😱 Engineers Called His B-25 Gunship “Impossible” – Until It Sank 12 Japanese Ships in 3 Days 😱 – HTT

Engineers Called His B-25 Gunship “Impossible” — Until It Sank 12 Japanese Ships in 3 Days

On August 17th, 1942, at precisely 7:42 a.m., Captain Paul Gun crouched under the wing of a Douglas A-20 Havoc at Eagle Farm Airfield near Brisbane.

He watched as mechanics worked diligently to weld .50 caliber machine guns into the bomber’s nose, replacing the bombadier’s seat.

At 43 years old, with 21 years of service in the Navy, Gun had a personal stake in the war; his wife and four children were imprisoned in a Japanese camp in Manila.

The Fifth Air Force faced dire challenges, losing bombers faster than they could be replaced.

In July alone, the third attack group had lost 11 A-20s trying to hit Japanese convoys from high altitudes.

The bombers struggled to hit moving ships, and when they attempted lower approaches, deck gunners decimated them.

Captain Ed Lner had witnessed three of his crews burn in the Coral Sea just the previous week.

The Japanese were reinforcing New Guinea at will, and Gun had a different idea.

He believed that if bombers could fly low enough to skip bombs across the water like stones, they could hit ships at point-blank range.

But first, they had to survive the approach, which meant overwhelming the deck guns with forward firepower.

This required transforming bombers into strafers.

The problem was straightforward: the A-20 Havoc had four .30 caliber machine guns in the nose, but these rounds bounced off ship armor like hail.

Gun needed .50 caliber guns.

He envisioned four of them mounted where the bombardier used to sit, firing straight ahead, generating a combined fire rate of 1,700 rounds per minute.

General George Kenny, the new Fifth Air Force commander, had given Gun one week to prove that this concept would work.

To achieve this, Gun stripped .50 caliber guns from wrecked P-39 and P-40 fighters that would never fly again.

The pilots were dead, but the guns were salvageable.

He mounted the guns on a steel frame inside the nose compartment.

Each gun weighed 64 pounds, and with four guns and 200 pounds of ammunition, the weight shifted the center of gravity forward.

During the initial test flight, the aircraft nearly crashed; it barely climbed and wanted to nose over.

Gun spent two days rebalancing the aircraft, moving equipment aft and adjusting the tail trim.

The second test pilot reported that the plane flew like it was angry, but it flew.

On September 12th, 1942, 16 modified A-20s struck the Japanese airfield at Buna.

The strafers swooped in at treetop level, guns hammering, destroying 14 Japanese aircraft on the ground and suppressing every anti-aircraft position.

Zero A-20s were lost in the process.

Kenny wanted more, but the A-20 had limitations.

Its range was too short to reach Japanese bases across the Owen Stanley Mountains, and its bomb load was too light.

Gun needed a bigger platform, and the B-25 Mitchell was the answer.

With a longer range, heavier payload, and more space for guns, Gun pulled the bombardier and nose guns from a B-25C.

He installed four .50 caliber guns in the nose, four more in external cheek packs on the fuselage, and rotated the top turret forward, resulting in 10 forward-firing guns.

He then added two more on each side, totaling 14 guns that unleashed 215 pounds of lead per second.

The ground crew dubbed it “Papy’s folly.”

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Gun flew the prototype to Charter Towers to demonstrate it to the third attack group.

The plane was nose-heavy and wanted to drop out of the sky on takeoff.

He had to use full back pressure on the stick just to keep it level, but once airborne, the B-25 became a flying destroyer.

Kenny ordered 12 more conversions immediately.

The 81st Air Depot Group in Townsville worked 18-hour days to modify every available B-25.

By February 1943, they had 30 strafers ready for combat.

Kenny then sent the blueprints to Wright Field in Ohio, where Army Air Force engineers studied the modifications for three days.

They sent a message back to Australia stating that the modifications were impractical.

The balance would be wrong, and the airplane would be too heavy to fly properly.

They recommended grounding every modified B-25 immediately.

Kenny was in Washington when the message arrived.

He walked into General Arnold’s office, where the Wright Field engineers were waiting to explain why Papy Gun’s gunship was impossible.

Kenny told them that 12 of the impossible airplanes had just played a key role in destroying a Japanese convoy in the Bismar Sea.

Every transport had been sunk.

Sixty more strafers were already being modified in Australia.

Arnold practically ran the engineers out of his office.

