This is really kind of silly, but after surviving my first mission I felt inspired to write something about it. I'm by no means new to DCS, but I have never paid a lot of attention to the Spitfire - that was a mistake because it's one of the greatest planes!
Anyway, this is what I wrote just to get it out of my head:
Dear Mom,
I’m sure you have been frantic with worry because you have not received a letter from me recently, but it was unavoidable. Even if the strict censors we have now that I’m here in England would have allowed me to tell you what was going on, I wouldn’t have. You would have been ever more worried if you knew that my new squadron was preparing for a new type of mission and that I would be a part of it. It turns out that our belief in the invulnerability of the B-17 Flying Fortress was nothing more than wishful thinking. The Luftwaffe is knocking them down by the dozens.
Think of it, mom. Ten guys in each one of those planes. Some are rescued from the channel, some land in occupied France and will be held as prisoners until the war is over, but a whole lot of them don’t make it. As the only American in the squadron, I can’t tell you how great it feels to see how anxious the other guys are to get on with this new mission. They feel just as keenly as I do that we have to help those guys. The long and short of it is that High Command has decided some squadrons are going to be tasked with missions to escort the B-17 bombers.
We can’t stay with them for the entire mission - those big bombers carry a lot more gas than the tiny Spitfire does, so some of our planes will escort them over the channel, and others will meet the bombers on their way back.
If you aren’t sitting down, mom, maybe you should. I flew my first actual mission today, and the mission was to fly across the channel (110 miles! Each way!) to meet up with a returning bomber group to escort them home. It didn’t quite work out that way, but the most important thing is that I made it back safely.
You would probably guess that the nerves and anxiety I felt on the morning of the mission would be from knowing that I was going to be flying into hostile territory and war zone. Make no mistake, that was certainly on my mind, but my most immediate fear was getting on the wrong side of Brutus. Brutus is the nickname of the squadron commander. He would also be leading the squadron on the mission. He’s known as a bit of a (I apologize for this, mom, but there’s no other words that suit) “ball-buster” throughout the squadron, but he seems to have a special kind of hate towards Yanks. The thing is, I’ve been having a hard time getting my plane to start. I’ve missed two scheduled “go” times because of it already, and third time would get me put on a boat back home. I reviewed the checklist items over and over and over...
As it turned out, I got a hand shake and crisp salute from Buster when we got back. The engine start went fine, I was able to join up at my assigned position to the left of Buster’s flight with no trouble, the flight across the channel was invigorating as we stayed low to the water, but we soon got to the point where we had to climb way up high to meet the bombers. I had obsessed over that moment for days. It was another chance for me to ruin the mission. When you go up high in the Spit, you have to remember to turn on a little switch hidden down by your left hip. You know how I’ve always said that the inside of a Spitfire looks like it was designed and built by a farm tractor company? This is a perfect example. At least I remembered!
This will sound odd, but this air war is very different from what I had imagined it to be. When daydreaming about it, you don’t think about the 110 miles that you have to fly there and back, you think about dogfights or strafing. You would never imagine that a lot of the time flying is incredibly boring. The other thing that surprised me is just how beautiful it can be. This morning, as we were climbing to an altitude over 20,000’, we got high enough to generate contrails. I don’t have the words to describe those dozens of trails of puffy white cloud shining brightly with the light of the rising sun… “amazing” doesn’t do it justice. Nor does “beautiful.”
Five minutes later I killed a man.
I’m not yet able to talk about it very much. This too is something you just don’t see coming.
“I’m joining up with the Brits to kill some Nazis!”
So noble, yet so naive.
You can’t wait to get into a dogfight and knock down a Messerschmitt, or even better, a Focke-Wulf 190. And that is exactly what I did today. I shot down a 190. The funny thing is, it didn’t feel like killing someone. I didn’t feel any fear for myself, either. I mean I knew it could happen, but the excitement and adrenaline seemed to focus every bit of my attention on the plane I was chasing. And that’s what I mean: I didn’t feel like I was hunting a man, I felt the same way as I do when a couple of us guys go out on training flights and chase each other around. The only difference was pulling a trigger.
I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I did not actually see my shots hit him. I was behind him, but he was turning and I was following. The Spit is a pretty gal, but she has a big nose. That becomes a problem in a turning fight. It’s not enough to get the nose of your plane pointing at him, you actually have to turn even tighter so the bullets will be exactly where you hope he’ll be at the same time. “Hope” is the word for it because the Spit’s big nose blocks your sight of the target when you tighten the turn. I pulled the trigger, hoped for the best, and loosened up my turn to see if I had got him.
I had. The plane was heading almost straight down, trailing black and gray smoke. We were low by then, and there was no parachute. He went down with his plane.
I had such severe tunnel vision during the fight (which could have lasted 5 seconds or as many minutes - I have no idea) that I had forgotten that there were dozens of other fights still going on. I also had no idea where all of the shrapnel and bullet holes in my right wing had come from. There had been some flak on the way in, and someone in the melee could have taken a shot or two at me, but I probably won’t ever know for sure. I headed back to base, unsure how far the damaged Spit would take me.
This too gives me a lot to think about. I’ll never know how close I came to dying today, and I don’t know what’s going to happen on my next mission. I know only this: I love you and miss you.
Your Son,
Homer Lithwick, Spitfire Pilot
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I didn't return from the second mission - I blew up the engine and had to bail out over occupied France.
