At 9:47 a.m.
on March 31st, 1943, Second Lieutenant Owen Bagot watched his burning B-24 Liberator tear itself apart over Burma, while 13 Japanese fighters circled for the kill.
The 22-year-old co-pilot had been flying combat missions for 8 months out of Pondoir, India.
His aircraft, part of the seventh bomb group’s 9inth squadron, carried eight men toward a railroad bridge at Pinmana when the enemy found them first.
The Ki43 fighters of the Japanese 64th Senti had launched from bases flanking the target bridge.
American bomber crews called them Oscars.
Light, maneuverable, deadly in the hands of experienced pilots.
These 13 aircraft were climbing through 4,000 ft when they spotted the formation of 12 B-24s.
First Lieutenant Lloyd Jensen fought the controls as fire spread through the fuel tanks.
Oxygen bottles shattered, feeding the flames.
The intercom died.
Bagot couldn’t reach the crew by voice, so he used hand signals.
Bail out.
Get out now.
19-year-old Sergeant Samuel Crossstick grabbed two fire extinguishers and fought the blaze while standing on a catwalk over the open bomb bay.
It wasn’t enough.
The fire was winning.
Jensen gave the order.
The crew abandoned the aircraft.
Bagot saw four parachutes blossom below him before the B24 exploded.
He counted men in the silk.
Then he heard the sound every parachuting airman dreaded.
the high-pitched wine of fighters diving.
The Ki43s came around for another pass, not at the bombers, at the men hanging helpless under their canopies.
American intelligence had documented this practice.
Japanese pilots sometimes strafed parachutists to prevent their rescue and return to combat.
Two of Bagot’s crew died in the air, cut down before they could reach the ground.
Bullets grazed Bagot’s left arm.
Blood soaked through his flight suit.
He made a decision.
He went limp, let his head drop forward, played dead in the harness, hoping the enemy pilots would ignore a corpse and focus on living targets.
The wind spun him slowly.
He kept his eyes barely open, watching through slitted lids as one KI43 broke away from the others.
The fighter pilot was curious or thorough.
The Oscar climbed slightly, then turned back toward Bagot.
The pilot brought the aircraft around in a wide circle, studying the American hanging motionless in his parachute.
The fighter’s nose lifted.
The speed dropped.
The canopy slid open.
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Back to Bagot.
The KI43 pilot was now 20 ft away, maybe less.
The aircraft hung on the edge of a stall, nose high, barely flying.
The pilot leaned out slightly, looking at Bagot’s body, checking for signs of life.
Making sure this American was truly dead before moving on to the next target.
Bagot’s right hand had been resting against his leg since he pulled the rip cord.
His fingers were wrapped around the grip of his Colt M1911 pistol.
standard issue for Army Air Force officers.
Seven rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber.
He’d never drawn it in combat.
Never imagined he’d need it outside of survival on the ground.
He raised the 45, aimed at the open cockpit.
The Japanese pilot saw the movement.
His eyes went wide.
Bagot fired.
Four shots.
Four pulls of the trigger in less than two seconds.
The reports cracked across the sky.
The KI43’s nose dropped.
The engine note changed.
The fighter fell away into a spin.
Bagot watched it spiral down through 3,000 ft of empty air, tumbling out of control until it disappeared below the treeine and the jungle swallowed it whole.
He was still falling, still hanging in his parachute, still bleeding from the graze wound on his arm.
The other KI43s were still out there, and the ground was coming up fast.
Bagot hit the ground in a rice patty 3 mi northeast of Pin Mana.
The impact drove him to his knees in 18 in of water.
He struggled free of his parachute harness, pulled the pistol from his holster, and checked the cylinder.
Three rounds left.
He looked up.
Two more parachutes were descending half a mile away.
Jensen and one of the gunners.
He couldn’t tell who.
The Ki43s had stopped strafing.
They climbed away to the northwest, back toward their base.
Bagot counted nine fighters.
