Jay Honeck wrote:

But I told it exactly the way Bill relayed it to me. (He wasn't in Italy
himself, so I suppose there is the slight chance that this story has taken
on mythic, some might say heroic proportions in the re-telling over the
decades? :-)

You might say that; I would say there's an absolute certainty of it.

By November of 1944, only two XP-80 prototypes had left the ground, and the
second one crashed in late October, killing the test pilot. Lockheed produced
and delivered 45 P-80s before the war ended. Only two of these made it to Europe
before war's end. Both flew test runs in Italy. They were deliberately kept far
away from any chance of encounters with enemy aircraft.

Information taken from the Wikipedia.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.