The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington

John L. Sublett (Part 1 of 2)

Interviewed by: Eugene A. Valencia

Interview Date: June 24, 1968

2

Abstract: In this two-part oral history, fighter ace John L. Sublett is interviewed about his military service and aviation career. In part one, Sublett describes his experiences as a fighter pilot with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Topics discussed include his training history, his service in England with the 362nd Fighter Squadron, and stories about fellow servicemen.

The interview is conducted by fellow fighter ace Eugene A. Valencia. Note that speakers may be difficult to hear in some spots due to faint audio.

Biography:

John L. Sublett was born on October 26, 1921 in Alpine, Texas. He joined the United States Army Air Corps in 1941 and graduated from flight training in 1942. After an initial assignment as a flight instructor, Sublett joined the 357th Fighter Group and was deployed to England. He served with the 362nd Fighter Squadron, flying missions over Germany, France, and other areas of the European Theater. Sublett remained in the military after the end of World War II and went on to serve in various command and staff positions. He retired from the Air Force in 1962 as a lieutenant colonel. Afterwards, he flew for Air America during the Vietnam War. Sublett passed away in 2003.

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:

Personal background and joining the Army Air Corps ...... 4

Flight training and instructor assignment ...... 7

Deployment to Europe ...... 8

First combat missions and competition for aerial victories ...... 10

Bomber escort mission to the Stendal oil refineries (January 13, 1945) ...... 15

Ground crew personnel and aircraft maintenance ...... 17

Stories about Chuck Yeager, Johnny England, and other servicemen ...... 18

Thoughts on German pilots ...... 21

Final aerial victory (March 17, 1945) ...... 21

Experiences at RAF Leiston (England) ...... 23

Encounters with the Messerschmitt Me 262 ...... 23

Characteristics of a successful fighter pilot ...... 25

Future of the fighter ace ...... 26

Post-World War II service ...... 27

More stories about fellow servicemen ...... 28

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John L. Sublett (Part 1 of 2)

[START OF INTERVIEW]

00:00:00

[Personal background and joining the Army Air Corps]

[faint audio]

EUGENE A. VALENCIA: John, how did you ever get started flying?

JOHN L. SUBLETT: Well, that’s quite an interesting story, I think. I decided when I was a freshman in high school I was going to be a flyboy in the Army Air Corps. And I—that far back.

EAV: Excuse me if I look around [unintelligible 00:00:13]—

JLS: And I started—of course, now this was during the Depression, and there just wasn’t any money, particularly in my family. My dad had been an oil well driller, and he’d farmed out into his own. And he bought an old Spudder and started drilling water wells.

EAV: An old what? Spudder?

JLS: Yeah.

EAV: Is that what you call them?

JLS: Well, a Spudder is the—on any oil well that’s dug, it has to be spudded in, and it’s spudded in by a small type. Then they move in the big rig, and they start from that hole. But you spud it in that—whatever size hole, 16, 18, 24 inches. And that’s—they take this machine, and it goes over, and it spuds in another one before they move in the big heavy equipment. And so he got ahold of a Spudder, and for three or four years there, you could drill a well. You wouldn’t get any money for it, and it was practically impossible for a man without any [audio distortion/unintelligible 00:01:33] job in those days. It was real difficult. But I managed to get through high school and graduated in ’39. And then I drove a truck and was a soda jerk and worked in a hash house and slinging hamburgers and what have you. But luckily, I was living in a little town there out behind where—Alpine, where Sul Ross was.

EAV: Sul Ross?

JLS: State College.

EAV: Hm-hmm [affirmative].

00:02:05 5

JLS: And so I decided that I best get an education. I had checked with the Army Air Corps, and they would not touch anybody without two years college.

EAV: What date was that, roughly?

JLS: This was in—

EAV: When you started college.

JLS: I started—I stayed out a year. I graduated in ’39 and stayed out a year and went back in—it was actually ’40. The school year ’40-41.

EAV: Hm-hmm [affirmative].

JLS: And I remember very well the price of the ticket at that time was $39.50, was tuition. That didn’t include books. And I managed to save up while I was driving a truck $40.00 and managed to get into school that way. And there just wasn’t any money to be had. And I’ll never forget the first biology class that I went to and went to the lab, and we started cutting up these worms. The little girl sitting next to me, man, she couldn’t—just to look at a worm scared her to death, besides cutting one up, pinning it on the sheet and what have you. Her name’s Ovella. That’s where we met. And so I would do the lab work and draw up the pictures and label them, and then she’d take my paper and copy them at night at the library. She’d get As and I’d get Cs, every time. But she [unintelligible 00:03:41]. So I managed to get 22 hours the first year. Well, 24, actually.

EAV: This was all based on your ability to work for yourself?

JLS: Well, I was drive—after the library closed, which was at 10:00—the girls had to be in at 11. Many’s the time I was working the graveyard shift in a hamburger stand down there. And go to the—I always had that 8:00 class. And this time, I’ve gone into this professor’s math class, looked him right in the eye, and went sound to sleep. And he’d say, “John, you make me so mad. You make my hair stand right straight up on end.” And he didn’t have a hair on his head. [laughs] But he was a great old gentleman. And the story comes back later—or he comes into my story later.

But anyway, I managed to go that year and a summer school and the first half of the next year. And I remember it cost $25.00 to enter the CPT Program that they had started out there then. And I said that’s—that was for me. So I could get checked out flying as—for $25.00. And so I had to borrow that from my aunt, who owned a ranch, bless her soul. She died not too many years later. And I went through CPT, and I was taking CPT, just finishing up, on December the 7th. That’s where I was, flying that day. And I remember listening on the radio about Pearl Harbor. It didn’t take me long because they had these teams that went around to colleges, you 6

know, giving physicals and what have you. And I knew they were coming, and I’d been working out at the field. And of course, Ovella was there—

EAV: Nikki?

JLS: …every afternoon. Yeah. That’s who I’m talking about.

EAV: Oh.

JLS: The Lady Ovella’s my airplane. I named it after her. Figured if it fight near as well as she did, I’d be going [laughter/unintelligible 00:06:02]. She still grins about that. I don’t know whether she likes it or not. But she likes the airplane. I went to—I worked out at the track field every afternoon. I’d run till I just dropped and do exercises and what have you. And as a result, when the team came in—there were 19 of us that were eligible to take the physical. And that was some physical back in the ‘40s, as you recall.

EAV: Oh yeah.

00:06:31

JLS: One of them busted it because he had sweat on the palm of his hand. That means he was nervous, so they just tossed him out of it. He later on got in and turned out to be one hell of a fighter pilot. But 19 of us took it, and I was the only one that passed it. And that—of course, I was the little skinny guy and the one least likely to pass it. But I did. I was quite pleased with it. And I sat there—that was in October—sat there, and then December the 7th come in and not a word one came from them. And so I went over to San Angelo to find out what the score was, and they didn’t have my papers. And of course, it was a great big mix-up then. And I don’t know if they ever would have called me.

But the flight surgeon who had given me the—named Howard Johnson, by the way—who had given me the physical recalled that I had passed everything, and he called one of the flight leaders down there who had been a flying member of the team. And he said, “Oh, hell, yes. You don’t have to take all of these tests and everything.” He says, “You’re already passed in.” And they packed me up and sent me to San Antonio to the Cadet Center right there. And I never did get back to school. But the reason I became eligible was that same math class and that same cue ball. I asked him, I said, “If I can get the three hours in that analytic geometry, I’ll be eligible to go into the Cadets.” He says, “Is that what you want to do?” I says, “Yep.” He says, “You got your three hours.” And he went up and put it on my record, although I never completed it. I don’t think I could have passed it. But at least the old gentleman got me in.

EAV: Well, he felt the same way, I’m sure.

JLS: I feel so. I think so. 7

00:08:35

EAV: And you felt—

[overlapping voices/unintelligible 00:08:34]

[Flight training and instructor assignment]

JLS: Well, we all had the same thing back in those days because we were fighting a war and getting the dog kicked out of us everywhere. And went onto Cadets. I was the class of 42H. And—

EAV: Did you have any humorous experiences, either while going through CPT or through Cadet training?

JLS: Well, I was the first one to solo in CPT in—of our class. I think there was eight of us taking it at the time. And the same old gentleman that—that same old gentleman that gave me CPT out there is still out there. He must have 50 or 60,000 hours. And he’s still got the same airplane. And I flew that airplane here, oh, about three or four months ago. A little old Aeronca that’s got a great big old 65-horsepower engine up there. It takes off at 40, cruises at 40, and lands at 40. It’s quite an airplane. Humorous—well, too many to—to really think about. They’ll come to me as I go along.

