Koning, China, October 1942.
The Himalayas are not just mountains.
To the pilots flying the hump, the suicidal supply route from India to China, they are jagged teeth of granite waiting to chew up aluminum and flesh.
The air over the hump is a chaotic mix of vertical updrafts, freezing sleet, and Japanese interceptors.
It is the end of the world.
And sitting at the end of the world in a cockpit that smells of sweat, cured leather, and high octane gasoline is Colonel Robert Lee Scott Jr.
He is 34 years old.
In the fighter pilot game, 34 is ancient.
He is supposed to be behind a desk.
He is supposed to be planning logistics.
The Army Air Forces told him he was too old for combat.
They told him his reflexes were gone.
They told him to train the kids and stay on the ground.
Robert Scott didn’t listen.
He sits in his Curtis P40K Warhawk, a plane he has named Old Exterminator.
The name is painted in garish white letters on the nose, right next to the shark mouth that defines the lineage of the flying tigers.
The P40 is a relic.
By late 1942 standards, it is heavy, draggy, and obsolete.
It struggles to climb past 20,000 ft.
Its Allison V1710 engine lacks the two-stage supercharger of the Mustang or the Thunderbolt.
It wheezes in the thin air of the Himalayas.
But Scott loves it.
He loves it because it is honest.
It weighs 9,000 lb.
It carries 650 caliber M2 Browning machine guns in the wings.
It has armor plate behind the seat that can stop a 7.7 bullet.
It is a flying tank in a war of paper kites.
Scott is a man of deep contradictions.
He is a killer who carries a Bible.
He is a warrior who speaks of the spiritual ecstasy of flight.
He famously told a reporter when asked how he survived the suicide missions over Burma, “I’m not alone up there.
God is my co-pilot.” It was a sound bite that would become a book, a movie, and a legend.
But right now, it is just a prayer in the back of his mind as he watches the warning flags go up on the airfield.
The phrase, “God is my co-pilot,” became a cliche.
But the man who said it lived a life of terrifying danger that was anything but cliche.
We are about to fly the mission that defined the air war in China, a solo crusade against an entire Japanese bomber fleet.
If you want to understand the physics of a P40 pushed beyond its limit, and the mind of a pilot who refused to retire, hit that like button and subscribe.
The warning siren is wailing.
Let’s scramble.
The Chinese air raid warning network is a marvel of low tech ingenuity.
It consists of thousands of farmers, soldiers, and villagers watching the sky with binoculars and radios.
When they see the Japanese planes coming from Burma or Hanoi, they call it in.
The reports move from village to village.
Jing bao air raid warnings tracking the enemy like a storm front today.
The report is terrifying.
Heavy raid the intelligence officer shouts running to Scott’s plane.
Bombers, sallys and bedettes escorted by zeros 40 plus.
Scott looks at the sky.
It is a deep piercing blue.
The kind of blue that hides predators.
He looks at his flight line.
The 23rd fighter group is ragged.
They are short on fuel.
They are short on parts.
Many of the P40s are grounded with blown gaskets or shotout hydraulics.
Scramble everything that runs.
Scott orders.
He presses the starter toggle.
The inertia starter winds up.
A high-pitched wine that builds to a scream.
He engages the clutch.
The Allison engine coughs, belches blue smoke, and roars to life.
The vibration shakes the entire airframe.
Scott taxis out.
The P40 bounces on the rough dirt strip.
He pushes the throttle forward.
The torque of the V12 tries to pull the plane to the left.
He stomps on the right rudder to keep it straight.
Old exterminator claws into the air.
Scott is not alone, but he might as well be.
He has a handful of wingmen, Tex Hill, maybe Ajax Baller, but in the chaos of the climb, formations disintegrate.
The P40 climbs slowly.
It is a struggle against gravity.
He needs altitude.
Altitude is potential energy.
Altitude is life.
He pushes the nose up, watching the manifold pressure.
He has to baby the engine.
If he overheats it now, he will blow a cylinder head before he even sees the enemy.
10,000 ft.
The air cools.
The humidity of the jungle below fades.
15,000 ft.
He puts on his oxygen mask.
The rubber smells of talcum powder.
20,000 ft.
The P40 feels sluggish.
The controls are mushy.
The air is too thin for the wing design.
Then he sees them.
It is a sight that would freeze the blood of a lesser man.
A massive formation of Kawasaki Kai 48 Lily bombers and Mitsubishi Kai21 sies.
They are flying in a tight V formation.
Their defensive guns bristling and swarming above them like gnats around a rotting fruit are the fighters.
Nakajima Kai 43 Oscars.