The Battle of the Bismar Sea began with intelligence intercepts on February 28th, 1943.

Allied codebreakers in Melbourne had decrypted Japanese naval messages indicating that a convoy was leaving Rabaul.

Eight transport ships and eight destroyer escorts were carrying nearly 7,000 Japanese troops bound for Leyte on New Guinea’s north coast.

General Kenny had only 72 hours to stop them.

The convoy route crossed the Bismar Sea, a stretch of 400 miles of open water.

Japanese commanders believed that bad weather would shield them, as March was monsoon season, characterized by low clouds, heavy rain, and poor visibility.

Allied bombers couldn’t hit what they couldn’t see, and the Japanese were correct about the weather.

They were wrong about the bombers.

On March 2nd, reconnaissance aircraft spotted the convoy steaming south through the Vitas Strait.

B-17 Flying Fortresses attacked from 15,000 feet through the cloud breaks, dropping 137 bombs and claiming multiple hits.

However, post-battle analysis showed that they sank nothing.

High-altitude bombing against moving ships simply did not work.

The Japanese convoy continued its advance.

That night, the ships scattered, with the transports hugging the New Guinea coast and the destroyers forming a protective screen.

Japanese commanders were confident they would reach Leyte by dawn on March 4th, unloading their troops under fighter cover.

They had no idea what was coming at first light.

Captain Ed Lner briefed the 92nd Bomb Squadron at Port Moresby on the evening of March 2nd.

Twelve B-25 strafers, 30 modified A-20 Havocs, Royal Australian Air Force Bow Fighters for top cover, and P-38 Lightnings to handle Japanese Zeros would be involved.

The strafers would attack at masthead height, just 50 feet above the water.

Gun range would be point-blank.

The plan was simple: overwhelm the deck guns with concentrated firepower, skip bomb the ships while they were stunned, and get out before the Zeros arrived.

Lner had flown one practice mission using this tactic.

One.

His navigator asked what would happen if a strafer took fire during the approach.

Lner replied that they would find out the next day.

The briefing concluded at 2200 hours, and nobody slept.

At 06:30 on March 3rd, the strike force assembled over Cape Ward Hunt.

A total of 137 aircraft were present.

The B-17s would attack first from altitude to draw defensive fire high, followed by the strafers coming in low.

The Japanese convoy was 70 miles northwest of Leyte when the B-17s arrived.

The heavy bombers attacked through scattered clouds, and the transports opened fire with every gun.

The sky filled with black puffs as flak erupted.

One B-17 sustained flak damage and turned back, but the rest pressed the attack.

Then the strafers arrived.

Lner led the B-25s in from the southeast at wavetop height, armed with 14 forward-firing guns per aircraft, totaling 168 guns across the 12 strafers.

They came in line abreast, creating a wall of firepower 300 yards wide.

The Japanese crews aboard the transport Kyoku Seamaru saw them at two miles out.

The ship’s captain ordered a hard turn to starboard, but it was too late.

The B-25s opened fire at 800 yards.

The .50 caliber rounds walked across the water like a chainsaw, hitting the ship’s superstructure, shredding the bridge, and killing the anti-aircraft crews before they could traverse their guns.

Three B-25s dropped bombs at 100 yards.

The first bomb skipped off the water, struck below the waterline, and detonated inside the engine room.

The second bomb hit midship, while the third bomb missed.

Kyoku Seamaru was dead in the water just 30 seconds after the strafers arrived, burning and listing to port.

The ship would sink in 40 minutes.

That was just the first transport; the transport Teayo Maru attempted to flee.

The captain pushed the engines to full speed, reaching a maximum of 15 knots.

The B-25 strafers were flying at 240 knots, making the math simple.

Four strafers bracketed Teayo Maru from both sides, and the streams of .50 caliber fire converged on the deck.

The anti-aircraft crews were cut down at their guns, and the bridge windows shattered.

The ship’s executive officer took three rounds through the chest, and the captain lasted another ten seconds before a burst of fire cut him down.

The strafers dropped eight bombs in total, five of which hit their target.

The ship broke in half, and many Japanese soldiers below decks never made it topside.

The transport sank in just six minutes.

Survivors jumped into the Bismar Sea wearing full combat gear, but their packs dragged them under.

Australian Bow Fighters strafed the decks of the destroyer Shikami as it attempted to screen the transports.

The destroyer’s anti-aircraft fire hit one Bow Fighter, but the Australian pilot pressed on.