EAV: When did you graduate from—

JLS: Graduated 6th of September, 1942. And of course, standing right there next to me was Ovella. And I had put in, of course, and went through single-engine and through the gunnery school down at Matagorda Island. And I was a real tiger, and I had the flag about nine miles square, waving it like mad. And I didn’t care whether I went to the Pacific or ETO. It didn’t make any difference to me.

EAV: Were there any doubts all the time you were going through flight training that [unintelligible 00:10:30] bombers?

JLS: Oh, no. The only thing that bothered me was—well, yes. That happened to a lot of them. But I had put in for single-engine advanced and requested it. And by great trepidation I stayed with it, and it boiled down to the fact that my name began with “S.” When you got to that, they went to single-engine pilot training school. Most of our class graduated at that time, and they were expanding so fast in September ’42 that a great need of—for instructors came up. And 55 of us went to become basic instructors. In fact, the week after I graduated, I had six students. And if that wasn’t the blind leading the blind. No instructor school or anything like that. It’s just teaching them— 8

EAV: Now, did you get married after you graduated?

JLS: We had decided not to get married until I found out where I was going. And they shipped us up to Enid, Oklahoma, where I stayed as an instructor for about a year-and-a-half, and went down to the Air Force instrument school—and I expect the man who saved more lives than any other one person—Colonel Duckworth’s [Joseph Duckworth] full-panel instrument school. And he finally convinced the Air Force that people were going to have to fly instruments, and they finally took him up on it. Then I went from there back to Enid and up to Winfield, Kansas in January ’44. I had been beating on Colonel Miles’s and everybody else’s desk. I was volunteering for B-24s or B-17s or anything else. At the time, I’d picked up about 1,700, 1,800 hours flying time [unintelligible 00:12:32] the instrument school. And lo and behold, they came in with—they were going to try to send a whole flock of instructors over with a lot of flying time as replacements in fighters to see how they came out, how they turned out. And so they did. They quick sent us down to Matagorda, though gunnery school again.

00:12:22

[Deployment to Europe]

EAV: Now, what was the first heavy plane you [unintelligible 00:12:59]?

JLS: P-40 down in Florida, when we went to—

EAV: Was that quite a thrill for you?

JLS: Oh, gee-whiz. It’s something I’ve been fighting for since I was a freshman in high school, and I finally got it. I was like a fish in good, sweet water. I wasn’t—they weren’t about to get me out of that place. We went through our training down there. I think we got about 20, 25 hours. And then we—they shipped us on over—as it turned out, I went to the ETO. A lot of them went to the other—other direction. We shipped out on the Hill to France with about 9,000, 11,000 other troops. Everybody recalls that made those trips, it was quite crowded. And they’d blow their whistle and have their disaster practice. Everybody had to run out on the decks and put on the Mae Wests and what have you. And we finally got tired of that. We just stayed in the ballroom and played bridge all the time. We never did go out after the first one.

EAV: Now, you were a first lieutenant at that time?

JLS: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. First lieutenant. And of course, when we—we got into Glasgow and—

EAV: What was your first reaction when you pulled into Glasgow? Was it rain—what time of year was it? 9

JLS: This was September ’44. And what was bothering me was the fact that, while we were going through operational training in the ‘40s, was the fact that we were afraid that the war was going to be over before we could ever get there. And it was really bothering the hell out of a lot of us, particularly me, because I had sworn that I was going to go over there and whip all the Japs or the Germans or whichever side it went. At that time, I felt that way. They changed my mind shortly after getting there. And we went over with elements of the 9th Division, and they walked into the Battle of the Bulge. Their first action. I felt real sorry for those guys. We went over to Grimsby and got about six or eight hours in some old war-weary Mustangs.

EAV: Now, you hadn’t been assigned to any particular group?

00:15:21

JLS: No. Uh-uh [negative]. We hadn’t been assigned.

EAV: This was more or less an OTU-type thing?

JLS: That’s what it was. And there was no gunnery, and it just boiled down to we went around in a pattern a few times, flew about—a couple hours formation. And they assigned myself and Al Swope and Jimmy Windham and Buddy Hayden [Edward R. “Buddy” Hayden]. Jimmy Windham lives here, by the way.

EAV: Oh.

JLS: And assigned us 357th Group. When we got there, Al and I were put into the 362nd Squadron.

EAV: Now, who was the commanding officer of the group and the squadron?

JLS: Well, the original commander had been Russ Spicer [Henry Russell Spicer], but he was—he had been shot down. And Irwin Dregne was the commander, but he was home on 30- day R&R coming back. And John Landers from San Antonio was leading the group at the time when we first got there. He’s—then Dreg came back. And Johnny B. England was our squadron commander, and Kit Carson [Leonard K. “Kit” or “Whip” Carson] was the ops officer. And I was put in a flight with a fellow—I don’t want to give his name because he had 120 combat hours when I got there and I finished—and he finished a 250-hour tour after I finished a 300- hour tour. And he finished his last three missions over [Scotland?]. And he really got the shakes real bad.

00:17:02

EAV: [unintelligible 00:17:02].

JLS: I understood him— 10

EAV: [unintelligible 00:17:04]. Just once. Just—

[recording stops and starts again 00:17:06]

JLS: Well, actually, we went to the repple depple before we went up to Grimsby and—which is near Hull. The first night there in the repple depple—they were sleeping in what looked like a jailhouse, and all they had was the old pallets to sleep on. No cover. And they sent in their nightly buzz bomb raids. And that—one of them hit right out in the neighborhood. And it didn’t really bother me because, hell, I was under the bed and under the mattress and everything else at the first soundwave. But it did introduce us to the fact that they did shoot real bullets over there.

We got into the group, like I say, and I was assigned to 362nd Squadron with—Johnny B. was leading. And Whip Carson, John Kirla, and—real tigers—O.D. Jenkins [Otto D. Jenkins]. And Al and I went over together, and that’s a strange thing. He and I flew on each other’s wing for many missions, and we flew almost mission-for-mission for our whole tour and finished our tour in about the same length of time, about a week of each other. And he never fired his guns at an airplane in the air. It’s—you just had to be real lucky, in my estimation, particularly that—

[knocking noise in background]

EAV: Well, you did have to be real lucky. I mean—

JLS: Well, I turned out later—as it turned out, I was one of those who was in the middle of every fight the 357th got into, from the time that I arrived there until after I finished my tour.

[First combat missions and competition for aerial victories]

EAV: John, what was your first action?

JLS: Well, the first mission is one that was quite an eye-opener to me. I was flying on the wing of the guy leading the squadron—leading the group with our squadron, old Silver Gates. I believe he was the oldest fighter pilot in the ETO. He was 38 at the time—active fighter pilot. And he was—he had some strange ideas about combat, I found out later. Of course, I was just a young buck. And I was flying in the old B model. Of course, the old war-weary types—the new pilots always got those before they got—worked their way up and got one of their own. And this had an old Christmas tree sight and four guns instead of six. But it’d go like hell. And so I was flying his wing, and we ran into flak and—

EAV: And where was this, John?

JLS: This—the first mission was up in Munich area. 11

EAV: The day was clear?

JLS: But, like I say, when I came back and the intelligence quizzed me, they asked me where it was and I could only remember what the target was. Well, what was the weather? I didn’t know. Where did the flak come from? I didn’t have the faintest idea. In other words, I was so scared and keyed and tensed up that I didn’t even know I’d been on a mission. And I recall one thing, the fact that I wanted to know where the damn relief tube was. And he told me it’s over on the right-hand side.

