P-38 Lockheed Lightning Strikes / Documentary / WHD

[Music] it was as deadly as it was beautiful the aircraft of choice for America's ace of aces it was the best damn airplane ever built as far as I am concerned it was like flying a Cadillac it gained unparalleled reputation as the most versatile and lethal combat aircraft of its day it was the Lockheed p-38 nicknamed the like it was just an aviators dreamed to fly in a p38 it made the war in the Pacific designed as a fighter-interceptor it was the p-38 that claimed the scalp of Japan's most celebrated military strategist Admiral Yamamoto the mastermind behind the attack on Pearl Harbor using color reenactments and archive film battle stations takes to the skies in the fearsome p-38 lightning [Music] as The Wall Street Crash of 1929 plunged the u.s. into the Great Depression its effects were felt worldwide Japan heavily dependent on foreign trade was severely affected the resulting economic crisis spawned nationalist groups and the country focused on relieving its domestic troubles by colonizing her Asian neighbors as Japan emerged as a key power in the region rivalry with the United States over commercial and territorial interests grew bringing the risk of confrontation Japan's aggressive expansion in the region was spearheaded by its sophisticated mana wing fighters America's air core equipped with obsolete biplanes needed to modernize and quickly in February 1937 the US Army Air Corps issued proposal number X 6:08 calling for an advanced Pursuit interceptor aircraft that would be able to perform at previously unheard-of levels we had very few planes that could keep up with the speed of the German planes or even the Japanese plane so they needed something that would be able to be competitive a specification called for a desired speed of 400 miles per hour a hundred miles per hour faster than any other military aeroplane of the day and able to operate efficiently at altitudes of 20,000 feet or more it will be armed with a 20 millimeter cannon it was an ambitious proposal six contractors among them Lockheed submitted designs a senior figure of Lockheed design team was a man who would become a legend Clarence Kelley Johnson had joined the company in 1933 recognized as being a precocious talent Kelley was given free reign to design an aircraft that fitted the specification realizing that a single-engine aircraft could not possibly match the performance required Johnson focused his attention on a twin-engine design Kelley's initial concepts for the new fighter covered a range of configurations but he finally decided on profile with twin booms to accommodate the engines with the pilot and guns in a central nacelle superchargers were positioned in booms behind the engines and the armament was to consist of four machine guns in the nose clustered around a cannon it's really a beautiful looking machine very impressive couple of big engines lots of firepower all of it in the nose which would be very impressive if you're on the wrong end of it it was a visionary desire he created something that hadn't even been conceptualized in other areas and the p-38 was a total radical design Johnson's work paid off Lockheed won the contract for an experimental prototype in June 1937 the prototype designated XP 38 went into production despite early problems realizing the futuristic design the plane was completed in just 18 months it was a top-secret project that was shipped in by parts and trucks and assembled in a hangar despite flying for only 35 minutes the test was considered a huge success [Music] impressed the US Army Air Corps decided to go after Howard Hughes transcontinental speed record and lieutenant Benjamin Kelsey was ordered to fly the prototype from Marshfield California to Mitchell field New York as fast as he could the XP 38 smashed the record by 23 minutes the bad thing was they didn't tell the New York people the plane was coming and when I got there they were told to circle and we'll give you permission to land and ran out of gas and had the belly in on a golf course though Kelsey survived the impact the aircraft did not Lockheed's prototype ex p38 the only one of its kind was destroyed but it approved its worth as Europe descended into chaos the US Army Air Corps ordered 66 p38 the first ever 400 mile per hour fighter was officially given the green light early in 1939 Britain and France ordered 667 p38 but the planes dubbed lightnings by the British were to be built without superchargers Lockheed engineers protested this decision labeling the variant the castrated p38 with the fall of France in 1940 Britain took over the whole p38 order but their decision to remove the superchargers would have dire consequences having taken delivery of just three castrated lightnings the RAF realized that the planes performance was severely limited the British didn't like the air and they'd been unknown in conflict for quite a while and they knew airplanes and they didn't want that thing and it was a real dog you didn't have some turbo it didn't fly high all the props turn in the same direction faced with an inferior fighter britain cancelled the entire order from now on the p-38 would be solely an American fighter but its entry into service was not a smooth as p38 pilots would soon find out its problems were just beginning [Music] as America's new p-38s rolled off the production line serious problems began to emerge we're not going to try to teach you how to fly you've all had good training and other ships we're simply going to show you how we have a 38 one danger was compressibility causing the controls to lock up in a high-speed dive leaving the pilot no option but to bail out the p38 was having a problem credibility problem pilots are aspiring pilots hadn't heard some things that weren't very complimentary about the p38 now as young cadets 20 21 years old we really didn't