Heller’s “Hell-Er-Bust”
North American, P-51D-15NA (Mustang), Serial number 44-14696
486th Fighter Squadron, 352nd Fighter Group, 8th Air Force. Bodney, England, Asch (Y-29) and Chievres (Y84), Belgium. November 1944 - end of WW2.
Flown by Capt. Edwin Lewis Heller
P-51D with a serial number 44-14696 was the second Mustang assigned to Capt. Heller. Like his first (a P-51B), it was also named HELL-ER-BUST. By the time Heller started to fly his P-51D in November 1944, he already had 4.5 aerial and 7.5 strafing victories to his name, as well as 14 locomotives and a shared E-boat destroyed. Seven of his strafing victories, apart from his half share in the destruction of a Ju-52[1], were all scored in one day during various strafing attacks on April 24th, 1944. In addition to the 7 aircraft destroyed, Heller also damaged 5 that day, but all these strafing victories were scored in Heller’s previous airplane.
While flying his HELL-ER-BUST, P-51D, Heller went on to claim one more aerial victory, his 5th, thus becoming an ace. This aerial victory occurred on March 2nd, 1945, when the Eighth Air Force was tasked with striking petroleum facilities in Germany. Numerous dogfights occurred during this mission, the first of which was when Capt. Heller led a flight of six P-51s into a pack of fifteen Fw-190s. The Mustangs destroyed 7 of the enemy aircraft, 5 of which were confirmed and 2 were probables, plus damaged two. Capt. Heller claimed one of the confirmed destroyed and one of the damaged.
March 2. 1 x FW-190 30m south-east of Leipzig (Germany)
March 2. 1 x FW-190 (damaged) 30m south-east of Leipzig (Germany) [2]
Heller’s luck at strafing the enemy was repeated again on April 24th, 1945, when he managed to destroy another seven enemy aircraft on the ground! This act propelled Heller into the undefeated position of 352nd FG’s leading strafing ace. On that day, after escorting the bombers of the 1st Air Division through their target area, half of 352nd FG’s Mustangs broke off escort and started looking for enemy airfields. They found one over the base at Gonecker, containing around 70 aircraft. First, the Mustangs neutralised the flak guns protecting the airfield and then proceeded to unleash hell on the airfield itself. In a period of about 30 minutes, the ‘Bluenosers’ destroyed a total of 40 aircraft and damaged 27. The 486th FS claimed 24 of these, of which 7 were claimed by Heller in his HELL-ER-BUST.
Heller flew this airplane until the end of the war, ending WW2 with 5.5 aerial and 14-16.5 (depending on the source) ground victories.
Footnotes
[1] Based on the information on this page http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/URG/heller.html
[2] The details about the aerial victories are based on the book by Frank Olynyk called “Stars & Bars”, published by Grub Street in 1995, p.331.
Much of the other information based on the book “352nd Fighter Group”, by Thomas G. Ivie, published by Osprey Publishing in 2002, PDF e-book iSBN: 978 1 84603 755 9
All the work presented on this page is subject to updates and revisions in the light of new information which might present itself. If you have any new information relevant to this page or disagree with anything that's presented here, then please contact me through the Planes in Profile Facebook page to help make the content of this page more accurate. Thanks:)