June 26th, 1943.
24,000 ft.
Over the English Channel.
The air is thin, cold, and deceptive.
To the naked eye, the sky is a sprawling canvas of peaceful blue.
But inside the cockpit of the P47C Thunderbolt named HalfP Pint, Second Lieutenant Robert S.
Johnson knows better.
The sky is a slaughter house waiting to open its doors.
Johnson is 23 years old, a stocky, square jaw kid from Oklahoma who wrestles airplanes the way he used to wrestle steer.
He is strapped into the largest, heaviest, most complex single engine fighter ever built, the Republic P47.
Thunderbolt is not a rapier.
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It is a bludgeon.
It weighs 7 tons fully loaded.
It has a 2,000 horsepower Pratt and Whitney R2800 double wasp engine in the nose, an 18cylinder radial beast that drinks 100 gall of high octane fuel an hour and spits out pure kinetic energy.
Today, Johnson is flying tail end Charlie, the last man in the formation of the 56 fighter group, the Wolfpack.
It is the position of the orphan.
You are the last to turn, the last to climb, and the first to die if the Germans bounce you.
The mission is an escort run for BU flying fortresses hitting the airfield at Villa France.
The bombers are ahead.
Great silver moths lumbering through the flack.
Johnson checks his gauges.
Manifold pressure 42 in.
Cylinder head temperature 200.
Oil pressure 80 sigh.
The machine is singing.
The vibration of the R2800 is a comforting numbness in his hands and feet.
The margin between a hero and a casualty often comes down to a single rivet, a single piston, or a single decision made in the blink of an eye.
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We’re about to dive into a fight where the only weapon left is the airframe itself.
Bandits 4.
Hi.
The warning screams through the headset.
Johnson snaps his head right.
He sees them.
N16.
Fwolf 90s.
The butcher birds diving out of the sun.
They are sleek radial engine predators painted in the modeled grays and greens of the jaguar.
They are fast, agile, and heavily armed with 20 cannons.
The American formation breaks.
Drop tanks.
The leader orders.
Johnson reaches for the release lever.
The heavy 200 Galon belly tank falls away.
The P47 leaps upward, lighter by 1,000 lb.
But Johnson makes a mistake, a rookie mistake.
In the adrenaline haze of the break, he doesn’t check his position relative to the rest of the flight.
He turns too sharply trying to get his nose on the enemy.
He slides out of the formation.
He is suddenly alone in the sky and the Germans see him.
The F-Wolf swarm.
They recognize the isolated P47 as easy meat.
A single thunderbolt separated from the herd is heavy and slow to accelerate.
Johnson sees the tracers flashing past his canopy.
Bright yellow streaks of magnesium fire.
He kicks the rudder, jinking the big plane.
He spots a FW90 crossing his nose.
He pulls the trigger.
The 850 caliber machine guns in his wings roar.
A chainsaw sound that vibrates his entire skeleton.
He sees strikes.
Pieces of the German wing fly off, but then the world explodes.
A 20 cannon shell from an unseen attacker slams into Johnson’s fuselage.
It hits the hydraulic system.
Then another shell hits the engine.
Bang! The cockpit instantly fills with a mist of acid burning fluid.
Hydraulic oil, engine oil, smoke.
Johnson gasps, his eyes stinging.
He wipes his goggles, but the oil is everywhere.
It coats the windscreen.
It coats the instrument panel.
It coats him.
Then the engine changes its tune.
The deep throaty roar of the double wasp turns into a horrific metal-on metal grinding.
One of the cylinders has been blown off.
The master rod is flailing.
The engine is eating itself alive.
Oil sprays over the canopy glass, turning the bright blue sky into an opaque brown smear.
Johnson is blind.
He grabs the throttle.
It’s unresponsive.
The engine is surging and coughing, spitting black smoke.
The tachometer is fluctuating wildly.
He has lost power.
He has lost hydraulics.
The flaps won’t work.
The landing gear might be dead.
And he has 16 fog wolves queuing up to kill him.
Mayday, mayday.
This is Johnson.
I’m hit.
I’m blind.
He hears nothing but static.
The radio is dead.
A shell fragment has severed the antenna wire.
Johnson is in a seven toneon metal coffin falling through the sky over occupied France with a dying engine and a cockpit full of fire hazards.
