Excerpt from Flying Low

By Joseph Furbee Gordon

"Lieutenant Hansen was flying as spotter, seated behind me as the two of us took off in my Piper Cub from the cow pasture used for division artillery airstrip. This was another daily fire mission against elements of the German 7th Army. We were the eyes of our artillery. The 2nd Armored Division spearheaded the U.S. 9th Army's drive from the Rhine River hell bent for Berlin, 200 miles ahead.

My job was to get up front and circle about, low and slow, so we could spot Tiger tanks, machine gun nests, and anything else they had. Hansen, using map coordinates, called by radio to battalion fire control and adjusted our bursting artillery shells on target. I dodged enemy fighter planes and ground fire.

Flying toward the point of attack that day, Hansen and I were about a thousand feet above the convoy of support vehicles then moving forward on the road below. Always wary of the Luftwaffe, I searched the sky through the clear plastic windows around and over the cockpit. At our low altitude, enemy planes were usually above us and visible, silhouetted against the sky.

Suddenly two Focke Wulf 190s surprised us from below, headed our way as they strafed the vehicular column on the road. We were silhouetted this time, and one came up with machine guns blazing from both wings."