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

by Stout, Jay

  Operation Bodenplatte was the product of that imperative. At first light, on January 1, 1945, the Luftwaffe launched just more than a thousand aircraft—virtually all of them fighters—on a low-altitude attack against more than a dozen Allied air bases in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. To its credit, the Luftwaffe’s leadership maintained strict secrecy during the period leading up to the actual operation and consequently achieved complete surprise. On the other hand, that secrecy was so complete that trigger-happy German antiaircraft gunners misidentified and shot down many of the Luftwaffe aircraft as they flew to their targets. Moreover, many of the pilots were so ill-prepared and poorly briefed that they had little idea of what their mission was.

  In the event, although many of the attacking units became lost, or were engaged by both hostile and friendly forces prior to reaching their targets, the operation achieved a degree of success. Approximately three hundred Allied aircraft were destroyed on the ground and another two hundred were damaged. Had the German flyers been better trained, the results would have been even more impressive. Regardless, the size and scope of the effort caused Allied planners to reconsider their earlier assessments of the Luftwaffe’s strength and capabilities.

  Still, the short-term results were far overshadowed by the costs. More than two hundred German pilots were captured or killed—the largest single-day loss of the war. These airmen, especially those who were experienced, could not be replaced. It was a blow from which the Luftwaffe simply could not recover. On the other hand, most of the Allied aircraft that were destroyed were parked. As most of their pilots were still sleeping or at breakfast during the attacks, few were killed. The aircraft were easily replaced and the effects of Bodenplatte beyond the day of the attack were essentially nil.

  Bodenplatte had virtually no effect on the England-based Eighth Air Force or the 55th Fighter Group other than to make clear that the enemy was resourceful and capable of mounting large, complex air operations. For his part, Righetti never even mentioned it in his letters home. Indeed, although there was little doubt that the Luftwaffe was on the ropes, to what extent was still uncertain. Accordingly, Allied air operations continued unabated, and the German air force was engaged at every opportunity both in the air and on the ground.

  It was the weather—the worst in decades—that was the biggest factor in determining when and where those engagements occurred. Combat operations aside, the misery that the cold and wet and wind created was inescapable at Wormingford where the 55th’s men lived and worked. One of the 38th Fighter Squadron’s monthly narratives noted that high winds blew the door from one building and lifted the roof from another that housed some of the unit’s officers. “The door was soon reinstalled but the roof has to date defied the efforts of our English friends to fix it. And although they’ve stopped the rain from coming in, a fine grade of black tar continues to drip on any unfortunate officer that tries to use this part of the barracks. Suggestions that the officers move into tents has so far met with nothing but abusive language and flying shoes, stones, etc.”1

  Aggressiveness oftentimes pushed common sense aside during the fight against the Luftwaffe. This was the case with one of the 55th’s airmen on January 3, 1945, during the mission to Fulda. After seeing the bombers across their target, the 55th went looking for trouble. Righetti led the 55th’s B group through Kassel and then back across Calais and home without finding any trade. However, Crowell’s A group spotted three Ar-96 training aircraft headed east at low level near Stuttgart. “We peeled off to the right, went down and clobbered all of them,” noted the 38th’s mission summary report. “Two were seen to blow up in the air, and the third augured in.” A fourth Ar-96 was subsequently spotted and also knocked down.

  Righetti’s letter home that evening wished everyone “a Happy New Year,” and expressed hope that “this one will finish things over here.” He also—after just more than two months in combat—had already started counting down the number of combat hours until his tour was over and he could go home. “Total time now is 122 hours, 148 to go.” He estimated that he would complete the requisite 270-hour combat tour in time to be home by April. Notwithstanding his desire to get safely back home, he still wanted to bag more enemy aircraft. “If I don’t get them in that time, and if the war still needs me, I reckon I’ll sign on for an extension—50 hours is all I can get.”

