P51 pilot story

[popper]

http://www.rb-29.net/html/50FtrPltStory/FtrPltStory/50.01.00.htm Found the link so I didn't have to copy & edit this one. Read most of the WWI ace stories when I was a kid, missed a lot of these.

[MtGun44]

Amazing story.

Bob Hoover was shot down, put in a prison camp and escaped and stole a FW190 and managed
to fly to US lines. Flying back to your own base is pretty cool.

My father in law flew P51s out of England, has 2.5 kills and is still healthy down in FL in his 90s.

Bill

[10-x]

Read Hoover's book is all I can say.

[Kraschenbirn]

One of my uncles (on my mother's side) flew 8th AF Mustangs for about (5) weeks just before D-Day. Tried to belly-land a shot-up airplane (hydraulics out - no gear, no flaps) and spent the rest of the war in a succession of hospitals. Told me he was so afraid of bailing out...one of his classmates during advanced fighter training had been killed jumping after an engine failure...that he decided a gear-up landing was the lesser of two evils. His brother, a retired tank officer, used to tease him that it was only a 9-foot jump to get out of a burning Sherman.

Bill

[MtGun44]

Brave men, all.

Bill

[WILCO]

Brave men, all.

Bill

Indeed.

[felix]

Brave and crazy! David Robbins, son of my grandfather's brother, started his career driving whiskey from MO,KY,TN to Big Al's group in Chicago on back roads to quickly "age" the goods residing in the oak casks in the back seat and/or trunk. He learned to fly crop dusters between the money runs. According to family history, he needed extraordinary excitement to live out his destiny. When Chicago closed down, he answered ads for pilots to fly the "Hump". Those were DC3s (or equivalent).
His fortune continued by flying intentionally overweight loads from Burma to China. His hand-picked co-pilot was used to kick out stuff when the plane couldn't get over the peaks. The same thing on return by hauling contraband/black market stuff back to Burma for the troops there.
Back in the states he and his co-pilot worked carrying oil field supplies to the rigs throughout Texas from Houston. They used the same airplanes having been bought as surplus by TransTexasAirlines. When those runs ran out of steam, the airlines made David and his co-pilot convert to jet passenger planes. Reportedly, he had a hard time doing so and his drinking became more constant.
He died of liver failure in Houston before I arrived and I met his co-pilot by accident! He was friends of my next door neighbor and his wife. Unbelievable, to say the least. It was there I learned that David was a drunk, and ALWAYS had been especially when driving over the Hump. The co-pilot told me that many times the plane SCRAPED its bottom going over the mountains.
Bill, my brother when 16 years old or so, was in Houston once and David let him LAND a DC3 in an oil field. Unbelievable!
The co-pilot told me this and was in the plane as well. The co-pilot said David was so drunk when he flew that everyone thought that was normal. Yeah! Right! But who else would fly those kind of missions during those days.
... felix