Adding to the responses above, its been a very long time since I read it so my recollection may not be entirely accurate. I believe I still have the book it was contained in but much of my book collection is still at my parents, I’ll check it out next time I’m over there.
The German pilot may not have been using radar on his own craft but instead using a radar-tracking device (or even instructions from the ground), I don’t know much about radar and counter-measures in WW2 to be honest.
The British plane may not have seen him coming if he was being directed/travelling through cloud cover and on a moonlit night a surprising amount of detail can be discerned.
I’ll try and find the account and check the details.
Possible. The Germans did learn how to track the H2S ground mapping radars, as well as the fact that they made use of their own ground radar to lead night fighters to targets.
Sorry I am late to the thread, and I haven’t the time to go through all of the responses, so my information might have been mentioned up thread. There are a few really good books that cover the op, if you get a chance I highly recommend you read them. They are:
“Top Guns”, edited by Foss and Brennan has one such story by WWII P-38 ace John Lowell about an encounter with a German ME-109 pilot, as well as fascinating stories from many famous fighter pilots. Another great compilation of fighter pilot stories (both books are non-fiction, actual accounts) is “War in the Air”, by Koontz. Both books will point the reader to full autobiographies of many of these pilots which are also fascinating reading.
Len Deighton’s Bomber, an extremely well researched novel, describes how German night fighters were directed onto British bombers by radar stations on the defence line.
You misspelled “start that shit”. The Japanese have a great many ruthless and inhumane deeds to their account, not least the Bataan March and the Burma Railway (one dead slave for every sleeper laid, in the latter case). But they too could be chivalrous: after the sinking of the British ships Prince of Wales and Repulse, a Japanese plane dropped funeral wreaths as a mark of respect to brave men sacrificed to the necessities of war.
Concerning Galland and Bader, mentioned above, there’s a nice photo in Reach for the Sky of Bader sitting in a 109; although what Bader could not see was that, outside the cockpit, Galland had a gun pointed at him in case he yielded to the impulse to fire that sucker up and make a run for home.
Something worth mentioning is that for a variety of reasons, aircrews, and fighter pilots in particular, seem much more inclined to be one step removed from the whole “killing other humans” experience. In many ways, you’re not trying to kill a guy, you are simply trying to destroy a machine.
Of course, it might also just be an officer chivalry thing left over from the long-past traditions of knights and samurai or some such. As I recall, Hal Moore, an Army officer who commanded air cav troops in Vietnam, has had at least one fairly amicable meeting with the North Vietnamese commander that he previously fought in the Ia Drang Valley early in the war. Even in that case, the two officers, though both infantry commanders, did not fight each other personally, so that must have helped somewhat as well.
EDIT: I bring this up as a contrast to the claim that it is simply because of race that people get along with each other to widely varying extents after the war. I’m sure you will find many white Christian Allied soldiers from WWII who had nothing nice to say about the Germans or Italians after the war, but those don’t make for good stories to publish in books later on.
One of my patrons at the Library told a story of coming upon another American patrol on a very cold night during the Battle of the Bulge. There were frozen German bodies about, and he couldn’t help giggling when he recounted how the leader of the other patrol invited them to, “Pull up a Kraut and sit down.”
I was at the Oskosh EAA flyin some years ago and had the honor of meeting Pappy Boyington, awarded the Medal of Honor as commander of the Black Sheep Squadron (Of TV fame,only they really existed) He had met and befriended tthe Japanese pilot who had shot down his P47, (at age nineteen!!) and the two of them had written a book together. They were sharing a booth, and the neatest part was the Boyington was wearing a tshirt silkstreened with a Zero and Rising Sun, and the Japanese had a P47 and a black sheep.
That is so cool you got to meet Boyington. And before you get ripped in here I will fix you post. You meant F4U Corsair, not P47 Thunderbolt. Cool Story Bro.
In The Wild Blue, former USAAF Lt George McGovern recounts an almost identical story. They were over Austria, returning to their Italian base, with one bomb still stuck in the bomb bay. Since it was too dangerous to land with a bomb, the crew was attempting to free it. When they did so, it hit the farmhouse as if it had been aimed.
Twenty years later, Senator McGovern is interviewed on Austrian TV. After the broadcast, the farmer calls to let him know that the family survived, they hid in a ditch when they heard the plane approach.
