The content details the extraordinary life of Charles Carpenter, a history teacher who became "Bazooka Charlie," a legendary World War II pilot who ingeniously armed his L4 Grasshopper aircraft with bazookas to combat German tanks, significantly impacting key battles.
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Gan Razac from Starship Troopers. One of
my favorite characters in cinematic
history. The history and philosophy
teacher that goes into combat when war
starts and leads his former students.
Well, I found the real life version and
it's even cooler than the movie.
Today, we're talking about Charles
Carpenter. The Germans referred to him
as the Mad Major, while his men knew him
as Bazooka Charlie, a 29-year-old
history teacher from Molen, Illinois,
who would join the United States Army
Airore after Pearl Harbor was attacked
and his younger brother, who was a
fighter pilot in the Philippines, was
captured by the Japanese. Through a
series of events, he would become one of
the United States Army's first liaison
pilots, a new experimental program where
these men were tasked with flying the L4
Grasshopper. Basically, a glorified crop
duster with fabric wings and what
amounts to a lawnmower blade sticking
out of the front. They would fly out
over the battlefield and use their
altitude to spot enemy positions and
call in accurate artillery fire. While
this job was extremely valuable,
dangerous, and did have a humongous
impact on the battlefield, it didn't
have the direct impact that Charles
Carpenter wanted. So Carpenter decided
he was going to mount six bazookas on
the wings of his crop duster and begin
flying combat sordies, quite literally
divebombing German tanks. He would later
perfect this technique and use it to
sway the entire battle of Araore, which
is the largest tank battle on the
Western Front in all of World War II.
And we're going to get into everything
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video.
Our story begins August 29th, 1912.
Charles Carpenter is born. He is the
oldest of six kids. He has two brothers
and three sisters. He grows up in
Illinois. And like pretty much every
other World War II hero we talk about,
he grows up dirt poor. You guys know the
drill. Unfortunately, the young
Charles's dad was not that great of a
guy. He had an alcohol problem. He had a
gambling problem. And we don't really
know how old Charles was when this
happened. But in his childhood, his dad
would end up losing their 1,000 acre
farm in a gambling game. And he would
walk out of their lives forever,
abandoning his family, his wife, and all
six kids. Now, something like that
happening would absolutely destroy most
people. But Charles Carpenter is the
main character. And without a positive
male role model in his life, he turns to
books. He turns to literature and reads
all the great books he can find. And
that becomes his positive male role
model. That's how he learns how to be a
man. And it works. He's super
hardworking. He's very intelligent. Does
great in school. And he's a three sport
athlete playing football, basketball,
and track. Quote, "My creed. I have
resolved to exert all of my efforts
towards being a nobler and stronger
fellow, a gentleman, a scholar, a
friend, and a real man. To the best of
my ability, I will ever strive for
self-control, self-improvement, freedom,
wisdom, courage, generosity, truth, and
the true nobility before God and men. I
will be better." Charles Carpenter.
Okay. He wrote that at 17 years old
after his dad had lost everything and
abandoned him and his family. Okay, the
dude knew he was the main character all
along. For high school, he gets a full
ride scholarship to Roosevelt Military
Academy. And then after that, he gets a
full ride scholarship to Center College
in Kentucky, both for football and
track. While he's there, he joins the
Civilian Training Corps, which is kind
of like an old version of ROC, where you
get to become a military officer when
you do classes during college.
Basically, he has to go off to two weeks
of training every summer, all four years
of college. And then once he graduates
from college and finishes a program,
he's offered the spot as a second
lieutenant in the Army reserves as a
pilot. So that's what he does. He goes
off to college, studies history, studies
philosophy, decides he wants to be a
history teacher. He wants to be able to
go into a classroom full of kids and
find the kids that are like him and be
their strong male role model that he
never had. And that's what he does for
years. And when he's not teaching
history, he's a flight instructor. But
being the history guy, he can also kind
of see the future because history is the
best predictor of the future. and he
sees all the tensions and everything
rising in Europe. And in his personal
journal in the 1930s, he would write,
and I quote, "Life is far cruer than
death, and nations are feverishly
preparing to slaughter again." So, he
knew that World War II was coming,
probably a lot sooner than most other
people did, but he's one man. He's a
history teacher in Moly, Illinois. What
can he do? So, he just keeps living his
life. If he keeps teaching history in
the day, he keeps teaching pilots at
night. And then on the weekends, he
would go to the next town over to go to
the dance hall to try to find a wife, a
big dance hall called the Coliseum. One
night at the Coliseum, he picks a lovely
young lady out of the crowd. Elda, also
known as Bunny, asked her to dance. They
dance all night. They have a great time.
