war storys from gramps

[Soviet Ace]

Well, both of my grandfathers were in WW2. But the only one who liked to talk about it was the one who always said at the beginning of a speech at family gatherings, "Mussolini had some good ideas, but his way of being Hitlers puppet in North Africa didn't help his situation. And that's probably why me and my friends flew, and got shot down." So from that, I guess you can tell he flew on the Italian side. He always talked about it, for him I think it was a relief to talk about it. My other grandfather thought differently, and clammed up when you tried to talk to him about it very much.

The only story I can think off the top of my head that my Italian Grandfather talked about, was when he was in Italy, fighting over Malta. He said that he and a flight of about five other Macchi's were heading to defend a group of Italian torpedo planes, that had attacked a British convoy, and were being attacked by Hurricanes and Spitfires. Well they flew the two hour or so flight there, and found that out of the ten or so torpedo planes they had known about, only six were still flying, he could see that one crew of the torpedo plane had ditched into the water, and were already sitting and waiting for a rescue. But while the others attacked the Hurricanes and Spitfires, he stayed up above, wait for a lone Hurricane or Spitfire to make a wrong move. Well I guess that wrong move was towards him, because next thing he knows, a Hurricane is climbing towards the clouds, going to try and surprise him. Well he took action, following the climbing Hurricane, and with his machine-guns and cannon, he opened up and hit all along the fuselage. The Hurricane stopped its climb, probably loosing speed he said as it tried leveling off, but the pilot couldn't keep his air speed up and he had to bail out. Then after taking out the Hurricane, my grandfather saw another Hurricane unhindered, and busy attacking one of the torpedo bombers. He quickly dived on the Hurricane, but before he could get any rounds into the plane, the Hurricane broke off its attack, and tried getting away. Luckily my Grandfather was quick enough, and made a move before the Hurricane pilot did, and was in gun range. That was my Grandfathers like 3rd kill or something like that. His fourth was a British Spitfire, but his 5th was undetermined as I guess three of his other squadron buddies, claimed to have shot the same plane, and so none of them got credit for the kill.

That's my Grandfathers story.