Another wonderful veteran interview done.
This time our victim was mr. Hemmo Leino, Fokker D.XXI, Morane Saulnier 406 and Messerchmitt 109 ace.
Mr. Leino testing WarBirds III December 2001:
Mr. Leino as young pilot:
We chatted with mr. Leino for over 4 hours. I'm including few fun snippets from the discusison. Full interview appears some day to our history site at
http://www.compart.fi/icebreakers/WW2History.html.We talked with mr. Leino and he mentioned a Spitfire that he shot down. Glancing down to his "ace bio" I wondered "what Spitfire, there's no SPitfire here" but he continued telling how the squadron intelligence officer had insisted it couldn't have been a Spitfire "the Russians don't have Spitfires here" and marked it as a P-51. Mr. Leino agreed but has thought ever since "what bloody Mustang, it was no Mustang, it was a Spitfire V". He had tried to explain to the intelligence officed how how the plane had looked exactly like Spitfire when he had bounced it from behind, and how it had an air scoop under its right wing. "No other plane had air scoop there, hell I knew what a Mustang is and it has air scoop under its fuselage, this one didn't have that".
And so on. We had a war time identification manual with us there, and he very expertly showed us how he could recognize a Spitfire, and when asking "so you had pretty good identification manuals there in the squadron" he agreed that yes, he know well what different planes looked like, even those he had never seen with his own eyes yet.
He had another pretty major surprise for us, when we were talking about the cannonboot 109 G, G6/R6. He told us how he completely hated and despised it, and "it was so bad climber that when I saw those four Lightings I just couldnät get to their level, (don't remember who but two guys from same squadron) were tangling with the Lightings above me and I tried and tried to climb but just couldn't get up there."
And he swore that yes, those were for P-38 Lightings and nothing else. "Intelligence claimed that no, there couldn't have been P-38s but I saw four of them right above me and they were nothing else but Lightings. ANd I was flying with that damn cannonboot Messerchmitt and couldn't get up to attack them."
Pretty interesting. By the way mr. Leino must be one of those maybe quite few pilots, who definitely haven't overclaimed. His official score stands at 11 victories, but so far research from Russian archives has found him 20 victories - with pilot names and units. So his actual score might be twice as big as his official. During the summer war he during one day shot down two Yak-9s in row, confirmed from ground. Next day he shot again at two Yak-9s, unconfirmed, until Soviet archives show that both fell again. All four planes from same unit. Mr. Leino himself said though, that "those 11 victories are confirmed and they won't change from that. But it is interesting to see what the reserarchers find from Russian archives, it is very nice there are people who dig up that information, but I still need to check my own papers to make sure I surely was on those places."
Another interesting combat episode was when Leino was with 5 other Morane Saulnier fighters making a offensive patrol to enemy rear. The flight appeared over Soviet airfield, and 4 planes went down to harass the field. Flight commander ordered Leino and one other plane to stay up as high cover. Well, there started to appear movement on the field - Soviet fighters started rolling. The four plane started - WHAT ELSE!!!! - vulching ;-) Leino's wingman saw the others are vulching down there and - hopppps - dove into the action as well. Yeah, flight discipline..
Now there was only one plane covering those 5 other vulching the Soviet airfield. And what mr. Leino did? Well he saw FIVE I-15 bis fighters flying past. And he thought "hell me too" and attacked the five Soviet fighters by himself. In his first pass Leino had too much speed and was forced to overshoot "but still I hit two of them". He kept on attacking and attacking until... "Then I saw the Sekehe city factory pipes and was scared to hell." WHy? Well - he was there, 100 kilometers behind enemy lines, over enemy airfield, alone - and radio didn't work, nobody knew where he was.
So he was scared toejamless when noticed his situation, turned and returned home. After all these years he still said "if I wouldn't have scared so much I would have shot them all down." You should notice, that he had ammuniation left only in his one 12.7 mm machine gun. The "rat guns had so little ammo and they were just useless but that Berezina was a wonderful weapon and had lots of ammo. I had enough ammo to shoot them all if I had stayed."
Official score give him two I-15 bis victories. Research on Soviet archives show that also third plane went down. All practically with ONE MACHINE GUN. Eat this, flight sim dweebs ;-)
Later in the summer battles of 1944 he shot down four Yak-9s in two days, using 109s capability to spiral climb. All 4 from same squadron, no wonder Soviets had to withdraw whole regiments from the Finnish front because lack of pilots, already during their offensive. Two of those Yak-9s were confirmed, but the other two were found from Russian archives.
Combat stories were not the primary matter in our chatting, but those I can remember best right now.
Full interview comes one or another day. Meanwhile, why not enjoy what we've done so far.
Several interviews are currently in process of proof typed from tape or being translated into english. Keep the site bookmarked ;-)
More about Hemmo Leino:
Mr. Leino and Kyösti Karhila with Virtual Pilots:
http://www.byterapers.com/~grendel/photos/virtuaalilentajat/ilmailuharrastepaivat2001/Mr. Leino's official score:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/pguiller/leino.htmKossu and My were also there interviewing mr.Leino. Thanks, guys!
Grendel
Virtual Pilots Finland
VLeLv Icebreakers
