World War II Database

Contributor: Alan Chanter

ww2dbaseRobert Johnson was born on 21 February 1920 in Lawton, Oklahoma, United States and studied aeronautical engineering at Cameron Junior College in the city of his birth, gaining his degree in 1941. Interested in flying since childhood, Johnson privately took flying lessons before joining the US Army Air Force where he was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 3 July 1942 at Kelly Field, Texas, United States. Initially the US Army Air Force trained him to be a bomber pilot, but soon reassigned him for training on the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter.

ww2dbase"Bob" Johnson went to England, United Kingdom in early 1943 with the USAAF 56th Fighter Group ("Zemke's Wolfpack"), which was commanded by the legendary Lieutenant Colonel Hubert "Hub" Zemke. Johnson entered combat in April, escorting bombers across the English Channel or the North Sea , and scored his first kill, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, on 13 June 1943.

ww2dbaseOn 26 June 1943 during a patrol over France Johnson was bounced and badly shot up by Fw 190 aircraft, but despite being injured managed to limp home. Recovered from his injuries, Johnson was back in the cockpit by 1 July, and in October, he became an ace when his fifth aerial victory accounted for one of the Luftwaffe's finest pilots, Oberstleutnant Hans Philipp, the commander of Jagdgeschwader 1 (who had 177 victories on the eastern front and another 29 in the west). As he destroyed Philipp's Focke-Wulf aircraft, Johnson himself was hit resulting in the loss of his rudder. Managing to evade the remaining Luftwaffe fighters he rendezvous with P-47 aircraft of the 62nd Fighter Squadron, who escorted him back to England.

ww2dbaseSoon the patrols of the American P-47 aircraft proved so effective over the French and Dutch coastline that the Luftwaffe pulled their defensive line back to the limit of the Thunderbolt aircraft's operational range, roughly between Kiel and Hannover, Germany. It was here that a number of massive aerial battles would occur. On 8 March 1944 Bob Johnson led a handful of Thunderbolt aircraft against more than 100 Luftwaffe fighters sent up to attack American bombers. There were 34 bombers lost on that day, but on 15 March, Johnson used his radio, when the Germans attacked, to vector a large number of American fighters into the battle, and no bombers were lost on this occasion.

ww2dbaseUltimately Bob Johnson would fly 91 missions and score 27 victories with the final two, a Bf 109G aircraft and an Fw 190 aircraft, occurring on his final mission on 8 May 1944. This made Johnson the second-highest scoring American pilot in the European theatre. He had only one less victory than Francis "Gabby" Gabreski, another P-47 Thunderbolt fighter pilot with the 56th Fighter Group, who scored his 28th victory only after Johnson had returned to the United States.

ww2dbaseJohnson came home in June 1944, just after the invasion of Europe, and was assigned to go on a publicity tour to help sell war bonds. It was during this tour that he met Richard "Dick" Bong who, at the time, was the top scoring American ace in the Pacific theatre (also with 27 victories, the same as Johnson). While Bong would return to combat and push his total to 40, Johnson left the service (although he remained in the reserve), to work for Republic Aviation, the makers of the Thunderbolt aircraft that he had flown in combat.

ww2dbaseJohnson was with Republic for 18 years and his first task was to redesign the P-47 cockpit to make it more user-friendly for the pilots by clustering the instruments together so they could be seen at a glance. In December 1951 he went to Korea for the company where its F-84 Thunderjet was in combat, and two years later, wearing the uniform of a US Air Force Reserve Lieutenant Colonel, was present at the armistice talks at Panmunjom, Gyeonggi Province, Korea.

ww2dbaseJohnson's book, co-written with Martin Caidin, entitled Thunderbolt! Flying the P-47 with the Fabulous 56th Fighter Group in World War II was first published in 1958 and, after leaving Republic, he went into the insurance business. In 1983 Robert Johnson was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame.

ww2dbaseRobert Johnson died on 27 December 1998 aged 78 years.

Robert Johnson Interactive Map

Photographs

Robert Johnson Timeline

Visitor Submitted Comments

Show older comments