August 6th, 1944.

28,000 ft above northern Germany.

The cold at 5 m high doesn’t feel cold.

It feels like drowning in frozen mercury.

Major George Py’s breath comes in mechanical gasps regulated by the rubber oxygen mask strapped to his face.

through the plexiglass canopy of his Mustang.

A machine he’s named Kripes a mighty third.

He watches the sky.

It’s not blue up here.

It’s something else.

Indigo.

Alien.

Prey is 25.

He’s from North Carolina.

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He has the face of a seminary student, not a killer.

Thin cheekbones, wire rimmed glasses when he’s not flying.

a quiet voice that makes his wingmen lean in to hear him.

But here, strapped into 10,000 lbs of aluminum and Merlin engine, he is something different.

He is hunting.

Below him, stretching for miles like wounded geese, are the B17 bombers of the 8th Air Force.

They’ve just bombed Berlin.

Now they’re trying to get home.

They’re bleeding fuel.

Their gunners are frozen solid at their stations.

Some of the fortresses have engines feathered, windmilling uselessly.

Pretty squadron, the 352nd fighter group, blue-nosed bastards of Bodney, is their only protection.

The radio crackles.

White leader, this is blue three.

I have contacts.

Angels 28, sector 3.

Freddy’s eyes snap right.

He sees them immediately.

30 German fighters, maybe more.

Their Master Schmidt 109’s from Yaktv 27.

The sunlight catches their wings as they climb.

A school of metal sharks rising from the depths.

They’re preparing for a textbook Luftwafa tactic, the sangri, a diving attack from above.

They’ll slice through the bomber formation like a chainsaw, firing their 20 mm cannon at point blank range, then dive away before the Americans can respond.

It’s a slaughter technique.

Prey does the math instantly.

If those 30 German fighters reach the bombers, they’ll destroy a dozen B17s in seconds.

That’s 120 American airmen dead or captured.

He doesn’t hesitate.

All flights, this is White Leader.

Drop tanks.

We’re going vertical.

He pulls the jettison leather.

The two external fuel tanks tumble away, spinning end over end toward the German countryside below.

His Mustang immediately feels alive.

500 lb lighter.

The controls sharpen.

He shoves the throttle forward.

The instrument panel vibrates.

The tachometer climbs.

2700 RPMs, 2900 RPMs, 3,000 RPMs.

The Packard V1650 Merlin engine, a masterpiece of Angloamerican engineering, begins to scream.

George Prey is about to fly the most lethal 5 minutes in American fighter pilot history.

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Now, the Germans are diving.

Let’s go.

Most fighter pilots think in terms of speed and altitude.

Prey thinks in terms of energy.

He knows that the P-51D has a secret weapon, the two-stage supercharger.

At 20,000 ft, it kicks into high gear, force-feeding compressed air into the engine.

While German fighters gasp for oxygen in the thin air, the Mustang keeps producing 1490 horsepower.

He climbs at 3,000 ft per minute straight toward the diving Germans.

The Luftwaffa pilots see him, one Mustang climbing to meet 30 of them.

They think he’s insane.

They ignore him.

Their eyes are locked on the bombers below.

That’s their first mistake.

Freddy picks his target, the German flight leader, a BF 109G with a white spinner.

He reaches down and adjusts the K14 gyroscopic gun site, a piece of computing witchcraft that turns a fighter pilot into a sniper.

He dials in 32, the wingspan of a BF 109 in feet.

The reticle in his windscreen comes alive.

The gyros spin up.

The sight compensates for his speed, the target speed, the angle of deflection, the trajectory of his bullets.

He doesn’t have to aim anymore.

He just has to place the dot.

Closing speed, 650 mph, 300 yd, 250 yd.

The German pilot never sees him coming.

Pretty’s thumb presses the firing button on his control stick.

Six Browning M2 machine guns, three in each wing, erupt simultaneously.

The sound inside the cockpit is like tearing canvas.

The Mustang shutters from the recoil.

75 rounds per second per gun, 450 rounds per second total.

Each bullet is half an inch in diameter, weighing 1.6 oz, traveling at 2900 ft per second.

They converge at a single point in space.

The German fighter engine explodes.

The cowling peels away like a tin can.

The canopy shatters into a glittering cloud.

The BF 109 flips inverted and falls, trailing glycol coolant like white blood.

Kill number one.

The German formation falters.

Their leader is gone, but they’re still diving.

They’re committed to the attack.

Prey doesn’t dive away.

He doesn’t run for safety.

He pulls back on the stick.

The Mustang’s nose rises.

He trades air speed for altitude in a vertical climbing turn, a Chandel.

He loops up and over the entire German formation.

Now he’s behind them.

29 enemy fighters in front of him.

He keys his mic.

His voice is flat, emotionless, engaging.

T plus 45 seconds.

The sky over Hamburg.

The German formation has dissolved into chaos.

They’ve lost their leader.

They’ve lost their discipline.

Some are diving toward the bombers.

Some are climbing.

Some are turning, trying to find the blue-nosed Mustang that just murdered their commander.

