Finishing school for P47 pilots

Experienced airmen get final lessons on gunnery

By Andrew A. Rooney, Stars and Stripes staff writer

AN EIGHTH AIR FORCE FIGHTER STATION, England, June 23 — This is an Army institution of higher learning. It is a finishing school for pilots who will be pointing the blunt noses of their P47s at Nazi fighters high over Germany, France and Belgium.

Gunnery from a fighter plane is a tough job. It takes practice and long hours of training. The P47 pilot is faced with the task of flying 13,500 pounds of machinery in circles at upwards of 400 mph to outmaneuver the Jerry fighter, and at the same time aim a stream of small projectiles at the German plane flying 400 mph in another direction.

It is like trying to shoot through the brass ring with a .22 on a runaway merry-go-round.

At this station, commanded by Col. Jack W. Hickman, of Tampa, Fla., experienced fliers are brought in from the States. They go up in the planes they will fly in combat, knock the rust off their rolls, lazy eights and Immelmans and do a lot of shooting.

The instructors here are men with combat experience, most of them RAF transferees. Head man among them is Maj. Selden Edner, a 25-year-old veteran who has five German planes to his credit. He came from San Jose, Cal., to join the RAF.

Best in the Business

The other men at the field who have worked with Maj. Edner for more than a year swear that he is the best in the business. "I'm embarrassed to wear the same rank on my shoulder as Maj. Edner does," another major on the field commented.

The men learning aren't green pilots. They are experienced pilots who are tired of training — they are anxious to get to work, but they are glad to get all the gunnery experience they can before they see action.

Many of them are RAF transferees who are learning the difference between the performance of a Spit and a P47, and some are fresh from US. training schools. There are all kinds. Take Lt. Windmayer — 2/Lt. Frederick C. Windmayer, of Chicago — he was a buck sergeant on the line at Hickam Field when the Japs struck their blow at Pearl Harbor. He was boiling mad and determined to avenge his friends who were killed by the Japs. He was accepted as an Air Force cadet, returned to the States and trained as a fighter pilot on the West Coast. When the time came that he was ready to go after the Japs, he was shipped to the ETO.

Natcherly.

Lt. Col. Melvin F. McNickle, of Doland, S.D., is in charge of the whole replacement program at the field. He emphasizes that the station handles plane replacements and ground personnel replacements, as well as fighter pilots.

"We get everything in here," Col. McNickle says. "We get twin-engined pilots to convert into P47 pilots. As a matter of fact all replacements for fighter groups in the British Isles come through us.

"We get planes here and make minor modifications on them, and when an operational group needs them we ship them out. We like to keep enough good ships on the field to carry out the training program, but naturally we have to give the best planes to the operational groups."

Another feature of the combination replacement center and training school is the OTU at the field. The OTU (an adopted RAF abbreviation, meaning Operation Training Unit) is for men who return from a series of ops for further gunnery practice. It doesn't indicate a lack of proficiency (those guys don't get back for more practice), but the men don't like it. They want to get back to work.

The chief instructor of the OTU is a veteran of 63 RAF sorties. "Fighting is like learning the touch system on a typewriter. You have to be able to get your plane into position without thinking about it."

Gunnery Problems

A fighter pilot's problems in gunnery involve angles that demand the split-second solution of trigonometrical problems. The best of them, such as the RCAF genius, "Screwball" Buerling, perform these functions automatically, and he and a few others were born with the knack of calculating speed, distance and fire angles, but the ordinary guy has to learn the hard way.

Another justification for the pilot's training school is that the men must learn the peculiarities of climatic conditions and terrain in England. British maps are different and British signals are different. A pilot has to familiarize himself with these things before he flies operationally.

The newly arrived pilots get a lot of combat flight training and a lot of gunnery theory to go with it. They are shown films taken in actual combat. In some cases the combat films may have been taken from a ship flown by one of the men who now instruct the student pilots. They spend hours on a variation of the Link trainer, and shooting a light-beam projectile at a model plane which can be moved in any line of flight, at any range. The equipment is designed so that the instructor can tell the pilot what his mistake is.

The students go aloft in Spitfires. P47s and Miles Masters to churn up the sky in dog fights with "enemy" planes often flown by instructors who know how Jerry fights. They fire cine-guns — small motion picture cameras mounted where the guns would be ordinarily. On the same day, or early next morning, while the flights are still fresh in their minds, the pilots are shown the results of their shooting in the projection room.

The films are assessed in such a way that the pilots can tell not only whether they scored hits, but so that they can tell, if they missed, why they missed. Instructors explain faults in approach, angles of deflection and distance at which the "guns" were fired.

Live Ammunition Practice

After his ground training and "camera gunnery," the pilot goes to another division of the school up on the coast, where he concentrates on gunnery with live ammunition fired at sleeve targets towed behind training planes.

Instructors take the student pilots up in a Miles Master, fire at the tow-target, and explain, as they maneuver, what they are attempting to do. The instructor demonstrates the most effective approaches and the best angles of fire, giving the student his range and estimation of relative speed as he attacks.

The dual flights are continued as long as the student-pilot needs them, then he is turned loose in a P47 and after that his performance goes on the record.

He has about 300 rounds of ammunition when he goes up and when he has fired it the target is brought down and the holes counted. The aim is five per cent, a mark he must reach before he leaves the school.

Between flights the student is required to spend from one to two hours a day on the skeet range. This feature has been installed at every bomber and tighter station, but here they have a few new wrinkles. They have a set-up whereby the skeet can be fired directly at the gunners, giving them practice at judging targets coming head on.

Col. Hickman says. "a fighter pilot can't get too much gunnery," and his school emphasizes the fact that the best pilot that ever stepped behind a stick isn't any good as a fighter pilot unless he knows his aerial gunnery.