Pacifica Military History Free Sample Chapters.pmd

442 Pacifica Military History
put two decades of strategic thought and preparation to the test as well
as study tactical flourishes and provide the first entries in the lessonslearned
book.
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The first mission involving aircraft with USAAF markings took place
on July 26, 1942. Six 31st Fighter Group Spitfires joined a Royal
Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Spitfire squadron on a routine cross-Channel
sweep in the vicinity of Gravelines, St. Omer, and Abbeville. The six
American pilots were senior officers on their first familiarization hop
over enemy territory.
The fighter sweep was the means by which the short-legged
British-built fighters kept their fingers on the pulse of German air
operations in the region on and backing the French, Belgian, and Dutch
coasts facing the English Channel and North Sea. The Germans rarely
responded; they were too war savvy to risk damage to their airplanes—
much less their lives—in combat in service of nothing. Spitfires could
do little damage to the German war effort, so why bother with challenging
them?
On July 26, German fighters did rise to the challenge. In a duel
that ended in seconds, one of the German pilots shot down one of the
white-starred Spitfires. The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Albert Clark, was
the 31st Fighter Group’s air executive officer. He lived through the ordeal
and was taken prisoner. (Far from being cheated of an opportunity to
make war against the Germans, Clark became an important operator in
the March 1944 prisoner-of-war venture known as the Great Escape.)
The 31st flew again on August 5 and 6. In both cases, eleven
Spitfires were launched to undertake practice sweeps under a program
dubbed RODEO. The 31st ran into zero opposition on both practice
RODEO missions, but a few of its rank-and-file pilots learned to function
smartly with their hearts in their throats.
The RODEO missions were modeled precisely on British fighter
sweeps, which concept VIII Fighter Command chief Monk Hunter, a
World War I ace brought up in the “Dawn Patrol” era, had embraced
straight out of the package. Hunter, whose headquarters was located
quite close to the RAF Fighter Command headquarters and who visited