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Post by bushpounder on Jul 21, 2009 20:45:25 GMT -5
Hope you are doing well. First off, I went to visit Wes and his wife two weeks ago. He has agreed to let me record some of his stories for use in the upcoming Aviation Gallery I am designing. They are really great folks. I mentioned your name and he remembers you well. Secondly, did you ever hear of or fly with Bill Overstreet?
Don
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Post by bushpounder on Jul 24, 2009 21:06:19 GMT -5
 Bill Overstreet is the guy flying "The Berlin Express", the P-51 under the tower chasing the 109! I will be interviewing him soon. Don |
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Post by pilotgod on Jul 25, 2009 12:51:56 GMT -5
Wow, what an opportunity, definitely a very interesting man. I only know a few of the stories like the low altitude bailout from a P-39 where his chute opened just as his feet hit the ground, his loss of oxygen at 22,000 feet, and my favorite, his downing of a Me-109 with just vodka.
"He did not expect resistance from the Luftwaffe on the group's mission to Foggia. As a result, he traded the .50 caliber ammunition in his Mustang for bottles of vodka and loaded them in the now empty ammunition bays. The flight was uneventful until the group spotted Messerschmitt 109s over Romania. The Germans spotted the 357th almost as quickly and ran for home at full throttle. As the group chased the German fighters, Overstreet managed to get on the tail of a Me 109 and saw, to his amazement, the German pilot bail out of his fighter, even though he had not been hit. Regarding this incident, Overstreet wrote:
"No one fired at the one who bailed out, so imagine the smiles on the faces of the fellows when we were asked at the debriefing, "Who was the closest one to him?" I was the closest, but I had vodka, not bullets. That (Me 109) could have been awarded to me as an aerial victory, it wasn't.""
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