One Gun Against the Luftwaffe: How Maj. James Howard Earned the Eighth Air Force’s Only Fighter Pilot Medal of Honor

On January 11, 1944, a lone P-51B pilot held off the Luftwaffe over Germany as his guns jammed one after another until only one remained — earning the only Medal of Honor ever awarded to an Eighth Air Force fighter pilot.

Five miles above the earth, crisp contrails etched the steely blue sky high over Germany. The B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 1st Bomb Division, in close formation, had just completed their bomb runs against the aircraft factories at Oschersleben and Halberstadt — targets that lay just 65 miles southwest of Berlin — and were turning for home. The date was January 11, 1944.

Somewhere above the withdrawing bomber stream, a lone North American P-51B Mustang climbed back toward the B-17s. Its pilot had lost the rest of his flight in a diving pursuit minutes earlier. Of the four .50-cal. machine guns installed in his wings, one now worked. Ahead, approximately 20 German fighters — Bf 109s and twin-engined Bf 110 Zerstörer — were forming up for a coordinated attack run on two boxes of B-17s from the 401st Bomb Group. There was no other American fighter in sight.

The pilot was Maj. James Howard. And he turned his Mustang directly toward them.

THE ONLY ONE

The engagement that followed — roughly 30 minutes of solo aerial combat over German-held territory — remains the most singular act of airborne valor in the history of the Eighth Air Force. Howard’s relentless defense of the 401st Bomb Group that morning earned him the Medal of Honor: the only such decoration bestowed on a fighter pilot of the Eighth Air Force during the Second World War.

Howard was no ordinary pilot thrust into an extraordinary situation by chance. He was a former U.S. Naval Aviator, a combat ace with the American Volunteer Group (AVG) — the legendary “Flying Tigers” — and the most combat-experienced pilot in a group that had been flying the P-51B for barely six weeks. His background was not incidental to his performance on January 11. It was the reason he stayed in the fight when the mathematics of survival demanded he break off. The Eighth Air Force, meanwhile, had been brought to the edge of strategic collapse by the autumn of 1943, and what Howard demonstrated that morning was both an act of individual valor and a validation of the most urgently needed weapon in the Allied arsenal.

A MAN BUILT FOR THIS MOMENT

Leading the 354th FG on the 11th was Maj. James Howard, who was an unusual fighter pilot for a number of reasons. Firstly, he was 6 ft 2 in. tall — three inches over the USAAF’s official maximum height for fighter pilots. Secondly, he was 30 years old, making him an “old man” in comparison with his subordinates. Thirdly, he had significant combat experience.

Howard had earned his wings of gold with the U.S. Navy in August 1939 and then resigned his commission in June 1941 to join the American Volunteer Group (AVG) in China, where he had been born to missionary parents. The decision to resign a regular commission — one of the most coveted career designations in the peacetime Navy — spoke to a temperament that measured value in action rather than institutional security.

In China, Howard flew under the direction of Claire Chennault. The Flying Tigers operated against Japanese fighters that held decisive advantages in maneuverability, and AVG pilots were required to exploit hit-and-run tactics — diving, striking, disengaging before the enemy could bring his superior turn rate to bear. These were not the tactics of the textbook. They were the reflexes of a pilot who had learned to weaponize aggression and patience in equal measure. Having claimed 2.333 aerial victories in China, Howard entered the USAAF in early 1943 when the AVG was disbanded.

Now the commanding officer of the 356th Fighter Squadron (FS), Howard had already opened his European account on December 20, 1943, knocking down a Bf 109 on one of the group’s early missions. By January 11, though he wore his 30 years lightly, he was in every tactical sense the most dangerous man in the 354th Fighter Group. His experience as a Naval Aviator and his victories with the AVG had proved that his height had no bearing on his effectiveness as a pilot.

Howard did not experience the ordeal that awaited him that January morning as an act of exceptional heroism. He experienced it as his job.

A FORCE ON THE BRINK

By late 1943, the Eighth Air Force was facing an existential problem. The assumption that “the bomber will always get through” had been proved catastrophically wrong. The P-47 Thunderbolt had a combat radius of 275 miles in September 1943, even with drop tanks. On deep-penetration missions into Germany, Luftwaffe fighters would simply wait for the fighter escort to break away for home before pouncing on the bombers.

The consequences were devastating. On August 17, 1943, the USAAF launched a two-prong raid against the German aircraft ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt and Regensburg. Weather scrambled the formations and left them especially vulnerable to fighter attack. Of 376 bombers sent to the two targets, 60 failed to return. A return to Schweinfurt on October 14 was even more disastrous, with 77 of the 291 bombers in the attacking force being lost. Between the two Schweinfurt raids, 1,219 American airmen had been killed or captured — and these were just two of many missions being flown at the time. Deep-penetration raids were suspended after the October mission.

