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In 1942, Robert J. Goebel was a young nineteen-year-old high school graduate with the same interests as any teenager in any time. But in 1942 there was a war going on, a war that had touched every portion of the globe and every human being in one way or another. So instead of going to college or taking up a trade, Goebel joined the United States Army Air Force.

By 1944 he was a member of the 31st Fighter Group in North Africa, flying British Spitfires. In short order they traded their Spits for Mustangs, entered combat and suffered their first losses.

"Up near the Yugoslavia-Austria border, bogies were called out at one o'clock, slightly below. This time, I got a good look and saw about twelve Me 109s passing from one o'clock toward three, fairly close. As the squadron started to turn in to them, Johnson let go his tanks, cut sharply inside our lead flight, and started down after them. I just had time to sneak a look at our lead flight on the outside as I rolled to follow Johnson. I was horrified to see the rest of the squadron turn back to the original heading, leaving us hung out to dry.

"I shot a glance back at Johnson. He was already getting away from me, turning in a tight vertical bank and closing rapidly on a 109. I pulled it in as hard as I could. But, if I was to stay with him, I knew I was going to have to keep reefing it in. The 109s on the outside of us, which Johnson was expecting the lead section of the squadron to engage, could easily drop in behind us. But I figured that, while pulling four or five Gs, I was relatively safe. Hauling back on that stick for all I was worth and in a semi-crouch, I was tightening my stomach muscles-tightening all my muscles trying to hold my head up against the vicious, unrelenting force of magnified gravity. I no longer knew if I was in the same piece of sky as Johnson; the positive Gs were draining the blood from my head and I was sightless.

"After another second or two, I eased the back-pressure on the stick until I got some vision back, hoping Johnson would still be in front of me. No joy. That part of the sky was empty. At eight o'clock, a mile or two away, I saw a parachute. A good bit closer, two aircraft were coming at me. They had no deep central air scoop but two flat, shallow radiators under the wings and close to the fuselage, exactly like the recognition silhouette. They were unmistakably Me 109s! I went to War Emergency [Power] 67 inches [of] manifold pressure and made for a bank of clouds over on my left. I beat them into the clouds, a stratus deck that was fairly smooth inside. I was safe& I moved in gingerly toward the first flight of Mustangs I came upon. The large letters WZ on the side told me they were from a sister squadron, the 309th. The leader gave me a short glance, raised his gloved hand to acknowledge my presence, and went on about his business. I felt like the lost kitten that had found its mother. But I couldn't help wondering what had happened to Johnson. Was that his chute or a German pilot's?

"After I had landed and parked, I walked slowly toward the ops tent for debriefing, dreading the interrogation and my admission that I had lost my element leader. I told my story to Lam as completely as I could while he took notes. Johnson wasn't back and no one had reported seeing him& Two other squadron pilots besides Johnson failed to return: Trafton and Hughes. Although no one knew it then, Trafton was wounded, but he had successfully bailed out and was to return to Italy three months later. Hughes was dead. He had remarked to Lam before going out to his airplane, 'Isn't it a beautiful day to get shot down?' Did he have a premonition, or was it just an offhand remark? Who knows. But he was right about one thing: It had been a beautiful day."

-From Mustang Ace, Bob Goebel's memoir

By the time Goebel returned home after his combat tour he had flown 61 combat missions and shot down 11 Axis planes. He was nearly 22 years old.

Today Bob Goebel is 77 years old and retired from a career in aerospace. He has survived youth, war and illness and the years have lent him a grace and ease unattainable to someone younger. So much has changed from the pictures of a much younger man that in one way it is hard to believe that it is the same person.

Until you get to the eyes. These eyes have stared into the vaulted blue, searching for deadly winged specks and somehow they have been changed forever. Now he is a writer, a man who has searched among his former enemies and found instead good and true friends.

For myself, I have so many questions; I hardly know where to start. Here is a man who has been "there," who has done the things that I have only dreamed of, can only dream of. I blurt out, "What did you think of the Mustang?" since my mind is in danger of immediate seizure. Thus starts a conversation that is easy and fascinating, slow and thoughtful, quick and full of humor.

I will present it here as question and answer to make it easy to understand. You must fill in the smiles and pauses in your own mind.

Rapier: You flew the P-51 Mustang, as well as the Spitfire, P-39, and P-40. Now that 55 years have passed in the blink of an eye, how do you view your P-51's performance in combat? Are there any good or bad qualities of the aircraft that stand out in your memory that weren't mentioned in the book?

