At about 1635 hours on April 13, as the group was landing after the Schweinfurt mission, Gentile decided to give the 336 FS dispersal area a real treat by "cutting their hair" with a couple of real low passes. There was a large crowd gathered around his parking spot in front of the dispersal shacks. The press was there as well - this was to be his last mission before a short break back to the States, and everybody was out in full force to watch him come back. He gave the dispersal a real rattling on his first pass, but after spotting the rather large crowd, he decided to make his next one something nobody would forget. Circling around, he set up his second pass by diving down from the eastern side of the field. Don lined up, put his nose down and leveled off just feet off the ground. He would have crossed just north of 334's hangar as he leveled off from his shallow dive. He was seen flying extremely low on a southwesterly heading driving straight for the cameras set up around his parking spot. At this point, Debden has a considerable "rise" or "hump" effect in the middle of the field due to the sloping southern portions of the airfield (the area is surprisingly hilly as I found out in July 2002), and Don was so low at the beginning of his run that he disappeared from view to those at the 336 dispersal at the southwest corner of the field - he reappeared just before he crossed the southern part of the N-S runway. He crossed the runway right on the deck, and then, witnesses said, the plane seemed to settle and Shangri-La's prop struck the grassy area about 100 yards in front of the 336 dispersal. They later found numerous "chop" marks where the prop had dug into the ground.

I've studied the site myself, and my semi-educated opinion is that as he tried to "fly down" the other side of the airfield's "hump" to maintain the same relative altitude above the ground, Don was going so fast that he didn't allow for the ground's gentle "rise" as it gradually leveled off again. In other words, he flew into the ground as it rose to meet him. Maybe in a moment of looking at the blur of the crowd and cameras . . . just a second's lapse in awareness would be all it took at his blistering speed.

After he felt those first unmistakable jolts, Don immediately pulled the kite up, and sailed right over the heads of the assembled crowd and the squadron's dispersal shacks, nearly hitting them. Witnesses recalled that the plane seemed to "bounce", which can be explained by Gentile's reflexive "jerk" back on the stick. His prop was slowly windmilling, they say, and horribly bent as he flew/glided west-southwesterly for about half a mile, gently arcing slightly right (more westward) as he spotted and aimed for Debden Common - a good flat set of open fields. Not quite making the Common, he did manage to squeak his glide just barely over the pork chop-shaped Howe Wood, a large stand of trees, then hit hard and slid to a stop in the northwest corner of one of Mr. Tetlow's Brick House Farm fields - see Then and Now pictures of the crash site here. Shangri-La broke her back when she "landed", and was a total write-off as pictures show. In addition to a bruised ego, Don survived with only a few minor kinks, further cementing the belief many held that "The Publicity Kid" was indeed leading a charmed life.

Those who witnessed the event then sped to the scene were shocked and surprised, but of course very happy, to find Gentile still alive. TSgt. Dorn Painter, a 336 FS maintenance flight chief, was in his jeep and the first one to arrive on the scene. He found Don leaning against the fuselage. "What did Gentile say??, I asked Dorn at the 2001 4th Fighter Group reunion. "Don said, 'I think I farbed up!
This forever ended Don's combat days - Blakeslee almost literally kicked him out of the 4th Fighter Group, and he never again saw combat. Don was banned from flying with the 4th until he left for the States - even practice flights. Col. Blakeslee had his unbreakable rule that anybody who bent a kite "flat hatting" was out of the group for good. I asked the Colonel about this at the October 2001 4th FG reunion, and he told me that after Gentile ". . . broke the rules", either he or Blakeslee would have to leave, and, as he told me while looking straight through me with those famous gray-blue eyes, ?. . . it wasn't going to be me!" Don was reportedly planning to bring Shangri-La with him to the States as a publicity tool (wouldn't it be great to be able to go to the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum and see it today?). Col. Blakeslee has commented on the matter:















After being sent back to the States,Gentile got a new P-51D and he toured with this aircraft for warbonds.(Note Shangrila is one word) This aircraft never saw combat.





Regards Duggy.