Escort Pilot

Guarding the American Bombers Over Europe in World War II

Philip Kaplan, Andy Saunders

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781510705173
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War II
• Index: History

Spitfire, Mustang, Lightning, Thunderbolt … in the darkest days of World War II, these legendary fighters escorted lumbering heavy bombers over enemy territory, providing protection, drawing cover, and taking on everything Germany's Luftwaffe could throw at them. Escort Pilot is the lavishly-illustrated celebration of these unique heroes, painstakingly researched and beautifully designed. It conjures up the lost world of these daring US, British, and other Allied pilots. Readers witness gripping, first-hand accounts of deadly dogfights over Germany, accompanied by warm, humorous personal reminiscences of life on the ground, accompanied throughout by hundreds of period photos and reproductions of vintage artifacts and keepsakes - many in full color.Filled with engaging anecdotes, little-known fighter lore, and a wealth of fascinating and colorful details you'd expect – from favorite, long-forgotten local pubs to personalized flight jacket artwork – Escort Pilot is a richly evocative reminiscence of a heroic era and the larger-than-life personalities that inhabited it.

A LAST LOOK

Wartime color captured at the Martlesham Heath base of the 356th Fighter Group.

Fighter pilots relaxing after a mission.

OF THE HALF-MILLION American airmen stationed in England, there must have been many who were thankful to shake its damp soil from their feet at the end of the war. Staff Sergeant Henry Wertz of the Steeple Morden-based 355th Fighter Group expressed their feelings: “Some day to America we’ll return, and behind us bridges we will burn, but as sure as there is sadness, joy and bliss, there are some things of England we will miss. The Daily Mirror and its sweetheart ‘Jane,’ walks in the meadow, through the lane, but when we are back in America once more, to enjoy the things for us there in store, we will soon forget the English way, and settle at home, e’er more to stay!”

Not all the Yanks, though, turned their backs on Britain for good. Some would become eager to come back. American fighter group veterans returned frequently for one last look. It is said that as men grow older they find more strongly in their hearts the memory of their youth. It is an inexplicable but powerful emotion that draws them back. But coming back can be painful as well as happy. There is sadness at the sight of the cemeteries and wayside memorials. Even those who were not part of the war cannot fail to be moved by the thousands of white memorial markers that stand row upon row beside the Wall of Missing at the Madingley Cemetery near Cambridge. Today it is a place of pilgrimage for returning veterans. Most commemorated here were airmen with the American Eighth and Ninth Air Forces, who died before their time. Those vets who come back have, for the most part, led long and fulfilling lives, and one returning airman confessed to a feeling of guilt as he scanned name after name. “Each of them should and could have been me.”

At Steeple Morden the veterans kept coming back, not all of them having “settled at home, e’er more to stay.” Their focus has been the imposing 355th Fighter Group memorial at the edge of the abandoned base. It is well kept, in stark contrast to the old airfield around it. Here, weed-choked roadways and perimeter track meander aimlessly among cultivated farmlands and the soil is fertile with the scattered debris of war: a fuel filler cap, a crushed Zippo lighter, a press-stud fastener marked CHICAGO, spent .50 caliber shell casings, and mounds of brick rubble. All are echoes of the past. Casual visitors with only the slightest sense of history realize there is something special about these places. Each crumbling roadway to nowhere is a memory lane, every dilapidated hut a reminder of lost youth. One historian said of these places: “If there are ghosts, then they are here.”

The 357...