On the morning of January 11, 1944, Lieutenant Colonel James Howard watched the sky ahead fill with German fighters. Behind him, the B-17s of a small bomber group were struggling to hold formation, their flanks exposed after the long run into Germany. Howard was alone, his wingmen gone, his ammunition nearly spent. In front of him, an estimated thirty Luftwaffe aircraft were closing in for the kill.
Every instinct of a fighter pilot told him to turn away. Instead, he pushed the throttle forward and flew straight into them. The moment had been building for months. In late 1943, American forces were already looking ahead to the invasion of Europe planned for the following year.
Operation Overlord could not succeed unless Hitler’s war machine was weakened, and the Americans believed the way to do that was from the air. Day after day, B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 8th Air Force crossed the English Channel to bomb key targets across the continent. The 401st Bomb Group was one of the units carrying that burden, hammering German industry and infrastructure through the autumn and winter. But as January 1944 arrived, the strategy changed.
The bombers would now go deeper into Europe, striking targets farther from home than ever before. That meant longer flights over heavily defended territory, longer exposure to German flak, and far more time in the reach of the Luftwaffe’s fighters. The Americans had a problem: they could not protect their bombers. The two main American fighters of the period, the P-47 Thunderbolt and the P-38 Lightning, simply did not have the range to escort the bombers all the way to their targets and back.
The German pilots knew it. They would wait, biding their time at high altitude, watching the American escorts turn for home. Then, once the bombers were alone, they would drop in on them in waves. Into this gap came the P-51 Mustang.
Newly introduced to the European theater, the Mustang had a much larger range than the other American fighters, thanks to its efficient Merlin engine and drop tanks. It could stay with the bombers deep into Germany and back, and its speed and maneuverability made it a match for the best the Luftwaffe could send up. Among the first pilots to fly it in combat was James Howard. Howard was an unusual figure in the 8th Air Force.
Born in China to American parents working overseas, he had grown up speaking the language and feeling at home in a country that few of his fellow pilots had ever seen. He left China at fourteen and returned to the United States, but when war broke out he volunteered for the American Volunteer Group, the unit that would become famous as the Flying Tigers. It was an obvious choice for him: it would send him back to China, a place that felt like a second home. Under the legendary Claire Chennault, the young pilot learned his trade and made a name for himself fighting the Japanese.
In January 1942, barely a month after Pearl Harbor, he became an ace. His time in China ended abruptly when a debilitating fever forced him out of the theater. He returned to St. Louis to recover, uncertain whether his flying career was over.
But he could not be held down for long. Within months he had signed up with the Army Air Forces and was headed back to combat, this time in Europe. After crossing the Atlantic and moving through a few postings, Howard was assigned to long-range bomber escort duty in the P-51 Mustang. He took command of the 354th Fighter Group, and his men followed him proudly.
He was one of the very few pilots in the war who had now shot down both Japanese and German aircraft. He named his personal Mustang Ding Hao, from the Chinese phrase for “very good,” a nod to the country where his legend had begun. By January 1944, Howard and his squadron had settled into their role. They flew escort missions, protecting the B-17s on their long hauls into and out of Germany.
It was dangerous work, but routine. That changed on the eleventh. That day, the 8th Air Force sent up a massive force of bombers to hit targets near Oschersleben, a town deep inside Germany. The 354th Fighter Group launched its Mustangs to escort them.
The fighters climbed hard, formed up, and set course for the rendezvous point, where they were to meet the bombers on their egress, after the B-17s had dropped their loads and turned for home. When Howard and his men finally caught up with the bomber stream, they found chaos. The B-17s were already under heavy attack. German fighters swarmed the formation, and the bombers were scattered, many of them damaged by flak, straggling behind the main group with no protection.
Later, 8th Air Force headquarters would estimate that the day’s missions had been attacked by roughly five hundred German fighters. Howard did not hesitate. The 354th dove into the dogfight almost immediately. An Me-110 moved in front of him as he approached the bombers.
Howard lined up the twin-engine German fighter at close range and let out a four-second burst. The fighter rolled over and went down. His first kill of the day. He scanned the sky and spotted a smaller group of B-17s, separated from the main formation and fighting for their lives.
As he flew toward them, he found another German fighter, a Bf-109, lining up on one of the bombers. Howard chased it for a few moments, then hit it hard. Smoke poured from the German fighter as it dropped away. But the chase had cost him.
