0:02 Gan Razac from Starship Troopers. One of
0:04 my favorite characters in cinematic
0:06 history. The history and philosophy
0:08 teacher that goes into combat when war
0:10 starts and leads his former students.
0:12 Well, I found the real life version and
0:16 it's even cooler than the movie.
0:17 Today, we're talking about Charles
0:19 Carpenter. The Germans referred to him
0:21 as the Mad Major, while his men knew him
0:23 as Bazooka Charlie, a 29-year-old
0:25 history teacher from Molen, Illinois,
0:26 who would join the United States Army
0:28 Airore after Pearl Harbor was attacked
0:30 and his younger brother, who was a
0:32 fighter pilot in the Philippines, was
0:33 captured by the Japanese. Through a
0:34 series of events, he would become one of
0:36 the United States Army's first liaison
0:38 pilots, a new experimental program where
0:41 these men were tasked with flying the L4
0:43 Grasshopper. Basically, a glorified crop
0:45 duster with fabric wings and what
0:47 amounts to a lawnmower blade sticking
0:48 out of the front. They would fly out
0:50 over the battlefield and use their
0:52 altitude to spot enemy positions and
0:54 call in accurate artillery fire. While
0:56 this job was extremely valuable,
0:57 dangerous, and did have a humongous
0:59 impact on the battlefield, it didn't
1:01 have the direct impact that Charles
1:03 Carpenter wanted. So Carpenter decided
1:04 he was going to mount six bazookas on
1:06 the wings of his crop duster and begin
1:08 flying combat sordies, quite literally
1:11 divebombing German tanks. He would later
1:12 perfect this technique and use it to
1:15 sway the entire battle of Araore, which
1:16 is the largest tank battle on the
1:18 Western Front in all of World War II.
1:19 And we're going to get into everything
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2:39 video.
2:42 Our story begins August 29th, 1912.
2:44 Charles Carpenter is born. He is the
2:46 oldest of six kids. He has two brothers
2:48 and three sisters. He grows up in
2:49 Illinois. And like pretty much every
2:51 other World War II hero we talk about,
2:53 he grows up dirt poor. You guys know the
2:54 drill. Unfortunately, the young
2:56 Charles's dad was not that great of a
2:58 guy. He had an alcohol problem. He had a
2:59 gambling problem. And we don't really
3:01 know how old Charles was when this
3:03 happened. But in his childhood, his dad
3:05 would end up losing their 1,000 acre
3:07 farm in a gambling game. And he would
3:09 walk out of their lives forever,
3:11 abandoning his family, his wife, and all
3:13 six kids. Now, something like that
3:15 happening would absolutely destroy most
3:17 people. But Charles Carpenter is the
3:18 main character. And without a positive
3:20 male role model in his life, he turns to
3:22 books. He turns to literature and reads
3:24 all the great books he can find. And
3:26 that becomes his positive male role
3:27 model. That's how he learns how to be a
3:29 man. And it works. He's super
3:31 hardworking. He's very intelligent. Does
3:32 great in school. And he's a three sport
3:34 athlete playing football, basketball,
3:37 and track. Quote, "My creed. I have
3:39 resolved to exert all of my efforts
3:41 towards being a nobler and stronger
3:43 fellow, a gentleman, a scholar, a
3:46 friend, and a real man. To the best of
3:48 my ability, I will ever strive for
3:50 self-control, self-improvement, freedom,
3:54 wisdom, courage, generosity, truth, and
3:56 the true nobility before God and men. I
3:58 will be better." Charles Carpenter.
4:01 Okay. He wrote that at 17 years old
4:03 after his dad had lost everything and
4:05 abandoned him and his family. Okay, the
4:07 dude knew he was the main character all
4:08 along. For high school, he gets a full
4:10 ride scholarship to Roosevelt Military
4:12 Academy. And then after that, he gets a
4:14 full ride scholarship to Center College
4:16 in Kentucky, both for football and
4:17 track. While he's there, he joins the
4:19 Civilian Training Corps, which is kind
4:21 of like an old version of ROC, where you
4:23 get to become a military officer when
4:24 you do classes during college.
4:26 Basically, he has to go off to two weeks
4:28 of training every summer, all four years
4:30 of college. And then once he graduates
4:32 from college and finishes a program,
4:33 he's offered the spot as a second
4:35 lieutenant in the Army reserves as a
4:36 pilot. So that's what he does. He goes
4:38 off to college, studies history, studies
4:40 philosophy, decides he wants to be a
4:42 history teacher. He wants to be able to
4:44 go into a classroom full of kids and
4:45 find the kids that are like him and be
4:47 their strong male role model that he
4:49 never had. And that's what he does for
4:50 years. And when he's not teaching
4:52 history, he's a flight instructor. But
4:54 being the history guy, he can also kind
4:56 of see the future because history is the
4:58 best predictor of the future. and he
4:59 sees all the tensions and everything
5:01 rising in Europe. And in his personal
5:03 journal in the 1930s, he would write,
5:06 and I quote, "Life is far cruer than
5:08 death, and nations are feverishly
5:10 preparing to slaughter again." So, he
5:12 knew that World War II was coming,
5:13 probably a lot sooner than most other
5:15 people did, but he's one man. He's a
5:17 history teacher in Moly, Illinois. What
5:19 can he do? So, he just keeps living his
5:20 life. If he keeps teaching history in
5:22 the day, he keeps teaching pilots at
5:23 night. And then on the weekends, he
5:25 would go to the next town over to go to
5:27 the dance hall to try to find a wife, a
5:29 big dance hall called the Coliseum. One
5:31 night at the Coliseum, he picks a lovely
5:33 young lady out of the crowd. Elda, also
5:35 known as Bunny, asked her to dance. They
5:36 dance all night. They have a great time.
5:39 She's aruck that this perfect 10 of a
5:41 man, he's got a job, he's athletic, he's
5:44 handsome, is hitting on her. And at the
5:45 end of the night, he asks her, "Hey,
5:47 could I take you out on a real date?"
