Unlikely victors or encounters.

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and another story in one of Hess's books about US fighters Vs Luft jets, where a P51 and 262 flew side by side ( I think the jet was nearly out of fuel or had a dead turbine, and the P51 was out of ammo), and the German pilot thumbed his nose at the Mustang pilot, who opened his canopy, and tried shooting him down with his .45 pistol???
 
pattern14 said:
Does any one know about the Japanese pilot who landed on a US carrier by mistake? Read the story several times over the years, but no Idea what plane or carrier it was.
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There was a Japanese pilot who landed on an airfield on Okinawa the first day of the invasion. He was out of the cockpit before he noticed the change of ownership. Then he tried to draw his pistol on several hundred Marines. It didn't end well for him.
 
It didn't end well for him.
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And of course there was poor old Arnim Faber who landed his Fw 190 at RAF Pembry, Wales, handing to the Brits an intact flyable example of the fighter; the first they had.
 
In one of the Tallboy raids one of the bombers was separated from the escorting fighters and being chased by an Fw 190. Unable to get the escorts on the radio, a crew member (radio operator I guess) fired a flare to catch their attention. Instead teh flare went into the Fw 190's engine and caused it to break off.
 
Don't know if its true, but I once read an account of a bombers gunner shooting at a V-2 rocket leaving the launch pad and knocking it down. That would take some beating.
 
Don't know if its true, but I once read an account of a bombers gunner shooting at a V-2 rocket leaving the launch pad and knocking it down.
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The British broadcaster Raymond Baxter, a Spitfire pilot in the war, told a story about an attck on a V 2 launching over Holland during a low level raid in 1945:

"In an interview about his wartime career, Baxter described once flying over a V-2 rocket site during a launch, and his wingman firing on the missile: "I dread to think what would have happened if he'd hit the thing!"
 
nuuumannn said:
And of course there was poor old Arnim Faber who landed his Fw 190 at RAF Pembry, Wales, handing to the Brits an intact flyable example of the fighter; the first they had.
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I don't quite recall the source, but I read that, before landing, Faber had shot down a Spitfire, and subsequently performed a victory roll over Pembry and extended his landing gear while inverted.
 
There are many cases of disoriented pilots landing on enemy airfields. My favourite is a PRU Spitfire whose pilot was on a navigational exercise who landed at Schipol and parked between a couple of Bf 109s before he realised his error. At least he had the sense to surrender and spend the rest of the war as PoW.

Some just got lost.



Some of course were not mistaken but defected.

Information extracted from page 79 of AIR27/1087 held at the PRO at Kew, London.

At 17.50 hrs on the 9th May 1943, Blue Section of No. 165 (Ceylon) Squadron comprising of F/L A. F. Roscoe in Spitfire Vb BM515 (SK-T) and Sgt B. R. Scaman in Spitfire Vb AB921 (SK-X) got airborne from RAF Dyce under Peterhead Sector Control (F/L G. S. Crimp) to investigate a "Plot". The raider was pointed due east of Peterhead but turned south down the coast of Scotland, eventually orbiting a few miles NE of Dyce. During this time the fighters were vectored onto it, and upon visual contact, identified the intruder as a Ju 88. Upon the approach of the Spitfire pair the enemy aircraft lowered its undercarriage, fired off Verey lights and waggled its wings. Blue 1 replied in a similar manner, flew ahead of the enemy aircraft to lead it into Dyce and ordered Blue 2 to take up position behind and above the Junkers as safeguard any attempt to escape.
Thus the formation recovered, line astern, to Dyce where they all landed safely, the whole operation had taken no more than thirty minutes. The Controller is to be congratulated for his quick appreciation of the possibilities of the affair and for his able handling of the situation and the pilots for withholding fire and so bringing home a valuable prize for the Technical and Scientific Services to examine and evaluate.

According to WASt in Berlin, the pilot Oblt Herbert Schmid passed away on the 04.05.1983.

Cheers

Steve
 
norab said:
IIRC there was an incident that ended up with P-38's fighting Russian Yak 9"s but I don't remember the details, maybe someone else does?
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This post brought to mind a painting in a book I have called: "World War II Aircraft in Combat" by Glenn B. Bavousett published by Arco.