  Combat hours were those hours flown while on an actual mission. At that point in the war missions generally exceeded four hours, and occasionally stretched to six hours or beyond. Mission paperwork was occasionally fudged as some men “fat penciled” their combat time in order to leave for home sooner. Others logged less than they actually flew so that they could fly more missions.

  Righetti mentioned the downing of the German training aircraft that day only in passing. “Weather’s been quite tough [the] past few days so Heinie fighter opposition has been almost nil. We got three today. However, I didn’t score.” He also noted the length of the mission which, at 5 hours and 40 minutes, “was a long time to sit strapped and squirming in one spot.”

  One event that Righetti did not mention was the downing that day of one of the group’s pilots. That man was Captain John Coonan. Righetti was not aware of the details surrounding Coonan’s loss, but another of the group’s pilots, Dudley Amoss, was. And that night as Righetti penned his letter, Amoss was no doubt enduring a guilty hell.

  The group’s mission summary report described only part of what had happened: “Captain John F. Coonan [was] hit by flak and was seen to belly land in vicinity of Kellmunz. He called in and said he was hit when he passed over a small town. His ship was in good condition after landing except that [the] canopy was off. He was not seen to get out of his plane.” The 38th Fighter Squadron’s monthly narrative noted that the loss of Coonan was, “the first low blow of 1945.”

  Coonan, an old hand who had not only shot down one of the Ar-96s, but had also been credited with a victory against the Japanese earlier in the war and with an Me-109 the previous summer, survived the crash landing and was made a POW. Robert Jones, one of the pilots in Coonan’s White Flight recorded, “Captain Coonan led the attack, and shot down one enemy plane. Several seconds later he said he had been hit.” Jones spotted Coonan’s aircraft in the snow and made a couple of camera passes. He observed that Coonan’s aircraft “seemed to be in good condition.”2

  A German report, J2735, confirmed that the aircraft was only slightly damaged at “12–15%.” It further stated—in a direct contradiction to the 38th’s mission summary report—that Coonan had been shot down by “machine-gun fire from another Mustang.” This information was shared with Coonan who promised to “kill the son-of-a-bitch” who shot him down if he was ever able to determine who it was.

  As it developed, he later had that opportunity. Dudley Amoss was shot down by antiaircraft fire on March 21 while strafing the airfield at Hopsten. He was made a prisoner and was eventually put into the same POW camp as Coonan. “He [Coonan] told me that his wingman had shot him down,” said Amoss. “I had to level with him and tell him that it was me that shot him down!” Amoss, who had not previously admitted his mistake, told Coonan that he had incorrectly identified his aircraft as an Me-109. “It was a long, long shot. I gave him a lot of lead and fired.”

  “Much to my horror,” said Amoss, “as I passed over him, I recognized the plane as a P-51.” Coonan grimaced when Amoss told him the truth. But he neither killed him nor even became angry.3

  Mail call was good to Righetti on January 5, following the group’s mission to Trier, during which he shot up three more locomotives near Fulda. “Xmas presents arrived last evening and I loved them all. They were picked with such good judgment. Thanks too for the swell letters.”

  An official document explained how VIII Fighter Command’s pilots—virtually on their own initiative—came to be so heavily engaged in strafing operations:

  Plainly our fighters, being there for the purpose of fighting Germans, were determined to
join the battle, be it on our terms or on theirs. If the high-altitude strategic escort didn’t produce enough combat and enough victories to satisfy the healthy appetite of the Eighth, then there’d be some fighting lower down.4

  Strafing attacks by Eighth Air Force fighter pilots before 1944 were mostly ad hoc hit-and-run affairs by one or two or a handful of pilots that achieved little of note. In fact, early in the Eighth’s operations it was discouraged as too dangerous—the emphasis was on protecting the bombers. However, on February 22, 1944, elements of the 353rd Fighter Group made a planned attack on their own initiative after completing their escort duties. Eight aircraft hit the airfield at Ostheim and achieved some success. Believing that real hurt could be achieved against the Germans by more thoroughly developing “the art of ground strafing” and subsequently disseminating appropriate tactics throughout VIII Fighter Command, the 353rd’s leadership approached its head, Major General William Kepner.

