Escorted Mossies

[mhuxt]

After Baer shot the Mossie down he returned towards base so he and his crew thought and then felt the sting of another Mossie on their tail and nearly blew the Do 217 out of the skies 4 km south of Rantum. pretty weird day for the LW crew I'd say.

Heya,

Yeah, I think the difficulty with that though is that the other Mossie was thought to have been of 418 Squadron, however Mark Proulx, who is The Man when it comes to 418, has no record of any of their Mossies even having fired their guns that night, let alone made a claim.

 

[bobbysocks]

one of the 357th pilots thought he was jumping a couple of 110 and took down 2 mossies....so it happened...and both ways. a couple of spits took down a 357th boy and a brit AA crew shot a b17 flying at 200 feet out of the sky thinking it was a buzzbomb.

 

[bobbysocks]

I always wonder how many fighters got shot down in large 'furballs', with all those shells flying around everywhere, even by their own side.

when ever i hear the story by an allied or lw pilot who attacks an EA and that plane makes no evasive maneuvers....or a plane peels off from a cluster and heads for home i chaulk it up to something like what you said. in the middle of a furball bullets from both sides are zinging through the air and with their range can and probably did hit many an unlucky soul. bleeding out you arent going to be wanting to pull any Gs

 

[mhuxt]

I've a reference for one friendly-fire incident with the 357th, August 12, but not for the other - can you give me a date? I'm really not interested in names, just trying to add information to my file of Mosquito fates.

 

[bobbysocks]

there are no dates in the book i am reading. its in a recounting by harvey mace. look up R.D. Brown and Rodney Starkey. there might be more in the second book i have yet to read.

 

[mhuxt]

Thanks Bobbysocks.



Apparently it wasn't just cruise speed the escort fighters stuggled with, range too seems to have been an issue. Details of fighters turning back from jet country appear in the individual sortie reports, this is from the 60 SAAF unit diary for January '45.