Maj "Pete" Peterson.364th Sqn.On January 20th 1945, I was Red Flight leader and my wingman was Ernest Tiede. Lt Ed Haydon was my Element lead and his wingman was Lt Roland Wright,Lt Dale Karger was leading White Flight. I have forgotten what the original mission was, but about the time that we were to return home, we engaged 2 Me-262's near Brunswick(Germany). It appeared that one 262 pilot was checking the other one out in the jet.
They did not run away, but seemed to want to engage in a fight. We were at about 20,000 feet and the 262's split......one went down to about 18,000 feet and the other stayed at 22,000 feet. Both flew in a large lazy circle, one opposite the other with me and the flight in the middle.It looked to me that the upper jet was waiting for me to attack the lower one, I called Lt Karger to turn back as if he were going home and climb back to attack the high jet while we circled. Lt Karger and his flight did just that and the upper 262 never saw them return, they shot him down with out any trouble and then Lt Kargers flight headed for home.When the upper 262 was eliminated, the remaining jet headed down for home in a hurry. I rolled over, split S'ed and went to full power.In no time, I hit compressibility with loss of all control at speeds in excess of 650 mph. After finally getting control I pulled out in a wide sweeping arc and pulled up behind the jet for a perfect shot at 6 o'clock. Unfortunatly, I was out of trim and my tracers went right over the top of his canopy. He hit the throttle and left me in a cloud of kerosene exhaust as if I were standing still. My flight had caught up with me so we headed for Lechfeld airbase, this we thought would be were he was heading and maybe we would catch him on landing. We flew over Lechfeld at about 6,000 Ft, there were about 100 262's nose to tail parked on the inactive side of the field, this meant they were out of fuel, no pilots or both. We were not sure which way the jet would approach the runway, so Lt Tiede and myself cruised toward the South end.Lt Haydon and Lt Wright spotted him coming in from the North, so Lt Haydon went for the jet, but he was to high and made an easy target for the flak gunners. He was hit and on the R/T said he was on fire, he pulled up to 400 Ft and bailed out and landed on the airfield, he became a P.O.W. Lt Roland Wright, following Haydon, was at very low level and the flak missed him but he did not miss the Me 262(LINK), he shot it down on its approach to the field.
The remaining three of us reassembled South of Lechfeld and I called for them to check their fuel. We would need approx 135 gallons to get us back to Leiston, I had enough but Lt Wright who had been "Tailend Charlie" only had 85 gallons or less. It was pretty obvious that we were not going to make it home, so we needed to find a friendly airport as soon as possible.
Flying at about 8,000 feet, deep in Germany in really nasty weather,we headed West through the weather front on instruments only. By know I was getting concerned about Lt Wright, about this time his fuel would be very low, and being on instruments flying on me he would not have a chance if his engine was to cut out.We finally broke out and spotted a large town near a river and we turned to it.Lo, and behold there was an airport,covered with snow,no tracks from aircraft traffic, but there appeared to be an Me-109 near a hanger. I told Lt Wright to land,tail first because of the unknown depth of the snow, and to wave his arms if the field was friendly.If they were not he must get clear as I would shot up his plane. Out came a vehicle full of people to the airplane as Lt Tiede and myself circled, eventually Lt Wrights arms started waving so we both landed. We were Southeast of Paris at Auxerre,France, and the front line was 60 km down the road at Dijon. Auxerre had a small company of MP's as the town had recently been "liberated", we asked them for help to get fuel.The fuel was ordered and would come from Patton's tank corp but we did not know how long it would take.
Finally, Five days later a truck arrived full with 5 gallon Jerry-cans, so we filled up the planes and in lovely weather we headed off for England. By the time we got to mid-channel the weather had turned against us, it was a solid wall of fog from 1500 feet all the way down to the water,It looked like a wall of concrete along a straight vertical line. We radioed Leiston for information and heard quite a roar from them, as the last they heard we were in combat with the 262's.Major Gates got on the radio and said there was no way we would be able to land at Leiston as they were fogged in solid, he thought that we may have to bail out.Can you imagine that after what we had been through to get us and our planes back? I decided to give an instrument approach a try!
At mid-channel, we were flying in a "V" formation with both wingmen stacked above me as I started a letdown in an attempt to get below the fog. I got down to where the altimeter read "0" and suddenly one of the guys said "Pete, you better get up here......a wave has just gone by!!" At this point it was decided to climb above the fog to about 2,000 feet. We arrived in the approxamate area of Leiston field and asked the tower to fire a rocket so we could get a fix, the rocket appeared above the fog so I told Lt Wright and Lt Tiede to circle that point whilst I tried an instrument approach.
Since the longest runway at Leiston had a bearing of 240 degrees, it gave me a clue that maybe I could apply my high school geometry to an instrument letdown and we could then make it in. So I headed out a little way toward the channel and turned straight North at 0 degrees. As I kept talking on the radio for bearings, they fed me bearings to the field backto me, Firts 300 degrees, then 290, then 280. When they called 270 degrees ( making a 90 degree angle with my heading true North), I clocked the time that it took for the bearing to change to 240. Twice that time was the time it would take me to reach the field on a heading of 240 degrees which was the alignment with the runway. The runway 240 heading and a heading of 270 makes a 30/60 right triangle as I flew North. In a 30/60 right triangle, the side opposite the 30 angle is half the length of the hypotenuse. In this case, the "Hypotenuse" would be my line of approach toward the 240 bearing. As I decended toward the field I got down to about 50 feet above the ground, I could see straight down and spotted the end of the runway! I knew then that we could make it by repeating what I had done. I climbed back up on instruments and picked up Lt Roland Wright who flew off my right wing and we went through the same routine, we started the approach, I put down my landing gear; Lt Wright lowered his and stayed back just far enough to still keep me in sight and follow me down. I dropped flaps; he did the same. As we got to about 50 feet I saw the runway and called it out to him, he picked up the sight of the runway and landed, I then did the same with Lt Tiede and he landed. I was last and did a tight 360 degree turn at about 50 feet off the ground and landed.
The people in the tower could hear us; could hear the tyres squeal on landing; but could not see us. At no time did the tower see us until we taxied by. The tower and DF guys did a great job without them we would not have made it. Without an automatic pilot, instrument landing system, or GCA to assist us, we managed to get down safely without losing airplanes or pilots. It was the best flying that I had ever done........or ever since!.