Roland "Bud " Wolfe Eagle Sq Pilot

Saw this story on line today …guess the BBC is or has done a program on his crashed Spit …. story has some additional photos …..

BlueNoser352!!!!

Spitfire’s pilot was a fighter

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110710/NEWS01/707109941/-1#spitfire-s-pilot-was-a-fighter

Related News
Spitfire artifacts pulled from the…
Related Links
Photo showcase: Roland “Bud” Wolfe and his Spitfire

Premium Content
The little-known and remarkable tale of a Nebraskan’s bizarre adventures in the early years of World War II emerged with the wreckage of his Royal Air Force Spitfire from its grave in an Irish peat bog.

For his daughters, however, the excavation was a stirring reminder of their father’s aerial combat career in three wars and his passion for flying — especially the Spitfire fighter and its powerful Rolls-Royce V12 piston engine.

“If he had been able to be there and see his plane rise up out of the bog, that would have been meaningful for him,” said Betty Wolfe of Durham, N.C. “I could imagine him really eager to get his hands on it again.”

Said Barbara Kucharczyk of Semora, N.C.: “He loved to fly, and he wanted to fly the fastest airplanes, so off he took. The rest is history.”

What a history it was.

Wolfe’s and Kucharczyk’s father was Roland “Bud” Wolfe, who learned to fly at Lincoln’s Lindbergh Field in the late 1930s and later volunteered for the RAF to defend Great Britain from Nazi Germany’s assaults.

Jonny McNee, an aviation historian from Northern Ireland who organized the search and recovery of Wolfe’s aircraft, said the aircraft is the holy grail of Spitfires because of the history it conveys.

Wolfe was a 23-year-old pilot officer when his fighter went down. He was returning from a routine Sunday patrol protecting maritime convoys off the coast of County Donegal at Ireland’s northwestern tip.

It was Nov. 30, 1941 — one week before Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

The Spitfire’s engine overheated — a common problem with the aircraft — and the fighter lost altitude. He was about 13 miles from his RAF base at Eglinton, now the airport at Derry in Northern Ireland.

Wolfe’s final radio message: “I’m going over the side.” He slid back the cockpit canopy, unbuckled his seat straps and launched himself into the air over the cold and foggy Inishowen peninsula.

The Spitfire smashed into mountain moorland.

Wolfe parachuted safely to the heather-covered hills a half-mile away — and into a diplomatic stalemate between Britain and Ireland.

A member of neutral Ireland’s local defense force apprehended Wolfe near Moneydarragh, and Ireland added him to a growing population of detained Allied troops, German U-boat crewmen and Luftwaffe airmen who ended up on Irish soil.

Wolfe was sent 175 miles south to a detention camp outside Dublin.

Camp security was lax. Guards had blank rounds in their weapons. Prisoners came and went as they pleased to pubs and other social events. Internees were allowed to own bicycles. Visitors were permitted. There were fishing and fox-hunting outings and supervised trips to Dublin.

About 100 Allied servicemen from Poland, Canada, New Zealand and Britain and 140 German internees mixed together. Germans and Brits played soccer. There were boxing matches.

Wolfe is said to have been the lone American at the camp.

After two weeks at the camp, Wolfe apparently decided to rejoin the war. He signed himself out and walked away.

Accounts vary, but Wolfe made his way to Dublin and may have taken a train the next day to Belfast in Northern Ireland.

“Dad apparently played fast and loose with the rules,” Kucharczyk said. “Therein lies the sticky wicket, as they say over there, in terms of international relations.”

Wolfe was detained and held for 10 days while authorities in Britain and Ireland debated his fate. Britain’s Air Ministry ordered Wolfe sent back to the camp.

“He wasn’t real thrilled,” Kucharczyk said.

She said camp authorities reacted by clamping down on prisoner privileges. Upset detainees took out their frustration by challenging Wolfe to fisticuffs — he had won boxing trophies in his youth, Kucharczyk said.

McNee said Wolfe may have been the only Allied escapee of World War II returned to his captors because his superiors disapproved of how he escaped. Diplomats apparently judged Wolfe’s walk-away as outside the spirit of parole at the camp, McNee said.

Wolfe was a reluctant prisoner.

