MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Back around 1982 I was fortunate enough to hear the following from Tony LeVier, the famous Lockheed test pilot. I will relate it just as he did, in first person. A shorter and less detailed version of this story is in his book, "Pilot."
"One day I was told to do a simple radio test on a P-38 (note: according to his book this was 1 Jan 1944). This involved nothing more than taking off from Burbank, calling a local ground station, and verifying the radio transmitted and received properly. But I decided that I could do the test just as well at Sand Diego as Burbank, so I flew down there."
"I got to San Diego and did the test. Then I was free to have some fun. I flew back up the coast. I was looking for the Navy and I found them over the ocean off of Oceanside."
"It was a whole bunch of F4U Corsairs. They were in formation and flying pretty slowly. It looked to me like they might be practicing long range cruise techniques."
"I pulled up next to the leader and did this (takes his hands and moves them like two airplanes chasing one another, in the universal gestures of a fighter pilot describing air to air combat). The leader shook his head and turned away by 90 degrees."
"I thought, What is it with these guys today? They always like to dogfight!"
"So I pulled up next to the Corsair leader again and gestured the same way. He just shook his head and turned away again."
"I decided I would give up trying to get the Navy guys to dogfight, pulled up, turned, and climbed out, heading back toward Burbank."
"Then I looked back. They were all in formation right behind me, heading the opposite direction. And I just could not resist."
"I turned, dove, and came under them, pulling up in front and over them, added more power and climbed out."
"Then I looked back. They were all over the sky, the formation broken up. They had firewalled their engines, black smoke pouring out of every one."
"'Gee! They seem to have changed their minds about dogfighting! I wonder why?'"
"I pulled around and dove on them. At this point I had more speed than all of them put together. I made a pass on one, then another, and then pulled up, into the sun."
"And I met a Corsair coming down, out of the sun! I saw he was going to pull up over me and I dove under him. There was a bump, and I leveled off."
"I saw that one of my wingtips had what looked like fingers sticking up. I decided that I better head home."
"The Corsair leader pulled up next to me and gestured with his hands, indicating as I had that he wanted to dogfight. I pointed to my damaged wingtip."
"He went under me, pulled up next to my damaged wingtip, then he looked at his own, other wingtip, and turned away sharply. It was clear that he was the one I had collided with."
"I headed back to Burbank, wondering how I was going to explain getting a damaged wingtip on a radio test mission. I thought about telling them I had hit a telephone pole, but I figure some fool would want to see the pole. Finally, I decided to tell the truth. I was out on a radio test mission, was jumped by a bunch of Corsairs, and was able to avoid most of them but touched wingtips with one."
"Back at Burbank, I explained what had happened. I was told there would be an Army Air Force investigation board held on Monday morning and that I had to explain how I had damaged the aircraft."
"I spent the weekend trying to find the pilot I had collided with, so we could get our stories straight. I tried all the bases down around San Diego and around Los Angeles, but I could find no one who knew anything about a Corsair damaged in a collision. And no one in the Navy seemed to care, anyway. They said that they trained their pilots to be aggressive and that sort of thing happened in training."
"On Monday morning I went to see the board. I explained what had occurred. They said not to let it happen again. And they told me that Kelly Johnson wanted to see me."
"I figured that Kelly was going to at least chew me out or maybe even fire me, but in reality he wanted to talk about something else. He did not care about a damaged wingtip."
"It was not until after the war that I found out who I had collided with. It wasn't the Navy. And it wasn't from any base in southern California. It was the Marines, out of Santa Barbara. The Corsair lead pilot I had run into was none other than the famous Marine ace, Joe Foss."
So, what were very probably the best two pilots on the West Coast, if not the entire USA at the time, managed to run into each other.
One final, rather weird, addition to this story. When Tony LeVier in that talk said that Kelly Johnson wanted to talk about something else, for some reason at that point I immediately thought that I knew what that meeting was about. I had read the series of articles by Warren Bodie in Airpower/Wings magazine about the P-38, and I thought that meeting with Kelly was when he told Tony that he wanted him to go to England to investigate the engine problems with the P-38's there. It was not until several years later when I read the book "Pilot" that I discovered that was in fact true.