EAV: This was in the air when you—

JLS: Yes. Uh-huh [affirmative]. I looked all over that airplane. I do believe I tore the right side of it down. But they forgot I was flying the B model. It was on the left side—or vice-versa, whichever it was. I never did find it in this five-hour mission, and I had to piss from the time I took off till I got back. And old Silver got back to the coast and went up and down it for a little while, waiting to make sure there wasn’t any stragglers coming back. And I felt he was never going to take that airplane home and put it on the ground. And then, finally, he did. And when we went in and we pitched off and I had forgotten to undo my G-suit. And when we pitched off, we really wracked it around and I pissed all over myself—because it was up to my nose anyway. And that was a lesson for me to learn because—drown my tailwheel. And this—all of us, you know, you get up in the morning, you take a leak. You go drink coffee, you take a leak. You go to briefing, you take a leak. You go out to your airplane, you piss on the tailwheel before you get on the—get in the air. And no more than the gear come up and look down and see that cold, damn Channel and you had to piss again. I don’t care who it was. [laughs]

So that also enters into one of the battles we got into—but I was talking about the major engagements. It got to where England or Carson or these tigers would always check the board to see if I was on a mission the next day or they wouldn’t go. Because if I didn’t go, they didn’t meet any krauts, and it would be a waste of time as far as they were concerned if they didn’t hit a fight every time they went out. And that was the same with that whole group. And I expect most of the group was the same way, was that you had to be careful of calling out known krauts with those guys—no, I mean, not just bogeys, but they were actually bandits—because they’d beat you to them, every time. So you had to get yourself in a position where you could cut them out of the pattern, and then you call them in. That’s the only way you could get to them first. Oh, they—well, Chuck Yeager and Clarence Anderson and Peterson [likely Richard A. Peterson], all of these guys, single, double, triple aces. And the way they got there is, by golly, if there was a kraut in the air, they got that cotton-picker first. And if you wanted to get in on the action, you just had to beat him to it, and it’s pretty difficult to [unintelligible 00:23:27], as I found out. And that’s the reason that—I told you a while ago that I didn’t like to lead the squadron. I liked to— everything got to be a maximum effort later in the war, and I liked to lead the—what we call “the bastard flight,” just a make-up of various pilots. And quite often, that rear-end Charlie flight 12

would be made up of aces that weren’t flying with their own flight that particular day. And in that position, if you saw the krauts anywhere but head-on, you could cut them out of the pattern and get there first. And that’s the only way you could beat these guys because they were tremendous.

I’ll tell you another thing about aces—these particular ones I’m talking about. They had the most tremendous eyesight of anybody I’ve ever seen. And it’s a developmental process. I used to watch Carson when I’d fly his wing. And I’d watch his head, and I don’t believe he ever did look through his gunsight in that area. He would take a square of his window about six inches and he’d sit there and he’d look and look and look and look to do—thought that he’d ought to spin in. And then he’d switch over, and he’d do the same thing on the other side. And he’d search up sky way. But I’ll tell you this, if there was a kraut in that sky, he’d see them first. England did the same thing. Finally, I thought, well, if I’m going to get in on the action, I’d better learn this trick. So I asked them and they told me, but they didn’t tell me without me asking them. I think they were the greatest leaders of people that—I was real fortunate to get in that outfit. England was a task-maker. He said if anybody hits krauts in this squadron, the whole squadron hits them. And as a result, he had us flying real close all the time. And it paid off many times because we were quite often outnumbered, but we had the full firepower of our whole outfit right there in the melee. It wasn’t one or two there and one or two there.

00:25:52

EAV: John, you mentioned earlier that, in your numerous dogfights, that while the 190—Fw 190 was a later version than the Me 109, that you met one guy in a 109 one day and it turned the formation around [unintelligible 00:26:13]?

JLS: I’ll start with after I got back from that first mission. Finally, about—well, it was Thanksgiving Day ’44 when I was flying Johnny England’s wing. He was leading the squadron. But Dregne was leading the group with the 363rd Squadron. And—

EAV: Incidentally, may I ask one thing? You said you’d pee on your tailwheel before getting in the cockpit?

JLS: Every time.

EAV: Was this a good luck sign or—

JLS: No. It was the fact that I didn’t—I was trying to get across that Channel without having to take another pee. You wait till somebody called piss call, you know? That—we used to call that, and everybody would spread out, and it looked like a dogfight. And then back in together because you couldn’t really relieve yourself in the cockpit when you fly Johnny England’s type of flying. And the first guy that moved a foot out—he had eyes in the back of his head—he’d call 13

his—not—color and his number and put him back into position. And it was difficult to fly that way. It was damn near show formation.

But on this particular mission, he had them the same way. Well, it—on the first mission, Gates called me over and he says, “Now,” he says, “That was the way to stay in formation. He says, “Boy, you stuck right in there.” What he didn’t know, that old boy wasn’t about to leave me over there in Germany because I didn’t know where in the hell I was or what I was doing. [laughs] And the only way I knew to make sure I got home was if he got home, I was damn sure going to get there, you know. So we did make it back. So I was flying England’s wing, and Broadhead [Joseph E. Broadhead] was leading the squadron. And we were flying fourth flight back, [Ace?] Murphy was second flight, and Carson was leading the third flight. In other words—and we’re stacked down. And this—England smelled this outfit. I don’t know how he did it. And this was the first combat mission—I mean, first time I was—fought the krauts. And without saying a word to anybody, England turns 90 degrees and heads north. We were going east at the time—or an easterly direction. And we were on a fighter sweep. We weren’t picking up the bombers that day.

And England didn’t say a word over the radio. And old Murphy was—he went over—went in with us in the—at the same time [unintelligible 00:29:00], but a smart head and he didn’t let anybody get away from him. And he sees our flight turn and start north. Well, he turns his flight, taxiing behind us. And Carson never lets England get out of his sight because they were racing each other for the most victories, and they did pretty well—19-23. So here comes Carson and his flight, and there was Broadhead going—tooling off into the wild blue over there, thinking he’s leading the squadron, and he only had his own flight of four because nobody had said a word on the radio yet. And the first word Broadhead got of the fact that he didn’t have a squadron was when Carson—England passed over the outfit, and he says, “Five, ten, 15, 20, 60, 70.” He says, “Come on, Whip. There’s enough for both of us.” And that’s the first word that went over the radio. And this is the first time I’d ever seen any krauts, and there was a whole gaggle of them, about 70 of them. And we were three flights of four and—but England had spotted them. I don’t know how because it was five minutes after we turned before I ever got sight of them.

EAV: How was the weather?

JLS: We were above an overcast, and they were just into the contrails. And we were pulling contrails. But I’ve never figured this out. I think it was a training flight or something on that order, one of the last that they ever had. But there were about 70-1 on odds. And Carson passed over them out of the sun, three flights of 12, and he put Whip on one side of their gaggle. And they started a slow descending turn, and they stayed in formation. Another thing that was real strange. And England took one side, Carson the other, and Murphy started up the rear. And England said, “Don’t spread them out. Don’t let them spread out.” [laughs] He says, “Keep them in close.” It was like herding a herd of quail, you know? Or a covey of quail. 14

Well, he kept them in close, all right. And I was sitting like a little cork on the wild water. I wanted to shoot at one of them so bad, I couldn’t hardly stand it. But I was still a wingman and had to keep his tail clear and did. And I sat there and watched him shoot down four of them. And the second one was the thing that really impressed me, in a way, of the stupidity of a man. He clobbers this number-two man, and he falters, falls out of formation, rolls completely, and comes back up and gets in formation and sits there. And one more burst, and that’s all she wrote. Down he went.

And finally, when England finally ran out of ammunition—I didn’t think he was ever [unintelligible 00:32:19]—he let me move up, and he moved back to cover my tail. We were down about eight—we started about 28,000. We were down about 6,000 or 8,000 then. There’s still lots of krauts around, and so I managed to tack on the tail of one right quick and just spirt him a little bit, and he bailed out. He went right by my wing. And then there was a lot of—they even had heavy flak down that low, shooting up in that area. Shooting at their airplanes as well as us, I guess. And one—another one crossed right over in front of me, and I just rolled them down on his tail, did the same thing. And boy, it tore his wing up, and he went right into the deck. And I sat there, and I got to thinking. I says, “Well, I know England has—is not back there. And I haven’t looked back at my tail, and I’ve heard so many of them say, if you’re not looking, that’s when you get it.” So without even looking, I just broke as hard as I could to the right. And there was a kraut I hadn’t seen right on the deck that had just passed under me, and I broke right onto his tail. [laughs] He was the one that blew up, just hit—we were going just balls out, and he blew up and came to a sudden halt. The damndest thing I ever saw.

EAV: So you were flying a B at that time?

JLS: No. I’d gotten a D then.

EAV: Ah. And you were below the overcast?

JLS: Oh, yes. Yeah, we got down below the overcast. Well, it got broken into the area where they were trying to go, and then it just scattered all over North Germany, really. And after he blew up, I checked my fuel and I was low. And I got him with the last 50 rounds because we had a few tracers in those to let us know when they’re running out. So I pulled up to go home, and there wasn’t an airplane in that whole damn country. I could hear a lot of yak-yak going, but I couldn’t see anybody. And I managed to get back home, and I was such a rookie at it, I didn’t know anything about this victory rolls and bit. I just went and parked my airplane. The crew chief asked me, he says, “Looks like you all had a real big hassle today.” Yes, we went in and changed clothes and went into briefing. And the intelligence officer said, “Well, what did you do after you left—after England left?” “Well, I shot down three.” He says, “Oh my God.” He says, “That gives us a record,” which I’d have 31 in one flight. We got the Presidential Citation for that. 15

EAV: What day was that? Or date? Any idea? Do you recall roughly?

JLS: Yeah, that was Thanksgiving Day of 1944. I remember very well.