5:49 And she wasn't very confident. and she
5:51 panics and she's like, "Um, uh, I
5:52 actually I have a I have a date with my
5:53 girlfriend scheduled for that night
5:55 already." So, Charles Carpenter is like,
5:58 "Oh, okay. I I guess." And and that was
5:59 the end of it. Bunny spends the next
6:02 weeks and months just kicking herself in
6:03 her own ass for shooting down this
6:05 perfect tent of a man. And then
6:06 eventually after a couple of months,
6:08 they run into each other at the coliseum
6:10 again. They dance all night, have a
6:11 great time, and Charles Carpenter shoots
6:14 his shot again. They go out on a date
6:16 and three months later, they were
6:18 married. According to Bunny, and I
6:20 quote, "We were so in love, we couldn't
6:22 eat." Fast forward, Charles Carpenter is
6:23 living the American dream. Despite his
6:25 rough childhood, he's college educated.
6:27 He's a high school history teacher
6:29 living his dream job. He's happily
6:30 married. His wife is pregnant with their
6:33 first child. And then in 1941, Japan
6:35 attacks Pearl Harbor. And at essentially
6:36 the same time, they also attack the
6:38 Philippines where his brother, the
6:39 fighter pilot, is currently stationed.
6:41 And they destroy his brother's plane in
6:43 the opening attack. His brother's now a
6:45 P. All of his former students are
6:47 getting drafted and going off to war.
6:49 And he could probably get away from the
6:50 draft. Being at home as a teacher is an
6:52 important job. He could probably get an
6:53 exemption. But that's not the man that
6:55 Charles Carpenter is. So he volunteers
6:57 to go off and joins the military, too,
6:59 at 29 years old. Now, because Carpenter
7:01 is already college educated, he's
7:02 already an Army officer. He's already a
7:04 flight instructor. The Army determines
7:06 they're not going to send him off into
7:07 combat. They're going to send him to
7:08 Miami where he's going to be an
7:10 instructor and teach other people how to
7:12 be officers and how to fly planes. And
7:14 while that might be a dream job to most
7:16 people, being able to stay states side,
7:18 healthy, happy, it's not really what
7:19 Carpenter wanted, but that's what the
7:21 army told him to do. So, he's going to
7:22 do it to the best of his ability. So, in
7:24 early 1942, he gets in his car in
7:26 Illinois and drives all the way to
7:28 Miami, and the road trip there is
7:31 absolutely crazy. Pearl Harbor just
7:32 happened, and they're already rationing
7:34 gasoline. They're rationing rubber for
7:36 tires. They're rationing absolutely
7:38 everything. At one point, Charles picks
7:40 up a hitchhiker and that hitchhiker
7:42 explains to him that he's a merchant
7:44 marine and his ship had been sunk by a
7:46 German yubot and he's trying to make his
7:48 way home to his parents because his
7:50 parents think that he's dead. And the
7:51 entire thing is just surreal to him
7:53 because he's read and studied so much
7:55 history and he realizes during this road
7:57 trip that he's now living through history.
8:00 history.
8:02 So he gets to Miami, starts doing his
8:03 job and it's just it's not his thing. I
8:05 mean, he's good at it. He can train
8:06 people how to do stuff. He's a teacher.
8:07 He knows how to teach. He knows what
8:09 he's talking about. But he just feels
8:10 wrong about the fact that he's teaching
8:12 somebody how to go off and fight a war
8:13 when he's never gone off and fought a
8:15 war himself. So, he decides that's what
8:16 he needs to do. The problem is is he's
8:18 too valuable where he's at. They're not
8:19 going to let him just change his orders
8:21 and go join a normal aviation unit and
8:23 abandon this teaching job because he's
8:25 the best man for that job. The only way
8:26 he's going to get out of these teaching
8:28 orders is if he volunteers for something
8:31 so dangerous that it's a volunteeronly
8:33 basis. And he does exactly that. He
8:35 volunteers to be a glider pilot. Okay,
8:36 what is a glider? They were used on
8:38 D-Day. They're a really big deal. Not a
8:39 lot of people have heard about them.
8:41 It's basically a giant kite that's
8:43 shaped like a plane. K, I know what
8:44 you're thinking. Why on earth wouldn't
8:45 you just, I don't know, fly another
8:47 plane into combat? Why are you going to
8:49 tow a planed kite behind you? Well, you
8:51 got to remember it's World War II. Raw
8:52 materials are scarce. They're rationing
8:54 everything. We can't make planes fast
8:56 enough. We need more planes. More planes
8:58 isn't an option. So, this is the next
9:00 best thing to make a giant kit-shaped
9:03 plane and tow it behind a C-47 into
9:05 combat and then cut the ropes and
9:07 they're going to glide into the
9:09 battlefield and have a controlled crash
9:10 landing. And I think we can all agree,
9:12 pretty crazy proposition for a military
9:14 job. So, obviously not a ton of
9:16 volunteers. So, when Charles Carpenter
9:18 does volunteer, he gets accepted pretty
9:19 much immediately. He gets shipped off
9:21 into the glider training pipeline.
9:22 First, they send him to Tennessee, then
9:24 they send him to Arkansas, then they
9:25 send him to South Carolina. He's
9:27 literally flying a giant kite. They're
9:29 cutting the ropes and he's practicing
9:31 his crash landings over and over and
9:33 over again. And this goes on for months
9:34 and months and months. And you got to
9:36 remember Charles Carpenter is a
9:38 historian. He's always thinking the big
9:39 picture. He's always known that these
9:41 gliders were a bandage fix. They were
9:43 just something that had to be done. They
9:45 were not the ideal scenario. On top of
9:47 that, they also have a very specific
9:49 niche application of when and if these
9:50 are ever going to be used. So, he kind
9:52 of starts to feel like maybe he's
9:54 wasting his time because the longer this
9:56 goes on, the more planes America is
9:57 building and maybe they're not going to
9:59 have to use these gliders at all and
10:01 maybe he's just wasting his time. And
10:02 then one day on the bulletin board,
10:04 there's another list for volunteers for
10:06 a different crazy flight program called
10:08 a liaison pilot. Now, conceptually, this
10:10 job is nothing new. It's basically
10:12 recon. It's just get up really high, be
10:14 able to spot the enemy, report what the
10:16 enemy is doing back to your chain of
10:17 command. Back in the day, you'd send
10:19 scouts up on the high ground. Back in
10:20 World War I, you had hot air balloons.
