Word: gabreski
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...longer you stay up destroying other aircraft in time of battle," mused Colonel Francis S. Gabreski, 48, "the luckier you've got to be." By that measure, the retiring commander of the 52nd Fighter Wing at New York's Suffolk County Air Force Base is the luckiest man in the air. Though it has been 15 years since his last combat mission, the Colonel is still the nation's top-ranked living combat ace, with 371 kills to his credit from World War II and Korea. Gabreski is leaving the Air Force...
...Junior Chamber of Commerce announced its "ten outstanding young men of 1951." On the list: Helicopter Designer Stanley Miller Jr., 27; Gordon B. McLendon, 30, president of the mushrooming (443 stations) Liberty Broadcasting System; Air Force Colonel Francis S. Gabreski, 32, Korean air ace, who last week bagged his fourth MIG; Publisher John H. Johnson, 33, who nine years ago, on a $500 shoestring, started the nation's No. 1 string of Negro magazines (Ebony, Jet, etc.); Donald R. Wilson, 34, national commander of the American Legion...
Despite these lopsided figures, the Reds are narrowing the gap, both in pilot ability and tactics. Said Colonel Francis S.("Gabby") Gabreski, an ace in two wars: "We used to go up and find them spread out like sitting ducks. This time they were in flights of four stacked up at all altitudes. Their pilots are better and their system's better. They're as good as any German pilots I met during the last...
...Wait'll you get 'em right in your sights. Then short bursts. There's no sense melting your guns." That was Lieut. Colonel Francis S. ("Gabby") Gabreski's formula for picking Messerschmitts out of the air in the last war. It worked well enough to make Gabby the U.S.'s top-ranking ace in the European Theater, with 28 Nazi planes to his credit before a forced landing in 1944 grounded him for ten months in a German prison camp...
...Force's Fourth (Sabre jet) Fighter Interceptor Group, Gabby, now a full colonel, got a chance to try his formula on Communist MIGs in Korea. Some 15 MIG-15 jets had pounced on a mass flight of U.S. prop-driven Mustangs just north of Pyongyang when Gabreski and his Sabres roared to the rescue. In short order Gabby knocked out one MIG-his first kill in Korea. His teammates shot down two more, damaged a third and sent the others streaking home to Manchuria...