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479th Fighter Group 1st Edition John Stanaway Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): John Stanaway
ISBN(s): 9781846034206, 1846038855
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 12.66 MB
Year: 2013
Language: english
OFC-OBC_03643.qxd:AEU 23 cover.qxd 2/5/09 2:43 PM Page 1

Aviation Elite Units • 32 Aviation Elite Units

OSPREY
PUBLISHING

Combat histories of the world’s most renowned 479th Fighter Group

479th Fighter

Aviation Elite Units • 32

fighter and bomber units

Group
Formed in October 1943 as part
of the last group of fighter units
to be sent into combat in
northern Europe and the Pacific,
the 479th FG wrote for itself an ‘Riddle’s Raiders’
impressive history whilst flying

479th Fighter Group

against the Luftwaffe from RAF
Wattisham in rural Suffolk.
Color aircraft profiles Despite the group’s P-38s not
being highly regarded in the
Eighth Air Force due to their
unsuitability for high-altitude
combat, the 479th’s pilots had
a fierce pride of arms. Their
fighting spirit, which saw the
group destroy hundreds of
German aircraft, earned the
479th a Presidential
Distinguished Unit Citation in
the late summer of 1944. The
479th transitioned to the P-51
Mustang in the autumn of 1944,
and by VE-Day, some 29 aces had
been created by the group, which
Insignia Photographs had claimed more than 430 kills.

US $25.95 UK £14.99
CAN $30.00
John Stanaway

I S B N 978-1-84603-420-6
5 2 5 9 5
OSPREY
PUBLISHING

www.ospreypublishing.com 9 781846 034206

OSPREY

John Stanaway

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001-005_03643.qxp:AEU 32 2/3/09 4:12 PM Page 1

Aviation Elite Units

OSPREY
PUBLISHING

479th Fighter Group

‘Riddle’s Raiders’

Job:E01-03643 Title:AEU 32 479th Fighter Group

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Aviation Elite Units • 32

OSPREY
PUBLISHING

479th Fighter Group

‘Riddle’s Raiders’

John Stanaway
Series editor Tony Holmes

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Front Cover This book is dedicated to the late Gen Robin Olds – a good guy who knew
Future 479th FG ranking ace Capt Art how to keep the sharp end pointed at the enemy.
Jeffrey already had a single victory
to his credit when, on 29 July 1944,
he was credited with downing the First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Osprey Publishing,
first jet fighter to fall to the Allies Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford OX2 0PH, UK
in aerial combat. Leading ‘Newcross 443 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016, USA
Yellow Flight’, which was covering
E-mail; info@ospreypublishing.com
a pair of 100th BG B-17s retiring
from a successful mission to
Wilhelmshaven, Jeffrey and his © 2009 Osprey Publishing Ltd.
fellow P-38 pilots from the 434th FS
were holding station over the All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study,
bombers at an altitude of just 11,000
research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and
ft when a rocket-powered Me 163
threatened the ‘heavies’ at 1145 hrs. Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
The pilot of the German jet (almost retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
certainly from 1./JG 400) appeared electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
more curious than belligerent when without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should
he made a pass at the B-17s from
the ‘five o’clock position’.
be addressed to the Publishers.
Jeffrey, flying his assigned P-38J
42-104425 BOOMERANG, chased after A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
the Me 163. He also tried to raise the © Osprey Publishing. Access to this book is not digitally
bomber crews so as to warn them, restricted. In return, we ask you that you use it for
Print ISBN: 978 1 84603 420 6 personal, non-commercial purposes only. Please don’t
but was unsuccessful. As he closed upload this pdf to a peer-to-peer site, email it to everyone

on the rocket fighter, Jeffrey watched

PDF e-book ISBN: 978 184603 885 3 you know, or resell it. Osprey Publishing reserves all
rights to its digital content and no part of these products
the aircraft alter its course from a may be copied, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical,
slight dive into a steep climb – the Edited by Bruce Hales-Dutton and Tony Holmes recording or otherwise (except as permitted here), without
pilot had spotted his approach. Page design by Mark Holt the written permission of the publisher. Please support
our continuing book publishing programme by using this
Jeffrey’s wingman, meanwhile, pdf responsibly.
Cover artwork by Mark Postlethwaite
was experiencing some mechanical
trouble with his Lightning that Aircraft Profiles by Chris Davey and Unit Heraldry by Roger Chesneau/Ad Hoc
prevented him from following the Originated by United Graphics Pte, Singapore
action until its final moments. He Index by Alan Thatcher
did, however, manage to witness Printed and bound in China through Bookbuilders
the Me 163 dive almost vertically
into cloud below the P-38s at 3000 ft.
The rocket fighter was probably in a 09 10 11 12 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
glide when Jeffrey commenced his
pursuit, but the pilot had apparently FOR A CATALOGUE OF ALL BOOKS PUBLISHED BY OSPREY
re-ignited its engine because puffs of MILITARY AND AVIATION PLEASE CONTACT:
dark smoke began to emit from the
exhaust at the base of its tail.
NORTH AMERICA
Once within range, Jeffrey opened Osprey Direct, C/o Random House Distribution Center, 400 Hahn Road,
fire, and he observed strikes on the Westminster, MD 21157
Me 163 when its pilot levelled off E-mail: uscustomerservice@ospreypublishing.com
and circled to the left in an attempt
to engage the P-38. The USAAF
fighter was able to turn inside the
ALL OTHER REGIONS
much faster jet, however, allowing Osprey Direct, The Book Service Ltd, Distribution Centre, Colchester Road,
Jeffrey to get in at least two more Frating Green, Colchester, Essex, CO7 7DW, UK
bursts that registered further hits. At E-mail; customerservice@ospreypublishing.com
an altitude of between 5000-7000 ft,
the Messerschmitt ‘did a wild split-
ess and spiralled off in an 80- to 90- www.ospreypublishing.com
degree dive’, Jeffrey noted in his
combat report. He followed his first confirmed jet victory of the war, than certain that he had destroyed
target until he was forced to level even if similar combats with the the rocket fighter, but he was
off whilst still in the clouds at about Me 163 later in the conflict would subsequently convinced he had
1500 ft. The Me 163 continued on result in USAAF pilots only being indeed shot the Me 163 down once
at an estimated speed of 500 mph. given credit for probably destroying his claim had been reviewed by
This brief clash resulted in Capt their opponent. Jeffrey himself higher authorities (Cover artwork
Art Jeffrey being credited with the reported at the time that he was less by Mark Postlethwaite)
 001-005_03643.qxp:AEU 32 2/3/09 4:13 PM Page 5

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 6

CHAPTER ONE
TRAINING AND DEPLOYMENT 7

CHAPTER TWO
INTO THE FIGHT 11

CHAPTER THREE
DISTINGUISHED UNIT CITATION 28

CHAPTER FOUR
P-38 VERSUS P-51 63

CHAPTER FIVE
MUSTANGS TO THE FORE! 73

CHAPTER SIX
VICTORY 95

APPENDICES 121
C O L O U R P L AT E S C O M M E N TA R Y 1 2 4
BIBLIOGRAPHY 127

INDEX 128

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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION
B
y the time of the D-Day invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944,
the Allied order of battle in the European Theatre of Operations
(ETO) was complete. Indeed, the United States Army Air Forces
(USAAF) had cancelled all future flying cadet training classes and
curtailed some already in progress. Amongst the final groups to reach the
Eighth Air Force in the United Kingdom was the 479th FG, which had
completed its training for combat in the early months of 1944. The unit
was equipped with Lockheed P-38 Lightnings, like its sister groups the
475th, which was deployed in the Southwest Pacific Area in mid-1943,
and the 474th, which arrived in the UK not long before the 479th.
Reaching RAF Wattisham, in Suffolk, in mid May 1944, the 479th
commenced combat operations on the 26th of that month – just 11 days
prior to the Normandy landings.
By the end of May 1944 the Luftwaffe was defeated, but not yet
subdued. The potency of the German fighter force had begun to decline
as early as July 1943 – the month that had seen the Anglo-American
invasion of Sicily and the monumental Battle of Kursk on the Eastern
Front. In western Europe, the USAAF’s ever-growing daylight bombing
campaign had forced the Luftwaffe to withdraw fighter units from the
USSR and the Mediterranean to help boost the Defence of the Reich.
The Allied bombing campaign, therefore, faced about 60 per cent of the
Jagdwaffe’s overall strength in northwest Europe and a further 16 per cent
in the Mediterranean.
This was the scenario that greeted the 479th FG when it was finally
thrown into action.
Combat zeal led the group’s fighter pilots to set records during the last
year of the war, both against opponents in the air as well as targets on the
ground. Valiant warriors like Robin Olds and Arthur Jeffrey began to
achieve scores that rivalled those accrued by redoubtable aces manning
such legendary groups as the ‘Debden Eagles’ of the 4th FG or the 56th
FG, dubbed ‘Zemke’s Wolfpack’. By the time the fighting was over, the
479th had scored more than 400 aerial and strafing victories. It had also
destroyed innumerable rail and transport targets. The Distinguished Unit
Citation awarded to the group just as it was converting from P-38s to
P-51s attests to its record in the ETO.
During their first few weeks of combat, pilots from the 479th prepared
the way for the invasion of France by flying ground attack missions, while
the veteran fighter units of the Eighth Air Force ravaged an already
depleted German fighter force. This duly meant that the group was not to
score its first aerial victory until two weeks after the invasion. At the time,
479th pilots feared that they would be faced with meagre pickings for the
remaining months of the war, and the group would be destined for a
mediocre combat record. However, the combination of a fervent fighting
spirit and inspired leadership determined that this latecomer to the
struggle in the ETO would not only earn its spurs, but ultimately excel in
6 fighter combat.

