Donald S. Bryan (Part 2 of 2)
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The American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews The Museum of Flight Seattle, Washington Donald S. Bryan (Part 2 of 2) Interview Date: September 1989 2 Abstract: In this two-part oral history, fighter ace Donald S. Bryan discusses his military service with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. In part two, he provides clarifying details regarding his wartime experiences and the combat missions discussed in the previous interview. Biography: Donald S. Bryan was born on August 15, 1921 in Hollister, California. He joined the United States Army Air Forces in January 1942 and attended flight school at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Bryan served with the 79th Fighter Squadron and 304th Fighter Squadron while stationed stateside and with the 328th Fighter Squadron in Europe from 1943 to 1945. Bryan remained in the military after World War II, retiring from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel in 1964. He then started a second career as an inspector for an engineering firm and retired again in 1981. Bryan passed away in 2012. Biographical information courtesy of: Boyce, Ward J., ed., American fighter aces album. Mesa, Ariz: American Fighter Aces Association, 1996. Restrictions: Permission to publish material from the American Fighter Aces Association Oral Interviews must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives. Transcript: Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services 3 Index: Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4 Mission details ................................................................................................................................ 4 Armament of North American P-51 Mustang variants ................................................................... 5 Logistics of bomber escort missions ............................................................................................... 5 Thoughts on snap rolls and turns .................................................................................................... 7 Additional mission details............................................................................................................... 7 Encounters with Arado Ar 234 Blitz (Lightning) aircraft ............................................................ 12 4 Donald S. Bryan (Part 2 of 2) [START OF INTERVIEW] [Begin Side A] 0:00:00 [Introduction] DONALD S. BRYAN: Dear Eric, got your tape the other—letter the other day. I’ll sit down now and try to answer your questions. Not too good at this tape recorder, but I’ll try to keep it working. As regarding the checking into other—or a fighter group for history—if you’re serious about that, you just might be, uh—good idea for you to check with the 352nd Fighter Group’s group historian. His name is Robert H. Powell, Jr. He lives at [address in Atlanta, Georgia]. His phone is [personal telephone number]. He is presently putting together a book or a history of the group from the very beginning to the time it was, uh—finished all its combat over in Europe. This history relates a great deal of interesting items, not only from the side of the fighter pilots but also some of the airmen and some of the ground officers. You might want to talk to him. I understand also that he is—has copies of many of, if not all, of the group combat reports. I wish I had some of them. I sure could answer a lot of your questions better than just relying on recollection alone. 00:02:14 [Mission details] Regarding your first paragraph dealing with the route of the formation size and etcetera, I—when I gave you the tape—was thinking that it was a normal mission, but recollection or recalling things, thinking about it, I believe it is one—was one of the “max effort” missions that the 8th Air Force put on. If it was, it was a good chance that we had 24 rather than the 16 fighter aircraft. I am further led to believe that this was the case because of the people I noticed that were flying at that time in the 328th Fighter Squadron. The first of them was George E. Preddy. George Preddy had taken over the squadron and was Squadron Commander, and I believe he took it over along—shortly before that. And I’m pretty sure that he was actually leading the 328th Fighter Squadron at the time. Earl Abbott was another. He was at that time the Operations Officer for the 328th Fighter Squadron, so I believe he would be flying one of them. So that takes care of one or the other, either White or Yellow. And I am sure that I was leading eight aircraft also and that would put me back into the third grouping of eight aircraft—the third section. And I’ll be blessed if I can remember the color code for that. I remember it went White, Red, Yellow, and Blue, in that order, but then in the—for the fifth and sixth flights, I just do not recall the color codes. 5 00:04:31 [Armament of North American P-51 Mustang variants] Your second paragraph dealt with the difference in the armament of the 51D and the B. The B and the C also, I believe, were made—armed with four 50-caliber machine guns. At least I know the B was. I believe the C was the same. The D, of course, had the six 50-caliber machine guns. Something else, too; in the D we had a better machine gun bullet feed. As a result, we didn’t have the, or—well, I don’t say we didn’t have any problem, but we didn’t have as much problem regarding the jamming of the guns. If you were to fire—I know from experience—the B model with a little negative G, you almost invariably jammed one or both sides of your guns. [Logistics of bomber escort missions] Regarding paragraph three, the pre-flight: I do not recall. I couldn’t, in any way, be able to relate with any certainty as to what we were going [sic], when we picked up, whether we relieved somebody or not. It—vaguely in my mind, it seems to me we or the bombers were on penetration when we came into them. I am sure that I had not picked up my group of bombers, or block of bombers, for escort at the time I sighted the 109s. Now, normally in one of these max efforts, these squadrons would split down to section size. In other words, we would go in, we would find a block of bombers that—whatever one we were supposed to, square tail, square markings, triangular, whatever the markings were on the tail—and then each squadron would pick out about three blocks, if we had that many blocks, and each section would sit over, around, or let’s say, give escort support for a particular block of bombers. This is—was a normal practice. I’m sure we would have done it then or if we—no, we probably did. But that was the normal way of picking up the escort. 00:07:34 As for how long we would stay with the 51s with the wing tanks: when we picked up the bombers, let us say, if we were going in towards Berlin, we would pick them up someplace around Dümmer Lake, maybe Steinhuder Lake, and we would penetrate with them through the target, coming back out and probably drop them again at the same location. So we would stay with them, I think, oh, maybe an hour-and-a-half or something on that line, if I recall the distances, depending on the speed of the bombers and etcetera. Your paragraph four, I believe I’ve answered. The Squadron Commander was definitely George E. Preddy at the time. I suspect he was leading, I suspect that Earl Abbott had Yellow Flight, and good old DSB had the third section of eight aircraft. And I believe—I’m pretty sure—that this was, in fact, a max effort and we had at least 24 aircraft at the time. I do know and I do remember that I did have a flight or a section of eight at the time of the combat. 6 00:09:02 Re: paragraph five. I said as, uh—as I said before, I don’t believe we had actually picked up the escort of the bombers at the time we spotted the Germans. I sure would hate to stand up in court and swear to that, but it just seems to me that we had not actually picked up the bomber stream when we saw them. I know we were very close to it because we would not have picked up as many Germans as we did at that time. I can recall very well that the air was just full of Germans, and unless you’re pretty close to a bomber stream, you don’t—or at least we didn’t usually see that many German aircraft. As to the bombers, I suspect that these were—this was one of those raids where we had anywhere from 800 to 1,000 aircraft, but again, you would have to go back to the original mission reports as submitted by 8th Air Force or as recorded in 8th Air Force to determine actually how many bombers there were. 00:10:28 Paragraph six: the 352nd Group definitely was broken down into squadrons, and the squadrons themselves broke down upon arrival at the bombers normally into, as I said, sections of eight. At that time, we were pretty well smoldering boulders, and we didn’t concern ourselves too much with Germans. I know up to that day when I got my fanny waxed, I was positive that I could take on the entire Luftwaffe if I had a section of eight P-51Ds. And I believe under normal circumstances we could. We were pretty good pilots at that time. At least I thought we were. 00:11:20 Paragraph seven: all I can recall is that I was attacking him from, of course, the rear.