His forward guns raked the destroyer’s deck from bow to stern, taking down Japanese gun crews.

When the B-25 strafers arrived, Shikami had no defense.

Three strafers attacked from different angles, but the destroyer tried to turn into the attack.

It was too slow.

Bombs hit the port side, starboard side, and amidships.

The destroyer didn’t sink immediately, but it was finished—dead in the water with fires spreading.

The crew abandoned ship two hours later.

By 0900 hours on March 3rd, the Japanese convoy was scattered across 40 square miles of ocean.

Five transports were sinking or burning, and two destroyers were crippled.

The remaining ships tried to make a getaway, but they didn’t succeed.

The strafers returned at 1400 hours, fresh bombs, and full ammunition loads.

The Japanese had no fighter cover; the Zeros had landed at Leyte to refuel and were still on the ground when the second wave arrived.

The transport IO Maru took 12 bomb hits in the second attack.

The ship’s magazine detonated, and the explosion was visible from Port Moresby, 130 miles away.

When the smoke cleared, there was nothing left—no wreckage, no survivors.

1,800 Japanese soldiers were gone in three seconds.

Captain Ed Lner’s strafer came in low over the transport Oawa Maru.

His co-pilot counted 14 separate fires on the deck, and Japanese soldiers were jumping overboard.

The anti-aircraft guns were silent.

Lner’s bombardier released bombs at point-blank range.

Two bombs hit the target, and the transport settled by the stern before capsizing.

The modified A-20 Havocs hunted the crippled destroyers.

The destroyer Asashio attempted to rescue survivors from the water.

Three A-20s attacked from different directions, but the destroyer’s crew was focused on rescue operations.

They never saw the strafers until the guns opened fire.

Asashio took bomb hits on the forward deck and bridge, burning through the night and sinking at dawn on March 4th.

By the evening of March 3rd, the entire Japanese convoy was destroyed.

Eight transports sank, four destroyers were sunk, and of the nearly 7,000 Japanese troops that left Rabaul, fewer than 1,200 reached Leyte.

About 2,700 were rescued and returned to Rabaul, while the rest died in the Bismar Sea.

Allied losses included four aircraft: one B-17 and three P-38s, with 13 aircrew killed.

General MacArthur referred to it as one of the most complete and annihilating combats of all time.

The Japanese never attempted to reinforce New Guinea by convoy again.

The war in the Southwest Pacific had turned, and it had turned because of Paul Gun’s impossible gunship.

Back in Australia, the Wright Field engineers were drafting their formal report explaining why the B-25 modifications couldn’t possibly work.

Kenny sent a message to General Hap Arnold in Washington on March 5th.

The subject line read, “Commerce Destroyer Modifications Approved for Production.”

The body of the message contained one paragraph: 12 B-25 strafers had just destroyed an entire Japanese convoy.

He requested the immediate factory integration of the forward gun package into all B-25 production aircraft.

Arnold called North American Aviation’s President J.H. “Dutch” Kindleberger that afternoon.

Kindleberger said his engineers needed to see the modifications.

Arnold insisted he was sending the man who designed them—Paul Gun was going to California.

Gun was reluctant to leave Australia.

His wife Paulie and their four children were still in the Santo Tomas internment camp in Manila, held captive since January 1942.

Fourteen months had passed.

Gun flew every mission hoping to get closer to liberating the Philippines.

Going to California felt like going in the wrong direction.

Kenny made it an order.

The Fifth Air Force needed factory-built strafers—hundreds of them.

Gun was the only man who could show North American Aviation how to do it right.

The general promised Gun he would be back in the Pacific within six weeks.

Gun landed in Long Beach, California, on March 27th, 1943.

The North American Aviation Plant spanned 140 acres and employed 20,000 workers on three shifts.

The assembly line produced one B-25 every four hours.

The factory engineers studied Gun’s hand-drawn blueprints and asked about stress calculations.

Gun admitted he didn’t have any.

They inquired about wind tunnel testing, and he replied that he had tested it by flying.

When they asked about the center of gravity problem, Gun showed them where he had moved the radio equipment aft to compensate.

One engineer warned that the modifications would buckle the fuselage skin around the cheek gun mounts.

The muzzle blast from the .50 caliber guns would peel the aluminum.

Gun confirmed that it did happen, but then he showed them the blast tubes he had welded to extend beyond the propeller arc.

Problem solved.

The factory engineers spent two weeks reverse-engineering Gun’s field modifications into production drawings.

