Here it is. Thanks to my frirnd Dan aka "+Tiff" from another game/sim/time...
-Westy
From "Top Guns" by Joe Foss and Matthew Brennan.
(John Lowell's account of his fight with Galland 38 vs 190D9)
"One of our last P38 missions was a flight to protect bombers on
a mission near Berlin. My squadron was flying top cover. We were
attacked from above, out of the sun by sixteen long nosed FW 190s.
I was alerted by a flight leader in our squadron. I saw a flight of four
Focke-Wulfs coming in from too high to effectively fire on my flight
so I quickly slowed the flight as we opened up laterally for a defensive
break and a head on attack that the Germans never wanted when they
were fighting P38s. The lead German flight passed very close over
me with throttles back trying to slow down.
I looked up at the German plane. The pilot was looking down at me
as he eased ahead and close above me into sure death, unless he could
take violent evasive action. He split-Sed and I followed him. He nearly
got out of my sight because the P38 high-speed compressibility problem
kept me from staying with him in a vertical dive. I stayed out of trouble
by doing a vertical barrel roll to pull several Gs and keep my speed under
control. Finally he turned to find me, and I cut across to close with him.
Then the fight started.
He was a fantastic, wild, talented pilot who pulled all the tricks I had
ever seen. But finally I got into a tight Lufbery with him and used my
clover-leaf surprise to get a few strikes. None of them harmed the
power unit. The long-nosed 190 had methyl injection that was usable
for ten-second spurts. Then a pilot had to quit using it for a while
because the twenty-six percent added boost to the engine would burn
it up if used too long. This pilot used his methyl injection very
advantageously to keep me from shooting him down. When his methyl
was gone, he dived to the deck and dropped into a tar pit that was
about 500 feet deep and wide enough to fly a fighter in a tight turn.
I got a few more strikes on him. A portion of his vertical stabilizer and
one wingtip flew off. Unfortunately I was getting low on gas and had to
break combat and head for the North Sea, and England. After two
more circles in the pit I pulled up and flew away to the west. I looked
back over my shoulder to see the FW-190 going the opposite way,
waggling his wings as if to say, "I'll see you tomorrow and we'll go at it again."
A few years ago the American Fighter Aces had their annual reunion at
Maxwell AFB near Montgomery, Alabama. The base commander invited five of the top living German Aces. The first day I arrived in a large hall
where over one hundred Maxwell and AFA officers were gathered. Ace
Gabreski, the highest scoring living USAF ace, who is a friend and a man
that I admire to the hilt, was talking with the German Aces, along with
several other US Aces. One subject was the German attitude and tactics
relating to the P38. Gabby saw me come to the opposite side of room,
waved and hollered for me to come over. He introduced me as the
highest scoring P38 Aces in Europe.
When I shook hands with German General Adolf Galland, I said, "Adolf,
did you ever shoot down a P38?"
He said, "Yah, I shoot down eight."
Then I asked him if any of his pilots told him about a fight in a long
nosed FW190 in late 44 against a P38 that wound up in a huge pit with
water and two crashed P38s on the bottom. I described what had happened and the strikes I got on the long nosed 190, then told him
that when I ran low on gas and had to leave, the German pilot had
waggled his wings as he flew away in the opposite direction. I was
using my hands and looking down as I talked and wasn't watching
Galland. When I looked up, he was pale white.
He said, "You son of a squeak! You dom neer keel me dat day!"
Holy Mackeral! All the pilots that heard our conversation bellowed
their surprise, including me. Adolf wouldn't let me out of his sight
for the rest of the day, asking me how I got the P38 to do what I had
explained was my clover leaf in a tight Lufbery "Fight to the death"
tactic. He wanted to know how I trained our pilots and had many
other questions about tactics."