know what compressibility was at the time but that was one of those rumors that the p38 was a dangerous airplane if it hit compressibility but the most dangerous problem by far was the tendency of the aircraft in the event of a single engine failure on takeoff to flip over and slam upside down into the runway most people were not used to flying anything faster in about 200 miles an hour so here you suddenly have a 400 plus mile an hour aircraft with very strong engines so if you lose an engine most people were flying in the early days would panic and they'd roll over and just go right in [Music] modifications to the p-38s followed the planes allison engines underwent a structural redesign and outward turning props were added to reduce the effects of torque these modifications would make the plane more stable during flight and in an effort to combat the p38 s-- image problems tony LeVier Lockheed's chief test pilot was drafted into help they had some bad rumors all about about the aircraft wasn't a safe airplane to fly and so forth and 20 come by and it was a demonstration of the p38 I saw him fly on single-engine and do slow rolls to everything that you'd want to do with single-engine aircraft and he did it on one engine had wound debt and I think that was a real selling factor as far as I was concerned during the spring of 1941 the credibility of the p38 was slowly being restored but Kelly's fighter like the United States was not yet ready for [Music] but on the morning of December the 7th 1941 everything changed [Music] in the days following the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese guided by Admiral Yamamoto scored a series of crushing victories in the Pacific the Pacific Fleet had been all but destroyed and MacArthur's army in the Philippines began its ill-fated retreat by capturing Wake Island Dutch New Guinea and the strategic port of rebel Japan gained the upper hand across the Pacific reeling from this series of body blows America prepared to send its aircraft to war in accordance with the Allied in Europe first strategy the US and its older p39 s to the Pacific and its new p38 to Britain we who went to the southwest Pacific anyplace in Pacific we were just sent there more or less as a holding detail to try to stem the flow and hold on to what we had and keep the Japs from capturing anymore but the Lightning's performance in Europe fell short of expectations operating at altitudes of around 15,000 feet far lower than it had been designed for the large twin-engined lightning proved to be considerably less maneuverable and smaller axis aircraft like the me-109 but the p38 devastating firepower often compensated for its lack of maneuverability at low altitude [Music] now the US Air Force looked for a high altitude role for its p-38s in Europe they soon found $1.99 p-38s were modified for photo reconnaissance missions one of the main things you need is stability and if your camera is wobbling you're not gonna get a good picture in the p38 was so smooth and quiet there was no drift caused by the torque of the propellers and because it was such a stable aircraft you could get more accurate bounds but flown without fighter escort these missions could be extremely dangerous we had cameras instead of guns but we also didn't have as much armor plating on our planes the theory was to cut down the weight to increase our speed so we were probably close to 2,000 pounds lighter than the fighter version of the same aircraft we lost a lot of guys we had a 70% casualty rate but nobody ever considered we were doing anything brave because you're only taking pictures out there [Music] but on the other side of the world p38 would face even greater dangers in the desperate days of early 1942 one aircraft dominated the skies of the Pacific the performance of the Mitsubishi a6m zero in every major battle of the war to date confirmed its superiority as a fighter American airmen flying p39 S&P 40s were powerless to stop them the Air Force considered the p39 as our number-one fighter until they had to use it in combat and they found out then that it was not the aircraft for the job if I had been jumped by zeros and a P through nine back in those days the chances are I wouldn't be here talking to you that's about the way we all felt about it we had good pilots but they just did not have the equipment I wanted to be in an organization that did have the equipment in this case the p38 so that our pilots had a fighting chance a new fighter group consisting entirely of p-38s was established now American airmen in the Pacific had the equipment they so badly needed to settle old scores big thing is our country was fighting for its life japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor they were a Hemi dami semiquaver away from attacking our homeland our country was being threatened what choice did you have even though Lockheed p-38 lightning z' were being produced in greater numbers precious few were deployed to the southwest Pacific despite this disadvantage the p38 would play a key role in one of the most crucial missions of the war after Japan's crushing defeats at Midway and Guadalcanal Admiral Yamamoto the strategic mastermind behind the infamous attack at Pearl Harbor planned a tour of frontline bases to restore flagging morale on April the 13th 1943 American code breakers intercepted a message which included explicit details of Yamamoto scheduled a plan to intercept was devised we had broken the Japanese code and knew that Yamamoto was going to make this trip to one of his outposts and he they knew his habits was were very punctual and that's how they were able to put this mission together at 8:00 a.m. on the morning of April the 18th a flight of p-38s from the 339th Fighter Squadron took to the skies as I sent 16 p38 12 of them would be top cover and 4 of the p38 would beat the attack group they