10:22 And now in World War II, they're going
10:24 to have liaison pilots. Why is that
10:26 dangerous? Because they're flying an L4
10:28 Grasshopper, okay? Which is literally
10:31 just a J3 Piper Cub, which is like the
10:33 most mass- prodduced trainer plane at
10:35 this point in time. Like, if you were a
10:36 pilot, you first learned how to fly a
10:39 plane on a J3 Piper Cub. It's literally
10:41 the Model T of airplanes. It's got
10:43 fabric wings, like an 80 horsepower
10:45 engine, and its top speed is like 85
10:47 mph. It's basically a paperier-mâché
10:49 plane with a lawn mower blade sticking
10:51 out of the front. And not only is it
10:53 slow, it has no offensive or defensive
10:55 capabilities. It can't engage the enemy
10:57 and it can't defend itself when it gets
10:59 engaged. So, literally, you're just
11:01 going up in the air getting eyes on the
11:03 enemy and hoping they decide not to
11:04 shoot at you. And the reason the army
11:06 wants to use this feeble aircraft is
11:08 because it's super easy to fly on and
11:10 you can land it in a random field. You
11:12 don't need a runway and you can take off
11:15 and land in like 300 ft, which is
11:16 actually where it got the name the L4
11:18 Grasshopper because it's literally just
11:20 a J3 Piper Cub, but the army's got to
11:21 give it a different name. And when the
11:23 J3 Piper Cub was going through military
11:25 testing, they were landing it in random
11:28 fields and this green little plane would
11:30 hit the ground and skip and skid to a
11:32 halt. And one of the generals said, "It
11:34 looks like a damn grasshopper." And
11:36 that's how it got the name, the L4
11:38 Grasshopper. So these liaison pilots are
11:40 going to be operating like a mile behind
11:42 the front line, taking off from a random
11:44 field, loitering over the battlefield
11:46 for hours, calling in artillery, and
11:47 reporting back enemy troop movements to
11:49 their chain of command. Basically,
11:51 liaison pilots in the L4 Grasshopper is
11:53 the world's first version of a recon
11:54 drone, except for, you know, the whole
11:56 point of a drone is you can go do
11:58 dangerous [ __ ] and not put your men in
12:00 harm's way, but that's not really an
12:01 option here. And Charles Carpenter is
12:03 like, "Sounds great. Whatever gets me
12:05 into the battle, sign me up." And I mean
12:06 to be fair, he had already volunteered
12:08 to crash land a giant kite with no
12:10 engine. So now he's flying what amounts
12:12 to a kite with an engine, so I guess it
12:14 is an upgrade. From here, he gets
12:16 shipped off to Texas to learn how to fly
12:17 the L4 Grasshopper, which he already
12:19 knows how to do because he's been a
12:20 pilot instructor forever. Passes that
12:22 with flying colors. Then they send him
12:24 off to Fort Sill, home of the artillery,
12:25 where he gets to learn how to call in
12:27 artillery while he's inside of his
12:29 plane. Okay, time out cuz I need you
12:30 guys to understand how insane this job
12:31 is. I don't want you to think I'm
12:33 pumping up flying a crop duster like
12:35 it's some incredible job cuz I know it's
12:37 not as glamorous or as glorious as being
12:39 a fighter pilot. This job is [ __ ]
12:42 nuts. Ka, he's alone almost always. The
12:44 plane literally isn't big enough to
12:46 carry two people in it and be fast
12:47 enough to not get shot at. So, he is
12:49 alone inside of a plane. Inside of the
12:52 plane, it is his job while 2,000 ft
12:54 above the ground, traveling 85 mph in a
12:57 noisy ass cockpit being propelled by a
12:59 lawnmower blade to be able to look down,
13:01 spot the enemy, and call in artillery.
13:03 Okay. And you're thinking like, oh, you
13:04 just pick up the phone and say, "Send
13:06 the artillery." No, he has to be able to
13:09 figure out while moving in one direction
13:12 where the enemy is on the grid, like get
13:14 their coordinates and then call that in
13:17 in relation to him as he's moving. And
13:19 the enem is also potentially moving as
13:21 well. And he's trying to do math and
13:23 trajectory problems while flying a
13:25 [ __ ] plane. The entire job is
13:27 literally fly a plane, hope to god you
13:28 don't get shot down, and while you're
13:30 flying the plane, have the world's
13:32 shittiest math quiz, and if you fail,
13:34 you or your buddies die. So, is being a
13:36 liazison pilot as glamorous as being a
13:39 fighter pilot? No, absolutely not. But I
13:41 would argue that they have way bigger
13:43 balls. I mean, as an outsider looking
13:44 in, which job would you rather have?
13:46 Option A, you could be a fighter pilot.
13:48 basically take up what amounts to a hot
13:49 rod covered in machine guns and zip
13:51 around the battlefield shooting at the
13:53 enemy. Or B, you could take up your
13:55 grandpa's crop duster traveling at the
13:58 speed of smell with no weapons to fire
14:00 at the enemy or defend yourself. And the
14:01 entire time that you're loitering over
14:03 the battlefield, hoping you don't get
14:05 shot down, you're doing Sedoku puzzles
14:07 with life or death consequences for you
14:08 and your buddies. Okay, if you're not
14:09 picking up what I'm putting down, I'm
14:11 trying to articulate to you that liaison
14:13 pilots are highly underrated. These are
14:16 quite literally iron men flying paper
14:18 planes. Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked.