The Americans call them zeros, but they are army fighters, lighter and more agile than the Navy Zero.
There are dozens of them.
Scott is above them.
He has won the first battle, the battle for position.
He has the high perch.
He checks his guns.
He flips the arming switches.
He turns on the illuminated reticle of his gun site.
He does the math.
One P40, six guns, 15 seconds of ammunition versus 40 enemy aircraft.
Scott feels the fear.
It is a cold knot in his stomach, but he pushes it down.
He replaces it with the cold logic of the engineer and the hot zeal of the crusader.
Lord, he whispers into the mask.
If you’re riding with me, hold on tight.
He pushes the stick forward.
The P40 noses over.
Gravity joins hands with horsepower.
The heavy fighter accelerates.
300 m 350 m 400 m.
The wind noise builds to a shriek.
The airframe begins to hum.
This is the P40’s domain.
It falls like a brick.
And in a dive, it is faster than anything the Japanese have.
Scott targets the lead bomber.
He wants to cut the head off the snake.
He is closing at 500 m per hour relative speed.
The enemy formation grows rapidly in his windscreen.
He can see the glass nose of the lead bomber.
He can see the gunners tracking him.
He is diving into a wall of fire.
The Japanese gunners open up.
Tracers float up toward him.
Lazy arcs of light that snap past his canopy at supersonic speeds.
Scott ignores them.
He focuses on the crosshairs.
He waits.
He waits until he can see the pilot’s face.
800 yd.
600 yd.
400 y.
Now he squeezes the trigger.
The P40 shutters as six heavy machine guns erupt.
The recoil slows the plane by a fraction of a mile per hour.
The stream of incendiary bullets slams into the lead bomber.
22,000 ft over Eunan Province.
The impact of 650 caliber machine guns is not subtle.
It is a kinetic event.
Each bullet weighs 45 g and is traveling at 2,900 ft per second.
When they strike the unarmored wing route of the Japanese bomber, they don’t just poke holes, they tear the structure apart.
Scott watches as his tracers saw through the main spar of the lead Kai 21 Sally.
The bomber’s right wing folds upward, then shears off completely.
The fuselage rolls violently to the right, vomiting fuel and fire.
It drops out of the formation like a stone, taking its crew of five down to the harsh Chinese rocks below.
Splash one.
Scott grunts, but he has no time to celebrate.
He is screaming through the bomber formation at 450 m.
He passes so close to the other bombers that he feels the thump of their wake turbulence.
Now comes the hard part, the recovery.
Scott bottoms out his dive at 18,000 ft.
The G forces crush him into the seat as he pulls back on the stick.
His vision grays out the tunnel vision of a pilot on the edge of consciousness.
His guit inflates, squeezing his legs to keep the blood in his brain.
He zooms back up.
He is trading his massive kinetic energy back into altitude.
He wants to get back to the perch, but the escort fighters are awake now.
Four Kai 43 Oscars dive on him.
The Oscar is a terrifying opponent for a P40.
It weighs half as much as the American plane.
It has butterfly flaps that allow it to turn on a dime.
It can loop inside the P40’s turning radius easily.
If Scott tries to turn with them, he is dead.
Scott looks in his mirror.
The Oscars are agile, but they are light.
They cannot dive as fast as the heavy P40.
But because Scott is climbing, bleeding off his speed to regain altitude, they are catching him.
Tracers zip past his wing.
Thump.
Bullets hit the tail.
The P40 shutters.
Scott realizes he can’t make it back to the high perch.
The Oscars have the angle.
If he keeps climbing, he will slow down enough for them to chew him up.
He has to change the equation.
He remembers the P40 strength roll rate.
The P40 has hydraulic boosted ailerons or highly effective mechanical leverage.
At high speeds above 300 m, it rolls faster than the Oscar.
The Oscars’s controls stiffen at high speed.
The pilot has to fight the stick.
Scott pushes the nose down again, abandoning the climb.
He enters a shallow dive to keep his speed up.
The Oscars follow.
Scott waits until they are close.
Then he slams the stick hard to the left.
The P40 snaps into a roll.
Scott reverses it immediately, rolling right, then left again.
He is cissoring.
He is forcing the Japanese pilots to react to his direction changes because their controls are stiff at this speed.
They lag behind.
They can’t roll fast enough to keep their guns on him.
Scott watches them in the mirror.
They are struggling.
He sees an opportunity.
One of the Oscars tries to anticipate his role.
The Japanese pilot turns too hard and bleeds off his speed.
He pops up momentarily hanging in the air.
Scott executes a high G barrel roll.
He pulls the stick back and rolls over the top of the pursuing fighter.
Because the P40 retains its energy better, Scott slides over the Oscar and drops down behind it.
It is a classic overshoot.
The hunter has become the hunted.
Scott is now on the tail of the Oscar.
He is close 200 y.
The Japanese pilot realizes his mistake.
He tries to turn tight to shake Scott, but Scott is ready.
He anticipates the turn.
He pulls lead.
He fires.
The 050 caliber rounds tear into the Oscar.
The Japanese plane has no self-sealing fuel tanks.
It has no armor plate.
It is a Zippo lighter with wings.
The fuel tank behind the pilot ignites.
The Oscar turns into a fireball.
Two Scott whispers, but there are still dozens of them.
And he is now alone at medium altitude, surrounded by enemies.
He looks around.
The sky is full of turning planes.
His wingmen are engaged elsewhere.
He sees a P40 spinning down in flames.
He sees a Japanese bomber trailing smoke.
He is in the furball.
This is where the P40 dies.
In a swirling dog fight, the P40 is a brick.
It needs to keep moving.
Scott spots a flight of three Oscars circling looking for a target.
They spot him.
They bank toward him.
Scott knows he can’t run this time.
He is too low to dive away effectively.
He has to fight.
He charges them headon.
It is a game of chicken.
The Japanese pilots hate the head-on pass.
Their planes are fragile.
A single 050 caliber hit to the engine block will destroy them.
The P40, on the other hand, has a massive liquid cooled engine, radiators, and armor plate protecting the pilot.
It is built for a collision.
Scott lines up the lead Oscar.
He holds the trigger.
The Japanese pilot sees the muzzle flashes from the P40’s wings.
He flinches.
He breaks right.
Scott shifts his aim to the wingman.
The wingman holds his nerve.
He fires back.
Bang.
A 12.7 explosive round hits Scott’s windshield.
The armored glass shatters but holds.
It crazes, turning opaque like a spiderweb.
Scott can’t see forward.
He is blind.
He is flying a 400 m fighter plane in the middle of a dog fight and his forward view is gone.
Panic flares.
He wants to bail out.
He reaches for the canopy crank.
Then he stops.
God is my co-pilot, he thinks.
Well, you better have the stick because I can’t see a damn thing.
He looks out the side panels.
He can see the horizon.
He can see the ground.
He kicks the rudder, yawing the plane so he can see forward through the side glass.
It is like driving a car with a muddy windshield by looking out the side window.
He sees the Oscar that hit him.
It is turning back for the kill.
Scott decides to do something insane.
He decides to use the P40’s weight as a weapon.
He pulls the throttle back.
He drops the combat flaps.
The P40 slows down rapidly.
It becomes a brick.
The Japanese pilot expecting the American to run is closing fast.
He overshoots.
He flies right past Scott’s nose.
Scott slams the throttle forward.
He retracts the flaps.
He is now behind the Japanese pilot.
He can’t use the gun sight.
He can’t see through the front glass.
He has to aim by instinct.
He has to aim by using the tracers as a guide.
Looking out the side to judge the angle.
He walks the rudder, spraying bullets in a wide arc.
He sees pieces fly off the Oscar.
The Japanese plane rolls inverted and dives into the jungle.
Threes Scott says his voice is shaking.
His engine is running rough.
The temperature gauge is in the red.
He has holes in his wings.
His windshield is shattered.
And he has no ammo left.
He checks the counters.
Empty.
He is defenseless.
And there is still one Japanese fighter on his tail.
15,000 ft over the Salwine River Gorge.
The silence of empty guns is the loudest sound a fighter pilot can hear.
When Scott presses the trigger and hears only the hiss of pneumatics, no roar, no vibration.
He knows he has crossed the line from predator to prey.
He is flying a broken airplane.
[snorts] The windshield is opaque.
The engine is overheating.
The hydraulics are leaking.
He can smell the acurid fluid in the cockpit.
And behind him, a single Nakajima Kai 43 Oscar is closing for the kill.
The Japanese pilot knows Scott is hurt.
He can see the smoke trailing from the P40’s exhausts.
He can see the sluggish movements.
He is taking his time.
He is savoring the kill.
Scott looks at his fuel gauges.
He has enough to get home.
Maybe, but he can’t outrun the Oscar in level flight.
The P40 is faster in a dive, yes, but they are already low.
If Scott divies now, he hits the granite peaks of the gorge.
He has to bluff.
Scott remembers a story, a myth, really.
The story of the psychological kill.
He pulls the P40 into a steep climbing turn.
It is a mistake.
The P40 bleeds speed.
The Oscar cuts inside effortlessly.
The Japanese pilot fires.