EAV: And what was the area?

00:35:26

JLS: That was in the Munich—not Munich.

EAV: [unintelligible 00:35:29]?

JLS: No. [unintelligible 00:35:32]. Magdeburg, in that area. And we were—what we were doing was making a sweep in the Halle/Magdeburg area, where the bombers were getting such a—taking such a beating from flak and aircraft. And when we ran into this particular gaggle of krauts and turned out to be quite a hassle. And Johnny got the Silver Star for that, and I got the DFC in my first fight. Was quite pleased.

EAV: You certainly should. Terrific.

[Bomber escort mission to the Stendal oil refineries (January 13, 1945)]

JLS: Then we had a few more engagements that I just—I didn’t get a shot. I was still flying wing then. And then the Bulge came and—January the 13th, we started in on a mission that was—the bombers were making a feint at Berlin and coming back this—toward England to hit the Stendal oil refineries. And also, I understand they made some of their [unintelligible 00:36:49] fuel. And they wanted to feint at Berlin, bring up the fighters. And they did, and the fighters came up. But we crossed in—we went up the water route over Heligoland, crossed over at Kiel and down from the north, ostensibly to hit Berlin. And they were flying awfully high. Because I remember, we were at 32,000 when I—I just called my flight for piss call, and we were spread out and heard Dregne say, “Drop your tanks. There they are.” Well, that’s a very inopportune time when you’re sitting up there taking a leak, and the thing is frozen, and you’re trying to get the ice out so it’ll run down it.

So I sent my flight element lead, told him—he called a couple out, and I told him to go get them. I’d be with him in a minute. And so he took off. And he’s a real sharp young fellow. And Hank was flying my wing, and I don’t know how he got there but—

EAV: Hank who?

JLS: I’m trying to think of his name. [unintelligible 00:38:10] was flying the H. And he was—we were going 180 degrees, opposite direction of a good 90, the whole gaggle of 109s. 16

And we were headed to the bombers, so we knew where they were going. So I said, “Well, Hank, when this column gets by, we’ll tack on to the tail end and work up to the front.” Which was a real good idea, see. So I made sure there wasn’t any stragglers, and I turned in on this— right behind this whole gaggle of 109. Must have been some 80 of them. And they’re flying line abreast, oh, six-to-nine, something like that.

EAV: Recall a date?

JLS: January 13th. That’s the day I made ace.

00:39:02

EAV: It was a clear day?

JLS: Yes, uh-huh [affirmative]. The film turned out real well. But it was bright upstairs, and then there was a broken undercast in where we eventually ended up. And as I started to turn into the last—on this outfit, the last five broke off and started to turn into me, and I knew I had made a mistake. And this is where I ran into this tiger. And we started at 32,000 feet. And he lost his four wingman, and I lost my one. And we ended up—oh, we started out in a Lufbery to the left and ended up in loops. Lufberies to the right without anybody ever changing his direction. And all our—anytime I wanted to see him, all I had to do was look out the top of the canopy.

EAV: This was a 109?

JLS: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. And the 109 G model had the old tailwheel down and [unintelligible 00:40:09] sticks under the tail. And this guy could—and I had this real fine Mustang. And it was waxed, and it was in perfect shape. And I was flying it to the best of my ability and then some, and this old boy was just staying in there without any problem at all, it appeared to me. Because he would pull up and—just enough lead he thought he could—he’d fire at Hank. And Hank said, “Hey, we better do something about this. This guy’s shooting.” And I said, “I know it, but there’s not a hell of a lot I can do about it.” [laughter]

So finally we lost Hank. And it was just he and I, you might say, canopy to canopy in that circle, and he wouldn’t quit. And usually, if you could stay with them long enough, they’d make some stupid mistake, but not this guy. And we got down to the 12,000-foot area, and we were in a— sort of a three-quarter loop type of thing. And my blower was in automatic. And it cuts out below 12,000, and it cut in above 12,000. And it was cutting in and out, and I thought my engine was quitting. And I was really one scared little feller at that time. Of course, I was getting just about the max power I could get anyway, including water and through the gate and everything else. And this old boy was just apparently having no trouble with me.

And finally, I thought it might be a mistake, but I dropped the flaps and hammer-headed it and cut the butter on him and surprised him, I guess. And I ended up going straight down at him and 17

[unintelligible 00:41:52]. And I knew if I missed him, I was up a creek because all he had to do was drop his nose and there I am. So I hosed out at him—and I personally didn’t see it, but my film showed up real good. The flash is right on top of the cockpit, going right on top of his head. I didn’t know this. I didn’t even look back. I missed his tail by about 15 feet. And I was going straight down, so I just bored it all the way down. And I said, “Well, if he followed me, I’ll just haul back and I’ll meet him coming up.” And I hauled back, and he wasn’t there. And I was going just about the max that the Mustang would do. And I came out, and I zoomed way the hell—I’m going up there 12,000, 15,000 feet. And while I’m going—still going up, here comes another 109, just lazing across over there. And I just rolled out, sort of a semi-Immelmann, and right onto his tail and one squirt and down he goes. And I followed him down, take a picture before he hit. And that was a difference of the two victories. One I worked like a dog for and didn’t think I was ever going to get, and the other one I just, “pop-pop,” and away he went. That’s the vagaries of this business. And that was the one that made me an ace, and I was real pleased with that. Now, my crew chief was real unhappy with me because when I got back to England I had less than four gallons of gas in the airplane. He said that was cutting it pretty thin, and I agreed with him.

00:43:35

[Ground crew personnel and aircraft maintenance]

EAV: What was the morale of the crew chiefs?

JLS: Oh, these guys—I’ll just take my hat off to any one of them. I think they’re the greatest people in the world. They changed—changing an engine in an airplane is a very simple maneuver, but all they had was a half-hangar, dead of winter in England, which is pretty damn cold. And a minimum of tools. They had an A-frame and stuff like that, but nothing like they have nowadays, of course. And Swope’s airplane and my airplane, we lost our engines because of that idiot Peptane they put in them, ate the [unintelligible 00:44:17] out.

EAV: What happened?

JLS: Some idiot sent some fuel over there for us to use. They called it 150 Peptane or something. I forget what the name of it was. And it was real hot gasoline, and it gave you a whole bunch of poop. But it did exactly what our maintenance officer said it would. It would ruin every engine in the outfit, and it did.

EAV: Hmm.

JLS: But overnight, in a 20—I mean, we got home around noon or 1:00 that day. These two crew chiefs put our airplanes in the hangar, and they changed that engine that night. Of course, they had help from the supply—the holding section there. But the next morning, those airplanes 18

were ready for—then we had to slow-time them four hours before we could fly a mission. And we slow-timed them before the mission took off—because it was a late mission—and made the mission. We didn’t lose a mission, and we had an engine change in between. Now, boy, that’s something.

EAV: You bet it is.

JLS: And that—it was that sort of thing all the time. My armorer in the second fight—one gun didn’t fire. You know, and I got back, of course, it had all the ammo still in that particular gun bay. And he damn near cried. It just killed him, the very idea of one of his guns not firing. He just wouldn’t put up with it. He stayed up with that gun all night long. Not only cussing it, but working on it. And they all worked next time.

[Stories about Chuck Yeager, Johnny England, and other servicemen]

JLS: And then we were over on one of our few fighter sweeps, and I hear Yeager. He’s leading the 63rd, 64th Squadron. I forget which it was. And that’s the day he got five, and, oh, he’s having some ball down there with a flock of krauts, he and his outfit. So I call him up, ask him where he is. He says, “I’m about 50 miles west of Frankfurt,” or some such place. He wasn’t anywhere in the neighborhood of that area. Of course, I go screaming off down there, and, of course, he wasn’t there. He wasn’t about to tell any of the rest of us where those krauts were because he had them cornered and he wasn’t going to let any of them get away. And they damn near didn’t. I think they had counted 21 or 22 in that, and I believe they get 18 or 19 of them. Caught the krauts on the deck with outside stores—

EAV: Now, John, this was after he had returned from being captured.

JLS: Oh, yes. Uh-huh [affirmative]. See, I didn’t know Chuck before his capture. In fact, he was just getting back on combat status when I arrived as a [buck?] replacement. And this wasn’t a real good situation either because we were old first lieutenants. In fact, I had graduated with Broadhead, who was a light colonel at the time. And he moved over to ops, and Johnny England took over the squadron. And I had a year of service on him. And it wasn’t a real good situation because they had a bunch of young second lieutenants they wanted to promote. And it—sort of touchy situation. But as it turned out, they were quite pleased because all of us were quite proficient in instrument flying, which the young fellows weren’t.

