SHREDDED WHEAT
Excerpt from "The Loco Boys Go Wild" by: Arch Whitehouse, True magazine, November, 1944.
...Probably the most interesting charcater in this unbelieveable organization (The 20th.FG) is Maj. Jack Ilfrey of 3122 Robin Road Street, Houston, Texas. I love that Robin Hood business.
Ilfrey is an aluminus of Texas A and M and the University of Houston. Jack has done everything and he does it with the falir of a circus showman - without knowing it. So far he has more than eighty-five missions in his logbook and he has shot down eight enemy planes. He is a veteran of the North Africa campaign and once came back from a trip over the enemy sandpiles with 278 bullet holes in his plane.(See below)
The other day Jack came back from a mission with about three foot of his wing missing. He explained the damage by saying he had actually collided with an Me-109. How he got back to base is a mystery, because accrding to the book the ship is not supposed to fly after an encounter of that kind.
"You ought to see the other guy," Ilfrey said when they questioned him about it. "He went down wobbling and smoking."
From what I could make out Ilfrey was leading a flight when they were bounced by sixty enemy fighters. Ilfrey made a head-on pass at an Me-109 as anothercame up from behind and below --much too close.
"I felt a jolt," Ilfrey explained, "and I ducked. I saw the 109 start to spin and my own plane went over into a dangerous bank and rocked badly. I finally managed to get it under control, but I had several anxious moments and had to fight like fury to keep from spinning. The collision had ripped open my right wing tank and that engine quit temporarily. From where I sat the end of the wing looked like shredded wheat, but I managed to skip out of that hot spot and later got both engines working."
Ilfrey didn't mention that he was hours getting back and the Operations crowd was sweating it out for him and once had gave him up as lost. Jack finally skidded in and the first thing he asked for was --you guessed it, a drink...
"Texas Terror" after returning from a mission with over 270 holes in the airframe. (02 Dec., 1942, Tunisia.)
BACK TO THE BIO