The B25 Mitchell screams across Cebu Harbor at 100 ft.
So low the spray from its prop wash lashes the water beneath.
Inside, Captain Paul Py gun grips the controls with white knuckles.
His twin point45 automatics still holstered at his sides.
Cigar smoke curling through the cockpit.
The date is April 12th, 1942.
Just 5 days after the largest surrender in American military history at Batan, the Japanese control the entire Pacific.
America has lost every battle, every island, every hope.
Guns bombardier is screaming at him to pull up.
They’re violating every regulation in the book.
Flying so low that enemy gunners can’t depress their weapons enough to fire.
What gun is about to do has never been attempted in combat.
If it fails, they die.
If it succeeds, he changes the entire war.
The numbers are catastrophic.
In 4 months, Japan has conquered territory the size of the United States.
American bombers hitting from high altitude have a 2% hit rate against ships.
2%.
For every 100 bombs dropped, 98 miss.
The Pacific fleet is crippled.
The Philippines have fallen.
Australia expects invasion within weeks.
Allied commanders are preparing evacuation plans from the entire theater.
And in the headquarters of Japanese naval intelligence in Manila, analysts are tracking something they cannot explain.
An American pilot they’ve designated the shadow.
A maverick who appears from nowhere, strikes with devastating precision, and vanishes before interceptors can respond.
They don’t know his name.
They don’t know his tactics.
But they know he’s operating deep behind their lines with aircraft that shouldn’t exist.
Flying missions that military doctrine deems impossible.
What Japanese intelligence didn’t know was that this 42-year-old former moonshine runner with no engineering degree, no formal military training beyond his enlisted naval aviation experience, was conducting unauthorized experiments that would turn obsolete medium bombers into the deadliest weapons in the Pacific.
What they didn’t know was that in 72 hours, gun would strike five separate Japanese installations in a single dawn raid originating from enemy occupied territory.
A feat of navigation, endurance, and audacity unmatched in modern warfare.
And what they absolutely didn’t know was that the crude modifications he was welding together in secret hangers would kill more Japanese ships than any other weapon system in the theater save one the submarine.
This is the story of how a bourbon drinking, rulebreaking Arkansas wild man, with a personal vendetta turned the tide of the Pacific War, not with orders from above, but with a wrench, a welding torch, and zero regard for the word impossible.
In the opening months of 1942, the Allied air campaign in the Pacific is bleeding to death from a simple physics problem.
Medium bombers cannot hit moving ships.
The Douglas A20 Havoc and North American B-25 Mitchell are designed for high alitude strategic bombing.
Doctrine requires them to attack from 8,000 to 12,000 ft where enemy anti-aircraft fire is less accurate.
But Japanese destroyer captains have learned to read the bombers’s approach angles.
By the time a bomb falls 2 m through the air, they’ve maneuvered clear.
American hit rates against naval targets hover between 2% and 5%.
Combat reports from Java, the Coral Sea, and New Guinea confirm the same grim pattern.
Crews return from missions claiming near misses, while enemy convoys steam away unscathed.
The mathematics are brutal.
A B-25 carries a standard bomb load of 8 500 lb bombs.
In a typical anti-shipping mission, a squadron of 12 bombers drops 96 bombs at enemy convoys.
Statistical analysis shows that between two and five bombs hit their targets.
Barely enough to damage one ship, never enough to sink a convoy.
The Japanese are reinforcing their garrisons in New Guinea at will.
Lieutenant General George Brett, commander of Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific, is presiding over a catastrophe.
His inventory of combat ready aircraft can be counted on two hands.
Spare parts don’t exist.
Trained pilots are evacuating from one disaster to another.
Morale is in freefall.
When General Douglas MacArthur orders Brett to strike Japanese installations in the Philippines, 4,000 m round trip through enemy controlled airspace.
Brett protests that the mission is impossible.
The expert consensus in early 1942 is unanimous.
Medium bombers are ineffective against naval targets.
The British have experimented with lowaltitude attacks in the Mediterranean with horrific casualty rates.
The Germans have achieved limited success with dive bombers, but American doctrine prohibits such reckless tactics.
A study commissioned by the War Department concludes that only torpedo bombers or dive bombers have sufficient accuracy to justify anti-shipping missions and the Pacific theater has almost none of either type available.
