Luzon, Philippines.
January 11, 1945.
The F6D Mustang is a paradox wrapped in aluminum.
To the casual observer, it looks exactly like the legendary P-51D fighter.
It has the same laminer flow wing, the same bubble canopy, and the same screaming Packard Merlin V1657 engine producing, 1490 horsepower, 1,720 at war emergency power, but underneath the skin, it is a different beast.
Major William A.
Shomo, commander of the 82nd Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, knows the difference intimately.
His aircraft, the flying undertaker, is carrying extra weight.
Inside the fuselage, where a standard fighter might carry extra ammo or fuel plumbing, Shomo carries cameras.
A K17 and a K22 are mounted obliquely and vertically.
Heavy glass eyes designed to steal secrets from the Japanese army.
These cameras shift the center of gravity CG.
They add dead weight.
They make the Mustang sluggish in the pitch axis compared to a clean fighter.
The F6D is built to run, to hide, to snap photos and vanish into the clouds.
It is not built to dogfight the entire Imperial Japanese Army Air Force.
But Shomo is not a man who runs.
He is 26 years old, a former mortician, hence the nickname undertaker with a dark sense of humor and a clinical approach to violence.
On this morning, the sky over Luzon is a hazy, humid white.
The cloud deck sits at 1,000 ft, broken and ragged.
Shomo is leading a two ship element.
His wingman is Lieutenant Paul Lipcom.
Their mission is purely tactical reconnaissance.
Fly north to Tugaro, photograph the Japanese airfields, and check for troop movements.
They are flying low, 200 ft off the deck.
The jungle rushes by in a blur of green static.
The Merlin engine purr, a rhythmic mechanical heartbeat that vibrates through the soles of Shomo’s boots.
He checks his gauges.
Coolant temp normal.
Oil pressure 80 sigh K gyro gun site on but in fixed mode.
The difference between a reconnaissance mission and a massacre is often just a matter of who spots who first.
We are about to dissect one of the most statistically improbable feats in aviation history.
A moment where a pilot turned a camera plane into a weapon of mass destruction.
If you want to see the gun camera footage and understand the ballistics of this legendary fight, hit that like button and subscribe.
The shutter is about to open.
Major Taliho.
Lipscom’s voice crackles over the radio.
high.
Shomo looks up through the plexiglass.
Through a gap in the clouds, he sees them.
It is not a patrol.
It is a migration.
A Mitsubishi G4M Betty bomber is flying in the center painted in the dark green jungle camouflage of the Japanese Navy.
Escorting it are fighters, not one or two.
Shomo counts them.
112 12 fighters protecting one bomber.
It is a VIP transport mission likely carrying high-ranking officers fleeing the American advance.
Shomo identifies the escorts instantly.
They are a mix of Kawasaki Kai Tony’s and Nakajima Kai 44 Tojos.
The Tony is dangerous.
It looks like a German BF 109 and carries a liquid cooled engine.
The Tojo is a radial engine interceptor, fast and armed with four cannons that can blow a Mustang apart with one hit.
Shomo does the math.
Two Americans against 13 Japanese.
The manual for tactical reconnaissance is explicit.
Avoid combat.
Your intelligence data is more valuable than a kill.
If engaged, use speed to escape.
Shommo looks at the formation.
They are flying at 2,500 ft.
Unaware of the two mustangs prowling in the weeds below.
They are complacent.
They believe the air belongs to them.
Shomo feels the shift.
It is a physical sensation, a cold tightening in the stomach.
He is no longer a photographer.
Paul, Shomo says, his voice flat and calm.
We’re going in.
All of them, sir, Lipscom asks, a hint of disbelief in his voice.
All of them drop tanks.
Shomo reaches down and pulls the release handle.
The 110galon external fuel tanks tumble away into the jungle.
The flying undertaker leaps upward, shedding 1,200 lb of drag and weight.
The aerodynamics of the Mustang change instantly.
The drag coefficient drops.
The wing loading decreases.
The plane becomes alive, sensitive, twitchy.
Shomo pushes the throttle forward.
He doesn’t slam it.
He feeds it in, letting the manifold pressure build to 61 in.
The supercharger kicks into high blower.
The prop pitch automatically adjusts to bite more air.