They strengthened the nose structure, redesigned the gun mounts, and added heavier gauge aluminum patches to reinforce the fuselage skin.

They calculated the exact center of gravity shift and adjusted the tail trim accordingly.

The first factory-built B-25G strafer rolled off the assembly line on May 10th, 1943, featuring four .50 caliber guns in the solid nose and a 75mm M4 cannon in the forward fuselage.

The cannon used the same ammunition as the M3 Lee tank, and one shell could sink a destroyer below the waterline.

Gun test-flew the prototype, noting that the 75mm cannon recoiled four feet when fired, causing the entire aircraft to shudder.

The navigator had to manually reload the cannon between shots, with a rate of fire of one round every 30 seconds.

Gun assured the engineers it would work for ships, but maybe not for anything faster.

North American Aviation built 400 B-25G strafers, and then they improved the design.

The B-25H model added four more .50 caliber guns in the cheek packs, totaling 14 forward-firing guns.

The H model retained the 75mm cannon but featured a better recoil system, allowing the navigator to reload faster, increasing the rate of fire to one round every 20 seconds.

The B-25J model removed the 75mm cannon and added four more .50 caliber guns, resulting in 18 forward-firing guns—the most heavily armed production bomber in history.

North American Aviation built 4,900 B-25Js, delivering the first ones to the Pacific in October 1943.

Gun returned to Australia in May, having been gone exactly six weeks.

His family was still in Manila, but the strafers continued their hunt.

In April 1943, B-25s destroyed 16 Japanese barges carrying troops and supplies near Finch Haven.

In May, they sank 12 cargo ships at Wewak Harbor.

In June, they targeted oil facilities at Balikpapan on Borneo.

The Japanese stopped moving supplies by ship in daylight, but it didn’t help.

The strafers learned to attack at night using radar, mastering the art of skip bombing from 50 feet in complete darkness.

They coordinated with PT boats that illuminated targets with searchlights at the last second.

The Japanese dubbed the modified B-25s “Black Death,” and they weren’t wrong.

On November 2nd, 1943, Major Ben Fridge led four squadrons of strafers into Rabaul Harbor.

A total of 137 Allied aircraft were involved, including 59 B-25s.

The harbor held 38 Japanese vessels: cruisers, destroyers, tankers, cargo ships, and mine sweepers.

The strafers came in at masthead height through phosphorous smoke that blinded the anti-aircraft gunners, attacking from multiple directions simultaneously.

The Japanese couldn’t track them all.

In just 15 minutes, 30 ships were hit, five sunk outright, and 12 damaged beyond repair.

The remaining ships limped away.

Rabaul Harbor was finished as a forward supply base.

Gun flew that mission at 44 years old.

He didn’t have to fly combat; he was a special projects officer on headquarters staff.

But his family was still in Manila, and every mission brought him closer to them.

Intelligence reports from Sto. Tomas internment camp were worsening.

Food rations were cut, medicine was running out, and prisoners were dying from malnutrition and disease.

The Japanese camp commander had informed the Red Cross that all prisoners would be executed if Allied forces approached Manila.

Gun told Kenny that he wanted to fly the first mission over Manila when liberation came.

Kenny promised he would make it happen.

The strafers evolved through 1944.

Some carried eight 5-inch high-velocity rockets under their wings, while others carried napalm tanks or parafrag bombs—small fragmentation bombs with parachutes that allowed the B-25 to drop them from minimum altitude without catching itself in the blast.

The most effective tactic was the combined strike.

High-flying B-24 Liberators would bomb from 20,000 feet to force the defenders to look up, and then the strafers would come in low.

By the time the gunners looked down, the B-25s were already on them.

In the first eight months of 1944, Fifth Air Force strafers destroyed 947 Japanese aircraft on the ground, sank 273 ships, and killed an estimated 38,000 Japanese soldiers.

The modified B-25s had become the decisive weapon in the Southwest Pacific campaign.

Gun continued to add his modifications as the war progressed.

He mounted additional fuel tanks to extend the range, improved the gun cooling systems, and developed new ammunition loading techniques that increased the rate of fire.

Some B-25s in the Pacific carried modifications that existed nowhere else because Gun had invented them the night before a mission.

Other theater commanders wanted strafers, and Kenny sent them blueprints.

The Mediterranean theater modified B-25s for anti-shipping missions against German convoys supplying North Africa, while the China-Burma-India Theater adapted them to attack Japanese supply lines along the Burma Road.