He does the only thing he can do.
He puts the nose down.
Dive.
He screams at himself.
Dive, you heavy bastard.
The P47 is famous for one thing above all else.
It falls faster than anything in the world.
Its density is its salvation.
Johnson shoves the stick forward.
The Thunderbolt groans and tips over.
He can’t see forward.
He can only see out of the side panels.
He watches the altimeter unwind.
20,000 FT, 15,000 FT, 10,000 FT.
The Fwolves are following him.
They know he is crippled.
They are like wolves chasing a wounded bison.
They don’t need to be brave.
They just need to be persistent.
Johnson pulls out of the dive at 5000ft fft, terrified that the wings might rip off or the engine might seize completely from the overreving.
The P47 shutters, levels out, and keeps flying.
But the engine is barely producing thrust.
It is coughing, chugging, misfiring.
The propeller is spinning, but it’s not biting the air.
He is essentially flying a glider with a very bad glide ratio.
He looks to his left.
A Foxwolf one at 90 pulls up alongside him.
The German pilot is close.
So close Johnson can see his oxygen mask.
The German looks at the battered oil soaked Thunderbolt.
He probably wonders why it’s still in the air.
The German drops back to the saddle position.
Dead a stern.
He is lining up the execution shot.
Johnson grips the stick.
His hands are slippery with oil.
He waits.
He knows the German is there and he can feel the eyes on his neck.
The German fires.
Johnson waits for the impact.
He waits for the shells to tear through the armor plate behind his seat and turn his spine into shrapnel.
But the impact is weird.
Thump, thump, thump.
Bullets strike the wings, the fuselage, but the plane doesn’t explode.
Johnson realizes something.
The P47 is flying dirty.
Because of the engine damage and the loss of hydraulic pressure, the cowl flaps.
The metal gills around the engine used for cooling have likely blown open or jammed.
The rudder is damaged.
The plane is crabbing.
It is flying sideways through the air.
To Johnson inside the cockpit, it feels like he is flying straight.
But to the German pilot behind him, the P47 is moving in a constant unpredictable slip.
The German is aiming at the fuselage, but the fuselage is skidding five deg path.
The Germans bullets are passing through the empty space where the P47 should be, or hitting non-critical parts of the massive wings.
Johnson’s broken engine by failing to provide symmetrical torque and smooth power has turned his plane into a drunken stumbling ghost.
He is not outsmarting them with a maneuver.
He is outsmarting them with the chaos of a dying machine.
The German pilot, frustrated, pulls closer.
He is determined to finish this.
He closes to 100 yards.
Johnson watches the mirror, wiping the oil away with his sleeve.
He sees the muzzle flashes.
“Come on,” Johnson whispers, his voice cracking with fear and rage.
“Is that all you got? Is that all you got?” The P47 takes the hits.
It absorbs them.
The radial engine, even with a cylinder blown, keeps turning.
The airframe built like a bridge, holds together.
Johnson realizes he has a chance.
a slim terrifying chance.
If he can keep the plane wallowing, if he can keep it skidding, the Germans can’t get a clean convergence point on his cockpit.
He starts to kick the rudder pedals rhythmically.
Left, right, left, right.
He induces a Dutch roll, a sick swaying motion that makes the aircraft yaw and roll simultaneously.
It is nauseating.
It ruins his own aerodynamics.
It bleeds what little speed he has left, but it makes him the hardest target in the sky.
The German pilot empties his guns.
He runs dry.
He peels off, diving away in frustration.
Johnson lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
One down, he says, but then he looks to his right.
There are more.
Three more flock wolves are lining up.
And this time, they aren’t playing around.
They are led by an ace, a man who knows exactly how to kill a wounded animal.
Johnson pats the oil sllicked instrument panel.
“Don’t quit on me,” he begs the broken machine.
“Don’t you dare quit.
” The English Channel is a cold gray slab of iron waiting below.
Robert Johnson is at 3000 fits, descending steadily.
His P47 is a civ.
The canopy is shattered in places, letting the freezing slipstream howl into the cockpit, mixing with the hot oil and smoke.
His engine, the mighty R2800, is no longer roaring.
It is coughing.
