After shooting down one of two German fighter planes, World War II double ace Alwin Max Juchheim Jr. ran out of ammo. So, he used his wing to knock off the other plane”s fuel tank.
“I”d run out of ammunition, but I wasn”t going to let him go,” Juchheim, now 89, told a packed room Thursday at Columbus Air Force Base. “I was just going to nick him a bit and cut off his head.”
That was just one of the war stories Juchheim told at his induction ceremony into the Order of the Daedalians Possum Town Flight 74 on the base Thursday evening. The order is a fraternal order of military pilots created during World War I.
Juchheim, who now lives in Grenada, flew more than 138 combat sorties and had 11 confirmed kills as a P-47 fighter plane pilot between spring 1943 and spring 1944, when another American plane collided with his, resulting in his ejection and capture.
“I shot a lot of (planes down),” he said. “Shot some down I never took credit for.”
After he was captured, he and two other soldiers dug out of a prison camp twice, escaped on his third attempt, and found their way back to allied lines, capturing three enemy soldiers on the way.
“I”ve had a lot of different experiences,” Juchheim recalled.
His son, Max Juchheim III, introduced his father as “one of the most courageous men I”ve ever known.”
“We even did a barrel roll in a boat one time,” he added.
One time, his son continued, his father told him he tried to use his propeller to chop an enemy pilot”s cockpit up during a dogfight.
Juchheim, piping up from his seat nearby, replied that he had more faith in his plane.
His daredevil attitude showed through Thursday, when he told the crowd of mostly younger pilots the story of traveling to Germany to meet some of his former adversaries.
At a dinner, he said, a German pilot was bragging about his shooting skills.
“I looked over at him and told him, If we”d met, he wouldn”t be here. He told me I might not be here,” Juchheim said. “He wouldn”t have been there.”
Despite crashing five planes in various incidents, Juchheim said bullets never touched his planes during his World War II career.
“I”ve tore up more airplanes, the Germans wanted to make me an honorary ace,” he said with a chuckle.
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