August 30th, 1943, and Marine Corps Lieutenant Ken Walsh was alone over the Solomon Islands with eight Japanese zeros diving on him from above.
Their pilots laughing over their radios because they had him exactly where they wanted him, trapped at sea level with nowhere to run and no altitude to dive away.
Walsh’s wingmen were scattered across the sky, and he was looking at his fuel gauge, knowing he had maybe 20 minutes before he’d be swimming in sharkinfested waters.
The Zeros came down like wolves on a wounded deer, their 20 mm cannons already spitting tracers that cut white lines through the tropical air.
Every fighter pilot in the Pacific knew the rule.
You can’t outrun a zero at sea level in a Corsair because they’re too evenly matched in speed.
And if you’re down low with zeros above you, you’re already dead.
Walsh reached for his throttle and remembered what the squadron mechanics had told him 3 weeks ago about the watermethanol injection system.
That stupid trick that everyone laughed about in the ready room.
Use it and you’ll blow your engine.
Bait said you’ll be swimming with the sharks before you can make it back to base.
But Walsh was about to be dead anyway.
So he pushed that throttle past the war emergency power detent and felt his Pratt and Whitney R 2800 engine roar from 2,000 horsepower to 2450 in less than 2 seconds.
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What those 8 pilots didn’t know was that they were about to watch a Corsair do something that should have been physically impossible.
And in the next 5 minutes, their entire understanding of American aircraft was going to shatter right before their eyes.
This is the story of how one Marine pilot used a trick everyone mocked to outrun an entire Japanese squadron and prove that sometimes the stupid idea is the one that saves your life.
Ken Walsh wasn’t supposed to be a fighter ace.
He joined the Marines in 1933 during the depression because he needed work and the military was hiring.
And for the first 8 years of his service, he was a mechanic, not a pilot.
He worked on aircraft engines in peace time, learning every bolt and wire and cylinder of the radial engines that powered Marine Corps planes.
When the war started and the Marines needed pilots fast, Walsh applied for flight training even though he was already 26 years old.
ancient by fighter pilot standards.
Most of the guys in his training class were 19 or 20 fresh-faced kids who’d never held a wrench.
But Walsh had something they didn’t have.
He understood engines at a level that would save his life.
The F4U Corsair was a beast of an airplane designed by chance vaughought to be the fastest carrier fighter in the world.
And when it first arrived in the Pacific in early 1943, it looked like something from the future.
That massive Pratt and Whitney R2800 engine produced more power than any fighter engine ever built.
And the distinctive inverted gull wings made it instantly recognizable in the sky.
But the Corsair had a reputation problem.
Navy carrier pilots hated it because the long nose blocked their view during landing and the plane had a nasty tendency to bounce on carrier decks.
So, the Navy gave it to the Marines for land-based operations, and guys like Walsh learned to fly it from rough jungle air strips, where a bouncy landing just meant you hit more potholes.
The water methanol injection system was one of those engineering solutions that sounded insane when you first heard about it.
Engineers had installed tanks that could spray a mixture of water and methanol directly into the engine supercharger.
And when you activated it, the chemical reaction would cool the intake charge and prevent detonation, allowing the engine to run at much higher power settings without destroying itself.
In theory, it gave you an extra 450 horsepower for emergency situations.
In practice, it was supposed to be used for maybe 60 seconds during takeoff from short runways or when you absolutely had to outclimb an enemy who had altitude advantage.
The mechanics who maintained the Corsairs were the ones who really understood what the system could do and they tried to explain it to the pilots during technical briefings, but most pilots just laughed it off.
Why would you need emergency power when the Corsair was already the fastest thing in the Pacific? The Japanese Zero was lighter and more maneuverable, sure, but in a straight line at high altitude, the Corsair could run away from anything with a rising sun painted on its wings.
Besides, the mechanics warned that if you used the watermethanol injection for too long, you’d cook your cylinder heads, warp your valves, and turn your $2 million fighter into a 15,000lb paper weight.
Use it for 60 seconds and you’re fine.
Use it for 5 minutes and you’ll be gliding home on a dead engine if you’re lucky.
Walsh listened to those briefings more carefully than most because he’d been a mechanic himself and he understood that the water methanol system wasn’t magic.
It was just chemistry and physics pushed to their absolute limits.
He knew what cylinder head temperatures should look like on a healthy engine, and he knew what they looked like when you were about to blow every gasket in the power plant.
But he also knew that a dead engine was better than being dead himself.
And in combat, you play the hand you’re dealt.
August 30th started like any other mission over the Solomon Islands.
Walsh and his squadron were supposed to provide air cover for American ships off Vela Lavella.
Flying patrol patterns at 15,000 ft and watching for Japanese bombers coming down from Rabbal.