14:19 Charles Carpenter completes his
14:21 training, gets his L- wings, officially
14:23 becoming a liazison pilot. From here, he
14:24 gets assigned to the fourth armored
14:26 division in Patton's third army. So, he
14:27 goes out with the fourth armor division.
14:29 They're training out in the deserts of
14:30 California getting ready to go into
14:32 theater. And very quickly, he becomes
14:34 the top liazison pilot in the entire
14:35 fourth armored division. He is
14:37 essentially now the man in charge of all
14:39 the other liaison pilots. Both because
14:41 he's extremely capable, but also because
14:43 he's like in his early 30s at this point
14:45 in time. He's an older dude by
14:47 standards. He's more mature. He's a
14:48 teacher. He's college educated. He's
14:50 just the right guy for the job. Because
14:52 of this, he essentially becomes the
14:53 personal pilot for the general of the
14:55 fourth armor division, John Shirley
14:57 Wood. A man who's described as being
14:59 broad in the shoulders and even broader
15:01 in the waist. And remember, the L4
15:02 Grasshopper not really meant to have two
15:04 people inside of it. And the general is
15:07 a big boy. Charles Carpenter also a
15:09 pretty big guy. They are way overweight
15:10 when he's flying this general around.
15:12 So, not only does he get used to flying
15:15 a overumbered L4 grasshopper, but he
15:16 also ends up becoming really good
15:18 friends with the general again because
15:20 he's one of the only older guys around.
15:21 Everybody else is a 19-year-old kid.
15:23 He's super well read. The general's
15:25 probably super well read. They become
15:27 homies. And both of these things are
15:30 going to save his ass later on.
15:32 Early 1944, Charles Carpenter and the
15:33 rest of the Fourth Armor Division head
15:35 off to Great Britain. They're training
15:36 there. They're getting ready. That goes
15:38 on for a couple of months. D-Day happens
15:42 in June of 1944. And by July of 1944,
15:43 Charles Carpenter and the rest of the
15:45 Fourth Armor Division go into France.
15:46 Right out of the gate, he's doing his
15:48 job exactly how he's supposed to. He's
15:50 going up. He's doing recon. He's calling
15:52 in artillery. He's being the personal
15:53 pilot for the general whenever he needs
15:55 it. And this goes on for a couple of
15:57 weeks. And the entire time, every
15:58 mission, it just it starts to eat at him
16:00 more and more. He feels like he's not
16:02 doing enough. He's not going out there
16:04 and confronting the enemy. He's just
16:05 loitering above the battlefield. He's
16:07 he's just he's cutting himself and his
16:09 contribution short. And then he gets his
16:11 chance to confront the enemy in person
16:13 on August 1st, 1944 outside of a French
16:15 town known as Avranch. I want to be
16:17 clear, we don't know the exact context
16:19 of how this unfolded, but we do know
16:22 that he was in a jeep by himself
16:23 conducting forward reconnaissance
16:26 looking for an empty field to land his
16:28 plane and all the other L4 Grasshoppers.
16:29 Now, the fact that he's going out by
16:31 himself in a jeep to look for a place to
16:33 land his grasshoppers closer to the
16:35 front line tells me that he's probably
16:37 been up in the sky conducting
16:38 reconnaissance and come to the
16:40 conclusion that there's no Germans in
16:41 the area, so they're going to move
16:43 forward. That's just where my head is at
16:45 and probably his, too. While he's in his
16:46 jeep looking for a new operational base
16:48 for all of his L4 grasshoppers, he comes
16:50 up on a bunch of American tanks and
16:51 American infantry and they are in a
16:53 firefight with the Germans. So, he hops
16:55 out of the jeep, runs up to some of the
16:57 infantry, asks what's going on. They're
16:58 telling him there's a ton of Germans in
16:59 the area. They're pinned down. They
17:01 can't punch through into this town. And
17:02 this is where I'm inferring something.
17:04 I'm assuming he knows that that's
17:06 [ __ ] That's not a possibility. He's
17:08 probably been up in the air conducting
17:10 recon for days. He knows that there's no
17:12 massive German element here. So, he
17:13 thinks that this is just some kind of
17:15 German trick or some last stand. But
17:17 what we know for sure is that he then
17:18 proceeds to run up to the nearest
17:21 Sherman tank whose commander isn't there
17:23 for one reason or another. hops in the
17:25 turret with the 50 cal and yells down to
17:28 the crew, "Let's go. He's an officer.
17:30 They're lower enlisted." They listen to
17:31 him. They drive straight into the
17:34 Germans, firing the 75mm cannon on this
17:35 Sherman with the other tanks and
17:37 infantry following behind him. And they
17:40 start clearing the town block by block.
17:41 And every time they round a corner, he
17:44 yells down to the crew, "Let it go." And
17:45 they fire another round, forcing the
17:48 Germans to retreat further, block after
17:50 block, slowly clearing this entire town.
17:52 As they round the last corner on the
17:53 last block in this town, they're about
17:55 to take the entire thing. Through the
17:57 smoke and chaos of the battle, he sees a
17:59 tank and he yells down to the crew, "Let
18:01 it go." And as soon as the words leave
18:03 his mouth, he sees through the smoke
18:05 that it's another Sherman tank. He has
18:07 the gut-wrenching, "Oh shit!" moment as
18:10 time slows down and before he can say a
18:12 word, the gun fires. And he watches in
18:15 slow motion as his tank fires on another
18:17 American Sherman tank that's got a
18:18 bulldozer blade attached to the front of
18:21 it. And thank God the shell only hits
18:23 the bulldozer blade, blows it off the
18:25 tank, and nobody's hurt.
18:28 >> Guess what? What?
18:31 [ __ ] you.
