The American Beagle Squadron

The prime air action of the month was the accidental interception, late in the afternoon of 23 January, of a large formation of JU-88s and HE-111s carrying torpedoes, by a flight of four 2nd Squadron planes that were on a dive bombing mission. These e/a were headed for the beachhead at Anzio, which had been established just the night before, and had many supply and support ships offshore.

Bickford, who was the flight leader on this mission, had these memories of the encounter.

It was a slow day—not much going on. I wanted to attack the E-Boat [torpedo carrying motorboats] pens at Marina di Pisa, so a few of us asked Bill Beard, the Operations Officer, to get an O.K. for such a mission. The permission came back about midafternoon and the four of us, Encinias, Johnson, Liebl and myself, took off as soon as the bombs were installed.

As we approached Marina di Pisa we spotted two flights of German aircraft heading south just off the coast and very low over the water. There were about forty a/c in each flight, JU-88s and HE-111s in tight formation, with a few JU-88s, I think, as escort.

As we maneuvered into position for attack, I told the flight to jettison their bombs—I didn't think of dropping them on those formations, which we probably should have done.

The return fire was quite heavy but everyone survived it. Mike Encinias' plane was badly damaged, however. After our second pass at the bombers, someone said, “Where's Johnny?”. To relieve the tension of the moment, I tried to be funny by saying, “He's probably goofing off somewhere”. Johnson let me know immediately that he didn't appreciate my remark; he had been chasing a bomber that headed inland when we started our attack.

After we ran out of ammunition—the Spitfire didn't carry much, and certainly not what was needed in this situation—we headed back to base. We split up the formations a little, but they closed up and continued south, toward Anzio. I reported to control the number and type of aircraft and their direction of flight, so I assume that our forces were alerted. Bickford shot down two HE-111s. The other three pilots tell these stories.

Encinias: I remember only the action since my radio was out; it died on the way. When I saw all those bombers flying past us I thought they were friendly. Don't ask why; I just couldn't believe that we would have the luck to run into so many e/a.

When our other planes started peeling off, it dawned on me and I started looking for markings, etc. There were so many of them that I didn't need to maneuver; I simply sat behind them and traded fire until they fell. I could tell that one was a Heinkel 111 from the shape of the tail. The other one looked different, so I assumed that it was a JU-88, but I can't swear to it; it just looked different from the HE and had two engines. I stopped my attack when I ran out of ammunition.

Stars and Stripes later published a squib about Mike doing a double victory roll upon returning to base, only to find, after landing, that his plane's tail section had been badly damaged by return fire from the bombers.