I believe it shows the incident you described. Over Yugoslavia in November 1944, P-38's of the 82nd Fighter Group, 15th AF operating from Foggia, Italy were on the second day of a request to provide close air support for the Russians. Unfortunately due to the "fog of war" Russian troops in close engagement with the Germans were also strafed. Evidently a 3 star general was killed in the mix-up. A call went out to a flight of Yaks in the vicinity. Two P-38's were downed before they turned the tables and shot down 4 Yaks. This painting shown an un-lucky Yak pilot from that engagement stumbling into the guns of a stalled P-38 flown by Bill Blurock. Even as a kid I always loved the look of splintered wood at the wing roots.

 
Two instances along those lines come to mind,

First was over Sofia when Bulgarian Airforce Bf109s went up to intercept an inbound flight of American bombers. Coming in close behind the bombers, was another flight of fighters and the Sofia units flew to form up with them for the attack. Turns out that these were American P-51B/C aircraft arriving late, that the Bulgarians mistook for thier own, having not seen the Mustang before. Needless to say, they recovered from thier surprise quickly and the fur began to fly.

The other occasion, was near the eastern front, where a flight of YaKs and P-51s were sizing each other up when a flight of Luftwaffa fighters, who had been above observing the stand-off, dove through the two groups shooting as they went. Looking back after thier dive, they didn't have Allied fighters in hot pursuit but instead witnessed the two groups battling it out. Aparently the German's surprise attack led the Americans and Ruusians to beleive that the other had attacked and immediately jumped at each other's throats. The Germans continued on thier way quickly...
 

Yeah, that one has always struck me as an example of near-miraculous cool-headedness. If it had been me, I'd no doubt have pooped off all my ammo before colliding with the 88 - possibly one of the reasons I never became a fighter pilot.
 
A Kate posed a bombing run with no torpedos. A Soviet destroyer ran away.
The captain became a hero as he had managed to escape a torpedo with his good skills.
The Battle of Shumshu.
 

That aircraft is now at the RAF Museum; it became PJ876 and had the latest FuG 202 Lichtenstein radar; the first of its kind to fall into British hands. The aircraft had set off from Denmark to intercept a BOAC Mosquito on its way to Sweden.
 
I don't quite recall the source, but I read that, before landing, Faber had shot down a Spitfire, and subsequently performed a victory roll over Pembry and extended his landing gear while inverted.
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He did do this indeed, lowering his gear inverted is what alarmed the Brits to the fact he was a German. Ths Spit was flown by a Czech guy from 310 Sqn. Faber was an ace by this time, having claimed six enemy aircraft
 

According to Erich Hartmann's semi-biography The Blond Knight of Germany, Hartmann himself led the Luftwaffe fighters through the Soviet and American groups. Of course, based on the source, I am not certain if this is true...
 
I wrote this down here before, but with the searchengine out of order, I cannot find it.

On May 10th 1940, Fokker D.XXI 229 fought 2 BF110's. He got hit pretty bad and pilot sgt. Roos decided to bail out. He threw off the canopy in order to do so. This canopy ended up in a propeller of one of the BF110's, which went down. Roos then decided to stay and get into the cloudcover. When he got out, he was on top of the other BF110, which he then properly shot down. After all this, he got hit, probably by flak. The D.XXI was thrown in a dive and Roos, already unstrapped and unconcious, was thrown clear of the cockpit. He regained concious just in time to pull the cord, so he survived. The fighter plunged deep into Dutch soil, only to be recovered in the '90ies. It's now on display, being the only Dutch D.XXI still in existance.

Sgt. Roos survived the war and was killed in the early '50ies in a helicopter crash.
 
mhuxt said:
Yeah, that one has always struck me as an example of near-miraculous cool-headedness. If it had been me, I'd no doubt have pooped off all my ammo before colliding with the 88 - possibly one of the reasons I never became a fighter pilot.
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I agree, though lowering undercarriage was some sort of unofficial sign of surrender as I understand it. Waggling wings and popping off an array of Verey lights must have helped to convince the Spitfire pilots not to make an immediate attack.
I bet that "Blue 2" flying behind the Junkers had his weapons ready and his thumb hovering over the fire button.
Cheers
Steve
 
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