00:47:36

EAV: I understand that—was it Lord Haw-Haw [William Joyce] that issued threats? 19

JLS: Oh, yeah. He used to talk every night on the radio. And that was just a part of our brawl each night, was listening to Lord Haw-Haw. And he would send—he sent word to Chuck when he got back on—and I listened to it—told Yeager that if he ever went down to Germany again, he was a dead man. That’s all there was to it. No trial, no nothing. And that didn’t bother Yeager a heck of a lot. In fact, it tickled him to death.

EAV: Well, you know, actually, his escape—or evasion through—didn’t he practically have to carry a fellow combatant?

JLS: He—actually, it was an Army man. I don’t know where they met up or the circumstances of it. But basically, it boiled down to Yeager carried this colonel over the Pyrenees in wintertime, which is a difficult job to go—I understand—to walk over by yourself. And then they got into Spain’s hand and jailed. And then there was a whole lot of political bit about that that I never did find out about, and I don’t think Chuck even knows. But they got him out. And Chuck went back, and they were going to send him back to the States. And he went all the way to Eisenhower to get back on combat status. And while he was going through all this red tape, with which only the military could have, he was flying radio relay, which is along about the Zuiderzee area. And some idiot in a Ju 88 came by, and Yeager, combat status or not, is not about to let something like that get away. So he knocks him off and had to give credit to his wingman for it. So actually, Chuck got one more than he could put on the books.

00:49:27

EAV: Hell of a guy. Do you know that not many people realize that he’s an ace?

JLS: That’s true. He—

EAV: Even in his own book, it starts off with the test pilot business.

JLS: Hm-hmm [affirmative].

EAV: Never a word mentioned. I met so many amazed people who realized he was a combatant, you know.

JLS: Not only a combatant but a tiger combatant. You know, that sort of stuff does things to a lot of people. It changes them. For instance, Johnny England, who I think was one of the most promising young leaders we had when he got killed in that 86 over France, I think he’d have his stars on right now if he had lived. Johnny, when he went over with the outfit—he was one of the originals. They had flown one tour and had come back, and he was on—well, he was three- quarters through a full second tour when the war was over. And he wouldn’t have gone home if—he’d have finished that tour. When he first came over, he was sort of a milquetoast type, they tell me. Wouldn’t say a four-letter word [unintelligible 00:50:38], and he didn’t drink. And a slow roll was his version of a real hairy maneuver. And then one of his close buddies got shot 20

down over Paris very shortly after they got there, and they say that, from that day on, he changed from a milquetoast to a tiger. And that’s when I met him. He was all tiger.

EAV: Now, how did he die?

JLS: He was flying 86s from the States over to France and went in—they were making GCAs. And the weather was too low, and they made the first two passes. And his wingman pulled up, and he told him to bail out. He was going to make one more pass. And he didn’t have enough fuel, and he flamed out on the [unintelligible 00:51:27] when he didn’t get out. Should have pulled up and bailed out. But he was also pretty hard-headed.

EAV: Well, you know, you do get the idea, after you’ve been kicked around a bit, that’s not going to happen to me. I can make it.

00:51:46

JLS: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s true. But then this other real top-notch ace we had in the squadron was Kit Carson, [Kenneth?] Carson. And he was a little wiry and just a tremendous— he studied tactics. And we had a German fighter pilot that was—that defected in a 282—or 262—into France. And then he came over, and he started talking [unintelligible 00:52:20]. And he had—

EAV: Did he defect with this plane?

JLS: Yes. What he did, he landed, pulled the gear up, and that took care of it. But he was all right. The reason he did is because the lines had went beyond where his wife and family were. Our lines had moved beyond that. And then he defected. He was a test pilot down at Lechfeld here, where they had their jet plants and jet planes. And he had been flying 109s for most of the war, and he was a real tiger. He had 1,500 starts in fighters. That’s the way they counted their flying time. By starts, not by hours. And of course, we ask him all sorts of questions when he was talking to the group here and ask him what was—what maneuver he used to get away from Mustangs. He says, “It’s very simple. Just a half outside loop. Just push over.” He says, “Got rid of them every time.” Said it was real hard on him in the airplane, but says, “That’ll lose them every time.” And he was right. It will.

EAV: He was quite cooperative then.

JLS: Oh, yes. Yes. And so after talking to him, Carson and several others improved on this for the Mustang. Because we didn’t pull too many negative Gs. That damn—without a fuselage tank [unintelligible 00:53:49]. And he would—he devised a very similar thing to, say, [unintelligible 00:53:59], where you shoved the stick just full to—full left or right corner— forward and left or right corner. And that’s a horrible maneuver, but if somebody is sitting behind you, they won’t get a shot at you at that time. And if they try to follow you through the 21

rest of it, what that does is just drop you down with a—a turning nose-down attitude in a hurry and then hit your combat flaps with full power and loop twice. And you’ll be pointed at anybody that tries to follow you. I don’t care what maneuver you try. You don’t have your noise pointing—

EAV: Opposite stick and opposite rudder?

JLS: No, no. Same rudder. And as you get down there, add the rudder in the same direction that you got the stick. And it just whips down like that. It’s a real mean maneuver on you. You got to be really tied in, shoulder straps and all. But—

[Thoughts on German pilots]

EAV: And what was your opinion of the German pilot?

00:54:53

JLS: Oh, tremendous.

EAV: Even at that late date?

JLS: Oh—well, like I say, I ran into some of their junior birdmen, and like I’m sure they ran into some of ours that weren’t—and at that late date, there was more of them. And there weren’t as many, of course, of the real tigers, like Abbeville Kids and so on, that were left at that time. And they had their shortage of fuel and everything else that they had problems with. But even at that late date, they—I didn’t run into any of this run-away-from-the-fight boys. Not a single one. They’d damn sure mix it up with you every time you run into them. They’re just fighting people. That’s all there is to it. I didn’t see any that would give an idea of cowardice or anything that way, even to the last day of my last fight.

[Final aerial victory (March 17, 1945)]

EAV: Which was when, John?

JLS: Well, March the 17th of ’45 was when I got my last victory. And it was quite strange. We were up strafing trains. And Johnny England was circling Dümmer Lake, and he was pointing out trains and trucks and what have you and assigning certain flights, “Go and shoot it up,” see? We were having a great time. And we joined up and started back home. And I looked over to the left, and there was a 109 leading two—with two 190s on its wing, which is a real odd thing in itself, too. But there they were, tooling along at the same altitude where we were. And 22

they were over to the left of the other squadron, and I called them out. Apparently, I was the first one to see them, these three bandits sitting off the left wing. Says, “Yeah, I’ve been watching them.” I says, “Watch them? Hell, run them over—or run them down here.” We were below them, too. “Run them down here, and I’ll—we’ll take care of them for you.”

And about that time—as he broke with the full squadron—I can’t think who was leading that day. But this old boy was no fool that was leading in the 109. He broke into their squadron, split them all to hell, of course. All three of the airplanes, they scattered everybody. And they split up, and he rolled, and he came right by our squadron. And I was the only one that had kept eye [unintelligible 00:57:24]. I had seen him, and the rest of them were still looking in their airplanes, whatever, which direction. And I was able to follow him throughout the whole melee. And I rolled over and went down with him. We went right down to the deck, and he leveled out on the deck. And my wingman—my element lead was still with me, and he was sitting up there about 800 feet, watching the—just sort of ringside seats, you know. And I’m a-shooting and I’m shooting, and I can’t see anything hits. Nothing falling off. Finally, he called me. He says, “Say, you’re hitting him.” And his radio was out. And then he was leading us up to that airfield. And the flak all around it started going off. It looked like a real Fourth of July.

But gee-whiz, there was a 109 out there, and they were getting hard to find, and I wasn’t about to let him go. And it got pretty hot with the flak in there. And that’s the only time I ever had a wingman leave me. And he flat left. He went home. I took care of the situation when I got home. I thought he’d been shot down. Hell, I looked all over Northern Germany for him. But I’d been hitting this guy all the time, and then it got—I got right up to the edge of the airfield, and I broke to the right and Duncan [possibly John Duncan] broke to the left with his wingman. And I went around. I was going to catch him on the other side of all that flak. But what he did was belly-in. I didn’t see him. And I got around to the other side, and I couldn’t find him, couldn’t find my wingman, couldn’t talk to Duncan because his radio was out. And so I looked all over. Didn’t find him or my wingman. I went home. I was just madder than hell because I didn’t think I’d gotten him and got home, and Duncan had already confirmed it for me. And what this guy did was belly-in on the airfield doing about 400, 450, something like that. And Duncan said they shot a red flare at him. [laughs] He didn’t have his gear down. So that about wrapped it up.

