Un rta chez les soviet...

par Invité Lun 9 Jan 2006 - 13:41

J'ai retrouvé ce témoignage que je trouve tres interessant , je le repost pour ceux qui n'ont pas encore eu la chance de le lire :

AVIATION ARTIST DWAYNE HOLT INTERVIEWS 302ND FIGHTER SQUADRON PILOT LEON, SPEARS ABOUT FLYING THE MUSTANG WITH THE RED TAILS

Q: Can you describe the loss of your P-51 Kitten?

Spears: I was hit by German 88 guns during a mission over Berlin at 32,000 feet. That's almost six miles straight up! There was no way I could get back to Italy and make it over the Alps, so I had to crash land Kitten in Poland. I would have to be a least 18,000 feet to cross the mountains. I knew by the way my engine was sounding that I would be no way near 18,000 feet to make it home. I turned 90 degrees west toward Poland and I landed near this river. The Germans were on one side of the river and the Russians were on the other side. Between the two of them they shot my plane to pieces. You see, when the P-51 Mustang is flying directly at you it looks like an Me- 109 from certain angles. While I was flying down this river I could feel shells hitting the plane. I said to myself, "Well, I'm on this side of the river so the shells got to be coming from those Russians., Once they saw that I was a American they stopped firing at me. As I remember, I saw myself coming toward this runway. I said to myself that if I let the wheels down I could probable make a pretty good landing. I decided not to land because I did not want the enemy to use the plane. As I was in the process of putting the wheels up I hit the ground. I did not have enough power to work the hydraulics.

Surprisingly it was Germans that came right away in a car. There were two officers and three enlisted men in Nazi helmets and they had their guns pointed right at me. I put my hands in the air and they motioned for me to come close. They could see that I had a .45 pistol. They made motions that they wanted that .45 on the ground, which I did. It seems to me that they were trying to be as nice as they could because they knew that the war was coming to an end for them, so they did not want to get to cruel. The Germans did know about the Geneva Convention which dealt with war crimes. They did not want to be involved in any war crimes. They sat me in the car and drove to their headquarters. I was interrogated by a German official who asked if could speak English. He asked me where did I come from. I told him, "I'm sorry, I can't tell you. I can tell you my name, rank and serial number." I said, "You know the Geneva Convention don't you." He said, "Yes." Whenever he would ask me something, I would mention the Geneva Convention then he would say, "I'm sorry I ask," and that was it. They knew full well that any information they could get would be useless for them. I was only with them for three days.

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The Russians were in Poland and they were advancing about 25 to 35 miles a day. At about the third day I heard all this ripping and roaring and the building was shaking and everything. All the glass was out of the windows, but I pulled, a board off a window area and the first thing I saw was this huge Russian tank. There were 40 or 50 guys surrounding it going through the town blowing up buildings. This scared me because I thought that they would blow this building up that I was in. I was screaming and hollering to them and a guy that looked like a Russian officer looked up and saw me. When I saw him looking at me I had a A-2 flight jacket on with a large American flag on the back. I put my back to the window so he could see it and I could hear him yell, "American! American!" He came up and gave me a big bear hug!

Q: Please relate your first combat encounter with enemy aircraft.

Spears: I had an air combat encounter in Kitten when my flight of about five aircraft escorted a... I believe it was a British Mosquito reconnaissance plane over a target area. He led us while we kept him in sight. We escorted him to the Munich area to this German ball bearing factory. As soon as he started his photo run, we backed off a little so he could do his work. He had to fly straight and level. The Mosquito was a very fast plane. When we came back from the target area he just out ran us. We could not keep up with him because of his speed. We heard him say on the radio "Ta, ta, chaps!" and just keep on going past us. As we started after him we noticed a He-l 11 bomber turning our direction. Well, we turned into him. When he saw us turning, I could see little specks coming out the bottom of the bomber, which meant he was firing his hand-held machine guns. He did not hit us. I think he waited too long to fire because we were just right on top of him. By the time he made his turn we started to fire on him. We keep firing and I could see pieces coming off and then smoke and fire would come out and then the plane went in toward the ground sideways. Both me and James Mitchell destroyed this aircraft and shared the victory.

Q: Were you allowed to put ground victory markings on your planes?

Spears: No. l did get quite a few ground victories.

Q: What squadron were you in?

Spears: When I first got overseas I was with the 302nd Fighter Squadron, which was later disbanded. The guys with the 302nd FS went to the 99th FS, the 100th FS and the 301st FS. I went to the 301st FS.

Q: How come the 302nd FS was disbanded?

Spears: Well; a group with four squadrons would be a bit much, logistically and tactically. What they did was beef up the three squadrons. Instead of having four lesser squadrons they had three larger squadrons.

Q: Did the markings of 302nd FS Mustangs stay the same when they were transferred to the other three squadrons?

Spears: The planes came with you, all the markings were the same from the previous squadron. My P-51 strangely enough had the number "51" on the side when I received it!

Q: Were there dorsal fins added to the P-51 I's vertical stabilizers?

Spears: That's was one of the things that was a big help because it was in front of the rudder, This device disturbed the air flow from the propeller. You see, the air flow from the propeller doesn't just go back, it goes around the airplane. The dorsal fin in front of the vertical fin broke the airflow up to the point that you always had good control of your airplane. My P-51 Kitten did have the dorsal fin.

Q: What was your first combat experience in a P-51 Mustang?

Spears: We flew from Ramitelli to an area were they are having that war in Yugoslavia right now. it was a place around the Udine Valley. We were escorting bombers over Yugoslavia. Coming back from the target we were told that we could take out targets of opportunity, which means that we could go down and do a little strafing. I remember we went down into the Udine Valley and I saw a train going through the valley. All of us jumped on that train. We stopped it from moving. I made two or three passes. On one of the passes I made, I saw steam and smoke from the engine shoot straight up into the air. I liked strafing because I liked to fly close to the ground.

Q: When did you arrive at Ramitelli Air Base?

Spears: Sometime in November of 1944. That's when I first saw the P-51 Mustangs.

Q: Were you assigned your own plane?

Spears: Yes! It was a C model. It was a hand-me-down from someone who had rotated back to the States. I think my plane was previously flown by Charles McGee. He had his time in and rotated back to the States. As a replacement pilot I was given his plane. i remember very clearly that the Mustang had some nose art on it which just said Kitten written on the side. I left the nose art on there, because I remember the first time I flew it and came down, my crew chief asked me what I thought about the plane's performance. I said it's justifiably named because the engine sure did purr like a kitten!

Q: How would you describe the maintenance done on the Mustangs?

Spears: They were very well maintained. We had very fine crew chiefs!

Q: Did any representative from the North American P-51 factory come to Ramitelli to consult you guys on the P-51 Mustang?

Spears: No. The instructors were our own guys. We went through the technical manual and did a little ground school work. There was no class room type thing to it. It was mostly hands on. After it has been assumed that we had enough training to fly into combat, we were assigned missions. When a combat mission came along, you were just assigned to it. Three flights would take off daily to go into combat. AC