"I opened fire on a Liberator from the front and a little below. It immediately starts burning and falls out of formation. I come in and attack from the tail and then turn for another frontal attack. My aim has never been better. Suddenly there is an explosion and the blazing crate disintegrates above me."

Knoke dodges pieces of flaming wreckage. "It falls to the sea near Heligoland. This was my fifth."

He climbed back to see his friend in the middle of the B-24 formation doggedly firing at the leader from six o'clock while every gun in the bomber box sent a criss-cross of tracers at the 109. He broke away smoking and exited the doomed "Gustav."

This account of leisurely bomber attack has been experienced by flight sim hobbyists in several combat flight simulations. As in physical reality, it was before the scrappy hordes of Thunderbolts and Mustangs were there to watch out for their bomber brethren. After that both the virtual and tangible Luftwaffe pilots usually contended with determined escorts "shooing" them away or shooting them down.

Heinz Knoke went on to survive many wounds and ended the war with fifty-two victories.

BLACK 'CAT

Major Bruce Porter in his radar equipped F6F-5N Hellcat night fighter aptly named "Black Death," carried four fifty caliber machine guns with 500 r.p.g. outboard and two twenty millimeter cannon inboard with 230 r.p.g. Something like 1,400 F6F-5Ns were set up this way. This was a potent array that Bruce liked quite well. The Marine had come out the victor three previous times he had met the enemy in battle in his Corsair and was equally as confident of his black F6F.

One indigo night in June, 1945 Porter, flying as Topaz One, was informed of a contact by his ground controller, Handyman. The shorter-range on-board radar picked up the bogey above him. He dropped the belly tank and fire-walled the throttle.

The water-methanol injected Pratt & Whitney P-2800-10W put out 2,200 hp and added a fifteen knot burst of speed in emergencies. Black Death began to close as Handyman vectored him in mile by mile. Patiently following directions yielded Porter a visual. It was a twin-engine KI-45 "Nick" about 350 feet ahead.

Closing to 300 feet to be certain of perfect gun convergence, Porter held down both triggers rudely interrupting night's stillness aiming for the right engine and fuselage. The 20s were noticeably slower in firing rate that the .50s. Seventy rounds per second were output by the six heavy guns. Bruce let off of the cannon trigger to save ammo but continued firing the .50s API (armor-piercing incendiary) so as the target would burn and it could be confirmed destroyed. Slugs ravaged the Imperial Army fighter.

Click to continue

"I saw tracers go into the canopy. I doubt if the pilot knew what hit him," remembers Porter. Two seconds of the devastating fire was all that was needed to send the Nick towards the ocean wrapped in a sheet of flame from nose to tail.

Handyman gave Topaz One another target vector that turned out to be a G4M "Betty" Porter closed near enough to see that a Baka (The Japanese Okha was a piloted rocket powered suicide weapon.) was slung beneath the bomber. Bruce knew the Betty had a 20-mm tail gun so he opened up with further delay.

A one to two second burst of machine guns and cannons exploded the bomber and its volatile cargo into a blanket of seething pieces that floated down to the ocean below. This rare double night kill made Bruce Porter an ace.

Black Death had used but 500 rounds of .50 caliber and 200 rounds of 20-mm. Porter's boyhood marksmen heroes Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett would have been proud.

WHERE IS EVERYBODY?

Walter Schuck amassed a total of 206 confirmed victories. 198 were on the Eastern Front but eight were in the West in the Me262 jet. His description of the chaos during combat is well portrayed in the popular European Air War combat flight simulator. As modeled in the virtual world, the tangible world's Mk 108 30-mm quartet in the 262's graceful nose dealt death at more than 500 mph.

Fig. 4 Walter Shuck