My father was a first generation American, a new-world amalgam of immigrants from different old-world cultures. His father came to these shores in 1905 from the beautiful mountain village of Kalavryta, nested in a valley in the north of the Peloponnesus in Greece. Mike Manthos chose to cast his fate to the clean open spaces of Central Texas and the embrace of the daughter of Swiss and German immigrants, Laura Klein, who was raised in the German farming community of Fredericksburg among other German speaking immigrants. Atlee was born on Aug 4 1912 in San Antonio.


   

Mike 1922                                                   Laura 1933


Sadly, Mike and Laura divorced only a few years after their son was born. Mike moved to Houston where he started another family. Atlee lived for several years with his Uncle Carl in Fredericksburg where he spoke German before he spoke English. When he was nine he went to live with his mother and her new husband John Halbardier in San Antonio.




Atlee 1918



Atlee, Laura, John, and Atlee's brother Alois 1922


Atlee was mechanically inclined from an early age and by the time he was eighteen he owned a model T Ford "Flivver". He had a thirst for speed, and in the days before bumper stickers he painted his own messages on the rear fenders. One reads "Pass me, Hell ain't half full".




In front of the Halbardier house at 521 McLeary St in San Antonio


Once the Great Depression came to Texas things were difficult for everyone and work was scarce. Atlee graduated from San Antonio High School in 1930 and entered the University of Texas in Austin in the fall of 1931. He had no financial assistance from anyone and had to work long hours for depression era wages to pay for school and living expenses. He struggled and left the university at the end of the academic year in the spring of 1932.

In 1933 he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, the "Tree Army", a federally funded depression-era  job program that offered full time employment for young men building roads and planting trees in national parks and forests and other public lands. He worked for thirty dollars a month at CCC Camp F-17-N in the Lincoln National Forest near Carrizozo in the mountains of south-central New Mexico, and later at a camp in the Medicine Bow National Forest in southeastern Wyoming.





In the fall of 1934 Atlee left with the money he had saved and entered St Mary's University in San Antonio where he began to study Geology. He took light loads at St Mary's, picked up an Analytic Geometry class from San Antonio Junior College and got nothing but A's and B's. He also joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps.

After spring semester 1936 he transferred back to the University of Texas where he continued to study Geology, earning his way with drafting and surveying jobs. He graduated with honors in 1938.

After college he found a position as a petroleum geologist where he spent his working days looking for oil. There are geological formations in Texas that bear his name.


   

St Mary's ROTC 1934/36                                  Surveying 1930's


Once the US entered the Second World War Atlee heard the call to arms in general and the call to the Army Air Corps in particular. As a college graduate he was accepted as an officer and pilot and began training as a cadet at Hicks Field in Fort Worth in August of 1941. As the oldest member of his class was called "Pappy" after Al Capp's Li'l Abner cartoon character "Pappy" Yokum. He was Pappy to everyone who knew him the rest of his life.

He completed his training at Randolph Field and Kelly Field in San Antonio, and in March of 1942 was commissioned as second lieutenant and assigned to Waco Army Air Field as flight instructor with his two best friends, Alva Murphy and Daniel "Stretch" McKinnon.


    

Flying Cadet 1941



Flight Instructor BT-13A 1942



2nd Lt Alva C Murphy, 2nd Lt Atlee G Manthos, 2nd Lt Daniel A McKinnon, August 1942


For the next two years he trained new pilots in both basic and advanced flight techniques as well as aerial gunnery. They were great years. He had an exciting and glamorous job, fast friends,a girl, and his relationships with his mother and father and their families were better than ever.  




Atlee with his brother George, his sister Mary Olga, and Mike

   

Alois Halbardier                           Mary Alice Judd Manthos



Houston Jan 1944


Then everything changed. On 16 May 1944 his father Mike Manthos died. Less than a month later he married Mary Alice Judd. Two weeks after his wedding day Pappy left his wife and his family to go to war.

In June of 1944 the three friends boarded a ship for England and the "Mighty" Eighth Air Force to train for duty flying bomber escort and ground support missions. Atlee was assigned to the 496th Fighter Training Group in Goxhill and it's likely Murphy and McKinnon joined him there where they trained in early models of the P-51 Mustang. Below left is a picture of Atlee opening the "birdcage" canopy of a P-51B. The C7 on the fuselage is the code number for the 555th Fighter Training Squadron. In the second, he's in the cockpit of a P-51C.


   


In August the pilots were transferred to their respective combat units. They traveled by train from Goxhill to Cambridge along with Captain Fred Brown, then went their separate ways. The photograph below is the most poignant in this collection. Murphy, McKinnon and Manthos, the three great friends, would never meet again as a group.

Daniel McKinnon was killed in action on 10 January 1945 over Vianden Luxembourg on the German border during the Battle of the Bulge. Alva Murphy, an ace with eight victories, was shot down by anti-aircraft fire while strafing an airfield near Rhuland Germany on 2 March 1945, just two months before the German High Command surrendered and the war in Europe came to an end.




