It happened to me today. Fortunately, the pilot didn't have real guns.

This morning on the way to work, this little orange kitten crossed the road in front of me. I stopped to try and rescue it, but by the time I got stopped it was gone into the woods by the side of the road and I couldn't find it. So I went in to the office, because I had court this morning, intending to get my hearings done and then take the day off, change into jeans, and spend an hour literally beating the bushes for this kitten.

It's a rural bit of road, not too far from the local Sheriff's training center and close to a local GA airport, a former World War II Army Air Force training base that was reactivated for T-33s during Vietnam, then closed again and turned over to the local tiny municipality where it is. I park my Evo on the side of the road and get out and start calling for the kitten. It was young enough that if it was still there it would be crying for its mother or meowing or something. Not a peep, and no sign of it. I even went back a bit where I could get into the woods and called for it, nothing.

So I crossed over to the other side of the road, in case some moron had thrown a bag of kittens out of his car or something, to be sure I hadn't missed anything this morning (and I didn't, it evidently was just that one kitten). While I'm doing this, a beautiful yellow SNJ zooms by about a hundred feet above me, with his gear down. And right behind it, a P-51D, one of the later ones with the bubble canopy, in super-bright polished silver with D-Day recognition stripes. They were doing touch-n-goes at the airport.

As I'm walking, I hear the pitch of the P-51's motor change. The Merlin, by the way, is a real deep, throaty growl and there's a whine from the turbos when it flies over you. I looked up and it was coming right at me, maybe four or five hundred feet up and rapidly dropping, diving right at me!

When a P-51 dives on you, it screams and when it zips by overhead (this one passed over me high, about a hundred feet but close enough I could see the nose-art) it Dopplers off with a roar of the Merlin. I swear that it sounds EXACTLY like the movies. I'd have hated to be some German or Japanese soldier with that coming at me. It would have been real scary.

But since it wasn't, it was pretty cool.

But I didn't find the kitten, darnit. Someone else must have picked him up. At least, I hope so.

Miao, Cat

"Of all the crazy things..."

And the moral of the story is...a kitten in the bush is worth a P-51 overhead

Wow! How close did he get? I mean, would he have seen your Glock if you had pulled it?

i woulda <bleeped> myself.

DCS sure goes a long way to advertise its new release! :P

Figures, the one time you weren't driving around in the flatbed with the static display Flak 38 on the back.

Great account. There are not many folks alive who have a story like that to share.

That's EXACTLY what went through my mind!

Miao, Cat