A sick rhythmic hacking sound.
Chug, chug, bang, chug.
Every backfire sends a shutter through the airframe that Johnson feels in his teeth.
He is losing altitude at a rate of 500 ft per minute.
At this rate, he will be swimming in 6 minutes.
But swimming is the least of his worries.
The second wave of attackers arrives.
These aren’t the opportunistic pilots from the first pass.
These are the wingmen of Oberluten and Egon Mayer, the commander of JG2 Richen.
Mayor is a legend.
He invented the head-on attack against B7s.
He is a surgeon in the air.
Mayor’s wingmen see the crippled thunderbolt.
It looks pathetic.
It is trailing a plume of black smoke.
It is flying in a bizarre slipping yaw.
It should be an easy kill.
One FW190 slides in from the left quarter.
He wants to rake the P47 from nose to tail.
Johnson sees him, but Johnson has no throttle.
He can’t accelerate to get out of the way.
He can’t climb.
He has only one form of energy left.
Potential energy, altitude, converting to kinetic energy, speed.
He trades altitude for life.
As the German opens fire, Johnson kicks the rudder hard and pushes the nose down.
The P-47 drops like a stone.
The heavy fuselage weighing 7 tons accelerates purely by gravity.
The German’s deflection shot goes high.
The tracers zip harmlessly over Johnson’s canopy.
But now Johnson is lower, 25,00.
The German overshoots.
He flies past Johnson, pulling up to come around for another pass.
Johnson realizes the physics of the fight have inverted.
Normally, a fighter pilot wants speed and altitude.
But Johnson is flying a brick.
A brick has one advantage.
It stops faster than a feather.
Because his engine is failing, his propeller is acting like a giant air bra.
The huge four-bladed Hamilton standard prop is windmilling, creating massive drag.
When Johnson cuts the throttle, or when the engine dies momentarily, the P47 decelerates violently.
The sleek aerodynamic fog wolves behind him are clean.
They are fast.
They are expecting a target that maintains 250.
Johnson is doing 160.
When they dive on him, they close too fast.
They have only a split second to aim before they are in danger of ramming him.
A second German tries.
He comes in dead a stern.
He lines up the shot.
Johnson watches the mirror.
He waits.
He waits until the German commits.
Then Johnson pulls the stick back into his gut and stomps on the right rudder.
The P47 performs a snap stall.
It shutters.
The left wing drops and the nose whips around.
It is an ugly, uncontrolled departure from flight.
The plane literally falls out of the sky, tumbling.
The German pilot, terrified of colliding with the tumbling American, yanks his stick back and breaks left.
He misses Johnson by feet.
Johnson neutralizes the controls.
The P47, stable as a table, catches the air again.
He levels out at 1,500 ft.
He has forced another overshoot.
He has outsmarted another enemy, not with skill, but by weaponizing his plane’s inability to fly properly.
But the abuse is taking its toll.
The snap stall stressed the airframe.
The engine is vibrating so badly that the instrument needles are blurry.
And now the boss is here.
Egon Mayor himself pulls up alongside Johnson.
Johnson looks out the side of his oil smeared canopy.
He sees the yellow nose of Mayor’s folk wolf.
He sees the knight’s cross painted on the fuselage.
Mayor is examining him.
This is a rare moment in aerial warfare.
The predator is studying the prey.
Mayor is looking at the holes in the P47’s wings.
He sees the rudder hanging by a shred.
He sees the oil covering the pilot.
Mayor shakes his head.
He cannot believe this thing is still flying.
Mayor drops back.
He is not going to make a mistake.
He is not going to overshoot.
He is going to execute a textbook gunnery pass.
He swings out to the right, opening the angle.
He wants a deflection shot that will put rounds into the cockpit from the side, bypassing the heavy armor plate behind Johnson’s seat.
Johnson knows what’s coming.
The high side run.
Johnson tries to turn into the attack.
He pushes the stick right.
Nothing happens.
The ailerons are sluggish.
The hydraulic boost is gone.
The control cables might be frayed.
The heavy P47 refuses to bank.
It just wallows.
Turn.
Damn you.
Johnson screams, putting both hands on the stick and shoving with his shoulders.
The plane slowly, agonizingly begins to roll, but it’s too slow.