Bob: I cannot think of a single flying characteristic of the Mustang that was bad. Of course the fuselage tank caused problems when full but that was the price for cramming more internal fuel into the Mustang, and [it] was self-correcting as the fuel was used. The gun stoppage of all four guns on the B-model if firing while pulling four Gs was a problem but was fixed on the D-model.

Rapier: I know that the Mustang had a long nose. How was it trying to taxi or land the plane?

Bob: Every fighter from the WWII era that had a three-point gear (i.e. a tailwheel) had no visibility forward on the ground. I remember being shocked on my first flight in a fighter. It happened to be a P-40 and of course there were no two-place aircraft so the fledgling pilot was on his own from the get-go. We were all told of this condition and advised in no uncertain terms to keep "S"-ing and clearing the taxiway ahead by alternately looking out one side and then the other. However, by the time one had 15 or 20 hours in an aircraft under these conditions, it became second nature and one didn't have to think about doing it any longer. On takeoff the pilot had to look out to the side until sufficient speed was achieved to raise the tail. Also on landing I liked to make a close-in pattern and stay in a turn onto a short final.

Rapier: I bet takeoff in the aircraft was difficult particularly when heavily loaded. Did you ever have to do ground attack missions with rockets and bombs?

Bob: I never carried rockets and bombs during my combat tour. However, compared to Mustangs flying today, we were pretty heavy, with armor plate, six machine guns and ammo, 85 gallons in the fuselage tank and a 110-gallon external tank under each wing. There was nothing tricky about it. You just didn't jerk it off the ground until it was ready to fly. Also, even with the rudder trim set at five or six degrees right-rudder, you advanced the throttle rapidly but smoothly so that you could keep the aircraft straight as the torque built up.

Rapier: Was it hard to maneuver the aircraft at low speed or particularly trying conditions (fog, rain, snow, etc.)?

Bob: I assume you are talking about landing under reduced visibility conditions. That was not a factor through the spring, summer, and fall, in Italy. I did not have to contend with that until much later.

Rapier: How hard was it to maneuver the aircraft in combat? Many latter-day flyers have commented on how little stall warning the Mustang gives before departure from controlled flight.

Bob: I have also heard that modern pilots consider the Mustang to give little stall warning, which surprises me. I suppose it all depends on what you are used to. I considered the Mustang to be an "honest" airplane in all aspects of flying characteristics. I thought that the P-40 was also okay but the P-39 would stall without warning, especially in a nose high turn. Of course the remedy was obvious-don't make low-speed, nose-high, tight turns. Some of the stalls in combat with the Mustang were true low-speed stalls, but far and away the most common were high-speed or acceleration stalls. But even here, I thought there was adequate warning and then of course all that was needed was a slight easing of back-pressure on the stick. The only explanation I could come up with is that WWII pilots who flew the aircraft every day, often at its performance envelope limits, developed a keener sense of what the aircraft was doing and what it was trying to tell the pilot and could respond so quickly and instinctively that a loss of control could be averted.

Rapier:·Did you have any difficulties firing your guns in combat?

Bob: I never used rockets in combat-only four .50 caliber machine guns on the B model and six ea. cal .50 guns on the D model. As I mentioned in my book, firing out of range (500 or 600 yards) was common for newer pilots (and some older pilots). Of course the chance of hitting anything under those conditions was little or none.

Rapier: Latter-day writers and novelists have made a case for the fact that the P-51 was chosen because it was relatively cheap to manufacture (compared with the P-47 and P-38) and that the engine durability of the Merlin was not on par with the power plants in those two planes. Does this match your experience?

Bob: It certainly does not. If the Mustang was cheaper than the other two, it was a coincidence-certainly not a determinant. I assume that you are talking about survivability rather than durability.

It is true that a rifle bullet in the radiator of a Mustang will eventually cause an engine failure. It is equally true that the R-2800 in the P-47 could fly on for unheard-of distances with a whole cylinder shot off. Which means to me that the P-47 was better suited to ground attack than the P-51. However, the Rolls Royce Merlin was an extremely durable engine, as least it was the times that I tortured it beyond its design limits.

On one occasion over Vienna I got into a fight, shot down one Me 109 and was turning with another when I was jumped by two Fw 190s. I let the nose fall through the horizon and went into a vertical dive but spiraling so as not to give them a shot as I accelerated.

