August 16, 1944, was one of the busiest days of the war for the 354th Fighter Group. By day’s end, it had shot down thirteen enemy aircraft and lost four of its own.
From the mission report: “15-minute fight ensued from 11,000 ft. to deck. E/A [enemy aircraft] were aggressive, and pilots seemed more experienced than most previously encountered. Lts. C. E. Brown and Dahlberg missing; Lt. Brown believed to have bailed out.” The report is silent on whether anybody saw Dahlberg bail out.
The pace of the war had picked up considerably in August. The German Army had been giving up ground grudgingly after D-Day as the Allies tried to advance through the hedgerow country. After the breakthrough at St. Lo, the Third Army moved into high gear, racing across eastern France. The Ninth Air Force was a key player in the advance.
Returning from a three-day pass, Dahlberg had arrived back at the base and checked into the ready room just to see what was going on. He was informed that one of the pilots was ill, and was asked to take his place. Dahlberg was still in his dress uniform, but he climbed into a plane. “I didn’t have my sidearm, and I was still in my low-cut shoes. I didn’t have my escape kit or knife. I didn’t have anything.”
The 353rd Squadron took off at just past 4 p.m. from field A-31 at Gael, France. The group had moved there three days before from Criqueville. The new base had been a German fighter field, and had just been liberated by Patton’s Third Army. In its rapid drive east, however, the Army had left many pockets of German resistance behind, some near the new Allied airfield.
First Lieutenant Charles Koenig was leading the flight of eight P-51s. It was a patrol mission in support of the Third Army, and its destination was Mantes-la-Jolie, a city on the Seine River just northwest of Paris. Dahlberg was flying Shillelaugh, a Mustang named for the Irish weapon of assault.
At about 4:30 p.m., the squadron was notified that there were bandits at about 11,000 feet in the area south of Dreux. Koenig took the eight planes up to 14,000 feet, and the Americans surprised about twenty of the enemy 109s at about 4:40 p.m. Almost immediately, about sixty more German fighters joined in the fray, coming out of the clouds from the north.