She's aruck that this perfect 10 of a
man, he's got a job, he's athletic, he's
handsome, is hitting on her. And at the
end of the night, he asks her, "Hey,
could I take you out on a real date?"
And she wasn't very confident. and she
panics and she's like, "Um, uh, I
actually I have a I have a date with my
girlfriend scheduled for that night
already." So, Charles Carpenter is like,
"Oh, okay. I I guess." And and that was
the end of it. Bunny spends the next
weeks and months just kicking herself in
her own ass for shooting down this
perfect tent of a man. And then
eventually after a couple of months,
they run into each other at the coliseum
again. They dance all night, have a
great time, and Charles Carpenter shoots
his shot again. They go out on a date
and three months later, they were
married. According to Bunny, and I
quote, "We were so in love, we couldn't
eat." Fast forward, Charles Carpenter is
living the American dream. Despite his
rough childhood, he's college educated.
He's a high school history teacher
living his dream job. He's happily
married. His wife is pregnant with their
first child. And then in 1941, Japan
attacks Pearl Harbor. And at essentially
the same time, they also attack the
Philippines where his brother, the
fighter pilot, is currently stationed.
And they destroy his brother's plane in
the opening attack. His brother's now a
P. All of his former students are
getting drafted and going off to war.
And he could probably get away from the
draft. Being at home as a teacher is an
important job. He could probably get an
exemption. But that's not the man that
Charles Carpenter is. So he volunteers
to go off and joins the military, too,
at 29 years old. Now, because Carpenter
is already college educated, he's
already an Army officer. He's already a
flight instructor. The Army determines
they're not going to send him off into
combat. They're going to send him to
Miami where he's going to be an
instructor and teach other people how to
be officers and how to fly planes. And
while that might be a dream job to most
people, being able to stay states side,
healthy, happy, it's not really what
Carpenter wanted, but that's what the
army told him to do. So, he's going to
do it to the best of his ability. So, in
early 1942, he gets in his car in
Illinois and drives all the way to
Miami, and the road trip there is
absolutely crazy. Pearl Harbor just
happened, and they're already rationing
gasoline. They're rationing rubber for
tires. They're rationing absolutely
everything. At one point, Charles picks
up a hitchhiker and that hitchhiker
explains to him that he's a merchant
marine and his ship had been sunk by a
German yubot and he's trying to make his
way home to his parents because his
parents think that he's dead. And the
entire thing is just surreal to him
because he's read and studied so much
history and he realizes during this road
trip that he's now living through history.
history.
So he gets to Miami, starts doing his
job and it's just it's not his thing. I
mean, he's good at it. He can train
people how to do stuff. He's a teacher.
He knows how to teach. He knows what
he's talking about. But he just feels
wrong about the fact that he's teaching
somebody how to go off and fight a war
when he's never gone off and fought a
war himself. So, he decides that's what
he needs to do. The problem is is he's
too valuable where he's at. They're not
going to let him just change his orders
and go join a normal aviation unit and
abandon this teaching job because he's
the best man for that job. The only way
he's going to get out of these teaching
orders is if he volunteers for something
so dangerous that it's a volunteeronly
basis. And he does exactly that. He
volunteers to be a glider pilot. Okay,
what is a glider? They were used on
D-Day. They're a really big deal. Not a
lot of people have heard about them.
It's basically a giant kite that's
shaped like a plane. K, I know what
you're thinking. Why on earth wouldn't
you just, I don't know, fly another
plane into combat? Why are you going to
tow a planed kite behind you? Well, you
got to remember it's World War II. Raw
materials are scarce. They're rationing
everything. We can't make planes fast
enough. We need more planes. More planes
isn't an option. So, this is the next
best thing to make a giant kit-shaped
plane and tow it behind a C-47 into
combat and then cut the ropes and
they're going to glide into the
battlefield and have a controlled crash
landing. And I think we can all agree,
pretty crazy proposition for a military
job. So, obviously not a ton of
volunteers. So, when Charles Carpenter
does volunteer, he gets accepted pretty
much immediately. He gets shipped off
into the glider training pipeline.
