Jack Price

84 th Fighter Squadron 1 100 hours Near Paris Cloud layer about 10 ,000 feet . Visibility: good. FW 190 and ME 109 (1) FW 190 and (1) ME 109 destroyed Narrative: I was leading Bayland Red Flight when we picked up the bombers up northwest of the Paris area. They were not being attacked at first, but shortly after they had passed over Paris, bandits were reported below them and just above the clouds. As we started down a bomber in the lower box blew up, and we could see about five fighters around them. Colonel Roberts, who was leading the Group, started a bounce, the results of which I did not observe. As he pulled back up I noticed two FW 190s flying parallel to the bombers and at about 18,000 feet. They were approximately 1,200 yards ahead of me so I started after them. I was pulling 47" Hg. and 2600 RPM, and I was closing very slowly. I noticed that they were positioning themselves for a pass from ten o'clock on the first box of bombers. When I was about 600 yards from them, the second one broke off and split S'd down. I then started after the first one who was about in position for a head-on pass. I saw that I was not catching him fast enough to stop him from making his pass, so I opened fire on him at about 550 yards. As I opened up I observed large strikes and flashes on the left wing close to the fuselage. I gave him a three second burst. The he started turning to the right. I started giving him deflection and opened fire again. This time I closed to about 100 yards. He stalled out and fell off to the right, and started down, trailing smoke. At this time I looked around and discovered I was headed almost head-on into the bombers so I broke away to the left and reformed my flight at 11 o'clock on the firs box of bombers. I could see about 25-30 e/a climbing up under me and I saw five ME 109s climbing about 2,000 feet below me, and 1,000 yards away. I started after them and when I was about 600 yards from them, the last one flipped over and went down. I closed in on the next in line and from dead astern I opened fire at 300 yards and gave him a two second burst. The e/a blew up and later caught on fire. The other three e/a split- S'd away. I looked around for my flight and as I pulled up into a zoom climb the second element of my flight was about 1,000 yards behind me and 1,000 feet below. Below them, about 4,000 feet, I saw a ME 109 climbing towards them. I called them and told them to pull up. I looked around to see if there were any other e/a in the vicinity, and when I looked back the ME 109 was closing very rapidly on the No. 4 man, Lieut. Dougherty. The e/a must have come up out of a split-S because of his rapid closing speed. I called Lieut. Dougherty and told him to break, and at the same time I broke into the e/a. The ME 109 fired a very short burst and then broke away and, although Lieut. Dougherty broke almost as soon as I called him, I saw that he had been hit on the tail surfaces and I saw a puff of smoke from his a/c. He rolled over one and a half times and started straight down. He was not smoking then. I didn't see him again. We then came on home.