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TRAINING AND

TRAINING AND DEPLOYMENT

DEPLOYMENT
O
rganised as early as August 1943 from cadres drawn from the
329th FG at Glendale, California, the 479th FG was officially
constituted on 12 October 1943 and activated three days later.
The 329th had been a Lockheed P-38 replacement training unit that had
trained combat pilots and formed new groups from the middle of 1942.
By the time the 479th began preparing for combat it had the advantage
of being staffed by returning P-38 veteran instructors as well as younger
pilots who, although not yet blooded in combat, were well-versed in
the hard-won principles acquired in the crucible of battle. Amongst the
group’s early instructors were Lts Joe Forster and Paul Cochran, both of
whom would subsequently ‘make ace’ after leaving the 329th FG for
This P-38J-10 from the 479th FG
frontline groups. Forster joined the 475th FG in October 1943, and he
displays the markings worn by the
duly claimed nine kills with the group in 1944, whilst Cochran already group during the time its pilots were
had five victories to his name by the time he joined the 329th following in training at Palmdale and Riverside,
action with the 14th and 82nd FGs in North Africa in early 1943. in California, in 1943-44. Both
airfields usually enjoyed an arid
Some of the lessons passed on to the new 479th FG pilots by combat
climate, but records indicate that
veterans such as Paul Cochran included the importance of maintaining the winter of 1943-44 was especially
formation integrity of at least a four-aeroplane flight. By the end of 1943 wet. Lt Don Dunn of the 436th FS
the hard-won knowledge about maintaining sufficient numbers to assure remembers flying this aircraft in
England, thus confirming that it
teamwork with P-38 formations had become virtually canon law. One of
made the journey across the Atlantic
the tactics developed to assure success involved Lightning elements to Wattisham in the spring of 1944
turning in opposite directions in hard-climbing banks in order to trap any (Dunn via Blake)

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single enemy pilot foolish enough to follow an element of P-38s. The

CHAPTER ONE

second element would slip into a firing position behind the enemy fighter
whilst its pilot concentrated on the first element.
One curious tactic learned in actual combat and taught to new P-38
pilots from late 1943 onward was to dive to about 24,000 ft when attacked
at higher altitudes and then turn into the pursuing enemy aircraft.
It undoubtedly required nerves of steel and total faith in the P-38’s
dogfighting ability at medium altitude for a USAAF pilot to allow the
enemy to pursue him down to a more suitable ceiling before turning a
defensive posture into an offensive one.
In fact, the Lightning was at its best between 22,000-24,000 ft, where
its mechanical reliability outweighed the disadvantage of an unfavourable
power-to-weight ratio that made the fighter less manoeuvrable and prone
to the affects of compressibility.
Combat techniques such as these were taught to a group of future
479th FG pilots from the 329th FG when they were sent to the USAAF
School of Applied Tactics at Orlando, Florida, at the end of August 1943.
On the opposite side of the country, Lt Col Leo Dusard assumed
command of the 479th on 28 October at Glendale’s Grand Central Air
Terminal in southern California just as all three squadrons – the 434th,
435th and 436th – were assigned to the group. Dusard was subsequently
posted overseas and succeeded by Maj Francis Pope, who was in turn
Future 12-kill ace 2Lt George replaced by Lt Col Kyle Riddle on 26 December. It would be Riddle who
Gleason of the 434th FS is seen would not only take the group into combat but also give the 479th its
here in the cockpit of a P-38 during evocative sobriquet of ‘Riddle’s Raiders’.
training in California (Gleason)
The 479th received its first batch of P-38s at Grand Central Air
Terminal in January 1944 when a few elderly H-models arrived to allow
the group to establish some sort of organisational order. By the end of the
winter there were enough Lightnings (including several J-models) to give
shape to the group as a neophyte combat unit. It is believed that some
of the later P-38Js were subsequently shipped to England as part of the
initial combat force.
Pilots who would subsequently distinguish themselves in combat also
began to arrive, including Maj James Herren, who took command of the
434th FS in December, and Lts Tom Olson, Harold Grenning and
Berkley Hollister, who joined the squadron in January. Capt Art Jeffrey,
who would score more aerial victories than any other pilot in the 479th,
had been assigned to the 434th in October, and the ebullient Lt Robin
Olds joined the unit in February 1944. George Sykes and Phil Gossard
were posted to the 435th FS in January, while Lt Clarence Johnson, a
veteran of North Africa who would claim the group’s first aerial kill, was
assigned to the 436th in late 1943, as was Lt Hans Grasshoff.
When the limitations of the field at Grand Central Air Terminal –
particularly its short runways and proximity to the large population centres
around Hollywood – curtailed combat training, the three squadrons
separated and moved to new fields. The 434th went to Lomita, near
Torrance, the 435th travelled west to Oxnard and the 436th and group
headquarters headed north to the desert country of Palmdale. By the middle
of February the group was ready for intensive combat training.
It was in late March 1944 that Lt Col Sidney Woods joined the group’s
8 HQ staff. He had recently been rotated home after a successful tour with

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the 49th FG in the Southwest Pacific, where he had scored two victories

TRAINING AND DEPLOYMENT

over Japanese aircraft. Woods would go on to lead several successful
ground attack missions prior to completing his tour with the 479th in late
1944. Joining the 4th FG as deputy group CO in February 1945, he
would ultimately achieve ‘ace-in-a-day’ status on 22 March 1944 when he
downed five Fw 190s. Woods was the only pilot to perform such a feat
with the 4th FG.

POOR WEATHER TRAINING

March 1944 proved to be a wretched month in California for weather,
as its usual mild conditions were replaced by alternate bouts of cold
rain and dust storms. But the wind, heavy rain and even snow helped
acclimatise 479th crews to the conditions they would encounter in the
skies over northwestern Europe once the group was transferred to the UK.
Like the P-38-equipped 55th FG, which had become accustomed to the
cloudy and cold conditions of Washington State between 1941-43, prior
to being assigned to the Eighth Air Force, the 479th would benefit from
its exposure to adverse weather. Fortunately for the group’s pilots, the
P-38 proved relatively easy to fly on instruments, facilitating effective and
relatively safe flight conditions.
Nevertheless, accidents did happen. The first fatality of the month
befell deputy group commander Maj Robert Twyman, who was forced to
bail out of his P-38 on 12 March but perished during the descent. 436th
FS pilots Lts Henderson and Walker also died in accidents during March.
There were several non-fatal crashes too, including one that saw the pilot
involved parachute from his burning P-38 into the Pacific. Once in the
436th FS pilot 2Lt Gerald Mulvaney
water, he had to fend off prowling sharks until he was safely picked up.
sits in the cockpit of a well-worn
The highlight of the month was the 479th FG’s participation in Lightning between training flights
manoeuvres at Muroc Army Air Field (later to become Edwards Air Force in California in early 1944 (Blake)
Base), which commenced on 25 March
1944. For five days the group acted as
the defending force, trying to repulse
attackers who had theoretically landed
at Monterey Bay. Many useful mock
scrambles, alerts and aerial engagements
gave the pilots and crews experience of
potential combat situations.
A semi-authorised activity which
also helped prepare P-38 pilots for
action was the occasional mock
combat with US Navy and Marine
F4U Corsair units based in the area.
The F4U was probably the best
US-built single-engined fighter in the
inventory at that time at altitudes
below 20,000 ft (or even higher,
according to its pilots), and it routinely
acted as friendly opponent for P-38
pilots over southern California. Other
Lightning groups in training in the area
also reported engaging the F4Us with 9

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CHAPTER ONE

The P-38L was the ultimate version satisfactory results, so it is reasonable to assume that some of the 479th
of the Lightning fighter to reach pilots learned their craft during these clandestine mock engagements.
frontline service. It arrived in the
ETO too late to see combat with
In any case, the group was preparing for operational deployment by the
the 479th FG, however, although beginning of April on the assumption that its pilots were ready for combat
a handful of pilots flew a visiting overseas. During the second week of the month progressive movement to
example from the 474th FG in mock Santa Maria Army Air Base, in California, eventually brought the group
combat with a P-51D late on in the
conflict (Scutts)
together at its port of departure. For the next few weeks 479th personnel
engaged in physical training and parades, as well as completing the various
formalities associated with overseas movement. On 15 April 1944 the
men boarded trains that would transport them to Camp Kilmer, in New
Jersey, prior to being shipped across the Atlantic. Incidental training and
inspection occupied the group for the rest of the month, before leave in the
nearby cities of New York or Hoboken saw personnel enjoy a final ‘night
on the town’ prior to travelling to the combat zone. Soon they would find
themselves in the unfamiliar surroundings of East Anglia, with its quaint
villages.
On 2 May 1944 the group arrived at Brooklyn to board USS Argentina,
which was a pre-war luxury liner that had been converted into a troopship.
The journey across the Atlantic took 12 days, so it was not until the 14th
that men who had been cramped below decks were able to catch their first
glimpse of the Scottish coast.
After disembarkation on the Clyde, there was a further train journey
that ultimately took the group to Wattisham, near Ipswich, in Suffolk.
This base would be the group’s home for the rest of its time in England,
and it would be the only airfield from which the men of the 479th FG
10 would fight their battles during the war in Europe.

