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.”

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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.”

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