birds of a feather

On the next day, Bucky Cleven gathered up the enlisted men who worked at the 350th Squadron Headquarters and told them he was going to make up for the indignity they had suffered the day before. He took them out to the flight line and loaded them up into an old stripped down B-17E, which our group brass used for joy rides and taxi service. Since it had no guns or armaments, it was light and Cleven could fly it like a P-39 fighter plane.

Apparently Cleven had phoned some of his pilot training classmates who were now assigned to P-47's and arranged a surprise. The E was hardly off the runway when it was "attacked" by three American fighters.

For the next twenty minutes, Cleven—whose superb skill as a pilot no one questioned—wrung that old plane out as though it was a Piper Cub. He twisted and turned and plunged, all in a simulated dog fight with his three fighter pilot chums. The three Thunderbolts buzzed the 17 and came within inches of it.