Mayor is already firing.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
The 20 Michelle hit the fuselage.
They sound like sledgehammers.
One hits the instrument panel, shattering the glass dials.
Another hits the turbocharger, ducting.
Johnson flinches, curling into a ball in the cockpit, waiting for the fire.
The P47 has a massive fuel tank in the fuselage.
If a tracer hits it, he burns.
But there is no fire.
The P47’s legendary ruggedness is saving him.
The self-sealing fuel tanks are swallowing the bullets.
The heavy dural and skin is shredding, but the structural spars are holding.
Johnson realizes he can’t turn.
He can’t fight.
He is a sitting duck.
He decides to play dead.
He lets the nose drop.
He stops fighting the rudder.
He lets the plane slip into a gentle erratic descent toward the water.
1,00 fft.
800 fft.
He hopes Mayor will think he is finished.
He hopes the German will save his ammo for a target that fights back.
He watches the mirror.
Mayor is still there.
He is circling.
He is watching.
Mayor flies alongside again.
He looks at Johnson.
He rocks his wings.
For a second, Johnson thinks it’s a salute.
A gesture of chivalry.
You fought well, American.
I will let you swim.
But then Mayor drops back again.
It wasn’t a salute.
It was a range check.
Mayor lines up directly behind Johnson.
He is going to deliver the coup to Grace.
He is going to aim for the one spot that isn’t armored.
the oil cooler intake under the engine or the cockpit glass itself.
Johnson has 500 ft of altitude.
He has no speed.
He has a gun that might work, but he can’t bring it to bear.
He has one card left to play the wallow.
The engine is surging.
Vroom die.
Vroom die.
Johnson times it.
As Mayor opens fire, Johnson pumps the rudder pedals in time with the engine surges.
The P47 begins to fish tail violently.
The nose swings left, then right, then left.
The entire aircraft yaws 15° and off center.
Mayor’s tracers stream past the cockpit.
They pass through the space between the wing and the tail.
They hit the air.
The P47 is a 14,000 lb pendulum.
It swings back and forth, refusing to travel in a straight line.
Mayor corrects.
He kicks his own rudder, but the P47 swings the other way.
It is a dance of geometry.
Mayor is trying to shoot a straight line at a target that is moving in a sinewave.
The German pilot empties his cannons.
Click.
He has fired everything he has.
Mayor pulls up alongside Johnson for the third time.
He looks at the P47.
It is riddled with holes.
It is leaking fluids.
It is flying sideways.
Mayor looks at Johnson.
Johnson looks at Mayor.
The German ace shakes his head again.
He raises a gloved hand.
He salutes.
Then he peels off and banks toward France.
Johnson is alone.
He checks the altimeter 100ft.
He is skimming the waves.
The engine is still dying.
The coast of England is 40 minutes away.
He has survived the wolves.
Now he has to survive the water.
The silence after the combat is heavier than the noise of the guns.
Robert Johnson is flying at 50ft above the English Channel.
The white caps of the waves look like teeth waiting to chew up the aluminum carcass of half pint.
His cockpit is a disaster zone.
The instrument panel is shattered.
The floor is slick with oil.
The wind howls through the holes in the canopy, freezing the sweat on his face.
He tries to take stock of the damage.
Engine.
Three cylinders are dead.
The top cylinder has been shot away.
The cowling is shredded.
The engine is producing maybe 40% power.
It is vibrating so badly that Johnson’s vision is blurred.
Controls.
The rudder cables are frayed.
He has to hold constant pressure to keep the nose straight.
The ailerons are sluggish.
The flaps are dead.
Hydraulics gone.
The landing gear is held up by the mechanical locks.
He has no brakes.
Radio dead.
He is a ghost.
No one knows he is alive.
The rest of his squadron is likely back at manston drinking coffee, writing him off as MIA.
He checks his compass.
It’s spinning lazily.
He looks at the sun.
It’s in the west.
England is north.
He banks gently, terrified that a steep turn will stall the heavy wing.
He flies by instinct.
He listens to the engine.
Chugga chugga.
Bang.
Every backfire makes him flinch.
“Come on, jug,” he mutters, patting the side of the cockpit.
“Get me home.
Just get me over the beach.” He thinks about the Germans, 15, maybe 16 of them.