18:32 [ __ ] you.
18:33 >> So, that's great news. Nobody got hurt.
18:35 Also great news, he just helped break
18:37 through the German lines by leading this
18:39 massive offensive into a French town.
18:41 Bad news, the other tank commander, who
18:43 just got his bulldozer blade shot off
18:45 crawls out of his tank and starts
18:47 walking over to Carpenters's tank,
18:49 rightfully furious. and pissed off. And
18:51 when he gets there, he's expecting to
18:53 chew out, I don't know, another tank
18:55 commander. And what he finds is a
18:57 liaison pilot that's not even in this
18:58 unit that's not supposed to be there
19:00 that just commanded one of his tanks to
19:01 shoot at his tank.
19:03 >> It's only my third day out here. I don't know.
19:03 know.
19:05 >> So, he goes from being furious to
19:08 absolutely mega pissed. And to be fair,
19:10 he's kind of justified. He immediately
19:12 orders Charles Carpenter get arrested
19:13 and says that he's going to do
19:15 everything he can to make sure he faces
19:18 a firing squad for fratricside.
19:19 What the?
19:20 >> Luckily, his homie, General Shirley
19:22 Wood, finds out that his pilot and buddy
19:24 has been arrested. He goes, springs him
19:26 out of jail, but it's the wrong chain of
19:28 command, and he doesn't have enough sway
19:29 to be able to get rid of the potential
19:31 court marshal that Charles Carpenter is
19:33 now facing. So, at the very least, he's
19:35 not going to be facing the firing squad,
19:36 but he's still potentially looking at
19:38 getting dishonorably discharged from the
19:40 military. So, General Shirley Wood takes
19:42 the case to the next tier hire, somebody
19:44 that can resolve this issue, his buddy
19:47 from West Point, General Patton.
19:49 Nobody's closer.
19:50 >> General Patton hears about what
19:52 happened. He says something along the
19:54 lines of, and I quote, "That's the type
19:56 of fighting man I want in my army." And
19:58 gets rid of the court marshal and wipes
20:00 his slate clean altogether. Now, that
20:02 part we know happened for sure, but I
20:03 also believe that this is the point
20:04 where Charles Carpenter was not only
20:06 given a second chance, but I believe
20:08 Patton also gave him the Bronze Star
20:11 with Vice and promoted him to major at
20:13 this point as well.
20:14 >> See, now that's some [ __ ]
20:16 Unfortunately, I can't present that to
20:18 you as a 100% fact because I cannot find
20:20 any of his medal citations or promotions
20:22 anywhere in the National Archives. I'm
20:25 assuming he's in that 80% majority that
20:27 lost all their personnel records in the
20:29 fire in 1973. But I believe at this
20:31 point Patton did award him the Bronze
20:33 Star with Vice and promote him to major,
20:35 which is absolutely on brand for General Patton.
20:37 Patton.
20:38 All right, so had a little oopsies.
20:40 Everything worked out all right. He's
20:41 back in the saddle. He's not in trouble.
20:43 He's going out on missions. Everything's
20:44 back to normal. And then there's a rumor
20:46 going around in the liaison pilot
20:48 community that apparently somebody
20:50 somewhere on the Western Front mounted a
20:52 bazooka onto the wing of their L4
20:54 Grasshopper, fired it, and the plane
20:56 didn't blow up. It didn't catch the wing
20:58 on fire. It worked out. Okay, now bear
21:01 in mind this is a rumor. This is 15°
21:03 removed. Some guy told another guy told
21:05 another guy that apparently this
21:06 happened. But when Charles Carpenter
21:08 hears that it happened, he's like, "I'm
21:10 [ __ ] doing it." So he goes to his
21:11 chain of command, asks permission, is
21:13 like, "Hey, I heard this was possible. I
21:14 want to give it a try. His chain of
21:16 command being cool as [ __ ] is like,
21:18 look, I'm not saying you're allowed to
21:20 do that. I'm also not saying that if you
21:22 did, I'm going to stop you. Which he
21:23 takes as the green light. And he does
21:25 it. Okay, bear in mind this is a rumor.
21:27 He heard from a guy who heard from a guy
21:29 that this is theoretically possible. And
21:30 he's going to go out there and actually
21:32 figure out how to do it. There's no
21:34 YouTube tutorial. There's no how-to.
21:36 There's no pictures of how it was done.
21:37 He's just going to go out there and
21:39 figure out how to mount a bazooka onto
21:41 his plane. Which, to be fair, doesn't
21:42 sound like it would be that complicated
21:44 until you actually start to think about
21:46 the fact that this is borderline
21:47 approaching rocket science, right? I
21:49 mean, you can't just be strapping big,
21:51 heavy metal tubes onto the wings of
21:54 aircrafts and expect it to not interfere
21:55 with, I don't know, aerodynamics, weight
21:57 distribution, all the [ __ ] that goes
21:59 into, I don't know, keeping a plane in
22:00 the [ __ ] sky.
22:01 >> That's simply not possible.
22:03 >> Why isn't it possible?
22:05 >> It's just not. Why not, you stupid bastard?
22:06 bastard?
22:07 >> And if you don't believe me, go make a
22:09 paper airplane, throw it across the
22:11 room, watch it go, and then pick it up,
22:13 strap some weights to each wing, and
22:15 throw it again and see how different it flies.
22:17 flies.
22:19 >> Oh. Oh, man. It slipped out of my hand.
22:20 What a whiff.
22:22 >> Regardless, he's a smart guy. He figures
22:23 it out. You can't literally mount the
22:25 bazooka on the wing because they're
22:26 fabric wings. So he mounts it on the
22:28 wing strut and then he mounts it so that
22:30 the actual weight of the bazooka with
22:32 the shell is behind the rear tires and
22:34 behind the pilot because the center of
22:36 gravity on these Piper Cub planes is
22:38 actually behind the pilot already. So
22:40 he's using his own body weight to
22:42 counteract the weight of these bazookas.
