OK, you . . . I now think that I should get two beers.
This one *is* from a German pilot whose information is given in the book "A Higher Call". From the writer of "A Higher Call": "What you’ll read in the following pages is built around four years of interviews with Charlie and Franz and four years of research, on and off." Franz Stigler was a 109 pilot, and here is what he relates:
"THREE DAYS LATER, APRIL 16, 1943
Spiraling upward in their 109s through scattered clouds above the airfield, Franz and Willi saw smoke rising on the other side of Olympus. The gray plumes bellowed from the port of Palermo on the island’s north coast. The Four Motors had bombed the docks and power station there, sinking two ships. Franz, Willi, and twenty-one of their comrades had scrambled too late. The skies were otherwise empty. It was 4: 30 P.M., and the Four Motors had just spoiled the dinner dates Franz had lined up for him and Willi in Trapani. From Olympus, the controllers radioed the flight to alert them that P-38 fighters had been sighted above the Gulf of Palermo. Franz had never seen a P-38, but he had heard the name the boys in Africa gave the new American fighter—“ the Fork-Tailed Devil.”
. . .
Franz liked the idea of pursuing “the herd,” as the bombers were called, instead of “the Fork-Tailed Devils.” The call was Willi’s— he was leading the flights because their squadron commander, Sinner, had been banged up several weeks earlier after a crash landing on the airfield. Despite the fact that Willi was younger than him, Franz respected Willi’s rank and courage.
Not a minute had gone by before someone radioed, “Fighters! Eleven o’clock low!” Franz leaned forward against his straps and peered ahead of his left wing. He saw green silhouettes just two thousand feet below him. At sixteen thousand feet they motored in the opposite direction, toward Africa. Franz’s eyes went wide. Each fighter had two engines, one attached to each large wing. The engines’ booms extended back like fork blades connecting to a small tail. They were P-38s, ten of them, the Fork-Tailed Devils of the 82nd Fighter Group. The Americans called their planes “Lightnings.”
Eager to redeem himself from his botched run on the bombers, Willi radioed Franz to say he was attacking. Willi knew no bounds when it came to pushing his luck, so Franz agreed to cover him. Willi dismissed his flight, as did Franz. It was like the desert again, two experts against many. . . .
. . .
When Franz and Willi landed at Trapani, they hurried to fill out their victory claims in the operations shack. Willi claimed two P-38s and Franz one. Willi was cheerful because they had chased away an entire flight of Fork-Tailed Devils, but Franz felt a sense of regret. He had seen his enemy in the raft. He mentally put himself in that man’s shoes, floating alone as the sea grew choppy and storm clouds rolled in, without water or food. “That’s war,” Franz told himself as he lit a cigarette, another new habit. With each drag of smoke, he put the American pilot farther out of his mind. He scrawled his signature on the paperwork so he and Willi could go celebrate in Trapani, where black-haired “bella donnas” and bottles of sweet Marsala wine were calling."
