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

Paul A. Conger

Interview Date: January 1990

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Abstract:

Fighter ace Paul A. Conger discusses his military service with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He describes his wartime experiences as a fighter pilot and his time in Europe with the 61st and 63rd Fighter Squadrons of the 56th Fighter Group. Special focus on several of his combat missions in Germany and the Netherlands, including one in which he encountered a large group of German planes near Emden, Germany and scored several aerial victories.

Biography:

Paul A. Conger was born on May 3, 1918 in Los Angeles, California. He joined the United States Army Air Forces and graduated from flight school in July of 1942. He served two tours of duty with the 56th Fighter Group in Europe, flying with the 61st Fighter Squadron and 63rd Fighter Squadron from 1943 to 1945. Conger remained in the Air Force Reserves after the war and retired as a colonel in 1957. In his civilian life, he operated an air charter service and worked in the heavy equipment and truck leasing business until his retirement in 1980. He passed away in 1994.

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

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Index:

Deployment to England and early missions ...... 4

Pilots and leaders of the 56th Fighter Group ...... 5

Aerial victories near Emden (December 1943) ...... 5

Dogfight near Dümmer Lake (1944) ...... 6

A decoy for Jerry Johnson ...... 8

Two more aerial victories ...... 8

Strafing missions ...... 9

Shot down in the Netherlands ...... 10

Stories about other pilots ...... 11

Forgetting to switch fuel tanks ...... 12

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Paul A. Conger

[START OF INTERVIEW]

0:00:00

[Deployment to England and early missions]

PAUL A CONGER: …now. We were all greenhorns when we went overseas, left there in 1940. Let’s see, we left at—we arrived on the first of January of ’43. I get this with this, Eric, now and get things started.

People were on that ship, and it made it in three day—two-and-a-half days. And then we went to King’s Cliffe and stayed there a few months before we got airplanes. And then over to Norwich and we got airplanes at Norwich and King’s Cliffe and then on down to Boxted. But our main combat was out of Boxted and Halesworth. And of course, we all were—we're all green peas and we all worked up. Them Germans would get us 15 minutes out in the channel at the first. And then as we backed them up and as they became on the defense more and more and we became offensively, we went clear into—as far as Berlin, escorting and strafing and looking, just on a rhubarb even. And a lot of our stuff was escorting, though.

And then after escort, we’d go down and strafe. But at the first part we would usually hit combat because the Germans were very aggressive. The Abbeville Boys were very aggressive. The Yellow Nose Boys with Luftwaffe 190s and—and extremely aggressive. And of course, we had learned only from the Eagle Squadron with the 4th Group and they had led us astray, told us we’d die in five missions and we’d never make it in the Thunderbolt and so forth, et cetera. And misled us in many, many ways. But we acquired ourselves and adapted ourselves rapidly.

In turn, the—a few missions that I did, 168 missions, and that’s all across the North Sea. We were the first fighter group into England from America, and the last to leave in all blue Thunderbolts that continuously—the whole entire time, not being regretful one bit. The P-51 was limited on certain things and the 38 was a lost cause. And so the Thunderbolt was the backbone, I believe. Hold on a minute.

Before we went into combat, we were down at Biggin Hill two weeks, sets outside of London. RAF was pretty pooped because of the Battle of Britain. So we stood at some alert there. We were in Spitfire Vs. And a couple of guys made a couple of rhubarbs with the RAF early in the morning and I believe Gabreski was one of them. We had attacks on a couple Dornier 217s, but that was about all.

0:03:00

Our first mission that I went on was about the second mission the group did. Was a high altitude mission at 32,000 feet, at 50 inches of manifold pressure. And we went into the Frisian Islands 5 and broke left and two Focke-Wulfs went down between us and everybody went scrambling around and didn’t know quite what happened and back home we were. About like that. That was no good.