Four were missing from the original 13.
He didn’t know if American gunners had hit them or if they’d simply expended their ammunition and fuel.
He moved toward the treeine bordering the patty.
His arm throbbed where the bullet had grazed it, but the bleeding had slowed.
He made it 20 yards before he heard voices.
Burmese, not Japanese.
Local militia working with the occupation forces.
Six men emerged from the jungle carrying rifles.
British Lee Enfields probably captured when Singapore fell the year before.
Bagot raised his hands.
The pistol was still in his right hand.
One of the Burmese pointed at it.
Bagot dropped the weapon into the mud.
They bound his wrists with rice rope and marched him east.
Jensen joined the column 10 minutes later.
Then Sergeant Crostic, the flight engineer who’d fought the fire in the bomb bay.
Three Americans, five dead crewmen.
Bagot did the math in his head and tried not to think about the men who’d been cut down in their parachutes.
The Burmese turned them over to Japanese army personnel at a garrison post outside Pin Mana.
The interrogation began immediately.
Names, ranks, units, bases, targets, bomb loads, formation sizes.
Bagot gave name, rank, serial number, nothing more.
The interrogator struck him across the face, asked again.
Bagot repeated the same three pieces of information.
They separated the prisoners.
Bagot was locked in a bamboo cage barely large enough to sit upright.
No food, no water.
The temperature climbed above 100° by midday.
He could hear Jensen somewhere nearby, but couldn’t see him.
Night brought mosquitoes and the distant sound of artillery to the north.
The British were pushing back.
Maybe, or maybe it was just wishful thinking.
On the third day, Japanese soldiers loaded the three Americans onto a transport truck.
The convoy moved south toward Rangon.
They traveled at night to avoid Allied air patrols.
Bagot watched the jungle slide past through gaps in the canvas cover.
He thought about the KI43 spinning down, the pilot’s face in that last second before Bagot pulled the trigger.
young, maybe 20, maybe younger.
They reached Rangon on April 7th.
The guards marched them through the gates of a military prison on the city’s eastern edge.
The compound held 200 prisoners, British, Australian, Indian army, a handful of Americans.
Most were captured during the fall of Burma 13 months earlier.
They looked like walking skeletons.
A British major who’d been imprisoned since March 1942 watched Bagot arrive in the exercise yard.
The major stared at Bagot’s bloodstained flight suit and the dried mud caking his boots.
Word had already begun to spread through the camp about the American bomber crew shot down over Pinmana.
The prisoners wanted to know what had happened in the sky above the bridge.
Bagot didn’t believe his own story at first.
The more he replayed the moment in his mind, the more impossible it seemed.
a man hanging from a parachute, a pistol, four shots at a moving aircraft.
The odds were astronomical.
He’d seen the KI43 fall, but couldn’t confirm it had actually crashed.
Maybe the pilot recovered from the stall.
Maybe Bagot had missed entirely and the fighter had simply broken off the attack.
The Japanese guards thought differently.
On April 15th, eight days after Bagot arrived at Rangon Prison, the guards pulled him from his cell and marched him across the compound.
Jensen and another American officer accompanied him.
They entered the Command Dance office.
A Japanese major general sat behind a wooden desk.
The man commanded all prisoner of war facilities in the Burma theater.
He would later be executed as a war criminal for his treatment of Allied prisoners.
The general studied baggot for a full minute without speaking.
Then he made an unexpected offer.
He explained the concept of harikiri, the honorable way for a warrior to die rather than face the shame of captivity.
He offered Bagot a blade and detailed instructions on the proper technique.
The general seemed to believe he was showing respect to a fellow soldier who had demonstrated exceptional courage in combat.
Bagot declined.
He had no intention of committing ritual suicide.
The general showed no anger at the refusal.
He simply nodded and dismissed the prisoners back to their cells.
But the encounter confirmed something Baggot had begun to suspect.
The Japanese knew what had happened over Pin Mana.
