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I
was flying Floral White Two. Floral White
leader (Charcoal)
who
was leading the Group, peeled off into his
dive-bombing run
and
I followed immediately. As I released my
bomb I noticed
that
Charcoal was turning to the right and diving
for the
ground
instead of zooming back to altitude, so I
turned after
him.
Charcoal closed in very rapidly on a light
colored twin-
engined
ship which was flying over an air-field at
about 800 feet
altitude.
He fired a medium burst and broke up and to
the
right
at about two hundred yards. I realized that
I was closing
too
rapidly and I chopped my throttle and closed
in while the
rear
gunner of the enemy aircraft (JU-88) began
firing. At
about
500 yards I opened fire and continued fire
to about 200
yards
at which time the return fire had ceased and
the right
engine
apparently exploded as a great deal of black
oil and
debris
came back adn (and)
covered the leading edges of my plane
from
wing-tip to wing-tip with dirty oil. The
front of my
canopy
was completely covered with oil so I broke
sharply up
and
to the right. I climbed to about 4000 feet
as I kicked rudder
violently
and searched for enemy aircraft to the rear
or above.
I
leveled off and circled and observed the
enemy aircraft in a
shallow
dive toward the ground and ready to crash.
Two P-47's
dived
at the enemy aircraft, one coming in a
shallow dive from
the
rear and another in a very steep dive from
the right rear.
I
observed the P-47 in the steep dive to fire
a long deflection
burst
which kicked up the dirt along the right
side of the path
of
the JU-88 which was just off the ground. I
did not see the
other
P-47 fire and immediately thereafter the
JU-88 hit the
ground
and burst into flames. The encounter occured
at 1905
hours
just notheast of the town of Creil and it
ended when the
enemy
aircraft crashed in a gully about four miles
northeast
of
the town. I claim one JU-88 destroyed.
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