or more now—asking that I furnish you with “information pertaining to your most exciting combat mission of World War II.” I must say, I think they’re—or thought they were all exciting. I don’t think that it’s possible to describe in the years now that have gone by and remember exactly what those missions were like. My encounter reports are fairly standard. They’re not—as you probably have read dozens and dozens of them, they’re fairly stereotyped. They were taken by the Intelligence Officer and written up and then signed by the individual after they had been typed up. 00:01:25 Anyway, one mission does come to mind because—not necessarily because the mission was that interesting, although it was pretty exciting, but there was a rather unique situation that occurred both before and after the mission. And so I picked this out, and you can use whatever part of it you want. I’ll make some interjections. Perhaps—and later, if you send me the copy, I might edit it a little bit. But I’ll describe it, and you can see what you think. [Service details] Let me put in a little information at first. I have been retired since July 1973. I retired as a lieutenant general after 34 years of service. And I served in all three wars. The last one, in Vietnam, I flew 146 missions—combat missions, fighter-combat missions. And I think rather than attempt to describe my background, I’ll just send you a copy of my biography, and you can extract from that whatever you wish. And then I won’t have to also fill out the sheet that you sent, that you indicated—well, I’ll probably—I’ll fill that out anyway. But let me get on to this mission. I was assigned to the 355th Fighter Group, 354th Fighter Squadron. When I was first assigned to the group, I was not the squadron commander, but shortly afterwards I was assigned as squadron commander of the 354th Fighter Squadron. We were flying P-51Ds and some Cs and had been flying Bs. I did not fly any combat missions in 5 anything other than a D model. Although I did fly some of the other airplanes because we hadn’t fully converted when I got there. 00:04:22 [Bomber escort mission over Germany (December 25, 1944)] This mission that I’m about to describe—well, our primary mission was escort the bombers. We were assigned to the 2nd Air Division, and the structure there, as you probably well know, three air divisions—this is in Eighth Air Force in England—two of the air divisions were equipped with B-17s and one with B-24s. The 2nd Air Division, our assigned division, being B-24- equipped, as far as bombers was concerned. The fighter groups were equipped primarily with 51s, although there were—I think there were two P-47—or at least one, I know, the 78th, when I got there, still had 47s. And the 56th. Also, there were two P-38 groups, as I remember. Later, I think those both converted to 51s. So most of our work was involved in escorting B-24s, but B-17s as well. And we did have some ground work, primarily strafing of transportation targets and airfields. And, in fact, our group had the highest destruction total of aircraft on the ground. We were known as the “Steeple Morden Strafers” because our base was on the outskirts of a very small village called Steeple Morden. 00:06:25 This mission was a—let’s see. This mission was on Christmas Day of 1944. And it was—no. I’m sorry. I’m reading the wrong encounter report. Well, I was correct the first time. It was Christmas Day 1944. And on this mission, I was leading Falcon Squadron, which was the 354th Squadron, “Falcon” being the call sign. And we were assigned a close escort to B-24s. And our group, our fighter group, had been split up the previous day, and our—my squadron was—we landed at three different fields, and we never got together when we took off on this particular mission. And so I had one flight that was flying with the other two squadrons in the group: the 357th and 358th squadrons. And two flights out of my four didn’t get airborne at all because of the weather. And so I had—for the particular mission, I had one flight of four ships and one flight of three. About 12 minutes before target time—and incidentally, the target was in the Hamburg area. I don’t remember now what the specific target was. Steel or steel mills or whatever. Port facilities, perhaps. I’ve forgotten now what the actual target was. But about 12 minutes before target time, Nuthouse, which was the call sign of our ground control radar installation—which was on the continent by now. Nuthouse called in a bunch of bandits 20 miles northeast of our bomber force. And I crossed to get between this point and the bomber force and detected what appeared to be a gaggle forming up in the indicated area. However, it was too far away to lead the bomber force 6 to investigate. Our bombers released their loads, and as their targets were a few miles apart, the groups were scattered somewhat in the target area. I orbited during the bombing and the controller, Nuthouse, gave us another position report to the effect that the gaggle was approaching from the east. About five minutes after turning on the withdrawal course, I observed a gaggle of 75-plus Focke- Wulf 190s and Messerschmitt 109s approaching from five o’clock level to a group of bombers, about four o’clock to me and 3,000 feet below me. I was flying at 27,000 feet. 00:10:38 Prior to target time, the three-ship flight with me had gone down to bounce some bogeys and was at approximately 15,000 feet, climbing back up toward my flight. I called a bounce, drop tanks, and went balls-out for the gaggle. My wingman did not follow me. Immediately after calling the bounce, my element leader called in 15-plus Messerschmitt 109s, which were about 3,000 feet above us covering the main gaggle. The Me 109s dived in to cut the three ships off that were climbing up, and my second element leader turned to engage them. I continued straight on into the gaggle to help—to break-up the attack about 800 to 1,000 yards behind the bombers. As I was closing, all of the gaggle fired simultaneously at the bomber force. I closed rapidly and hit them in the middle and opened fire immediately. They began to split-S just before I hit them and, just as I went through, fired another long burst. I closed fast on one from dead astern and fired a long burst from zero deflection at about 250 yards, observing many strikes around the wing roots and pieces flying off. As I pulled up to go over him, he either jettisoned his canopy or it came off, and he was climbing out of the ship as I shot by.