would go down after the Betty bomber that Yahoo were supposed to be in and the other 12 airplanes will chase off any Japanese fighters just one and a half hours later the Americans spotted Yamamoto's flight of two Betty's and six zeroes four of the p-38 passed and in the ensuing battle both Betty's were hit and Yamamoto's aircraft plunged into the jungle below America's lightnings had come out fighting but there was still a long way to go now it would face it's toughest test yet against the battle-hardened Japanese pilots in the skies of the southwest Pacific [Music] with the death of Japan's leading Admiral America launched an all-out offensive against Japanese air power in the South Pacific the enemy's advance had been halted now the United States Army Air Force would fight back from bases on the eastern coast of New Guinea they would attack the fearsome aerodrums of Wewak and Rob all the swiftest and the most effective means of gaining control of the air was to bomb Japanese airfields to destroy as many planes on the ground as possible [Music] such daylight strikes could only be accomplished with a fighter escort and the only plane in the allied arsenal would arrange to escort the Bombers was the p38 for many of the pilots of the newly established 475th Fighter Group in New Guinea it would be their first taste of combat this was kind of stupid but at that age we were actually looking forward to getting into combat and utilizing the training that we had been working on for some time intelligence photos provided by p38 reconnaissance aircraft pinpointed the targets we had a fifth Air Force briefing where the command would get up and brief the desires and give us a plan and it was to send to b-25s in low with p38 cover and destroy the targets we flew a long distance over water before we hit a target we were probably 200 miles away from a target before we climb to altitude whenever our bombing altitude was we would pick up the fighters along the way they would estern in front of us before we got to the target typically the Japanese zeroes will hit you before you got to your target [Music] you may see 50 a hundred fighters warming up from below in every direction you know they're they're all climbing they headed for the Bombers that's what they want they kind of keep those bombers out of there and of course our job is to get in here and swarm with them and keep them off the Bombers and that's about what it looks like if you've ever seen a person getting hit by a swarm of bees that is what it looks like when you get incumbent because you got airplanes coming in from every direction your own your's enemies everybody anybody this had been an aerial combat and says well it doesn't bother them and they're not afraid our first-class liars all the time you're in a fight you're so full of adrenaline you need to know who you were because you're so concentrated in that cockpit and what's going on all the time your heads on a swivel for fear someone's going to get you it reminded me of being chased around the block by someone with a gun in his hand you're really not really interested at all this what caliber that damn gun is you're just running around that block just trying to get away and that's about the way combat was as the p-38s tangled with the fighters the Bombers leveled out on their bomb runs you're flying in formation over a target you can't very because you had six planes in a formation three and one formation and three lower you had to keep in your formation before you dropped your bombs so you couldn't veer off to the right of the left as you saw these bullets coming so you had to fly and watch these tracers hitting towards your plane flying at low level the b-25s dropped para fragmentation bombs each capable of tearing aircraft and personnel to pieces the b-24s thousand-pound bombs destroyed the runways depriving the Japanese of any opportunity to fly in replacements but it wasn't just the bombers who did the damage as you're out there what he's yelling at you take that spine each guy was trying to pick off a plane it was old and I got behind one the first time I fired those guns it about blew that plane right off the map of the world it just expect Lee exploded as it went over the top of me parts were flying all over the place when the p38 would fire all their machine guns may hit a Japanese zero that zero generally blew up in flames that was the end of it I was just amazed it just it just tore holds all the way up there and when I hit the wing rip the wings flew off the engine at all and of course he rolled over 20 that was close enough that I realized that that 20-millimeter in that nose what was so destructive throughout August 1943 pilots of the 475th Fighter Group flew hundreds of sorties - we were destroying 41 enemy aircraft for the loss of only three lightning the bombing campaign in the South Pacific allowed the invasion forces to capture enemy positions without fear of aerial attacks as the Japanese retreated the US Army Air Force advanced occupying the basis that they had so much lessly bombed it might take them there for days he had to cleaned out an area to where we could get in after we blown everything to pieces the engineers went in and laid down a runway that we could use they'd go in there and have a base cleaned out a strip put in and in a couple of weeks it was unreal there was a bull dozing off of aircraft that were laying all over the place and when we went into Atlanta man there were piles fifty feet high of Japanese aircraft that they just bulldoze into a pile everything was destroyed course we lived in tents everything was a tent I mean the mess hall was a tent your quarters were a tent your ops office was at 10:00 everything was rolled up and packed despite the difficult conditions there was no respite for the pilots operating from these forward bases the p38 squadrons were in the