The stakes extend beyond military casualties.
If the Japanese succeed in isolating Australia, the entire Allied strategy in the Pacific collapses, there is no second line of defense.
American planners are quietly discussing a withdrawal to Hawaii, conceding the Western Pacific to Japanese control for the duration of the war.
The Australian government is preparing for invasion.
Civilians are evacuating Sydney and Melbourne.
Allied codereers have intercepted Japanese plans for operation FS, the invasion of Fiji and Samoa to cut supply lines between America and Australia.
In Washington, Army Chief of Staff General George C.
Marshall reviews the casualty reports from Batam with growing alarm.
75,000 American and Filipino troops have surrendered.
It is April 9th, 1942.
News reels show American prisoners being marched into captivity.
The Baton Death March will kill 10,000 men.
The American public is demanding answers.
President Roosevelt needs a victory, any victory, to prove America can strike back.
Against this backdrop of systemic failure and institutional paralysis, a solution is emerging not from staff colleges or research laboratories, but from the greased hands of a 42year-old former chief petty officer with 2.45 four or five pistols and a Filipino wife and four children trapped in a Japanese internment camp in Manila.
Paul Irvin Papy Gun has no authority to modify military aircraft.
He has no engineering credentials beyond his enlisted training as a naval aviation machinist’s mate.
He is technically a civilian airline manager whom MacArthur commissioned as a captain out of desperation when the Philippines fell.
But Papy Gun has something the experts lack.
a burning personal hatred of the Japanese Empire, an encyclopedic knowledge of aircraft systems from 20 years as a Navy mechanic and pilot, and absolutely zero respect for regulations that prevent him from killing the enemy.
Paul Irvin Gun was born on October 18th, 1899 in Quitman, Arkansas.
In 1917, a local judge gave the 18-year-old moonshine runner a choice.
Enlist or go to jail.
Gun chose the Navy.
It saved his life and gave him a career.
He became a machinist’s mate, then earned his wings as an enlisted naval aviator, a dying breed in the 1920s when the Navy began requiring officers to fly.
Gun served with the legendary Top Hat Squadron as a fighter pilot, flew from carriers, worked as a flight instructor in Pensacola.
By 1939, he’d retired as a chief petty officer after 20 years of service.
His official credentials, high school diploma, enlisted technical training, 4,000 flight hours.
No university degree, no engineering degree, no staff college education.
By military standards, Papy Gun lacks the qualifications to design a toaster, let alone redesign combat aircraft.
After retirement, Gun moved to Manila where he became operations manager for Philippine Airlines, flying Beachcraft Model 18s across the archipelago.
He married Clara Louise Crosby in 1921.
They were the first couple to honeymoon by airplane.
By December 1941, they have four children.
Life is good.
Then the Japanese bomb Clark Field 10 hours after Pearl Harbor.
MacArthur commissions Gun as a captain and orders him to evacuate key personnel using PLAL aircraft.
On January 2nd, 1942, Manila falls.
Gun is 200 miles away when Japanese forces intern his wife Py and their children at the University of Sto.
Tomtomas.
They will remain prisoners until February 1945.
The war becomes personal.
The moment of insight strikes on April 12th, 1942 over Sabu Harbor during the Royce raid.
Gun is piloting a B-25 on only his second bombing mission against Japanese shipping.
His first pass from 4,000 ft misses completely.
The freighter maneuvers clear.
Standard doctrine says, “Return to base.
Reload.
Try again tomorrow.
But Gun is furious.
His family is 150 miles away, starving in a prison camp.
This ship might be carrying supplies that keep them imprisoned.
Rage overrides training.
He shoves the control yolk forward and dives.
His bombardier, watching the altimeter spin downward, begins screaming.
100 ft 50 ft.
The B-25 is skimming the wavetops.
Spray lashing the windscreen.
Gun’s mind flashes to his Navy days.
Bomber pilots practicing skip bombing exercises, bouncing bombs across the water for fun.
He remembers anti-aircraft doctrine.
Naval guns can’t depress below 18° without risking self-destruction.
We’re going in low, gun shouts over the intercom.
So low you’ll think we’re swimming.
The B-25’s 050 caliber machine guns open fire, hosing the freighter’s deck with tracer rounds.