The morning had been quiet, almost boring, just endless circles over blue water under tropical sun that made the cockpit feel like an oven.
Then the radio crackled with a report of Japanese fighters approaching from the north, and Walsh’s squadron leader ordered them to investigate.
What happened next was a mess of combat confusion that fighter pilots knew all too well.
The Japanese formation scattered when they saw the corsaires coming and suddenly the organized patrol turned into a dozen individual dog fights spread across 50 mi of sky.
Walsh chased a zero into a dive, lost him in the clouds, and pulled up to find himself completely alone at 3,000 ft with no friendlies on his radio and no idea where his wingmen had gone.
He started climbing back to altitude, which is what you’re supposed to do when you’re alone because altitude gives you options.
But then he saw them eight zeros in perfect formation and they were above him at 6,000 ft, which meant they had all the advantages.
In a dog fight between a Corsair and a Zero, altitude is everything because the Zero can outturn you at low speeds, but the Corsair can outdive anything that flies.
If you’re above a zero, you can dive away and he can’t catch you.
If you’re below a zero, he can dive on you and you can’t outturn him.
Walsh was below eight of them and they’d already seen him.
The zero pilots knew exactly what they had.
They dove on Walsh in a coordinated attack, coming down at angles that would let them scissor back and forth if he tried to turn.
And Walsh knew he was in trouble because the textbook said he should run, but he was at 3,000 ft and dropping fast as he tried to evade their first pass.
He couldn’t dive to escape because he’d hit the ocean.
He couldn’t climb because they just shoot him from above.
He couldn’t outturn them because that’s what zeros did best.
The only option left was to try to outrun them in level flight, but everyone knew you couldn’t outrun a zero at sea level in a Corsair.
The first zero opened fire at 400 yd and Walsh saw the tracers arc past his canopy like slow motion fireflies.
He jinkedked left and the second zero was waiting there firing a burst that punched holes in his right wing.
The third zero came from below which should have been impossible but the pilot was good and Walsh felt impacts along his fuselage.
He was at 1,500 ft now, still dropping, and the ocean was getting close enough that he could see white caps on the waves.
His engine was at full throttle, 2,800 RPM, manifold pressure at 54 in, and he was doing about 400 mph, which was fast for sea level, but not fast enough because the zeros were staying right behind him.
Walsh’s hand moved to the throttle and he felt the war emergency power detent.
That little metal gate that prevented you from accidentally pushing the throttle too far forward.
Behind that gate was the watermethanol injection system.
The stupid trick that would blow your engine and leave you swimming with sharks.
He could hear his squadron mates laughing about it in the ready room.
He could hear the mechanics warning him about cylinder head temperatures and warped valves.
He could also hear 20 mm cannon shells exploding around his aircraft.
He pushed the throttle past the detent and hit the watermethanol injection switch.
And his Corsair did something that made the Zero pilots think they were hallucinating.
The Pratt and Whitney R 2800 went from 2,000 horsepower to 2450 horsepower in the time it took to blink, and white vapor started pouring from Walsh’s exhaust stacks as superheated water and methanol flashed into steam.
The Corsair leaped forward like someone had strapped a rocket to its tail.
400 mph became 410, then 420, then 435.
Walsh was at 200 ft above the water now, running in a straight line because any turn would bleed speed and get him killed.
And the Zeros were still behind him, but they were falling back.
The Zero pilots pushed their Sakai engines to maximum power, running at combat settings that should have given them about 330 mph at sea level, but Walsh was pulling away at 440 mph and still accelerating.
They opened fire, but their rounds were falling short now, splashing into the ocean behind Walsh’s tail.
They couldn’t believe what they were seeing because Corsair’s weren’t supposed to be this fast at sea level, and they pushed their throttles forward until their engines were screaming.
But it didn’t matter because Walsh was running on emergency power that wasn’t supposed to exist.
Walsh watched his cylinder head temperature gauge climb into the red zone and just kept going.
The mechanic had said 60 seconds maximum on the watermethanol injection, and he’d already been running it for 2 minutes, and his engine temperature was now at levels that would normally make a pilot shut down immediately.
But behind him were eight zeros trying to kill him.
And in front of him was the open ocean, and his choice was simple.
Blow the engine or get shot down.
He chose the engine.
3 minutes on the watermethanol injection and Walsh was doing 450 mph at sea level, which was insane because that kind of speed should have been impossible for a fighter this heavy.
The Corsair was shaking from the strain and Walsh could feel vibrations through the control stick that meant something in the engine was very unhappy, but he was alive and the Zeros were now a/4 mile behind him and still falling back.
They fired a few more bursts, but they were out of effective range.
And Walsh knew he’d done something that broke all the rules for minutes and his oil pressure was starting to fluctuate, which meant he was cooking seals and gaskets.
But the zeros were still back there and still trying.