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INTO THE FIGHT

INTO THE FIGHT

U
nlike many of the airfields specially constructed for the Eighth Air
Force in East Anglia, RAF Wattisham was a permanent base that
had been officially opened in April 1939. Initially home to RAF
Blenheim, Boston and Beaufighter units, it became the USAAF’s Station B
12 on 12 June 1942. The airfield was refurbished for use by an Eighth Air
Force bomber group, with new concrete runways being laid and buildings
erected. This work would take 18 months to complete, and ultimately
Wattisham would be used by a fighter group equipped with P-38s, rather
Lt Ray Friend and TSgt James
than a bomber group flying B-17s or B-24s. Grant of the 435th FS are pictured
The 479th FG enjoyed the permanent nature of the new buildings at at Wattisham during the early period
the base, with the accommodation blocks being particularly welcome as of squadron operations. Friend was
credited with a half share in the
they possessed better heating than the group had experienced at the
destruction of a Ju 88 and damaging
various locations it had encountered during training in the US. three He 111s on the ground at
Situated between Bury St Edmunds to the north and Colchester to the Nancy/Essay airfield on 18 August
south, Wattisham lies in a quiet, green corner of southern England to the 1944. Promoted to captain whilst in
the ETO, Friend completed his tour
northeast of London. For the personnel of the 479th FG this meant that
in March 1945 with 66 missions and
they could savour the ‘mild & bitter’ beer served in local pubs, as well as the 300 combat hours to his name
historic and bucolic charm of the English countryside when their gruelling (Blake)
operational schedule allowed.
Just as the 479th was settling in
at Wattisham, the commander of
the Eighth Air Force, Maj Gen James
Doolittle, issued an order that
released VIII Fighter Command
from having to provide close escort
for USAAF heavy bombers. This
duly meant that fighter pilots could
now hunt more freely than in the
past. The great aerial battles of
March and April 1944 had already
wrested the initiative from the Luft-
waffe to the point where, at times, it
was unable to offer anything but a
token force to engage the ever grow-
ing formations of Eighth Air Force
‘heavies’ that were systematically
destroying Germany’s ability to
wage war.
The feeling amongst the ‘brass’ at
Eighth Air Force HQ was that after
the D-Day landings, shooting down
considerable numbers of enemy
aircraft would add little to the out-
come of the war, as the fight to secure
air superiority over western Europe
had already been won. It is ironic, 11

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CHAPTER TWO

P-38J DOSSIE (serial unknown) is therefore, to recall the vast number of German aircraft destroyed in the air
guided towards its parking stand in and on the ground during the latter months of 1944 and the early weeks
the 435th FS revetment area at the
end of an uneventful mission.
of 1945. A significant number of these would be claimed by the 479th.
Lt Chester Granville (who was later Quickly settling into its Suffolk base, the group became operational
killed in a flying accident in a P-51D within a few days. This transition to frontline flying was helped by the fact
in September 1944) was nominally that several key officers and enlisted personnel had arrived ahead of the
the pilot of this pristine Lightning
(Blake)
main body to help the group quickly settle into life at Wattisham. Leading
the advance party was Lt Col Sidney Woods, who drew upon his
experience of frequent unit movement along the north coast of New
Guinea (a characteristic of his time in the Southwest Pacific theatre) to
help rapidly set up a working base in East Anglia.
A few practice missions were flown in mid-May, usually led by veteran
P-38 pilot (and future ace) Maj John Lowell, who was CO of the 364th
FG’s 384th FS. Lowell, who had been a P-38 project officer at Wright-
Patterson Field, Ohio, prior to joining the 364th, led the 479th on a series
of cross-country flights that sometimes included sweeping over the
Channel coast to escort returning bombers as they headed inland to their
bases in East Anglia.
The group’s first offensive missions were flown on 26 May 1944, when
the 479th performed two sweeps of the Dutch coastline. Some 58 P-38s
were involved in total, and one of the missions was led by Maj Lowell. No
opposition was encountered and all aircraft returned to Wattisham. The
last of the Eighth Air Force’s 15 fighter groups had entered combat, albeit
in a low key way.
Although there were no casualties on this initial mission, the 479th
had already experienced its first operational loss when 436th FS CO Capt
Bill Walker was killed in a training accident in P-38J 42-104328 near
Rattlesden 24 hours earlier.
Uneventful escorts predominated for the next few days, with Maj
Lowell or Lt Cols Woods or Riddle leading the group. A pilot from the
479th finally got to fire his guns in anger on 31 May when Capt Frank
12 Keller of the 434th FS descended to ground level near Osnabruck and

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destroyed a Ju 88 that he found parked amid dummy aircraft. Hitting the

INTO THE FIGHT

fully fuelled bomber with a single burst, it erupted in flames.

D-DAY PERIOD
The war reached a critical phase for the Allies on 6 June 1944 when
‘Fortress Europe’ was invaded via the beaches of Normandy. Although
having flown barely a handful of unremarkable bomber escort and
support missions since being declared operational in late May, the 479th
FG entered combat in earnest as part of this monumental undertaking
alongside VIII Fighter Command’s battle hardened units. The group’s
experiences during this period are detailed in the following extract taken
from the pages of the official 479th FG history;
‘For ten days, starting on the afternoon of 5 June, the group’s pilots had Lt Arnold Helding’s P-38J 43-28714
a grandstand view of the biggest show on earth – the invasion of France by (he also flew 43-28729) acts as a prop
for various 434th and 435th FS pilots
Allied forces. All day long from sun-up till after dark they cruised high in this photograph, which was taken
over the English Channel to prevent German aircraft from getting at the between 6 and 22 June 1944. The
endless stream of surface craft, jammed full of men and equipment, that officers on the wing are, from left
to right, Lt Thomas Olson (434th),
shuttled back and forth between England and the Normandy coast.
Capts John Miller (435th) and Claire
‘Long before D-Day, VIII Fighter Command had set up Plan Neptune Duffie (434th) and Lts George
to ensure strong air cover for the invasion forces. When the flash came over Gleason (434th), George Hendrix
the teletype “Execute Plan Neptune”, the 479th and certain other fighter (434th), Robert Hendrickson (434th),
Leroy Lutz (434th) and Arnold
groups immediately despatched aircraft to begin a patrol which, for the
Helding (434th). On the ground, from
next 57 missions, was kept up without a halt except for darkness and left to right, are Lts Keith Canella
weather. (434th), Bailey Williams, James
‘The 479th patrol was executed by all squadrons, and consisted of some Wallace and Jene Haas. Lutz and
Canella were both killed by flak on
eight missions a day. Two squadrons flew three missions each and the
22 June, and Wallace also fell victim
third flew two. When the time came for one squadron to return to base, to anti-aircraft fire on 15 August
it would be relieved by a second, and the second was relieved by the third, (Mike Bates)

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and the third by the first again. In this way a constant search was
CHAPTER TWO

maintained for any enemy aeroplanes that might slip through other
similar patrols to the south. None ever did.’
The group suffered its first combat casualty on 9 June when 436th FS
pilot Lt Edward J Spillane, who was heading back to Wattisham, failed to
pull out of a manoeuvre in his P-38J (serial unknown) and crashed fatally
at Raydon.
In the late afternoon of 16 June, the 479th took a break from its
beachhead patrol routine to escort heavy bombers that were targeting
several airfields in northern France. Another bomber escort mission was
flown the next day, as was a fighter-bomber attack on two road/rail bridges
in the Crecy-la-Chapelle area. During the latter mission, the 479th
experienced its first loss to enemy action when 435th FS pilot Capt Calvin
Butler (in P-38J 44-23168) was shot down on the outskirts of Paris by
flak. 434th FS pilot Lt James Ohligschlager (in P-38J 43-28729) was also
lost when he crashed following a mid-air collision with another Lightning
near Rennes. Both Butler and Ohligschlager were killed.
The group suffered yet more casualties through mid-air collisions on 19
Armourer Cpl O’Malley and Crew
Chief TSgt Taydus service the June, when no fewer than four pilots were lost during a bomber escort
external tanks of a 436th P-38J called mission over the Pas-de-Calais. Amongst the pilots killed was seven-
The Uninvited shortly after D-Day. victory MTO Lightning ace 1Lt Ward Kuentzel (in P-38J 42-104427).
It may have been named after
According to post-mission speculation, these incidents had been caused
a popular film of the period starring
Ray Milland, Gail Russell and Ruth by a lack of oxygen at extreme altitude that had caused pilots to lose
Hussey (via Blake) consciousness and fly into their wingmen. Kuentzel, of the 434th FS, was

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seen to dive into cloud at 27,000 ft. Post-war reports from French

