Mustang Ace

Mustang Ace

This second paperback book edition has pictures in better definition while the format and text of the original hard-cover book has been retained virtually unchanged. Goebel's memoir is a well written classic of combat aviation, giving the reader a true sense of what it was like to fly and fight as a World War II fighter pilot. It covers stories about the often overlooked 15th AF in Italy, and tales of flying the classic P-51, America's ultimate piston-engine fighter. Robert Goebel, his friends and peers, arrived on the WWII scene at the same time as the P-51 Mustang and the result became aviation history. The P-51 had the range and firepower to sweep deep into Axis territory from both England and the Italian fronts, protecting the heavy bombers and forever changing the complexion of the air war. The P-51 evolved significantly from the P-51B to the P-51D model. This can be seen in the book’s two cockpit pictures of Goebel, one in the P-51B and another in the P-51-D. The bubble canopy, the added firepower of six instead of four guns, with improved resistance to jamming shows the evolution of the P-51 fighter, while this entire book describes the evolution of a US Army Air Corps fighter pilot. When Bob left home to join the Army Air Corps in 1942, he was nineteen years old and a high school graduate. Cadet Goebel worked his way steadily through the Basic, Primary and Advanced phases of Military Flight Training, and found in himself an aptitude for flight. Bob himself observed that at every phase of flight training, a different group of individuals emerged at the top, and that this held true into squadron operations and eventually in combat as well. After graduation from flight school, with his new wings, and new commission as a second lieutenant, he and several of his classmates were posted to a fighter squadron defending the Panama Canal. By the spring of 1944 he was on his way to Italy and the 31st fighter group which was eventually to become one of the top fighter outfits of the war. After a short time in Spitfires, he was headed to a new aircraft, the legendary P-51 Mustang. After 61 combat missions, the now promoted Captain Goebel was officially credited with 11 aircraft destroyed, and one probable in his Mustang. Returning home in September 1944 he was not yet 22 years old. Goebel’s memoir is a classic of combat aviation, giving the reader a true sense of what it was like to fly and fight as a WWII fighter pilot. Fighter pilots are generally considered the elite of the flying fraternity, at least by themselves. There were approximately 150,000 fighter pilots in all US services in WWII, but only about 1350 tallied the five aerial victories or more and became an Ace, less than one percent. This book can be read or listened to simply as an entertaining and true adventure story, but it is also a well written, well researched, and a very engaging personal account of aviation history. There will never be a more accurate account of this phase of the war. Most of those who actually experienced these events have now gone to their final reward.