First, they send him to Tennessee, then
they send him to Arkansas, then they
send him to South Carolina. He's
literally flying a giant kite. They're
cutting the ropes and he's practicing
his crash landings over and over and
over again. And this goes on for months
and months and months. And you got to
remember Charles Carpenter is a
historian. He's always thinking the big
picture. He's always known that these
gliders were a bandage fix. They were
just something that had to be done. They
were not the ideal scenario. On top of
that, they also have a very specific
niche application of when and if these
are ever going to be used. So, he kind
of starts to feel like maybe he's
wasting his time because the longer this
goes on, the more planes America is
building and maybe they're not going to
have to use these gliders at all and
maybe he's just wasting his time. And
then one day on the bulletin board,
there's another list for volunteers for
a different crazy flight program called
a liaison pilot. Now, conceptually, this
job is nothing new. It's basically
recon. It's just get up really high, be
able to spot the enemy, report what the
enemy is doing back to your chain of
command. Back in the day, you'd send
scouts up on the high ground. Back in
World War I, you had hot air balloons.
And now in World War II, they're going
to have liaison pilots. Why is that
dangerous? Because they're flying an L4
Grasshopper, okay? Which is literally
just a J3 Piper Cub, which is like the
most mass- prodduced trainer plane at
this point in time. Like, if you were a
pilot, you first learned how to fly a
plane on a J3 Piper Cub. It's literally
the Model T of airplanes. It's got
fabric wings, like an 80 horsepower
engine, and its top speed is like 85
mph. It's basically a paperier-mâché
plane with a lawn mower blade sticking
out of the front. And not only is it
slow, it has no offensive or defensive
capabilities. It can't engage the enemy
and it can't defend itself when it gets
engaged. So, literally, you're just
going up in the air getting eyes on the
enemy and hoping they decide not to
shoot at you. And the reason the army
wants to use this feeble aircraft is
because it's super easy to fly on and
you can land it in a random field. You
don't need a runway and you can take off
and land in like 300 ft, which is
actually where it got the name the L4
Grasshopper because it's literally just
a J3 Piper Cub, but the army's got to
give it a different name. And when the
J3 Piper Cub was going through military
testing, they were landing it in random
fields and this green little plane would
hit the ground and skip and skid to a
halt. And one of the generals said, "It
looks like a damn grasshopper." And
that's how it got the name, the L4
Grasshopper. So these liaison pilots are
going to be operating like a mile behind
the front line, taking off from a random
field, loitering over the battlefield
for hours, calling in artillery, and
reporting back enemy troop movements to
their chain of command. Basically,
liaison pilots in the L4 Grasshopper is
the world's first version of a recon
drone, except for, you know, the whole
point of a drone is you can go do
dangerous [ __ ] and not put your men in
harm's way, but that's not really an
option here. And Charles Carpenter is
like, "Sounds great. Whatever gets me
into the battle, sign me up." And I mean
to be fair, he had already volunteered
to crash land a giant kite with no
engine. So now he's flying what amounts
to a kite with an engine, so I guess it
is an upgrade. From here, he gets
shipped off to Texas to learn how to fly
the L4 Grasshopper, which he already
knows how to do because he's been a
pilot instructor forever. Passes that
with flying colors. Then they send him
off to Fort Sill, home of the artillery,
where he gets to learn how to call in
artillery while he's inside of his
plane. Okay, time out cuz I need you
guys to understand how insane this job
is. I don't want you to think I'm
pumping up flying a crop duster like
it's some incredible job cuz I know it's
not as glamorous or as glorious as being
a fighter pilot. This job is [ __ ]
nuts. Ka, he's alone almost always. The
plane literally isn't big enough to
carry two people in it and be fast
enough to not get shot at. So, he is
alone inside of a plane. Inside of the
plane, it is his job while 2,000 ft
above the ground, traveling 85 mph in a
noisy ass cockpit being propelled by a
lawnmower blade to be able to look down,
spot the enemy, and call in artillery.
Okay. And you're thinking like, oh, you
just pick up the phone and say, "Send
the artillery." No, he has to be able to
figure out while moving in one direction
where the enemy is on the grid, like get
their coordinates and then call that in
in relation to him as he's moving. And
the enem is also potentially moving as
well. And he's trying to do math and
trajectory problems while flying a
[ __ ] plane. The entire job is
literally fly a plane, hope to god you
don't get shot down, and while you're
flying the plane, have the world's
shittiest math quiz, and if you fail,
you or your buddies die. So, is being a
liazison pilot as glamorous as being a
fighter pilot? No, absolutely not. But I
would argue that they have way bigger
balls. I mean, as an outsider looking
in, which job would you rather have?
Option A, you could be a fighter pilot.
basically take up what amounts to a hot
rod covered in machine guns and zip
around the battlefield shooting at the
enemy. Or B, you could take up your
grandpa's crop duster traveling at the
speed of smell with no weapons to fire
at the enemy or defend yourself. And the
entire time that you're loitering over
the battlefield, hoping you don't get
shot down, you're doing Sedoku puzzles
with life or death consequences for you
and your buddies. Okay, if you're not
picking up what I'm putting down, I'm
trying to articulate to you that liaison
pilots are highly underrated. These are
quite literally iron men flying paper
planes. Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked.