INTO THE FIGHT

eyewitnesses on the ground at the time spoke of a P-38 breaking out of the
clouds and rolling over and through the empennage of the second
Lightning to appear from the overcast. Squadronmate 2Lt Frank
Grdenich (in P-38J 43-28456) managed to parachute out of his stricken
fighter prior to them hitting the ground near Rennes. He evaded capture.
Lts Leland K Horne (in P-38J 42-68161) and Donald McClure
(in P-38J 42-68189) of the 435th FS were not so lucky, however. Both
pilots perished when they collided over Murau.
On the 20th 436th FS pilot Lt Lewis Nesselbush was captured after he
was forced to bail out of P-38J 42-67452 over Ottersberg when the fighter
suffered mechanical failure during a bomber escort mission.
The group suffered more casualties on 22 June, with four pilots being
killed during the course of Mission No 78. However, on a more positive
note, the 479th at last claimed its first aerial victory, as the group history
reveals;
‘The mission on 22 June called for the group to dive-bomb a bridge P-38J-15 43-28443 was the usual
south of St Quentin at Beautor with “thousand-pounders” and strafe rail mount of 434th FS pilot Lt William J
Hehn (back row, left), and he used it
transportation between Soissons and Rheims. Forty-nine aircraft set out to claim two He 111s destroyed and
on the mission and 45 came back. The scorecard showed one (Fieseler a Ju 52/3m damaged on the ground
Fi 156) Storch destroyed in the air by Lt C O Johnson of the 436th FS. On at Nuneburg on 9 August 1944.
the ground, the total group claims were one locomotive, one generator Rumboogie was also the nickname
of the fighter’s crew chief
station, 20 box cars, three tank cars, two switch houses, one canal barge, (Tabatt collection)
two water towers, nine trucks and two personnel carriers with four
Lt Clarence Johnson (who is seen
“Jerries” all destroyed. Additional damage was done to a factory, a radar
here as a captain later in the war) of
station, two oil tanks and one gun emplacement. Near misses were the 436th FS scored the group’s first
observed at the Beautor bridge, and the tracks leading to it may have been victory on 22 June 1944. This success
knocked out of alignment. also made him the 479th’s first ace,
as he had previously claimed four
‘In the 434th, Lt K E Canella received flak hits over the target and
other kills while serving with the
crashed nearby. Lt A S T Tucker was caught in small-arms crossfire near 82nd FG in the MTO in 1943.
Cambrai and crashed and Lts Leroy Lutz and Dwight Isley simply did not Johnson went on to claim two more
return to base for reasons unknown.’ victories after joining the 352nd FG,
but he was in turn shot down and
Lt Clarence O Johnson, who had already claimed two Fw 190s, a Bf 109 killed by an enemy fighter on 23
and a C.202 in aerial combat in the Mediterranean theatre, had surprised September 1944 (Blake)
the Fi 156 near Reims and shot it down. His combat report noted;
‘In the vicinity of Reims we were on the deck shooting at anything of
military importance that we could see. As I came over a hill and pushed
over on the other side, the enemy aircraft loomed in front of me. I had time
for only a very short burst before I made a right turn to shoot at a train. My
No 2 man, Lt Granger, and my wingman, Lt Hightower, saw the aircraft
catch fire, crash and burn. I also saw the enemy aircraft catch fire, crash
and burn. The enemy aircraft was at an altitude of 50 ft or less.’
As noted, the group paid a high cost for the successes it achieved on
22 June, with the 434th FS losing no fewer than four P-38s to ground
fire. The squadron’s mission report provides a succinct view of these
unfortunate losses;
‘Seventeen P-38s armed with two 250-lb general-purpose bombs (GPs)
despatched on mission. One P-38 returned early with bombs, one P-38
aborted and returned with bombs, escorted by one P-38, which dropped
two 250-lb GPs on grid reference IV V G 7172, results unobserved.
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target from Blankenburg at 1450 hrs

CHAPTER TWO

at 16,000 ft. Over target, railway

bridge at Le Fere (grid reference IV V
N 8427), dive-bombed from 1500
hrs at 12,000 ft. 435th and 436th
FSs bombed the target first but did
not destroy it. 434th FS then dive-
bombed the target with 14 250-lb
GPs, scoring near misses. Dive-
bombed from 13,000 ft down to
1500 ft, then strafed from target
area, 50 miles southeast.
‘Lt Canella (in P-38J 43-28731)
seen to have strikes on cockpit after
releasing his bombs, and crashed
near target. Lt Tucker (in P-38J
43-28439), escorted by Lt Mathews,
to vicinity of Cambrai grid reference
IV V N 8575, where his ship was
caught in crossfire, burst into flames
and crashed into the ground. Very
intense light flak over target area, all
along strafing run, all airports in area
and in small forests.’
Lt Quentin Pavlock was flying as
‘Newcross Red Three’ in Canella’s
flight, and he observed what hap-
pened during the attack;
‘Lts Canella, Ilsley, Lutz and I
started down from 13,000 ft, being
the second flight to go down. Up till
about 10,000 ft, the dive was shallow,
A West Point graduate with high then, seeing that we would overrun the target, Lt Canella pushed over into
expectations as a fighter pilot, a steep-angle dive. Up until that steep dive, Lts Ilsley (in P-38J 42-104258)
Lt Keith Canella of the 434th FS was
killed on 22 June 1944 during a dive-
and Lutz (in P-38J 43-28714) were in position, but at about 8000 ft, I
bombing mission against the railway looked over and could not see either of them, and did not see them again
bridge at Le Fere. He was flying his throughout the mission. Airspeed at this time was over 430 mph.
assigned P-38J 43-28731, nicknamed ‘Lt Canella released bombs, then I did. I was to his right, so picked a
Sweet Mary, when he was brought
down by German flak
factory as target. As I started to pull out, these following events happened
(Tabatt collection) almost simultaneously – Lt Canella’s aeroplane was hit by ground fire in
the right engine, which immediately poured out black smoke; I felt my
aeroplane hit and start to skid; then I proceeded to pull out. Then I looked
over to Lt Canella’s ship again, which was now approximately in a
45-degree dive and going slightly to the left. I observed more hits on the
centre nacelle of his aeroplane, after which his P-38 remained in its dive
and crashed into the ground, exploding about 100 yards ahead of the
bridge on the left bank of the river. I did not see Lt Canella bail out, and I
am positive he was in the aeroplane when it crashed. I pulled out on the
deck, looked for the rest of the flight but could not see them, and
continued on a strafing run for 12 minutes, then climbed to 10,000 ft and
16 came on home.’

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Lt Pavlock was indeed correct in assuming that Lt Keith Canella had

INTO THE FIGHT

perished when his P-38 hit the ground. His squadronmates Lts Dwight
Ilsley and Leroy Lutz had also been killed.
Lt Albert Tucker was leading ‘Newcross Yellow’ Flight when his aircraft
took hits over the target rail bridge. He was escorted out of the area by his
wingman, Lt Harold ‘Smiley’ Mathews, but was again hit by anti-aircraft
fire and crash-landed his flak-damaged P-38. Tucker was captured soon
after abandoning his burning P-38. Mathews’ aircraft also sustained some
flak damage, but he was able to nurse it back to England and force-land at
Sudbury, having exhausted his fuel.
Four losses over the target area and a fifth aircraft badly damaged in a
crash landing was a predictable result for an VIII Fighter Command group
attacking ground targets in support of the Normandy invasion in the
summer of 1944. But it is not generally appreciated that the Lightning was
more effective in dive-bombing and strafing attacks than either the P-47
or P-51. The durable Thunderbolt was legendary for its ability to absorb
battle damage and the Mustang was more formidable in air-to-air
engagements. But the P-38 could carry heavier loads over greater distances
at low altitude, and had better survival potential than the relatively fragile
Mustang. More losses were to follow, however.
For the rest of June and into July, the 479th would concentrate on rail
targets by both escorting other aircraft to attack them and also striking Two anonymous 434th FS P-38Js
bridges and rolling stock with 250-lb bombs. Several escort missions were have their engines run up at
flown to cover B-17s and B-24s attacking rail targets deep in enemy Wattisham some time after the
D-Day landings. Frequent ground
territory, while alternate bombing and strafing strikes were made against
attack missions during this period
trains and marshalling yards supporting the German resistance to the saw the 479th suffer heavy losses to
invasion perimeter. deadly enemy anti-aircraft fire (Cook)