Remember when we walked into our hut that first day—we were first lieutenants—and a bunch of guys who had been there two or three weeks or a month—longer than we had—and they were a bunch of wiseasses. One of them looked at me, and he said, “Well, he looks about my size. I’ll take his jacket. He’s too skinny for the pants. So his shoes look about my size.” And they were sizing Swope up the same way, who was going to get his clothes when we got shot down on our first mission. Real nice bunch of guys.

01:00:10 23

[Experiences at RAF Leiston (England)]

EAV: Well, [unintelligible 01:00:21].

JLS: Bunch of idiots. [laughs] They, of course, had the needle out. And then they used our runway when they turned loose the V-2s—or V-1s, buzz bombs, from the 111 cage up in the North Sea. They’d come right down along our runway at 9:30 at night. You could set your watch on it. And we had a real operating type sergeant there in a group. He’d go into town and have his girlfriend fix up his fish and chips and what have you. And here’s all these buzz bombs and the Limeys are shooting. I’m telling you, they really turned on—put on the dog when one of them come by. Looked like the Fourth of July, just light as day out there because of all the firing. And here was this old boy going around, “Get your fish and chips and watch the buzz bombs.” And he’d sell out every time. [laughs]

EAV: John, what was that field?

JLS: This was at Leiston.

EAV: How do you spell that?

JLS: L-E-I-S-T-O-N.

EAV: Leiston.

JLS: Uh-huh [affirmative]. Leiston Saxmundham, which is about ten miles up the coast from—

EAV: [unintelligible 01:01:23]

JLS: …between [unintelligible 01:01:26] and—it was the nearest airfield in the point of distance to Germany. And quite often, we could get off on missions [unintelligible 01:01:37] the interim point of England be socked in and they couldn’t make it. We’ve escorted the bombers quite often—when I say “quite often,” half a dozen times—it would be one of maybe two fighter wings that get off the ground and escort the whole Eighth Air Force.

[Encounters with the Messerschmitt Me 262]

EAV: Did the 262 give you much concern?

JLS: Oh, yes. I got damage on one of those, by the way. You bet they concerned me. The most beautiful piece of flying I ever saw in my life, you’re talking about a 262 pilot. And all I 24

could do was sit there and watch him. He came over us—we were escorting the bombers, and they were in box-string. And he came up the box from the rear at an altitude that we couldn’t have touched and went up to the front of the bombers, made a 180, went through the first box shooting, did a roll, went through the next box shooting—and he knocked a bomber out every time he went through—went through the third box—and after he went through, he would roll— and then pulled up and left and didn’t—he, of course, created confusion that wouldn’t wait among the fighters because we were sitting there watching him and just as clear as a bell. And he left and didn’t get a shot fired at him, either by the bombers or by us. Just a tremendous piece of flying. And this was in the neighborhood of 20,000 to 30,000 feet. Beautiful piece of work. I marveled at it. And, in fact, I was sort of glad that he didn’t come our way because I don’t think we could have handled him, the whole damn group. Not with his airplane like that.

EAV: What date was that roughly, John? Ballpark area.

JLS: Gee-whiz. That was in—must have been February of ’45. Well, they had the airplane that could have stopped that whole thing. And what he did himself, every damn one of us dropped our tanks, our external tanks, and that cut us down—our potential down tremendously. And he could have done this at the coast, and we’d have never made it to the target with the bombers. He could sit there and play with them the rest of the day then. But they never caught on to this, and why they didn’t do it, I don’t know. They could—there’s no fighter going to sit there with his wing tanks on.

I take this back. One of them will, and I did. We were escorting B-24s one day, which is unusual. We usually had B-17s. We were in the second—we were in the outfit that had 17s normally. And this 262 came up, and he knocked a couple of bombers out. He went through the formation, and not only—I was in such a position where I went through with him. And they were shooting at him, come a lot closer to me, and damn near knocked my wingman down. [laughs] He stayed with me. A real fine kid. John—his name was John L., too, and—John L. [Smith?], I believe it was. And so I didn’t drop my tanks. I couldn’t catch him with them off. But I figured, well, if I got all this fuel, I can keep him in sight for a hell of a long time and did.

And he finally—he left and took off. They didn’t have—they just had a very short range of fuel, and this I knew, too. So I kept my tanks until—he went off about 30 to 40 miles, then he turns, starts letting down to his base. And we were so far behind him then he couldn’t see us. And that—when he made his 180 coming back, well, that’s when I dropped my tanks. And he was motating, and I was—he made the 180 and come by, and I was pulling every G I could. My gunsight was somewhere down on the floorboard because of—the K-14—because it wasn’t even in my window. And so the only thing I could do—and I just lined up the nosepiece, where the count increases were, and just pulled out in front of him and hosed out, just—I don’t know how many rounds. A tremendous amount. Probably burned my guns up. But he ran into it, and I knocked one piece off of him and a couple of three puffs of smoke. And I followed him for 25

another ten minutes, but he got so far away from me that when he went down underneath it—I went down and looked and never could find him. I don’t know where he went. But I did get a damage on it, and it showed up in my film.

01:06:35

[Characteristics of a successful fighter pilot]

EAV: John, could you ever tell, when you’re in a position of leading the squadron, when the new guys checked in, who would be the successful of the lot? Was there any way at all of telling, aside from flying with them? Or could you then?

JLS: Well, of course, the main way was strap an airplane on their butt and go up and hassle with them. But yes, I—the guys who were really serious about their business—and it wasn’t any one thing you’d put your finger on. Their outlook, their feelings, their loyalty, or the reasons they were there. All of it would fit in. And you could say you would feel like this guy’s going to make a real [horse?]. But you never were sure. Too many people can cover up their feelings well with words and actions and what have you. That defies the fact that they’re going to really turn out to be tigers or not. Now, I knew a bunch of fellows had a tremendous amount of potential, in my— to my way of thinking, when I first met them. And one thing I will tell you, that the loudmouth braggart is never going to be the—never hack the course.

EAV: What is the necessary equipment he must have? As you said earlier—

JLS: Good eyes.

EAV: …he must have a set of good eyes.

JLS: That. And that—of course, everybody has 20/20, but there’s more to it than that. When you’re looking for a little black dot way out there in the sky, as you well know, Gene, it’s—you can bypass it so easily. And it’s like golf. It’s very similar to it or to—strictly concentration. You’ve got to be able to concentrate. A good instrument pilot is a typical example there because that is just strictly concentration. That ability is—is also one of those things—it’s a natural talent—but then it’s also—you’ve got to have a lot of natural talent, but you’ve got to develop it daily. I mean, it’s not just a hit-and-miss thing. It’s a continuing thing.

EAV: You can’t get it out of a book. You have to participate.

JLS: True. True. That is true. And then again, I’ve seen fellows that, you know, stand about six-foot-three and weigh about 125 pounds, and they can’t put their left foot in front of their right one. But they get in the cockpit of an airplane, and it’s just like it was glued onto him. I mean, like they were born with it. 26

As far as looks, there’s—well, you could look at those people that were in the room the other night. Just as diverse as anything I’ve ever seen. There’s [unintelligible 01:09:45], a big, healthy, handsome brute like Robin Olds, then turn right around and standing right next to him was Doc Watson [Ralph J. “Doc” Watson]. Two diverse looking people, two people who talk differently altogether, and yet both of them are real tigers. How you would pick these out of a crowd, I’m— the only way I could say is—is like they can talk about their Stanine scores and all of this bit on how—whether a guy would be able to fly an airplane or not. But how to pick those that would— ready to be leaders and aces, I don’t think there is any way, except but to—now, a lot of them you can say would possibly make great pilots. Jim Kasler, for one, you know. He’s over in the crossbar hotel of Ho Chi Minh’s. Now, there was a perfect leader. He got the tremendous loyalty of all of his troops that flew with him and all the people that worked for him. He is one of those types. He’s a professional at his business, and he works at it, worked at it day in and day out. And when you’re in that business, that’s the only way you can operate. And the guy who is not going to put out that much is not going to get to [unintelligible 01:11:18].

[Future of the fighter ace]

EAV: Do you think today’s ace is going to have as much fun as we had? Or what is today’s ace? We’ve discussed pretty thoroughly the other evening: will there be one? Or is it the backseat man and the pilot and the groundman combined or—when you leave the single-seated cockpit and you leave the machine gun, who is the ace?

JLS: There—that is a problem, really. I think—and don’t cut those groundmen out with their radar. They are providing a tremendous assist. But I’ll have to say this, that the guy that pulls that trigger is the one that ultimately gets the victory. You can’t give credit to the crew chief, who is just as—

EAV: If he doesn’t give you the airplane, you’re not going to get airborne.