At 100 ft and 250 mph, gun releases two 500 lb bombs.
They skip across the water like stones on a pond.
Once, twice, and slam into the freigher’s hull at the water line.
The ship convulses in fire.
Gun yanks back on the stick.
Gforces crushing him into his seat.
“That’s the way to do it, boys!” he screams.
“That’s the way to get him.
His co-pilot, Lieutenant Frank Bender, is hyperventilating.
If you want to get us all killed, that’s the way, but Gun is already banking for a second pass.
Papy Gun lands at Delonte Field with his mind racing.
Skip bombing works.
He’s proven it.
But the B-25 still has a fatal flaw.
Insufficient forward firepower.
Approaching at 100 ft gives crews maybe 30 seconds of exposure to enemy anti-aircraft fire.
In that window, they need overwhelming suppressive fire to survive.
The standard B25 has a single30 caliber machine gun in the nose.
One gun knows it’s suicide.
He needs more guns.
Many more guns.
He returns to Charters Towers, Queensland, where the third bombardment group maintains a repair depot.
At night, after official duties, Gun disappears into a maintenance hanger with a few trusted mechanics.
No authorization, no paperwork, just a welder, a wrench, and a vision.
His first modification is the Douglas A20 Havoc light bomber.
He removes the bombardier position from the nose and installs 450 caliber machine guns in a fixed forward firing mount.
The same quad 50 mount used on anti-aircraft imp placements.
Then he adds two more 050 caliber guns in package guns mounted on the fuselage sides.
six forward-firing heavy machine guns on an aircraft designed to carry one.
The A20 depot commander sees the modification and summons Gun to his office.
Captain, this is completely unauthorized.
You’ve violated.
I’m not asking permission.
Gun interrupts, cigar smoke curling from his lips.
I’m telling you, this is how we’re killing ships.
You can court marshall me after we win.
Word of guns experiments reaches Colonel John Big Jim Davies, commander of the third bomb group, who faces his own dilemma.
Davies needs bombers.
The outfit still lacks sufficient aircraft.
Then gun brings him extraordinary news.
There are 24 Dutch B-25 Mitchells sitting idle at an airfield in Melbourne.
The Netherlands East Indies Air Force fled Java with them, but has no pilots.
Davies and Gun hatch an audacious plan.
They’ll steal them.
On April 3rd, 1942, Davies Gun and 22 other pilots fly to Melbourne with paperwork authorizing pickup of third bomb group aircraft.
They quietly taxi 12 Dutch B-25s to the runway and take off before anyone realizes the deception.
Protests from the American and Dutch ambassadors arrive too late.
The third bomb group has its bombers and Gun has his workshop subjects.
Now Gun attacks the B-25 modification with obsessive focus.
He removes the bombaders’s glass nose and installs 8.5 caliber machine guns.
Four in the nose, four in side packs.
He strips the belly turret, useless at 100 ft altitude.
To save weight, he adds extra fuel tanks scavenged from damaged aircraft.
The engineering is crude.
Metal plates are riveted to existing structures.
Ammunition belts juryrigged from spare parts.
Gun is making it up as he goes, guided by intuition and decades of experience.
When ordinance officers protest that the modifications violate center of gravity calculations, gun test flies the aircraft himself.
Flies like a dream, he announces upon landing.
Start converting the squadron.
That’s illegal.
An ordinance officer protests.
regulations prohibit field modifications without engineering approval from “Then court marshall me when I get back from killing Japanese ships,” Gun says, walking away.
By December 1942, Papy Gun has converted an entire squadron of B-25s into unauthorized gunships.
The Fifth Air Force doesn’t know it yet, but everything is about to change.
In August 1942, Major General George Churchill Kenny arrives in Brisbane to take command of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific.
He is 52 years old, a World War I veteran, an MIT graduate engineer, and a pragmatist with zero patience for bureaucratic excuses.
MacArthur has given him one mission.
Make the Air Force work or everyone goes home.
Kenny’s first inspection tour takes him to the third bomb group at Charter’s Towers.
What he finds shocks him.
In a maintenance hanger without authorization, a wildeyed captain covered in grease is installing machine guns into the nose of a B-25.
Eight forwardfiring 050 caliber.
Ammunition belts feed from juryrigged boxes.