Captains  Murphy, McKinnon, Brown, Manthos, Cambridge Station Aug 1944


While McKinnon went to the 405th Fighter Group, Murphy and Manthos went to the legendary 357th Fighter Group at Leiston, on the coast about 100 miles northeast of London. The 357th consisted of three squadrons of 24 aircraft each, and according to his notes Pappy served in all three. We have no record of where he was from August until October, so he may have gone to the 362nd Fighter Squadron along with Murphy. By October 1944 however, he was attached to the 363rd Fighter Squadron where he flew 24 combat missions between 9 Oct and 18 Dec in the North American Aircraft P-51D Mustang he named for his new wife, seen below on the ground in Leiston. The P-51D was the most capable and respected allied fighter of the war. In fact, it is arguably the single most iconic warplane in the history of aviation. It was fast and maneuverable with a high ceiling, a top speed of 435 mph and a 2000 mile range equipped with extra fuel in the wing tanks you see here. It could carry two 1000 pound bombs and was armed with six .50 caliber machine guns mounted three in each wing.







At the end of December 1944 Pappy left the 363rd FS for Eighth Air Force Fighter Command Headquarters at High Wycomb where he remained until the end of January 1945. It was about this time that Alva Murphy was transferred to the 364th FS as operations officer. Pappy's whereabouts are unknown until he returned to flying missions for the 364th on 19 March, only two weeks after Murphy was killed in action. I can't help but wonder if the death of his great friend is what motivated him to return to combat duty as Murphy's replacement.

In any case, once he came to the 364th Pappy was assigned a new P-51D which he named Mary Alice II - Mad Pappy. He flew thirteen missions in Mary Alice II between 19 March and 8 May.

The second of the photographs below must have been taken after the war ended since it wasn't until 10 May that Pappy was promoted to major.






  


The following sequence of frames was taken from the nose camera in Mary Alice of a Focke-Wulf FW-190 fired on and damaged during a mission north of Berlin on 5 December 1944.� Below left is a single frame of damage to what appears to be a Messerschmidt Me-109, and below right a still image of German bombers being strafed on a runway. There is also a record of damage claimed against a Messerschmidt Me-262, the acclaimed German jet-powered fighter, on Pappy's first mission with the 364th on 19 March 1945.




   


On 8 May 1945 Germany surrendered unconditionally and the war in Europe came to an end.

Two million American servicemen headed for home by any means available and as soon as possible. Pappy accepted reassignment to the 78th Fighter Group at Duxford as Operations Officer and remained in England until the end of 1945.




VE Day with 363rd squadron commander Maj Don Bochkay and unidentified 363rd pilot


His return to Texas in 1946 was not a particularly happy one. Within a year he was divorced, and the rewards of civilian life could not match the lure of the skies and the new generation of jet fighters. The price of his return to active duty was the loss of wartime rank, but he decided it was an arrangement he could live with and in July 1947 he left Mary Alice and petroleum geology to wear first lieutenant's bars in the new US Air Force, where he would spend the next 16 years of his life.





Lt Col Atlee G Manthos, USAF, retired April 1963 as Command Pilot with 4300 flight hours. In May 1980 Pappy died of cardiac arrest and was buried in Fort Collins Colorado.


POSTSCRIPT

In 2011 my brother Jeff and I were contacted by a Greek engineer named Dimitrious Vassilopoulos, who was working on a labor of love. His interest in aviation  and history had led him to write a book about Greek pilots who flew foreign fighter aircraft during WWII and was looking for information about Pappy. We were happy to oblige, and that led to something of an odyssey of research during which we both learned a lot more about the old bastard than we ever knew before, including some things he may not have known about himself. The short biography above is a result of that effort.

The book was recently published and contains the wartime stories of ten Greek pilots who flew foreign fighters all over the world. It's written in Greek but the volume is filled with 46 stunning color plates by French aviation artist Gaetan Marie. Four of these aircraft profiles depict Mustangs flown by Pappy during his time with the 357th Fighter Group.




Greeks in Foreign Cockpits



P-51B



P-51C 555th Fighter Training Squadron



P-51D 44-13573 was previously flown under the name Isabel III by New Zealand RAF pilot Jack Clealand on temporary assignment to the 363rd Fighter Squadron



The individual code and frame number of Pappy's second P-51D are unknown, so this very pausible profile bears the 364th FS code and the same F designation Pappy had with Mary Alice.


And finally, along with the aircraft profiles of Gaetan Marie, the book contains 15 paintings of air combat scenes, 11 by Greek digital artist Andonis Karydis including this magnificent portrait of Pappy's encounter with a German Me262 on 19 Mar 1945





Hundreds of these artists' superb digital graphics can seen here:

GAETAN MARIE
ANDONIS KARYDIS

PHOTO ARCHIVE OF LT COL ATLEE G MANTHOS USAF

Pappy took dozens of  color slides between 1941 and 1949. Nearly all are pre or post-war and many quite mundane, but among them are what have proved to be some real treasures. These and other aircraft related images may be seen here: