Presentation Date: August 28, 1997
Urban Drew
Two Me262 victories from a P-51 Two Me262 victories from a P-51
"There Will Be No More Aces"
With today's high Mach fighters, radar systems and over-the-horizon weapons, "there will be no more aerial aces, no more air-to-air combat" as we have known it. That's Urban Drew's assessment, noting there were 189 American aces in WWI, 1200+ in WWII, 36 in Korea and only 2 in Vietnam.
Drew began his talk to a standing room-only crowd at the August dinner meeting by speaking of the cost of war in the air - - 81 killed in the group Drew flew with and 53,000 in the 8th Air Force, 11% of all U.S. casualties in the war.
Urban Drew began the war as a flight instructor. In seven months he flew 700 hours in P-51 Mustangs, while the cadets he turned out had all of 60 hours in the P-51. After making an accidental low pass over a parade of Army troops headed for the China-Burma-India theater, Drew got his chance for combat with a transfer to the 361st Fighter Group just after D-Day.
The 361st was committed to flying ground support to Patton's Third Army. Drew flew 76 missions with the 361st, and says through his hours of training, he'd become one with the P-51, gaining confidence he might not have had otherwise. Drew says when he got to Europe, five of the kids in his group were pilots he'd trained and were already aces. Some were Captains and Majors yet they still called 2nd Lt. Drew, "Sir."
It was on a mission in October, 1944 that Drew first made contact with a German jet. Drew pursued the aircraft in his P-51 in what proved to be a futile effort. All he could do was fire his guns at a distance, to no avail, while the jet outran his Mustang. Drew returned to base wanting to know more about the Me262, and contacted his intelligence officers who proceeded to say they could not divulge secret information. Drew turned to British intelligence, who told him among other things the new jets were based at Achmer and at Lechfeld, Germany.
On a mission soon thereafter, Drew shot down an Me109. Performing a victory roll when returning to base, Drew was grounded for the maneuver. He and Billy Kemp, who'd also been grounded, were in their billet just starting a bottle of bourbon, when Drew's squadron commander came in. "Put the bottle away" he said, "because we're going on a mission to Brux, Czechoslovakia. There are Me262s operating in that area, and you know more about them than anybody else in this squadron. So, you're leading the mission."
October 7th. Drew was flying with wingman McCandless when he spotted the German airbase at Achmer and went down for a look. Two Me262s were just taking off when Drew dived on them, McCandless keeping right with him. The first Me262 exploded when hit by the .50s of "Detroit Miss". Drew says he was surprised when the second Me262 tried to climb away, allowing him to turn inside and shoot away the jet's control surfaces. When Drew returned to base, he found that not only had his wingman failed to return after being hit by flak following Drew's victories, but the gun camera also failed. Only after the war did Drew learn his wingman had survived.
It was more than 40 years later when an Air Force clerk noticed Drew's claim for two Me262 victories on the same mission. She contacted a custodian of German war aviation records(Hans Ring), who knew former Luftwaffe pilots who might be able to shed light on the claim. Georg-Peter Eder had been scheduled to lead the Me262s of JG 7 that day, but when his aircraft had problems taking off, the two-ill-fated pilots took off to lead the squadron. Eder says he saw a yellow-nosed P-51 dive on the climbing Me262s and shoot them down. Eder couldn't read "Detroit Miss" on the nose of the Mustang, but his account was sufficient to confirm Drew's two Me262 victories.
Of the 81 361st FG pilots lost in combat, Drew says about half were lost to flak. The most deadly threat was the vaunted 88mm antiaircraft gun. On one mission at 31,000 feet, Drew's number 4 had strayed a bit from the group. There was a burst of 88mm flak about 50 yards in front of him as Drew called for the pilot to close up. Shortly there was another burst about 50 yards behind the pilot, and Drew started to scream on the radio "They've bracketed you!" But a third burst hit the P-51 and the plane disappeared.
Drew says two of his three victories over Me109 pilots came relatively easily. "It's who's in the cockpit that counts." The third proved his toughest challenge.
Flying at about 23,000 feet, he saw a flight of P-38s fall prey to Me109s. The Germans came down past Drew and his wingman, and Drew pulled a hammerhead stall to come around behind one 109. The German pilot saw him, went into a Lufbery, and Drew followed, the two aircraft in a tight circle, corkscrewing down to 10,000 feet. That's when Drew asked himself, "Is this guy better than you? I had to put it out of my mind immediately, because if you don't, the wrong mother's son is going to come home that night."
They spiraled closer to the ground, Drew keeping at least 100 feet altitude on the 109, until the German pulled out. The G forces in the Lufbery (about 7Gs) had jammed five of his six guns, but the one gun proved enough to shoot down the 109. Drew says this was the one time in his combat career he felt remorse over a victory. "I felt very bad, because I said, Drew, there was one of the great fighter pilots of all time. Whoever was flying that 109, he almost got you. And I was the best, as far as I was concerned. Maybe he was a big ace and maybe he wasn't, but by God he could fly that Messerschmitt."
As testimony to Germany's fighting spirit even when the country had been all but reduced to rubble, the Me262s of JG 7 took down 20 bombers on the last day of the European conflict.
Post World War II, Drew has been frustrated by the failure to learn history's lessons. "We brought back a dozen of these (Me262s), tested them at Eglin Field and Wright Patterson and understood the aeronautical engineering very well. Five years later Korea broke out. We sent P-51s, a straight wing airplane...and all we had learned since then was to build a P-80, which was also a straight wing airplane, and the Migs shot us out of the air. And finally we sent the F-86."
Drew questions current U.S. Defense policy - - creating defensive weapons, where Drew believes there's a need to develop offensive weapons. "Those of us who've fought wars for this country are always sad to see how slow we are in coming along with our technology and the things we really should know."