i watch the history channel whenever they have a program called "dog fights."
a bunch of guys about my age describe their experiences as fighter pilots. today chenault's flying
tigers fighting with china against the japanese.
they talk about their P40's and the incidents are shown using some kind of computer generated
pictures that aren't animated and look like the actual scenes.
as these guys talk about their techniques of climbing until the P40 almost stalled and resulting in
the jaopanese pilot's plane ended in front of them and they could come out of the stall and low the
enemy out of the air.
some chap, newly assigned, never having flown a combat mission, decide to go up with a veteran
because the japanese bombers were trying to destroy the air base and flying at night in the dark.
they noticed the bombers were flying in three groups of three each. and this new kid on the block,
using one of the tricks he was taught, flew directly at one of the bombers. the P40 had armor
plate and the japanese use it preferring the the extra speed they could get with a lighter plane.
the young man,l newly assigned was about 19 or 20, shot down the three bombers before he had
to return to base because of the number of hits the P40 took and it wasn't going to fly much
longer.
these were kid 19, 20, 21, and while i was at home trying to get into some college, these guys had
already had a ball flying in these prop planes and shooting down enemy pilots, like they were in
bumper cars at a carnival.
when i was on guam, i used to read the descriptions of the lt colonels experiences that gave them
an air medal. i used to look at some of these non assuming men having just read that he had
flown his bomber through heavy flack and dropped his bomb load on target and barely made it
back to base with his plane shot to hell.
i am impressed with them.
http://www.history.com/content/dogfights