Major George Prey is exactly where he wants to be.

Behind them, above them, with speed to burn, he picks his next victim.

A BF 109 banking left, trying to reform with his wingman.

Prey rolls inverted and pulls.

The horizon spins.

His vision grays at the edges.

4 G’s, 5gs.

The blood drains from his brain toward his boots.

He’s diving now.

400 mph.

450.

The Mustang’s wings creek.

He brings the gun sight onto the target.

The Germans wings fill the reticle.

He fires.

A two second burst.

The convergence point, the place where all six streams of.5 caliber bullets meet, walks across the messes fuselage.

The fighter’s wing route explodes.

Fire blooms.

The German pilot has no time to react.

One moment he’s flying, the next moment he’s inside a fireball.

Kill number two.

Prey pulls out of the dive using his momentum to zoom climb back to 27,000 ft.

His Merlin engine is howling.

The manifold pressure gauge is buried in the red zone.

He’s pulling emergency power, burning the engine’s lifespan in minutes.

He doesn’t care.

You can replace an engine.

You can’t replace a dead bomber crew.

He spots another 109.

This one trying to escape by climbing.

The German pilot is terrified.

He’s pulling max power, climbing for the safety of altitude.

But PR’s Mustang climbs better.

The P-51 was designed for this high alitude interception.

He closes from below and behind.

The German doesn’t see him until it’s too late.

The BF 109 pulls up into a desperate loop, trying to reverse the situation.

Freddy follows him through the loop.

At the top, where the Germans energy bleeds away and his plane hangs motionless for a split second, Prey fires.

The bullets punch through the 109’s cockpit.

The pilot slumps.

The fighter falls like a brick.

Kill number three.

Three minutes have passed since the engagement began.

Freddy’s hands are cramping.

His oxygen mask is fogging.

Sweat is freezing on his forehead.

But he’s in a state of flow now.

His conscious mind has stepped aside.

He’s operating on pure instinct and training.

He sees two more 109s attempting the weave, a defensive maneuver where two planes scissor back and forth, covering each other’s tails.

It’s a smart tactic.

It works against most pilots.

Prey isn’t like most pilots.

He doesn’t chase them through their weave.

Instead, he predicts where they’ll be 3 seconds from now.

He cuts the corner.

He comes at the trailing 109 from a 45 degree angle, a deflection shot that requires him to lead the target by three plane lengths.

The K14 sight does the math for him.

He places the Pipper ahead of the German.

He fires.

The bullets arrive at the exact moment the Messers crosses that point in space.

The 109’s engine disintegrates.

Black smoke pours out.

The pilot bails out, tumbling through the sky.

Kill number four.

The leader of the pair breaks hard right trying to escape.

Pretty pursues.

He pulls six G’s in the turn.

His vision tunnels.

He can see only directly ahead.

The rest is gray static.

He fires a burst.

Misses.

He corrects with the rudder, walking the gun sight onto the target.

Fires again.

This time, the bullets find their mark.

The BF 109’s tail separates from the fuselage.

The plane tumbles out of control.

Kill number five.

Five kills in four minutes.

Pretty is now an ace in a day.

A pilot who shoots down five or more enemy aircraft in a single mission.

It’s one of the rarest achievements in aerial combat.

But he’s not finished.

One more BF 109 is running for the deck, diving at maximum speed, desperate to escape.

Pretty checks his ammunition counter.

He has 200 rounds left in each gun.

Enough.

He rolls inverted and pulls into a split S, following the German down.

They plummet from 20,000 ft toward the Earth.

The air thickens.

The controls stiffen.

The Mustang’s airframe groans.

The German jinx.

Left, right, left.

He’s flying for his life.

Pretty stays locked on his tail, matching every movement.

At 8,000 ft, the German makes a mistake.

He straightens out for two seconds, trying to gain speed.

Prey fires his last burst.

The convergence of six machine guns tears the Messormid apart.

The fighter explodes in midair.

Kill number six.

Prey pulls out of the dive at 5,000 ft.

His air speed indicator is showing 480 mph.

The wings are shaking.

He climbs back up, scanning the sky.

It’s empty.

The German squadron is gone, destroyed, scattered, or fled.

Below him, the B17 formation continues toward England.

Not one bomber has been touched.

Freddy’s radio crackles.

White leader, this is Overwatch, confirm visual.

Confirm status.

Prey looks at his hands.

They’re shaking violently.

He keys his mic.

Overwatch white leader swept the deck.

Bombers are clear.

Returning to base.

He turns the Mustang west.

The adrenaline is draining from his system now, replaced by a bone deep exhaustion.

He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s just flown the perfect mission.

Six kills in 5 minutes.

A record that will stand for decades.

But in 4 months on Christmas Day, his luck will run out.

Bodney Airfield, England, August 6th, 1944.

1445 hours.

When Kryps a mighty third touches down on the grass runway, there’s no victory roll, no celebration.

Major George Prey taxis to his hard stand and shuts down the engine.

The propeller ticks as it winds down.

He sits in the cockpit for 5 minutes, not moving.