Eighth Air Force Deep-Penetration Crisis, 1943

The answer to the escort crisis had arrived in the form of the Merlin-powered P-51B Mustang. The Mustang held a 95-mile range advantage over the P-47 Thunderbolt and a 30-mile advantage over the P-38 Lightning. With two 108-gallon drop tanks under the wings, the Mustang could fly deep enough into the Reich to cover Berlin and beyond — a range no other USAAF escort fighter in the ETO could match.

In January 1944, just one group in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) was equipped with the P-51B — the 354th Fighter Group. The 354th often found itself as the only escort for the bombers during the last few miles to the target — usually the most hotly contested part of the mission. On January 11, the bombers heading for Oschersleben and Halberstadt were covered, at the moment of greatest peril, by one fighter group — and for a critical stretch of the engagement, by one pilot.

INTO THE FIGHT

Howard sent one of the three squadrons to cover the front of the bomber stream while he remained with the other squadrons at the rear of the formation. The B-17s made their bomb runs and turned for home. Twenty minutes later, the Luftwaffe struck. Waves of Bf 109s and twin-engined bomber-destroyers went after the lead formations of B-17s, and Howard led his squadron to their defense.

Spotting a Bf 110 below him at the same altitude as the bombers — the Zerstörer still carrying its launchers for W.Gr. 21 “Dodel” air-to-air unguided rockets, which had not yet been expended in an attack on the 401st BG northwest of Halberstadt — Howard dropped his external tanks and dove, pulling up behind the enemy fighter. “I waited until his wingspan filled my gunsight and opened up with a four-second burst,” Howard subsequently reported. He sprayed the Bf 110 with 0.50-cal. rounds, scoring hits across the engines, fuselage and cockpit. The Bf 110 veered off course, went into a dive and broke up at 5,000 ft.

Howard had lost the rest of his flight in his dive, and found himself alone above the bomber stream. Noting that the rest of his flight had moved back in the bomber stream, he throttled back to stay with the lead element, noting it “seemed to have more than its share of enemy fighters.” A few minutes later, a Bf 109 flew toward him, and he raked it with machine gun fire. He then spotted an Fw 190 and closed in from astern, opening fire and seeing parts fly off the aircraft. The pilot jettisoned the canopy and jumped, possibly “in anticipation of something worse,” Howard recalled.

It was during this third engagement that the P-51B’s most insidious mechanical flaw revealed itself. As Howard had fired on the Fw 190, two of his four guns had stopped — ammunition feed jams were a common early problem with the P-51B. The angled gun mounts in the Mustang’s thin laminar-flow wing required the ammunition belts to make a sharp turn on the way to the weapons’ receivers; under the high-G forces of aerial combat, those belts would bind and jam, silencing the guns at the worst possible moment. Now restricted to only two machine guns, and still looking for Mustangs to join with, Howard spotted a Bf 109 just underneath and a few hundred yards ahead of him.

Upon seeing the Mustang, the Bf 109 pilot chopped his throttle, trying to make Howard overshoot. “It’s an old trick,” Howard said. What followed was a contest of pure airmanship. “We went into a circle dogfight, and it was a matter of who could maneuver best and cut the shortest circle. I dumped 20 degrees of flap and began cutting inside him, so he quit and went into a dive, with me after him. I got on his tail and got in some long-distance squirts from 300 or 400 yards, but I didn’t see him hit the ground.”

Howard found himself “on the deck.” He had no wingmen, two working guns, and a mission that was far from over.

“It was a case of one lone American against what seemed like the entire Luftwaffe. They can’t give that boy a big enough reward.”
— Maj. Allison Brooks, Commanding Officer, 401st Bomb Group

ONE GUN

Pulling back on the stick, Howard climbed back toward the altitude of the bomber stream. Nearby, a P-51B was itself trying to join up, mistakenly, with a Bf 109. “The ’51 saw me coming in from behind and he peeled off, while the ME started a slow circle,” said Howard. “Things happen so fast it’s hard to remember them in sequence when you get back.”

Now down to one gun, Howard climbed back up to the bombers and soon recognized about 20 German fighters setting up an attack on two boxes of B-17s from the 401st Bomb Group. Singling out a Bf 110 on the right side of the formation, Howard dove and fired, his one working gun producing strikes. “I could see gas and smoke coming out, [and] white and black smoke.” The Zerstörer flipped onto its back and fell into a vertical dive.

