After 11 months of shooting up ground targets, Bill Shomo finally got a crack at a whole squadron of enemy fighters.
T here are pilots who fly fighters, and there are fighter pilots.
Bill Shomo was a fighter pilot, and a frustrated one at that. For 11 months, the 82nd Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, to which he was assigned, had moved from strip to strip along the north coast of New Guinea and finally to Morotai Island, Indonesia, some 250 miles northwest. The Flying Undertaker, became one of the best known Mustangs in the Pacific theater after Shomo shot down seven Japanese aircraft, one morning in January 1945. Even the victory flags painted on this aircraft sported black borders. Then, in December, things began to pick up.