[mayfair35]

Re: The P-39. I have several friends who flew the P-39 in training and hated it. In North Africa, Col Sluder was making an inspection trip of a P-39 outfit to see how well they were doing with the new P-39 model (I forget the designation) and inquired of the squadron commander how they liked it. The reply was, “It’s still a P-39.” He then went on to tell Col Sluder that on his morning fight he observed 4 Me-109s above and ahead of him and his greatest concern was being able to stay low and hidden in their 6 o’clock position. If you inquire of the German pilots who flew there, they described the P-39 as “good target practice.”

The 325th FG was the first to fly a Frantic mission to Russia and on landing there, they talked with some of the Russian pilots who were flying P-39s from Piryatin field. The Russians were quite satisfied with the performance of the P-39 and insisted they could hold their own and more below 12,000 feet with the Me-109. However, these P-39s were unlike ours. All the armor plate was removed, all the guns except the 37 mm cannon were removed, and all the radio equipment had been taken out. They were extremely interested in our P-51s. There are some interesting stories about the lengths they went to in order to determine its performance and “secrets.”

An interesting sidelight to that mission was the realization by our pilots that the Russians were fighting a different war from us. Because there was a possibility of going down behind Russian lines during our missions, we were required to wear the .45 in a shoulder holster. If a Russian pilot was shot down behind German lines, he was expected to engage the Germans with his sidearm and not surrender! Thus, they would have been upset if we did not also carry a sidearm. The implication was that we were also supposed to take on the German army with our .45 if downed on one of our missions. Ha! Our briefings clearly pointed out that no one had ever shot his way out of Germany with his .45. There were many other unbelievable stories we heard when they got back. Unfortunately, 3 others and myself had been sent to Casablanca to ferry back some new P-51s when the 325thFG was alerted and sent on this mission. We surely missed a good one.


By the way, the only ace I know of in the P-39 was a William Fiedler who was flying them in the Pacific. He met his demise when a P-38 landed on him while he was waiting to take off.

Cordially, Art Fiedler