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CHAPTER TWO

Lt Burton Cross (in P-38J 42-104416) of the 435th FS was killed by This P-38J is being loaded with
improvised ordnance made from
flak during just such a mission over Creney on 27 June, and three more
Lockheed external tanks. The fins at
pilots were lost eight days later. Capt Robert Green (in P-38J 43-28467) the rear provided sufficient ballistic
of the HQ flight and Lt Rayne Fairchild (P-38J 44-23484) of the 435th stability to give a reasonable
FS both perished near Laval when their fighters were hit by anti-aircraft expectation that the fuel-filled
tanks would hit a stationary target
fire, while Lt Jack Denny (in P-38J 43-28367) successfully evaded capture
in a fire-bombing attack
after abandoning his flak-damaged fighter over Cande. 434th FS pilot (Tabatt collection)
Lt Clayton Proctor (in P-38J 42-68029) was also killed by flak near
Montignac on 5 July.
Lt Flamm Harper’s Mary/Anna of
Fellow 434th FS pilot Lt Flamm Harper (in P-38J 42-68147)
the 434th FS displays an early paint
successfully avoided being captured when he went down during an attack scheme. The aircraft was named
on the enemy’s transport infrastructure on 15 July. The 479th history after the pilot’s wife and daughter,
briefly describes the mission, and touches on the experience of Lt Harper; and it is probable that he did not
expect either of them to find out that
‘The assigned area was from Tours to Bourges, but the weather was so
in this application their names would
heavy that the group of 49 aircraft, with Lt Col Woods in the lead, had to be separated by a nude female
keep on course for another six minutes before turning eastwards. Despite figure! (Tabatt collection)
the weather, there were plenty of
targets of opportunity to work over,
and the final score made the mission
well worthwhile. Destroyed – one
ammo dump, one factory, one
bridge. Damaged – three power
stations, four bridges, one dam, two
radio stations, two flak towers, two
locomotives, one railway station, 11
goods wagons and a switch tower.
‘Lt Frederick M Read, on arriving
back in England, crash-landed his
ship a few miles southwest of Canter-
bury, shoved his hands into his
pockets and started for the nearest
farmhouse. Lt Flamm D Harper of
the 434th flew through the explosion
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INTO THE FIGHT

Boasting full D-Day stripes, this belly his aeroplane in near Valencay. He waved, ran like hell and came back
unidentified P-38J came to grief to work in August.’
in the Wattisham area shortly
after the Normandy landings
Harper was indeed fortunate to have survived the crash, and in being
(Tabatt collection) recovered by friendly French villagers who guided him back into Allied
hands. In 1998 he wrote about the mission, and his return to Wattisham;
‘We were looking for targets of opportunity when we spotted what
appeared to be an ammunition dump with storage igloos covering several
hundred acres. We began our attacks and, on my second strafing pass,
a tremendous explosion occurred in front of my fighter. I could see
concrete from the igloos blown 300 ft into the air, and my P-38 became a
wreck as we flew through the debris at about 100 ft above ground level.
‘When I gained some sort of control, I knew I was in deep trouble. The
right engine was on fire and the left engine had a heavy vibration. Because
of the slipstream, smoke from the engine fire and blood in my eyes, I had
to fight to see as far as the wing tips. For all practical purposes, I was blind,
and had had no visual contact with the ground since the explosion. At the
last moment the aircraft rolled into a steep bank, turned left, then rolled
out and went down in a meadow alongside a river. The aircraft cut down
some small trees and slid into others at the far end. All this time I thought
I was flying straight and level!’
Harper immediately left the wreckage and was met at the edge of the
meadow by a Frenchman, who took him to a farmhouse where his
uniform was exchanged for civilian clothes. Several other locals drained
the fuel from the P-38 and later blew it up in what must have been an area
free of German troops and Vichy French.
Hostile forces did eventually arrive, but the American fugitive was
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squad of SAS troops operating behind enemy lines. Harper was given a
CHAPTER TWO

British uniform and duly fought alongside his newfound comrades until
being repatriated a few weeks later. He had returned to Wattisham by
mid-August to recount the unusual experience for a P-38 pilot of fighting
on the very ground that his unit was attacking from the air!

ART JEFFREY’S EVENTFUL JULY

Aerial victories came on a more frequent basis for the group in July, as the
479th started to perform more bomber escort missions and its pilots began
to accrue more combat experience. Amongst those to claim their first kills
was Capt Arthur Jeffrey, who would eventually become the group’s top-
scoring ace with 14 aerial victories. Jeffrey was a steady, cold-eyed profes-
sional whose flying prowess and leadership ability had already been
recognised by group commanders. He frequently led missions for the
434th FS, such as the strafing sweep the unit flew over southwest France
on 4 July.
The next day saw a repeat mission to the same area, with satisfactory
results against rail and other installations. Jeffrey was leading ‘Newcross
P-38J-15 43-28376 ELBOW DOTTIE II Yellow’ Flight over an airfield near Cognac when his wingman radioed
of the 434th FS was named in tribute that an aircraft was taking off below them. Jeffrey’s post-action report
to the ‘Elbow Room’ – a pub in
Glendale, California, which was
details his first aerial victory, over a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 four-engined
popular with squadron personnel. long-range reconnaissance bomber;
‘Dot’ was an equally popular ‘Since my flight was closest to the enemy aircraft, I immediately called
barmaid! This aircraft fell victim Maj James Keller – “Newcross Leader” – asking him to furnish top cover
to flak near Veeingen on 15 August
1944, its pilot, Capt Hiram Turner,
while I went down for a pass at it. The aeroplane had made a 180-degree
spending the rest of the war as turn to the left, and was staying on the deck close to the aerodrome and
a PoW (Tabatt collection) town, from where they were shooting up quite a lot of flak at us. I began
firing at about 350 yards, closing to about 50 yards, and giving him about
a ten-second burst. The right inboard engine caught fire immediately, and
This unidentified P-38J suffered a parts of it flew off. The pilot of the enemy aircraft then made a belly
partial undercarriage collapse whilst landing, and by the time the ship had stopped skidding the whole
taxiing at Wattisham in August 1944.
aeroplane was ablaze. I observed one man making his escape from the
Note the fire extinguisher at the
ready near the left propeller spinner front of the aircraft. By this time light and heavy flak was becoming
(Tabatt collection) intense, so I had to leave immediately.’