He pulls the stick back.
The Mustang zooms up from the deck.
He is attacking from the blind spot low and behind.
The Japanese pilots are scanning the horizon and the sun, the traditional avenues of attack.
They are not looking at the jungle floor.
Shomo targets the tail end Charlie on the right side of the formation.
It is a Tony.
He closes to 300 y.
He switches his gun sight to gyro.
The K14 site is a marvel of analog computing.
It uses gyroscopes to calculate the lead required based on the geforce of the turn and the range.
But Shomo doesn’t need the computer yet.
He is flying a straight line.
He squeezes the trigger.
The 650 caliber Browning M2 machine guns in the wings roar.
They are harmonized to converge at 250 yards.
Shomo is slightly outside convergence, but it doesn’t matter.
The stream of incendiary rounds API hits the Tony’s radiator scoop under the belly.
The liquid cooled engine, fragile as glass, shatters.
Coolant sprays out, turning to white steam instantly.
The engine seizes.
The Tony rolls violently to the right and drops out of the sky.
Splash one.
Shomoma whispers.
The Japanese formation hasn’t reacted.
They didn’t hear the guns over their own engines.
They didn’t see the wingman fall.
Shomo slides left.
He targets the second fighter, another Tony.
He is closer now, 200 y.
The Mustang is eating up the distance.
Shomo can see the rivets on the enemy plane.
He can see the exhaust stains.
He fires again.
A short 1 second burst.
The bullets saw through the Tony’s wing route.
The fuel tanks in the wing ignite.
The plane becomes a fireball.
It explodes so close that Shomo flies through the smoke.
Splash too.
Now they notice.
The sky erupts into chaos.
The remaining 10 fighters break formation.
They scatter like a flock of birds hit by a stone.
They bank left, right, climb, dive.
They are confused.
They don’t know how many Americans are attacking.
They assume it is a squadron.
It is just two men.
Shomo has lost the element of surprise.
Now he has to rely on energy.
He pulls the Mustang into a vertical zoom climb.
He uses the speed he built up in the dive to rocket past the Japanese fighters.
He is trading kinetic energy for potential energy altitude.
He looks down.
The Japanese are turning.
They are exposing their bellies.
Shomo grins beneath his oxygen mask.
He is the undertaker and business is good.
2,500 ft over the Kagan Valley.
The Nakajima Kai 44 Tojo is a stubby ugly brute of a fighter.
It was designed as an interceptor, a specialized machine built to climb fast and kill bombers with heavy 40 cannons.
But it has a weakness.
It has small wings.
This means it has a high wing loading.
It cannot turn tightly without stalling.
Shomo knows this.
He recognizes the silhouette instantly as he crests his zoom climb.
He wing overs, rolling the Mustang on its back and pulling through the horizon to dive back into the fight.
He is now looking down on the chaos he created.
Below him, five Tojos are trying to reorganize.
They are attempting to form a defensive Lubury circle.
Shomo divys on the lead tojo.
The Japanese pilot sees him coming.
He pulls up trying to meet Shomo headon.
This is a mistake.
The Mustang is heavier in a head-on pass.
Mass provides stability.
The tojo bounces in the turbulence.
Shomo’s plane is a rock.
Shomo holds the trigger.
The 050 Cal’s hammer.
The tracers converge on the tojo’s radial engine.
The Japanese plane shutters.
The cowling flies off.
The engine block cracks.
The plane stalls and spins away.
Three.
Shom counts.
He doesn’t watch it fall in a targetric environment.
Fixation is death.
He scans for the next threat.
A Tony is latching onto Lipcom’s tail.
Lipscom is fighting hard, but he is outnumbered.
Break right, Paul.
Shomu yells.
Lipscom breaks.
The Tony tries to follow, but the Mustang turns tighter at high speed.
The Tony overshoots.
Shomo is there.
He has anticipated the overshoot.
He slots in behind the Tony.
He is pulling 4GS.
The blood drains from his head.
His guit inflates, squeezing his legs to keep him conscious.
The heavy cameras in the fuselage make the Mustang’s tail feel heavy, but Shomo uses the rudder to skid the nose into position.
He fires.
The Tony’s canopy shatters.
The pilot is hit.