I was in War Emergency Power (throttle through the gate-67 in. of Hg [mercury]) when I hit the deck and had opened the distance slightly so that the 190s were out of range. The race seemed to last a very long time before they gave up the chase, but was actually closer to 10 to 12 minutes. The book limited the operation at that setting to five minutes but of course I wasn't about to pull the throttle back, even if the engine blew. When I got back to base and landed, I discovered that I had burned or blown off several exhaust stacks but the engine ran fine. I think all engineering did was compression-check the engine, check the screens for metal particles and mark the aircraft back in commission. I wouldn't classify that performance as "low" durability.

Rapier: How do the other planes you flew, the Spitfire, P-39 and P-40 stack up in comparison? Would you have liked to fly them in combat?

Bob: The P-39 and P-40 were roughly equivalent in terms of performance. The Spit MK V, the only version I flew, was very nimble and light on the controls and was quite good in a climb. I would not have hesitated to fly it in combat against the 109 and 190.

I can't say that I would have been very enthusiastic about flying the other two in combat. Having said that, however, I was told by Herky Green [Herschel H. Green, another U.S. Mediterranean Ace] that he flew the [P-]40 in combat and could actually out turn the 109 although that was all it could do. Also, the Red Guard of the Soviet Air Force did quite well with the P-39 against the 109, so maybe I was just not a "believer."

Rapier: I know from reading your book that you flew from Italy and attacked targets in Romania, Czechoslovakia, southern Germany and France. Normally when the public thinks of air combat in Europe, they think of the groups based in England. What do you think are the important differences between the two experiences?

Bob: I think there was very little difference in the opposition encountered by the 8th AF vs. the 15th AF pilots. I say that because from late '43 on, German units and individual pilots were moved around and transferred all over Europe. After I finished my tour and was home on leave, a friend, Dick Olander, who had completed a tour with the 8th was also home on leave before returning to England. He told me that he had only gotten into fights on four or five missions during his entire tour. That certainly was not my experience.

I had gone to Ploesti or the Ploesti area 16 times and would guess that I had encountered enemy aircraft on at least 10 of them, if not more.

Rapier: How difficult was it to identify aircraft in the air in combat? How large do they seem to appear to you? There is a huge debate in the flight sim community as to the size aircraft should be presented. If they are presented at an accurate size in relation to a 14-17" monitor, they are often just dots until they are less than 2,000 yards away. Is this accurate?

Bob: I thought it was relatively easy to identify enemy aircraft, even at considerable distances. However, I would like to call your attention to two facts, which indicate that mistakes were made, fairly often. Edu Neumann categorically states that there were never any Fw 190s used in the defense of Ploesti. Yet there were many claims by our group and probably others for Fw 190s destroyed at Ploesti. The aircraft were actually IAR 80s-an aircraft designed and built by Romania. It did have a radial engine but there were significant differences in the aircraft profiles.

The other example is rather embarrassing since it happened to me. A friend of mine from the 52nd Fighter Group sent me a copy of a book called Air War Italy by Beale, D'Amico and Valenti. I quote partially from the entry for 20 July 1944:

"On the first operation, 1st GR.C. scrambled at 1305 from Vicenze and Thiene with ten C.205s and 12 G.55s, intercepting a formation of B-24s in the Udine area. These were escorted by P-51s of the 308th F.S. (31st FG) and P-38s of the 48th F.S. (14th F.G.), each unit covering a different height band, whose intervention wrecked the Italians' attack. Two C.205s and two G.55s were lost.

The American's claimed 3-0-2, crediting the kills to Maj. Dorris and Lt. Goebel (308th F.S.) and Lt. Brezas (48th F.S.). All the claims were for Bf 109s except for Dorris, somewhat nearer the mark with his "C.202."

The only excuse I have for mistaking a Macchi 205 for a 109 is that it was a zero deflection shot and so painted insignia was invisible. However, I certainly should have noted the different scoop arrangement.

The only comment I could make about relative size is the impression I had from trying out a different sim game. I thought that there was not enough difference in the relative size of an image from mid-range to very close. My impression in combat was that at 400-500 yards, you could see quite lot of detail, causing neophytes to think they were a lot closer than they actually were. At 200 yards and less you had the impression that he filled the windscreen and you were actually going to collide with him. One had to school himself to continue to close with him while firing but it was hazardous especially if the rate of closure was high.

