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www.warbirds.st
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Stan Andrews, P-38 ace, remembers his first fight and first victory
Stan Andrews tells us about his
first air to air combat after arriving in New Guinea. That took
place on 27 Dec 42. Incidentally, it is this same fight that Dick
Bong (Leading American Ace, WWII) got his first two kills.
He was attached to the 39th Fighter Squadron, 35th
Fighter Group the same squadron that Stan was in. However, they
were not in the same flight that day.
"Note the moccasins. I didn't
fly in them in
On 27 Dec 42, I was tail-end Charlie
in a flight of four P-38s lead by Lt. Eason. (He was killed a few
months later in the Bismark Sea Battle). We were flying a patrol
over Buna, New Guinea. My radio was out so I was just staying with
the flight and was keeping my eyes open. There were broken clouds
over the area at about fifteen thousand feet. We were cruising around
in a out of the clouds and underneath them from time to time. I
noticed the leader started down through them all of a sudden but
since I didn’t have a radio that was functioning, I didn’t know
what was taking place so I tagged along. When I broke out of the
clouds, I was looking head-on at a Zero coming at me with a lot
of little lights blinking on the wings. Needless to say, I suddenly
got very busy turning on gun switches, pushing the throttles and
prop pitches full forward and taking evasive action. I was really
scanning the sky at this point, clearing my tail, underneath, above,
etc. All of those fly specks on my windshield and canopy turning
into Zeros in a hurry..
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