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America Accidentally Attacked the Soviet Union and Other Lesser Known History Moments

Khalid Elhassan February 27, 2020 34 min

Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star - Aircraft — American F-80s in action during the Korean War. Squdron

39. “Look at That Airfield – It’s Loaded!”

Thousands of American manufactured P-39 Air Cobras were given to the Soviet Union during WWII under the terms of Lend-Lease. Soviet Hammer

Targets and resistance had been scarce in the days preceding his mission, so F-80 pilot Alton Quanbeck was surprised to see the flashes of antiaircraft guns from a small town nearby. Soon thereafter, he spotted a truck on a dirt road, and heard his wingman Al Diefendorf urging “Let’s go in and get it!” An instant later, Diefendorf spotted a juicier target, and exclaimed: “Look at that airfield, it’s loaded!“

As Quanbeck described it decades later: “It was the kind of target that fighter pilots dream about. Parked in two rows were about 20 aircraft of the P-39 or P-63 type. Thousands of them were built and flown by Americans in World War II, and some were sent to our Soviet ally. Those below us had large red stars surrounded by a narrow white border painted on the side of their dark brown fuselages.”

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.