Vanished Hero: The Life, War and Mysterious Disappearance of America’s WWII Strafing King

by Stout, Jay

  The locomotives were large, vulnerable targets that erupted with huge plumes of steam when their boilers were hit. And they had no ability to maneuver or hide—they couldn’t jump their tracks and travel afield. The disruption caused by the attacks made a real difference to the war effort. Vital supplies and material were delayed or destroyed, and similar hurt was done to the military units that were so desperately shuttled back and forth across the Reich to staunch the crushing Allied offensives.

  A 55th Fighter Group mission summary report recorded one of these attacks. “Locomotive pranged [destroyed], at which time uniformed Heinies poured forth from all 20 coaches, heading up a hill to reach the timberline. One full squadron, line abreast, strafed these huddled Heinies, pinning entire gaggle to the ground.”2

  It was terrifying to be on the receiving end of these attacks. Luftwaffe fighter pilot Johannes Steinhoff recalled that his train came to an abrupt halt en route to Berlin, late in the war. “I heard the whine of fighter engines … Mustangs!” He leapt from his compartment, intent on fleeing the sitting duck that was the train. At the same time a military policeman rushed down the corridor shouting that no one was to leave the train.

  Steinhoff’s shouts contradicted the policeman’s: “Get out, get out—they’ll shoot us to pieces!” Steinhoff wriggled through a window and saw many others likewise scrambling down from the passenger cars. “Looking back, I could see the steel-helmeted transport officer waving his pistol and shouting over and over again, “No one’s to leave the train!”

  The fleeing passengers threw themselves to the ground as the P-51s dove and shot up the locomotive. In subsequent passes, entirely unmolested, they machine-gunned the passenger cars and boxcars. “After ten minutes it was all over,” said Steinhoff. “When I got back to the train I saw the transport officer dashing helplessly about looking for a doctor. He had been too late in deciding to evacuate the train, and now we had wounded and dead. We sat for hours and hours in the chilly train, until late in the evening they brought up another engine and we continued our journey toward the capital.”3

  Notwithstanding the fact that the German trains often had no recourse but to endure the air attacks, they weren’t always helpless. Particularly important trains were sometimes protected by purpose-built boxcars carrying armored antiaircraft gun turrets. When the train came under attack, the boxcar’s sides were dropped and the guns went into action. They were effective and attacking aircraft often discontinued their firing runs and went in search of easier prey.

  As spectacular as a blown boiler was, the locomotives were rarely ever destroyed by machine-gun fire. Although the high-velocity rounds might penetrate the boiler and make it impossible to maintain a head of steam sufficient for locomotion, repairs were often readily made. Indeed, most of the components that could be damaged by machine-gun fire could be replaced or fixed. And, of course, there was much that made up a locomotive that couldn’t be destroyed by .50 caliber machine-gun rounds.

  Consequently, many of the locomotives that Righetti and the 55th and the rest of the USAAF knocked out of action were eventually returned to service. All the same, the disruption caused by the attacks was real. Locomotives had to be repaired on the spot, or moved to a repair depot while an operational replacement was found and shuttled into place. Likewise, railcars that had been damaged sometimes had to be repaired or moved. In the meantime, the section of railway upon which the stricken train sat became a chokepoint beyond which nothing could pass.

  Aside from the locomotives, Herman Schonenberg recalled a tactic the 55th used to set the boxcars afire. “We flew line abreast, low and perpendicular to the train. As we got close we released our drop tanks so that they smashed against the train and drenched it with gas. Then, the newest guy in the formation had the honor of coming back around and setting it on fire with his guns.”

  Through most of 1944, it was typical for the VIII Fighter Command’s newly arrived replacement pilots to be sent to training groups that operated the same aircraft types they would fly in combat. Most pilots destined for the P-51 matriculated through a course of several weeks’ duration with the 496th Fighter Training Group at Goxhill. However, toward the end of the year, organizational changes, resource reallocations and improvements in Stateside training resulted in the shutdown of the training groups; the replacement pilots were sent directly to the operational fighter groups.