Rapier: How reliable were your radios?

Bob: The SCR 522 4 channel VHF radio with which we were equipped was very reliable. I don't know if it was FM but the reception was excellent compared to the earlier "coffee grinder" type radios. Of course having only four channels left something to be desired, but at least the voice communications were understandable.

Rapier: Flight modeling is a BIG subject with nearly all flight games, with game creators presenting everything from very loose and hard-to-control flight models to some games where the plane feels like it is on rails. The problem is that very few of the designers have ever flown a plane, much less a WWII fighter. How is it really to fly a plane in combat? How stable was the P-51 at speed, how stable was it while shooting?

Bob: I am afraid that I am unable to put in words what it was like to fly fighter in combat. It was high excitement, fear, senses honed to a razor edge, physical hard work throwing the aircraft about at speed mixed together in varying degrees depending on the circumstances and the competence of the pilot.

I thought that the P-51 was stable at high speed and a reasonably good gun platform, but of course subject to the same problem as all single-engine fighters [Editor's note-torque and coordinated flight.] Although covered in detail in my book, I would like to state again that the constantly changing flight attitude and speed in a fight, resulted in severe rudder trim changes that had to be compensated for. I do not think that most pilots paid enough attention to keeping the ball in the center while firing.

When I returned to the states after my combat tour, I was assigned to a fighter-training unit. I was shocked to learn that they were teaching the students who were firing aerial gunnery on a flag target to set the rudder trim at the setting where it was correct during the firing pass and to fly around the rest of the pattern either in a yaw or holding rudder. While this may have produced more hits on the target for the student, I felt this defeated the purpose of the training exercise.

Rapier: How hard was it to keep the sights on target in a tail shot, for example, with no deflection, assuming no turbulence from the target aircraft?

Bob: I assume that you mean that the target aircraft pilot is unaware of your presence behind him. I believe any competent fighter pilot would have no trouble hitting his target under those circumstances. Of course if he was excited, then he would probably over-control to the point that it DID become difficult. Probably the biggest difference between a sim and actual combat is that when only one's pride can be wounded, every thing is a lot easier to do than it should be.

Of course if one can't hit a stationary target at zero deflection, he has no chance ever to hit anything and probably should get into a different line of work.

Rapier: There goes my career as a fighter pilot! But seriously, what would you say about the importance of pilot ability vs. aircraft performance? That is skill against great aircraft?

Bob: It is pretty obvious that an inexperienced pilot in a Mustang is going to get hammered by a an old pro in an Me 109 and an old pro in a Brewster Buffalo wouldn't have much of a chance either. The degree to which pilot competence and aircraft performance play together has too many variables to be quantified. In general, I would say that a WWII fighter pilot should have at least 200 fighter hours before being used on ops. At that point he has a reasonably good command of the aircraft but would need 15 or 20 missions in order to be able to function well in an arena where people are screaming on the R/T, tracers are whizzing close and one is trying to watch out for his wingman and set up an attack on an enemy aircraft. I'm sure that the Mustangs shot down by Hartmann and others were "new guys."

Rapier: Do you have any thoughts on what do you think was the "best" fighter aircraft of WWII and why? Did the performance of individual planes of the same model vary noticeably or significantly?

Bob: I do think that the Mustang was the best fighter of World War II, because of its performance and because of its ability to stay in the air for six hours. Every one relates the fuel load carried to its ability to go all the way to distant targets during its escort duties. Of course this is true and is a significant characteristic. However, I don't hear much about a related tactical effect that having lots of fuel had.

Twice that I know of (and probably more often than that) I was engaged with enemy fighters when they broke off the encounter and tried to make it back to base. The only explanation was that they got the "rote Lampe," the red light, and had 10 minutes before the engine quit.

Leaving a fight under these conditions made them very vulnerable and they usually were shot down or bailed out when the engine quit.

I don't remember any significant differences between aircraft of the same model, unless there was something basically wrong with one of them. I preferred to fly my own assigned aircraft whenever I could because of the real or imagined familiarity with it, which included having everything set exactly where I'd left it and where I wanted it.

I also thought that I could detect any microscopic differences in the engine response and engine sound but this may have well been illusory.

Rapier: How did the P-51 stack up to the Me 109s that were your opponents? Specifically, did it climb better, turn better, seem easier to fly& ?