Charles Carpenter completes his
training, gets his L- wings, officially
becoming a liazison pilot. From here, he
gets assigned to the fourth armored
division in Patton's third army. So, he
goes out with the fourth armor division.
They're training out in the deserts of
California getting ready to go into
theater. And very quickly, he becomes
the top liazison pilot in the entire
fourth armored division. He is
essentially now the man in charge of all
the other liaison pilots. Both because
he's extremely capable, but also because
he's like in his early 30s at this point
in time. He's an older dude by
standards. He's more mature. He's a
teacher. He's college educated. He's
just the right guy for the job. Because
of this, he essentially becomes the
personal pilot for the general of the
fourth armor division, John Shirley
Wood. A man who's described as being
broad in the shoulders and even broader
in the waist. And remember, the L4
Grasshopper not really meant to have two
people inside of it. And the general is
a big boy. Charles Carpenter also a
pretty big guy. They are way overweight
when he's flying this general around.
So, not only does he get used to flying
a overumbered L4 grasshopper, but he
also ends up becoming really good
friends with the general again because
he's one of the only older guys around.
Everybody else is a 19-year-old kid.
He's super well read. The general's
probably super well read. They become
homies. And both of these things are
going to save his ass later on.
Early 1944, Charles Carpenter and the
rest of the Fourth Armor Division head
off to Great Britain. They're training
there. They're getting ready. That goes
on for a couple of months. D-Day happens
in June of 1944. And by July of 1944,
Charles Carpenter and the rest of the
Fourth Armor Division go into France.
Right out of the gate, he's doing his
job exactly how he's supposed to. He's
going up. He's doing recon. He's calling
in artillery. He's being the personal
pilot for the general whenever he needs
it. And this goes on for a couple of
weeks. And the entire time, every
mission, it just it starts to eat at him
more and more. He feels like he's not
doing enough. He's not going out there
and confronting the enemy. He's just
loitering above the battlefield. He's
he's just he's cutting himself and his
contribution short. And then he gets his
chance to confront the enemy in person
on August 1st, 1944 outside of a French
town known as Avranch. I want to be
clear, we don't know the exact context
of how this unfolded, but we do know
that he was in a jeep by himself
conducting forward reconnaissance
looking for an empty field to land his
plane and all the other L4 Grasshoppers.
Now, the fact that he's going out by
himself in a jeep to look for a place to
land his grasshoppers closer to the
front line tells me that he's probably
been up in the sky conducting
reconnaissance and come to the
conclusion that there's no Germans in
the area, so they're going to move
forward. That's just where my head is at
and probably his, too. While he's in his
jeep looking for a new operational base
for all of his L4 grasshoppers, he comes
up on a bunch of American tanks and
American infantry and they are in a
firefight with the Germans. So, he hops
out of the jeep, runs up to some of the
infantry, asks what's going on. They're
telling him there's a ton of Germans in
the area. They're pinned down. They
can't punch through into this town. And
this is where I'm inferring something.
I'm assuming he knows that that's
[ __ ] That's not a possibility. He's
probably been up in the air conducting
recon for days. He knows that there's no
massive German element here. So, he
thinks that this is just some kind of
German trick or some last stand. But
what we know for sure is that he then
proceeds to run up to the nearest
Sherman tank whose commander isn't there
for one reason or another. hops in the
turret with the 50 cal and yells down to
the crew, "Let's go. He's an officer.
They're lower enlisted." They listen to
him. They drive straight into the
Germans, firing the 75mm cannon on this
Sherman with the other tanks and
infantry following behind him. And they
start clearing the town block by block.
And every time they round a corner, he
yells down to the crew, "Let it go." And
they fire another round, forcing the
Germans to retreat further, block after
block, slowly clearing this entire town.
As they round the last corner on the
last block in this town, they're about
to take the entire thing. Through the
smoke and chaos of the battle, he sees a
tank and he yells down to the crew, "Let
it go." And as soon as the words leave
his mouth, he sees through the smoke
that it's another Sherman tank. He has
the gut-wrenching, "Oh shit!" moment as
time slows down and before he can say a
word, the gun fires. And he watches in
slow motion as his tank fires on another
American Sherman tank that's got a
bulldozer blade attached to the front of
it. And thank God the shell only hits
the bulldozer blade, blows it off the
tank, and nobody's hurt.