The plane rolls over and dives into the jungle canopy.
Four.
Shomo is in a rhythm now.
He has entered what sports psychologists call the zone.
The noise of the engine, the rattle of the guns, the screaming of the radio.
It all fades into a background hum.
His vision is razor sharp.
He sees the geometry of the fight before it happens.
He spots the bomber, the Betty.
It is running for the cloud deck, hugging the treetops.
Shommo knows he should kill the fighters first, but the bomber is the prize.
He dives toward the Betty, but a Tojo cuts across his path.
The Japanese pilot is brave.
He is trying to shield the bomber with his own body.
Shomo reacts instinctively.
He doesn’t turn away.
He pulls lead on the crossing target.
This is a high deflection shot.
The tojo is moving at 300 m perpendicular to Shomo.
To hit it, Shomo has to aim at empty air 50 yards in front of the enemy plane.
He trusts the K14 sight.
He lines up the pipper.
He squeezes.
The stream of bullets intersects the Tojo’s flight path perfectly.
The Japanese plane flies into the sawblade of lead.
It catches fire from nose to tail.
It doesn’t even change course.
It just becomes a meteor and impacts the ground.
Five.
Shomo is an ace in a day.
It has been less than 6 minutes since he dropped his tanks.
But the fight is getting harder.
The remaining Japanese pilots have realized there are only two Mustangs.
They are angry.
They are aggressive.
Three fighters swarm Shomo.
They are attacking from different angles, high, low, and level.
They are trying to box him in.
Shomo checks his energy state.
350 m.
Altitude 1,500 ft.
He cannot turn with three of them.
He will bleed too much speed.
He has to extend.
He pushes the throttle to war emergency power.
The wire is already broken, but he jams it forward until the manifold pressure hits 70 in.
The engine screams.
The Mustang accelerates.
The Japanese planes cannot keep up.
The Tony tops out at 360 m.
The Mustang can do 440.
Shomo opens the gap.
He puts a mile between him and his pursuers.
Then he does the unexpected.
He doesn’t run away.
He executes a immeloman turn.
He pulls up into a half loop, rolls upright at the top, and reverses direction.
He comes back at them.
The Japanese pilots are shocked.
They thought he was fleeing.
Now he is diving on them again with renewed energy and altitude.
They scatter.
Shomo picks the one on the left, a Tony.
The pilot tries to dive to escape, but the Mustang is the king of the dive.
Its laminer wing gets more efficient the faster it goes.
Shomo catches him at 500 ft.
He fires a short burst.
The Tony explodes.
Shomo pulls up hard to avoid the debris.
He checks his ammo counters.
He has used about 1,500 rounds.
He has plenty left.
He looks for the bomber.
The Betty has almost reached the safety of a valley.
It is flying so low its props are clipping leaves.
Shomo dives.
But the bomber has a tail stinger, a 20 cannon in the rear turret.
The gunner opens fire.
Shommo sees the large, slowmoving cannon shells arcing toward him.
Thump, thump.
One hits his wing.
A hole appears in the aluminum, but the Mustang is tough.
The main spar holds.
Shomo ignores the damage.
He lines up the bomber.
He knows the Betty is a flying Zippo.
Its fuel tanks are unprotected.
He aims for the right wing route where the fuel tanks join the fuselage.
He fires a long 3-second burst.
The bomber shutters.
Flames lick out from the engine.
Then the wing folds up.
The massive plane rolls onto its back and crashes into the jungle with an earthshaking explosion.
Seven.
Seven kills.
Seven smoking holes in the jungle.
Shomo pulls up.
He scans the sky.
The remaining Japanese fighters have fled.
They have seen enough.
They have seen seven of their comrades die in less than 10 minutes.
Shomo finds Lipcom.
You okay, Paul? I got three, Major.
Lipscom yells, his voice cracking with adrenaline.
I got three of them.
10 enemy aircraft destroyed, two Mustangs, zero losses.
Shomo checks his fuel.
He has burned through half his internal load.
His engine is running hot.
His gun barrels are scorched white.
Let’s go home, Paul.
Shomo says, “I think we got the pictures.” The flight back to Muro.
The adrenaline dump is worse than the combat.
Shomo’s hands begin to shake.