They hit him with everything they had.
20 cannons, machine guns.
They swarmed him like angry wasps.
And they failed.
They failed because they couldn’t solve the puzzle of a broken machine.
They expected the P47 to act like an airplane.
Instead, it acted like a tank tumbling down a hill.
Johnson realizes the irony.
If his engine had been healthy, he probably would have died.
He would have tried to fight them.
He would have tried to turn to climb to use energy he didn’t have.
He would have presented a stable target.
The failure was his armor.
10 minutes pass, then 20.
The white cliffs of Dover should be visible.
He sees a dark line on the horizon.
Land.
Tears prick his eyes.
It’s the coast.
But now he has a new problem.
Altitude.
He is at 200 ft.
To cross the cliffs, he needs 500.
He gently nudges the throttle forward.
The engine protests.
Bang.
A cloud of black smoke erupts from the exhaust.
The vibration increases.
Sorry.
Sorry, Johnson whispers.
I know it hurts.
He trades air speed for altitude.
He pulls the nose up, bleeding off speed.
160 m.
150 m.
The cliffs loom closer.
He clears the edge of the cliff by 50ft.
He sees the green fields of England.
He sees cows.
He sees a farmhouse.
He is home now.
He needs an airfield.
He can’t bail out.
He is too low.
If he jumps, the chute won’t open.
He has to ride it down.
He spots a grass strip ahead.
It’s Manston, the emergency field.
The runway is wide, designed for crippled bombers.
He lines up.
He has no flaps to slow down.
He has no hydraulics to lower the gear.
He has to pump the gear down manually.
There is a hand pump on the floor.
He lets go of the stick with his left hand and grabs the pump handle.
He pumps clungouch one pump two.
He needs 50 pumps to lock the gear.
The plane is drifting.
He grabs the stick, corrects, then pumps again.
He is fighting the plane, the engine, and his own exhaustion.
He sees the red indicators on the panel or where they used to be.
He feels the mechanical thud of the gear locking into place.
Down and locked, but he has no brakes.
And he is coming in fast.
140 m to keep the damaged wing from stalling.
He crosses the threshold of the runway.
He chops the throttle.
The engine dies instantly.
It doesn’t sputter.
It just stops.
The propeller windmills to a halt.
The silence is shocking.
The wheels touch the grass.
Bump.
The P47 is a heavy beast.
It carries momentum.
It rolls and rolls and rolls.
It is heading for the end of the runway.
There is a line of trees.
Johnson kicks the rudder pedals.
He tries to ground loop the plane to spin it around to scrub off speed.
The tail wheel catches.
The P47 swings around in a cloud of dust and grass.
It slides sideways, the tires screaming if they were on pavement, but on grass they tear up the turf.
It comes to a stop 20ft from a parked Spitfire.
Johnson sits in the cockpit.
He can hear the ticking of the cooling metal.
He can smell the grass.
He tries to open the canopy.
It’s jammed.
The fuselage is twisted from the combat damage.
He hammers on the glass with his fist.
Let me out.
Let me out.
A ground crewman runs up.
He climbs onto the wing.
He looks at Johnson.
He looks at the oil.
He looks at the holes.
My god, Yank, the Brit says.
Did you fly through a flack tower? I flew through the whole Luftwaffa.
Johnson croakas.
They pry the canopy open with a crowbar.
Johnson climbs out.
His legs give way.
He falls onto the wing.
He looks at his plane.
It is unrecognizable.
The rudder is gone.
The elevator is shredded.
There are 220 cannon holes in the fuselage.
There are over 200 machine gun holes.
The propeller has a hole in it you could put your fist through and the engine.
Johnson walks to the nose.
He looks inside the cowling.
One cylinder is completely sheared off.
Another is hanging by a thread.
The crankase is cracked.
It shouldn’t have run.
It physically shouldn’t have been able to turn the prop.
How? Johnson whispers.
How did you do it? He touches the hot metal.
He realizes that the P-47 isn’t just a machine.
It’s a fortress.
It took the punishment that would have disintegrated a Spitfire or a Mustang, and it brought him home.
A jeep pulls up.
It’s his squadron commander, Colonel Hubert Hub.
ZMP Z looks at the plane.
