I published the final issue of Aviation Review in ca. spring 2005. I asked my friend Miles Shipley if he would be willing to be my final feature story, and he was. We had gone to church together several years before and I had featured him in various ways in previous issues. I couldn’t think of a more fitting way to finish the publication’s run than by featuring someone who had been a reader from the first issue.
In Aviation Review, Vol. 4, No. 2, we did our first story on Lt. Col. Miles Shipley. This was a review of his self-published book 1st TAC[tical] A[ir] F[orce] / The “Phantom” Air Force in WWII and the 27th Fighter Group from Tarquinia, Italy to Manheim in Germany.
He was a pilot in the First Tactical Air Force of World War II. This was a provisional air force. Combat aircrews flew missions in hand-me-down airplanes as long as they were mentally and physically able with no hope of rotation home.
On October 20, 1944, a USSTAF general order established the 1st Tactical Air Force (TACAF) to report directly to the USSTAF. On February 1st, 1945, Mr. Shipley’s group, the 27th fighter group, was officially transferred to the 1st TACAF.
Mr. Shipley flew many hazardous and memorable missions, some of which were described in the article. In the interview, we did not discuss his entire military service in sequential order; that has already been covered in the past, and to repeat it would be unnecessary. He told stories that he had not already told in his book, and added new detail to some familiar stories. This interview is a collection of reminisces, not a sequential account.
In training practice, Mr. Shipley was particularly good at target practice. As a farm boy, he was used to shooting; his understanding of science and mathematics helped him understand the complicated calculations necessary to accurately predict the precise location of the target.
Vance Whitten, the best buddy he had, was killed in a target practice session over Texas. He shot a target off the target plane; it hit his plane and messed up the plane’s controls. “This brought the war home real quick-like to me,” Mr. Shipley said. “We had lost some pilots before, but this was from my own flight.”
The other three pilots in his flight made it overseas. Bill Bradley, when overseas, switched from P-47s to P-51s, and was killed on one of his first missions. Bill Ackerman flew eighty-nine missions; Mr. Shipley, who was also nicknamed Bill, flew eighty-nine missions. Bill Ackerman and Mr. Shipley both survived their missions.
He saw the Me-262 Schwalbe on several missions; however, when he saw them, he did not always see them for long. “Here I was, flying an airplane that cruised at 260 miles per hour, and they were flying a plane cruising at 375,” he recalled. He saw Me-262s much more frequently than he fought with them, for the simple reason that they flew so quickly.
He said that it was very fortunate that Hitler committed the Me-262 to ground support for about six months. “As a consequence, he [Hitler] lost a tactical advantage by pulling a dumb trick,” Mr. Shipley observed. American pilots profited, because they could spend six months learning about the plane, while the Me-262 pilots were doing ground support. Mr. Shipley said that average American doesn’t realize that Hitler’s mistake in committing the Me-262 to ground support and not aerial interdiction “probably cost him the war.”
After six months, though, the Me-262s were re-assigned. “He [Hitler] finally woke up to the fact that the 262 could shoot our guys down real easy,” Mr. Shipley said.
He saw five on one mission. “They were at about 1:00 high. I called ‘em in as bogeys [unidentified aircraft]; they were actually bandits [enemy aircraft]. The next thing I knew, they were coming towards us. It was just a matter of seconds. They had turned around and came up from underneath to go after the bombers.”
“The guy that was leading it [the flight] was General Adolf Galland,” Mr. Shipley said. “I fired at him, and he just pulled down through my line of fire like nothing happened.”
“He went on in, and hit this bomber formation. The first one he hit, the guys started bailing out of it.” Mr. Shipley observed that it was unreal to see men bailing out of an airplane; he soon saw men bailing out of a second aircraft that Galland downed.
A pilot from the 56th Fighter Group shot Galland down by doing an Immelman maneuver and shooting when Galland came into his line of view.
Gen. Galland bailed out. Mr. Shipley was so close to the airplane that he could have easily shot Gen. Galland. “But the war was nearly over, so I let him live. He was a very dapper individual. I probably should have administered the coup de grace.” He did not know that the pilot was General Galland until after the war.
On that mission, he was flying cover for B-26 Marauder twin-engine bombers. He noted that the B-26s had the same engines as the P-47 Thunderbolts did. He also observed that too many people were killed while flying the B-26, because they did not realize what a difficult aircraft it was to take off and land. “The two very critical components in any airplane flight are takeoff and landing,” he said.
Interestingly, under ideal circumstances, the B-26 could carry the same size bomb load as a B-17. The B-17 could carry 3,500 pounds; under ideal circumstances, though not under combat circumstances, the B-26 could carry the same weight.
Some of the B-26s that he flew cover for were flown by American pilots; others were flown by French pilots. His view of French pilots was that “they weren’t real tigers”; tigers were aggressive pilots. In his view, the French did not seem to take war seriously. (This might have been because in Europe, they fought a war in about every generation.)
His group’s airports had pierced steel taxiways. Once, when his right wheel was caught in a bomb crater, he ticked his propeller. He had to turn his engine off; the imbalanced forces of a ticked propeller at almost any rpm (rotations per minute) on the plane’s engine were too much to continue the mission.
A part of a fighter pilot’s equipment was a rubber dinghy; they placed it on the seat of their airplane, so that it would be accessible in case of emergency. However, this was a hard surface to sit on for hours at a time. (With wing tanks, their missions could last up to four or five hours.) In spite of this, some pilots thought they were indestructible and neglected to bring the dinghy along, replacing it with a softer item, such as a pillow.
On one mission, a pilot in his group regretted his decision to do just that. When flying near the Gulf of Genoa, anti-aircraft fire set the hydraulic fluid of one pilot’s P-47 on fire. Other members of the flight urged him to bail out. He said, “I can’t. I don’t have a dinghy.”
The pilot flew the plane down the coast with no hydraulic fluid. He landed his plane safely in Italian territory held by the Allies—and lived to tell about it.
The Me-163 Komets never got close to their group. Mr. Shipley did see the planes from a distance—from one mile to twenty miles away, depending on the day. The Me-163 could fly quickly—until its fuel ran out. “It was a one-shot proposition,” Mr. Shipley said. After their fuel ran out, the pilots had to trust gravity to get to earth, and, as Mr. Shipley said, “they were at our mercy.” Me-163s could land anywhere on the Autobahn, which Mr. Shipley described as “one long landing strip.”
When necessary, Mr. Shipley and his flight would sometimes get down on the deck (fly at low altitudes) and fly to the Gulf of Genoa or to the Adriatic Sea. However, the minute an aircraft got slower than cruising speed, danger threatened. “You’ll hit terra firma in a hurry. Gravity has a way of being dominant.”
Mr. Shipley survived his eighty missions. He returned to the United States; in civilian life, he eventually became the Senior Technical Buyer for Cooper Energy.
Martha Shipley, his wife, tells him that he gets too excited when he talks about his combat experiences. He can’t avoid it; he says that anyone who went through the same experiences would do the same.