22:43 >> Yes, science.
22:44 >> So he ends up mounting one bazooka on
22:46 each side of the plane. Does a test run.
22:49 It flies. Okay. Then he runs electrical
22:51 wires into the cockpit on a panel where
22:54 he can fire each bazooka individually or
22:56 both at once. goes up on a test run,
22:57 fires the bazookas, doesn't light the
22:59 wings on fire, doesn't blow them out of
23:01 the sky. He's actually able to semi
23:03 accurately shoot these bazookas. He
23:05 lands and it's like the holy [ __ ] that
23:07 actually worked. At which point, he has
23:09 a wonderful idea. You know what's better
23:12 than two bazookas? Double it. That's
23:14 right, four bazookas. So, he mounts four
23:16 bazookas on his plane. Goes up, does a
23:18 test run, it works, comes back down,
23:19 lands. You know what's better than four
23:22 bazookas? Six bazookas. goes up, does a
23:24 test run, it works again, comes back
23:26 down and lands. You know what's better
23:30 than six bazookas on an L4 Grasshopper.
23:30 >> Here I come.
23:33 >> An L4 grasshopper with six bazookas and
23:35 a dopeass paint job where he names his
23:38 plane Rosie the Rocketer after Rosie the
23:40 Riveter. From here, he takes his Grunts
23:42 and Crafts project into combat. From
23:43 here, things get a little bit fuzzy
23:45 because again, a lot of the
23:46 documentation was probably lost in a
23:49 fire in 1973. And there probably wasn't
23:51 a lot of great documentation taken at
23:52 the time to begin with because again,
23:54 he's a one-man show. If there's not a
23:56 witness to verify whatever he said
23:58 happened, they can't really prove it.
23:59 They can't officially say that it
24:01 happened. But what we do know is outside
24:02 of Sens France, there was some German
24:04 tanks and some German armored cars that
24:07 were now apparently on fire and blown
24:09 up. We don't know if they were from his
24:10 bazookas or from him calling in
24:13 artillery or a combination of the two. I
24:14 like to think it was a combination of
24:16 the two. So Charles Carpenter after
24:19 presumably destroying a German convoy by
24:20 himself and or with the help of
24:22 artillery decides, you know what, I'm
24:24 going to go land my plane in a field
24:26 next to this burning convoy and inspect
24:28 it and see what happened. I want to see
24:30 how good these pazookas are performing.
24:31 So that's what he does. lands his plane
24:33 in the field, grabs a gun, goes out
24:35 there to inspect it, finds six surviving
24:37 Germans, and takes all six of them as
24:39 prisoner, and then proceeds to put
24:41 bullets in the engine blocks of all the
24:43 remaining vehicles that weren't burning
24:44 yet. Okay? Do you understand how
24:46 ridiculous and gangster this is from the
24:47 German perspective? Okay? Because at
24:49 this point in time, the German ideology
24:51 was if you see an American spotter
24:53 plane, if you see a grasshopper up in
24:55 the sky, they don't have guns. They
24:56 can't really hurt us. They can just call
24:58 in artillery and have that rain down on
25:00 our head. So, the strategy for them at
25:02 the time was if you see it, hide from
25:04 it. Don't shoot at it and give away your
25:05 position because he's going to call in
25:07 artillery. Best case scenario, you shoot
25:10 down a $2,000 plane and take out one guy
25:12 and he dumps artillery on your entire
25:15 unit. It's a bad trade. So, usually they
25:16 just ignore him. So, these Germans are
25:18 sitting there in this convoy and they're
25:20 like, "It's just a spotter plane. Ignore
25:21 it." "Oh, it's getting pretty close. Oh
25:23 [ __ ] it's diving on us." And then it
25:25 starts shooting bazookas at you and
25:27 calling in artillery. destroys your
25:29 entire convoy. Then the pilot proceeds
25:31 to land in the field next to you and get
25:33 out of the plane like dad coming home
25:35 from work and capture you as prisoner.
25:37 From here, word spreads like wildfire.
25:39 There's some crazy ass major out there
25:40 somewhere on the Western Front flying a
25:42 crop duster around shooting bazookas at
25:44 Germans. From here, people start calling
25:46 him the mad major, bazooka Charlie, and
25:49 he pretty much gets told, I mean, do
25:50 whatever you want. You can call in
25:52 artillery. You can shoot bazookas at
25:53 people. Remember, he's good buddies with
25:56 the top general. He's the only guy doing
25:57 this. It seems to be effective. Why get
25:59 in his way? Let him keep blowing up
26:01 Germans. Everything works out. So that's
26:02 what he's doing. He's just going up in
26:04 the air, calling on artillery when he
26:06 sees fit, shooting bazookas when he sees
26:07 fit. Everything's going great. And
26:09 during this time, he really refineses
26:11 the method, okay? He kind of figures out
26:13 as close as you can how to accurately
26:15 aim these bazookas. I mean, at the end
26:16 of the day, it's basically a giant
26:18 bottle rocket. The bazooka is going to
26:20 do what the bazooka wants to do, but he
26:21 kind of gets a feel for where they
26:24 usually go on average. He's got markings
26:26 on his windshield inside the cockpit for
26:28 where the bazooka should land. On top of
26:30 that, he refineses how he does his
26:32 attack runs. He comes in at like 800 ft,
26:34 does this corkcrew maneuver, goes down,
26:37 drops to 300 ft, levels out, fires his
26:40 bazookas, and then dives straight up,
26:42 literally pulling G's in a fabric plane.
