AH: Were you assigned a particular plane?

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Aviation History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

McGee: My usual P-51C was 42-103072, which as I recall bore the “buzz number” 78. I christened it Kitten, which was my wife’s nickname, and my crew chief, Nathaniel Wilson, kept it purring, too.

AH: What was the squadron’s makeup?

McGee: Usually, each squadron would have 18 aircraft take off–16 and two spares. If everything went well as we climbed and formed up, the group leader would tell the spares to go on back to base. But if anyone was having engine trouble, then the spares would go wherever needed. The commander of the 302nd was Captain Edward C. Gleed. After he became group operations officer, the squadron was led by 1st Lt. Melvin T. “Red” Jackson, then V.V. Haywood. In September 1944, I was promoted to first lieutenant and became a flight leader.

AH: Who led the missions?

McGee: Sometimes the squadron commander or operations officer led the formations, sometimes the group operations officer, and when the leader had a problem, someone next in line would be designated to assume the lead.

AH: Do any particular missions stick out in your memory?

McGee: They were all long flights, usually five hours and at least one I recall that was six hours. On those flights, you find that the cockpit really gets small and you can sweat through a leather flight jacket sitting up there under the sun. We were glad when we got off the target and we could be less rigid in keeping formation with one another. Fighter sweeps were great fun.

AH: When did you initially encounter aerial opposition?

McGee: I first saw Messerschmitt Me-109s over Markersdorf, Austria, on July 26, 1944. In his briefings, B.O. was very explicit about the way we operated. If enemy planes appeared to attack, the flight commander would designate who would go after them. The rest of us stayed with the bombers, doing S-maneuvers, and we were glad that we weren’t bomber pilots, who had to hold a tight formation as they made their final runs over the target, through enemy flak and fighters. On this occasion, the Germans didn’t attack the formation. In another sighting, 2nd Lt. Roger Romine was told to get them and got a kill.

AH: What about your aerial victory?

McGee: That was during the bombing mission to the Czechoslovakian oil refinery at Pardubice, north of Vienna. Their tactic on that occasion was to try to fly through the bomber stream and keep on going. We were pretty much over the target area when we spotted a Focke Wulf Fw-190 and I got the word, “Go get him.” I fell in behind him, and he took all kinds of evasive action, diving for the ground. We were down over the local airfield–I remember seeing a hangar on fire out of the corner of my eye–when I got in behind him and got in a burst that must have hit something in the controls. He took a couple more hard evasive turns and then went right into the ground. I stayed low getting out, to stay out of the sights of enemy groundfire. During that time, I saw a train pulling into a little station, so I dropped my nose and made a firing pass at the engine. Then, when I thought I’d pulled away from where I thought all the ack-ack was, I began climbing back up. Romine was my wingman on that occasion, and somewhere in all that jinking he had lost me and had gone up to rejoin the formation. He saw the Fw-190 crash, though, and confirmed the victory for me. [McGee's opponent was from Jagdgeschwader 300, three of whose Pardubice-based Fw-190As attacked the 5th Bomb Division and damaged two bombers before being driven off.] The 302nd’s 1st Lt. William H. Thomas got another Fw-190 and 1st Lt. John F. Briggs of the 100th Squadron downed an Me-109 on that mission. Unfortunately, Romine got killed after his 97th mission–in an on-the-ground accident in his airplane–in November 1944.

AH: Your flight log also credited you with an enemy plane on the ground at Ilandza, Yugoslavia, on September 8.

McGee: Yes, on some days, we were assigned a fighter sweep over an enemy airfield to go in and catch anything we could there. I was only credited with destroying one, but we damaged a great number of enemy aircraft on the ground.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to