  These men were still not ready to be sent to combat and the responsibility for preparing them for action fell to the operational groups to which they were sent. When Righetti had arrived during mid-October he was simply paired up with several different experienced pilots who took him on a handful of training flights—all very informal. Such other information as he needed, he picked up in the pilots’ lounge. This worked well enough, considering his experience.

  But the group’s leadership recognized the need for a more formal training program and commissioned “Clobber College” the following month. It operated around a structured syllabus that introduced new arrivals to aspects of operations that were peculiar to the type of air war then being fought over Europe. There was particular emphasis on high-altitude operations, foul-weather flying, formation work and fuel management. It was equipped with war-weary aircraft that were nevertheless suitable for the task, and it was staffed with experienced pilots who pulled double duty, or who had finished their combat tours or otherwise needed a break from combat. In the end, it proved to be a success as it provided just the sort of “finishing” the new pilots needed to, at a minimum, not be a burden during their first few missions.

  While American ground forces battled their German counterparts in the Ardennes, bad weather grounded most of the Eighth Air Force from December 19 through December 22. Righetti was frustrated by the inaction: “Really haven’t a durn thing to write about. But four straight days of bad weather with no flying—and the stinking Heinies kicking our boys around just a couple of hundred miles away—kinda puts a guy on edge.”

  Still, he enjoyed relaxing with his men, with whom he still lived. “In case I didn’t tell you all,” he wrote, “I passed up the chance of living alone in order to live with my boys in a 12-man barracks. The boys have a heated discussion on women going right now, so I guess I’d better sign off and join in—they’re mostly bachelors so need my sage views and advice.” He was probably the only squadron commander in the Eighth Air Force who shared living quarters with his youngsters. Of this unorthodox arrangement he wrote: “It’s really the life, and certainly a liberal education.”

  The barracks were concrete structures of British design and were always cold and damp. Each was fitted with a single stove that was unequal to the task of chasing out the chill. Still, as the only source of heat, it was usually surrounded by a circle of men. “Sometimes,” said Herman Schonenberg, “some wise guy would get on the roof and drop a cartridge down the chimney.” Schonenberg noted that the resultant explosion caused quite a stir. “Nobody got hurt, but it sure scared the hell out of you if you were sitting next to the stove, as you always tried to be.”

  Unlike Righetti, most of his men were bachelors. And like most young unmarried men, they were interested in female companionship, although the nature of their duties obviously limited such opportunities. Nevertheless, as recorded by one of the group’s pilots, opportunities did exist although they were not always of a Norman Rockwellian sort. “In England during the war,” he wrote, “there were millions of U.S. soldiers and about six available women. Of course, there was a good supply of whores on the blacked-out streets of London. You could hear the action in every darkened doorway in the vicinity of Piccadilly Circus. We were warned that the girls probably all had syphilis or gonorrhea and that we should not have sexual relations with them. Then we were provided with prophylaxis kits for use when we did.”

  “My only female encounter,” the pilot continued, “began at a dance at the officers’ club. I met this girl who had been dating one of the pilots who had just been shot down. She had a
pronounced Cockney accent and, considering my Texas accent, we hardly spoke a common language. However, I could understand ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ I escorted her home in a chauffeured GI truck. The driver made the rounds, letting out the couples, then made the rounds again, picking up the guys. My date and I had sexual relations standing up in the middle of the dark street in front of her house.”

  The result of the encounter was predictable. “Pilots returning from the next dance, which I did not attend, told me this girl was pregnant and was looking for me. I missed several dances after that. The English girls had the idea that they could not get pregnant standing up.”

  Righetti was not a heavy drinker or womanizer. Carroll Henry, one of the junior pilots, recalled how he interacted with his pilots. “I don’t know if he won a lot of money or not, but he liked to play poker with us because he liked to be with the boys. He was a fairly good poker player—he wasn’t the best we had, but he was pretty good.” Russell Haworth seconded Henry’s assessment. “Righetti was a very good poker player. His strategy was either to raise or drop out.” It was an approach that evidently worked well enough for Righetti. “I’ve been showing the boys here some card tricks,” he wrote, “to the tune of $400 the last three days.”

