[RSwank]

Taken from A History of the Mediterranean Air War pages 258-259:

Sunday, 17 January was the first time the 82nd FG was able to fly its first mission as a unit, (flying from Telergma, Algeria) 16 P-38s of the 97th Squadron taking off at 0730 to escort six B-25s of 310th BG on an antishipping sortie. Twenty miles south-west of Sicily they claimed to shoot down 3 German aircraft. The P-38 flown by Keith Lund was last seen banking near the water and did not return. Lund was later reported to have become a PoW. (Note:Lund was captured on the 17th and did survive the war)


In the afternoon, Lt Schiehs scrambed from Sidi Ahmed (Biserte, Tunisia) after a lone reconnaissance aircraft which was directly over his own airfield and shot it down. From Schiehs description of the P-38 bursting into flames then hurtling downward engulfed in a sheet of flames and disintegrating just before it struck the ground it does not seem the pilot would have been able to bail out.

There seems to be both a timing issue (the P-38s flew in the morning and Schiehs shootdown occurred in the afternoon) and a survival issue of the P-38 pilot. We might need to find Lund’s version of events that day to be able to rule him “in or out”.


Rolland