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Other documents randomly have
different content
except for my entirely fortuitous observation of his performance,
nobody had seen his absorption any more than they now saw his
apparent idleness.
I tucked all these observations away in a corner of my mind for
future reflection, and moved on to the nearest child, a little girl,
perhaps a year older than the boy, who was absorbed as eagerly as
he over a similar light wooden frame, covered with two pieces of
cloth. But these were fastened together with pieces of ribbon which
the child was tying and untying. There was no fumbling here. As
rapidly, as deftly, with as careless a light-hearted ease as a pianist
running over his scales, she was making a series of the flattest, most
regular bow-knots, much better, I knew in my heart, than I could
accomplish at anything like that speed. Although she had advanced
beyond the stage of intent struggle with her material, her interest
and pleasure in her own skill was manifest. She looked up at me,
and then smiled proudly down at her flying fingers.
Beyond her another little boy, with a leather-covered frame, was
laboriously inserting shoe-buttons into their buttonholes with the aid
of an ordinary button-hook. As I looked at him, he left off, and
stooping over his shoes, tried to apply the same system to their
buttons. That was too much for him. After a prolonged struggle he
gave it up for the time, returning, however, to the buttons on his
frame with entirely undiminished ardor.
Next to him sat a little girl, with a pile of small pieces of money
before her on her tiny table. She was engaged in sorting these into
different piles according to their size, and, though I stood by her
some time, laughing at the passion of accuracy which fired her, she
was so absorbed that she did not even notice my presence. As I
turned away I almost stumbled over a couple of children sitting on
the floor, engaged in some game with a variety of blocks which
looked new to me. They were ten squared rods of equal thickness,
of which the shortest looked to be a tenth the length of the longest,
and the others of regularly diminishing lengths between these two
extremes. These were painted in alternate stripes of red and blue,
these stripes being the same width as the shortest rod. The children
were putting these together in consecutive order so as to make a
sort of series, and although they were evidently much too young to
count, they were aiding themselves by touching with their fingers
each of the painted stripes, and verifying in this way the length of
the rod. I could not follow this process, although it was plainly
something arithmetical, and turned to ask the teacher about it.
I saw her across the room engaged in tying a bandage about a
child’s eyes. Wondering if this were some new, scientific form of
punishment, I stepped to that part of the room and watched the
subsequent proceedings. The child, his lips curved in an expectant
smile, even laughing a little in pleasant excitement, turned his
blindfolded face to a pile of small pieces of cloth before him. Several
children, walking past, stopped and hung over the edge of his desk
with lively interest. The boy drew out from the pile a piece of velvet.
He felt of this intently, running the sensitive tips of his fingers lightly
over the nap, and cocking his head on one side in deep thought. The
child-spectators gazed at him with sympathetic attention. When he
gave the right name, they all smiled and nodded their heads in
satisfaction. He drew out another piece from the big pile, coarse
cotton cloth this time, which he instantly recognized; then a square
of satin over which his little finger-tips wandered with evident
sensuous pleasure. His successful naming of this was too much for
his envious little spectators. They turned and fled toward the teacher
and when I reached her, she was the center of a little group of
children, all clamoring to be blindfolded.
“How they do love that exercise!” she said, looking after them with
shining eyes ... I could have sworn, with mother’s eyes!
“Are you too busy and hurried,” I asked, “to explain to me the game
those children are playing with the red and blue rods?”
She answered with some surprise, “Oh, no, I’m not busy and hurried
at all!” (quite as though we were not all living in the twentieth
century) and went on, “The children can come and find me if they
need me.”
So I had my first lesson in the theory of self-education and self-
dependence underlying the Montessori apparatus, to the
accompaniment of occasional requests for aid, or demands for
sympathy over an achievement, made in clear, baby treble. That
theory will be taken up later in this book, as this chapter is intended
only to be a plain narration of a few of the sights encountered by an
ordinary observer in a morning in a Montessori school.
After a time I noticed that four little girls were sitting at a neatly-
ordered small table, spread with a white cloth, apparently eating
their luncheons. The teacher, in answer to my inquiring glance at
them, explained that it was their turn to be the waitresses that day,
for the children’s lunch, and so they ate their own meal first.
She was called away just then, and I sat looking at the roomful of
busy children, listening to the pleasant murmur of their chats
together, watching them move freely about as they liked, noting
their absorbed, happy concentration on their tasks. Already some of
the sense of the miraculous which had been so vivid in my mind
during my first survey of the school was dulled, or rather, explained
away. Now that I had seen some of the details composing the
picture, the whole seemed more natural. It was not surprising, for
instance, that the little girl sorting the pieces of money should not
instead be pulling another child’s hair, or wandering in aimless and
potentially naughty idleness about the room. It was not necessary
either to force or exhort her to be a quiet and untroublesome citizen
of that little republic. She would no more leave her fascinating
occupation to go and “be naughty” than a professor of chemistry
would leave an absorbing experiment in his laboratory to go and rob
a candy-store. In both cases it would be leaving the best sort of a
“good time” for a much less enjoyable undertaking.
In the midst of these reflections (my first glimmer of understanding
of what it was all about), a lively march on the piano was struck up.
Not a word was spoken by the teacher, indeed I had not yet heard
her voice raised a single time to make a collective remark to the
whole body of children, but at once, acting on the impulse which
moves us all to run down the street towards the sound of a brass
band, most of the children stopped their work and ran towards the
open floor-space near the piano. Some of the older ones, of five,
formed a single-file line, which was rapidly recruited by the monkey-
like imitativeness of the little ones, into a long file. The music was
martial, the older children held their heads high and stamped loudly
as they marched about, keeping time very accurately to the strongly
marked rhythm of the tune. The little tots did their baby best to copy
their big brothers and sisters, some of them merely laughing and
stamping up and down without any reference to the time, others
evidently noticing a difference between their actions and those of
the older ones, and trying to move their feet more regularly.
No one had suggested that they leave their work-tables to play in
this way (indeed a few too absorbed to heed the call of the music
still hung intently over their former occupations), no one suggested
that they step in time to the music, no one corrected them when
they did not. The music suddenly changed from a swinging marching
air to a low, rhythmical croon. The older children instantly stopped
stamping and began trotting noiselessly about on their tiptoes,
imitated again as slavishly as possible by the admiring smaller ones.
The uncertain control of their equilibrium by these littler ones, made
them stagger about, as they practised this new exercise, like the
little bacchantes, intoxicated with rhythm, which their glowing faces
of delight seemed to proclaim them.
I was penetrated with that poignant, almost tearful sympathy in
their intense enjoyment which children’s pleasure awakens in every
adult who has to do with them. “Ah, what a good time they are
having!” I cried to myself, and then reflected that they had been
having some sort of very good time ever since I had come into the
room. And yet even my unpractised eye could see a difference
between this good time and the kindergarten, charming as that is to
watch. No prettily-dressed, energetic, thoroughgoing young lady had
beckoned the children away from their self-chosen occupations.
There was no set circle here with the lovely teacher in the middle,
and every child’s eyes fastened constantly on her nearly always
delightful but also overpoweringly developed adult personality. There
was no set “game” being played, the discontinuation of which
depended on the teacher’s more or less accurate guess at when the
children were becoming tired. Indeed, as I reflected on this, I
noticed that, although the bigger ones were continuing their musical
march with undiminished pleasure, the younger ones had already
exhausted the small amount of consecutive interest their infant
organisms are capable of, and, without spoiling the fun for the
others, indeed without being observed, had suddenly stopped
dancing and prancing as suddenly as they began and, with the
kitten-like fitfulness of their age, were wandering away in groups of
two and three out to the great, open courtyard.
I suppose they went on playing quieter games there, but I did not
follow them, so absorbed was I in watching the four little girls who
had now at last finished their very leisurely meal and were preparing
the tables for the other children. They were about four and a half
and five years old, an age at which I would have thought children as
capable of solving a problem in calculus as of undertaking, without
supervision, to set tables for twenty other babies. They went at their
undertaking with no haste, indeed with a slowness which my racial
impatience found absolutely excruciating. They paused constantly
for prolonged consultations, and to verify and correct themselves as
they laid the knife, fork, spoon, plate, and napkin at each place.
Interested as I was, and beginning, as I did, to understand a little of
the ideas of the school, I still was so under the domination of my
lifetime of over-emphasis on the importance of the immediate result
of an action, that I felt the same impulse I had restrained with
difficulty beside the buttoning boy—to snatch the things from their
incompetent little hands and whisk them into place on the tables.
But then I noticed that the clock showed only a little after eleven,
and that evidently the routine of the school was planned expressly
so that there would be no need for haste.
The phrase struck my mental ear curiously, and arrested my
attention. I reflected on that condition with the astonished awe of a
modern, meeting it almost for the first time. “No need for haste”—it
was like being transported into the timeless ease of eternity.
And then I fell to asking myself why there was always so much need
for haste in my own life and in that of my children? Was it, after all,
so necessary? What were we hurrying so to accomplish? I
remembered my scorn of the parties of Cook’s tourists, clattering
into the Sistine Chapel for a momentary glance at the achievement
of a lifetime of genius, painted on the ceiling, and then galloping out
again for a hop-skip-and-jump race down through the Stanze of
Raphael. It occurred to me, disquietingly, that possibly, instead of
really training my children, I might be dragging them headlong on a
Cook’s tour through life. It also occurred to me that if the Montessori
ideas were taken up in my family, the children would not be the only
ones to profit by them.

The Meal Hour.

C
opyright 1912, by Carl R. Byoir

When I emerged from this brown study, the little girls had finished
their task and there stood before me tables set for twenty little
people, set neatly and regularly, without an item missing. The
children, called in from their play in the courtyard, came marching
along (they do take collective action when collective interests
genuinely demand it) and sat down without suggestions, each, I
suppose, at the place he had occupied while working at those same
tiny tables. I held my breath to see the four little waitresses enter
the room, each carrying a big tureen full of hot soup. I would not
have trusted a child of that age to carry a glass of water across a
room. The little girls advanced slowly, their eyes fixed on the
contents of their tureens, their attention so concentrated on their all-
important enterprise that they seemed entirely oblivious of the outer
world. A fly lighted on the nose of one of these solemnly absorbed
babies. She twisted the tip of that feature, making the most
grotesque grimaces in her effort to dislodge the tickling intruder, but
not until she had reached a table and set down her sacred tureen in
safety, did she raise her hand to her face. I revised on the instant all
my fixed convictions about the innate heedlessness and lack of self-
control of early childhood; especially as she turned at once to her
task of ladling out the soup into the plates of the children at her
table, a feat which she accomplished as deftly as any adult could
have done.
The napkins were unfolded, the older children tucked them under
their chins and began to eat their soup. The younger ones imitated
them more or less handily, though with some the process meant
quite a struggle with the napkin. One little boy, only one in all that
company, could not manage his. After wrestling with it, he brought it
to the teacher, who had dropped down on a chair near mine. So sure
was I of what her action inevitably would be, that I fairly felt my
own hands automatically follow hers in the familiar motions of
tucking a napkin under a child’s round chin.
I cannot devise any way to set down on paper with sufficient
emphasis the fact that she did not tuck that napkin in. She held it up
in her hands, showed the child how to take hold of a larger part of
the corner than he had been grasping, and, illustrating on herself,
gave him an object-lesson. Then she gave it back to him. He had
caught the idea evidently, but his undisciplined little fingers, out of
sight there, under his chin, would not follow the direction of his
brain, though that was evidently, from the grave intentness of his
baby face, working at top speed. With a sigh, that irresistible sigh of
the little child, he took out the crumpled bit of linen and looked at it
sadly. I clasped my hands together tightly to keep them from flying
at him and accomplishing the operation in a twinkling. Why, the poor
child’s soup was getting cold!
Again I wish to reiterate the statement that the teacher did not tuck
that napkin in. She took it once more and went through very slowly
all the necessary movements. The child’s big, black eyes fastened on
her in a passion of attention, and I noticed that his little empty
hands followed automatically the slow, distinctly separated, analyzed
movements of the teacher’s hands. When she gave the napkin back
to him, he seized it with an air of resolution which would have done
honor to Napoleon, grasping it firmly and holding his wandering
baby-wits together with the aid of a determined frown. He pulled his
collar away from his neck with one hand and, still frowning
determinedly, thrust a large segment of the napkin down with the
other, spreading out the remainder on his chest, with a long sigh of
utter satisfaction, which went to my heart. As he trotted back to his
place, I noticed that the incident had been observed by several of
the children near us, on whose smiling faces, as they looked at their
triumphant little comrade, I could see the reflection of my own
gratified sympathy. One of them reached out and patted the napkin
as its proud wearer passed.
But I had not been all the morning in that children’s home, perfect,
though not made with a mother’s hands, without having my
mother’s jealousy sharply aroused. A number of things had been
stirring up protests in my mind. I was alarmed at the sight of all
these babies, happy, wisely occupied, perfectly good, and learning
unconsciously the best sort of lessons, and yet in an atmosphere
differing so entirely from all my preconceived ideas of a home. All
this might be all very well for Italian mothers so poor that they were
obliged to leave their children in order to go out and help earn the
family living; or for English mothers, who expect as a matter of
course that their little children shall spend most of their time with
nurse-maids and governesses. But I could not spare my children, I
told myself. I asked nothing better than to have them with me every
moment they were awake. What was to be done about this
ominously excellent institution which seemed to treat the children
more wisely than I, for all my efforts? I felt an uneasy, apprehensive
hostility towards these methods, contrasting so entirely with mine,
for mine were, I assured myself hotly, based on the most absolute,
supreme mother’s love for the child.
I now turned to the teacher and said protestingly, “That would have
been a very little thing to do for a child.”
She laughed. “I’m not his nurse-maid. I’m his teacher,” she replied.
“That’s all very well, but his soup will be cold, you know, and he will
be late to his luncheon!”
She did not deny this, but she did not seem as struck as I was by
the importance of the fact. She answered whimsically, “Ah, one must
remember not to obtrude one’s adult materialism into the idealistic
world of children. He is so happy over his victory over himself that
he wouldn’t notice if his soup were iced.”
The Morning Clean-up.