The bombardier’s position has been completely removed.
What the hell is this? Kenny demands.
Papy gun doesn’t salute.
Doesn’t stop working.
This is how we kill ships, General.
Low and fast.
Skip the bombs in like stones.
Kenny’s staff officers immediately object.
“Sir, these modifications violate.
I don’t care what they violate,” Kenny interrupts, studying the gun placement.
“Can you hit anything with this?” “I sank two freighters at Cebu in one pass,” Gun says, not looking up from his welding.
Standard doctrine from altitude, 2% hit rate.
My way 80%.
Kenny turns to his staff.
80%.
Unverified, sir.
An intelligence officer cautions.
Captain Gun’s combat reports are unconventional.
He also stole these aircraft from the Dutch without borrowed gun corrects and they got them back mostly.
The staff conference erupts.
Officers demand guns court marshal for unauthorized modifications, theft of allied property, violation of chain of command, and general insubordination.
Regulations require all aircraft modifications to be approved by right field engineers in Ohio, tested for 6 months, then slowly introduced to combat squadrons.
gun has bypassed the entire process.
He’s a rogue operator, sir.
A colonel argues.
42 years old, flying combat missions when he should be behind a desk.
No engineering credentials.
These modifications could kill crews through structural failure or kill Japanese ships.
Kenny interrupts.
The room falls silent.
Kenny walks around the modified B-25, running his fingers along the gun mounts.
His MIT training evaluates the engineering, crude, but functional.
The weight distribution is acceptable.
The fire concentration is devastating.
As a World War I pilot, Kenny understands something the younger staff officers don’t.
Wars are won by men who break rules, not follow them.
Captain Gun, Kenny says finally, I’m assigning you to my personal staff as special projects officer.
Your job is to modify every B25 and A20 in the theater exactly like this.
I want parachute fragmentation bombs, skip bombing racks, and as many forward guns as these birds can carry without falling out of the sky.
The staff officers are appalled.
Sir, we should court marshall him, not promote.
What’s your current ship kill rate, Colonel? Kenny asks.
With current doctrine, approximately 2 to 5%, sir.
But Captain Gun’s claiming 80%.
If he’s even half right, he’s worth 10 squadrons.
Kenny turns to Gun.
You get me those numbers in combat, Captain, and I’ll personally pin a medal on you.
You get crews killed with unsafe aircraft, I’ll court marshall you myself.
Deal.
Gun finally looks up, cigar clenched in his teeth.
Deal.
But I need a promotion.
Can’t get respect from majors as a captain.
Kenny laughs.
Done.
You’re now Major Gun.
Now get me those gunships.
Before we see how Papy Guns gunships changed the Pacific War.
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Now, let’s watch what happens when Papy Gun’s illegal gunships finally get their chance to prove themselves in the most decisive naval battle of 1943.
Within weeks, Gun converts 32 B25s and a dozen A20s into Strafer gunships.
He works 18-hour days in maintenance hangers, training crews on skip bombing techniques, perfecting ammunition feeds, test flying each aircraft personally.
He was a gadgeter par excellence.
Kenny later writes in his memoirs, “By February 1943, Papy Guns gunships are ready.
The Japanese convoy steaming toward New Guinea has no idea what’s about to hit them.
On the morning of March 2nd, 1943, American patrol aircraft spot a Japanese convoy in the Bismar Sea.
Eight transport ships, four destroyers escorted by fighters carrying 6,900 troops to reinforce New Guinea.
It’s the largest Japanese reinforcement operation since Guadal Canal.
If it succeeds, the Japanese can hold New Guinea indefinitely.
If it fails, Japan loses the initiative in the South Pacific forever.
In Port Moresby, Fifth Air Force Commander George Kenny studies the reconnaissance photos and makes his decision.
This is the moment to test Papy Guns gunships in mass formation.
He orders every available B-25 strafer into the air.
March 3rd, 1943, dawn.
18 B25s armed with Papy guns modifications, eight forwardfiring 050 caliber machine guns each, approach the convoy at 200 ft.
Flying alongside are Australian bow fighters and American P38 Lightning fighters.
The B17 flying fortresses will strike from high altitude, but the killing blow will come from the skip bombing Strafers.
Major Ed Lner leads the B-25s in.
Behind him, Papy Gun pilots his own modified bomber.