They knew about the Ki43, and they knew who had brought it down.
The guards treated Bagot differently after that meeting.
Not better.
The beatings and starvation continued, but there was a new element of caution in their behavior.
They watched him more carefully, kept him isolated from other prisoners more often.
The Japanese military culture placed enormous value on battlefield prowess.
Bagot had done something they considered both impossible and admirable.
That made him dangerous.
By June 1943, Bagot’s weight had dropped from 180 lb to 140.
Dysentery swept through the camp.
17 men died in 3 weeks.
The Japanese provided no medical care beyond basic bandages and iodine.
Prisoners survived on rice, thin vegetable soup, and whatever protein they could scavenge from insects and rats.
Baggot developed Barry Berry from vitamin deficiency.
His legs swelled, his vision blurred.
In September, the Japanese transferred him and Jensen to a new facility near Singapore.
The journey took 4 days by rail and ship.
50 prisoners packed into a cargo hold designed for 20.
Two men died during the voyage.
The guards threw their bodies overboard without ceremony.
The Singapore camp was worse than Rangon.
Smaller cells, less food, harsher discipline.
But it offered one advantage.
More Allied prisoners cycled through Singapore on their way to labor camps in Thailand and Malaya.
New faces, new information, new rumors about the war’s progress.
On November 28th, 1943, guards brought a new prisoner into the compound, an American colonel, fighter pilot shot down over southern Burma 3 days earlier while flying a P-51 Mustang.
His name was Harry Meltton, commander of the 311th Fighter Group.
And Melton had information about what happened over Penmana on March 31st.
Colonel Harry Melton had been shot down on November 25th while leading an escort mission over the Irowati River Valley.
His P-51 took cannon fire from a KI43 at 8,000 ft.
He bailed out and landed in Japanese controlled territory near Miktilla.
Local troops captured him within two hours.
The Japanese army flew him to Singapore for interrogation before sending him to a permanent prison camp in Japan.
Melton spent 3 days in the Singapore facility.
The guards kept him separated from other prisoners during initial processing, but he managed brief conversations during exercise periods.
He recognized Baggot from intelligence briefings back in India.
The seventh bomb group’s losses over Burma had been significant.
Every unit in the theater knew about the March 31st mission to Pin Mana.
What Melton told Bagot changed everything.
During his interrogation in Burma, a Japanese colonel had mentioned the American bomber crew shot down over Pin Mana 8 months earlier.
The colonel spoke with a mixture of respect and disbelief.
He described how one of the B-24 crewmen had fired at a KI43 pilot while hanging in a parachute.
The fighter had crashed.
The pilot had been thrown clear of the wreckage when it hit the ground.
Recovery teams found his body 200 yard from the impact site.
The cause of death was a single bullet wound to the head.
The Japanese colonel had emphasized that detail.
The pilot hadn’t died from the crash.
The 45 caliber round had killed him before the aircraft hit the trees.
The bullet had entered through the left side of his face and exited behind his right ear.
The pilot was dead before his KI43 began its final spin toward the jungle floor.
Melton promised to file an official report when he returned to Allied lines.
He wanted Bagot’s actions documented.
The Army Air Force needed to know that one of their officers had achieved something unprecedented in aerial combat.
A kill with a sidearm while suspended beneath a parachute canopy.
No fighter escort, no bomber formation, just a man, a pistol, and 4 seconds of perfect aim.
But Melton never made that report.
On December 14th, Japanese guards loaded him and 47 other prisoners onto a transport ship bound for the Japanese home islands.
The vessel sailed north through the South China Sea without escort.
American submarines controlled those waters by late 1943.
The Japanese gambled on speed and luck to get their cargo through.
The USS Sea Lion found the transport on December 17th at 0300 hours.
The submarine fired four torpedoes from,200 yd.
Three hit.
The ship broke apart and sank in 11 minutes.
Survivors climbed into lifeboats.
They spent two days a drift before a Japanese destroyer discovered them.