The concept Gun had proven in Brisbane spread across every combat zone.

On October 20th, 1944, American forces landed at Leyte in the Philippines.

The liberation of Manila was just three months away.

Gun was now flying multiple missions every day, telling his crew chief that he wouldn’t stop until his family was free.

Then, on November 27th, 1944, the Japanese bombed Tacloban airfield.

At 0330 hours, 56 Mitsubishi G4M Betty bombers escorted by Zero fighters came in low from the north.

The radar operators saw them too late.

Gun was in the operations tent reviewing mission plans for the morning strike when the first bombs hit.

The tent was just 200 yards from the main runway—too close.

The blast wave knocked him off his feet, and shrapnel tore through the canvas walls.

A fragment hit Gun in the left leg, and another struck his shoulder.

The medical officer found him trying to stand, blood soaking through his flight suit.

Gun insisted he needed to check on his aircraft, but the doctor said he needed surgery.

Gun made it just 30 feet before he collapsed.

They evacuated him to the hospital at Leyte.

The leg wound was serious; the shrapnel had severed an artery.

The surgeon informed Gun that he wouldn’t fly again for at least six months—probably longer.

The injuries qualified him for medical retirement.

At 45 years old, with 26 years of service between the Navy and Army, he had earned the right to go home.

But Gun told the surgeon he wasn’t going anywhere until his family was free.

The Battle of Manila commenced on February 3rd, 1945.

American forces fought house to house through the city, as the Japanese had declared Manila a fortress and would defend every street.

The fighting was brutal, building by building, block by block.

Sto. Tomas internment camp was liberated on February 3rd, with 3,700 Allied prisoners freed.

Gun’s wife Paulie weighed just 89 pounds, and his daughter Julia weighed 63 pounds.

They had been eating rice and vegetable soup once a day for the past year.

His son Nathaniel suffered from malaria, and his youngest daughter had dysentery, but they were alive.

Gun flew to Manila on February 4th against medical orders.

His leg was still bandaged, and he was using a cane.

The doctor had cleared him for light duty only—no combat flying.

Instead, he went to Sto. Tomas, where he found his family in the makeshift hospital the army had set up.

Paulie didn’t recognize him at first; he had lost 40 pounds since she last saw him in April 1942.

Three years had passed, and he was completely gray.

She thought he was a doctor until he said her name, and then she knew.

The official army report stated that Colonel Paul Gun was reunited with his family on February 4th, 1945, at Sto. Tomas internment camp in Manila.

The reunion lasted four hours before Gun returned to Leyte.

His medical leave wasn’t over, but the war was not finished either.

The modified B-25s kept flying, operated by other pilots and crews, but utilizing Gun’s modifications.

By the end of the war, North American Aviation had built 9,600 B-25 Mitchell bombers, nearly 5,000 of which were strafer variants featuring the forward gun packages based on Gun’s original design.

Those strafers sank over 800 Japanese ships in the Pacific, destroyed over 2,000 Japanese aircraft on the ground, and killed an estimated 85,000 Japanese soldiers.

The commerce destroyer concept that engineers had once deemed impossible had become the most effective anti-shipping weapon in the theater.

Gun never flew combat again; the leg wound ended his operational career.

The army retired him as a full colonel on June 30th, 1948, citing medical disability.

At 48 years old, he returned to the Philippines and rebuilt Philippine Airlines, the company he had started before the war.

Philippine Airlines resumed operations in 1946, beginning with three war surplus C-47 transport aircraft.

Gun flew routes between Manila, Cebu, Davao, and other Philippine cities.

The airline he had built with five Beechcraft planes before the war now operated across the entire archipelago.

In 1947, the Philippine government awarded him the Distinguished Service Star, which President Manuel Roxas presented personally.

The citation read, “For extraordinary heroism and exceptional service to the Republic of the Philippines during the liberation campaign.”

Colonel Gun’s innovative modifications to Allied aircraft had directly contributed to the defeat of Japanese forces and the freedom of the Filipino people.

The United States military had already decorated him with the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Air Medal, and nine Purple Hearts.

The Distinguished Service Cross was recommended but never approved, as some officers believed Gun’s contributions were more technical than tactical.

They were mistaken.

General Kenny wrote in his memoir, “Papy Gun was the most valuable man in the Fifth Air Force.

His mechanical genius and combat innovations changed the course of the war in the Southwest Pacific.

