Now separated from his flight, Schilling spotted 35 to 40 Focke-Wulfs circling 1,000 feet below him. “I repeated the same tactics as before and attacked one from about 500 yards range.” As the Fw-190 went spinning downward, Schilling latched onto a fifth, which put up more of a fight: “He immediately took violent evasive action, and it took me several minutes of maneuvering to get in a position to fire. I fired from about 300 yards above and to the left, forcing me to pull through him and fire as he went out of sight over the cowling….The pilot immediately bailed out.”

Hooking up with a stray 63rd Squadron pilot, Schilling looked for a sixth kill, but when his wingman was attacked he broke off to help him out. Both escaped. When all the gun-camera film was sorted out later, the Wolfpack had chalked up its best day ever–34 enemy aircraft destroyed. Their tally now stood at more than 800–25 percent of the Eighth Air Force total. (Schilling, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, soon moved up to join 65th Wing Headquarters, finishing the war as a full colonel with 22 1/2 aerial and 11 1/2 ground kills.)

After that, the 56th’s only real challengers in the air were the new Messerschmitt Me-262 jet fighters. The Wolfpack had downed jets before with lucky passing shots or by catching them over their runways. They had stuck with the Jug when all other groups went to P-51s, and were the sole recipients of the P-47M–upengined to produce 465 mph (more speed than a Mustang)–with which they could handle combat on the jets’ terms. On April 5, 1945, a Wolfpack pilot actually ran down a 262 in a shallow dive. Attempting to outturn the P-47, the German pilot was cut off and shot down.

On April 13, the second anniversary of its first combat mission, the Wolfpack celebrated by savaging Eggebeck Airdrome. Coming across the field at 400 to 450 mph, they fired more than 78,000 rounds of .50 caliber, destroying 91 enemy aircraft where they sat and becoming the first Eighth Air Force group to surpass the magic number–1,000 destroyed.

Later that score was reduced, but the 56th Fighter Group finished the war with 992 1/2 confirmed kills, including 664 1/2 in the air, more than any other Eighth Air Force fighter group. Furthermore, the 56th scored 58 probables and 543 damaged in the air and on the ground. At war’s end a P-47M was exhibited under the Eiffel Tower, its nose emblazoned with the legend: Zemke’s Wolfpack, 56th Fighter Group, 1,000 Enemy Aircraft Destroyed!

“A fighter pilot must possess an inner urge for combat,” Zemke said. “The will at all times to be offensive will develop into his own tactics. I stay with an enemy until either he’s destroyed, I’m out of ammunition, he evades into the clouds, or I’m too low on gasoline to continue the combat.”

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For additional reading, Don Hollway recommends: Zemke’s Wolf Pack, by Hub Zemke and Roger Freeman; Gabby: A Fighter Pilot’s Life, by Francis Gabreski and Carl Molesworth; and Thunderbolt! by Robert Johnson and Martin Caidin. An article about U.S. bomber crews tangling with the Luftwaffe, “Twelve O’Clock High: Fact to Fiction,” by Chuck Dunning, can be found in the September 1999 issue of Aviation History.

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