Warbird Information Exchange

while reading the latest issue of flight journal magazine concerning the p-80 in korea, there was an interesting sidebar article that p-80's were deployed to the european theater late in the war for actual combat experience & testing. according to the mag author, 2 p-80's saw actual combat!!! is there any documentation as to possible victories?? or at least the documentation of the sorties in general??? the mag article notes no german to u.s. jets were encountered, but what of the shooting star tangling with other luftwaffe types??

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Take a look at the info I found in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-80

There is some information under Operational history.

I beleive the first operational deployment to Italy was under then Col. "Tex" Hill.

The 2 P80s were assigned to the 1st FG. There are photos of the two of them in "An Escort of P-38s" The 1st FG history by John Mullins.

They were based at Lessina, far away from any combat, so they did not encounter German aircraft and were not put in harms way.

Serials on the tails of the two birds from a photo in the book

44-83029
44-83028

I imagine someone can trace those

More on them on the 1st FG site. Funny how knowing the serials helps

http://www.1stfighter.org/photos/P80inItaly.html

From Baugher's site

44-83028 and 44-83029 were shipped to the Mediterranean. They actually flew some operational sorties, but they never encountered any enemy aircraft. Both of them fortunately managed to survive their tour of duty in Europe, but one of them crashed on August 2, 1945 after returning to the USA. The other one ended its useful life as a pilotless drone.

I seem to remember that a P-80 was lost in an accident in England during the war. Anyone have any details on that? Gloster Meteors did see combat in WWII, by the way, but only against V-1's.

Cheers,
Richard

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Richard Mallory Allnutt - Photography - http://www.rmallnutt.com

Also from Baugher's site.

YP-80As 44-83026 and 44-83027 were shipped to England in mid-December 1944, but 44-83026 crashed on its second flight at Burtonwood, England, killing its pilot, Major Frederick Borsodi. 44-83027 was modified by Rolls-Royce to flight test the B-41, the prototype of the Nene turbojet. On November 14, 1945, it was destroyed in a crash landing after an engine failure.

this pic is from my father in law's stash. He was at Wright Field and worked on some of the early jets. If this is the plane he told us the story about, it was supposed to fly over a group of VIPs for demonstration purposes and then return to the airfield. It did one pass too many and then ran out of fuel before making it back to the airport.

Here are a couple more pics, by way of the vintage leather jacket board...

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Sure, Charles Lindbergh flew the plane... but Tom Rutledge built the engine!

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Fred Barsodi was our top military jet pilot and was slated to be the X-1 pilot before he was killed. He earlier flew P-40 in the 79th Fg with 3 kills and ferried a JU-88 across the Atlantic to Wright filed in 1944. I've been conversing with his daughter and she's got a great deal of info on his exceptional military service.
BTW Tex Hill wasn't in Italy with the P-80s.

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Don't touch my junk!!

That belly landing pic looks like a dry lakebed. Muroc maybe?

Les