"One day I was told to do a simple radio test on a P-38 (note: according to his book this was 1 Jan 1944). This involved nothing more than taking off from Burbank, calling a local ground station, and verifying the radio transmitted and received properly. But I decided that I could do the test just as well at Sand Diego as Burbank, so I flew down there."
"I got to San Diego and did the test. Then I was free to have some fun. I flew back up the coast. I was looking for the Navy and I found them over the ocean off of Oceanside."
"It was a whole bunch of F4U Corsairs. They were in formation and flying pretty slowly. It looked to me like they might be practicing long range cruise techniques."
"I pulled up next to the leader and did this (takes his hands and moves them like two airplanes chasing one another, in the universal gestures of a fighter pilot describing air to air combat). The leader shook his head and turned away by 90 degrees."
"I thought, What is it with these guys today? They always like to dogfight!"
"So I pulled up next to the Corsair leader again and gestured the same way. He just shook his head and turned away again."
"I decided I would give up trying to get the Navy guys to dogfight, pulled up, turned, and climbed out, heading back toward Burbank."
"Then I looked back. They were all in formation right behind me, heading the opposite direction. And I just could not resist."
"I turned, dove, and came under them, pulling up in front and over them, added more power and climbed out."
"Then I looked back. They were all over the sky, the formation broken up. They had firewalled their engines, black smoke pouring out of every one."
"'Gee! They seem to have changed their minds about dogfighting! I wonder why?'"
"I pulled around and dove on them. At this point I had more speed than all of them put together. I made a pass on one, then another, and then pulled up, into the sun."
"And I met a Corsair coming down, out of the sun! I saw he was going to pull up over me and I dove under him. There was a bump, and I leveled off."
"I saw that one of my wingtips had what looked like fingers sticking up. I decided that I better head home."
"The Corsair leader pulled up next to me and gestured with his hands, indicating as I had that he wanted to dogfight. I pointed to my damaged wingtip."
"He went under me, pulled up next to my damaged wingtip, then he looked at his own, other wingtip, and turned away sharply. It was clear that he was the one I had collided with."
"I headed back to Burbank, wondering how I was going to explain getting a damaged wingtip on a radio test mission. I thought about telling them I had hit a telephone pole, but I figure some fool would want to see the pole. Finally, I decided to tell the truth. I was out on a radio test mission, was jumped by a bunch of Corsairs, and was able to avoid most of them but touched wingtips with one."
"Back at Burbank, I explained what had happened. I was told there would be an Army Air Force investigation board held on Monday morning and that I had to explain how I had damaged the aircraft."
"I spent the weekend trying to find the pilot I had collided with, so we could get our stories straight. I tried all the bases down around San Diego and around Los Angeles, but I could find no one who knew anything about a Corsair damaged in a collision. And no one in the Navy seemed to care, anyway. They said that they trained their pilots to be aggressive and that sort of thing happened in training."
"On Monday morning I went to see the board. I explained what had occurred. They said not to let it happen again. And they told me that Kelly Johnson wanted to see me."
"I figured that Kelly was going to at least chew me out or maybe even fire me, but in reality he wanted to talk about something else. He did not care about a damaged wingtip."
"It was not until after the war that I found out who I had collided with. It wasn't the Navy. And it wasn't from any base in southern California. It was the Marines, out of Santa Barbara. The Corsair lead pilot I had run into was none other than the famous Marine ace, Joe Foss."
So, what were very probably the best two pilots on the West Coast, if not the entire USA at the time, managed to run into each other.
One final, rather weird, addition to this story. When Tony LeVier in that talk said that Kelly Johnson wanted to talk about something else, for some reason at that point I immediately thought that I knew what that meeting was about. I had read the series of articles by Warren Bodie in Airpower/Wings magazine about the P-38, and I thought that meeting with Kelly was when he told Tony that he wanted him to go to England to investigate the engine problems with the P-38's there. It was not until several years later when I read the book "Pilot" that I discovered that was in fact true.