vanguard of the advance in the Pacific [Music] even with the experience of the pilots combat missions over enemy-held territory carried with them enormous risks you gotta be off your rocker to want to be a fighter pilot because it's like these little dodging cars you see in these carnivals all where people are chasing around these dodgems and they're bumping into each other only visualize yourself sitting on top of a 55-gallon drum of gasoline chasing it around and like dodgems and firing and send iary bullets at each other imagine what's going to happen you've got to be nuts there's two things the fighter pilot dreads the most losing an engine on takeoff when you got a full load maybe carrying a couple of 1000 pound bombs and the other one is every pilots nightmare is a mid-air collision I just happen to look off to my left and my god here's a p38 staring me in the face right there staring me in the face so I just shoved everything forward as I did I got hit it was like being hit by a Mack truck and the plane started flipping all over the sky doing all kind of crazy stuff so the first thing of course I try to do is get out of this airplane I've got the windows rolled down I'm gonna get out now I forgot he got the oxygen mask on I still got the earphones hooked on and the meantime the plane is flapping around not doing too well we were always told don't jump out because if we do and that crew stabilized their horizontal stabilizer back there hits you it'll break your neck or break your back and you're dead so the objective was to try to get out on a wing and slide down a wing so you'd slide underneath that stabilizer so I finally worked my way down get out of the wing Bal night went pull the ripcord bingo opens a chute and no sooner opened and Here Come two jet fighters after me they're coming in strafing tracer goes right by why they didn't hit me I don't know it in the treatment right on by me I got to reach out and grab them and I thought this is no good this is ridiculous the stand hearing that's a terrible feeling to hang in a chute and see somebody like that Kevin so I climbed a shroud lines to dump the chute which I did I dumped it got the hell out of there down I go next thing I know I'm almost on top of the tree so I let go of the chute again and thank God it opened cool she opened up again and just as she opened up a hit the trees I remember just trying to kick my legs up underneath me just as I did I hit the ground and busted the right knee which wasn't too Swift I was behind chap lines you know that I could hear the fighting going down if I D it's the Japanese in the South Pacific if you went down your chances of returning to base was almost nil they just didn't they just didn't get back over there defying the odds lieutenant Jake Jacob's survived and after 10 days in the jungle behind enemy lines was eventually picked up by a navy PBY Catalina [Music] by late summer 1943 the US had turned its attention to the mighty Japanese stronghold at Rabaul once again the p-38s were called in to escort the Bombers around the clock we knew that the Japs had a huge base at Rabaul and they used that based of either hit the Solomons or come down hit New Guinea and it was their Pearl Harbor actually of the south if we could knock out Rabaul why it would be a big step forward for several months the battle to level rabble raged earning the pilots of the 475th 62 enemy kills the growing success of the Lightning and its pilots was making headlines among those taking notice was the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh his interest in the aircraft would soon have an unexpected impact on its performance and on the war in the Pacific the p-38s formidable drive up through New Guinea had attracted the attention of Americans Lone Eagle Charles Augustus Lindbergh in 1927 Lindbergh solo transatlantic flight had delighted the world only months before America entered the war the famous aviator a firm isolationist had resigned his colonelcy in the Army Air Corps Reserve now eager to fly Lindbergh had sought reinstatement but Roosevelt's administration had refused in June 1944 without the knowledge of the White House Lindbergh visited the 475th Fighter Group he was curious to find out more about America's only twin-engine fighter an aircraft he had never flown he was a consultant to design a twin-engine fighter for the Navy and he was always asking questions what do you like about a twin-engine fighter what kind of armament do you like you know what range do you think at all what kind of combat ability he wanted to know all the answers almost immediately Lindberg discovered a crucial variable that would affect the performance of the p38 flying at the very limits of their range the p-38s needed to be airborne and in formation as quickly as possible with very small margins for error wasted fuel could claim lives [Music] we poured the coal on and started taking off on this mission then I get almost all the way around I look down there and there's an airplane on the runway blocking everybody blocking the runway forced the planes already in the air to circle overhead for several minutes wasting precious fuel and we are coming back in from that mission and most of us were sucking air from the bottom of our tanks as we came in and landing was very damn little fuel left they had a guy run out of fuel in the taxi ramp and I'm really upset and not being very smart I hadn't checked on there my little roster to see who it was I just said okay who's the blankety-blank you know that parked his aircraft on the runway and mr. Lindbergh stood up and I got past that I could if I could have gone to the floor I wouldn't despite his embarrassment major Warren Lewis made his point fuel was not to be wasted about two days later he come up to the tip and he says major loss he says could I come and talk with you and I said sure come on