Tracers arc over Scott’s canopy.
He missed.
Scott realizes the Japanese pilot is wary.
He respects the P40’s guns.
He doesn’t know Scott is empty.
Scott reverses his turn.
He turns into the attack.
He points the nose of old exterminator directly at the oncoming Oscar.
He has no bullets, but he has a shark mouth painted on the nose.
He has a 12T propeller spinning at 3,000 RPM.
He has 9,000 lb of angry aluminum.
He plays chicken.
He flies straight at the Japanese fighter.
He doesn’t flinch.
The Japanese pilot sees the P40 turn aggressively.
He sees the shark mouth.
He expects a wall of 050 caliber fire.
The Japanese pilot flinches.
He breaks off his attack run.
He pulls up.
Scott flies through the space.
The Oscar just vacated.
That worked once, Scott mutters.
It won’t work twice.
He needs to lose him.
Scott looks down.
The Salwine River gorge is below.
It is a deep, twisting canyon cut through the mountains.
The walls are steep cliffs.
The river is a ribbon of brown water at the bottom.
It is a place where shadows hide.
Scott pushes the nose over.
He dives into the canyon.
The Oscar follows.
This is dangerous flying.
The air in the canyon is turbulent.
The walls are close.
One mistake and you are a smear on the rock.
Scott flies old exterminator down to the deck.
He is 50 ft above the water.
He banks hard, following the twists of the river.
The P40 is heavy, but at high speed it is stable.
It rides the turbulence like a train on tracks.
The Oscar is light.
It gets tossed around by the updrafts coming off the canyon walls.
The Japanese pilot is fighting his stick.
Scott uses the terrain.
He hugs the cliff walls.
He flies into the shadows where his olive drab paint blends with the rock and vegetation.
The Japanese pilot loses sight of him for a second, then spots him again.
Scott sees a sharp bend in the river ahead.
A massive rock spire juts out.
Scott aims for the spire.
He flies straight at it.
At the last possible second, he yanks the stick back and rolls 90°.
He pulls 6GS.
The P40 knifes around the rock, missing it by feet.
The Japanese pilot is right behind him.
He sees the turn.
He tries to follow, but the Oscar is lighter.
It is more affected by the wind.
And the pilot is fixated on Scott, not the terrain.
The Japanese pilot turns, but a gust of wind from the side canyon hits his light wing.
He drifts wide.
Scott clears the rock.
The Oscar does not.
There is no explosion, just a cloud of dust and debris.
As the Japanese fighter clips the canyon wall, the wing shears off.
The fuselage tumbles into the river.
Scott pulls up out of the canyon.
He climbs into the sunlight.
He is shaking uncontrollably.
The adrenaline crash is hitting him.
His hands are vibrating so hard he can barely hold the throttle.
He checks the sky.
It is empty.
The bomber formation is gone.
The fighters are gone.
He is alone.
Four, he whispers.
Three with guns, one with a rock.
He sets a course for Konming.
The flight back is an agony of suspense.
Every shadow looks like a zero.
Every cloud looks like a trap.
His engine is dying.
The oil pressure is dropping steadily.
60 sigh, 40 sigh, 20 sigh.
The Allison engine is eating its own bearings.
It is making a sound like a bag of hammers.
Clank.
Don’t quit.
Scott begs.
Don’t you quit on me now.
Get me over the hump.
He crosses the final ridge.
He sees the lake at Konming.
He sees the runway.
He doesn’t have enough altitude for a proper pattern.
He has to come in straight.
He drops the gear.
One wheel comes down.
The other is stuck.
He cycles the handle.
He pumps the hydraulic hand pump.
Thump.
The second wheel locks.
He drops the flaps.
The hydraulics are weak.
They only go down halfway.
He is coming in hot.
140 m.
He lines up on the dirt.
He can’t see forward through the shattered glass.
He has to look out the side, judging his height by the blur of the grass.
He chops the throttle.
The P40 slams onto the ground.
It bounces.
It sloos sideways.
Scott fights the rudder.
He stands on the brakes.
The plane skids in a cloud of red dust.
It spins around coming to a stop facing the way he came.
The engine coughs once, shutters violently, and dies.
Silence.
The only sound is the ticking of the cooling metal and the wind whistling through the bullet holes in the wing.
Scott sits in the cockpit.
He tries to unbuckle his harness, but his fingers won’t work.
He just sits there staring at the instrument panel, at the shattered glass, at the picture of his wife taped to the side.
He hears sirens, the meat wagon, the fire truck.
He opens the canopy.
He climbs out onto the wing.
He slides down to the ground.
He falls to his knees.