He walks around it slowly.
He counts the holes.
He shakes his head.
Johnson.
Zemp says, “I marked you down as KIA.
I saw you fall out of formation.
I saw them swarm you.
I decided not to die today, Colonel.” Johnson says, “I can see that.” Zemp points to the tail.
You have a hole in your horizontal stabilizer that I can crawl through.
The engine quit over the runway, sir.
It quit.
ZMP laughs.
Son, that engine quit over France.
It just didn’t know it yet.
They drive Johnson to the hospital.
He has minor shrapnel wounds, chemical burns from the hydraulic fluid, and a bruised ego.
But he is alive, and he has a story that will become legend.
The story of Robert S.
Johnson’s survival spreads through the Eighth Air Force like wildfire.
It becomes a parable, a lesson.
The lesson is never bail out of a Thunderbolt until it’s on fire.
Johnson is back in the cockpit 2 days later.
He gets a new plane.
He names it Halfpine 3.
But something has changed in him.
He is no longer the rookie who makes mistakes in the turn.
He is a man who has stared into the barrel of an executioner’s gun and refused to blink.
He applies the lessons of that day.
He learns that the P47 strength is its ability to absorb punishment and its dive speed.
He stops trying to dog fight shrrenic wolves.
He starts using the boom and zoom tactic exclusively.
He becomes a predator.
By the end of the war, Robert S.
Johnson is one of the top American aces in the European theater.
He scores 27 confirmed kills.
He destroys the best the Luftwafa has to offer.
But he never forgets Egon Mayor.
Months later, intelligence reports confirm that Oberlutin Egon Mayor was shot down and killed in March 1944 by a P47 Thunderbolt.
Johnson wonders if Mayor remembered him.
He wonders if the German ace in his final moments thought about the crippled oil soaked plane that refused to die.
After the war, Johnson returns to the United States.
He writes a book, Thunderbolt, which becomes the Bible for P47 enthusiasts.
He visits the Republic Aviation Factory in Farmingdale, New York.
He meets the engineers who designed the R2800 engine.
He tells them the story.
He tells them about the cylinder that blew off.
He tells them about the vibration.
One engineer, an old man with thick glasses, listens intently.
Mr.
Johnson.
The engineer says the R2800 has a limp home mode designed into the master rod assembly.
If a cylinder fails, the counterwes are designed to balance the vibration just enough to keep the crankshaft from shearing.
It wasn’t luck, it was engineering.
Johnson smiles.
It felt like luck.
And the slipping, the engineer asks.
The wallowing.
That was me, Johnson says.
I was fighting the controls.
No, the engineer corrects him.
The P47 has a large keel surface area.
When the engine torque is asymmetrical, the fuselage acts like a weather vein.
It naturally slips to find aerodynamic equilibrium.
The plane was trying to stabilize itself.
You and the plane were dancing together.
Johnson thinks about that the machine and the man.
The legacy of that day lives on in the design of future aircraft.
The concept of survivability, armor plating, redundant systems, rugged airframes, becomes a cornerstone of American military aviation.
The A10 Warthog, the flying tank of the modern era, is the spiritual successor to Johnson’s P47.
Johnson dies in 1998.
He is buried with full military honors.
At the funeral, a flight of four P47 Thunderbolts, surviving warbirds, performs a flyover.
They fly in the missing man formation.
As they pass over the cemetery, the lead plane pulls up and climbs into the clouds.
The sound of those Radumi 800 engines, that deep guttural roar, shakes the ground.
An old veteran standing by the grave leans over to his grandson.
Do you hear that? The veteran asks.
Yes, Grandpa.
It’s loud.
That’s the sound of safety, the veteran says.
That’s the sound of a machine that loves you.
The veteran points to the sky.
Bob Johnson didn’t outsmart those Germans because he was a genius.
The veteran says he outsmarted them because he didn’t give up and because he was flying a brick.
A brick, the boy asks.
The fastest, toughest brick in the world, the P407 fades into the distance.
The silence returns, but the story remains.
It is the story of how a broken engine, a blinded pilot, and a stubborn refusal to die turned a massacre into a miracle.
It is the story of the day the Luftwaffa emptied its guns into a ghost and the ghost flew home.
Thank you for watching.
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