Waiter Carrying Soup.

C
 opyright 1912, by Carl R. Byoir

“But warm soup is a good thing, a very good thing,” I insisted, “and
you have literally robbed him of his. More than that, I seem to see
that all this insistence on self-dependence for children must interfere
with a great many desirable regularities of family life.”
She looked at me indulgently. “Yes, warm soup is a good thing, but
is it such a very important thing? According to our adult standards it
is more palatable, but it’s really about as good food if eaten cold,
isn’t it? And, anyhow, he eats it cold only this once. You’d snatch him
away from his plate of warm soup without scruple if you thought he
was sitting in a draught and would take cold. Isn’t his moral health
as important as his physical?”
“But it might be very inconvenient for someone else, in an ordinary
home, to wait so interminably for him to learn to wait on himself.”
Her answer was a home-thrust. “If it’s too much trouble to give him
the best conditions at home, wouldn’t he be better sent to a Casa
dei Bambini, which has no other aim than to have things just right
for his development?”
This silenced me for a time. I turned away, but was recalled by her
remarking, “Besides, I’ve put him more in the way of getting his
soup hot from now on, than you would, by tucking in his napkin and
sending him back at once. To-day’s plateful would have been warm;
but how about to-morrow and the day after, and so on, unless you,
or some other grown-up happened to be at hand to wait on him.
And on my part, what could I do, if all twenty-five of the children
were helpless?”
I seized on this opportunity to voice some of the mother’s jealousy
which underlay all my extreme admiration and astonishment at the
sights of the morning, “If you didn’t keep such an octopus clutch on
the children, separating them all day in this way from their own
families, if they were sent home to eat their luncheons, why, there
would be mothers enough to go around. They would be only too
glad to tuck the little napkins in!”
The teacher looked at me, level-browed, and said, with a dry,
enigmatic accent which made me reflect uneasily, long afterwards,
on her words, “They certainly would. Do you really think that would
be an improvement?”
 CHAPTER III
MORE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN A CASA DEI
BAMBINI