The convoy’s anti-aircraft crews see the bombers coming and open fire.
Tracers arc across the water.
The sky fills with flack and then the strafers hit.
Each B-25 unleashes 800 rounds per minute from eight guns.
6,400 rounds per minute per aircraft.
18 aircraft equals 115,200 rounds per minute, saturating the convoy.
The volume of fire is apocalyptic.
Deck crews are sthed down in seconds.
Anti-aircraft positions explode under tracer impacts.
Ships super structures shred like paper.
Then come the bombs.
Guns.
Bombers release their 500 lb bombs from 100 ft at 250 mph.
The bombs skip across the water once, twice, three times, and slam into holes at the water line with delayed fuses.
Ships don’t have armor below the water line.
The explosions rip open compartments, flood engine rooms, detonate fuel bunkers.
Within minutes, three transports are burning.
The attacks continue in relays for 2 days.
B-25s, bow fighters, and B7s hammer the convoy without mercy.
Skip bombing proves devastating.
Bombs that would miss from high altitude now skip directly into holes with precision.
The delayed fuses mean bombs penetrate ships before exploding, causing maximum internal damage.
The final toll shocks even Allied commanders.
All eight Japanese transports sunk.
Four of eight destroyers sunk.
Nearly 3,000 Japanese troops killed.
Of the 6,900 soldiers aboard, only 800 reach their destination.
Allied losses, four aircraft.
The before and after statistics tell the story.
Before guns modifications, highaltitude bombing hit rate against ships 2 to 5%.
Typical mission result, 96 bombs dropped, two to five hits.
Ships sunk per mission, 0 to one.
After guns modifications, skip bombing hit rate 60 to 80%.
Bismar sea mission, 12 ships attacked, 12 ships destroyed.
Allied losses, four aircraft, 3%.
In Tokyo, Japanese naval staff officers review the battle reports with disbelief.
One staff officer’s diary entry recovered after the war reads, “The enemy employed a new tactic, approaching at extremely low altitude with heavy forward armament.
Our anti-aircraft defenses were completely ineffective.
This may represent a fundamental change in aerial warfare.” Japanese destroyer captain Tamayichi Har, who survived the battle, later wrote, “The sea was covered with our dead.
The American bombers came in so low that our gunners couldn’t track them.
By the time we saw them, bombs were already skipping toward us.
We were defenseless.
It was slaughter.” The Japanese Navy immediately issues new tactical directives.
Convoys must avoid waters within range of Allied medium bombers.
The policy essentially concedes control of the seas around New Guinea.
But the battle of the Bismar Sea is only the beginning.
Throughout 1943 and 1944, Papy guns modified B25s and A20 destroys over 1,500 Japanese vessels.
more tonnage than any other weapon system except submarines.
The skip bombing strafer becomes the most lethal anti-shipping weapon in the Pacific.
The combat effectiveness statistics compiled by fifth air force intelligence in December 1943 show B-25 strafers account for 67% of all enemy shipping destroyed in the Southwest Pacific.
Skip bombing achieves 70 to 80% hit rates versus 2 to 5% for high alitude bombing.
Loss rates for strafer missions 3 to 4% versus 8 to 12% for high alitude bomber missions.
The reduced loss rates shock analysts.
Conventional wisdom held that lowaltitude attacks would cause higher casualties.
But Gun understood something doctrinal thinkers missed.
Speed and surprise at wavetop height gave crews less exposure time than slow predictable highaltitude bombing runs.
Enemy fighters couldn’t dive fast enough.
Anti-aircraft guns couldn’t depress low enough.
By the time defenders reacted, the Strafers were gone.
In November 1943, guns gunships participate in the devastating raids on Rabbal, Japan’s fortress base in the South Pacific.
Over 200 B-25s armed with guns modifications obliterate the harbor, destroying 150,000 tons of shipping in 3 days.
Japanese commanders evacuate the base.
A captured Japanese pilot interrogated in December 1943 tells his American captors, “We called the low-flying bombers the shadow planes.
They appeared from nowhere, destroyed everything, and vanished.
We feared them more than your heavy bombers.” By 1944, the modifications Papy Gun welded together in an unauthorized hangar [snorts] become official US Army Air Force’s doctrum.
