The Last Flight of Major George Preddy and "Cripes A'Mighty", P-51D-NA 44-14906.
25 DEC 44.
The 328th FS of the 352nd FG arrived at Airfield "Y-29" in Aache, Belgium just two days before, on 23 DEC 44 and immediately began flight ops, which generally consisted of "Rhubarbs" and "Rodeos", i.e. Ground Attack and Interdiction missions by this time of the war, due to steadily decreasing numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft in the air... The 352 FG (8th AF) had been temporarily attached to the 9th AF, along with the 366th and 361st FGs...
Shortly before the end of the afternoon patrol that Christmas Day, Ditto White Leader, with wingman Ditto White Two, was vectored to a position SW of Colblenz, where bandits had been spotted at barely a thousand feet AGL by US ground units... Given the "Buster" call from the GCI controller, a pair of Bf 109s were soon sighted, and Ditto White Leader picked one out. He made several turns with it at low altitude, and was closing with it when another 109 cut in between him and his first target.
He gave the second 109 a quick burst, "hip-shooting" (without the sight), and observed "a lot of hits" from his six .50 cals... The canopy came off, and the German pilot hit the silk. Ditto White Lead immediately swung his P-51's blue nose back onto the first 109 and his K-14 gunsight was on it, almost as if it was tied to the hapless German... The two Germans didn't even know that they'd just been up against the ranking US Army Air Force Ace in the ETO, Major George E. "Ratsy" Preddy... They lived to tell about it though, and would happily able to "eat another sauerkraut sammich" someday...
Receiving a new vector, Preddy and his wingman, Lt James G. Cartee, changed course toward Liege, where bandits were reported to be strafing American troops. Now flashing 1500 feet AGL SE of Liege, a lone FW 190 was sighted by the pair at tree-top level. Preddy told Cartee, "Cover Me.", as he dropped even lower after the now-fleeing Focke-Wulf...
On the ground, snow was piled up among the trees of the Hurtgen Forrest and in the Area of Operations where Germany, Belgium, and Holland come together near Aachen, and the whole landscape was cold, bleak and forbidding ... The 12th AA Group (SP) had moved South through it shortly after the beginning of the Battle of Bulge, with their mission being the Anti-Aircraft Defense of XIX Corps AO.
The Group's main AA-batteries were 40mm Bofors cannons, but their most effective weapon against low-level attacks were the quadruple fifty-caliber Browning HBs on the M16 AA Half-track. The guns, mounted in an electrically-powered turret with a 60-degrees-per-second traverse speed and high volume-of-fire were devastatingly effective against "tree-top level" strafing attacks, and, when used as fire-support for Infantry attacks, could eat a wall whole... (The 12th was officially creditied with 291 enemy aircraft kills in WW2...)
The individual batteries were equipped with an open-loop fire-control network (both radio and telephone), known as a "Hot Loop" and that gave the guns needed early-warning speed against the fast-moving low-level aircraft. Radios and telephones were on external speakers to allow everyone to listen... When dealing with low-flying fighter-types, the gunners generally had about ten seconds to identify an aircraft as threat or friendly, then track, engage, and destroy an enemy aircraft... They were generally out of range of the fifties after that period of time.
Anyway, friendly aircraft had been flying overhead all Christmas Morning, always at higher altitudes and usually they were blocked out by the overcast.... The Gunners tried mostly to just keep warm in the December wind as they manned the guns and radios... The radios were crackling from time to time with reports from rather bored observers who spotted approaching aircraft, which were quickly ID'd and assed as Friendlies, but then suddenly the "FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! " Warning Order came through the net... That alerted all the gun-batteries in the area to the fact that hostiles were positively identified, and inbound. The message that followed the WARNORD came through loud and clear: "Two '109s aproaching from the South-East at low altitude and strafing...".
This was, in fact, the direction of the German lines from the gun-batteries and all AA guns swung to point that direction... Seconds later, two fighter aircraft entered the area from the SE, flying just over the tops of the trees... There was the sound of machinegun-fire...
Now, the gunner, probably all of 18 or 19 years old, only had an instant to react as the aircraft suddenly appeared over the trees surrounding the the field in which his M16 was located. They were flying directly towards him and in his eyes, were the enemy fighters reported. He traversed his guns slightly and briefly touched the triggers. The "quad-fifty" had a combined rate-of -fire of about 3000 rounds per minute, and only about 60 rounds went downrange before he was able to check-fire, but the dice had been thrown... The aircraft sweeping overhead were friendly...
Lt Cartee was also taking hits from the groundfire and immediately yelled for Preddy to break, but the damge was done... "Cripes A' Mighty" had already run slap-into the stream of fire. Preddy popped his canopy and and nosed down, bellying-in in the same field as the AA Track. Cartee made a wide circle around the crash-site and flew over it several times before RTB-ing, alone, back to Asche...
The AA Gun-crew ran to the P-51, which had made a "good landing" on its belly and didn't burn. In the opinions of the GIs at the crash-site, Preddy could have likely survived the crash, but as he had been hit by two of the fifty-cal rounds he was already dead in the cockpit... I personally believe that he was hit by pieces of the rounds, as the fifty caliber round is pretty devasting and doesn't just wound you, except fatally..
That ended the career of the USAAF's leading ETO Ace. The Group credited him with 27.83 air-to-air and five ground-kills (the 8th AF gave kill-credit for enemy aircraft destroyed on the ground, a practice unique to them, and later stopped)...
The US Air Force Fighter Victory Credits Board, in 1956 and 1957, adjusted his final score to 25.83 and further determined that ground-kills would not be included in determining total victories of any WW2 victory claims from the 8th AF...
During his 17-month tour in the ETO, Major Preddy was once asked by a reporter if he feared death, he replied in a letter that, "Although my aircraft might be shot down, I will not fall, because I have wings... Wings made not of wood or steel, but of a firmer kind, wings that God has given to me."...
Major Preddy was just 24 years old when he was shot down...