in and he said I figured out a way to save more fuel for you because of his transatlantic experience Lindbergh was no stranger to issues of fuel economy he persuaded the group's CEO Charles McDonald to let him address the pilots we met in a large tent with all the pilots and all our crew chief the ground everybody was there and Colonel Mack first talked to us and then Lindbergh spoke to us and told us just bluntly this is what he was going to have us do to increase our range he said we checked a tech order and we can cut the rpm down to 1,400 rpm and use 30 inches of mercury and probably save maybe fifty to a hundred gallons of fuel on a mission of course we are true chiefs and all our line Chiefs all heard this ah come on hit a wrecked the engine says burn the engines out this is a dumb thing to do but how are you going to tell a man like Lindbergh what's dumb what you think is good who you are you you're this big compared to Lindbergh but nevertheless that's way it came out and that's what happened there were some really bitter questions towards Lindbergh questioning his theories and Lindbergh finally shut everybody up by saying boys I am willing to fly with you under the conditions which I have outlined and it was as simple as that you can't fault somebody that is willing to go on the mission he's not telling you what to do and then won't go with you he was willing to prove the theories along with us Lindburgh was assigned a p38 in which to test his theory and he only flew that thing and he flew it in some mannerism that he was able to pull it back and do this he'd get much better mileage if you want to call it that we were getting and after the two weeks or so they hit tore the engines apart and amazed not a damn thing irrelevant we did it on the next mission and some guys had as much as 80 gallons Lord landing than we ever had so that's the kind of a man and mr. Lindbergh was he was always looking for ways to do things better and to make it easier for those who flew in just a few months the 470 fifths famous guest had single-handedly increased the range of the Lightning opening up new targets before the p38 have been limited to a 900 mile round journey now they could fly a staggering 1,800 we were good for six to six and a half hours with our average range prior to Lindbergh coming over here and after he had spent that three or four months with us our range was anywhere from 12 to 14 hours if we had to go that long Lindbergh a civilian observer had already taught the p38 pilots how to double their range but he was hungry for combat in July he got his chance flying unauthorized on a patrol with the 475th he shot down an enemy aircraft Lindbergh had his kill but in so doing had broken his strict observer status fearful that the high-profile civilian would be killed in combat a public relations disaster the government immediately recalled him Lindbergh's war was over but his contribution was not on October the 14th 1944 p-38s from the 475th flew an astonishing 1,800 miles to attack Balikpapan in borneo the hub of japan's oil production in the pacific the long-range attack made possible by Limburg settings standard the Japanese tipping the balance of power by if I had to name one person who contributed more to the war in the Pacific I can honestly say it was Charles Lindbergh a civilian because he showed our pilots how to shift the aircraft into overdrive so to speak now the p38 with its unrivaled range prepared for the final assault on the Philippines [Music] from September 1944 onwards the American advance in the Philippines focused on the very heart of Japanese air power in the region p38 using settings outlined by Lindbergh to become the first long-range fighters to penetrate Philippine airspace since the US withdrawal in 1942 now they would be deployed against lating lady was to be the anvil broke macarthur against which I hope to hammer the Japanese into submission having fought their way up through New Guinea the p38 pilots have become one of the most skilled fighting units of the war the zero gained a wonderful reputation at the beginning of the and that was partly our fault because we were using World War one tactics in other words we were dog fighting the idea of the so-called dog fight stuff that went on in World War one of one plate against the other plane was a no-no as far as we were concerned and the fellows that broke out of the squadron after a [ __ ] plane all by himself usually he caught royal hell when he we get back in the ground again because that was not the idea it was important that everybody knew that you weren't out to run up your own score you were out there work as a team and that's one of the things and one of the big reasons in my judgement in addition to superior equipment that we had over the Japanese was our tactics we tried to maintain 300 miles an hour and never tried to climb return with the [ __ ] airplane because they got out climbing out turning and so you just you went away from and then turn around and come back and took another shot and yeah that discouraged a hello you have a very high airspeed you made passes at them and they were always the hunted and we were the hunters in the Philippines major Thomas B McGuire scored the group's first kill of the campaign his twenty-fifth of the war making him the leading ace of the group he was such a great shot he didn't need any one side he just aimed the airplane shot people down and he was probably the best and - to miss the best pilot of ever food p38 tommy was driven by a fierce aggressive strong attitude toward being a world's greatest fighter pilot and he was going to make it no matter how he did it and he was a great fighter but this guy could shoot but leading the charge in the Philippines was the group's CEO major Charles McDonald every time we had the toughest mission coming up our first mission said to Rabaul who lettuce was Colonel Mack he wasn't a desk operator sitting back and saying you guys do this you guys take that machine-gun nest and that kind of stuff Colonel back lettuce when he first went in a we wanker curl back lettuce when he first went back the first missions we made the Philippines all the way from New Guinea who led us colonel back to us well he was a terrific leader that was one of his attributes he was a great planner and he was a great fighter pilot some people are just natural hunters you know and these were hunters of a bear craft in the autumn of 1944 the US Marines stormed ashore at Leyte as almost 20,000 US troops from the 6th army Tufted out to take and secure the heavily defended island air strips p-38s played a key role strafing troop barges in support of the ground operations in the Philippines the p38 would claim more than 200 kills bringing its total to approximately 550 [Music] with the help of the p38 US forces had systematically halted and then reversed the Japanese advance in the South Pacific we were at it every damn day keeping the Japs from going into Australia chasing them from Rabaul back and back and back and back and into the Philippines it was the Army Air Corps that was at it all the time without the p38 I don't think we'd have been as lucky to push the Japs back as fast as we did in fact it's probably surprising to all including General MacArthur how well the 38 cleaned the clock of the Japanese over there on December the 25th 1944 MacArthur fulfilled his promise and returned to the Philippines the p38 have proved it's worth in the Pacific America's ace of aces the highest-scoring army ace of the war with 40 kills to his name was dick bong a p38 pilot Tommy McGuire with 38 confirmed kills was second and major Charles McDonald with 27 ensured that the p-38 would have its place in history as the most deadly fighter of the war as final preparations were made for the invasion of the Japanese home islands the p-38s remained at the heart of the Allied stranglehold on Japan [Applause] but in August the US Army Air Force dropped its atomic bombs [Music] now p38 reconnaissance planes bore witness to the total destruction of the enemy who are up about 18,000 feet and we could see it for probably 810 miles before got there and it was very interesting because we had done a lot of bomb damage assessment where normally you can tell the type of bombs were used it was sort of like wow that must have been one hell football and it was something that left enough of an impact that it's forever burned in my memory the awesome power unleashed by the US had ended Japan's resistance World War two was over during its four years of combat the Lightning had grown from an undesirable contender into a reliable champion in just two years no less than 41 p38 aces had been created and the aircraft itself had destroyed more Japanese planes than any other u.s. fighter I think 38 was responsible for winning the war in the Pacific almost to me that's you know big statement but he had an awful lot to do not only was it a good fighter it was a good eye bomber and they also had the f4 and the f5 which were the photo versions there was a wonderful aircraft as I like to say saved my butt down there in the World War two the three leading aces and in the theater through p38 and that feels strongly that the p38 the good Lord put that airplane over there it was perfect for that mission [Music] we're talking about flying over water and flying over jungle and what happens to you when you go down well I went down once he was on December the 18th 1943 a very dismal day for me and aha I spot a [ __ ] going by and I'm peeling into the behind him and I think I'm going to get this character he's got goner and as I looked back to see if my guys are there Pete and all of them they're all back there I just happened to look off to my left and my god here's a p38 staring me in the face right there it's staring me in the face so I just shoved everything forward as I did I got hit it was like being hit by a Mack truck oh I went pulled the ripcord and bingo opens a chute this is a chute I thought I'd carried with me from Tallahassee Florida when he refers to sign the chute brought it with us overseas carrying different squatters took your chute with you there buddy when this thing open it says US Navy you know where the hell that US Navy shoot came for him I do not know but that's what it said and no sooner opened and Here Come two [ __ ] fighters after me they're in formation the two of them they're coming in strafing tracer goes right by why they didn't hit me I don't know it in the two of them went right on by me I got to reach out and grab them and I thought this is no good this is ridiculous to stand here that's a terrible feeling be hanging a shooting seeing somebody like that Kevin so I climbed the shroud lines to dump the chute which I did I dumped it got the hell out of there but I didn't pay attention to where I was and by the way when I got out of that plane I remember glancing at the altimeter and I can't to this day know whether I jumped at 19,000 or 9,000 I don't know what the l a-- altitude was however when I hang on to the shroud lines all the shoot-down I go next day I know I'm almost on top of the tree so I let go of the chute again and thank got it open cool she opened up again and just as she opened up I hit the trees and again thank goodness I didn't the center a tree I hid where I went through the branches and all the tree and those trees over there and those jungle rainforests have lots of foliage up in the top but after you go through that initial foliage you're got a drop of about a hundred feet 150 feet to the ground so I went right through and the chute didn't snag or anything I went right on straight through but I was falling face forward into the ground I remember just trying to kick my legs up