26:44 And again, at this point in time, we
26:46 have no idea how many other missions he
26:48 ran, how many trucks or armored vehicles
26:49 or tanks that he took out. On top of
26:52 that, even if he did take out tanks, not
26:53 many people would believe him. And
26:54 that's because at this point in time,
26:56 bazookas weren't very successful against
26:58 German tanks. German armor was
27:00 incredibly thick. And a bazooka, more
27:02 often than not, even if you scored a
27:03 direct hit, was not going to penetrate
27:05 the front or side armor of a German
27:07 Panther or a German Tiger tank. But what
27:09 most people didn't realize at the time,
27:11 he's not shooting at a German Tiger tank
27:13 from the front or the side. He's
27:15 shooting at it from the top like an
27:17 early version of a Javelin missile
27:19 literally hitting the tank at its
27:21 weakest possible point because no
27:22 engineer could have ever foreseen what
27:25 if somebody was flying above you with a
27:26 [ __ ] bazooka. At no point in the
27:28 German engineering process did any of
27:30 the engineers say, "Yeah, but what if a
27:32 crazy history teacher from Illinois and
27:34 a crop duster covered in bazookas
27:41 Okay, if you're not picking up what I'm
27:42 putting down, I'm trying to tell you
27:44 it's not only possible for Bazooka
27:46 Charlie to take out a German tank with
27:48 his crop duster, it's probable. The only
27:49 problem is it's one of those things
27:51 you're going to have to see to believe.
27:53 And he's a one-man show, so nobody's
27:55 seen it but him yet.
27:57 yet.
27:59 All right, September 19th, 1944, the
28:01 Battle of Araore, right outside of
28:03 Nancy, France. It is the largest armored
28:05 battle on the Western Front in all of
28:06 World War II. The Germans have
28:09 approximately 262 tanks and armored
28:11 vehicles, and the Americans have
28:14 approximately 140 Sherman tanks. The
28:16 Germans have the upper hand, but per
28:17 usual, the Americans have air
28:19 superiority. Problem, it's foggy as
28:21 [ __ ] and the planes can't fly.
28:23 Regardless, Charles Carpenter goes up
28:25 anyways. Under the cover of the fog, the
28:27 Germans start advancing. And after about
28:28 an hour of loitering over the
28:30 battlefield, Charles Carpenter finds a
28:32 break in the fog. And what he sees is a
28:34 German column advancing. And there's six
28:36 soldiers pinned down at this watering
28:38 point. It's the only place to get fresh
28:39 water, and they were filling up water
28:41 tanks for the rest of the unit. Bazooka
28:43 Charlie sees what's unfolding,
28:45 immediately, takes action, goes into his
28:47 corkcrew, dives down on the first tank,
28:49 fires his first two bazookas. Both of
28:52 them are a miss. Pulls up, circles back
28:54 around, does his corkcrew maneuver
28:56 again, dives again, fires two bazookas,
28:59 hits the lead tank. The crew has to bail
29:00 out. And the six guys that were getting
29:02 water are watching this entire thing
29:03 unfold. And they are the first people to
29:05 ever see bazooka Charlie take out an
29:08 enemy tank with a bazooka strapped to a
29:10 crop duster. Something that nobody would
29:12 have thought was possible. >> Holy
29:17 [ __ ] [ __ ]
29:19 >> And bazooka Charlie's still got two more
29:21 bazookas fresh in the tank. Pulls up
29:23 again, circles back around, does his
29:25 corkcrew again, dives on another tank,
29:27 scores a direct hit. The Germans have no
29:29 [ __ ] idea what's going on. There's
29:31 just a tiny little plane spawning out of
29:33 the fog, taking out all of their tanks.
29:35 They think it's some type of new weapon
29:37 or an ambush or something crazy is going
29:39 on. So, they panic and retreat. The
29:41 water crew escapes unscathed. They later
29:44 confirm that he did in fact take out two
29:46 enemy tanks, giving him his first two
29:48 confirmed tank kills. He then flies back
29:51 to base, has his ground crew reload the
29:53 bazookas, and goes back up. Fires all
29:56 six bazookas again, goes back, reloads
29:59 the bazookas again, goes back up, fires
30:02 them all again. He fired no less than 16
30:04 bazooka rounds that day. Bear in mind
30:07 again, we have no idea how successful he
30:09 was overall because he's a one-man show
30:11 and he had to have witnesses to confirm
30:13 stuff. But by the end of the day, he had
30:15 ground confirmation from multiple other
30:18 people that he had for sure destroyed
30:20 two German Panther tanks, two armored
30:22 vehicles, and at least 12 ground troops.
30:24 But his impact on the overall battle was
30:25 so much bigger than that because again,
30:27 the fog cover was preventing America
30:29 from having air superiority, meaning
30:31 that the Germans had a humongous upper
30:34 hand. But Charles Carpenter going out in
30:36 the fog, preventing them from advancing,
30:38 throwing the Germans off their game,
30:40 kept them on their heels long enough for
30:42 the fog to lift. And by the time they
30:43 realized what the [ __ ] was going on and
30:46 it was one crazy guy in a crop duster,
30:48 America had regained air superiority and
30:50 flipped the entire battle on its head.
30:53 By the end of the Battle of Ara, America
30:55 had lost 30 tanks. The Germans had lost
31:00 over 200 tanks and armored vehicles.
31:01 After the battle of Araor, the legend of
31:03 Bazooka Charlie goes from being a legend
31:05 within the ranks of Patton's Third Army
31:07 to being a legend back home. He is in
31:10 newspaper articles absolutely all over
31:11 the place. Personally, he doesn't really
31:12 care for the attention. He doesn't
31:14 really like the notoriety. He even
31:16 writes back home to his wife Bunny and
31:18 says, "Hey, don't talk to the press. I
31:19 don't want the attention." In an
31:21 interview, he even told a reporter, and
31:23 I quote, "Some people around here think
31:24 I'm nuts, but I just believe that if
31:26 we're going to fight this war, we have
31:28 to get on with it 60 minutes, an hour,
31:30 24 hours in a day." In addition to his
31:32 newfound notoriety, he also has to deal
31:34 with the fact that the Germans have
31:35 caught on to his battle strategy and
31:37 they have changed their tactics to
31:40 ignoring spotter planes to shooting
31:42 absolutely everything they have at them
31:44 all the time. Regarding that, he told a
31:46 reporter, and I quote, "Word must be
31:48 getting around among those to watch out
31:50 for cubs with bazookas on them. Every
31:51 time I show up now, they shoot
31:53 everything they have. They never used to
31:55 bother cubs. Bazookas must be bothering
31:57 them a bit." Despite that, Bazooka
31:59 Charlie goes out and continues to do
32:01 bazooka Charlie things. Keeps going out
32:02 on missions, keeps shooting his
32:04 bazookas, keeps calling in artillery.