It is a physiological reaction.
the body purging the cortisol that kept him hyperfocused.
He grips the stick tightly to steady them.
He flies mechanically.
He scans the instruments.
The hole in his wing is creating drag, requiring him to hold a little left rudder trim.
The engine temp is high, 110°, likely from the prolonged use of war emergency power.
He eases the throttle back to cruise settings, letting the Merlin cool down.
He replays the fight in his mind, not as a hero, but as a technician.
Kill one, radiator shot, clean.
Kill two, wing route, fuel ignition.
Kill three, head-on, engine block.
Kill four, deflection shot, cockpit.
Kill five, high deflection crossing.
Luck and geometry.
Kill six, dive pursuit.
speed advantage kill 7 the bomber structural failure.
It wasn’t magic.
It was physics.
It was the application of superior energy management and gunnery against an enemy who made tactical errors.
The Japanese made the classic mistake.
They gave up their altitude advantage by flying low to protect the bomber.
They surrendered the potential energy that allows a fighter to dictate the engagement.
Shommo by staying fast and using the vertical controlled the tempo.
But there is another factor, the F6D airframe.
Shomo thinks about the cameras in the tail.
The extra weight shifted the center of gravity aft.
In a normal P-51, this makes the plane unstable in pitch twitchy.
But in a high-speed dog fight, that instability translates to maneuverability.
The tail wants to drop.
The nose wants to come up.
Unknowingly, the reconnaissance modifications made the plane snappier in the turn.
It allowed Shomo to pull lead faster than a standard Mustang.
He lands at the dirt strip in Muro.
The dust clouds his vision.
The wheels touch down.
He taxis to the revetment.
He shuts down the engine.
The propeller spins to a halt.
Silence rushes back in.
The canopy slides open.
His crew chief, Sergeant Miller, jumps up on the wing.
How’d it go, Major? Get any good photos? Shomo unbuckles his harness.
He looks at Miller.
He looks tired.
I didn’t get any photos, Sarge.
Miller looks disappointed.
cloud cover.
No, Shomo says I was busy.
He climbs out.
He walks around the plane.
He points to the gun ports.
The blast tubes are blackened.
The tape that covers the muzzles before a mission is gone.
Miller looks at the guns.
He looks at the empty shell casing shoots.
You fired the guns, sir? Yeah.
Did you hit anything? Shomo rubs his neck.
Paints seven rising suns on the side.
Miller.
Miller freezes.
Seven.
Seven.
In one mission.
In one pass.
The word spreads through the base like wildfire.
Seven kills.
It’s impossible.
It’s a record.
No American pilot has ever confirmed seven air-to-air kills in a single sordy in the Pacific.
The intelligence officers descend on Shaomo.
They are skeptical.
They separate him and Lipcom.
They interrogate them separately.
Describe the third kill.
What type of aircraft was the fifth? Where did they crash? Shomo answers calmly.
He draws diagrams.
He explains the geometry.
Then they pull the gun camera film.
The film doesn’t lie.
The footage is grainy, black and white and jerky, but it is clear.
Frame one, a Tony disintegrating.
Frame two, a tojo spinning.
Frame three, the Betty bombers’s wing folding.
The intelligence officer, a cynical captain named Harris, watches the film in the dark tent.
He watches it three times.
He turns on the lights.
He looks at Shomo.
Major Harris says, “I counted seven.” “Is that confirmed?” Shomo asks.
“Confirmed,” Harris says.
“And Lipcom got three.
That’s 10 aircraft in.” “My god, look at the timestamps.” Harris points to the clock on the film.
“12 minutes,” Harris says.
You wiped out a squadron in 12 minutes.
The feat is unprecedented.
It is efficient.
It is brutal.
But Shomo doesn’t feel like celebrating.
He thinks about the Japanese pilots.
They were young, probably inexperienced.
They were flying inferior machines against a P-51 flown by a man who knew exactly how to kill them.
It was a slaughter.
That night, Shomo sits in his tent.
He cleans his45 pistol.
He writes a letter to his wife.
He doesn’t mention the kills.
He writes about the humidity.
He writes about the food.
He is the undertaker.
He deals in death, but he doesn’t have to like the business.
