World War II triple ace Col. Leonard “Kit” Carson, 18.5 air-to-air victories over the Luftwaffe, wrote one of the most comprehensive accounts of flying fighters over Europe. Pursue and Destroy not only describes in great detail Carson’s experience flying P-51 Mustangs with the 357th Fighter Group, but also that of any pilot who occupied a single-seat cockpit—on either side. His description of strafing trains is a prime example:
“The ground fire was brutal, and we lost a lot of pilots to it. I had my canopy shot off on a train-busting mission, and that was another day I might have become a statistic. More precisely, as I pulled up and turned to the left after blowing the boiler tubes of the engine, a slug came out of nowhere and hit the canopy lock on the left side of the cockpit. The canopy tried to lift off but the forward corners jammed against the windshield frame creating a giant air scoop effect. Frigid air was ramming into the cockpit, so I had to reach over to the right and pull the emergency release handle and let it go. I have no idea where that bullet came from; I saw no gun positions or evidence of ground fire. It might as well have come from outer space, that would be as good an explanation as any. It passed a few inches in front of me and out the right side. If it had hit me in the chest going left to right, I wouldn’t have made it. As it was, I flew back to our base at Leiston in an open-cockpit Mustang.”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading anything about war, it’s that surviving is purely dependent on luck.