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. I claimed this Fw 190 destroyed.

I closed rapidly on another Focke-Wulf 190 directly ahead and gave it a long burst from zero degrees at 350 yards. He fell off into a slow spiral to the left. I observed strikes on the wing roots, fuselage, and around the cockpit. By this time, I was through the main gaggle, almost all of whom had split-S-ed. I observed a chute open, and I believe it was the pilot of the first ship that I fired on. The second ship was still in a slow, lazy spiral to the left, and apparently this plane was out of control or the pilot was dead. I claimed this Focke-Wulf 190 probably destroyed.

00:13:13

As I looked back, I pulled up and broke to the right. Three Me 109s were firing at me, but they were back about 800 yards or more and their fire was breaking about 150 yards off my right wing. I called my wingman, but he said he wasn’t with me. I picked out the nearest ship, which was about 1,000 feet below me in a diving right turn, and dove on him. He did two or three aileron rolls, and I stayed on him but was unable to get into position for a shot. He rolled out and continued a diving right turn. I fired a long burst out of range as a farewell gesture before diving straight down. The Me 109s behind me were firing intermittently every time I looked around. 7

About eight or nine more had queued up on either side, apparently waiting their turn. All of them were out of range, I believe, and their fire never came very close to me.

I dove straight down and pulled out at 5,000 feet, pulling seven Gs. My G-suit connection blew apart while I was pulling out. I ran through two flights of 353rd Group ships, I believe, who apparently thought I was leading a bounce on them, for they dropped tanks and turned into me— turned into the ship pursuing me. I climbed back to 15,000 feet and headed home, wishing to hell I had a wingman.

Now, that was read virtually verbatim from the encounter report that I prepared that day after the mission, as you know. And the Intelligence Officer, whose job it was to debrief us, takes this information, transcribes it, and then we were given a copy of it.

Now, the thing that makes this mission more interesting, perhaps—certainly to me—was the wingman I had—and I won’t mention his name because it wouldn’t serve any useful purpose. Those people who may read this sometime will know who he was, and those who read it and don’t know who he was, it wouldn’t make any difference if they knew his name anyway. He had been a crew chief in the squadron and had gone back to the States and gone through pilot training and got reassigned to the squadron.

00:15:54

[End Side A]

[Begin Side B]

GORDON M. GRAHAM: ….a hero or an idol or whatever of the enlisted men in the squadron. He had flown approximately one-third of his missions. While he had been in the States going through flying school, he had married and just recently—after his return, just recently, his wife had had a baby. And this was very much on his mind, and he had talked to me about it. He was a first lieutenant. And I asked him how he felt about flying, continuing to fly, and he said, “Oh, it doesn’t bother me a bit.”

But then he came and talked to me one more time. And he was very apprehensive, and he felt he didn’t really have the desire to fly, to continue to fly combat. And the reason he was flying my wing that day was I had decided to see what kind of performance he did. And he left me. When I made the first bounce, he turned and went the other way. Now, the reason I know all this is that after the mission, he came to my room—and this was after I had gotten home—and he came in— or he asked to talk to me. And he broke down and was very emotional, and he told me he couldn’t fly anymore. And I told him what would probably happen, and it did. 8

00:01:57

He was reduced in rank to private and assigned to the infantry, and that’s the last I ever heard of him, so I don’t know what his fate was. But this was a very, very unique thing to happen, to my knowledge. And certainly, it was the only one in—that ever—that occurred in our group, the 355th Group, and may have been the only one that ever occurred. But it’s certainly the only one I know about. And it was a very tragic thing. He was a very likable young man. Everyone thought the world of him. But he just couldn’t forget his wife and baby. And that kind of activity didn’t lend itself to thinking about the wives and babies.

So that’s the story. And I’d be glad to answer any other questions or elaborate on this, although there really isn’t anything more I can tell you. I pretty well covered the whole mission. I don’t think that it—that I need to describe the way the war was fought over there. You probably have dozens and hundreds of anecdotes and histories and so on. There is a chapter in Aces and Wingmen by Danny Morris which contains the encounter report which I just read to you. And if you refer to that, you’ll see that and some others. And there are a couple of others that are really interesting, but I think that’s my best—or that certainly had more—that little twist to it that none of the others had.

[More service details and conclusion]

So I’ll get this in the mail and send the biographical sketch with it, and then you can take it from there. Thanks and good luck to you and your book. I look forward to acquiring a copy of it someday when it comes out.

I just read the sheet that I should fill out, and there may be a couple of things that you might need. I was a major at the time this occurred, and I was the squadron commander. I had been a flying instructor in the United States for three years, previous to going to England and joining the 355th.

00:04:45

I had been with the 355th approximately six months, and this was my first combat tour. I had scored some kills. I don’t remember now. I ended up with 16-and-a-half victory credits, all of them with the 355th. And following that, my—following—from when I had completed the tour, I signed on for an extension and I completed that, signed on for another extension, and the war ended at that—when I was about halfway through that extension. I transferred then to the 361st Fighter Group as a squadron commander of the 374th Fighter Squadron to go directly to the Pacific. The war ended in Japan—or in the Far East before we left. And I, in the meantime, had 9

been promoted to command the 361st Fighter Group, and that’s the job I had when the war— when VJ Day occurred.

I do have several photos, and I will send you one, if you want it. It says in your sheet, “Don’t send it yet, but tell me if you do.” And I do have some. And I can add other information about weather and other personalities in our group, of which there were many. And there is a history of the group written by—or of the squadron written—I’m sorry, of the group—written by Bill Marshall, the son of one of our best men, Bert Marshall, who died several years ago from cancer. The name of that book is Angels, Bulldogs and Dragons, and I wrote the forward to it. And it’s a good historical treatise of the activities of the 355th Fighter Group.

00:07:07

[End Side B]

[END OF INTERVIEW]