Janey: A Little Plane in a Big War

Janey was Alfred W. Schultz's World War II artillery spotter plane, an L-48 Piper Cub. both JANEY and Schultz participated in the fighting from North Africa through Sicily, Italy, and southern France to Germany. JANEY was the only L-48 Piper Cub to survive the entire European War intact. In August 1945, JANEY was exhibited in Paris at the Eiffel Tower along with the bigger, fiercer, and sexier World War II fighters and bombers. JANEY and Schultz were General George Patton's air taxi and driver in Italy, taking Patton on dangerous flights to observe ground fighting, to check out German glider fields, and to meet wounded soldiers as they were being evacuated. Flying low over an artillery range in Morocco, JANEY was hit and almost brought down by a shepherd's staff. In Italy, JANEY and S halts lured a wily Messerschmitt 109 into a mountain and received credit for the kill.

From early 1943 to the end of the war, in Piper Cubs, especially one named Janey after his fiancee, Schultz flew missions in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, the Vosges Mountains, and southern Germany as an artillery observer attached to the formidable Third Infantry Division. He vividly chronicles a wide range of experiences--scrounging supplies from the army and friendly civilians, operating from cow pastures (sometimes sown with mines) within mortar range of the front lines, flying generals (including Patton), and the other duties that came to the unsung and unpopular (at least with their exalted brethren of the Army Air Force) little puddle jumpers. Observation pilots faced unimproved fields, enemy fighters and antiaircraft fire, accidents, weather, contaminated fuel, and enough other hazards to make their casualty rate quite formidable. Little of this has received much attention in the World War II literature, so Schultz and Neff's effort deserves a big catch-up readership. Roland Green