1O GRUPO DE AVIAÇÃO DE CAÇA

(FIRST BRAZILIAN FIGHTER GROUP)

PART TWO : THE 1o Grupo de Caça STORY BY ITS MEMBERS

by Marcus Borges

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Nobody can really tell the truth behind a real experience but the participants themselves.  As to respect this philosophy, the second part of the 1º Grupo de Caça story must be told by its own members.  Let us listen to these men.

1)Lieutenant-Colonel Nero Moura, 1º Grupo de Caça Commanding Officer :

"We had a distinctive form of operating, regarding 350th FG procedures, because we were a better trained bunch of guys compared to the North American outfit itself.  We had more results, more action, and had the lion’s share regarding those fellows.

That was because we arrived in theater with a huge flight experience, and the North Americans were just rookies (they never kept fighting to the end as the Brazilians did : after 35 missions, they were sent back home...).Our planes were used as an ultimate weapon: we had more bombing precision, we better attacked ground targets, and we saw things on land far ahead, such as camouflaged ammo depots.

Just to mention an example, there was an allied armour column which penetrated deeply in the enemy lines, when it was suddenly detected by one of our pilots, Cap Horácio Machado, who promptly identified them as North Americans and immediately sent a message warning the Allied Command, which sent him a huge ‘congratulations’ for that.  The Allied Command had no idea were the column was for more than ten hours, and the very first information, in the heat of the combats, was then given by the Brazilians, which kept that Allied men from being destroyed by their comrades!

 

Gun camera footage of an ammo depot bombardment at the river Po valley

2)Second Lieutenant Alberto Martins Torres :

"On April,22,1945, we had been sitting in our briefing room since 6 am, waiting for the weather to improve when, at 1 pm, Cel Nielsen dashed in and said : ‘The hun is on the run – take off !!’

The Germans were trying to escape to the Northernmost region of Italy via the river Po valley, and my flight was the first to take off, being vectored by ground-based radar across the Apenines moutains.  After 40 minutes, ‘Cooler’ – the radar controller – guided us down the Po valley, and we broke out of the clouds at 2,000 ft and get going down to 1,000 ft, hunting highway traffic.

Suddenly, we spotted a large mass of German armour and troops, concentrated at a river margin, waiting for a pontoon bridge to be completed.  We attacked the column’s rear area, so they could not retreat, and then strafed the many targets, including the bridge itself, until ran out of ammunition.  However, the enemy hit us hard in return and, thanks to the ruggedness of the P-47’s, we had no losses, but two badly shot up aircraft.

‘Cooler’ took us back to base through those clouds, while vectoring other flights to keep the pressure on that target.  When we returned four hours later to resume attack, the enemy formation (we later heard that it was the remains of two whole divisions of the German army) had been already surrounded by North American armoured units.  This day was our best in theater.

3)First Lieutenant Luiz Felipe Perdigão :

"On the afternoon of April 24,1945, I localized around 80 aligned boxcars at a railway junction west of Verona city...what would be their cargo?  It could be anything : the Allied offensive was fully on, and the Wermacht was trying to save whatever it was able to, trying to concentrate its forces on the Alps passes, where it could resist a little bit longer.

Our orders were to ’intercept’ all transportation, so I dived with my planes to strafe the boxcars, just to see the aftermath...However, as soon as the gunnery began, everything just blew up, in a hell of fire, with flames up to 300 meters high, the resulting smoke climbing up to 2,000 meters high!!  An immediate reaction (the explosion’s center is safer), a flashing thought (I died as my friend Santos), a red world, the melting hot of that big torch and, suddenly, the peacefulness of breaking through the other side, with my plane completely burned, smoked canopy, perforated wings, but still flying, going south, back to life, guarded by the other flight members, Paulo Costa, Tormin and Meira.

That was my most memorable mission, one to be never forgotten...

Gun camera footage from Lt Perdigão’s P-47.He is passing through the flames at the end...

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End of Part Two

Bibliography : "Senta a Pua", Rui Moreira Lima

Biblioteca do Exército Editora,Rio de Janeiro,RJ,1980

Marcus

Back to PART ONE : INTRODUCTION

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Part Three : The Modelling Chapter

Photos and text © by Marcus Borges