Lt. Joe Black,
362nd Sqn.On one of my early missions I was flying as Capt. Charles (Chuck) Weaver's
wing man. We were heading home to Leiston when we ran into four Me 109's, so our flight of four P51's dived down to intercept the enemy.Capt Weaver picked out one of the 109's with a yellow nose, and immediately the enemy aircraft headed straight down with 'Chuck' right behind it. At about 1500-2000ft he reached a cloud layer and we went in after him, Chuck and I went through the clouds and broke out below, we were alone! Suddenly the Me 109 dropped down behind Chuck and opened fire with a short burst, as I turned to get a shot at him he ducked back into the clouds. Over the radio Chuck told me to drop back further to see if we could mouse trap him using himself as bait. We flew above and below the cloud layer,trying our best to nail him, he would pop out of the cloud cover take a quick shot and be gone again, on one pass he made on Chuck I was able to get of a 2or3 second burst , but I doubt that I hit him. All told, the Me 109 got about six tries at us and we got only one quick shot at him. After his last attempt at adding a P51 to the tail markings on his plane he dissapeared, we hung around for a short while but he didn't return.
When we had got back to Leiston, Chuck said that he thought that the Me 109 must have run low on fuel and had to break off to get back to his base, We were rather clad that he did!. It was the first time I had fired my guns at an enemy aircraft, and it was to bad that I didn't see any hits. We disscussed the avent in the mess and we think the Me 109's were from JG 26, better known as the Abbeville boys.
Pilots of the 362nd Sqn painting names
on the engine cowlings of their P-51's.