Fighter Pilot

Born: 1910

Units:

• 9 July - ? 1940: 3rd Fighter Group
• 16 June - 9 July 1941: 3rd Fighter Group
• 2 August - 1 October 1941: 5th Fighter Group
• 6 May 1942 - 12 May 1943: 9th Fighter Group
• 22 May - 10 December 1943: 53rd Fighter Squadron

Combat missions: over 30

Victories: 3 confirmed, 1 probable

Decorations:

• Virtutea Aeronautica Order Gold Cross class with two bars

Fate Unknown

Biography:

Nicolae Sculy Logotheti is one of the several reservist fighter pilots coming from families with a rich past. Born in 1910 as the third child of Raul Sculy-Logotheti, a large landowner in Buhaesti, Vaslui County, he became an architect. For the compulsory military service he was assigned to the cavalry: the 7th Rosiori Regiment in Iasi and attained the rank of sergeant. After he returned to civilian life he was attracted by the idea of flying and eventually attended the flight school of Mircea Cantacuzino in Bucharest, where Prince Constantin "Bazu" Canatacuzino also learned how to fly, and obtained the license on 14 June 1939.

When the clouds of war descended over Europe and Romania started to mobilize its forces as well, the licensed civilian pilots were all reassigned from the military branches they had served to the Romanian Royal Aeronautics and put through military pilot training. Niculae Sculy Logotheti was assigned to the 3rd Flotilla and sent to the Aviation Officers School in Buzau, where he started classes on 16 October 1939. At the end of February 1940 he graduated and received the military pilot license for the IAR-38 reconnaissance airplane. However, after passing through another filtering process, Sculy Logotheti was part of a group of ten pilots who were to start a fighter pilot course.

After more than three months of training on school aircraft, on 13 June he flew his first actual fighter plane, a PZL P.7. Because the possibility of war with the Soviet Union was very high following the ultimatum received by Romania, at the end of the month all available pilots were sent to mobilized units. Serg TR av. Niculae Sculy Logotheti arrived at the 44th Fighter Squadron of the 3rd Fighter Group on 9 July 1940. The group was using the old PZL P.11f airplane and was stationed in Moldova, at Targu Neamt, ready to intervene should the Red Army attacked over the Prut River. On 5 September, during a dogfight exercise, serg. TR av. Sculy Logotheti's P.11f hit the wing of serg. TR av. Cassian Teodorescu aircraft and both had to ditch them and save themselves by jumping with the parachute from 2000 meters.

As the situation stabilized a bit in the region, a part of the troops were demobilized. In June 1941, Niculae Sculy Logotheti was recalled to active duty and assigned again to the 3rd Fighter Group, despite his requests to join a unit of the 1st Fighter Flotilla. On 22 June, he flew his first two missions of the war, both of which were patrols over the Sculeni area in Bessarabia. The first aircraft encountered was on 23 June in one of the 3 missions he flew, when adj. av. Pisorschi, the flight leader, misidentified a German He-111 and attacked it without results.

On 9 July, the request to join the 1st Fighter Flotilla was eventually approved and serg. av. Niculae Sculy went to Rosiorii de Vede where the 5th Fighter Group was organizing the personnel for the rebuilding of the 52nd Fighter Squadron. On 2 August they were transferred to Comrat in Southern Bessarabia where the training on the IAR-80A for the 42/52nd Fighter Squadron began. The 5th Fighter Group had originally been fully equipped with He-112Bs, but the high attrition of ground attack missions took its toll and it had to reequip one of its squadrons with newly available IAR-80As.

On 17 August, the course was finished and the squadron was relocated to the forward base of Zals, 15 km from Tiraspol. From there it started to fly missions over Odessa, which was under siege by the Romanian 4th Army. The first kill for serg. TR av. Niculae Sculy Logotheti occured only ten days later, on 27 August, when he part of a patrol led by of. echip. cls. III av. Ioan Maga who engaged a group of 9 unescorted Soviet bombers that were returning from a mission. He attacked one of them, which he identified as a DB-3F. The Soviet tried to escape by diving towards the Odessa harbor where he would be protected by the AA artillery. He followed it in the dive firing until it crashed in some warehouses near the port. He recovered very close to the ground and remained at around 10 m, in order to escape the AAA fire, and headed back West, full speed over the rooftops, until he was sure that he crossed the frontline. Two of the wingmen also claimed each a Soviet bomber.

Two days later, serg. TR av. Niculae Sculy was part of several free hunting missions over Odessa and claimed one I-16 probable. Then, on 16 September, while flying as the wingman of lt. av. Radu Reinek, he joined an ongoing fight between 3 IAR-80As from their squadron, led by of. echip. cls. III av. Ioan Maga, and VVS I-16s, over Dlanik, West of Odessa. Serg. av. Niculae Sculy took advantage of the surpise effect and positioned his aircraft behind an I-16. After firing 7 or 8 times, the Soviet airplane turned and fell near the Dalnik - Odessa road.

Soon after that, on 21 September, he was demobilized, received the "Virtutea Aeronautica" Order, Gold Cross class with one bar and returned home. However, as the war carried on, the newly promoted adj. stg. (r) av. Niculae Sculy Logotheti was recalled to active duty on 6 May 1942 and assigned as instructor to the newly created 47th Fighter Squadron/9th Fighter Group, commanded by cpt. av. Lucian Toma. In May 1943, as the group was prepared for combat and would soon be sent to the front, like many of the 1941 IAR-80 pilots, he was reassigned to begin training on the Hs-129B assault aircraft. After only ten days, on 22 May, he managed to get a transfer to the 53rd Fighter Squadron of the same cpt. av. Lucian Toma, which was equipped with Bf-109G2s and was stationed at Mizil in defence of the Ploiesti oil fields and refineries. This seemed to be a quiet part of the world at the time.

On 1 August 1943, five USAAF bomber groups flying from Benghazi, Libya, set out to attack the refineries around Ploiesti and Campina. BEcause it was SUnday, most of the squadron's pilots were on leave. When the alarm was sounded, only four pilots were available for action and adj. stg. (r) av. Niculae Sculy Logotheti was among them. The flight leader was of. echip. cls. III av. Ioan Maga. The four Bf-109G2s scrambled together with the Germans and climbed up to 7,000 meters above Caracal. Because the American B-24s were flying at low altitudes in an attempt to avoid radar detection, the fighters could not see them. Eventually the order from the radar control in Bucharest came to descend to 500 meters and head for Ploiesti. As they arrived south of the city, they still could not see anything, because they were looking up for the bombers. Only after the first bombs exploded on the Brazi Refinery, did they realize that the Americans were 450 meters below. The formation dived and attacked, resulting in a confusing melee with German and Romanian BF-109Gs and Romanian IAR-80Bs and IAR-80Cs attacking the American B-24Ds and the AA artillery shooting at everything that flew. Unfortunately for adj. stg. (r) av. Sculy, the machine-guns would not fire and the central 20 mm cannon fired only one shot before it stopped as well. Thus, he was just an observer of the fighting and followed several bombers retreating southwards until he had to land at Targsor airfield to refuel. The Romanian Bf-109Gs returned took off again and engaged the retreating bombers, but Niculae Sculy was just a witness for the kills scored by his wingmen.

The following day, he flew with cpt. av. Lucian Toma in a Fi-156 to locate and count the bomber wrecks. After this, life went back to normal, with daily training and exercises. On 9 December 1943 he made his last flight in a fighter. He was demobilized soon after that and this time for good. Niculae Sculy Logotheti returned to his main profession as architect and went on to build a successful career in this domain as well.