FANTASTIC : AIR HEADS
Who suckered naive Tom Cruise into the believing the “Knights of the Air” story about the Japanese pilot who kept making firing passes at a P-51 pilot and when the P-51 kept flying the Japanese pilot flew up alongside and saluted him and flew away (“Cruise-ing in the Media Stratosphere,” by Pat H. Broeske, May 25)?
What a laugh. As a veteran RAF tail gunner and 8th Air Force ball-turret gunner with close to 80 combat missions, that story is a great crock created by phony World War I movies in the 1930s. The only time a fighter pilot won’t press home an attack and keep going until he kills you is when somebody is shooting up his tail.
Would that I had met a Jerry “Knight of the Air” over Kiel. We both kept shooting and he wouldn’t go away until he put a 20-millimeter cannon shell into my thigh and I set his engine on fire.
Did writer Pat Broeske fall for this myth, too?
DAN BRENNAN
Huntington Beach
Only good movies
Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
