On 7 April 1945 I was leading Cockshy Spare aircraft, which included myself and Upper Spare. We were on an escort rnission to the Hamburg area.
At about 1240 hours we observed numerous contrails high above the bombers approaching from various directions. They started making high overhead passes on the bombers at about 1250 hours.
I attached my element to Cockshy Green Flight and the leader of the flight made several climbing turns to get into position to repel E/A attacks on the bombers. He started several passes on various E/A which broke up his flight into a two ship and a three ship element. I lost my wingman.
Finally the element leader started down on what I thought was an ME 262. We chased him from 25,000 feet down to about 10,000 feet where he started making a left hand turn.
The two ships in front of me kept flying straight on. I called to them on the R/T but they continued their dive.
I was so browned off I pulled out to the left by myself and continued the chase. at about 5,000 feet I was within 600 feet range and let go with a long burst observing strikes on the tail.
He immediately went into a right turn and started a steeper dive heading for the clouds. His turn gave me a chance to close up on him more. I gave him a ten second burst, observing many strikes around the cockpit, right wing and engine. The engine caught fire and the E/A went into a very steep spiral to the right. A cloud layer under 3,000 feet prevented me from seeing him crash to the ground.
VERNON B. HATHORN, Jr.
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