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Both P-5I Mustang pilots with the 357th Fighter Group and always itching to be where the action was, both pilots took off from Leiston on 14 January 1945 for what was the last mission of their second tour of combat duty with the Eighth Air Force, and they wanted to make it memorable. As Squadron Operations Officer, 'Bud' Anderson scheduled himself and Yeager as spares that day and, with the war drawing to its close and little chance of contact with the Luftwaffe, the two pilots left the formation after take-off and went sight-seeing!
Flying across France and deep into southern Germany, the two lone P-51s reached the southern Alps. Dropping to low level they dropped their long range wing tanks on Mont Blanc and, to liven things up, strafed them, buzzed a hotel on Lake Annecy, amongst other things that might well have got them court marshalled in peacetime, and flew home completing a 1,000 mile round trip. Buzzing the field in a final celebration on their return to Leiston, Anderson and Yeager noticed much excitement on the ground and assumed the celebrations were for the completion of their tours of duty. Taxiing to their hardstands they were shocked to learn the 357th had just returned from its most successful combat of the war, having shot down 56 enemy aircraft - a record for one day's action in the Eighth Air Force. Anderson and Yeager had missed all the action!
In a majestic painting, combining his love of landscape with aviation, Gerald Coulson depicts 'Bud' Anderson and 'Chuck' Yeager racing their Mustangs at low level through an Alpine landscape, oblivious to the record-breaking air battle involving the rest of the 357th pilots.
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