JLS: If you don’t get the airplane or if you don’t get the supplies to put the airplane in the air or the maintenance to keep it in the air—everybody has a part in it. And as far as I’m concerned, you know, the gunner and the man that loads the rockets and the weapon system and the GCI man, the whole bit—the guy in the backseat all contribute to it, but the guy that pulls the trigger is the only one that can take any credit for a kill.

EAV: Of course, he’s putting the machine in the right airspace.

JLS: That’s right. And he pulled trigger. That’s—you still got to have that, too, if there is such a thing as a conscience in—on the fact that you’re killing another human being—those people can’t take credit for that. 27

01:12:59

EAV: Jim, is there a place in today’s society for the wartime-type ace as we know him? I say this—this has been asked many, many times. And as an example, Robin himself told me when he was going out that he had just been—of course, it’s been played up in papers recently, too— [unintelligible 01:13:18] just didn’t want him around.

JLS: Hm-hmm [affirmative]. I’ll tell you, it was quite an adjustment for me after I retired, even though it’d been many years since I’ve been in the combat phase of it, even because of ignorance or just not of the same ilk—I mean, they don’t think the same way. Really, it’s been difficult for me to adjust myself to their way of living. And it’s true that the old dollar really counts. And I started to tell Robin the other day, since I’d flown with Air America, that he wouldn’t have any trouble getting pilots if he’d pay them. Pay them first their normal salary first tour. Double it the second. Triple it the third. You wouldn’t have any trouble getting pilots. For instance, in Air America, we flew some pretty hairy missions.

[Post-World War II service]

EAV: Well, I’ll get into that in a second. John, you’ve known so many of the guys, and they have so much love for you. What were your duties after the war? Your post-war duties?

JLS: Well, you know, that was—everybody had to make a decision of protecting people. In my place, gee-whiz, my folks never had any money at all. They’re barely making their own living. And I certainly wasn’t a rich man, but I had some opportunities to utilize—that I could have utilized if I hadn’t decided to stay in the Air Force. And that was quite a decision, whether to stay or go or get out and get into the civilian bit. But then again, I enjoyed the flying. But at that time, remember, after World War II, they just cut everything to the bone. And it wasn’t a glamourous set-up, but neither was it as difficult as a lot of people like to lead you to believe. Promotions were just—there weren’t any. The budget was cut to the bone. It was a battle. But some smart man—I really don’t know who’s responsible for it—kept our Training Command together. And they made it operate, even though on a shoestring, so that when Korea did come around, we were ready with some tigers. I’m not sure we were ready with equipment and a bunch of other things, and it took [unintelligible 01:16:19], but we did have a nucleus that turned out the fighters. And a lot of the old boys went back into it over there and did extremely well. Members of our club, to be exact. Old heads turned out to be just as good, uh—

EAV: Garrison [Vermont Garrison], Thyng [Harrison R. Thyng], go right down the list.

JLS: …just as good if not better because there they—they hadn’t sat on their butt reading funny books in between. They had been studying their profession and every new thing that they 28

could come up with. They had it there to utilize when they were called on, and by golly, they were called on. And they came through great. Then they had our new group of—between the wars that came in, like Blesse [Frederick C. Blesse] and those guys. And Jim Kasler is another one. Low [James F. Low], Hal Fischer. Tremendous guys.

EAV: Where is Jim Low now, by the way?

JLS: I haven’t the faintest idea. I haven’t seen Jim in years or even heard of him.

EAV: He was a nice guy. He was on this tac-eval team I was telling you about when—or I with him.

JLS: Great bunch of people. And they seemed to come out of the woodwork whenever it’s called on to do. And when they started cranking off this idiot’s war over here in Vietnam, there they are again. Well, [Geraldo?] and Bob are over there at Takhli now.

EAV: Oh, just like Robin Olds said. He said, well, today, the group we have coming out, he’d hate to be facing them.

JLS: Well, I want them on my side.

EAV: How did he say that?

JLS: I forget how he put it. But it’s always been my contention is that I want to fight on their side, whichever side they happen to be. [laughs]

[recording stops and starts again 01:18:22]

01:18:22

[More stories about fellow servicemen]

JLS: The man who was flying it with his flight—and of course, he was number four. It was one of the early missions that he had. So George [George R. Vanden Heuvel] was—they were climbing up to this overcast, and he gets vertigo real good and spins out and comes out underneath the overcast, which is at about 12,000, he said. And he fights it back into flying condition. So he charges back up into the soup, and he gets out on top, and lo and behold, he just—there’s his formation. He tacks onto them. And he’s flying along with them about four or five minutes, and he looks, and, “By golly,” he says, “That’s a black cross on that airplane. That’s a 109. That’s not Mustangs.” And he sits there with them a little while, sort of like a— now you got the big bear by the tail, you can’t hardly turn it loose. So he says, “Well, I’ll just back off from here and knock them off one at a time, just work up to the lead.” And he backs off and squirts his guns, and one of them fires five rounds. [unintelligible 01:19:24] this bigger than 29

hell, and he hadn’t turned his gun here on it. Didn’t work if you didn’t turn it on before you went up.

So what he nipped this old boy, and they—then they saw him. They found out they had a Mustang in the group, and they went helter-skelter in every damn which way. And up, down, into the overcast. And then he spins out again, and he gets down. He says, “This is getting tiresome.” He gets down underneath, and lo and behold, there’s—two of them had beat him down there, and they were waiting on him. And they—here they go, round to round to round, right on the deck. And so one of them—this goes on for 10 or 15 minutes. And George is— doesn’t think his guns will work. Of course, by then they should have warmed up enough to fire. But he wasn’t even getting a shot. And one of them decided he’d play it smart. They’d been going around and around and around, so he breaks out and goes back the other way. And he’s going to catch Vanden-Heuvel head-on, see?

EAV: How do you spell that name?

JLS: V-A-N-D-E-N H-U-E-V-A-L [sic].

EAV: Thanks.

JLS: It’s in the book. He’s listed. And this old boy misses Vanden Heuvel and runs head into the other one. And Vanden Heuvel was sitting there taking pictures of them as they go down, and he got credit for two victories for five shells.

EAV: I’ll be. Never heard it.

01:20:54

JLS: Confirmed. Oh, that’s tremendous. And I mean, this was, of course, an accidental one. But George went ahead—I think he ended up with nine. He was a fine fighter pilot. And then Big John Kirla who was flying with us—

EAV: Kirla who?

JLS: Big John Kirla, K-I-R-L-A. A real tiger. A great big fellow. He’d been a lumberjack, professional boxer. Just a great man all the way around. And Big John would—he wouldn’t drink when the squadron was drinking. He’d take care of every damn one of us. And to be honest with you, when he says, “It’s time for you to go home and go to bed,” the squadron commander and all, whoever he told, went home and went to bed. Because if they didn’t, the next thing you knew, their feet was about six foot off the floor and he’d carry them home and put them to bed. He took care of the squadron when they was drinking. Now, when he got to drinking, it took the whole damn squadron to take care of him. And this happened one night in London. And we were 30

in—I believe it was the Embassy Club or some place—and drinking it up and having a ball. And somebody looked around and says, “Uh oh, Kirla’s not here.”

So we all leap up—it was three floors of bars and what have you there—we leap up, go down the street, and we no more than opened the front door then we knew where John Kirla was. Around a bombed out building, we could hear all of this racket. And he was over there, and he’d gotten in this taxi. It going to take him he didn’t know where. And the old boy wouldn’t toot his horn, so John started tooting that bulb horn they had on those damn things. And then he decided he wanted that horn. And so he just reached up, and being the man he was, he pulled it off. And that cabby was just having some fits. And when we got there, John was standing on the running board of this cab, bouncing it up and down and just about to turn it over. [laughter] We managed to wrestle him out of that and buy the cabby off. And John took that damn horn back and—the flight leaders and ops types and what-have-you lived in one hut in our outfit. And he hung that damn thing on his bed, and when he squawked that thing in the morning, it was time for briefing. You’d better come out of there if you put yourself up on a mission.

Now, O.D. Jenkins was Indian, and he dearly loved to sleep late. And he stayed up late every night, and he always loved to sleep late. But if he put himself on a mission, this flight, Kirla saw to it he made it. Hangover or not, he damn sure was going to make that mission. And the horn would go off, and the next thing you’d hear was Jenkins, “Now, John, really, put a spare in my place.” And John says, “Nope, Diddy, you put yourself in that flight. You’re going to make it.” “John, John—” Cold—God, it’s freezing cold over there. We had that one little clinker stove, you know, and nobody ever lit it in the morning. And he’d drag him out of bed by one foot or throw water on him or anything. But he made the damn mission every time. And he was the same way about everybody else. He was real serious that if you was flight leader and you put yourself up, regardless of where he’s going, you went. [unintelligible 01:24:14] or anything else. And that damn Klaxon horn—I can remember that bulb taxi horn. One of them bleats right now, and I’ll go straight through the ceiling. But he kept—we never were late for briefing.

