Newspaper article during II World War
In letter (6 cents air mail stamp) 
January 25, 1945 U.S. Army Postal Service A.P.O.

ACROBATIC P-47 GIVES PILOT A ROUGH TIME
by Wade Jones - Stars and Stripes Staff Writer

FIRST TACTICAL AIR FORCE, January 11 --

2/Lt. Alvin McCorkle, a P47 Thunderbolt pilot operating in the Seventh Army sector, was ready to fly again only a few days after the following happened:

In a dogfight with enemy planes north of Strasbourg a 20mm shell hit his engine, two others hit his right wing and a third missed his head by inches. The right aileron cable was cut and the hydraulic fluid was in flames. He went into a tailspin, but managed to level off at 600 feet. Then he tried to bail out, but every time he slowed down enough to force his way through the hatch the plane would spin to the right. He decided to head for home and try to land. On the way the stick vibrated so badly it wore a blister on his right hand. The plane was shaking so much that McCorkle became dizzy.

REACHES THE FIELD - Finally he reached the field and the speeding Thunderbolt zoomed onto the landing strip on its belly at 250 miles an hour. "This caused us to slow down some," McCorkle related wryly. "We slowed down so much that the plane went into a ground spin and then cart-wheeled over a parked Spitfire and grazed its top." A split second later McCorkle and his athletic Thunderbolt were flying straight and level again at 50 feet above the runway and headed for a barracks. "Then we hit the ground again just short of the buildings," McCorkle said. "The engine and the plane went in different directions. The plane and I stopped in the shade of the barracks wall and the last I saw of the engine it was flying over the head of a woman riding a bicycle down a road."

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