[Pilots and leaders of the 56th Fighter Group]

The third mission, I always thought the captain would get—I mean, I always thought the second lieutenant would get it before the captain. We had two fine pilots, Captain Wetherbee [Robert H. Weatherbee] and Captain Eby [Merle C. Eby] in my squadron, 61st. They got it in the third mission, and I was quite surprised. The second mission I had called Eby on coming back that there were some bandits up above us and Eby didn’t turn and these guys attacked, but they were Spitfires, fortunately. I figured I was so dumb I was—when I saw the smoke come out of their— I was—with the guns. If I hadn’t—if Eby hadn’t broke by then, I was going to break and split— do a split S if it hadn’t been too late. See how dumb we—we were awful dumb, awful dumb. But we learned and we learned fast and we learned completely fast.

0:04:26

So as the mission proceeded, we got warmer and warmer and warmer and then dropped down a little bit instead of going in at 32,000, coming about 28,000 and down in there, feeling our way along. And as I say again, Zemke [Hubert Zemke] was flying great, the leader, and then as the group leader. And then when we were—and then of course McCollom [Loren G. McCollom] was too slow, too—I—he was not aggressive at all. Gabreski [Francis S. Gabreski] came into the squadron extremely aggressive—helpful and, in fact, a good combat leader. That’s all I can say. The other guys could be good fliers, good pilots, but not good combat leaders. Gabreski, Schilling [David C. Schilling], outstanding combat leaders. Tukey of the 63rd was a lost cause. They took him off of combat in 30 missions.

[Aerial victories near Emden (December 1943)]

So as I say, at this particular time, which was the latter part of ’43, called—they made some movies on it, for the Pictorial Review of the Air Force, Ramrod to Emden. I was on Gabreski’s flight—Gabreski’s squadron that day. And I was on the far north flight, that was 61st. And 63rd was the middle and the 62nd was down sun. Actually, the sun was coming out from the northeast. So anyway, this gaggle of Messerschmitts. I called into Gabreski, Gabreski called in immediate—had called us ten minutes before we were above the Frisian Islands, pushing about 40 inches. No, we were pushing about 30—29 inches. And autolean saving our fuel, carrying a load. We're at 30,000 feet. And I had two greenhorns with me on my wingmen and one Robill Roberts was my element leader. And we started pushing 42, 45 inches, 50 inches and start to 6

move. We had been indicating about 180 miles an hour, indicated about 290, close to 300, then start to dive a little bit to 320. And I saw these Messerschmitts, so 50-plus—100—50-plus on the one element and 50-plus on the other element. Ju 88s in there going north. Our B-17s were coming from the north—coming down south on a diversion raid, diversion vector, and then coming south. But these Messerschmitts were coming in and going to lob rockets into them.

0:07:13

Call the man again and said, “Go to the opposite and attack” And I made a quick turn left, down, and then dive before they attacked. My two wingmen hit. We had taught them to crossover and watch each other when they cross over, but the—you see, the OTU back in the States would send these pilots over just for numbers and not training them enough. Didn’t know themselves, really, how to train.

Anyway, Gabreski saw this action, explosion, and pulled back up again. He was really my top cover coming in. And I got one 110 and another 110 and then as I’m coming down now, within a few minutes now I’m down about 15,000—15,000 to 10,000, in there some place—and I got a Ju 88, a long shot, 500 yards. But I got hits and then he slowed down and then I got real good hits on him. And by that time I was over Heligoland about 5,000 feet and in the fog, quite a bit of fog. Of course, had a wild ride back home because I had forgotten about a few of my instruments that—controls that I had not shoved to full rich and not shoved all the way forward and when I was on autolean up above and several other things that I was into. But that Pratt- Whitney 2800 stood wide open at 80, 80 inches. Stood wide open at 80 inches. She was just pulling like a beautiful baby. And detonation, too. Because of my fault—God was with me, I guess. Hold up.

[recording stops and starts again 00:08:53]

…these days why I procrastinated so long to write to you, I was hoping to get down to my other house to get into the garage where I’ve got a lot of stuff stored. And I’d get the dates to you. But if you want anything specific, write me back and I’ll get you the dates, because I’ll be going out to that garage very shortly, as soon as I get my two sons to help me.

