Earned the title, according to his son, as 'The only German ace in the American Air Force' this was the result of having 5 x P-47 thunderbolts destroyed while he was flying them. He was essentially unhurt or received minor injuries in each of these scrapes. But a 6th crash in a P-51 Mustang put him in the hospital for a month (thus the Van Gogh mustache and goatee in some of the photos sent the museum.



Awards: DFC (2OLC), AM (9OLC), SS (OLC), PH, WWII Victory, EAME and many other medals.



78th FG 84th FS. “Major Raymond E Smith, of Long Beach, California, former 84th Fighter Squadron operations officer, became one of the few 78th Group pilots to wear the Oak Leaf Cluster to the Silver Star. The incident which won him the nation’s third highest valor award for the second time was told in a Public Relations article about the adventures of a Thunderbolt named ‘Li’l Thor’ :



Maj Smith’s most dramatic adventure in ‘Li’l Thor’ ended in tragic disappointment. That day he and another Thunderbolt pilot picked up and shepherded five B-17 Flying Fortresses straggling southwest of Hanover after having bombed Leipzig. At the Dutch frontier, one of the five began losing height rapidly. It was struggling along on two of her four engines. By the time the Zuider Zee was crossed the Fortress had gone from 14,000 feet down to 12,000 feet.



Once the cripple turned south toward Amsterdam, a heavily defended town, Maj Smith zoomed across her nose and motioned her away. But it became apparent as they approached the coast that the bomber would pass over Ijmuiden, bristling with Nazi guns. This time the Fortress could not turn. The pilot was having trouble keeping his plane in the air, and the crew was throwing out everything movable – guns, ammunition, and everything except parachutes.



As the Fortress passed over at low altitude, the town came alive with flak. The Thunderbolt pilots could not shoot at guns in the town filled with Dutchmen. But they could and did strafe the Nazi beach guns. It was hopeless. The remaining two engines of the bomber caught fire, a wing broke off, and she plummeted down into the surf. Three parachutes opened, and the last help the Californian gave them was to strafe the beach guns once more to prevent the survivors being shot as they floated down.



The Major’s first Silver Star was awarded for his strafing of a heavily defended German airdrome, during which he destroyed five Heinkel 111s.”