01:24:29

EAV: Did you have any romances over there? What’d you do after hours? You must have had some fun.

JLS: Oh, yeah. We used to have real brawls. I remember Chuck Yeager used to crank them off. And he’d jump up on the bar and holler, “Gather around, all you Oklahoma Baptists, we’re going to have a prayer session.” And then we’d start singing and drinking and till all the wee hours. And in—this would include the group commander and all. And quite often, we’d end up playing poker over in the group commander’s quarters till 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. We never missed a flight or missed a mission.

EAV: Did you have any particular bars or hangouts that the group went to? 31

JLS: Well, we—when we did get to London—but, you know, you just couldn’t—everybody at once—was always just one or two or maybe three or four—Ipswich was the town I was trying to think of, where we were ten miles up. That and Kensington Palace Manors is a place— apartment-type place that we used to stay. It was difficult to find a place to stay in London—

EAV: Did your group happen to—like the 56th had a suite they bought?

JLS: Yes. We had one there at the Kensington Palace Manor. And we had—the bar we mainly went to, I believe, was called the Embassy. It had three floors of—on it.

EAV: The Kensington Manor, you had it pretty well stocked with booze and [unintelligible 01:26:12].

JLS: Oh, yes. Automatic. And what we didn’t beg, borrow, or steal off the group, you know—our so-called shot of whiskey—we wouldn’t take it after a mission, but we would save it up and take it with us in jugs on leave. And they—but actually, we didn’t get out too much. But like, for instance, we had a mission and we got weathered in and—but I’ll say this. This tower officer we had was a great man. He had a voice that put—instilled confidence in the biggest coward we could possibly find. And Earl Duke was his title, but he is a real estate man in Reno right now. A fine fellow. And he called up—we called him up one day, asked him what the oranges were, and the first time I ever heard him say they’re sour. Well, they must have been sour because we got back two days later and they had clear ice about three inches thick still on the runway. And that was some fun getting down on.

But so we diverted to France. And of course, we landed at the wrong base the first time instead of our diversionary base. And it was snowing there and pretty creepy weather. And so England’s airplane wouldn’t start. You know, he had “Victory” painted all over that damn thing. And I had my little—I think I had a six painted on mine then. And this was January—about the 6th of January, somewhere in there. And so his airplane wouldn’t start, and he was leading the squadron. I said, “Well, you take my airplane and go on over. And I’ll be—I’ll get yours cranked up here after a while, soon as I get a hot start, and I’ll bring it.” So he did. And I didn’t think about us flying his airplane, you know.

We went into this medium bomber base, A-26s outfit, which is about 20 miles southeast of Paris at a little town over—[Munson?], I believe it was, [unintelligible 01:28:25]. And so I came over later, and they parked me. By the time I got there, hell, all the bomber jocks and everybody else was out there. And so I just jumped out of the airplane and headed for—where I could find the nearest bar, is the only thing I was interested in. And old—man, they treated me like you’ve never seen anything, you know. And I didn’t think about it till I looked back, and there was that airplane of England’s with 19 victories painted on the damn thing. And they really gave me the number-one treatment. [laughter] And I didn’t tell them any different. Hell, they wanted to believe that way, it’s all right with me. 32

So this—another strange thing. They had four squadrons there, and they scattered our three squadrons out amongst them in the tents. And snow was ass deep on a tall Indian. And [unintelligible 01:29:23] way down there and I got it—they assigned me to one squadron and to one tent in that area. And I went over there, and then my bunkmate, their B-26 pilot, Bill [Blevins?], a high school classmate of mine.

EAV: I’ll be darned.

JLS: We’ve known each other—and hadn’t seen each other since World War II started. And he was flying bombers. And of course, they had just gotten their whiskey ration for the month that day, and that didn’t last hardly any time. [laughs] We took care of that in fine shape. And the weather was so bad that they were already stood down for the next day. And us, too. So we went into town and into all the bars and flat drank them out of champagne. And they wouldn’t—the French over there, as I recall, kept their corks because it had something to do with count and how many they could get from a supplier and what have you. But we decided we wanted those corks. And we got us a bucket, and we kept our—we had a whole bucket full of champagne bottle corks. And John Kirla kept them, and he brought them home with him.

And we—of course, when we did finally get off—the weather cleared up, and we got off over there. We got back to England and it was clear, but it was colder than hell on the icy runway. And we masked our dogfight all the way across the Channel, which is automatic. And—

EAV: You did what?

01:31:00

JLS: We masked our dog—at least—when we hit the Channel, after every mission, we’d dogfight all the way across it. Not only did that tell the Limey radar that we weren’t Germans, but it was good practice and have a lot of fun and get a lot of shit out of your [unintelligible 01:31:14]. And so we were dogfighting all the way across the Channel, and the tower officer calls Kirla up and says—called him “Captain Kirla.” He’d gotten promoted while he’s over there. Old Big John rolls over in a big, hairy split-S, and he’s going down at the field, you know. And just, boy, real happy. And he reefed back, and he had his guns on and just sprayed the old man’s airplane, just shot it all to hell. Well, that scared him. He thought maybe he’d killed somebody down there. And then the fact he found out he’d shot the old man’s airplane up— Dregne’s—that didn’t set well. And he thought he’d never get to pin those tracks on, but he did. And then we had another big blast. And I never did find out what happened to those corks.

EAV: What did the old man ever say?

JLS: Well, he never said a word. That—it was Dregne, and he was just a great guy. That’s all there is to it. And protect the—we had a— 33

EAV: Did you have any local dances where you get the gals in?

JLS: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had those in—we had one girl that was cross-eyed and—

EAV: Cross-eyed?

JLS: Yeah. I’ll never forget her. And John England goes by her, and he’s pretty well souped up. He just glances at her, you know, and he stops about—goes about three more steps and stops. And he looks back. He says, “Hey, Carson, there’s one here with one eye caged.” [laughter] And turned, kept right on going. There was one guy in the outfit that found out how to uncage her eyeballs. Just straight [unintelligible 01:32:53] bigger than hell. So we had that in—but this—oh, hell. Andy Evans got there, and hell, he got real strict about—he wanted the girls off the base by the following Tuesday. Things like that, you know. Really getting GI. And it was hard to get them off the base because, you know, they could get fed real well there and dance at night and just play like hell. And quite often—it was a week later before they got all of them off. And we’d only have these about, oh, once a month or something or the other. The—

EAV: You guys had a lot of spirit then.

JLS: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hell, we’d get a bigger charge out of getting in the barroom and lying and singing just amongst ourselves than we would with having a party with the Limeys, the girls. Nothing tickled me more than one day we were out in the snow, and we’re just sawing like hell out—you know, these long fellows, two men on each end.

EAV: Oh, yeah.

01:34:05

JLS: And we were sawing our logs for—and each night, we’d go down and steal the King’s coal because we never had enough coal to keep our hut warm.

EAV: How did you do that?

JLS: Well, we cut a hole in his damn fence. The Limeys had it, and they had it guarded. Hell, they had armed guards around.

EAV: The King’s coal?

JLS: Yeah. Well, everything belonged to the King, see, in his royal compound, which we’d sneak over and—with a garbage pail, a big old GI can, and fill it full very quietly and sneak back. Then we’d saw up the wood, and we’d have a warm hut for three or four days. And old—

EAV: Did they ever complain to the old man? You know, what the hell is this?

JLS: They never knew it. They never did find out. 34

EAV: How did you get in there?

JLS: I say, we cut a hole in the fence.

EAV: Well, didn’t they recognize the hole or—

JLS: Yeah, but we hung it back up, see?

EAV: Ah.

JLS: And covered it up. Hell, they never did know it was there. They never did know they were losing—

EAV: I’ll be.

JLS: And it used to make them real happy—we’d go in and cut down the King’s forest, too. They’re real proud of their forests over there and—but we had to have wood. We got it. And—

EAV: Did you have any characters in the squadron? Like Zemke’s outfit used to have one that was always gambling or a public information guy that was a chronic alcoholic and always taking bets.

JLS: Oh, yes. We had those. And then, of course, I always—Broadhead was a classmate of mine, and when I got over there as a first lieutenant, he was light colonel. Of course, he’d been over there and in the battle, and he earned everything he got. And I hadn’t seen Broadhead since World War II. And he is an ace, too. I don’t know why he hadn’t been in the meeting.

EAV: Let me cut this down—

01:35:51

[END OF INTERVIEW]