O F course one day’s observations do not give even a bird’s-eye

view of all the operations of a Montessori school, and this
chapter is intended to supplement somewhat the very incomplete
survey of the last and to touch at least, in passing, upon some of the
other important activities in which the children are engaged. If this
description seems lacking in continuity and uniformity, it represents
all the more faithfully the impressions of an observer of a Casa dei
Bambini. For there one sees no trace of the slightly Prussian
uniformity of action to which we are accustomed in even the freest
of our primary schools and kindergartens. You need not expect at
ten o’clock to hear the “ten-o’clock class in reading,” for possibly on
that day no child will happen to feel like reading. You need not think
that the teacher will call up the star pupil to have him write for you.
He may be lying on the floor absorbed in an arithmetical game and a
Montessori teacher would as soon blow up her schoolroom with
dynamite as interfere with the natural direction, taken for the
moment by the self-educating instincts of her children.
In planning a visit to a Casa dei Bambini, you can be sure of only
one thing, not, however, an inconsiderable thing, and that is that all
the children will be happily absorbed in some profitable undertaking.
It never fails. There are no “blue Mondays.” Rain or shine outdoors,
inside the big room there always blows across the heart of the visitor
a fine, tonic breath of free, and hence, never listless life. On days in
winter when the sirocco blows, the debilitating wind from Africa,
which reduces the whole population of Rome to inert and
melancholy passivity, the children in the Casa are perhaps not quite
so briskly energetic as usual in their self-imposed task of teaching
and governing themselves, but they are by far the most briskly
energetic Romans in the city.
It is all so interesting to them, they cannot stop to be bored or
naughty. Just as one of our keen, hungry-minded Yankee school-
teachers, turned loose for the first time in an historic European city,
throws herself with such fervor into the exploration of all its
fascinating and informing sights that she is astonished to hear later
that it was one of the hottest and most trying summers ever known,
so these equally hungry-minded, healthy children fling themselves
upon the fascinating and informing wonders of the world about them
with such ardor that they are always astonished when the long,
happy day is done.
The freedom accorded them is absolute, the only rule being that
they must not hurt or annoy others, a rule which, after the first brief
chaos at the beginning, when the school is being organized, is
always respected with religious care by these little citizens; although
to call a Montessori school a “little republic” and the children “little
citizens,” gives much too formal an idea of the free-and-easy, happily
unforced and natural relations of the children with each other. The
phrase Casa dei Bambini is being translated everywhere nowadays
by English-speaking people as “The House of Childhood,” whereas its
real meaning, both linguistic and spiritual, is, “The Children’s Home.”
That is what it is, a real home for children, where everything is
arranged for their best interests, where the furniture is the right size
for them, where there are no adult occupations going on to be
interrupted and hindered by the mere presence of the children,
where there are no rules made solely to facilitate life for grown-ups,
where children, without incurring the reproach (expressed or tacit)
of disturbing their elders, can freely and joyously, and if they please,
noisily, develop themselves by action from morning to night. With
the removal by this simple means of most of the occasions for
friction in the life of little children, it is amazing to see how few, how
negligibly few occasions there are for naughtiness. The great
question of discipline which so absorbs us all, solves itself, melts into
thin air, becomes non-existent. Each child gives himself the severest
sort of self-discipline by his interest in his various undertakings. He
learns self-control as a by-product of his healthy absorption in some
fascinating pursuit, or as a result of his instinctive imitation of older
children.
For instance, no adult was obliged to shout commandingly to the
little-girl waitress not to drop her soup-tureen to brush the fly from
her nose. She was so filled with the pride of her responsible position
that she obeyed the same inner impulse towards self-control which
induces adult self-sacrifice. On the other hand, the buttoning boy did
not refrain by a similar, violent effort of his will from snatching the
blocks from the arithmetical children. It simply never occurred to
him, so happily absorbed was he in his own task.
I asked, of course, the question which obsesses every new observer
in a Children’s Home, “But what do you do, with all this fine theory
of absolute freedom, when a child is naughty? Sometimes, even if
not often, you surely must encounter the kicking, screaming,
snatching, hair-pulling ‘bad’ child!” I was told then that the health of
such a child is looked into at once, such perverted violence being
almost certainly the result of deranged physical condition. If nothing
pathological can be discovered, he is treated as a morally sick child,
given a little table by himself, from which he can look on at the
cheerful, ordered play of the schoolroom, allowed any and all toys
he desires, petted, soothed, indulged, pitied, but (of course this is
the vital point) severely let alone by the other children, who are told
that he is “sick” and so cannot play with them until he gets well.
This quiet isolation, with its object-lesson of good-natured play
among the other children, has a hypnotically calming effect, the
child’s “naughtiness” for very lack of food to feed upon, or resistance
to blow its flames, disappears and dies away.
This, I say, was the explanation given me at first, but later, when I
came to know more intimately the little group of Montessori
enthusiasts in Rome, I learned more about the matter. One of my
Montessori friends told me laughingly, “We found that nobody would
believe us at all when we told the simple truth, when we said that
we never, literally never, do encounter that hypothetical, ferociously
naughty, small child. They look at us with such an obvious incredulity
that, for the honor of the system, we had to devise some expedient.
So we ransacked our memories for one or two temporary examples
of ‘badness’ which we met at first before the system was well
organized, and remembered how we had dealt with them. Now,
when people ask us what we do when the children begin to scratch
and kick each other, instead of insisting that children as young as
ours, when properly interested, never do these things, we tell them
the old story of our device of years ago.”
I have said that the real translation for Casa dei Bambini is The
Children’s Home, and I feel like insisting upon this rendering, which
gives us so much more idea of the character of the institution. At
least, from now on, in this book, that English phrase will be used
from time to time to designate a Montessori school. It is, for
instance, their very own home not only in the sense that it is a place
arranged specially for their comfort and convenience, but
furthermore a place for which they feel that steadying sense of
responsibility which is one of the greatest moral advantages of a
home over a boarding-house, a moral advantage of home life which
children in ordinary circumstances are rarely allowed to share with
their elders. They are boarders (though gratuitous ones) with their
father and mother, and, as a natural consequence, they have the
remote, detached, unsympathetic aloofness from the problem of
running the house which is characteristic of the race of boarders.
In the Casa dei Bambini this is quite different. Because it is their
home and not a school, the hours are very long, practically all the
day being spent there. The children have the responsibility not only
for their own persons, but for the care of their Home. They arrive
early in the morning and betake themselves at once to the small
washstands with pitchers and bowls of just the size convenient for
them to handle. Here they make as complete a morning toilet as
anyone could wish, washing their faces, necks, hands, and ears (and
behind the ears!), brushing their teeth, making manful efforts to
comb their hair, cleaning their finger-nails with scrupulous care, and
helping each other with fraternal sympathy. It is astonishing (for
anyone who had the illusion that she knew child-nature) to note the
contrast between the vivid purposeful attention they bestow on all
these processes when they are allowed to do them for themselves,
and the bored, indifferent impatience we all know so well when it is
our adult hands which are doing all the work. The big ones (of five
and six) help the little ones, who, eager to be “big ones” in their
turn, struggle to learn as quickly as possible how to do things for
themselves.
After the morning toilet of the children is finished, it is the turn of
the schoolroom. The fresh-faced, shining-eyed children scatter about
the big room, with tiny brushes and dust-pans and little brooms.
They attack the corners where dust lurks, they dust off all the
furniture with soft cloths, they water the plants, they pick up any
litter which may have accumulated, they learn the habit of really
examining a room to see if it is in order or not. One natural result of
this daily training in close observation of a room is a much greater
care in the use of it during the day, a result the importance of which
can be certified by any mother who has to “pick up” after a family of
small children.
After the room is fresh and clean, the “order of exercises” is very
flexible, varying according to circumstances, the weather, the desire
of the children. They may perhaps sing a hymn together before
dispersing to their different self-chosen exercises with the apparatus.
Sometimes the teacher gives them some exercises in manners,
showing them how to rise gracefully and quietly from their little
chairs, how to say good-morning; how to give and receive politely
some object; how to carry things safely across the room, etc., etc.
Sometimes they all sit about the teacher and have a talk with her, an
exercise in ordinary well-bred conversation which is sadly needed by
our American children, who are seldom, at least as young as this,
trained to express themselves in any but trivial requests, or, as in the
kindergarten, in repeating stories. The teacher questions the
children about the happenings of their lives, about anything of more
general interest which they may have observed, or on any topic
which excites a general interest which they may have observed. Of
course, because she is a Montessori teacher she does as little of this
talking as possible herself, confining herself to brief remarks which
may draw out the children. Such conversation is of the greatest help
to the fluency and correctness of speech and to an early enriching of
the vocabulary, all important factors in the release of the child from
the prison of his baby limitations. The habit of listening while others
talk acquired in these general morning conversations is also of
incalculable value, as is attested by the proverbial rarity of the good
listener even among adults.
Of course the main business of the day is the use of the apparatus,
the different Montessori exercises, and these soon occupy the
attention of all the children. With intervals of outdoor play in the
courtyard garden, care of the plants there, the morning progresses
till the lunch hour, which has been described. After this, or indeed,
whenever they feel sleepy, the smaller children take their naps, and
they do not go home until five or six o’clock in the afternoon, having
back of them a peaceful, harmonious day, every instant of which has
been actively, happily, and profitably employed, and which has been
full from morning till night of goodwill and comradeship.
From time to time it happens that a new brother or sister is
introduced into this big family, with its régime of perfect freedom
from unnecessary restraint. The behavior of children who are
brought into the school after the beginning of the school-year is
naturally extremely various, since they are allowed then, as always,
to express with perfect liberty their own individualities. Some join at
once, of their own accord, in one or another of the interesting
“games” they see being played by the other children already
initiated, and in half an hour are indistinguishable from the older
inhabitants of that little world, drawing their fingers alternately over
sandpaper and smooth wood to learn the difference between
“rough” and “smooth,” or delightedly matching the different-colored
spools of silk. Others, naturally shy ones, naturally reserved ones,
those who have been rendered suspicious by injudicious home
treatment, or those who have naturally slow mental machines, hold
aloof for a time. They are allowed to do this as long as they please.
They are welcomed once smilingly, and then left to their own
devices.
I remember, in the Via Giusti school, seeing for several days in
succession a tiny girl, not more than three, with wide, shy, fawn-
eyes, sitting idle at a little table, in the middle of the morning, with
all her wraps on. When I inquired the meaning of this very unusual
sight, the Directress told me that, apparently, the child had
something of the wild-animal terror of being caught in a trap, and
had indicated, terrified, when her mother, on the first morning, tried
to take off her cap and cloak, that she wished to be free at any
moment to make her escape from these new and untried
surroundings. So her wraps were not removed, she was allowed to
sit near the door, which was kept ajar, and not a look or gesture
from the Directress disturbed the reassuring isolation in which that
baby, by slow degrees, found herself and learned her first lesson of
the big world. I think she sat thus for three whole days, at first
starting nervously if anyone chanced to approach her, with the
painful, apprehensive glare of the constitutionally timid child, but
little by little conquering herself.
One day she reached over shyly for a buttoning frame, left on the
next table by a child who had wandered off to other joys. She sat
with this some time, looking about suspiciously to see if some adult
were meditating that condescending swoop of patronizing
congratulation which is so offensive to the self-respecting pride of a
naturally reserved personality. No one noticed her. Still glancing up
with frequent suspicious starts, she began trying to insert the
buttons in the buttonholes, and then, by degrees, lost herself, forgot
entirely the tragic self-consciousness which had embittered her little
life, and with a real “Montessori face,” a countenance of ardent,
happy, self-forgetting interest in overcoming obstacles, she set
definitely to work. After a time, finding that her cape impeded her
motions, she flung it off, taking unconsciously the step into which,
three days before, only superior physical force could have coerced
her.
I watched her through the winter with much interest, her reticent,
self-contained nature always marking her off from the other little
ones more or less, and I rejoiced to see that all the natural
manifestations of her differing individuality were religiously
respected by the wise Directress. It was not long before she was
trotting freely about the room choosing her activities with lively
delight, and looking on with friendly, though never very intimate,
interest at the doings of the other children. But it was months before
she cared to join at all in enterprises undertaken in common by the
majority of the pupils, the rollicking file, for instance, which stamped
about lustily in time to the music. She watched them, half-
astonished, half-disapproving, wholly contented with her own
permitted aloofness, like a slim little greyhound watching the light-
hearted, heavy-footed antics of a litter of Newfoundland puppies. At
least one person who saw her thanked Heaven many times that a
kind Providence had saved her from well-meaning adult efforts to
make her over according to the Newfoundland pattern. Hers was a
rare individuality, the integrity of which was being preserved entire
for the future leavening of an all-too-uniform civilization. For
although the Montessori school furnishes the best possible practical
training for democracy, inasmuch as every child learns speedily first
the joys of self-dependence and then the self-abnegating pleasure of
serving others, it is also preparing the greatest possible amelioration
of our present-day democracy, by counteracting that bad, but
apparently not inevitable, tendency of democracy to a dead level of
uniform and characterless mediocrity. The Casa dei Bambini proves
in actual practice that even the best interests of the sacred majority
do not demand that powerful and differing individualities be forced
into a common mould, but only guided into the higher forms of their
own natural activities.
This brief digression is an illustration of the way in which every
thoughtful observer in a Montessori school falls from time to time
into a brown study which takes him far afield from the busy babies
before him. No greater tribute to the broadly human and universal
foundation of the system could be presented than this inevitable
tendency in visitors to see in the differing childish activities the
unchaining of great natural forces for good which have been kept
locked and padlocked by our inertia, our short-sightedness, our lack
of confidence in human nature, and our deep-rooted and unfounded
prejudice about childhood, our instinctive, mistaken, harsh conviction
that it will be industrious, law-abiding, and self-controlled only under
pressure from the outside.
It must be admitted that there is one variety of child who is the
mortal terror of Montessori teachers. This is not the violently
insubordinate child, because his violence and insubordination at
home only indicate a strong nature which requires nothing but
proper activities to turn it to powerful and energetic life. No, what
reduces a Montessori teacher to despair is a child like one I saw in a
school for the children of the wealthy, a beautiful, exquisitely attired
little fairy of four, whose lovely, healthful body had been cared for
with the most scientific exactitude by trained nurses, governesses,
and nurse-maids, and the very springs of whose natural initiative
and invention seemed to have been broken by the debilitating
ministrations of all those caretakers. It is significant that the teacher
of this school admitted to me that she found her carefully-reared
pupils generally more listless, more selfish, harder to reach, and
harder to stimulate than poor children; but the least prosperous of
us need not think that because we cannot afford nurse-maids our
children will fare better than those of millionaires, for one too
devoted mother can equal a regiment of servants in crushing out a
child’s initiative, his natural desire for self-dependence, his self-
respect, and his natural instinct for self-education.
The great point of vantage of a Montessori school over an ordinary
school in dealing with these morally starved children of too
prosperous parents, is that it catches them younger, before the
pernicious habit of passive dependence has continued long enough
entirely to wreck their natural instincts. Beside the beautiful child of
four with the sapped and weakened will-power mentioned above,
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