American BEAUTY

"Forgotten Fifteenth" top-scoring Mustang ace John J. Voll

- CLIVE ROWLEY, MBE RAF (RET.)

During World War Two and ever since, many stories of the USAAF "Mighty Eighth" Air Force, operating from Britain over Europe, have been made available for public consumption. In comparison, relatively little publicity has been afforded to the "Forgotten Fifteenth" Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO).

The Fifteenth was established as a strategic force on November 1, 1943, from elements of the Twelfth and Ninth Air Forces. At its peak, the Fifteenth was only about half the size of the Eighth Air Force, with 21 bomb groups compared with 41 in the Eighth, and seven fighter groups compared with 15. Consolidated B-24s made up 75 percent of the Fifteenth’s strategic bomber force, with the remainder being Boeing B-17s, while the Eighth’s was nearly 60 percent Boeing B-17s. By 1944, P-51 Mustangs dominated Eighth Fighter Command, and in Fifteenth Fighter Command, four P-51 groups provided long-range escort for the bombers while P-38s flew shorter escorts and increasingly performed dive-bombing and strafing.

In recent years, the story of the famous Tuskegee airmen of the Fifteenth’s 332nd Fighter Group has become well known, but very little of the exploits of the other squadrons and groups of the Fifteenth Air Force is common knowledge. This is a shame because the Fifteenth’s operations against strategic targets in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, southern Germany, Greece, Poland, and Yugoslavia, which were beyond the reach of British-based aircraft, made a significant contribution to winning the war. Most importantly, they massively reduced the Third Reich’s supply of oil and gasoline, with far-reaching strategic effect.