DICK DAVIS
Age: 87
Born: Feb. 5, 1923
Hometown: Fresno
Residence: La Quinta
Military branch: U.S. Army Air Corps; 8th Air Force 364th, Fighter Group 383rd, Fighter Squadron
Years served: 1943-48
Rank: World War II: captain; retired from U.S. Air Force Reserve as lieutenant colonel.
Family: Wife Mary Lou (deceased); two children, Sue Davis of La Quinta and Donald Davis of Buena Park.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming Wednesday
U.S. Army veteran Mateo Gonzales of Palm Springs
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii
More
Pilot Dick Davis had to bail out over the English Channel when his P-51 fighter was set ablaze by enemy fire during a bombing mission over Germany on Sept. 1, 1944.
“Coming out of Brussels, we were attacked by the German Air Force,” Davis said. “I knew I was hit but I thought I could make it home. I got two-thirds of the way across the channel, and I had to bail out.”
Home was Honington airfield in East Anglia, England.
The plane caught fire, and Davis stayed with the aircraft as long as he could, until the flames came near the cockpit.
“You take the canopy off, take your safety belt off roll the plane over and drop out when you're upside down,” Davis said.
Landing in the sea, Davis clung to a small float that was packed with his survival gear.
“That's what saved my life,” he said.
Davis was in the water for about 40 minutes before a British ship rescued him.
“Hell yes I was scared,” he said. “But I flew the next day.”
Davis flew 63 combat missions in Europe over nine months during World War II.
He flew 12 of those missions in P-38 fighters, before his fighter group changed over to the P-51 Mustang.
“We flew top cover for bombers,” he said. “Also, when we ran out of planes to cover, we dropped down, and we'd strafe anything that moved on the ground that wasn't ours.
“The bombers — B-24s and B-17s — wherever they were sent, we would support them. The sky would be full of them.”
The fighters met the airborne bombers at a predetermined spot and stayed with them up until a certain point.
“Then you'd have to come home” because the fuel would be running low, he said.
The fighter planes could travel about 500 mph and flew to altitudes as high as 30,000 feet, while the bombers flew slower and at lower altitudes — about 24,000 feet, he said.
The fighters were armed with six 0.50-caliber machine guns — three in each wing.
“I had one victory,” he said. “I shot down an airplane (a Focke-Wulf 190 fighter) over Munich. He was going in to land, and he was going down on the final approach. I saw it explode. I fired on a lot of airplanes. I know for a fact that was a sure victory.
“They had a few of the early jets,” Davis added. “The first jet was shot down by our squadron.”
The fighters flew in formation on missions — they didn't peel off to go one-on-one with enemy aircraft.
“You stayed together if you wanted to live,” he said. “You wanted eight airplanes there, not just yourself — so the more, the merrier.
“When you're the aggressor and you're doing well, you get that feeling like a winner does. If you don't, you get shot down and you get killed.”
On one of his days off, Davis went rabbit hunting on the base — a sprawling airfield teeming with wildlife.
The eyes of the law were watching.
“I shot a pheasant, which I shouldn't have,” Davis said. “The sheriff caught me.”
A sheriff's office and jail sat just outside the air base.
“He took the pheasant home and had dinner,” Davis said. “They threw me in the clink.”
After occupying the one-cell jail for a while, Davis took action.
“I thought, ‘I'm not going to sit here forever.' I decided to call the base and alert the colonel. He came and got me. Whatever he was doing, he stopped and came right over and released me from jail.”
The high-ranking officer told Davis to go sit in the car.
“He chewed that sheriff out like you wouldn't believe,” Davis said.
Davis' squadron was summoned to fly a mission over France when intelligence determined a German train in the area was carrying explosives.
“They sent one squadron to attack this train,” Davis said.
The fighters flew over, found the camouflaged train and strafed it, he said.
“We killed the train in one pass and damn near destroyed the town, too.”
One of the squadron's pilots was killed in the attack and the windows of every building in the town of Remy were blown out by the force of the explosion.
Davis said some townspeople pulled the dead pilot from his plane, hid him from the Germans and buried the fallen serviceman in a village cemetery.
A 13th-century church, the Church of St. Denis, remained standing, but all of its stained-glass windows were blown out.
Years later, in an expression of gratitude to the people of the village, Davis and some of the surviving squadron members raised more than $200,000 to replace the stained-glass windows of the church.
The group began raising money in 1996 when they learned the villagers had only been able to replace the windows with clear glass.
By July 2000, the stained-glass windows had been installed and Davis and other fighter squadron and group members traveled to Remy for the dedication of the new windows. A weekend celebration, including a military parade, was hosted by the grateful villagers.