>> Guess what? What?
[ __ ] you.
[ __ ] you.
>> So, that's great news. Nobody got hurt.
Also great news, he just helped break
through the German lines by leading this
massive offensive into a French town.
Bad news, the other tank commander, who
just got his bulldozer blade shot off
crawls out of his tank and starts
walking over to Carpenters's tank,
rightfully furious. and pissed off. And
when he gets there, he's expecting to
chew out, I don't know, another tank
commander. And what he finds is a
liaison pilot that's not even in this
unit that's not supposed to be there
that just commanded one of his tanks to
shoot at his tank.
>> It's only my third day out here. I don't know.
know.
>> So, he goes from being furious to
absolutely mega pissed. And to be fair,
he's kind of justified. He immediately
orders Charles Carpenter get arrested
and says that he's going to do
everything he can to make sure he faces
a firing squad for fratricside.
What the?
>> Luckily, his homie, General Shirley
Wood, finds out that his pilot and buddy
has been arrested. He goes, springs him
out of jail, but it's the wrong chain of
command, and he doesn't have enough sway
to be able to get rid of the potential
court marshal that Charles Carpenter is
now facing. So, at the very least, he's
not going to be facing the firing squad,
but he's still potentially looking at
getting dishonorably discharged from the
military. So, General Shirley Wood takes
the case to the next tier hire, somebody
that can resolve this issue, his buddy
from West Point, General Patton.
Nobody's closer.
>> General Patton hears about what
happened. He says something along the
lines of, and I quote, "That's the type
of fighting man I want in my army." And
gets rid of the court marshal and wipes
his slate clean altogether. Now, that
part we know happened for sure, but I
also believe that this is the point
where Charles Carpenter was not only
given a second chance, but I believe
Patton also gave him the Bronze Star
with Vice and promoted him to major at
this point as well.
>> See, now that's some [ __ ]
Unfortunately, I can't present that to
you as a 100% fact because I cannot find
any of his medal citations or promotions
anywhere in the National Archives. I'm
assuming he's in that 80% majority that
lost all their personnel records in the
fire in 1973. But I believe at this
point Patton did award him the Bronze
Star with Vice and promote him to major,
which is absolutely on brand for General Patton.
Patton.
All right, so had a little oopsies.
Everything worked out all right. He's
back in the saddle. He's not in trouble.
He's going out on missions. Everything's
back to normal. And then there's a rumor
going around in the liaison pilot
community that apparently somebody
somewhere on the Western Front mounted a
bazooka onto the wing of their L4
Grasshopper, fired it, and the plane
didn't blow up. It didn't catch the wing
on fire. It worked out. Okay, now bear
in mind this is a rumor. This is 15°
removed. Some guy told another guy told
another guy that apparently this
happened. But when Charles Carpenter
hears that it happened, he's like, "I'm
[ __ ] doing it." So he goes to his
chain of command, asks permission, is
like, "Hey, I heard this was possible. I
want to give it a try. His chain of
command being cool as [ __ ] is like,
look, I'm not saying you're allowed to
do that. I'm also not saying that if you
did, I'm going to stop you. Which he
takes as the green light. And he does
it. Okay, bear in mind this is a rumor.
He heard from a guy who heard from a guy
that this is theoretically possible. And
he's going to go out there and actually
figure out how to do it. There's no
YouTube tutorial. There's no how-to.
There's no pictures of how it was done.
He's just going to go out there and
figure out how to mount a bazooka onto
his plane. Which, to be fair, doesn't
sound like it would be that complicated
until you actually start to think about
the fact that this is borderline
approaching rocket science, right? I
mean, you can't just be strapping big,
heavy metal tubes onto the wings of
aircrafts and expect it to not interfere
with, I don't know, aerodynamics, weight
distribution, all the [ __ ] that goes
into, I don't know, keeping a plane in
the [ __ ] sky.
>> That's simply not possible.
>> Why isn't it possible?
>> It's just not. Why not, you stupid bastard?
bastard?
>> And if you don't believe me, go make a
paper airplane, throw it across the
room, watch it go, and then pick it up,
strap some weights to each wing, and
throw it again and see how different it flies.
flies.
>> Oh. Oh, man. It slipped out of my hand.
What a whiff.
>> Regardless, he's a smart guy. He figures
it out. You can't literally mount the
bazooka on the wing because they're
fabric wings. So he mounts it on the
wing strut and then he mounts it so that
the actual weight of the bazooka with
the shell is behind the rear tires and
behind the pilot because the center of
gravity on these Piper Cub planes is
actually behind the pilot already. So
he's using his own body weight to
counteract the weight of these bazookas.
