Built in Evansville, Ind., 1st Lt. Archie “Lin” Maltbie’s Republic P-47D-28-RA Thunderbolt (42-28932/C4-T) of the 386th Fighter Squadron, 365th Fighter Group, occupies the foreground at A-84 Chievres near Mons, Belgium while other “Jugs” take off in the background. Taken from the book Hell Hawks by Robert F. Dorr and Thomas D. Jones, the scene occurs at the height of the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945.

“The intersection was clouded over with dust and smoke as Red Two and Red Three dropped their bombs very close to mine. As the wind cleared the scene, I could see that one of the tanks was down in a ditch on the opposite side of the north/south road with its 88mm gun turned down and to the side. The second tank was pulling around the corner heading east on the main street.

“‘Get him with your guns!’ I yelled. ‘Make a steep angle of attack and aim for the ventilator grates. Set his engine on fire! He’s on hard surface,’ I continued, ‘ricochet them up into his belly – front and rear!'”

A Tiger I’s hull armor was impervious to nearly all American tank fire, and even the 25mm armor on the turret top and rear decking would defeat a .50-caliber round. On paper, .50-caliber machine gun fire would do nothing but rattle the Tiger crew’s eardrums. But there were cooling fan gratings and air intakes on the rear deck, and thin armor on the underside, that might allow a P-47’s sheer volume of fire with its eight Browning M2 guns to score a lucky hit and disable a Tiger’s engine.

“A glance back to the intersection showed the third tank backing to the north about a hundred yards into an orchard. He could wait his turn, I thought.

“The second tank pulled off the main street into a dirt lot between some buildings. When we kept hitting his ventilator grates with our bullets he pulled out and to the east. He then parked between two buildings on the north side of the street. We continued to work on his grates until he pulled out and turned back to the west on the main street. That was one harassed Tiger!

“As the Tiger continued west past the intersection we continued to ricochet .50 caliber bullets into its belly and pounded its grates as before. Finally the tank stopped in the middle of the street and remained there despite our attacks. It was now time to worry the third tank. We made one high-angle attack on the grates of the third Tiger. This forced it to move out of the orchard on to the secondary road from whence it had come.

“By this time, one or more of us was either out of ammunition or extremely low, so we advised FORMROOM of the tank’s status and took off for home.

“Next morning we received a wire from the tank force commander expressing appreciation for the attack. His forces took the town without further casualties. They found one Tiger destroyed, the second was incapacitated and it was captured, while the third had gotten away. From this we learned that our guns could cripple a Tiger tank despite its supposed impenetrable armor.”

The character of the war in March was similar to the previous summer’s campaign in Normandy: the Allies were gathering strength for a winning breakout. To assist the Rhine crossing, the P-47s would work to keep reinforcements from reaching the front.

“There was a lot of activity reported in the area between Siegburg and Cologne, so our group was given the task of patrolling that corridor,” wrote Lopez. “To go on and mention the various marshalling yards and trains we strafed, many of them blowing up and indicating that they were loaded with munitions, would be repetitive. Suffice to say that we were kept busy wrecking the German army.”

Robert F. Dorr is an Air Force veteran, a retired U.S. diplomat, and an author. Thomas D. Jones is an Air Force Academy graduate, a former NASA astronaut, and a planetary scientist. Hell Hawks: The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler’s Wehrmacht, has been called the best book ever written about the P-47 Thunderbolt and the war on the European continent. The book is available from co-author Dorr at robert.f.dorr@cox.net