The destroyer crew machine gunned the lifeboats.
They killed everyone except one British officer who survived by hiding under corpses until the destroyer departed.
That British officer later confirmed Melton’s death to the United States War Department.
He also recovered a letter Melton had written to his wife while imprisoned in Singapore.
The letter mentioned an American pilot who had done something extraordinary over Burma, something the Japanese themselves could barely believe.
But the official report about Bagot’s pistol shot died with Melton in the South China Sea.
The only documented evidence was now a secondhand account from a British survivor and rumors circulating through prisoner of war camps across Southeast Asia.
Bagot remained at the Singapore camp through the winter of 1944.
By March, his weight had dropped to 110 lbs.
His ribs showed through his skin.
His teeth loosened from scurvy.
The daily ration consisted of a cup of rice and watery soup made from vegetable scraps.
Twice a week, the guards provided a small piece of dried fish.
Protein was life.
Prisoners fought over fish heads and chicken feet when the guards discarded kitchen waste.
The work details were worse than the hunger.
Japanese engineers used prisoner labor to build airfield defenses around Singapore.
Baggot spent 6 months hauling coral stone for revetments and anti-aircraft positions.
12-hour days in 100° heat.
Guards beat anyone who slowed down.
Men collapsed from heat exhaustion and dysentery.
Some didn’t get back up.
American B-29 Superfortresses began hitting targets around Singapore in November 1944.
The raids came at night.
Bagot watched from his cell as search lights stabbed the darkness and anti-aircraft fire lit up the sky.
The bombs fell on docks and oil facilities 3 m from the prison.
Close enough to feel the concussions.
Close enough to hope.
By January 1945, Bagot’s weight had bottomed out at 90 pounds.
He could barely walk without assistance.
The Barry Berry had progressed to the point where his legs wouldn’t support his weight for more than a few minutes.
Jensen helped him to the latrine and back.
Other prisoners shared what little extra food they could spare.
An Australian sergeant gave Bagot half a lime stolen from a guard’s lunch.
The vitamin C probably saved his life.
The Japanese guards grew more nervous as the war news worsened.
Germany surrendered in May.
American forces captured Okinawa in June.
B29s firebombed Japanese cities.
The guards stopped pretending the war was going well.
Some talked about executing all prisoners if American forces landed in Malaya.
Others spoke of forced marches into the jungle where the captives would be abandoned to starve.
On August 6th, a single B29 dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
3 days later, another bomb destroyed Nagasaki.
Bagot heard the news from a guard who seemed genuinely shaken by what had happened.
Japan surrendered on August 15th.
The guards simply walked away from the camp.
They left the gates open and disappeared into Singapore.
The prisoners stayed put.
Nobody knew if the surrender was real or if this was some kind of trick to justify killing anyone who tried to escape.
They waited.
On September 21st, eight men parachuted into the prison compound at dawn.
American Office of Strategic Services operatives.
They’d been sent to locate and evacuate Allied prisoners before communist insurgents or Japanese holdouts could cause problems.
The OSS team brought medical supplies, food, and transport coordination.
They documented the prisoners conditions and began arranging evacuation to India and Australia.
38 men were judged too weak to survive immediate transport.
Bagot was among them.
The medics set up an aid station in the camp and began treating the most severe cases of malnutrition and disease.
On September 28th, a C47 transport landed at Singapore’s Kong airport.
The plane carried medical personnel and supplies.
It departed 4 hours later with 18 prisoners aboard.
Bagot was on that flight.
After 917 days in Japanese captivity, he was finally going home.
and he carried a story that almost nobody would believe.
The C-47 flew Bagot to Kolkata.
Army doctors examined him at a field hospital on October 1st.
Severe malnutrition, Barry Berry, chronic dysentery, dental damage from scurvy, multiple parasitic infections.
They estimated he’d need 6 months to recover enough strength for transport back to the United States.
