Shirley Jane and the Buzz Bombs
Here we see Captain Edwin O Fisher of the 377th FS/362nd FG, 9th AF, somewhere in liberated France (possibly Rennes-St. Jacques Airfield) in the fall of 1944. He plane is a Republic P-47D-27-RE Thunderbolt #42-26919.
Volunteering for the Oregon National Guard in 1936 at age 17, Fisher was accepted to the U.S Army Reserve’s Aviation Cadet Program when war came and by 1943 he was a rated fighter pilot flying the huge Thunderbolt over Northern Europe as a 1LT.
The P-47s often handled air to ground operations (hence the extensive truck and locomotive “kills” noted on Fish’s bird, the Shirley Jane III).
Notice the outlines of the Flakzielgerät 76 (FZG-76) V-1 “Buzz Bomb” cruise missiles?
He got all of them on the same day, June 29, 1944, chasing them down and knocking them from the sky as they were on their way to deliver a huge load of explosives (nearly one ton of amatol each) somewhere in the British Isles.
As the V-1 ran between 350-400 mph at low altitude (under 3,000 feet) and the heavy 8-ton P-47 (its pilots often called it the “Jug”) could only beat that by about 50 mph or so at that level, it took some skill to pull off any Buzz Bomb intercept much less a three pack.
Gun camera footage of Fisher splashing the trio of buzz bombs over France
Besides the trucks, tanks, random German foot soldiers and buzz bombs, Fisher also had a chance to scrap with some of the Fatherland’s few remaining pilots.
In a 35 day period (July 5-August 9, 1944), Fisher swatted down a total of 7 confirmed kills on Luftwaffe Me109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s to become the 377th’s only ace of the war.
Fisher was killed just shy of his 30th birthday in a flying accident in an AT-6F Texan near Norristown, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1947, while serving with the 64th Army Air Force Base Unit at Andrews Field, Maryland.
As for the 377th, it was a war baby squadron stood up in Feb. 1943 and disbanded on 1 Aug. 1946, its colors cased ever since.