Washington, D.C., April 1945.
The war is winding down in Europe, but raging in the Pacific.
Major William Shomo stands in the East Room of the White House.
He is wearing his class A uniform.
It is freshly pressed.
His shoes are shined.
President Harry S.
Truman stands before him.
Truman is new to the job, having taken over after Roosevelt’s death.
He looks serious.
An agitant reads the citation.
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, Major Shomo attacked an enemy formation of 13 aircraft, shooting down seven and assisting in the destruction of three others.
Truman places the blue ribbon of the Medal of Honor around Shomo’s neck.
I’d rather have that medal than be president, Truman says, shaking Shomo’s hand.
Shommo smiles politely.
I’d rather be flying, Mr.
President.
The press loves the story, the flying undertaker, the one-man air force.
They paint him as a cowboy, a reckless hero who charged into battle against impossible odds.
But Shomo knows the truth.
It wasn’t reckless.
It was calculated.
He calculated the energy states.
He calculated the gunnery.
He calculated the risk.
He knew the Mustang was superior.
He knew the Japanese were complacent.
He took a calculated risk and it paid off.
After the ceremony, Shomo returns to duty.
But the Air Force won’t let him fly combat anymore.
He is too valuable.
He is a Medal of Honor recipient, a living legend.
They can’t risk him getting shot down.
He spends the rest of the war on tour selling war bonds, giving speeches.
He hates it.
He feels like a carnival attraction.
He misses the cockpit.
He misses the simplicity of the air.
Up there, the only law is physics.
Down here, it’s politics.
The war ends.
Shomo stays in the air force.
He flies jets.
He commands wings.
He retires as a lieutenant colonel.
He never shoots down another plane.
Years later, historians analyze the engagement.
They call it the perfect dog fight.
They analyze the films.
They realize that Shomo didn’t waste a single movement.
Every turn was optimized.
Every burst was accurate.
He achieved a kill rate of one plane every 90 seconds.
In the 1980s, Shomo is an old man.
He lives in Pennsylvania.
He is a brick layer now.
He builds walls.
A historian comes to interview him.
Major, the historian asks, “What were you thinking when you saw those 12 fighters? Did you think about running?” Shomo looks at his rough hands.
Hands that laid bricks.
Hands that flew a Mustang.
I thought about the cameras, Shomo says.
The cameras? Yeah, Shomo says, “I thought if I shoot them down, I won’t have to take their pictures.
” He laughs.
It’s a dry, rasping laugh.
Seriously, though, Shomo says, “I thought about the guys on the ground, the infantry.
If those planes got through, they would have strafed our boys.” Or that bomber.
It was carrying generals.
If I let them go, the war goes on one day longer.
Maybe 10 guys die because I didn’t act.
So you did it to save lives.
I did it because it was my job, Shomo says, and because I had the altitude.
The legacy of the Undertaker.
William Shomo’s record stands.
Seven kills in a single mission is the all-time American record for a single sordy in the Mustang.
But his legacy is not the number.
It is the lesson.
The lesson is that role does not define capability.
Shomo was a reconnaissance pilot.
His job was to look, not touch.
He was flying a camera plane.
But when the moment came, he didn’t hide behind his job description.
He didn’t hide behind the manual.
He realized that a pilot is a pilot and a fighter is a fighter.
He proved that even a 19-year-old or in his case, a young man in his 20s in a compromised plane can dominate veterans if he maintains the initiative.
The Japanese pilots he killed were not rookies.
The pilots flying the VIP transport were likely experienced hands selected for the mission, but they were beaten by aggression.
They were beaten by a man who refused to be passive.
The F-6D Flying Undertaker was scrapped after the war.
Aluminum melted down to make cars or soda cans, but the gun camera film remains.
It sits in the archives, a silent black and white testament to 12 minutes of perfection.
It shows a Tony exploding, a tojo spinning, a bomber falling.
It shows the world what happens when a man with a camera decides to become the most dangerous thing in the sky.
William Shomo died in 1990.
His tombstone is simple.
It lists his rank.
It lists his war.
It doesn’t say ace of aces.
It doesn’t say the Undertaker.
But every pilot who knows the history knows the truth.
Beneath that stone lies the man who fought the perfect fight.