He spent three weeks in the Kolkata hospital before transferred to a facility in Karach for additional treatment and rehabilitation.
The debriefing began in November.
Army Air Force intelligence officers wanted detailed accounts of every prisoner’s experience, information about camp locations, guard routines, Japanese military movements, interrogation techniques, anything that might help prosecute war criminals or improve survival training for future air crews.
Bagot provided everything he remembered about Rangun and Singapore.
The interrogators documented his testimony and typed reports that would later support war crimes trials.
When he mentioned the Ki43 over Penmana, the intelligence officers paused.
They asked him to repeat the story.
Then they asked for clarification on specific details.
How far away was the fighter when he fired? What was the aircraft’s attitude? How many rounds did he expend? Could he confirm the crash? The questions came rapid fire.
Bagot answered each one as precisely as he could.
The officers were skeptical, not hostile, just professionally doubtful.
They’d heard countless combat stories during the war.
Some were accurate, some were embellished, some were completely false, created by men trying to explain survival when their crew mates had died.
The intelligence officers needed corroboration, witnesses, physical evidence, anything beyond a single pilot’s claim.
Baggot had none of that.
Jensen had been too far away to see the incident.
Crossstik was already on the ground.
The other crewmen were dead.
Melton was dead.
The Japanese colonel’s account existed only in Melton’s memory, now lost in the South China Sea.
There were no gun camera photos because Bagged wasn’t in an aircraft.
No wreckage recovery because the KI43 went down in Japanese controlled jungle.
No way to verify his story through official channels.
The intelligence officers filed his report without recommendation.
They documented what Bagot claimed but made no judgment about its accuracy.
The paperwork went into a folder with thousands of other debriefing reports from returning prisoners.
Nobody followed up.
Nobody investigated further.
The story sat in a filing cabinet at Army Air Force headquarters and collected dust.
Bagot returned to the United States in February 1946.
He landed at San Francisco and processed through separation facilities at the Presidio.
The doctors cleared him for continued service.
His weight had climbed back to 145 lbs.
The Barry Berry symptoms had mostly resolved.
He still had nightmares about the camps, still flinched at loud noises.
But he was functional, capable of returning to duty.
He chose to stay in the military.
The Army Air Force became the United States Air Force in September 1947.
Bagot transferred seamlessly.
He flew transport missions during the Berlin Airlift in 1948.
Served as a squadron operations officer in Japan during the Korean War, earned promotions based on competence and steady performance.
Nobody asked him about Pyan Mana.
The war was over.
Everyone wanted to move forward.
By 1953, Bagot held the rank of major.
He’d been in uniform for 11 years.
The nightmares had faded, but never disappeared completely.
Some memories don’t let go.
The story surfaced occasionally over the years.
A fellow officer would hear about Bagot’s prisoner of war experience and ask about his shootown.
Baggot would provide a brief account.
Sometimes the officer would press for details about the parachute incident.
Bagged would describe what happened as accurately as he could remember.
Most listeners reacted with polite skepticism.
The story was too extraordinary, too Hollywood.
Real combat didn’t work that way.
Bagot didn’t push back.
He had no proof, no witnesses who survived the war, no official documentation beyond his initial debriefing report that had concluded nothing.
He’d done what he believed he’d done.
The Ki43 had fallen.
Whether his shots actually killed the pilot or the plane crashed for some other reason, he couldn’t say with absolute certainty.
30 years of distance from the event had introduced doubt even in his own mind.
He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1961, colonel in 1968.
He commanded a transport squadron at Mitchell Air Force Base in New York.
His performance reviews praised his leadership and operational competence.
He was known for running tight organizations where maintenance standards were high and accident rates were low.
He mentored junior officers, sponsored children through the commander for a day program, built a reputation as a solid, reliable officer who got results without drama.
He retired from the Air Force in 1973 at age 53, 29 years of service.
He’d survived the Burma camps, flown through the Berlin Airlift, served in Korea, and spent decades building the post-war air force into a professional fighting force.