Soon, a Bf 109 came in on the bombers’ right side. Howard zoomed in close, and the German headed for the deck. Apparently unaware that Howard was following, the pilot’s dive was interrupted by 0.50-cal. rounds from the Mustang’s one operable gun. “I gave him a squirt and he headed straight down with black smoke pouring out,” Howard said.

He then climbed again to defend the bombers, driving more fighters off with feints, bluffs and mock attacks. With only one gun remaining, Howard turned his Mustang into a psychological weapon. A persistent Ju 88 kept trying to climb to attack the bombers. After its third try, the aircraft eventually gave up its pursuit. Howard was no longer fighting with firepower. He was fighting with presence.

Howard then joined up with three stray Mustangs and returned safely to the 354th FG’s airfield at Boxted, in Essex, where he claimed two victories, two probables and one damaged. Confirmations from other members of the group changed one of the probables to a victory.

There is one final detail that makes the mission all the more remarkable in its human texture. Howard was not flying his assigned aircraft, nicknamed DING HAO! — Chinese for “Very Good!” — during his Medal of Honor mission. Instead, he was at the controls of 43-6441, coded AJ-X, which was assigned to 1Lt Bart Tenore. The aircraft that stopped a Luftwaffe assault on an entire bomb group was borrowed.

SIXTEEN WITNESSES

Meanwhile, the 401st BG at Deenethorpe, in Northamptonshire, also corroborated the story. No fewer than 16 debriefing documents described the jaw-dropping antics of the single Mustang that flew over, around and through the bomber formation in their defense. The consistency of 16 independent accounts — each describing the same lone fighter weaving through the formation, driving off German attackers — gave the engagement an evidentiary weight unusual even by the rigorous standards of wartime documentation.

“For sheer determination and guts, it was the greatest exhibition I’d ever seen,” said Maj. Allison Brooks, who was leading the 401st BG that day. “It was a case of one lone American against what seemed like the entire Luftwaffe. They can’t give that boy a big enough reward.” Howard’s own assessment of his actions was characteristically understated: “Things happen so fast it’s hard to remember them in sequence when you get back.”

Howard’s tally that day made him the 354th FG’s first ace, and his relentless defense of the 401st BG earned him the Medal of Honor — the only such decoration bestowed on an Eighth Air Force fighter pilot. The Mustang’s presence over Germany had been a closely guarded military secret; the press was not informed until January 13, 1944 — the first time the USAAF admitted the Mustang was in action over Germany. When reporters were finally turned loose on Howard on January 13, one asked why he had risked his neck doing what he did. “I seen my duty and I done it!” he replied.

THE MEDAL AND THE MUSTANG

Howard’s January 11 performance did not exist in a tactical vacuum. A photograph taken at the June 1944 Medal of Honor award ceremony shows the 6 ft 2 in. pilot — officially three inches too tall to fly fighters — wearing the AVG “Flying Tiger” emblem on his right pocket, a visual embodiment of a career that had spanned two theaters and two air forces.

January 11, 1944 made Howard the 354th FG’s first ace. By the end of January, the “Pioneer Mustang Group” — as the 354th had dubbed itself — had claimed 53 victories. The template was set. By February 1944, Lt. Col. Don Blakeslee’s 4th FG had converted to P-51Bs, followed by the 357th and 363rd FGs that same month. In April, the 352nd, 355th, and 359th FGs traded their Thunderbolts for Mustangs, while the 339th made its combat debut with the P-51B at the very end of that month. The P-47-equipped 361st FG also converted to the Mustang in May 1944, giving the Eighth Air Force control over nine Mustang-equipped groups by D-Day.

The Luftwaffe’s day fighter force — the force Howard had held at bay alone northwest of Halberstadt — was being systematically dismantled. Howard’s mission and the 354th’s early operations provided the operational proof that VIII Fighter Command needed to fully commit to the Mustang and to the aggressive new doctrine of hunting the Luftwaffe wherever it could be found, in the air and on the ground.

“I seen my duty and I done it!”
— Maj. James Howard, 356th Fighter Squadron, 354th Fighter Group

BACK TO BOXTED

When Howard’s Mustang touched down at Boxted that January afternoon, three of his four guns were silent — jammed, locked, useless. He had fought the better part of his engagement with one .50-cal. weapon, in an aircraft that was not his own, over a stretch of Germany 65 miles southwest of Berlin.

The decorations and the press conferences and the Medal of Honor ceremony would come later. On January 11, 1944, Howard climbed out of 43-6441, coded AJ-X, and tallied two victories, two probables, one damaged — a tally the bomber crews who had watched him fight would consider the most extraordinary understatement in the history of the air war. Seven words would follow James Howard for the rest of his life, as the most complete answer he ever gave to the question of why: “I seen my duty and I done it!”