  Kepner embraced the notion and directed the formation of a temporary unit made up of sixteen volunteers from several different fighter units during March 1944. The group of enthusiastic strafers honored Kepner by dubbing themselves “Bill’s Buzz Boys.” They threw themselves into their work and flew six strafing missions from March 26 to April 12 while developing and testing different tactics. That developing and testing resulted in a tally of thirteen German aircraft destroyed on the ground—together with an assortment of other targets—at a cost of two pilots and three aircraft. Their emphasis, however, was on airfields as the neutralization of the Luftwaffe prior to the invasion was an imperative.

  Importantly, the work served as the basis for a document, Down to Earth, from which the Eighth’s fighter pilots—as intended—took lessons and, as they gained experience of their own, refined the work of the Buzz Boys. Righetti certainly identified with much of what was written. The following excerpt applied as much to him as to his men:

  The qualifications for a successful strafing pilot are plenty of daring, the ability to size up a situation and to arrive at a plan of attack quickly and on the spot, and, of course, he must be a cool shot. He must know when not to attack as well as when to attack. Many pilots enjoy ground strafing much more than escort work due to the certainty of action when they start out.5

  Another official document, Light, Intense and Accurate: U.S. Eighth A.F. Strategic Fighters versus German Flak in the E.T.O., described Righetti almost perfectly when it noted: “Because if there is anything a fighter pilot likes to do more than anything else, it is to get down on the deck, going like hell with all guns blazing, shooting up everything in sight.”6 Darrell Cramer, who credited Righetti with “great combat flying skills,” recalled his fighting spirit: “He was always aggressive and a good offense is better than a good defense in air combat. He inspired a sense of aggressiveness in the pilots he led and they were always spoiling for a fight.”

  The 55th, with Righetti at its head, escorted a group of 3d Air Division B-17s to Germersheim, south of Mannheim on January 6, 1945, as the German thrust into the Ardennes stalled. The escort was uneventful and after seeing the bombers clear of the target, Righetti broke the group into smaller elements and sent them to hunt on their own. He took the 338th in tow, descended to fifteen hundred feet and headed east—deeper into Germany.

  It wasn’t long until Righetti noted fresh, muddy, vehicle tracks around the airfield perimeter at Giebelstadt. Closer inspection showed more than a dozen twin-engine aircraft and nearly that many single-engine types, “well-dispersed and camouflaged.” He wasted no time and sent half the squadron down “to make the initial and surprise attack while he acted as top cover and observed the attack as it progressed.”

  There was no established protocol as to whether a squadron or group leader should make the first firing pass when he might catch the defending gunners by surprise and complete one or more runs unmolested. However, there was also the possibility that the airfield defenses would be ready and alert, in which case the unlucky pilot would receive the full attention of the enemy defenses and might very well be shot to pieces. Another very real risk was that he might do little more than alert the enemy gunners so that they would be ready for the rest of the pilots when they eventually made their attacks.

  In truth, there were at least as many different sets of tactics for attacking airfields as there were fighter groups, and nothing was mandated by VIII Fighter Command. Contemporaneous documents outlined the benefits in carefully studying photographs of a given airfield, locating its aircraft and defenses, and creating definitive—and often complex—strafing plans. For instance, some plans called for shooting up the enemy antiaircraft guns before beating up the rest of the airfield. Others called for distracting the gunners with a high flight while the rest of the group made a low, fast, surprise attack. Many schemes described attack headings, altitudes, patterns, and sequences in great detail.

  Few argued against the notion that it was better to have a plan than not, but the Luftwaffe’s situation late in the war was extremely fluid and a base crowded with aircraft one day might be deserted the next. Likewise, airfields that were seemingly only lightly defended might be greatly reinforced overnight. Or, weather or operational considerations might compel a group to attack a different airfield, thus making a carefully wrought plan useless.