>> Yes, science.
>> So he ends up mounting one bazooka on
each side of the plane. Does a test run.
It flies. Okay. Then he runs electrical
wires into the cockpit on a panel where
he can fire each bazooka individually or
both at once. goes up on a test run,
fires the bazookas, doesn't light the
wings on fire, doesn't blow them out of
the sky. He's actually able to semi
accurately shoot these bazookas. He
lands and it's like the holy [ __ ] that
actually worked. At which point, he has
a wonderful idea. You know what's better
than two bazookas? Double it. That's
right, four bazookas. So, he mounts four
bazookas on his plane. Goes up, does a
test run, it works, comes back down,
lands. You know what's better than four
bazookas? Six bazookas. goes up, does a
test run, it works again, comes back
down and lands. You know what's better
than six bazookas on an L4 Grasshopper.
>> Here I come.
>> An L4 grasshopper with six bazookas and
a dopeass paint job where he names his
plane Rosie the Rocketer after Rosie the
Riveter. From here, he takes his Grunts
and Crafts project into combat. From
here, things get a little bit fuzzy
because again, a lot of the
documentation was probably lost in a
fire in 1973. And there probably wasn't
a lot of great documentation taken at
the time to begin with because again,
he's a one-man show. If there's not a
witness to verify whatever he said
happened, they can't really prove it.
They can't officially say that it
happened. But what we do know is outside
of Sens France, there was some German
tanks and some German armored cars that
were now apparently on fire and blown
up. We don't know if they were from his
bazookas or from him calling in
artillery or a combination of the two. I
like to think it was a combination of
the two. So Charles Carpenter after
presumably destroying a German convoy by
himself and or with the help of
artillery decides, you know what, I'm
going to go land my plane in a field
next to this burning convoy and inspect
it and see what happened. I want to see
how good these pazookas are performing.
So that's what he does. lands his plane
in the field, grabs a gun, goes out
there to inspect it, finds six surviving
Germans, and takes all six of them as
prisoner, and then proceeds to put
bullets in the engine blocks of all the
remaining vehicles that weren't burning
yet. Okay? Do you understand how
ridiculous and gangster this is from the
German perspective? Okay? Because at
this point in time, the German ideology
was if you see an American spotter
plane, if you see a grasshopper up in
the sky, they don't have guns. They
can't really hurt us. They can just call
in artillery and have that rain down on
our head. So, the strategy for them at
the time was if you see it, hide from
it. Don't shoot at it and give away your
position because he's going to call in
artillery. Best case scenario, you shoot
down a $2,000 plane and take out one guy
and he dumps artillery on your entire
unit. It's a bad trade. So, usually they
just ignore him. So, these Germans are
sitting there in this convoy and they're
like, "It's just a spotter plane. Ignore
it." "Oh, it's getting pretty close. Oh
[ __ ] it's diving on us." And then it
starts shooting bazookas at you and
calling in artillery. destroys your
entire convoy. Then the pilot proceeds
to land in the field next to you and get
out of the plane like dad coming home
from work and capture you as prisoner.
From here, word spreads like wildfire.
There's some crazy ass major out there
somewhere on the Western Front flying a
crop duster around shooting bazookas at
Germans. From here, people start calling
him the mad major, bazooka Charlie, and
he pretty much gets told, I mean, do
whatever you want. You can call in
artillery. You can shoot bazookas at
people. Remember, he's good buddies with
the top general. He's the only guy doing
this. It seems to be effective. Why get
in his way? Let him keep blowing up
Germans. Everything works out. So that's
what he's doing. He's just going up in
the air, calling on artillery when he
sees fit, shooting bazookas when he sees
fit. Everything's going great. And
during this time, he really refineses
the method, okay? He kind of figures out
as close as you can how to accurately
aim these bazookas. I mean, at the end
of the day, it's basically a giant
bottle rocket. The bazooka is going to
do what the bazooka wants to do, but he
kind of gets a feel for where they
usually go on average. He's got markings
on his windshield inside the cockpit for
where the bazooka should land. On top of
that, he refineses how he does his
attack runs. He comes in at like 800 ft,
does this corkcrew maneuver, goes down,
drops to 300 ft, levels out, fires his
bazookas, and then dives straight up,
literally pulling G's in a fabric plane.
