Model Forum / General / Models / July 2006

Found a tiny black enamled P-38 pin (with no pin, maybe an earing?) in
my driveway yesterday. Have lots of aircraft pins, one for every type
that I have flown or flown in (other than airliners) or crewed. This
one was not from my collection nor was it one of my wife's earings.

Sat down to read the paper and sadly discovered that an old friend,
Col. Besby Holmes, had passed away. Holmes was one of the pilots in the
team that downed Yamamoto in their specially modified long range P-38s.

I looked down at that pin and a chill went up my back. Silly, I know,
but things like that just make me shake my head in wonder.

Besby lived in San Rafael, A couple of weeks ago Mozart Kauffman, who
lived one town over in San Anselmo, also passed away. Another friend of
many years, Mozart was a fighter pilot in the USAAF who was shot down
over Europe and taken prisoner. He was taken prisoner and turned over
to the nearest Luftwaffe unit, meeting the pilot that downed him and
sharing a nice meal and, essentially, a party in his honor. Happened a
lot in WWI, not so often in WWII.

The rest of the story is that Mozart was Jewish and made no attempt to
conceal the fact from his captors. They shuffled him around until they
finally had to turn him over. Even then they pressured the authorities
to send him to a Stalag Luft instead of the destination the SS had
planned for him. After the war he met some of his captors and continued
the interupted party from years before.

We're losing them so fast now. Besby and Mozart wrote  books about
their experiences and often appeared together at regional gatherings of
aces and veteran WWII pilots. I just the last week I have met ten
pilots and crews from WWII who had great stories to tell. Not one of
them had written down or recorded their experiences. I'm working on
them.

Tom