Bob: The Me 109 was able to climb more steeply than a P-51 but otherwise I believe the -51 had an edge. It was marginal in turning and significantly faster in level flight. It also accelerated faster in a dive. The Luftwaffe also lost a lot of aircraft to operational accidents during landing, due to the narrow gear.

Rapier: Did you ever go up against the Fw 190?

Bob: I rarely encountered the FW 190 and never did get on one.

Rapier: How did your aircraft performance compare to official specifications and performance data?

Bob: At the time we transitioned into the P-51, we had no operating manuals and essentially learned by doing and by exchanging information with fellow pilots. To this day I don't know how the specs and actual performance stack up.

Rapier: Revisionist historians point out that the crew losses in training during WWII were very high and that the main focus was on speed of training and not safety. Do you feel you got adequate or safe training prior to combat?

Bob: All my experience was just the opposite-flight safety considerations frequently interfered with realistic combat training.

After I returned from the ETO and was assigned to the fighter training base at Waycross, GA, I was sent to the 3rd Air Force Fighter Instructor School at Pinellas AAF, Florida. At the conclusion of the course a senior officer was sent from HQ to talk to the students, who were all returned combat pilots, and to critique the course. The single most often heard complaint from the students (who were to become instructors) was that the flying prospectus was so slanted in favor of preventing accidents that the realism of the training was being compromised. The HQ Observer made it plain that he understood the problem but that it was a conscious decision by the Commanding General and was practiced throughout the training world of the USAAF.

Also, General Gabe Disosway, as a colonel, ran the Fighter Training base at Aguadulce, Panama. He told me fifty years later that he had been sent down there to set up realistic fighter training so that accidents would not be as well publicized as they would have been in the States. Of course Aguadulce never did become an Army Air Force-wide training center for different reasons, but the high level thinking is instructive. I did go through the training at Aguadulce and it was pretty hairy.

Rapier: Bob, you have a tremendous perspective since your career spanned the time from WWII to the Vietnam era. In WWII, all aircraft were definitely machines that had to be operated all the time, each component (prop pitch, mixture, throttle, gun charging, gun sight, hydraulics, etc.) operated by the pilot. In the intervening years, manufacturers have automated a lot of those processes (fly-by-wire, automatic weapons sighting, etc.) to the point where the weapons almost operate themselves. It seems the end result is to remove man from the equation. Is this a good thing or a bad thing from your point of view?

Bob: I think that it is a mixed blessing but I suppose it had to go in this direction. For one thing, computers can definitely perform certain tasks better than the pilot. I recall Walt Goehausen [a] buddy during flying school, Panama, and combat who flew for PanAm for 35 years, telling me that under certain weather conditions, the company required the pilot to make an approach and landing on the automatic system. The pilot sat there with his hands in his lap. As regards military fighter flying, as the designs moved toward higher performance, and it became possible for the pilot to move the controls to a position, which would cause the aircraft to break up, it became necessary for a computer to modulate the pilot control inputs. Fire control systems were almost automatic, launching missiles beyond visual range so that the pilot had to be told whether or not he destroyed the target. You know other examples as well or better than I. I don't think that it is a matter of being good or bad-it just became a necessity. If you asked me whether I would like to fly combat under the present environment, the answer would be a resounding NO. I remember during WWII when the K-14 gun sight came out. It was a mechanical computing gun sight, which used some gyros and linkages to provide the correct lead. The pilot set the wingspan with a control on the sight and then rolled a grip on the throttle to make six small diamonds, which formed a circle, to enlarge or decrease the diameter of the circle. In use the pilot rolled the throttle grip to make the circle correspond to the target wingspan, set the pipper (which was floating around) on the intended impact point and began to fire.

The point I was trying to make is that when the Army Air Corps retrofitted the fighter fleet with this sight, the veteran pilots who were used to the 100 mil fixed ring would not give up their old sight, in spite of the evidence that the K-14 was very good at high deflection shots, assuming that one was in range. I suppose it takes a whole new generation to accept changes such as have occurred.

Rapier: Combat [flying] seems to be a rare combination of skill and luck. What personality traits do you attribute your success and survival to?

Bob: As I pointed out in Mustang Ace, I think the important traits are: aggressiveness (born of a self confidence in one's ability), ability to spot EA [enemy aircraft] at extreme ranges (not the same as reading an eye chart), razor-sharp reflexes, and the ability to function in the midst of bedlam.

