FIGHTER pilot Joe Peterburs had to wait 80 years to complete his 50th wartime mission.
His first attempt was in April 1945 when he took off from an airbase near to protect US bombers as they flew to in one of the last raids of
But after a series of dogfights in the skies above , Joe, then aged 20, was shot down and captured by the .
Incredibly, he broke out of a and ended up fighting alongside the Russians as they raced to liberate the German capital.
Now, Joe, 100, from Wisconsin in the US, has shared his amazing story in a letter to British schoolchildren — and returned to the UK to complete his mission eight decades late.
He is one of five survivors taking part in VE Mail, a project where pupils can exchange letters with a veteran as part of the of the end of the conflict in on May 8, 1945.
Like Joe, the veterans have each written about their life during the war and the lessons they want to pass on to the next generation.
‘You think you’re going to live forever’
This month, on the anniversary of his last flight, a still sprightly Joe climbed into a two-seater version of the P-51 Mustang fighter-bomber he fought in.
He and pilot Isabel Rutland executed a perfect victory roll above the English countryside — an air force tradition at the end of 50 missions.
In a hangar at RAF Duxford, Cambs, Joe exclusively told The Sun: “When you’re young, you’re full of pee and vinegar.
“We all had a fearlessness with being young. You think you’re going to live for ever, but that wasn’t the case for a lot of men I served with.”;
Before joining the Air Corps in November 1942, Joe had been in the seminary for two years to become a priest.
Based in , he regularly flew half-day missions with no food or water on board his tiny single-seater fighter bomber.
He recalled: “A typical day, I’d get up about five o’clock, and you eat breakfast, go to the briefing, which is about an hour, and then you get ready to take off.
“You fly a mission that’s five or six hours long, and you get back, and then you’re debriefed, that’s about 45 minutes.
“And in all the time you’re flying, you don’t have any water and you don’t have any food, so you go to the mess hall.
I found a Russian tank convoy and started fighting with them — that could have gone badly
Joe Peterburs
“But first you go to the bar for a drink, and all the pilots get together and we start telling lies about how great we were and then we’d go eat. Then you’d write letters home.”;
Joe flew 269 combat hours before being shot down.
He said: “On my last mission, the bombers had about six different targets and it was one big force going into different places in .
“Can you imagine 1,800 bombers and 950 of us P-51 Mustangs?”;
Joe’s plane was named Josephine after his sweetheart back home in Wisconsin.
He said: “We became engaged just before I left.
“Her name wasn’t on the nose of the aircraft, it was on the canopy. I put it there because it kept her as close to me as I could get.”;
At around 3pm on April 10, 1945, six hours into the mission, Joe dived to attack a German fighter, which had just shot down a fourth US bomber.
The German pilot, Walter Schuck, remembered being attacked from behind by a Mustang that hit his left wing and engine with .50 calibre machine-gun fire.
As Schuck escaped into low cloud, his plane’s left wing burst into flames and the plane went into a death spiral.
The pilot bailed out at 1,500ft. Just 20 minutes later, Joe’s Mustang was shot up and crashed to , after he parachuted out.
Joe said: “When I was shot down, the first thing I thought was my mom’s going to get a telegram.
Guardian angel
“My brother had been killed the year before as a submariner.
“All I could think about was how she would feel.”;
While Joe miraculously escaped serious injury when he crashed near Berg, 260 miles from , he was captured and almost shot before being sent to a prisoner of war camp, which he escaped from.
He said: “I’m convinced that I have our guardian angel on my shoulder. There are too many things where I should not have survived.
“I was going to be hanged by the German civilians who were coming after me but I was saved by a policeman.
“Then the chief of of the town wanted to blow my brains out with a Luger and I escaped.
“I found a Russian tank convoy and started fighting with them — that could have gone badly. Just outside Wittenberg was the last battle I fought with them.
“When came, I remember I wasn’t as excited as the Europeans because I knew it meant, as Americans, we were going to finish the war over there.”;
‘We did our duty. The world was in turmoil’
Joe stayed with the Army Air Corps after the war and later fought in and .
He has more than 35 , including the Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Air Medal with seven Oak Leaf Clusters.
While Joe is moved at being called a hero, he is adamant the heroes were the men he served with.
He said: “I’m not comfortable at all being called a hero because I’m not. Along with all of my buddies we did our job.
You should have something that you care enough about to be willing to die for it
Joe Peterburs
“We did our duty. The world was in turmoil and the heroes are the ones that didn’t make it.
“The rest of us were lucky to survive, but we’re no heroes.
“We did the best we could, and that’s what anybody should do in whatever endeavour they’re undertaking in whatever profession — do the best you can.
“You should have something that you care enough about to be willing to die for it. And when I was growing up, mine was my God, my country and my family.”;
Joe retired in 1979 as a colonel, going on to work in for the rest of his .
He said: “If I could go back and do it all again, I absolutely would — but I’d do it better.”;
4 MORE HEROES YOUNGSTERS CAN WRITE TO
MERVYN KERSH
TRANSPORT operator Mervyn, now 100, landed in France on and went all the way through , and .
In April 1945, Jewish Mervyn became separated from his unit, so he went to where he befriended survivors of the where tens of thousands died.
JEAN GREEN
THE 102-year-old from Norwich joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service aged 19 in 1942.
Living with fellow Wrens in a cabin, she loved the work and became close to colleagues who became lifelong friends.
She served at HMS Raven in Eastleigh, Hants, where her job as “Rum Bosun”; was to decide which conscripts got a daily tot of rum.
JOHN ESKDALE
AFTER faking a birth certificate, John joined the Home Guard in aged 14.
At 17 he joined the Royal Marines and two years later he nearly lost his life when his ship was sunk in the .
Of 458 crew who went into the sea, only 103 survived. John, now 103, was the last man to be pulled from the water.
TOM JONES
BOMBARDIER Tom, 103, was called up to serve in the Royal Artillery as the war broke out in 1939, when he was 17.
The signaller, from , Gtr , spent time defending the Docks before being posted to Burma – now Myanmar – for four years until the end of the war in 1945.
- More than 800 schools have joined the VE Mail project run by the Together Coalition. Find out more at together.org.uk/ve80
