Presentation Date: April 23, 1998
Mort Magoffin
P-47 Pilot 362nd Fighter Group, Ninth Air Force USAAF Col. Mort Magoffin, Fighter Ace, P-47 ETO Pilot, 362nd Fighter Group, Ninth Air Force. Was at Pearl Harbor during the attack, was with the Doolittle task force, and ended up in Europe to fly against the Germans. After many exciting adventures, covered in this tape, Mort was shot down, captured, and with the help of a French woman, eventually escaped and returned to England.
Colonel Mort Magoffin once gave a Pratt & Whitney representative a thrill, showing him how the engine behaved roughly when the plane flew inverted. Magoffin put the rep in the seat, hopped onto his lap without a parachute, and rolled the P-47 out to take-off. "He was scared to death. I took him up to 10,000 ft. and then took that airplane upside down and sure enough it coughed and missed. And I said, 'see there, see there'." You might say Magoffin liked having "front seat" experiences, and Golden Gate Wing members and guests were in the front seat with him at April's dinner meeting.
Mort Magoffin's first taste of war was at Pearl Harbor. Assigned to the 15th Pursuit Group, he was eating breakfast before a planned golf match, when he heard explosions. Mort first thought it was the Navy practicing dive-bombing until he noticed the red rising-suns on the planes. He drove to his HQ and made sure alert calls went out to all installations. Magoffin says he thought about trying to take a fighter up, "that it could be a turkey shoot", because all he saw were slow, two-seat bombers and torpedo planes. But, that didn't happen.
Ten days after the attack, Mort was was flown from Ford Island to the carrier Enterprise, which was rendezvousing with the carrier Hornet - - on its way to bomb Tokyo. Magoffin says he had the good fortune to spend time the next few days with Admiral Halsey for a daily 9:30am invitation for coffee, "I kept my eyes and ears open and was able to know what was really going on." His eyes were put to use in the back seat of patrol planes sent ahead of the task force as it steamed to waters near Japan.
Magoffin says he couldn't get into combat in the Pacific, so he went back to the States, to a flight training unit in Florida, until he could get a combat command of his own. In March of 1943 that command was the 362nd Fighter Group, Ninth Air Force, armed with P-47 Thunderbolts. After a year's training, the group was sent to England where early bomber-escort missions evolved to missions of interdiction - - attacks on trains, trucks, troops and dreaded flak towers.
After one mission in which he'd been involved in a dogfight, the Pratt & Whitney engine of Magoffin's P-47 cut out on his approach to base. Mort managed to bring the "Jug" safely down, but he remained sitting in the plane. He finally thought to check the time, only he couldn't find his wristwatch until he looked under the seat-chute, testimony to the rigors of the twisting, wrenching dogfight he'd flown in.
Magoffin ended the war credited with having shot down five enemy aircraft. One victory he recalls was on April 23, 1944. Set to fly bomber escort, Mort couldn't get the reflector gun sight to work when he started-up. He shrugged it off, thinking, "we won't see anything anyhow. I won't need it." On the way back from the mission, Magoffin heard B-24s "hollering for help", so he took eight P-47s to their aid. Mort says he jumped a Bf-109, but without his reflector sight couldn't accurately hit it. He also closed too quickly on the fighter and ended up side by side with the Messerschmitt. Mort says he looked over at the Luftwaffe pilot, waved, and got a wave back. Magoffin managed to slide onto the German's tail as they headed down, and after a short chase, Mort says the 109 flew into a hillside.
While D-Day itself was spent escorting C-47s across the Channel on parachute drops, the 362nd Fighter Group spent most of its time in the days just before and after D-Day flying missions on the deck. Magoffin says on about July 17th, 1944, he was coming back from a mission at low altitude when he spotted a "Duesenberg" type car with motorcycle escorts in front and behind it. He banked over and strafed the convoy, noticing soldiers leaping from the car into a roadside ditch. Mort says he made the single pass and headed for home. That evening he heard news reports about Field Marshal Erwin Rommel having been wounded in a strafing attack. Mort also heard British reports taking credit for the attack, but believes if it wasn't Rommel he hit, then it was another ranking German officer in the car.
Magoffin says he had a policy of accepting all missions, no matter how dangerous, and personally leading the most hazardous himself. That usually meant flying at 500 ft. and shooting at targets until they were knocked out.
The incident that ended Magoffin's combat career was a ground attack mission, August 10, 1944, about 60 miles west of Paris. His Thunderbolt was slammed by flak, a leg wound requiring Mort to use his headphone cord to tourniquet his leg. Managing to bail out, the next thing Mort knew, "I heard guttural voices and said uh oh, I'm in the wrong place." Magoffin was taken to a German field hospital, had his wound dressed and then was taken to Paris. He says he talked a French woman into hiding him in a closet when prisoners were evacuated east, and that led to his re-patriation.
Magoffin was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star w/Oak Leaf Clusters, Purple Heart, and the Air Medal with 16 OLCs.