His crew chief, Sergeant Bill Wisner, climbs onto the wing and looks through the canopy.

He can see Paddy’s hands gripping the stick, white knuckled.

Major, you okay? Pretty looks up.

His eyes are red rimmed from the oxygen mask.

Yeah, I’m good.

How many? Pretty has to think about it.

The mission is already fragmenting in his memory, breaking into disconnected images.

Six.

I think I got six.

Whisner’s eyes widened.

Six in one sorty.

Yeah.

That evening, the gun camera film was developed.

The intelligence officers watch in silence as the 16 mm footage shows frame by frame the systematic destruction of an entire Luftvafael.

The word spreads through the base like wildfire.

George Prey is now the top scoring P-51 pilot in the world.

26.83 victories.

The point A3 comes from a shared kill.

But Prey doesn’t celebrate.

He goes to his bunk, lies down, and stares at the ceiling.

He knows something that the cheering pilots don’t know.

He knows about statistics.

Every mission is a roll of the dice.

And the more times you roll, the closer you get to snake eyes.

December 25th, 1944.

Christmas Day.

Ash airfield, Belgium.

The war has moved.

The Allies have liberated France.

The 352nd Fighter Group has relocated to a forward air strip in Belgium, a muddy field designated Y29.

It’s freezing.

The Battle of the Bulge is raging 30 mi south.

The Germans have launched a massive counteroffensive through the Arden Forest.

The sky is overcast, gray, and low.

In the mess tent, the cooks have attempted a Christmas meal.

Cold turkey, powdered potatoes, coffee that tastes like diesel fuel.

Freddy eats quickly.

He wants to be in the air.

We’re going hunting, he tells his wingman, Lieutenant James Carti.

They take off into the gray soup.

The mission is simple.

Armed reconnaissance.

Find German fighters.

Kill them.

At 11:00 a.m.

they spot a lone Faulk Wolf 190 strafing American ground troops near the village of Cobblins.

The German pilot sees the Mustangs and runs.

Prey follows.

This is his specialty.

Low-level pursuit.

The chase.

They drop to treetop height.

400 mph, 50 ft off the ground.

The FW190 is jinking through valleys, using the terrain as cover.

Prey stays locked on.

They scream over a ridge line.

Below them is an American anti-aircraft position.

The 430th Anti-aircraft Artillery Battalion, Quad50 caliber machine guns.

The American gunners have been under constant air attack for 3 days.

They’re exhausted, terrified, trigger happy.

They see two aircraft roaring over the trees at 400 mph.

They don’t see markings.

They don’t see colors.

They see targets.

The gun commander screams, “Fire!” The four 50 caliber machine guns swivel and open up.

150 rounds per second per gun.

The tracers arc upward.

They miss the FW190.

They don’t miss the second plane.

The fatal second.

The bullets smash into the belly of Kryps a mighty third.

They punch through aluminum.

They sever coolant lines.

They rupture the oil reservoir.

One bullet passes through the cockpit floor and hits Major George Prey in the thigh.

The Mustang shutters.

The canopy flies off, torn away by the slipstream.

Prey pulls back on the stick, trying to gain altitude for a bailout.

The Mustang climbs to 700 ft.

Then the engine seizes.

The propeller locks.

The plane stalls, flips onto its back, and augers into a snow-covered field outside the village of Leazge.

Lieutenant Cardi circling overhead.

Keys his radio.

White leader is down.

White leader is down.

Somebody get to him.

But there’s no response, only static.

The aftermath.

American soldiers from the anti-aircraft battery sprint to the crash site.

They find the wreckage of a P-51 Mustang.

The blue nose is crumpled.

The American star on the fuselage is visible.

They pull the pilot from the cockpit.

He’s already dead.

When they see the identification tags, one of the soldiers falls to his knees and vomits.

The gunner who fired the shots sits in the snow staring at his hands.

He doesn’t speak for three days.

The legacy.

George Prey is buried in the Hanri Chappelle American Cemetery in Belgium alongside 7,992 other American servicemen.

The 352nd Fighter Group is devastated.

The pilots drink in silence that night.

Pretty didn’t die in a dog fight.

He didn’t die because a German pilot was better.

He died because of chaos, because of fear, because a young American gunner was just trying to do his job.

War is not a meritocracy.

It doesn’t care how good you are.

Today, fighter pilots still study PR’s tactics, the way he used energy management, the way he employed the K14 site, the way he turned a 30 to1 fight into a turkey shoot.

But mostly they study the lesson of his death.

In war, there are no safe missions.

The wreckage of Kry mighty third was salvaged weeks later.

The aluminum was melted down and recycled.

But the story endures.

The story of a quiet kid from North Carolina who became the most lethal Mustang pilot in history.

Who killed six German fighters in five minutes and who died on Christmas Day killed by friendly fire while defending the men on the ground.

This is the true story of Major George Prey, the top American P-51 ace whose brilliant career ended in the crulest twist of fate imaginable.

If this story moved you, leave a comment sharing your thoughts on friendly fire incidents in war.

These tragedies are more common than people realize.

Thanks for watching.

We’ll see you in the next documentary.