Luck certainly did play a part but only to the extent of being where the action was and being mounted on good machine.

Rapier: In hindsight, given all of what you now know, what would you have done differently in regard to tactics?

Bob: I don't know that I would do anything different, because I think my tactics were fundamentally sound-attack as quickly as possible from a superior position of altitude and/or speed, try to close quickly but allowing enough time for a one- to two-second burst before overrunning and breaking away sharply. Of course things never quite worked out that way and in fact, several times I wound up in a turning duel with my adversary, which I normally tried to avoid.

If I could do anything over, I would stay on combat for a lot longer than I did. In retrospect I came home at the height of my prime when I finally felt that I was in control in the air during a fight.

Rapier: In terms of tactics, did you feel that pilots employed mostly turn/stall fighting in WWII or did they use energy [climb and speed] tactics? How prevalent was dogfighting [a snarl of multiple fighters all engaged in battle] compared to hitting targets of opportunity?

Bob: You understand that these terms were not in use in the 1940s. "Tactics" consisted of going up with another aircraft flown by another pilot or an instructor and having at it. At the assigned altitude, on a signal from the lead aircraft, one would turn right and one would turn left. After 30 seconds both would do a 180 and come back toward each other keeping to the right so as not to risk a head-on. As they passed each other the fight was on, with each trying to gain a firing position on the other. It was kind of a "learn by doing" approach.

In actual combat, you took whatever action would get you the best shot in the least time. I recognized early on that nothing attracts the attention of enemy fighters like one of their own being attacked and fired on.

To answer your question about large formations engaging each other, it was not an every day occurrence but it did happen occasionally, especially before the fall of 1944 when large formations of German fighters (30 +) were still seen. One unusual aspect of such dogfights which many other pilots have remarked on was that at one instant the air was full of aircraft from both sides, climbing, diving, turning hard, and the next instant the sky was empty. To quote from [WWII Ace] Robin Olds, "It was the damndest thing you ever saw." I myself had noticed this and I think it was partially due to the fact the combat arena was in three dimensions and that with aircraft chasing and being chased helter skelter, the combat essentially exploded to the point where individual or small groups of aircraft became visually separated.

Do you mean by "targets of opportunity" ground targets, [on] which escort fighters used their ammo on the way home? The 8th Air Force began to do this late in the war. We rarely did. In the air, every enemy aircraft was a target of opportunity and was promptly attacked, assuming, of course, that he was not bait to draw off the fighters and leave the bombers uncovered.

Rapier: Can you compare the planes you flew to specific enemy aircraft? In combat, what techniques or tactics did they use? What techniques/tactics did you use against them? Did you have any favorite tactics or attacks that you preferred in combat? Were there any maneuvers that you stayed away from in the P-51 because of performance issues or just because it didn't do it as well as your opponents? As you can see I'm full of questions on this.

Bob: You have probably learned from my earlier answers that air combat was pretty unstructured, each one presenting its own give and take. In general, when an engagement became imminent, I always got the external tanks off immediately and went to auto-rich, full r.p.m. and full throttle. I tried to initiate an engagement from a position of superior altitude and/or speed but if you were attacked, you just had to break and play the hand you were dealt.

A German pilot pulled a stunt on me on a mission to Blechhammer, which surprised me. I hit him with my first burst and then he seemed to disappear. I pulled off and rolled past the vertical and caught sight of him almost directly below me and diving hell-bent for the deck. I did catch him right on the deck after a prolonged dive and shot him down. But I was shocked that he had trained himself to go hard forward on the stick by reflex even when he was not expecting an attack.

Negative Gs, which his action induced, were generally avoided by pilots, because one's feet came off the pedals and dirt and crap came flying up in your face. Even the pencil that you lost last week is up there against the canopy. I found out later that that particular maneuver was used often early in the war because the Me 109 was fuel-injected and the Spitfire's Merlin had a float carburetor which cause the engine to cut out momentarily under negative Gs. Although my adversary did surprise me with this tactic and came within an inch of getting away, in the end it did him no good and he was killed. I am told that the 109's ailerons tended to stiffen up severely above 350 [degrees]. The P-51 behaved quite well all the way up to the red line.

Rapier: Your book is a very honest portrait of what it was like as a young man to go into combat during World War II. One of the things that has struck me in my life is the realization that when I was 20, I saw the world with 20-year-old eyes and a 20-year-old's understanding and perspective. When I was 30, I saw the world with 30-year-old eyes and the same at 40. What perspective has the intervening 55 years given to you? Has the passage of time modified any of your feelings?