And again, at this point in time, we
have no idea how many other missions he
ran, how many trucks or armored vehicles
or tanks that he took out. On top of
that, even if he did take out tanks, not
many people would believe him. And
that's because at this point in time,
bazookas weren't very successful against
German tanks. German armor was
incredibly thick. And a bazooka, more
often than not, even if you scored a
direct hit, was not going to penetrate
the front or side armor of a German
Panther or a German Tiger tank. But what
most people didn't realize at the time,
he's not shooting at a German Tiger tank
from the front or the side. He's
shooting at it from the top like an
early version of a Javelin missile
literally hitting the tank at its
weakest possible point because no
engineer could have ever foreseen what
if somebody was flying above you with a
[ __ ] bazooka. At no point in the
German engineering process did any of
the engineers say, "Yeah, but what if a
crazy history teacher from Illinois and
a crop duster covered in bazookas
Okay, if you're not picking up what I'm
putting down, I'm trying to tell you
it's not only possible for Bazooka
Charlie to take out a German tank with
his crop duster, it's probable. The only
problem is it's one of those things
you're going to have to see to believe.
And he's a one-man show, so nobody's
seen it but him yet.
yet.
All right, September 19th, 1944, the
Battle of Araore, right outside of
Nancy, France. It is the largest armored
battle on the Western Front in all of
World War II. The Germans have
approximately 262 tanks and armored
vehicles, and the Americans have
approximately 140 Sherman tanks. The
Germans have the upper hand, but per
usual, the Americans have air
superiority. Problem, it's foggy as
[ __ ] and the planes can't fly.
Regardless, Charles Carpenter goes up
anyways. Under the cover of the fog, the
Germans start advancing. And after about
an hour of loitering over the
battlefield, Charles Carpenter finds a
break in the fog. And what he sees is a
German column advancing. And there's six
soldiers pinned down at this watering
point. It's the only place to get fresh
water, and they were filling up water
tanks for the rest of the unit. Bazooka
Charlie sees what's unfolding,
immediately, takes action, goes into his
corkcrew, dives down on the first tank,
fires his first two bazookas. Both of
them are a miss. Pulls up, circles back
around, does his corkcrew maneuver
again, dives again, fires two bazookas,
hits the lead tank. The crew has to bail
out. And the six guys that were getting
water are watching this entire thing
unfold. And they are the first people to
ever see bazooka Charlie take out an
enemy tank with a bazooka strapped to a
crop duster. Something that nobody would
have thought was possible. >> Holy
[ __ ] [ __ ]
>> And bazooka Charlie's still got two more
bazookas fresh in the tank. Pulls up
again, circles back around, does his
corkcrew again, dives on another tank,
scores a direct hit. The Germans have no
[ __ ] idea what's going on. There's
just a tiny little plane spawning out of
the fog, taking out all of their tanks.
They think it's some type of new weapon
or an ambush or something crazy is going
on. So, they panic and retreat. The
water crew escapes unscathed. They later
confirm that he did in fact take out two
enemy tanks, giving him his first two
confirmed tank kills. He then flies back
to base, has his ground crew reload the
bazookas, and goes back up. Fires all
six bazookas again, goes back, reloads
the bazookas again, goes back up, fires
them all again. He fired no less than 16
bazooka rounds that day. Bear in mind
again, we have no idea how successful he
was overall because he's a one-man show
and he had to have witnesses to confirm
stuff. But by the end of the day, he had
ground confirmation from multiple other
people that he had for sure destroyed
two German Panther tanks, two armored
vehicles, and at least 12 ground troops.
But his impact on the overall battle was
so much bigger than that because again,
the fog cover was preventing America
from having air superiority, meaning
that the Germans had a humongous upper
hand. But Charles Carpenter going out in
the fog, preventing them from advancing,
throwing the Germans off their game,
kept them on their heels long enough for
the fog to lift. And by the time they
realized what the [ __ ] was going on and
it was one crazy guy in a crop duster,
America had regained air superiority and
flipped the entire battle on its head.
By the end of the Battle of Ara, America
had lost 30 tanks. The Germans had lost
over 200 tanks and armored vehicles.
After the battle of Araor, the legend of
Bazooka Charlie goes from being a legend
within the ranks of Patton's Third Army
to being a legend back home. He is in
newspaper articles absolutely all over
the place. Personally, he doesn't really
care for the attention. He doesn't
really like the notoriety. He even
writes back home to his wife Bunny and
says, "Hey, don't talk to the press. I
don't want the attention." In an
interview, he even told a reporter, and
I quote, "Some people around here think
I'm nuts, but I just believe that if
we're going to fight this war, we have
to get on with it 60 minutes, an hour,
24 hours in a day." In addition to his
newfound notoriety, he also has to deal
with the fact that the Germans have
caught on to his battle strategy and
they have changed their tactics to
ignoring spotter planes to shooting
absolutely everything they have at them
all the time. Regarding that, he told a
reporter, and I quote, "Word must be
getting around among those to watch out
for cubs with bazookas on them. Every
time I show up now, they shoot
everything they have. They never used to
bother cubs. Bazookas must be bothering
them a bit." Despite that, Bazooka
Charlie goes out and continues to do
bazooka Charlie things. Keeps going out
on missions, keeps shooting his
bazookas, keeps calling in artillery.