He kisses the dirty, rocky ground of China.
A mechanic runs up to him.
It’s Sergeant Ski.
Colonel, you okay? We counted the holes from the tower.
Scott looks up.
His face is covered in oil and sweat.
He looks like a raccoon with the goggle marks.
Ski.
Scott says, his voice raspy.
Change the oil, patch the glass, reload the guns.
Sorry, we have to go back up tomorrow.
Ski looks at the plane.
He looks at the shredded tail.
He looks at the oil bleeding from the cowling.
Sir, this plane is scrap.
The main spar is twisted.
The engine is seized.
Scott pats the nose of old exterminator.
She got me home.
Scott says she did her job.
The debriefing room.
Conming.
Robert Scott sits on a wooden crate holding a mug of coffee that is shaking in his hands.
The intelligence officer, Captain Chennalt, son of the general, is writing on a clipboard.
Four confirmed.
Chenald asks.
Four.
Scott says three Oscars, one Sally.
And the fifth terrain kill.
Scott says, “Put it down as a maneuvering kill or an act of God.
Take your pick.” The room is silent.
The other pilots, the young ones, the ones Scott was supposed to be too old to lead, are staring at him.
They look at him not as an old man, but as a force of nature.
They realized that the phrase God is my co-pilot isn’t just a catchy slogan.
For Scott, it is a literal operational doctrine.
It represents the fatalism required to fly a P40 against 40 Japanese planes and expect to survive.
Scott survives the war.
In fact, he becomes one of the most famous pilots in American history.
He writes the book God is my co-pilot in three days while recovering from dysentery and exhaustion.
It becomes a bestseller.
It becomes a movie.
But the legend of Robert Scott is not just about the book.
It is about the transition of air combat.
Scott was a bridge.
He was a bridge between the romantic era of WWI dog fighting where individual skill and chivalry mattered and the industrial slaughter of WWI where machines and physics dominated.
He flew the P40, a plane that was technically inferior to almost everything it fought.
But he proved that energy management, the ability to trade speed for altitude, the discipline to slash and run, the refusal to turn on the enemy’s terms, could overcome technical inferiority.
He showed that a heavy, rugged plane could defeat a light, agile one, if the pilot had the will to push it to the breaking point.
He retires as a brigadier general.
He lives a long life.
He walks the Great Wall of China in his 80s, but he never forgets old exterminator.
Years later, in an interview, Scott reflects on that mission.
People ask me about the fear, Scott says.
They ask if I was afraid of dying.
I tell them, when you are in a dive at 400 mph and the controls are stiff as stone and the tracers are reaching for you, you don’t have time for fear.
You only have time for geometry.
Geometry? The interviewer asks angles? Scott says it’s all angles.
If you turn too tight, you die.
If you pull up too soon, you die.
You have to find the perfect line through the chaos.
And sometimes you find that line because you have help.
He points to the sky.
I wasn’t alone in that cockpit.
I never was.
The technical legacy of the P40 Warhawk.
The P40 is often maligned in history books.
It wasn’t as fast as the Mustang.
It wasn’t as high-flying as the Spitfire.
But in the China Burmemo, India theater, it was the perfect weapon.
It could drink bad fuel.
It could take off from mud.
It could survive midair collisions.
and it had the M2 Browning 050 caliber machine gun.
Scott’s mission proved the dominance of the big 50.
The Japanese Oscars were armed with two light machine guns, usually one 7.7.
They had to hit the pilot or the engine to kill a P40.
Scott’s guns could tear a wing off.
They could ignite fuel from 600 yards.
They allowed him to kill from outside the Japanese effective range.
It was a victory of American industrial might.
Heavy metal, heavy firepower, heavy armor over the Japanese philosophy of lightness and agility.
The final flight in 1980, Robert Scott is invited to fly an F16 Fighting Falcon.
He is an old man, but he climbs into the jet.
He takes the stick.
He pulls 9GS.
He doesn’t black out.
The instructor pilot is amazed.
General, how do you do that? Scott smiles.
He looks at the digital HUD.
The flybywire controls the radar.
It’s easy, Scott says.
This plane does the work for you.
In the P40, you had to arm wrestle the devil.
He looks out at the clouds.
But I miss the propeller, he says.
I miss looking through the disc.
I miss the oil on the windshield.
That was flying.
This This is just operating a computer.
He lands the jet.
He walks away.
Robert Lee Scott Jr.
dies in 2006 at the age of 97.
He is buried with full honors.
But his real monument is the story of the day he took a heavy, obsolete, broken airplane up against an armada, looked the odds in the eye, and said, “You’re going to need more planes.
” And he was right.