He was one of 50 Americans who made up the RAF’s 133rd Squadron, created in July 1941. It was one of three Eagle Squadrons formed during the war with a total of 244 volunteer pilots from the United States.

Wolfe’s Spitfire MkIIA, built in January 1941, appears to be the first of 20 produced with a donation from Canadian millionaire Willard Garfield Weston.

McNee said “Garfield Weston No. 1” is written in 4-inch yellow letters down the side of the cockpit.

“It is being discussed in such terms as the best preserved Spitfire excavated in Europe,” McNee said.

The excavation took place on June 28. A team of aviation archaeologists and historians completed the dig in one day. It was the first licensed excavation of World War II aircraft in Ireland.

About 100 townspeople came out and sat on a hillside to watch. A few recalled seeing Wolfe float to the earth with his parachute.

A film crew chronicled the excavation for “Dig WW2,” a pending BBC series on military archaeology from the war.

McNee said the crumpled wreckage was remarkably well-preserved.

Most of the aircraft was soaked in aviation fuel in the thick mud layer that preserved the Spitfire beneath the peat. The smell of fuel hung in the air.

Wolfe’s leather flying helmet, oxygen mask and throat microphone were recovered where Wolfe stored them before bailing out: wrapped around the gun sight. Wolfe’s faint initials, “RLW,” could be seen on the helmet.

McNee said the helmet and Wolfe’s paperwork would be given to his daughters.

The left wing appears to have struck first in a near vertical dive, McNee said. Its guns were buried nearly 20 feet into the ground. The right wing guns were about 12 feet deep.

The engine was recovered in one piece, more or less, about 30 feet deep.

The remains of the aircraft will be preserved for display at the Tower Museum in Derry.

Kucharczyk said flying was natural for her father.

“He was keen on taking flying lessons in Lincoln and he had a motorcycle,” she said. “I think he was one of those speed demons when he was young. There’s a reason he went to the RAF. They had the hot-rod airplane of the day in the Spitfire.”

Wolfe’s wartime photographs depict a young man with movie-star looks. His signature mustache is in all but a few pictures.

Born in 1918, Wolfe was a native of McGehee, Ark. His parents, John and Ella Wolfe, later moved the family to Nebraska. John Wolfe was a district manager for Procter & Gamble, and later a district manager for Safeway.

They briefly lived in Fremont, then Lincoln and Ceresco, and eventually retired in Fremont.

Wolfe was a graduate of College View High School in Lincoln and attended the University of Nebraska for a few months.

Her father talked little of his time in the Air Force and even less about his wartime experiences, Kucharczyk said.

“He steadfastly refused to share many details with me or mom,” she said. “We knew he was in the RAF because we had the photo album, but he would not sit and talk or turn the pages.”

Kucharczyk said that when her father finally joined U.S. forces in England, it was not the result of the detention camp closing in 1943.

“The fact is, he did escape,” she said. “He wasn’t just released and handed over.”

Wolfe’s RAF squadron was transferred to the U.S. Army’s Eighth Air Force and became the 336th Fighter Squadron of the 4th Fighter Group.

A single roll of 200 feet of film from Wolfe’s P-47 gun camera is in the National Air and Space Museum archives in Washington, D.C. The film depicts Wolfe’s targets in 1944.

After returning from the war, Wolfe served at Kearney (Neb.) Air Force Base in 1947 and 1948. Other career assignments took him to bases in California, Florida, Germany and Okinawa.

He flew F-86 Sabres during the Korean War and F-105 Thunderchiefs during the Vietnam War.

Wolfe served a 28-year Air Force career, not counting three years in the RAF, and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He died in Florida in 1994 at age 76.

He flew almost every frontline fighter in the Air Force inventory. During his career, he spent more than 3,000 hours flying 887 combat missions.

He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters, and many battle stars and war medals.

Among them was the Allied Service Medal from Britain for flying with the RAF from 1939 to 1942.

Kucharczyk said her father would be embarrassed by all the attention generated by the Spitfire excavation and the story of his detainment.

Betty Wolfe said her father wouldn’t want to be remembered only as the American aviator held by the Irish.

“But when Jonny McNee described to me the dials and pieces and parts of the excavated cockpit, that’s when I knew that if he would have been able to be there and have that in his hands again, that would be the connection,” she said.

“That makes this whole process personal.”