The bomber crews had good reason to be edgy. They were about to depart on one of their bloodiest missions, the first Schweinfurt-Regensburg raid. After escorting the B-17s part way to Schweinfurt, the 56th returned to Halesworth and took on 200-gallon, pressed-paper ferry tanks converted for combat use. These upset the Jugs' handling and did not feed well in the low air pressure above 20,000 feet, but they gave the Thunderbolts enough range to meet the bombers over Germany.

The Thunderbolts proceeded to teach a Staffel of twin-engine Messerschmitt Bf-110 night fighters (Me-110s to American fighter pilots) not to venture out in daylight. 'The 61st Squadron came screaming down from the front and caught an Me-110 right over the last box of bombers,' Zemke recalled. 'Two P-47s shot at this guy at the same time–sixteen guns firing–and both of them hit him simultaneously. That Me-110 blew up as I've never seen anything blow up and fell, on fire, directly through the bomber formation…without hitting one of them.'

One of the Bf-110 shooters was Jerry Johnson, who downed two more Germans in quick succession–the 56th's first triple kill, except that he had to split credit for the Messerschmitt. (Two days later, Johnson got a Bf-109, which could have made him the 56th's first ace. Instead, his score stood at 4 1/2.)

Zemke, having gotten a Bf-110 himself, estimated the combat at no more than seven minutes long, but at that distance from base, fuel was already running low and he ordered a return home. From well to the north, however, Captain Bud Mahurin called back, 'We've got 'em cornered. There's plenty for everyone. Come on up this way.'

Soon after Zemke's run-in with Bomber Command, Mahurin had gotten a little too close to one of the new Consolidated B-24 Liberators in formation and his Thunderbolt's tail had been sucked into the bomber's props; the four-engine B-24 had straggled home, but Mahurin had barely escaped from his falling Jug. Now he saw his chance to make amends–he had spotted a Focke-Wulf above the bombers, preparing to turn down into them. Mahurin recalled, 'I sneaked up behind it and started to fire from about 300 yards, closing to 200 yards. It blew up.'

Mahurin and his wingman circled up through the bomber stream onto the tail of a second Fw-190. 'We followed him until he started to make a turn into the front end of the bombers,' said Mahurin, 'when I took a deflection [angled] shot at him and watched him blow up.'

Not one to hold a grudge, Zemke recommended Mahurin for the Distinguished Flying Cross. Later it turned out one of his kills was none other than the commander of II Gruppe JG 26, Oberstleutnant (Lt. Col.) Wilhelm 'Wutz' Galland, brother of the famous Luftwaffe General of Fighters Adolf Galland and himself a 55-victory Experte (ace). His body was found in his aircraft two months later, driven by the force of impact 12 feet into the ground.

Bomber Command lost 60 of the 375 bombers on the mission. But the 56th, scoring 17 confirmed, one probable and nine damaged, prevented even more slaughter. 'We had certainly broken up several German attacks,' Zemke said.

In August 1943, the 56th's top guns began to distinguish themselves. Gabreski scored his first kill, Bob Johnson scored his second, and Zemke his fourth. In September, Zemke led the group on its longest mission yet, a 250-mile ramrod to Emden, Germany. (The P-47s had received new 75-gallon underwing tanks made of metal and pressurized to feed at all altitudes.) Spotting a lone Focke-Wulf stalking a straggling B-17 several thousand feet below, Zemke dived and fired from 500 yards: 'Immediately strikes were registered all over the aircraft. Surprisingly, the Focke-Wulf flew on in a straight line. Another burst brought smoke and flame, and a third caused the left undercarriage leg to drop. Only then did the stricken plane fall away in a vertical dive. As no evasive action had been observed, I concluded the first burst had killed the pilot.'

That made Zemke the 56th's first ace, by a narrow margin. Schilling, who had not scored a victory in 52 missions, got two that same day and three more by October 10, when Bob and Jerry Johnson each got their fifth. With four of the five American aces in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), the 56th never looked back, scoring its 100th kill, a Messerschmitt Me-210 (by now even Messerschmitt used the 'Me' designation), on November 5 (at this time Major Eugene Roberts of the 78th Fighter Group claimed eight kills). On November 26, during a ramrod to Bremen, Zemke's Wolfpack (the nickname given to the 56th) scored an ETO record: 23 confirmed, three probable and nine damaged, including two for Gabreski.

A second-generation Pole who had flown a Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk during the Pearl Harbor attack and a Supermarine Spitfire Mk. IX with the Free Poles in RAF service, Gabreski barreled down on a pair of Bf-110s that dived away–always a mistake against the fast-diving Jug. 'I closed in rapidly behind them and opened fire on one at about 700 yards range…suddenly I was right on top of the 110. I just barely had time to push the control stick forward and duck below the burning German fighter.' Regaining height, Gabreski dived after a second Bf-110. 'This time I slowed my approach slightly, though we were still traveling at about 420 mph when I opened fire from 600 yards. The 110 took solid hits in its wing root and rolled over into a death fall at 14,000 feet.'

Kills four and five were racked up by Gabreski; Schilling and Cook also scored doubles (Cook likewise achieving ace status), and Mahurin got three more Bf-110s to become the ETO's first double ace. By March 1944, with 20 kills, he ranked as its highest scorer, with Bob and Jerry Johnson right behind him. The 61st Squadron became the first in the ETO with 100 victories to its credit; the group's tally stood at 300. That month the Luftwaffe lost 22 percent of its pilots, a blow from which it never really recovered, and the 56th flew a ramrod all the way to Berlin and back without meeting a single enemy fighter.

Then, on March 27, while shooting down a Dornier Do-217 bomber south of Chartres, Mahurin was hit by its rear gunner: 'I could see the shadow of my airplane with a great long trail of black smoke following me,' Mahurin recalled. He bailed out and was last seen running for a tree line. And Jerry Johnson, with 18 kills to his credit, was hit by groundfire while strafing a truck convoy and taken prisoner after bellying in. Mahurin made it back to England via the French underground and an RAF rescue plane, but he was not permitted to risk capture–which might mean having to reveal the secrets of his escape route–again. Transferred to the Pacific theater, Mahurin scored another kill before the war's end, as well as 3 1/2 MiGs in the Korean War, before being shot down again and captured by the North Koreans.

So the mantle of high scorer passed to Bob Johnson. By early May 1944, near the end of his combat tour, Johnson led the ETO with 25 victories, just one less than World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Returning from his last mission, an uneventful ramrod to Berlin on May 8, he rolled onto the tail of a passing Bf-109. The Jerry banked left, but Johnson rolled inside his turn. 'We were real close,' Johnson recalled. 'Close enough that I could see the pilot look back over his shoulder as I opened fire. He went into a dive but I kept right on his tail pouring fire into him. Suddenly his left wing came off and the fighter spun in. That made 26!' When his Numbers three and four chased a flight of Focke-Wulfs into a cloud, only to re-emerge with the Germans on their tails, Johnson scared off the lead Fw-190 with a few bursts. 'I swung my nose to bear on the second plane. Hits! All over the wings and wing roots, and there it was. Number Twenty-seven…my last mission couldn't have been more perfect.'

By now the Wolfpack, flying out of Boxted, Essex–and accounting for more than 400 kills–had developed P-47 tactics to a high art, diving to the attack and zooming back up to safety. From that strategy evolved group tactics: a lead squadron flying low, covered by the second at medium altitude, with the third high up in reserve. Spreading out ahead of the bombers to sweep the skies clean of German fighters–the 'Zemke Fan'– the 66th Fighter Group presented an awesome array of aerial firepower.

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