  “It was just draw and stud,” said Henry. “We never played wild games. And we bet money—English money. But Righetti made us stop because we’d have English pounds lying on the table when girls came to visit in the dining room. He said that there was too much money going to the English girls. He just didn’t want us to flash all that money in front of them.”

  On December 22, with the 55th still grounded by poor weather, Righetti’s frustration peaked. “We’re all sure that if only the Eighth Air Force could get into the battle, we’d make short work of things.” He had a point, although his parochial allegiance to the Eighth discounted the outstanding capabilities of the Ninth Air Force which was specifically tasked to provide tactical air support to the Army units then engaged in Belgium. In truth, Germany’s leaders understood the vulnerability of their ground forces very well and grew nervous in the knowledge that sooner or later the weather would clear enough for the Americans to bring the full weight of their airpower to bear.

  Notwithstanding his own frustrations, it was Righetti’s job to ensure that the morale of his men did not sag. It wasn’t easy. “One of my toughest jobs as squadron commanding officer has really been working me overtime of late. Namely, what to do with three hundred officers and men on stand-down days.” Righetti’s special services officer orchestrated a “quiz contest” between the officers and the enlisted men. “So we ran it in the post theater this afternoon,” Righetti recalled. “Five pilots versus their five crew chiefs. The pilots won 595 to 505 points. Things went over swell and [the idea] will be used by other units on bad weather days.”

  The trivia contest was a mild and apparently worthwhile diversion, but it was only temporary and Righetti and his men chafed to get back into action. It was cold and snowy in England, but they knew that their ground brethren on the continent were enduring far worse. “Haven’t killed anyone for four days now, so am getting a trifle bloodthirsty. Hope more than anything else that tomorrow dawns clear and is a clobber day.”

  His hope was realized as the 55th put up 61 aircraft on December 23, 1944, to escort B-24s from the 2d Air Division to tactical targets in the vicinity of the contested town of St. Vith in Belgium. Although other USAAF units made contact with the Luftwaffe and were credited with downing 133 aircraft, the 55th ended the day empty-handed. It chased after a mixed bag of enemy aircraft types with no luck; an Ar-234 jet was spotted but fled almost immediately, as did an Me-262 and a flight of four Me-109s. Once the group finished its escort duties, the mission summary report noted that it received vectors from supporting radar units and “bounced everything but enemy aircraft—none sighted.” Righetti remained exasperated.

  Righetti often relied on Nuthouse when leading the 55th, and it was mentioned frequently in the group’s mission summary reports. Nuthouse was the radio callsign of the 401st Signal Company that operated radar equipment, also known as Microwave Early Warning, or MEW.4 The radar—together with radio transmitters and receivers, direction-finding units, telephone switchboards, special listening stations, display scopes, plotting boards, etc.—comprised a large air control system that was used both to assist the Eighth’s escorting fighter groups to rendezvous with their assigned bombers, and to monitor the progress of a given raid. Importantly, it was also used to vector the fighter groups onto enemy fighter formations.

  Developed in the span of just a couple of years, it was rushed into service from the United States and started operations at Greyfriars, England, shortly after D-Day on June 13, 1944, with the callsign of Dwarfbean. Although it could detect high-altitude targets at ranges that exceeded two hundred miles, that range wasn’t enough as the Eighth penetrated ever deeper into Germany. Consequently, during November 1944, the heavy, complex and sensitive radar equipment—and its support components—was moved across the North Sea and atop a hill near the small town of Eys, in the Netherlands.

  From its new location, Nuthouse began operations on November 23, 1944. The unit was surprisingly effective considering that the technology had been developed only a few years earlier, and the additional fact that virtually none of the men had operational experience that predated their arrival in England earlier that year. Not only was the equipment very basic—even crude—but the concept of radar control had only been evolving for a very short time. Operations inside the control center were operatic in their complexity and the demand for timely and accurate transmission of information to the air units being supported was very high.

