Duxford, Joe Peterburs wears a brown leather fliger helmet and fliger goggles. He sits in a cockpit, wears a green jacket and smiles broadly. Joe Peterburs said the surprise flight in the Mustang ‘exceeded his expectations’. An American fighter pilot from the Second World War was surprised 80 years to the day after he was shot down with a flight in a P-51 Mustang. Joe Peterburs was escorting United States Army Air Forces bombers over Germany on 10 April 1945 when he was forced to bail out of his damaged aircraft and was captured. The unexpected flight in the Mustang was organised by King's Cliffe Airfield Museum in Northamptonshire after it learned the 100-year-old was planning a visit to the former RAF airfield. Mr Peterburs said it was ‘beyond my wildest dreams to have this opportunity to fly over England and remember the days gone by’. Isabel Rutland, a professional aerobatic pilot, was his pilot. She flew from Duxford Imperial War Museum airfield. Peterburs was stationed at RAF King's Cliffe with the 55th Squadron of the 20th Fighter Group after his arrival in England in December 1944. The King's Cliffe Air Museum arranged the flight with professional exhibition pilot Isabel Rutland, who flew from the Imperial War Museum airfield in Duxford, Cambridgeshire. She took him up in the P-51 Mustang, which is similar to the Mustang he flew in the Second World War. Mr Peterburs had fond memories of the fighter plane, saying, ‘It was a beautiful aircraft, I always said it was like armour when you put it on - it fitted like a glove.’ A Mustang aeroplane standing in the grass at the Imperial War Museum Duxford. It is silver and white with a red and white propeller nose and has black propellers with a yellow tip. Yellow steps lead up to the cockpit. Two people can be seen climbing into the cockpit. Above them is a blue sky with white clouds. Mr Peterburs had ‘never seen a Mustang until I landed at King's Cliffe’ and therefore had to complete 20 hours of training before he could begin combat missions. When he was shot down, the 20-year-old was flying his 49th mission. ‘I landed, looked around and all I saw was farmland with about 20 German civilians working in the field - they came running towards me - and then I heard a rumbling noise and there came an air force sergeant on a motorbike firing two shots into the air and said I was his prisoner," he said. After some ‘hairy adventures’ - including being interrogated by Gestapo officers in an air raid shelter shared with Luftwaffe pilots during RAF raids - he managed to escape from a prisoner of war camp. "I headed towards Berlin and came across a Russian armoured column. I fought with them from Berlin to Wittenberg on the Elbe, a US Army patrol came by and brought me back - after that I was ‘repatriated’, said Peterburs. Joe Peterburs wears a brown leather flight jacket with wings on the left breast. He is standing outside, has short white hair and a white moustache and wears dark glasses. A Mustang can be seen behind him, resting on the lawn of the Imperial War Museum Duxford. His favourite memories of the Second World War are ‘the camaraderie; how a group of strangers came in and became a team’. The veteran said he savoured the memories triggered by his return to RAF King's Cliffe.
"When I was there, it was a vibrant, bustling community of people. There was always something going on, there was a lot of joy and fun," he said.
He continued his career in the Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 1979.
‘A lot of young men weren't able to live the life I lived,’ Mr Peterburs said.
"I'm really grateful that people are remembering the sacrifices that were made during WWII.
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Source: Emma Baugh & Katy Prickett / BBC News, Northamptonshire
Joe Peterburs shot down the lift gun pilot Walter Schuck of the Tiger of the Tundra in your ME-262 with his P-51 Mustang on 10 April 1945. I had the honour of meeting the two pilots exactly 63 years later to the day on 10 April 2008 in Speyer.
