Part two....
Five miles from base....LT Bob Brulle with his flight of P47D's is on a ground attack mission, he listens in on his R/T as the desperate situation unfolds......
LT Brulle orders his flight to ditch the bomb load.... defence of the base is paramount......
Running hard on the deck...a pair of Me109's are heading toward Auchon.....
Oberleutnant Lemke calls Hauptmann Voght on the R/T and directs him to pull up into the American flyer's overhead.....
LT Brulle aims between the pair of Me190's and splits them with a head on pass............
LT Brulle rolls his P47 over and closing at over 800mph passes Oberleutnant Lemke.....the two exchange clances...........
Hauptmann Voght pulls 180dg and closes in on LT Brulle's wingman LT D.Sparks.....
LT Sparks in unaware that Hauptmann Voght is closing on his tail until the bullet's strike his wings..........
Hauptmann Voght rolls down as LT Sparks P47 catches fire....this is Voght's first Kill..........
LT Brulle is locked in a dual with Oberleutnant Lemke... they are both Ace's in this struggle........
LT Brulle see's his wingman's Jug plough into the ground...... LT Sparks was his buddy.....
Relief..!! its LT Sparks hanging in his strap's....he managed to eject his canopy inverted and drop out of his crippled P47...........
Oberleutnant Lemke has pulled away.....Brulle gives chase and cripple's Lemke with a lucky shot.........
Lemke's Me109 is smoking badly.....the damage is done.................
Oberleutnant Lemke's plane level's out....he seems to take no avoiding action....LT Brulle pulls up alongside.....Lemke is slumped at his controls.....
Rolling over inverted, LT Brulle watches Lemke's aircraft do down..... Lemke does not bail out...... the dual is won...........
LT Brulle rolls to port and spot's Voght ........ this Me109 will not get away...
Brulle uses all his skill to turn the tide....Voght is a worthy opponent.....
Voght heads for the deck.....the struggle is real..........
LT Brulle follow's Hauptmann Voght's every move.....his skill is his survival....
Before his eye's..... Hauptmann Voght's Me109 explodes......Brulle just misses the wreckage.........
LT Brulle heads back to base.....he spots an aircraft approaching low over the base............
Its LT.c Myer.....his Mustang is out of ammo....the fight will go on all day....
re-arm and refuel...... the base is a mess but he lands between the bomb craters..........
LT Brulle follow's Myer in.....this day is not done.........
In the remaining 17 weeks of war, the Jagdwaffe struggled to recover from the 1 January operation enough to remain an effective force. In strategic terms, German historian Werner Girbig wrote, "Operation Bodenplatte amounted to a total defeat". The exhausted German units were no longer able to mount an effective defence of German air space during Operation Plunder and Operation Varsity, the Allied crossing of the Rhine River, or the overall Western Allied invasion of Germany. Subsequent operations were insignificant as a whole, and could not challenge Allied air supremacy. The only service in the Luftwaffe capable of profitable sorties was the night fighter force. In the last six weeks of the war, the Luftwaffe was to lose another 200 pilots killed. Werner Girbig wrote, "it was not until the autumn of 1944 that the German fighter forces set foot down the sacrificial path; and it was the controversial Operation Bodenplatte that dealt this force a mortal blow and sealed its fate. What happened from then on was no more than a dying flicker". (Wiki Quote)
“Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense”....
Winston Churchill... for all those pilots who fought for what they felt was right.
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