  And it quickly became indispensable as noted by the head of the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe, Carl Spaatz: “Our war is becoming a radar war. We depend heavily on the operational capabilities of a small number of radar sets of extraordinary performance.”5 Indeed, Righetti was often the beneficiary of the control provided by Nuthouse, especially in joining the bombers at the correct time and place. And, with the help of radar control, the 55th engaged enemy aircraft that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. However, because of the radar horizon, or curvature of the earth, Nuthouse was of no use when Righetti operated where he liked flying best—low to the ground. The radar was simply blind to anything that happened at low altitude.

  Righetti and the rest of the 55th finally found action on December 24, as the weather over Europe continued to clear. The group’s mission summary report stated: “There were still plenty of Heinies for the last minute shoppers.” The German fighters were encountered as they attacked 3d Air Division B-17s near St. Vith. The 55th was vectored to them by Nuthouse who called out “Rats! Heinies! Rats!” The mission summary report noted that German fighters, “were observed in the distance attacking violently from the down-sun side.”

  By the time the 55th engaged the enemy fighters, there were only about fifteen of them remaining in small, scattered groups. A group of four was attacked and two were destroyed, but the 55th’s fighters “were in turn bounced” by four Me-109s, “the latter attacking aggressively and determinedly down to the deck. At the same place, one FW-190 jockeying for a sneak attack from 5 o’clock level on the bombers was in turn snuck up on and clobbered. A runaway 190 was sighted at 13,000 feet and pranged [destroyed] in the same area.”

  Fighters from other units arrived to the fight. “Three more lone Krauts were sighted at 10,000 feet, but in the ensuing bounce, 8 Mustangs of another group bounced us …” The other P-51s were from the 357th Fighter Group and dived on aircraft from the 55th’s 343rd Squadron. As the 357th’s aircraft came down from high on their left side, the four pilots of the 343rd’s Yellow Flight turned and climbed into them, probably unsure as to whether or not they were Germans. The pilots from the other group subsequently realized their mistake and turned away to the left, “with the exception of a straggler, who was pushing his nose up and down, apparently having t
rouble in deciding which way to go.”

  The straggler was the 357th’s Wendell Helwig, who smashed directly into Kenneth Mix. One of Mix’s comrades observed that the engine was “pushed back into the fuselage, and the right wing torn off. No chutes were seen.”6 In whirling, confusing fights of this sort, midair collisions were a constant danger and occurred throughout the war. So did mistaken attacks on friendly aircraft. In fact, aside from the 357th’s abortive bounce, a group of Spitfires had also attacked the 55th earlier during the mission which caused a number of pilots to drop their external fuel tanks.

  As it developed, there weren’t enough enemy aircraft to go around and Righetti descended with five other aircraft of his 338th Fighter Squadron to attack targets of opportunity in the vicinity of Frankfurt and Mannheim. There, they bagged five locomotives and shot up about thirty boxcars, or “goods wagons.”

  “Following these attacks,” Righetti said, “one of the six planes was completely out of ammunition and the remaining planes had approximately half their ammunition left. We were flying north at deck level in the haze because visibility was sufficient to pick out targets and at the same time give us additional security from ground AA [anti-aircraft] positions.”7

  Righetti led the flight of P-51s in a line-abreast formation with his aircraft slightly in the lead. He found what he was looking for about fifteen miles southeast of Munster. “We saw 20, FW-190s flying four-ship flights in close trail formation approximately at 3 o’clock at our altitude. All of the enemy aircraft carried belly tanks. I believe we saw the enemy aircraft before they identified us.”

  Someone called out, “Oh boy, a field day,” but the two formations held their courses until the Germans passed less than half a mile in front of Righetti and his little group. He made a turn to get behind the FW-190s and it was then that the German pilots reacted, as Righetti noted in his encounter report. “I closed on the nearest 190 which was in a tight left turn.” He fired a short burst and observed strikes on the enemy aircraft’s left wingtip. “I turned with the enemy aircraft, and as I did so, I saw two FW-190s directly ahead belly in, one heading due west and the other northwest. Both raised large dust clouds as they hit, but did not explode. Their airspeed was in excess of 150 mph.” It was telling that the two German pilots, although they were part of a formation that was more than three times the size of the attacking American group, chose to throw themselves onto the ground at high speed rather than to fight, or even to flee.