underneath me just said I did I hit the ground and busted the right knee which wasn't too Swift so from then on for the next I was in there for ten days I they calculated that it must have been in about fifty miles inland from the ocean and when I landed and got straightened around and they tore some chute out of the silk out of the chute stuffed in my pocket and all took the jungle pack we carried a chute we had jungle pack in our chute in which we had medicine she was Shetty gloves and without machete gloves and a compass I'd still be there somewhere and I remember taking a bit of the shroud line and tie it around my neck and the compass was like a little watch thing tied so they'd have a compass with me who wouldn't lose the compass and then I started to walk away after I tried to cover up the shoot with leaves and stuff to so-called bury it I was behind chap lines you know that I could hear the fighting going on and I started down a stream I thought I'll walk down this little stream that'll throw them of where I am as soon as I start walking on the stream I see all this yellow stuff where we carried these yellow tablets in these damn bearish shoes that if we went down the ocean we could break these things in it so that yellow stuff wasn't such a smart idea I somehow covered that all up again and continued on that night that first night I remember I was in water probably up to my knees I was in a sago a swamp and I cut down all kind of branches all to make a big fat bed they could lie on you have never seen mosquitoes until you've lived in New Guinea or New Britain I was in New Britain now I'm a I'm 150 miles away from dole birdurer where we took off over him to New Britain and the question is how is he ever going to get home well to make a long story short and I've got to her we'll be here all day long it took me ten days to finally before I was picked up and during that 10 days I chopped my way through many areas of that jungle without gloves machete and that compass that had never made it you'd start through you'd looked at the Kuppa said it I knew where I had to go I had made up my mind incidentally that I wasn't going to Rabaul that way which was the recommended way to go back that way because allegedly there would be Aussie Scouts or maybe natives would help you and occasionally they had guys go that way and they picked him up at night in a submarine brought them back at night and I thought no no I'm not gonna do that because I knew I had known that the Marines were gonna land on Christmas Day at Cape Gloucester and this is the 18th of December so I thought oh that noise I'll work my way toward Gloucester behind the [ __ ] lines and when they get up there and the fighting is all I'll bury myself in some way and when they Marines push the Japs by I'll come back up again this is my thinking and that's the way I was headed I remember one day I tried to get across a river and I had a balsa logged about 18 inches in diameter and so long it was my buddy I was using to walk along the river I'm now I'm watered up this so deep still just got out of the seco swaps and all I tried to swim across a little creek once to get the shore line but I had these Aussie flying boots on and once again the Lord was good to me because most guys have wore Aussie flying boots there are fur-lined boots when they jumped and that shared they shoot snapped caught the boots kept going so you ended up in the jungle with no shoes at all but thank God mine stayed on but I tried to swim with them on and there Sookie wet and full of water and stuff it didn't work I damn near drowned trying to swim so I gave that up I had to get across this Broad River nice to this state don't know the name of the river but I spent all day long a straddle this big well slog paddling across this river hoping the Japs going by couldn't spot me because occasionally Japs go by in a boat or Japanese planes to the air if they spotted me I was a goner or maybe crocodiles I had no idea but again you're young you're dumb and nothing can happen to you so onward you go I never thought I had also when I left the shoot I had two chocolate bars that I kept and I had it wrapped up and some more of this shroud I mean parachute stuff and tucked in and when these pant pockets in the flying suit after I was out the day that first night I had two little chocolate chunks the next day something happened where I fell off of a cliff how you fall off a cliff when you're in swamp I don't know but I did and when I fell off the cliff I lost this stuff that I had all the medicine in this piece of the parachute chocolate bars and I couldn't find it he was gone so from then on I'm on my own in the meantime since I was back in this far I had decided I better save water knowing I was going to head for the ocean so I chopped holes and in they may West front and back two layers and filled it with water back there before it was all brackish and salty so I had a water supply which is another reason I couldn't swim without a Mae West the bay west was useless for that purpose anyway I made it across this river and started down toward the ocean all kind of things happened while I was in there I tried fishing that was a waste of time we had little fishing kit in this so-called jungle pac i also tried shooting fish with a 45 that's a waste of time - in fact that 45 is a better weapon if you throw it at somebody than if you shoot somebody with it because i tried to shoot parrots no way i'd wedge it to trees and aim at a parent after a while the gun was so wet from being in a swamp at all time every time I fired it everything was locked up in the back and I have to sit down and take that day gonna part say yeah jungle Oh another thing comes up that first night in the jungle sitting on top of my bed mosquitos oh my god I still had my helmet but I taken the earphones out so the mosquitos are coming in