  In truth, most airfield attacks were spontaneous affairs made as the fighters headed home after fulfilling their bomber escort duties. It was often the case that the pilots stumbled upon airfields about which they knew nothing and immediately attacked, trusting in surprise and luck. Or sometimes a simple scheme was quickly put together and executed, literally, on the fly.

  There were basic principles followed by many of the pilots. For instance, some advocated attacking, “from down sun so that if the attacker chooses to pull up he can climb directly into the sun, thereby making a very difficult target for the ground gunners.” Another factor was the wind: “When the attack on an airdrome is started, the direction of the wind should be taken into consideration so that smoke from burning aircraft may be used to advantage in providing a cover for attacking planes.” The downside, of course, was that the drifting smoke sometimes obscured the enemy aircraft that the fighters were trying to destroy.

  One group declared that, “all passes should be made at high speed and minimum possible altitude.”7 Another group commander agreed that attacking aircraft must, “maintain high air speeds. There is a tendency after a few passes to let the airspeed in the pattern drop off to slightly over 200 m.p.h. This is dangerous because a plane is much more vulnerable to ground fire at reduced air speed.” Probably the best but most ignored bit of advice was, “If the field has too much flak, use your head: Go home.”8

  Aside from officially promulgated documents and memorandums, experience was shared pilot-to-pilot. Russell Haworth recalled a discussion with Righetti. “I pointed out from my observations of combat films how others would start firing out of range, see their hits fall short, and then try to correct by pulling up, only to have their rounds rake through to the other side of the target.”

  Not surprisingly, although he was canny about how he used his men, and about the risks to which he subjected himself, Righetti sometimes attacked airfields in ways that violated these tactics and principles. In fact, they were regularly broken by pilots from all the fighter groups as circumstances sometimes precluded making a perfect attack. Moreover, the prospect of easy targets was, time and again, simply too great to resist.

  The pilots had to be especially aware of what was going on around them, aside from enemy fire. When attacking in line-abreast formations, they had to concentrate on, or accept, whatever targets were generally in front of them. A turn to fire on an attractive target might put a pilot in another’s line of fire. “Everyone had to know where everybody else was,” said Herman Schonenberg, “and be very alert so you either did not shoot down a buddy, or get shot up by one. It was exciting.”

  The outcomes of these airfield attacks—both plann
ed and spontaneous—were never predictable. There were instances when groups were savaged despite having made meticulous preparations. There were other times when formations threw themselves pell-mell across an airfield without any plan whatsoever and created tremendous destruction while suffering few or no losses. For his part, Righetti seemed absolutely unable to let pass any opportunity to shoot up German aircraft, or indeed, any worthwhile target.

  His attitude seemed similar to that of Donald Blakeslee who was one of the USAAF’s most successful fighter pilots in Europe, having started flying combat first with the Royal Canadian Air Force out of England in 1941. Blakeslee offered much wisdom about the art of strafing but put little stock in by-the-number tactics. “… I want to say a word about tactics. My feeling is that there is entirely too much emphasis placed on methods of strafing and on so-called tactics. Strafing is a simple process. You pick a target and shoot it up. As long as you are comfortable and get away with it, that’s all there is to it. Every pilot probably has a different idea on how to do it. A general rule just can’t be laid down, for one method is probably no better than another.”9

  Notwithstanding the volatile nature of airfield strafing, there was no doubt that the attacks were effective. In effect, the Americans were taking the fight to the Luftwaffe. Whereas, during 1944, of the 7,977 German aircraft the USAAF’s fighter pilots claimed destroyed, 70 percent, or 5,602 of them, were aerial victories, while only 2,375 were strafing claims. But of the 5,783 German aircraft claimed destroyed by the Americans in 1945, 76 percent, or 4,421, were ground victories and only 24 percent, or 1,362, were aerial claims. In other words, more Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed on the ground than in the air.10