Without his strafer modifications, the Battle of the Bismar Sea would have been a Japanese victory.

Without Bismar Sea, we would have lost New Guinea.

And without New Guinea, the road to the Philippines would have been impossible.”

MacArthur agreed.

In a classified letter to the War Department dated July 1945, MacArthur recommended Gun for promotion to Brigadier General.

The recommendation was denied, as the Army Air Force was reducing its force structure, and promotions were frozen.

Gun remained a colonel, but he never complained.

He had achieved what he fought for—his family was free, the Philippines were liberated, and the Japanese were defeated.

That was enough for him.

Philippine Airlines expanded throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Gun acquired DC-3 aircraft, then DC-4s, and later Convair 340s.

The airline established routes to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Singapore.

By 1956, PAL was flying to San Francisco.

Gun’s small inter-island airline had become an international carrier.

He flew constantly, from Manila to Cebu, Cebu to Davao, and Davao to Hong Kong.

He couldn’t stop; the war had taught him that movement meant survival, while standing still meant death.

Some of his pilots remarked that Gun was still fighting, still outrunning something—perhaps the memory of Sto. Tomas or the faces of the men who had flown his modified aircraft and never returned.

On October 10th, 1957, Gun chartered a Beechcraft Model 18 twin-engine plane for a routine trip from Manila to Baguio, 140 miles north.

The weather forecast indicated scattered thunderstorms over the Cordillera Mountains, but nothing severe.

He filed his flight plan at 0800 hours, with a departure time of 0930 and an expected arrival at 1100 hours.

The tower cleared him for takeoff at 0928.

However, the weather deteriorated faster than predicted.

By 10:30, the Cordillera Mountains were socked in with heavy rain, low visibility, and turbulence.

The Beechcraft’s radio went silent at 10:47.

Search and rescue teams discovered the wreckage three days later on a mountainside near Baguio.

The aircraft had flown into a storm cell, and the pilots attempted to climb above it, but the winds drove them into the ridge.

Impact killed everyone on board instantly.

Paul Irvin Gun died on October 11th, 1957, at the age of 57, just a week shy of his 58th birthday.

The Philippine government held a state funeral for him, attended by 6,000 people, including American veterans, Philippine Airlines employees, and former prisoners from Sto. Tomas.

General Kenny sent a wreath from the United States.

The Manila Times published Gun’s obituary on October 12th, with the headline reading, “War Hero Dies in Plane Crash.”

The article mentioned his Distinguished Flying Cross, his role in the Battle of the Bismar Sea, and his liberation missions over the Philippines, but it couldn’t capture the full extent of his contributions.

The numbers told part of the story: 5,000 B-25 strafers built with his modifications, 800 Japanese ships sunk, 2,000 aircraft destroyed on the ground, and 85,000 enemy soldiers killed.

Those were the official statistics, but the real impact was far greater.

The strafer concept changed how air forces viewed bombers.

Before Gun, bombers dropped ordnance from altitude; after Gun, they became multi-role weapons capable of strafing, skip bombing, and close air support.

The AC-130 gunship used in Vietnam was a direct descendant of Gun’s B-25 modifications, as were the A-10 Warthog and every modern attack aircraft equipped with forward-firing guns.

North American Aviation hired Gun as a consulting engineer in 1948, where he worked on the B-45 Tornado jet bomber, advised on gun mounting systems, and designed forward-firing armament packages.

The company compensated him well, but he donated most of the money to veteran organizations.

His son Nathaniel joined the Air Force, flew B-52s in Vietnam, retired as a colonel, and wrote a book about his father titled “Papy Gun,” published in 1994.

The book sold 12,000 copies, yet most people had never heard of Paul Gun.

The National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, displays one of Gun’s original gun mounting drawings.

The paper is yellowed, and the measurements are handwritten in pencil.

The sketch shows four .50 caliber guns mounted inside an A-20 nose compartment.

There are no stress calculations or computer modeling—just the drawing that contributed to the deaths of 8,000 Japanese soldiers in the Bismar Sea.

The Air Force Association inducted Gun into the Air Force Enlisted Heritage Hall in 2008.

The citation mentioned his innovations, combat record, and influence on modern attack aviation.

The ceremony was held in Washington, attended by three of his grandchildren.

Philippine Airlines continues to operate today, flying to 42 destinations across Asia, Australia, and North America.

The company headquarters in Manila features a portrait of Gun in the main lobby.

Most employees don’t know who he is.

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