this way so I put leaves and stuff in here to keep the mosquitoes from getting into biting me I took a piece that parachute and put it over the top my head then I put the helmet on took the chute in around my flying suit had the gloves that these slits and this flying suit pockets I had my arms down there to try to keep them out billions of them in fact for quite a few years after that I had scars from here to here I was read from mosquito bites if there was just raw from mosquito bites from the 10 days in there so anyway we're back to where we just crossed the river worked away way down in the next day now I'm in mangrove swamps mangroves are terrible to walk in those things if you ever seen him it grows so have the stuff grows up and all over the place and trying to walk with a knee that's no good many times that he'd really go out of joint and I have to sit out on the ground and get up against a coconut tree and with get my leg up put up against corrosion with my other foot hold onto it push it against the tree and grab my leg and like so to pull it back into joint snap it back into joint nobody's feeling sorry for you when all this happens you're on your own you're not putting on an act for anybody I also made a promise to myself don't talk because somebody told me once they would you're all alone like that if you started talking he'll drive yourself crazy so I never said a word all this time I wasn't I never said a word to my son or anything about one day after I made the cross river and I'm paddling along outside of the mangrove swamp hanging you over into the ocean coming back to the ocean friend go into little Cove and there's a little dock in there and there's a outrigger wired to the dock with a copper wire you knew damn well is Japanese in fact I knew it because the Japs would go by and went outside my log I'd have to hide underneath the mangrove stuff while the Japs went by and I'd come back how to get and blah blah blah so I took to outrigger and I started paddling it around I had a long stick as my paddle and said goodbye to my balsa buddy and carried on along headed down to her Gloucester that first night I slept on the flat spot of this outrigger and the first time I didn't have to sleep in the trees I've been sleeping in the trees or in the swamp however the next morning I hear noise I think oh my god those b25 streamers these guys came down the shorelines every day I'm just about dawn every day when we were over there they shot up anything it was in the front into anything sugar Charlie's native votes anything else just blast of all these b25 said anywhere from eight to twelve fifties mount another front wing some cannons and everything else that they're going to get me what am I going to do and I heard them coming in coming in coming and just as they came with the closest that I knew I was gonna be a trouble I don't win down as deep deep deep as I could possibly swim and I heard them going on I could hear the goddamn bullets stuff hitting the water and all sounded like hell wild and finally I came back up again they were gone and they had shot the whole deck and hurling off of this outrigger good thing I did what I did and I carried on and one more day comes up and I think to myself by then now by now I've run out of water and a bit like rinsing my water my mouth out of salt water for about a day or two I thought today if I don't get picked up I've got to go back inside I've got to get something to eat and I've got to get water I thought I've got a good off this thing and we're back into the jungle again if I don't pick get picked up today hell I am thinking this way I hear a plane coming up behind me I think oh my god so I went again trying to this outrigger underneath the mangrove and all that as I wait that's not a [ __ ] plane and I look back in a sec Catalina flying boat and these guys as he approached I'm I had taken all my clothes off because I was been soaking wet for days I look like a big chunk of cottage cheese is what it looked like so I'm out there trying to get dry and I got my flying suit off the Mae West's off and all that kind stuff and when they fly over and these guys in the Catalina are waving at me out of the blisters those big glass blisters ahead of them they're waving I mean I grabbed him a whist and shook it out and thinking they'll know it's a pilot with the dam they won't think I'm a native so the plane I see the plane go on and I'm off in the distance and it turns inland I thought fine they're gonna come and get me so I started paddling away from shore with a stick you know paddle paddle paddle to go think you they're gonna land out there and pick me up I get out so far and I can't see them I don't hear them anymore and I think wait a minute there's an offshore wind and it starts to move me offshore and I thought this is no good if I end up in the ocean so I paddle again I'm paddling back madly paddling back to get back to shore and just about the time I get back to shore I hear engines again and I look around and here's this Catalina it's landed out there somewhere and his taxiing toward me and they got the guy standing on each wingtip directing the pilot through the coral reefs he doesn't crack up the cat coming through the car or so once again I turn around and paddle paddle paddle out I go and they get me you

Channel: WAR - HISTORY - DOCUMENTARIES

Views: 1,976,799

Rating: 4.7816873 out of 5

Keywords: History of wars, world war, documentry, battleship, wwII warships, war history, Battlefield, whd, P 38 Lightning Strikes, p 38 lightning, The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, The Lockheed P-38, us bomber, ww2 planes, ww2 us plane, war planes, P-38, p 38 lightning vs zero, p 38 war thunder, battle stations, ww2, world history, whd channel

Id: LkrlGdjj8L4

Length: 61min 51sec (3711 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2017