32:06 And again, I reiterate for like the 15th
32:08 time, we don't know how many enemy tanks
32:10 and armored vehicles he took out during
32:12 this time period because again, he's a
32:13 one-man show and everything has to have
32:16 multiple eyewitnesses to be confirmed.
32:17 Despite that, over the next month in
32:20 October of 1944, he manages to bag four
32:23 German tank kills confirmed. two of
32:25 which were the German Tiger heavy tank,
32:27 the baddest tank of World War II. The
32:29 other two were allegedly Panther tanks,
32:32 one of which was leading an entire
32:34 column of tanks down a narrow road with
32:36 ditches on either side. And Charles
32:38 Carpenter dived on the lead tank, took
32:40 it out, and then called in artillery and
32:42 destroyed the entire column. Bazooka
32:44 Charlie continues with his antics all
32:46 through October, November, December,
32:48 January. Again, documentation's not that
32:50 great, but some accounts claim as many
32:53 as 14 confirmed tank kills, as well as
32:55 over 20 armored vehicles and countless
32:57 enemy machine gun positions and ground
32:59 troops. And somewhere along the line, he
33:01 is also awarded a Silver Star and an air
33:03 medal with Oakleaf Cluster. But by
33:06 February of 1945, he's hurting. He's got
33:08 this massive lump on his neck. He has no
33:10 idea what it is. He's extremely fatigued
33:12 and tired, and he ends up getting
33:13 hospitalized with battle fatigue.
33:15 Initially, Army doctors don't know what
33:16 to make of this lump on his neck. They
33:18 send him off to Paris. He gets surgery,
33:20 gets this massive lump removed, and he
33:22 gets told that he has Hodkins lymphoma.
33:23 They try to give him radiation
33:25 treatment, but the Hodkins lymphoma is
33:27 so advanced that they basically tell
33:29 him, "You've got a year, maybe two years
33:31 to live." He's released from the army
33:33 and sent back home. From here, he's
33:34 reunited with the love of his life,
33:36 Bunny, and his daughter, Carol. And he
33:38 figures he's got two years left. He
33:39 might as well make the most of it. He
33:42 buys an Airstream trailer, and they tour
33:44 the entire American West. and he gets to
33:46 see all of the country that he fought
33:48 for. Fast forward early 2000s, his
33:50 daughter Carol is now in her 60s and
33:52 it's the early days of the internet and
33:54 she gets on the internet one day and
33:55 she's reading on war forums and she
33:57 finds a thread about her dad and it's
34:00 people talking about this crazy guy
34:02 named Bazooka Charlie that supposedly
34:04 mounted bazookas onto a crop duster and
34:06 eliminated a bunch of German tanks. But
34:07 because there's such a lack of
34:09 documentation and everything else, all
34:11 the comments are doubting the validity
34:14 of this story and nobody believes it. So
34:16 she gets in this forum and she starts
34:18 posting pictures that she has of her dad
34:20 in theater and she starts reading all of
34:22 the letters that he had written back
34:24 home to her mom Bunny and she helps
34:26 validate this story and it becomes a
34:29 known fact. She then with some help of
34:30 some other people in the aviation
34:32 community goes on to write a book about
34:33 it. And in one of the pictures that she
34:36 has of her dad posing next to his plane,
34:37 Rosie the Rocketer, you can actually
34:39 read the serial number on the plane. And
34:42 aviation people track down Rosie the
34:44 Rocketer and find her in a museum in
34:46 Austria. They buy the plane, bring it
34:49 back home and restore Rosie the Rocketer
34:51 to her wartime paint job. And Carol's
34:53 daughter, a graphic designer, gets to
34:56 actually paint the old paint job of her
34:58 grandfather on the plane. But that's not
35:00 even the best part. The best part is
35:02 that after Charles and Bunny and Carol
35:04 got to tour the American West in their
35:09 Airstream trailer, Charles felt great.
35:11 So they went back home and he still felt
35:13 fine. So Charles went back to work being
35:15 a history teacher, changing the world
35:17 one classroom at a time. And a year went
35:19 by and he was still doing fine. And
35:20 another year and another year and
35:23 another year. And Charles lived an
35:26 additional 22 years after he was given a
35:28 one-year death sentence. He would
35:30 finally succumb to Hodkins disease in
35:33 1966 at the age of 53, which is still a
35:35 premature tragic death. But the silver
35:37 lining is he got to live an additional
35:40 22 years like he was dying. And I like
35:42 to thank Bazooka Charlie of all people
35:44 was able to cram a lot of life into that
35:46 22 years under those conditions. And
35:48 that's the best ending I could possibly
35:49 give you. Thank you for watching. Best
35:50 way to support the channel is go buy
35:51 some merch over at the
35:54 fatlectrician.com. Quackbang out.
35:56 out. [Music]
35:57 [Music]
35:59 Carol, if you're watching this, I really
36:01 hope you enjoyed it. I tried to do your
36:03 dad justice. He's a humongous badass. So
36:05 are you for all the work you did telling
36:07 his story. And I tried to get a hold of
36:09 you, but couldn't. But if you do see
36:11 this, I would love nothing more than to
36:12 buy you a first class plane ticket out
36:14 to San Antonio and have you on my
36:16 podcast and we can talk more about your
36:19 dad. Thanks. [Music]
