Nephew rides in his uncle's P-51

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- The pilot climbed the single-prop P-51 to 2,000 feet, flipped it upside down and brought it screaming toward the ground.

"I looked over his shoulder, and we were doing 300 knots," said Don Littge, the passenger.

But Littge, a Perryville resident, was not just any passenger, and this was not any plane.

Littge is the nephew of World War II ace Capt. Ray Littge, an Altenburg, Mo., native who is remembered as Missouri's top fighter pilot.

The plane was the Miss Helen, named for Ray's wife. It was the plane he flew with the 352nd Fighter Squadron.

When Don Littge and a friend, Bob Cissell of Perryville, heard the 352nd was meeting for its last reunion in Europe in April, they decided it was "one thing we had to do."

The Miss Helen flight was not on the itinerary, although they knew the plane would be at the Bodney air base in England.

At Bodney, Littge climbed into the cockpit and Cissell had him pose exactly the way his uncle had appeared in a photograph taken 60 years ago.

The plane's owner saw him, and offered to fly Littge around the field.

"People were coming up to me and asking me why he was getting a ride," Cissell said. "I told them it was his Uncle Ray's airplane. They started passing the word around and he was the star attraction after that."