Francis Gabreski, 83; Pilot Was War Hero

“I said, ‘Oh, my God, somebody can do the same thing to me.’ It scared the hell out of me.”

Such was the reaction of the son of Polish immigrants from Oil City, Pa., America’s future ace of aces, on Aug. 24, 1943, when the 24-year-old fighter pilot shot down his first German Messerschmitt.

Nine years later, when he returned to a hero’s parades and parties in San Francisco, Los Angeles and his own hometown after destroying 371/2 enemy aircraft during 266 combat missions in two wars, he dismissed all the medals and accolades by saying he was “just fortunate.”

Francis Stanley “Gabby” Gabreski, America’s top air ace in Europe during World War II who destroyed 31 enemy planes and then switched to jets and became an air ace anew in Korea, shooting down 61/2 enemy aircraft in dogfights at about the speed of sound, has died. He was 83.

Gabreski, who later worked for Grumman Aerospace and failed to rescue the troubled Long Island Rail Road commuter line, died Thursday of a heart attack near his home in Dix Hills, N.Y.

Wielding his P-47 Thunderbolt single-engine fighter as an aerial scythe, Gabreski shot 28 German planes out of the air and destroyed three more on the ground in the 11 months in 1943-44 before he crash-landed near Coblentz, Germany, and was taken prisoner of war.

Once he became an ace (a pilot who shoots down five or more enemy planes), Gabreski quickly built and maintained the American record for Europe. By war’s end, only three American fliers had bested his tally, and all in the Pacific--Maj. Richard Bong with 40 “kills,” Maj. Thomas McGuire with 38 and Navy Cmdr. David McCampbell with 34.

Over Korea, when Gabreski was at the controls of an F-86 Sabre jet, the target became Soviet-built MIG-15 fighters. He took out half a dozen and shared the destruction of a seventh with another pilot.

In the two wars, Gabreski amassed plenty of military decorations: the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, Distinguished Flying Cross with nine Oak Leaf Clusters, Air Medal with four clusters, the Bronze Star, the French Legion d’Honneur and Croix de Guerre with Palm, Polish Cross of Valor, British Distinguished Flying Cross and the Belgian Croix de Guerre.

But the kudos he treasured most came much later--his induction into the Aviation Hall of Fame in 1978 and the renaming of the Suffolk County, N.Y., airport for him in 1992. His final Army posting had been commanding the 52nd Fighter Interceptor Wing in Westhampton Beach when Francis S. Gabreski Airport was Suffolk County Air Force Base.

Born Jan. 28, 1919, to Stanley and Josephine Gabryszewski 10 years after they emigrated from Poland to Pennsylvania, young “Frank” (who shortened his surname) began a premed course at Notre Dame University. But he was already hooked on flying, having seen an air race in Cleveland when he was 13--a race won by his lifelong hero, Jimmy Doolittle, future commander of the 8th Air Force in World War II.

Gabreski took flying lessons and dropped out of college after his sophomore year to join an Army Air Corps cadet program. Graduated as a second lieutenant in March 1941, he was sent to a fighter unit at Wheeler Field in Hawaii.

“We never knew what hit us until it hit us,” he would say decades later, describing the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. He was shaving when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It took two hours for him to get into one of the few remaining P-36 fighters still intact and get airborne, and by then the Japanese were gone.

Ironically, instead of pursuing the new enemy that had brought the United States into World War II, the Polish-speaking Gabreski asked to go to Europe. He initially flew British Spitfires with a Polish unit of the Royal Air Force, but after more than 20 missions with them, joined the U.S. 56th Fighter Group stationed in England.

On July 5, 1944, Gabreski downed his 28th German plane, becoming at that time the top American ace in the war. He was a hero, and ready to go home on leave to marry his sweetheart and maybe sell war bonds.

But on July 20, eager to maintain his “kill” record, he volunteered for one more mission. After accompanying bombers attacking railroad yards near Frankfurt, Gabreski strafed a German airfield near Coblentz, doing damage to the enemy but flying so low he caused his own propeller to strike the ground. He crash-landed in a wheat field and spent five days on foot before a farmer turned him in to German authorities.

“We’ve been expecting you for a long time,” his German interrogator told him, holding a file of press clippings about the American ace.

Ten days later Gabreski’s parents and fiancee learned he was missing in action, and within a month were told he was a prisoner of war.

After the Germans surrendered in May 1945, Gabreski was one of 7,700 Americans and 1,500 British POWs liberated from Stalag Luft No. 1 north of Berlin.

Two months later, on June 11, 1945, Lt. Col. Gabreski finally got to marry Catherine “Kay” Cochran, after postponing the wedding first because of Pearl Harbor and again when he was taken prisoner. After 48 years of marriage and nine children, she died in a car crash in 1993.

At war’s end, Gabreski tried civilian life for a year or so, working as an executive at Douglas Aircraft’s Santa Monica plant. But he rejoined the military in 1947, flew as a test pilot and earned a college degree under Army auspices at Columbia University. In 1951, he went to Korea where he became commander of the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing and was the eighth man to earn an “ace” designation in a jet.

When he came to Los Angeles for his well-earned hero’s welcome in 1952, Gabreski told The Times, “Jet combat isn’t much different than World War II fighting. It’s faster, of course, but the rate of closure is about the same and most of the tricks of attack and defense are identical. Combat speed? Generally about the speed of sound.”

By then a colonel, Gabreski’s first assignment after his 100 missions in Korea was chief of flight safety research at Norton Air Force Base near San Bernardino. He also served at bases in South Carolina, Okinawa, Hawaii and Long Island, N.Y., before retiring from the Air Force in 1967, the pilot who had flown more combat missions than any other American. He served as president of the American Fighter Aces Assn. in 1968.

The civilian Gabreski spent the next 20 years as an executive with Grumman Aerospace in Bethpage, N.Y., except for the years 1978-81 when his popularity and Polish background led him into a political arena where his luck ran out.

Although Gabreski himself remarked that he “didn’t know anything about Lionel toy trains, let alone a real commuter line,” New York Gov. Hugh L. Carey appointed him president of the Long Island Rail Road. Carey was facing opposition from a Polish American rival and criticism from another political foe that he ignored Long Island’s problems.

He hoped that Gabreski’s heritage and strong identification with the area would help him at the polls.

The straightforward Gabreski, who took the railroad job and later left it as first a cold wave and then a heat wave affected the commuter railroad’s performance, became an advocate for his employees and commuters. He also offered his own candid assessment that the operation “stinks.”

Gabreski is survived by three sons, Donald of Dayton, Ohio; Robert of Holmes Beach, Fla., and James of Melbourne, Fla.; six daughters, Djoni Murphy of Trego, Wis.; Mary Ann Bruno of Dana Point, Calif.; Frances Phillips of Westhampton Beach, N.Y.; Patricia Covino of Quogue, N.Y.; Linda Kay Gabreski of Huntington Station, N.Y., and Debbie Ann Burkhardt of South Huntington, N.Y.; two sisters, Bernice Stanczak of New Castle, Pa., and Lottie Kocan of Erie, Pa.; 18 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

The modest hero told Newsday only a week before his death that as “a relic from World War II” he considered it a duty to “perpetuate what this country did during that war.”

“I love this country,” he said then, “and I’m proud to be an American. If we hadn’t won the war, this world would now be an entirely different place.”