The place is Bountiful, Utah on the western slope of the Wasatch Mountains just ten miles north of Salt Lake City.

It is the 14th day of February 2003. Happy Valentines Day.

Alden Rigby sits in his den and talks to a couple of visitors. He is 80, but looks younger. He is a contented man. His wife Eleen comes into the den, sees he has company and immediately grasps that he is talking about The War. "I can tell you all about it," she says with an easy grin. "I know all there is to know."

Rigby is delighted. His bride really does know all there is to know about his flying career. She lived through it with him. They've been married almost 60 years.

He can name all the planes he's flown, and in his basement there are models of all of them, lots of models. A P-51D, of course, with "Eleen and Jerry" painted across the nose, just like the original. Daughter Jerry is now Jeri Ellis of Peterson, Utah. When he went off to war she was just an infant.

There are models of the Air Corps P-40 Warhawk and P-47 "Jug," Air Force F-86 Sabrejet, the Navy FJ1 Fury, F4U Corsair, F8F Bearcat and TBM Avenger torpedo bomber. He flew the B-25 Mitchell and B-57 Canberra bombers, and cargo planes like the C-47 Gooneybird and C-45. All these and more.

Al Rigby was recalled to active duty stateside for Korea and then had a long and successful career flying with the Utah Air National Guard. He paired that with a 25-year government career as an air traffic control supervisor at the FAA's Salt Lake Center, retiring in 1979.

Asch, Belgium, the Battle of the Bulge, and a forward strip called Y-29 are now far in the past but always close to mind. On that first day of 1945, Al Rigby popped up into what may well have been the wildest melee of German and American fighters during WWII and lived to tell about it.

"We were supposed to be going out to fly a short patrol," he remembered, "then return before going off again to escort bombers to Berlin. So we were full up with fuel." "Full up" meant filling the P-51's fuselage tank with 85 gallons of gas. Until about 50 gallons were gone, which would take 45 minutes or so to burn, his plane would be heavy and unstable. In this condition, full combat maneuvering at low altitude would be at worst impossible and at best extremely dangerous. "We'd heard stories about planes swapping ends," he said.

After shooting the Fw-190 from Lt. Littge's tail he immediately spotted another. At this point Murphy's Law came into play. "During the chase my gun sight failed," Rigby said, "the bulb had burned out." Without a gun sight he was only guessing, and opened fire too soon. He used much of his ammunition before the German finally went down.

Rigby always used a trick that let him know when he was getting close to the end of his ammunition. A P-51 carried 2700 rounds of fifty caliber. Al made sure the last 300 rounds the armorers loaded into his guns were tracers. "Whenever I saw tracers coming out I knew I had only about 10 seconds of ammunition left."

As the second Fw-190 went down he realized he had hit it with a stream of tracers, and he was already part way into his last 10 seconds of shooting time.

Rigby headed back to the airfield at 1000 feet, thinking about landing to rearm. But when he arrived he saw a lot of flak coming up. The ground gunners were still busy, which told him the enemy was still there.

"And I'm in deep trouble," he said. "I'm still high on fuel, I have no gun sight and I'm very low on ammunition. So I'm thinking 'there's trouble in River City.'"

He then saw one of the heavy American P-47s down at about 800 ft. trying to shoot it out with a more nimble Messerschmitt 109. "They were turning on opposite sides of a circle, and I knew the 109 could easily out turn him." The P-47 was in a box. If he let the Me-109 turn inside him, he'd be dead. If he tried to break out of the circle the Me-109 would roll out on his tail and he'd be dead. He was just too low to bail out. No matter what happened next, Alden Rigby thought he was probably looking at a dead American P-47 pilot.

"I really didn't want to get into that fight," he explained, "I needed the few rounds I still had left to defend myself in case somebody got on my tail. Then I saw the P-47 sort of mush to the outside, which would give the 109 a clear shot. But that also gave me room to come up from underneath and between them."

The German fighter was only 50 yards in front of him and no higher than 500 feet off the ground when Rigby, again guessing at his point of aim, squeezed off a very quick burst. "I could see the pilot clearly," he said. "I saw the hits, and coolant come out." The Me-109 slammed into the ground. That made it three.

That's when he ran across another Me-109 flown by what he described as "the best German pilot I had seen at any time." Rigby saw the Messerschmitt was in a running battle with two other P-51s. "We just watched him," said Rigby. "He did a split-S from about 1000 feet and I saw the aircraft shudder, then pull wing tip steamers as his prop wash shook the tree tops. He was then back in the fight and very aggressive."

Al Rigby watched for another five minutes, amazed by the German's flying skill. He was hoping he might get into some kind of firing position, but knew that his guns were probably empty.

Then, unexpectedly, the other P-51s chased the German right past him. "He turned broadside to me less than 30 or 40 yards away," Rigby said, "at that range a gun sight wouldn't have done me any good anyway." Rigby pulled his trigger at point-blank range.

"My last few rounds shattered his cockpit." He went down, and that was number four. Four today plus the Me-109 he had shot down in November made it a total of five. He was an ace.

"So here I am. My guns are empty, I'm still burning fuel out of the fuselage tank, but my airplane is finally light enough where I feel comfortable flying the thing."

"But the fight is over."

Click to continue.