0:09:13

[Dogfight near Dümmer Lake (1944)]

But another day in ’44 that I recall, was that the Germans—as we became aggressive and we're going clear into the Rhine River before we could find a German in the air. But this particular case, Zemke called the Zemke Fan. And Gabreski was leading me that day. And I had a flight and he had a squadron and Zemke was leading the group. And about south of Antwerp, each flight and 48 ships would fan-out five degrees from the pinpoint. 7

So we started out and I went north, due north, and then my—Gabreski’s flight, which was—we were 12—16 ships in each flight. So there was—there was 48 overall. So I fanned out with my five ships—my four ships to the north. Within about five minutes, I hit a gaggle of—over in the area of the Dümmer Lake area, a little bit east of Antwerp. I hit a gaggle of 100-plus Messerschmitt 109s and 190s. And I only had four ships and I was above them, about 30,000 feet. And they were about 25,000, circling to come into—of course, the bombers were coming in about another half hour and the radar had picked them up and they were getting ready to attack the bombers, climbing for the bombers. And the bombers hadn’t arrived yet. But they were getting ready—waiting for them, and they were climbing.

So I call another flight in, White Flight in. White Flight said they’d be up in about five minutes. And about another two or three minutes, I turned around behind me—my wingman called me and White Flight’s joining us behind—and I turned around and four Focke-Wulfs on our tail, just lining up for us. You could see the nose on them in comparison to the oval nose on a 47. Boy, I broke left so fast. I didn’t even call a break. And my wingman followed me and we circled one circle and those guys dove and left.

0:11:43

Then I went back over to the top of these Messerschmitts that were forming up from 25 on up— thousand feet—from 23 to 26, in there. And I got over the top of them in an attack. You’ve got to be careful in your attack from 2,000 or 3,000 feet above because of the fact, by the time you get there, they're gone. And the first thing you know, you get—you're doing the same speed as them as when—so you have to do an overhead split S and a spiral down and right on top of them and come down fast and roll into them and do—and fire.

I fired at the wingman. He exploded. I went right through the explosion. My silver airplane was black when I came out. And the heat was terrific. Moved over and got the wing—got the leader and pulled back up. And of course, tried to get down to them again, but by that time they had all broken all up and had dispersed.

Meanwhile, we came back to the—my wingman came—had come with me and so we got back to the field and the interrogation. I told my—I got my two and then my—one of the interrogators said, “Is there any more?” And that was it on my part. I told my wingman, “Tell him about how you got yours.” My wingman, it was his second mission and he had never—it was Grosvenor [William D. Grosvenor]—and he had never—didn’t even realize he got a victory. He was so petrified. And that was an exciting—a very exciting recall of the fight, or whatever you want to—attack. Extremely so. Hold on.

0:13:29 8

[A decoy for Jerry Johnson]

Had another time, Jerry Johnson [Gerald W. Johnson] had been leading the group and we had escorted bombers down there to Munich. We had hit our—a little combat, but didn’t participate in it. And so we were coming back. Foster—Justus Foster—myself and Jerry Johnson. I don’t know what happened to that wingman. And halfway—Jerry Johnson got a couple that day, as I recall. So we're going back, day’s work’s done, so forth, and about a little over—in France, over France, about another 50 minutes to landfall out. Some Messerschmitts were having a regular dogfight up above us in the dense cirrus, high cirrus clouds. You could barely—and it was near four o’clock in the afternoon. You would barely see the sparks up there or flashes of the guns going on.

And all of a sudden, nine of those ships peeled S down in string out of there coming down. They went right by us. Would you believe it? Number nine man decided to pick on me. And I’m on Johnson’s right side. And he starts to turn into me. We were cruising along at cruise speeds, and the first thing I’m up to 150 miles an hour and starting to stall on a right turn. And Jerry Johnson’s telling me to hang on there, hang on. And the Messerschmitt is trying to pull a lead shot on me with his spiral back there. I could see it and I thought, “Son of a B. I’m a decoy for Johnson.” And as we pull harder and harder and harder, he says, “Hang on.” Johnson said—kept hanging on, hang on. And hell, I’m going to get killed while Johnson gets a victory.

