It was chilly and dark when I was awakened at about 4 A.M. the morning of August 25, 1944 for my 22nd combat mission. I was not scheduled to fly that day but the assigned pilot could not make the mission and I was chosen to take his place. The mission for us that day was a Fighter Sweep of the German occupied Paris area. The rest of the Squadron were already taking off as I ran to the latrine, then grabbed a cold pancake and raced to the plane assigned to me: P-51B-10, tail # 42-106445, Squadron Markings GQ-Q. We would start the mission together but only one of us would return.

"DIANA-MITE", Skowronek's Mustang and Thunderbolt have been created for the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 for the PC. The aircraft repaints were created by Chuck Lawsen. Fight-sim enthusiast worldwide have downloaded Lawsen's creation over 1,000 times. Lawsen's father was a B-17 pilot with the 351st BG in Polebrook, England.

After taking off, I played “catch up” with the squadron. I finally caught them and was assigned the wingman slot to the Element Leader. As we approached the mission point, my Element Leader aborted, leaving me alone for the upcoming flight. Someone called in the “BOGIES” and the battle was on and I was on my own. I tried to stay with the balance of my flight but they were pulling away from me in the melee of the battle.

An FW-190 flew past me and I pursued it with both of us climbing towards the clouds. I fired my 6 50 cal. guns and saw strikes to the FW-190. He drove for lower clouds with me still firing and I could see my strikes hit him. He jettisoned his canopy, flew into my fire a last time and spun to the ground. While on my back I was hit by flak in my left wing that flipped me into a dive. As the ground came up at me I prepared to bail out, pulling back my canopy and releasing my seat belt. This was it. I was bailing out over German controlled France.

"In a last desperate attempt to stay with the aircraft I pulled back on the stick and it responded and it pulled out of the crash dive. I closed my canopy, fastened my seatbelt, and turned to a southwest heading which would take me to the closest point of the Allied front line. I radioed my flight and told them of my trouble and my plan and got back a “Good Luck”!.

Me and the GQ-Q were saved from crashing but we were not back to our lines yet. My Mustang gave me all the power it had but after a short time it started loosing altitude and the engine temperature gauge showed it was seriously overheating. I was not able to turn the prop pitch down and the propeller was running wild. We were flying over a large, dense green forest when a single brown plowed field appeared. I headed for it and brought us in “wheels-up”. The landing was perhaps the most perfect one I ever made. I was certainly highly motivated to get it “right” and my P-51 flight controls were responsive and willing to the very end. I climbed over the side and threw two incendiary grenades into the cockpit, placed my chute on the wing, and ran toward the nearest trees because I heard dogs barking in the distance.

Thanks to the ultimate sacrifice of my P-51, the assistance of the Free French partisans, some disinterested German sentries, and Patton’s army, I escaped and evaded for 2 weeks and was able to return to my unit on September 13, 1944. I flew a total of 121 sorties with the 354th. I went on to fly many more hours in the Mustang (total of 233).

U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School

As a member of the Air Force’s 2nd Test Pilot class after the war, I was fortunate enough to fly 23 planes in the Air Force inventory (from X aircraft to the B-29 to the P-80). Most of the other planes I flew did their intended jobs well.

The best plane I ever flew was the North American P-51 Mustang marked GQ-Q because it gave me a superior weapon in battle and it gave me all it had to get me home. After being liberated, there was a parade and a celebration in a town close to where the GQ-Q landed. The P-51 was a formidable warrior and a beautiful plane to fly.

A note on the evasion adventure my P-51 got me into:

After evading the dogs, I heard (after the wheels-up landing) by tramping through a swamp in the French forest. I stopped long enough to take inventory of what I had to work with. The only thing I had was the standard issue “Survival Kit” I had found in the P-51. I had left my .45 Colt side arm in my locker. I was wearing only a kaki shirt and pants as in my rush, I had not pulled on my flight suit or put on my flight jacket. I also discovered blood seeping through the left side of my trousers and found shrapnel in my left leg. I wanted to put as much distance as I could between me and the plane so I took a SW heading from the compass in the kit and kept moving as fast as I could as the afternoon began to dim.

I still have the maps and compass from that kit but the story of my evasion adventure is for another time.

355th Fighter Squadron Mustang Fighter Pilots: Charles "Chuck" Tighe (left - deceased October 25, 2012), Tadeusz "Ted" Skowronek (center - deceased February 17, 2012) and, Clayton "Kelly" Gross (deceased January 10, 2016) during a 354th Fighter Group Association reunion in San Antonio, TX, Stinson Airport.