ENEMY PILOT IN THE CROSS FIRE

I will never forget the only enemy that I ever saw in
combat. An air war is very impersonal, even more so now that
we fight with missles and rockets that are remote controlled.
We in the air seldom saw anyone we are fighting even in WW-2.
We see planes and targets but not people.
On this particular mission, we were to bomb aircraft
factories in middle Germany. We met very stiff fighter
resistance, so we were pretty busy trying to protect our own
plane as well as those around us. We then got the call,
"Bandits at twelve o'clock high!" They were all lined up and
began to come in from the front of our plane. This was a
closing speed of over 600 MPH which was pretty fast for that
time. These were the latest planes that Germany had to offer,
FW-190s, brand new from the very factories that we were
headed to bomb.
I was in my regular position at the right waist gun. I
spotted this plane coming in over our left wing and firing at
everything in the squadron. Tis all happened in milliseconds
but seemed like a lifetime. Every gun that could was firing
at him and when he got even with my position I could see my
tracers going into his cockpit area. He was looking directly
at me. He couldn't have been over sixteen years old, with
short blond hair and no beard. He had what we have come to
know as the typical Hitler Youth sneer on his face. He
thought he was invincible. At that moment he turned 90
degrees away from me and blew up into a cloud of smoke. I can
still see the face of the only enemy I ever knew. I didn't
even claim a "kill" when I returned to briefing at our base
in England. I was always too glad to be back without a
scratch. lb