jugs vs. jets
24 FlightJournal.com
The first real competition the Luftwaffe faced
over France from the American fighters was the
presence of the P-38 Lightnings and the P-47
Thunderbolts (aka “Jugs”). The latter was like a
flying tank built around ruggedness and sporting
eight .50-caliber machine guns. The first P-47s
in England went to the 78th Fighter Group in
January 1943, with T-Bolts becoming operational
in March. Their numbers continued to grow, and
by the spring of 1944 they peaked when the 8th
Air Force had eight P-47 groups.
This epic story concerns the 366th Fighter
Group that brought its Thunderbolts to England
in January 1944 and began flying combat missions
over France in mid-March 1944. Most of the
366th’s pilots had been flying missions with more
seasoned groups to learn all they could before
facing the Germans over hostile territory. Once
they were well prepared to take on the Luftwaffe
in aerial combat, their core strength remained inlow-altitude interdiction in search of anything
that moved on the rails and roads in France. A lot
of these efforts were being carried out just before,
during and immediately after the D-Day offensive.
Preventing the Germans from attempting to shift
reserve troops and equipment to the hot areas
was high priority among all of the P-47 units. At
war’s end, the 366th was officially credited with
103 aerial kills, and one of them proved to be
monumental because it was a very rare German
twin-jet bomber that the Allies knew practically
nothing about—the Arado 234, code-named
“Blitz.”
When the group was at last unleashed on the
enemy, the overall weather conditions over France
were poor—typical for that time of year. Its first
major escort mission of some A-20 Havocs was
scrubbed due to 300-foot ceilings with tops at
around 5,000 feet. The group was called back to
base in England at Thruxton. The 391st Squadron
was the last to land, with the ceiling dropping
even further. Two of the P-47s hit the side of a
hill on approach and crashed because of the poor
visibility.
The group’s commitments continued to increase
when they were assigned a dangerous escort
mission of 163 Martin B-26 Marauders against
the heavily defended Hasselt marshalling yards
in northeastern Belgium. Due to the number of
defending fighters in that area, 101 Thunderbolts
were required for the mission. The Luftwaffe
resistance was rather light, so most of the fighters
that carried 250-pound GPs were able to strafe andbomb just before the Marauders struck, and two
days after the mission, smoke was still thick over
the target area because the P-47s had hit several
ammunition dumps. The target was completely
destroyed, so the 366th was off to a great start.
In any war, there are good days and bad days.
Four days after the Hasselt mission, the 366th was
up again in full strength against a German airfield
at Fauville, France. After several successful strafing
runs, they headed back up to 18,000 feet. Seconds
later, they received a frantic radio message from
a bomber formation under heavy attack from Fw
190s that were firing rockets at them. Fortunately,
they were not far away, and in a few minutes, theyone of the most unique encounters took
place between a p-47 and a relatively
unknown German twin-jet bomber known
as the ar 234 “blitz.”