‘Bud’ Anderson will forever be associated with the P-51 Mustangs he named Old Crow. But the first fighter to which ‘Bud’ had that moniker applied was a Bell P-39 Airacobra, and to mark his 100th birthday, a special salute was planned
“Don’t give me a P-39. The engine is mounted behind. They’ll tumble and spin and auger you in, don’t give me a P-39!”
So went the verse of the well-known US Army Air Forces drinking song Give Me Operations, famously sung by Canadian broadcaster, composer and folksy singer Oscar Brand. The tune was making its way around the officers’ clubs and flightlines of the AAF’s rapidly expanding roster of fighter groups in late 1942, when newly commissioned 2nd Lt Clarence ‘Bud’ Anderson was posted to the 328th Fighter Group at Hamilton Field near San Francisco, California that autumn for training in the Bell P-39 Airacobra at Oakland Municipal Airport.
The stall characteristics of Bell’s unconventional, tricycle-gear fighter with its engine mounted mid-fuselage behind the pilot, yielding an aft centre of gravity, were giving the Airacobra a bad reputation. Pilots worried they would have a devil of a time recovering from any stall-induced spin they might inadvertently experience. ‘Bud’ told me he was vaguely…