He settled in San Antonio, Texas, and took a job as a defense contractor manager.
The work was less demanding than military command, but it kept him connected to the aviation industry he’d spent his life serving.
His wife knew about Pin Mana.
His close friends knew, but Bagot rarely discussed it publicly.
The story seemed to belong to a different person.
A 22-year-old co-pilot hanging in a parachute over Burma was hard to reconcile with the 60-year-old grandfather living quietly in Texas.
The war had been over for three decades.
Most people didn’t want to hear about it anymore.
Then, in July 1996, Air Force magazine published an article titled Valor, David and Goliath.
The piece examined Bagot’s March 31st, 1943 mission in detail.
The author had researched Japanese records, interviewed surviving seventh bomb group personnel, and analyzed the tactical situation over Pinmana.
The article concluded that despite the lack of direct evidence, Bagot’s account was credible based on multiple corroborating factors.
No Allied fighters were operating in that area on March 31st.
The KI43’s low stall speed made a close approach possible.
A 45 caliber round could kill a pilot at 20 ft.
The altitude gave the fighter no room to recover from an unintentional stall.
Harry Melton’s report about the Japanese colonel’s statement, though secondhand, came from a credible source.
The magazine’s assessment was clear.
There appeared to be no reasonable doubt that Bagot had accomplished exactly what he claimed.
The article brought renewed attention.
Military history enthusiasts contacted Bagot.
Television producers wanted interviews.
Aviation magazines requested follow-up stories.
At 76 years old, Bagot found himself explaining Pinmana to a new generation of people who’d never heard of the Burma campaign or the Seventh Bomb Group.
He answered their questions, but he remained modest about what he’d done.
Four shots, one falling aircraft.
53 years of wondering if it had really happened the way he remembered.
Owen Bagot died on July 27th, 2006 at his home in New Bronfells, Texas.
He was 85 years old.
His obituary mentioned his Air Force career, his prisoner of war experience, and his work with children after retirement.
It also noted that he was believed to be the only person in military history to shoot down an enemy aircraft with a handgun while parachuting from a damaged bomber.
The Colt M1911 pistol he’d carried over Burma remained standard issue for American military pilots until the 1980s.
The weapons design dated to 1911.
John Browning’s masterpiece.
Seven rounds of 45 caliber stopping power.
reliable in mud, water, sand, and extreme temperatures.
Tens of thousands of pilots carried that pistol into combat during World War II.
Only one ever used it to down an enemy fighter.
The story challenges belief because the circumstances were so specific.
A KI43 had to approach close enough for pistol range.
The pilot had to open his canopy.
The fighter had to slow to near stall speed.
The parachuters had to remain conscious and capable of accurate fire while wounded.
All these conditions had to align in the same 4-second window.
The odds were astronomical, but astronomical odds aren’t the same as impossible.
Bagot’s achievement represents something fundamental about aerial combat in World War II.
The men who fought that war operated at the absolute edge of human capability.
They flew aircraft that could barely support their weight.
They fought at altitudes where oxygen deprivation clouded judgment.
They watched friends die in ways that still seem impossible eight decades later.
And sometimes they survived through actions that defy rational explanation.
The Burma campaign where Bagot fought remains one of the war’s least known theaters.
The seventh bomb group flew missions that matched the difficulty of operations over Germany, but received a fraction of the recognition.
They attacked targets sandwiched between enemy fighter bases.
They flew without adequate fighter escort.
They navigated by dead reckoning over jungle that offered no landmarks.
30% of seventh bomb group crews were killed, captured or missing by the end of the war.
Baguette story represents their sacrifice and their extraordinary courage under conditions most people can’t imagine.
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Thank you for spending this time learning about Lieutenant Colonel Owen Baguette.
His courage, his humility, and his refusal to embellish what he’d experienced represent the best qualities of the generation that fought World War II.
These stories deserve to be remembered.
These men deserve to be honored.