Anyway, nevertheless, Johnson pulled down slight, got slow enough and got behind the Messerschmitt and got a victory. But I always kid Jerry Johnson, who is a three-star general today, how I was his decoy; where’s my cut? And that was an interesting little thing. Of course, it had my fanny pretty well puckered up for a little while there, too. So, uh…

0:15:49

[Two more aerial victories]

And another day, I was leading the group this day, in the latter part of ’44. And I had gotten over to the Rhine River, or in that area, and we finally—that was—we were becoming very, very offensive on the ground. And we had a control where they're called Nuthouse Control on the Rhine River and they grabbed a hold of me, began to talk back and forth—and I was between 21,000 feet at the time, with 48 ships. It was a high cumulous—high cumulous above me and low cumulous below me, solid.

So he called in. He says, “There’s some ships there.” I said, “I don’t see any.” So as I got thinking, I was due—going due north then and he says, “There’s one behind you now.” I didn’t see them. So then I reversed the turn with 48 ships and we did it in a minute. So we had them pretty well controlled by that time. You know, everybody was working together. Reversed the flight to one—to a southern direction. And I told one squadron to stay upstairs while two of us went down through the soup. 9

As we got down through the soup at 18,000 feet, we broke out into a beautiful, clear day. And Nuthouse Control had put me right behind Messerschmitt 109s with belly tanks. And we pulled out about 1,000 yards behind them, just beautiful. So I throttled back because as soon as you start to fire into them, of course, they’ll run like geese. And many commanders or many leaders would go forward; all for me and nothing for anybody else. But I wanted everybody to get a victory.

So I throttled back and there comes Barnum down with the 61st. I was leading the 63rd at the time, plus the group. Barnum—Eugene Barnum—comes down on the left-north side and he was—with his squadron and he’s reversed back with me. He knows what I was going to do: let us all fire at once. And all of a sudden, a guy comes out from nowhere, God knows where, and starts to cut across on us. And he cuts across in front of Barnum, Eugene Barnum, and hits him and damn it. And by that time I’m starting to close-in on the Messerschmitt 109 in front of me and Gene Barnum started going down in a spiral, flat spin, and he jumps. And his chute catches around that wing and that was about 27,000 feet. And God knows what happens to him as he went around, tangled with that airplane as he went down. A good friend of mine.

0:18:41

And then my—I proceeded—that was time to fire at this little guy in front of me. So I fired, got him, and then as his leader started to dive, well, that’s all I needed because the P-47 dove like a beautiful kite. Just—it wouldn’t climb worth a darn, but it would dive like a son of a gun. I closed right in on him and got him. So I got two that day, also. And had a very interesting day, except for the sad experience of seeing Barnum go down.

[Strafing missions]

Doolittle had told us, after the Germans became less and less defensive, if they don’t come up, we’ll go down after them. So we began—more and more strafing, more and more strafing. At the first strafing job that I did, nobody’s told us ever how to strafe or anything. We had taken five— Gabreski had brought five Polish Air Force boys over there from—with the PAF and French Air Force and the RAF Polish Division and didn’t have any jobs. So we came up. Of course, we had to pick in our pockets to split—to give them three pounds apiece for their pay. They flew with us with no pay, except for what we gave them, and couldn’t lead. But I had a guy named Mike Gladych on my wing who was—at that time I was a captain, he was a major, I believe. So my first strafing job, he was on my wing after an escort.

0:20:07

Over near Hannover, I saw a field and went down on it. As I went down on the field, like my first day in a cold, cold swimming pool, man, you go in and you go for it and either or else. 10

Stupid me went down the middle of the runway to shoot these two airplanes up that were on the airfield, and naturally some—I don’t know—some corporal got me in the canopy with a 20- millimeter and exploded all over my back and everything. I climbed and everybody fired at me. I thought they were going to get me. And of course, scared stiff, naturally. So that was an hour- and-a-half back to our field, sitting in blood, thinking of climbing out of the airplane, but that particular seat wouldn’t jettison. And went to the hospital for three months.

