Former P-47 pilot recalls taking out enemy 'flamers'

Dave Hutton roared through the cloud- and flak-filled skies over Italy, gunning for "flamers."

Flamers were trucks, trains or vehicles carrying enemy supplies that exploded in a gush of fire when hit by the combined might of eight .50-caliber machine guns tucked in the wings of Hutton's P-47 Thunderbolt fighter.

P-47s were veritable tanks of the air, nicknamed "jugs" for their ponderous size and stodgy shape.

But Hutton and other P-47 pilots loved the thick armor plating that surrounded the cockpit, the plane's heavy construction that absorbed bullets and anti-aircraft shrapnel like a steel sponge and its ability to outdive just about any other fighter in Europe.

Not that there were many enemy fighters still around in Italy by the time Hutton joined the 57th Fighter Group in Corsica in 1944.

Germany's earlier aircraft losses during battles in North Africa and the difficulty of supplying its air forces in Italy had nearly eliminated that possible threat to American fighters.

Fortunately, when equipped with rockets and bombs, the P-47 proved to be an outstanding air-to-ground assault aircraft, providing close support for troops on the front line when not scouring the countryside for enemy trains, convoys and other targets.

Hutton, now 87, of Hudson, was just happy to be flying - a dream he'd had since his childhood, when his father took him to the Cleveland National Air Races and he built models of the champion airplanes of early aviation.

So when Hutton was called up after graduating from Shaw High School and attending Miami University for a year, he opted for the Army Air Forces.

In a sense, Hutton also was completing a mission started during World War I by his father, who trained as an aircraft gunner but was sidelined by appendicitis when his unit went overseas to fight the Germans....