Chuck Yeager hit a tree with his P39 wing tip as a favor to Pa Clifford...
"We use to buzz Pa Clifford's ranch all the time Tonopah Nevada, and if
he came out and waved a bed sheet, it meant yo' all come over tonight
for Ma's chow. Mack and I used to fly over and drop the Clifford boys
all kinds of ammo for their hunting, whole belts of thirty-ought-six,
since bullets were hard to come by in wartime. There was a dry lake
bed about a hundred yards from the house, and we would practice
dive-bombing over that lake bed, dropping practice bombs, while Pa
Clifford, down below, watched and laughed like h e 1 1. One day I heard
Pa mention that he'd like to get rid of a tree that stood near the
roadway to the house. The next day, I buzzed that tree in my P-39 and
carefully topped it with my left wingtip. I enjoyed that kind of
challenge, but when I landed there was h e 1 1 to pay. The maintenance
officer demanded to know why my smashed wingtip looked as if it were
taking root-hunks of wood were rammed into it. "I hit a bird," I told
him. "Well," he replied, "that son of a b i t c h must've been sitting in
one helluva nest." I was grounded from flying P-39s for a week. But
there were several BT-13s available, and I flew them instead."