Description of the plan of a fighter pilot from neutral Spain to shoot down a P-38 Lightning in World War 2
Miguel Entrena's World War 2 Adventure:
A Spanish Pilot's Unusual Story
by Jesús Dapena
(email: dapena@iu.edu)
(image obtained from “Heinkel He 112 in Action”, by Dénes Bernád, Squadron/Signal Publications, 1996)
(excerpted from an interview with Major Miguel Entrena by Dario Vecino, published in “Flaps” 2(16):8-9, 1961; translation by Jesús Dapena, 1998.)
… …
-What was your next assignment?
-Nador, in early 1943.
-What plane did you fly there?
-The only one there was, a German fighter that arrived during the Civil War, the Heinkel 112.
-How was it?
-Well, it was old, and it did not climb well. But it was very well armed. With 20 mm cannon.
-Well, tell me how you got to the Allied fighter.
-You have told the story already. That was an incident in the war. We were neutrals, and we hardly had planes. The Allies had just landed in North Africa. And of course their planes flew over our Protectorate paying no heed to the Spanish warnings to respect our neutrality. As there was nothing but a He-112 there, we pilots took turns to try to intercept them, but nobody could catch them. They were very fast twin-fuselage fighters.
-Did you succeed?
-Well, we set up a pretty crude warning system, based on scouts and telephones. It was difficult, because they were very fast, and they always flew low. But it worked, and when the time came I climbed into my fighter and grabbed all the altitude I could get. I reached my ceiling, and when the fighter formation passed below me, I dove at full power onto the tail of the formation.
-What maneuver did you make?
-A turn to have the sun on my back, and I continued diving vertically.
-Danger?
-Apart from the combat, the wings could get torn off, or who knows what … I was going very fast.
-Did you succeed?
-Well, yes, I did. But that is a thing of the past, we don’t have to talk about that.