In early June of 1944, my original P-38J, CL-X, had been wrecked by a fellow pilot while I was on leave. I returned to see my pride and joy lying on its belly from a combat encounter. My bunkmate, who was at the controls of my Lightning, told me he had an engine shot out while tangling with the Luftwaffe and made it all the way back to base in England when he got cut off by a landing B-17. With wheels down, flaps out, and only one prop turning, he ran out of options, raised the gear, and bellied it in. Thankfully, with a war going on, there were many P-38s sitting around waiting to be assigned. I was issued a new P-38 and my ground crew got it ready to fly. Unfortunately, the day I was supposed to give it a test hop, everything was grounded so the ground crews could paint black and white stripes on our airplanes — invasion stripes. I would have to perform double duty on my next flight, a combat mission and test hop all rolled into one. On June 5, I was slotted to fly a night mission over the English Channel to cover the invasion beaches along the French coast. The P-38s were selected because they were extremely recognizable with twin engines and twin tails, and nothing else looked like them. Our instructions were simple: "If you see anything flying over the beaches, shoot it down — no questions asked. Destroy anything that is not a P-38 entering your assigned patrol area." We departed our base at Wormingford very late in the afternoon. The weather was terrible with low ceilings and heavy rain as we struck out for our patrol area. From 1,500 feet, I saw countless numbers of boats of all shapes and sizes all over the channel heading for France. What a sight! We orbited the beaches and I saw some sporadic gunfire, but nothing that would compare to the next day. We landed well after dark and trudged to our bunks for some rest.
