P-80 Shooting Stars' in WW2?

[Tony C]

Hi All,
I was watching a programme on one of the Discovery channels last night (can't remember if it was Wings or not) but during the programme, the narrator claimed that late in the War, the P-80 Shooting Star was "rushed to Italy, in an attempt to combat the Ar234 reconnaisance flights"

Is this correct or yet another example of poor research by the programme makers or my fading memory, as I always thought that the only Allied jet to see any combat during WW2, was the Meteor!

[James Church]

'Project Extraversion' saw two pre-production YP-80As each sent to the combat zones in Italy and England for evauation and testing purposes. Several operational missions were apparently flown, but they never faced the enemy jets which they were sent to counter. There are some photos of them after arriving in England being towed from the docks where they arrived to their base of operations for assembly that have been printed in just about every P-80 book ever published. For once, the TV guys got it right! Jim

[Forgotten Field]

If you have the reprint of "Impact," which was the AAF's official publication from WWII, the visit to Italy (and not the one to England) was given an article and described, along with details of the mission. This was later in the European campaign and I doubt it was done as a countermeasure against the AR234. The Gloster Meteor was already in operational squadrons and could have handled the AR234. The two pre-production P80's with "just-trained" crews and probably NO SPARES to speak of, would not have made much of an impact on the budding art of jet combat. I think it was done for a show of force to let our friends know that we were in the jet game as well as the British, and maybe to drum up some post-war sales of the P80 series. But that is only my ill educated opinion, and certainly not the hype of the History Channel producers. Maybe if they actually talked to the experts listed in the show credits they would unveil such things...

By the way, the Impact article has good photos of the two aircraft flying over Italy, not just on the docks.

[RyanShort1]

It was the June 1945 vol. III No. 6 of Impact on page 57. There's one picture of the two P-80s flying over Mt. Vesuvius. One picture of the nose view on the ground, a shot from what appears to be a bomber overhead of the two planes on the ground and a shot of Field Marshal Alexander inspecting the tail pipe.

Other information is at http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p80_3.html

Ryan

[Dan Johnson II]

The 1st Fighter Group history, written by John Mullins, "An Escort of P38s" has two photos of the P80s in Italy as well. According to that book the P80s were brought over in early April 45 for testing under combat conditions.

Dan

[Tony C]

Thanks everyone, a fading memory it is then