Bob: I think my perspective has changed over the intervening years. Let me say straight away that you had to be young to remain strapped to a seat for 5+ hours, possibly scaring yourself or at the least undergoing some highly charged minutes of contact with the enemy and then be ready to do it again the next day. I suppose the conviction that you are immortal has something to do with it. I think all of or most us subconsciously believed that bad things happened to other pilots but would never to you in spite of daily evidence to the contrary. It was only later we found out otherwise.

As you probably know, I have become great friends with a pilot who flew with JG-53 over Ploesti. He was a staffel-mate of a pilot whom I shot down and unfortunately killed over Ploesti. He has visited me in L.A. and I stayed at his house in Bavaria a couple of weeks ago. If someone had tried to tell me in 1944 that such a thing was possible in a lifetime, I would have thought he was mad. But our attitudes change. One of the German pilots expressed it well at a recent meeting. Referring to the WWII era, he said, "Those were the days when we were all young and beautiful. Today we are merely beautiful."

It occurred to me that I have made several references to Ernst Pausinger, my friend who was in JG-53. If you have Eric Hammel's latest book, Aces In Combat-The American Aces Speak Vol. 5, you will notice that the epilogue is entitled "A Friend Never Met" by Bob Goebel. It describes my successful research to find the identity of a pilot I shot down over Ploesti whose parachute did not open and the subsequent finding of his staffel-mate, Ernst Pausinger.

Rapier: You mention in the book that somewhere around your 41st mission, you lost that sense of danger that made you careful about what you did and it was nearly your undoing. Did it ever get hard to climb into the cockpit, given the danger and the odds? What was the most exciting moment in your wartime experience? The scariest? Funniest? What are you most proud of?

Bob: I never did reach the point where it was hard to get into the cockpit and was still eager to fly on every mission that I could. I noticed that in the Flight Surgeon's evaluation of me, he mentions that my eagerness for combat was falling off. I don't know whether that was just boilerplate language to justify sending someone home or whether he really believed it. I certainly didn't feel it was true but perhaps he knew something I didn't. I was aware that this attitude was not shared by everyone in the squadron and really felt sorry for the pilots who got physically sick before a mission. I believe it took a great deal of courage to continue to fly combat under those circumstances. We had one pilot ground himself during my stay in Italy. He was a good guy, just couldn't conquer whatever demons possessed him.

I'm not sure that I could pick out specific occurrences as funniest, scariest, etc. I know what I am most proud of though, because I was asked that question during the making of a Discovery Channel documentary on the best fighter called "Air Power Showdown-Fighters." It's that I joined the squadron as a dumb-john second lieutenant and in six months' time I had risen in the estimation of the group and squadron commanders to the point where I was scheduled to lead the squadron seven times and the group twice. When I look at 21-year-olds today, I think that they are very fine young men but it's hard for me to believe that at that age I led 16 aircraft on a combat mission seven times and led the entire group of 48 aircraft twice.

Rapier: How would you like the world to remember the men of your generation that fought the war? Since you've met the Germans who were pilots, what things do you see about them that are the same? What do you see about them that is different? Does that change your feeling about the war?

Bob: Of course it is always tough to make sweeping generalizations about any group or class or generation. I think that by today's standards we would be thought somewhat naive. We were honest and sincere, put out our absolute best effort, and put great stock in such archaic ideas as keeping one's word and holding oneself to a high standard of personal responsibility. Participating in the war was just something we all did. The German pilots I have met had a like attitude, fighting for what they perceived to be the defense of their homeland.

Rapier: How would you like the world to remember Bob Goebel?

Bob: Don't know about the world. I would like my family to remember me as a "benevolent despot" who tried to keep a light hand on the reins and who tried to put the interests of his family ahead of his own.

Rapier: Given your life and your experience, is there any wisdom you'd like to impart to those of us who are younger and lack the benefit of your experience?

Bob: I don't think so. I have seen enough of young people today to be confident that if and when the need arises to stand up and be counted, the vast majority will scramble to be first in line.

Rapier: Finally, I just want to say thanks! Thanks for being there, thanks for fighting the war and defending our country, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Bob: As they used to say in the Luftwaffe, "Hals und Beinbruch" [Break your neck and legs]!