Hobby Master Archive

On February 10, 1945 four P-51s with Louis Curdes’ “Bad Angel” and Schmidtke along with LaCroix and Scalley, were returning from an escort mission. LaCroix and Scalley flew over a small Japanese airstrip and began to attack but LaCroix was shot down and landed in the ocean and survived. Curdes circled the down pilot when he spotted a C-47 heading for the same island and fate. To keep that from happening Curdes shot the C-47 down. It landed on the water and all passengers survived. Curdes later married a nurse that was on the C-47.