When Howard looked around, he was alone. His wingmen had filtered back to the main bomber group, and he was the only American fighter left near this isolated handful of B-17s. He was about to turn and rejoin his men when he realized something: this small group of bombers had more than its fair share of fighters closing in on it. He decided to stay.
For the next half hour, James Howard flew a one-man war over Germany. The German fighters kept coming, wave after wave, and he kept meeting them. Another twin-engine fighter approached the formation; he identified it as an Me-110, fired another burst, and watched it go down. He turned hard, found a new target, and fired on another Bf-109, which fell away trailing a steady stream of smoke.
All the while, he was dodging fire from the other German fighters in the fight. The sky was full of tracers and twisting aircraft. He refused to give in. Between the attacks, he stayed close to the B-17s, positioning himself to intercept each new threat as it came in.
The odds were staggering. Estimates put the number of German fighters attacking that small group at around thirty. Howard was one man in one airplane. Most pilots, facing those numbers, would have turned away and counted themselves lucky to get out alive.
Howard saw a group of bombers with no one else to defend them, and he decided the job fell to him. Eventually, his ammunition ran out. He could no longer fight. But even then, he did not immediately leave.
As he prepared to turn back, he spotted a Ju-88 trying to maneuver within range of the American bombers. The twin-engine German aircraft was attempting to use rockets to break up the tightly packed formation. Howard had no bullets left, but he had one card left to play: the bluff. He turned his Mustang toward the Junkers and feinted in its direction, again and again, making it look like he was about to attack.
The German pilot, unaware that Howard’s guns were empty, broke off his approach and pulled away. Seeing no more fighters in the immediate area, Howard wagged his wings and headed back to England. The B-17 crews in that small group could hardly believe what they had just witnessed. Wave after wave of German fighters had come at them, and a single P-51 had stayed with them the whole way, taking them all on alone.
He had batted away multiple German fighters with no regard for his own safety. Because of him, the bombers made it home. When the B-17 crews landed back in England, the briefing room was filled with excitement. The men told the story of the lone Mustang pilot who had saved them.
The 8th Air Force leadership received sixteen different accounts of his actions. Jimmy Doolittle, the commanding officer, took the debriefings from the B-17 crew members and had the gun camera footage from the P-51s reviewed. The evidence pointed to one man: James Howard. He was credited with four confirmed kills that day, but the more important credit was for the feat itself, a feat that served two vital purposes for the Americans.
First, it was a powerful piece of news for civilians back home, proof that the Allies were winning the war through brave men like Howard and that the German air force was on the defensive. Second, it confirmed to high command that the P-51 was exactly the aircraft the American air force needed to protect its bombers on these long-range missions. The mission was propaganda gold. Howard was soon on the front pages of newspapers and on the radio, his story retold across the country.
The official citation for his actions read: “While Colonel Howard could have waited to attempt to assemble his group before engaging the enemy, he chose instead to attack single-handed a formation of more than 30 German airplanes. With utter disregard for his own safety, he immediately pressed home attacks for some 30 minutes, during which time he destroyed three more enemy planes and probably destroyed and damaged others not confirmed. His skill, courage, and enterprise on this occasion set an example of heroism which will be an inspiration to the armed forces of the United States. ”
When asked why he had risked his life that day, Howard gave a simple answer: “I seen my duty and I done it.
” The quote became a headline across the country. The story was a media sensation, prompting articles in major publications including the Saturday Evening Post, Popular Science, and True magazine. Another fighter pilot who had served in the war wrote of Howard’s performance for one of those articles: “An attack by a single fighter on four or five times his own number wasn’t uncommon, but a deliberate attack by a single fighter against 30 plus enemy fighters without tactical advantage of height or surprise is rare almost to the point of extinction. ”
For his actions on January 11, 1944, James Howard was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
He became the only fighter pilot in the European theater to receive that honor. Howard continued flying combat missions after that day, and he helped plan close air support for the Normandy landings later in the year. He finished the war with twelve confirmed kills, six in Europe and six in the Pacific. He was promoted to colonel in 1945 and retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1966 as a brigadier general.
He died in 1995 at the age of eighty-one. The B-17 crews he saved that day never forgot him. Neither did the country whose highest military honor he wore.
James Howard had flown into a sky full of enemies with empty guns and a full measure of nerve, and in doing so he had set a standard of heroism that would be held up to American airmen for generations.