North American aviation begins factory producing B25J models with solid noses mounting 850 caliber guns.
Papy guns design stamped on the assembly line.
The Pentagon calculates that guns innovations shortened the Pacific War by at least 6 months, saving an estimated 100,000 American lives.
In February 1945, American forces liberate Manila.
Papy Gun flies into the city the day after liberation and races to the University of Sto.
Tomas.
His wife Polly and their four children emerge from 3 years of captivity, emaciated, but alive.
Gun’s youngest son doesn’t recognize him.
After the war, a B-25 pilot who flew gun modified aircraft writes him a letter.
Colonel Gun, we called your gunships Papy’s Revenge.
Because of your genius, my crew came home.
Because of your modifications, we lived.
We named our bomber after you.
43 missions over the Bismar Sea, and your guns brought us through everyone.
Sir, you gave us a fighting chance when nobody else could.
Thank you for bringing us home.
Papy Gun’s story doesn’t end with the war.
But before we get to his post-war life and tragic end, I need to ask for your help.
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Now, let’s discover what happened to the maverick who changed the Pacific War.
Paul Papy Gun flew over 200 combat missions during World War II.
He was shot down twice, wounded at least seven times, possibly nine times.
records conflict and earned a silver star, two distinguished flying crosses, the Legion of Merit, an Air Medal, and nine Purple Hearts.
He reached the rank of Colonel, General Douglas MacArthur personally commended him in 1945, calling him one of the most resourceful and courageous officers in the Pacific theater.
But Papy Gun never attended awards ceremonies.
He didn’t give interviews.
When reporters asked about his innovations, he deflected credit to his mechanics and crews.
In official photographs, he appears uncomfortable, cigar in mouth, eyes distant, as if he’d rather be anywhere else.
After the war, Gun returned to civilian aviation.
He could have written books, accepted speaking engagements, consulted for defense contractors.
Boeing and North American Aviation both offered him lucrative positions.
He declined everything.
Instead, he took a job flying commercial cargo routes in the Philippines, the place where his war had begun and [clears throat] his family had suffered.
He flew a Beachcraft Model 18, the same type of civilian plane he’d flown before the war.
No military pump, no ceremonies, just flying.
On the night of October 11th, 1957, Gun was piloting a cargo flight through the central Philippines when his plane encountered a severe tropical thunderstorm.
Trying to avoid the weather, gun descended.
A sudden downdraft slammed the aircraft into a mountainside.
He was 58 years old.
The funeral was small, attended by family and a handful of old pilots.
No media coverage, no military honors beyond a flag draped coffin.
His remains were buried in Arlington National Cemetery in a quiet ceremony.
The headstone reads simply Paul Irvin Gun, Colonel, US Air Force 1899 to 1957.
But Papy Gun’s legacy lives on in every military innovation developed outside official channels.
The US military today actively encourages battlefield innovation, a doctrine that traces directly to guns refusal to wait for institutional approval.
The Air Force Special Operations Command credits him as a founding influence for unconventional tactical aviation.
and the B-25 Strafer.
It’s studied in every military staff college as the quintessential example of adaptive innovation under pressure.
Guns modifications are featured in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
Restored B25J bombers factorybuilt with guns eight gun nose design still fly at air shows.
a flying tribute to the man who turned bombers into gunships with a welder and a wrench.
In 2016, author John Bruning published Indestructible, a comprehensive biography of Papy Gun.
It became a bestseller, introducing new generations to the maverick who changed the Pacific War.
A feature film adaptation is in development with Sony Pictures.
Perhaps the most fitting tribute came from a letter found in Gun’s effects after his death, written by an anonymous pilot.
Colonel Gun, you never sought glory.
You just wanted your family back and the Japanese defeated.
But what you gave us was more than guns and tactics.
You gave us belief that one person with courage and stubborn genius can change the outcome of history.
You proved that impossible is just a word used by people who’ve given up.
Thank you for never giving up on us.
The moral lesson is profound.
When institutions fail, when bureaucracy strangles innovation, when experts declare problems unsolvable, sometimes the solution arrives from an unlikely person with credentials no one respects, an idea everyone dismisses, and a refusal to accept the word impossible.
Paul Papy Gun never asked permission to save lives.
He just welded eight guns to a bomber and went to war and he won.