So believe you me, when I came back the next time, I was strafing at five feet. Five feet. My strafing jobs, my [unintelligible-0:20:58] five feet above the ground and go across the corners. I only got two—a couple damages, three damages, I believe, that day. But, you see, we would learn always for ourselves. We never could read it out of books or anything, just actual experience.

As times went on, we decided to try some of this out, which our airplanes flew at a negative angle and attacked at under 300 miles an hour. And it was hard to pull it up over 300 unless you burned a hell of a lot of fuel, but at about 40 inches we could indicate about 290 to 300. So Schilling decided we’d all strafe on these foggy days. So we left England, 45 minutes across that channel on deck. We hit landfall in right around the Frisian Island—I mean, excuse me, the Dutch Islands with—our battleships were in there. They were firing at us a little bit, and we did a lot of strafing after JG. But I enjoyed strafing on a rhubarb.

0:22:03

An actual rhubarb is when you go in low and never get over, say, 200 feet all the way. But the old P-47 down low gobbled the gas up. Two hundred gallons—close to 200 gallons an hour, see, and even at high cruise. So we had a limit on our capacity, was how many tanks plus 300 gallons internally. And anyway, we did a lot of strafing there as the second D-Day was coming along. And that was back in—I don’t know exactly the time that was.

[Shot down in the Netherlands]

It occurs—it just brings up one item, too. I was shot down in that area—in that time, I mean, right around the latter part of ’44, middle of ’44. “Bunny” Comstock [Harold E. Comstock] was leading the group that day and I was his—I was leading the squadron. It was about May—March or April or May, right in there. And he—we were going north to knock the flak installations out near Arnhem. And—because that’s when those paratroopers were trapped in—2,000 paratroopers were trapped. We were to knock the flak installations out so the B-24s could drop supplies to them.

We lost 36 out of 48 airplanes that day. Not all the men, because I got shot down and I walked near Tilburg. And I walked to an airdrome and a Canadian boy said, “What’d you do, just get 11

shot down?” I says, “Yeah.” I was telling him all about it. He said, “I talked to [unintelligible 00:23:41].” He says, “I get shot down every week.” He says no problem. He says “Go into Brussels and have some money—have some fun on your escape pack.”

0:23:48

So we hitchhiked 75 miles into Brussels and I walked from Brussels to Paris, or—and I say, swiping bicycles and so forth and was gone two weeks to get a ride back home to go with the ops again. But it was an interesting thing that—and you look back at things and you would do things many other ways. I would have stayed over there three months, walking around, because I had all free booze and free food and free lodging and free ladies. So it was—that was overall an interesting trip, as you look back on it. But you're—you had been taught and brainwashed so heavily to be devoted to your country and to save this war, save the world, or save the United States and England, that you thought: get back and get fighting again. Much different than today’s action is, isn’t it, huh?

[Stories about other pilots]

Bob Johnson [Robert S. Johnson] and I were very good friends. I mean, he—I led him, he’d lead me, and so forth. And we hadn’t shot down any airplanes. So this one particular day, we had talked it over the night before that if they don’t go down after these planes when they see them, we're going to peel off. We were number—Tail End Charlies all the times. So we were going to peel off and go down. But the next day, when you're sober, it’s a lot different.

Anyway, the next day did come, very shortly. A bunch of 109s and 190s went underneath of us and Bob called it. Nobody did anything, and Bob peeled off. Bob got two that day. Bob never believes that in his book of Thunderbolt—he mentions the guy at the bar. That’s me. But the next day things are different, as I say. Then my guilt conscience—complex kind of came to me, and I thought I better peel off. Now this is only about 20 seconds later. But time is a valuable element up there. I peeled off, wide open, down I went. I chased five Focke-Wulfs inland, but at that time we did not have belly tanks on and they were sucking us because the prevailing winds were from the west to the east, as high as 200 miles an hour. So it would suck you in and you’ve got to know—not enough gas to get back.