So he kept the throttle pinned and watched his instruments climb into readings he’d never seen before.
5 minutes and the engine started making sounds that Walsh recognized from his mechanic days.
The kind of sounds that meant metal was expanding beyond its design limits and things were about to break.
But the Zeros were finally giving up, breaking off their pursuit and climbing back to altitude.
And Walsh throttled back and felt his Corsair shudder with relief.
He climbed to 10,000 ft on an engine that was smoking and rattling and probably had about 30 minutes of life left in it.
And he pointed his nose toward base and tried not to think about sharks.
His watermethanol tank was empty.
His engine was damaged.
His airframe had 14 bullet holes.
And he was alive.
The stupid trick had worked.
The system that everyone laughed about had given him exactly what he needed.
5 minutes of impossible speed that outran an entire Japanese squadron.
Walsh made it back to base and landed with an engine that seized up 10 seconds after he cut the power.
The mechanics came running when they saw the smoke pouring from his cowling.
And when they opened up the engine, they found cylinder heads that had worked from heat, valves that had stretched, and pistons that had scores in them from running without proper lubrication.
The engine was completely destroyed, exactly like the mechanics had warned.
But Walsh was alive, and the mechanics who’ called it a stupid trick were the same ones who started telling every pilot who’d listened that maybe the watermethanol injection system wasn’t so stupid after all.
Word spread through the Marine Corps squadrons in the Pacific about what Walsh had done.
Pilots who’d laughed at the emergency power system started asking mechanics for demonstrations and technical briefings.
The system that was supposed to be used for 60 seconds during takeoff became the system that pilots practiced with and learned to trust.
Guys started pushing that throttle past the war emergency detent when they were in trouble.
And they found out that Walsh wasn’t lying.
You could outrun a zero at sea level if you were willing to sacrifice your engine.
Better to glide home on a dead engine than take a 20 mm shell through your fuel tank.
Ken Walsh kept flying combat missions in the Pacific, and he got better at reading his instruments and knowing exactly how long he could run the watermethanol injection before things started breaking.
He learned that different engines had different tolerances and some Corsair’s could handle six or 7 minutes of emergency power while others would start coming apart after three.
He became an expert at managing that narrow edge between maximum performance and catastrophic failure and other pilots started asking him for advice.
The mechanic who became a pilot was now teaching fighter tactics based on engineering knowledge.
By the end of 1943, Walsh had shot down 21 Japanese aircraft, making him one of the top Marine Corps aces in the Pacific.
He flew missions over New Georgia, over Rabal, over the Solomon Islands, and every time he got into trouble, he had that water methanol injection system as his ace in the hole.
The Corsair became known as the plane that could outrun anything in a straight line, and the water injection system became standard emergency procedure instead of a stupid trick.
On February 8th, 1944, Ken Walsh was presented with the Medal of Honor for his actions during multiple combat missions in the Pacific, including that day over Vela Lavella when he outran 800 at sea level.
The citation mentioned his aggressive pursuit of enemy aircraft and his determination in pressing home attacks, but every pilot who read it knew what it was really about.
The guy who used the stupid trick and proved that sometimes the engineers know what they’re talking about.
The F4U Corsair went on to become one of the most successful fighters of World War II with a kill ratio of over 11:1 against Japanese aircraft.
Part of that success was the airframe design.
Part was the powerful engine and part was the watermethanol injection system that gave pilots an emergency option when everything else failed.
That system that mechanics installed and pilots mocked became the thing that brought hundreds of pilots home alive from situations where they should have died.
Walsh survived the war and stayed in the Marines, eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1962.
He’d flown combat missions in World War II and Korea, logged thousands of hours in fighters, and trained hundreds of young pilots.
But everyone who knew his story remembered that day over Vela Lavella when he was alone at sea level with eight zeros trying to kill him.
And he did the one thing that everyone said would get him killed.
He pushed that throttle forward and trusted the engineering and ran his engine at power settings that should have blown it apart.
And for five minutes, he outran death itself.
The mechanics who’d called it a stupid trick were the same mechanics who started installing bigger water methanol tanks in later Corsair models.
The pilots who’d laughed about swimming with sharks were the same pilots who started practicing emergency power procedures until they could activate the system without even looking.
The gimmick that was supposed to destroy your engine became the feature that defined the Corsair’s reputation as the fighter you wanted when everything went wrong.
By the end of 1944, American Corsaires had shot down over 2,000 Japanese aircraft using tactics that depended on superior straight line speed.
And a huge part of that speed advantage came from watermethanol injection systems that gave pilots emergency power when they needed it most.
The stupid trick had become standard procedure and the Pacific Sky belonged to the guys who weren’t afraid to push their engines past the red line.
Thanks for watching this story from WW2 Vault about the Marine pilot who outran 8 Zeros with a trick everyone mocked.
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