And again, I reiterate for like the 15th
time, we don't know how many enemy tanks
and armored vehicles he took out during
this time period because again, he's a
one-man show and everything has to have
multiple eyewitnesses to be confirmed.
Despite that, over the next month in
October of 1944, he manages to bag four
German tank kills confirmed. two of
which were the German Tiger heavy tank,
the baddest tank of World War II. The
other two were allegedly Panther tanks,
one of which was leading an entire
column of tanks down a narrow road with
ditches on either side. And Charles
Carpenter dived on the lead tank, took
it out, and then called in artillery and
destroyed the entire column. Bazooka
Charlie continues with his antics all
through October, November, December,
January. Again, documentation's not that
great, but some accounts claim as many
as 14 confirmed tank kills, as well as
over 20 armored vehicles and countless
enemy machine gun positions and ground
troops. And somewhere along the line, he
is also awarded a Silver Star and an air
medal with Oakleaf Cluster. But by
February of 1945, he's hurting. He's got
this massive lump on his neck. He has no
idea what it is. He's extremely fatigued
and tired, and he ends up getting
hospitalized with battle fatigue.
Initially, Army doctors don't know what
to make of this lump on his neck. They
send him off to Paris. He gets surgery,
gets this massive lump removed, and he
gets told that he has Hodkins lymphoma.
They try to give him radiation
treatment, but the Hodkins lymphoma is
so advanced that they basically tell
him, "You've got a year, maybe two years
to live." He's released from the army
and sent back home. From here, he's
reunited with the love of his life,
Bunny, and his daughter, Carol. And he
figures he's got two years left. He
might as well make the most of it. He
buys an Airstream trailer, and they tour
the entire American West. and he gets to
see all of the country that he fought
for. Fast forward early 2000s, his
daughter Carol is now in her 60s and
it's the early days of the internet and
she gets on the internet one day and
she's reading on war forums and she
finds a thread about her dad and it's
people talking about this crazy guy
named Bazooka Charlie that supposedly
mounted bazookas onto a crop duster and
eliminated a bunch of German tanks. But
because there's such a lack of
documentation and everything else, all
the comments are doubting the validity
of this story and nobody believes it. So
she gets in this forum and she starts
posting pictures that she has of her dad
in theater and she starts reading all of
the letters that he had written back
home to her mom Bunny and she helps
validate this story and it becomes a
known fact. She then with some help of
some other people in the aviation
community goes on to write a book about
it. And in one of the pictures that she
has of her dad posing next to his plane,
Rosie the Rocketer, you can actually
read the serial number on the plane. And
aviation people track down Rosie the
Rocketer and find her in a museum in
Austria. They buy the plane, bring it
back home and restore Rosie the Rocketer
to her wartime paint job. And Carol's
daughter, a graphic designer, gets to
actually paint the old paint job of her
grandfather on the plane. But that's not
even the best part. The best part is
that after Charles and Bunny and Carol
got to tour the American West in their
Airstream trailer, Charles felt great.
So they went back home and he still felt
fine. So Charles went back to work being
a history teacher, changing the world
one classroom at a time. And a year went
by and he was still doing fine. And
another year and another year and
another year. And Charles lived an
additional 22 years after he was given a
one-year death sentence. He would
finally succumb to Hodkins disease in
1966 at the age of 53, which is still a
premature tragic death. But the silver
lining is he got to live an additional
22 years like he was dying. And I like
to thank Bazooka Charlie of all people
was able to cram a lot of life into that
22 years under those conditions. And
that's the best ending I could possibly
give you. Thank you for watching. Best
way to support the channel is go buy
some merch over at the
fatlectrician.com. Quackbang out.
out. [Music]
[Music]
Carol, if you're watching this, I really
hope you enjoyed it. I tried to do your
dad justice. He's a humongous badass. So
are you for all the work you did telling
his story. And I tried to get a hold of
you, but couldn't. But if you do see
this, I would love nothing more than to
buy you a first class plane ticket out
to San Antonio and have you on my
podcast and we can talk more about your
dad. Thanks. [Music]
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