0:25:55

And those five ships went ahead of me. I kept firing at them, firing at them, firing at them. I only got a hit on one, a victory. But son of a B. Boy, Bob Johnson never liked me as much as he did before. He’s always talked about it, never has forgotten it and [unintelligible-0:26:12] really cut him off. But it wasn’t the right way to fly, is to peel off from the leader. The way we were taught at Kelly and Randolph Field is to be subordinate. That’s the only way to fight the war. 12

Somebody’s got to be the leader. People can’t peel off on the leader, and I still think to this day I did right. But on the other hand, I still have a guilt complex because I’m—I would have liked to have been with Bob Johnson, but he sure built up his ego fast.

Which reminds me. I’ve got to give you this story. It’s an interesting, little, funny story. Bob and I used to drink every night at the bar until ten o’clock, until it shut down. A lot of the guys didn’t want to blow their money, and send it back to the States. We didn’t give a God damn. And so when we come back, they’d say, “Well, where’s some beer for us?” Well, they’d be sitting there playing poker, playing—you know, whatever. Bob and I’d always have two or three bottles— they had those cork tops to them—for the guys. They never repaid us, but we didn’t care too much.

0:27:14

One night I’m coming back—we're coming back together, drunk up the hill—and this is at Halesworth. And he says, “I’ll tell you.” And I says, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll drink some beer out of this bottle and we’ll take a leak in it.” So we did that procedure and got back to the barracks and Bob’s—I mean—and Foster says, “Did you bring some beer back?” “Yeah,” I says, “Got a nice bottle for you.” And he says, “Thanks a heck of a lot.” And he grabs it and God, he just guzzles it down. It was a half a bottle of piss in there. And these were cork bottles. And he says, “Geez, this limey beer is getting flat. God damn, it’s getting flat.” And he just guzzled it on down. And we were laughing away and laughing. Naturally, later on we told him about it and boy, he didn’t borrow or anything else or bought beer from us anymore.

[Forgetting to switch fuel tanks]

And along with this, I’m thinking of a couple other ones. When I told you our first missions and I went on the second of the—of the 56th Fighter Group, when we turned into each other that day, when those two Focke-Wulfs went down below us, showed my head up was my ass—we—many of us had a head up our ass. We just didn’t—the Thunderbolt was a forgiving airplane, that’s all. Along with pilots—did have—we had a lot of accidents with head-up-ass stuff. But I ran out of fuel at 31,000 feet over the Dutch Islands in my auxiliary tanks. See, we burned our auxiliary tank out first to get our CG straightened out, in case we got in combat and our ops that, uh—the main tank was in the middle and the CG was pretty well balanced there. But the CG would be thrown off on the auxiliary main— auxiliary internal.

Well, I sat up there with my prop windmilling and I’m out of gas and my goddamn fanny puckers up and I’m going in. And I go to D-channel and call, “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” weakly as hell. And then I—within a few seconds, I see a boat coming on a vector my way from London area—Thames area, mouth—or we could see—and we were—that’s how far—on a clear day you could see clear across the channel, see? I figure that boat’s coming for me. And I’m 13

sitting up there, windmilling along, dropping at 1,000 feet a minute, see? And I said, “God damn, turn your tank.” And I turn it to main and that beautiful engine starts right up again, starts right up. Stupid me, sitting up there with an empty tank and thinking I’m going to die. I got back about two minutes late and everybody shook my hand and everybody this—I thought, “Boy, if this is war, wow wee!”

But, Eric, I think I’ve spoken enough today. Now if any of these items or whatever—and if I put it together wrong or right, write me again. I’d be only too happy to [unintelligible-0:30:10] one by one, and by that time I’ll get it out of the garage. Thanks for calling me for some information. Best of luck to you.

00:30:20

[END OF INTERVIEW]