The year is 1944, and on a distant French battlefield a column of Nazi tanks are making
their way to a beleaguered American position.
The German Panzer and Tiger tanks are amongst the best the world has ever seen, and heavily
protected from the front and sides- American Sherman tanks often see their shells bounce
harmlessly off the thick front armor, and have trouble landing damaging strikes against
even the side plates.
However from up top, the tanks are incredibly vulnerable.
The American outpost the German armored column is moving towards is under heavy attack and
on the verge of being overrun.
US troops are attempting a fighting withdrawal, but this new column of tanks and tracked infantry
fighting vehicles spells doom for the beleaguered soldiers.
Then, suddenly, there's the rapidly growing sound of a diving aircraft.
Confused, the Americans look up- they've been calling for air support for hours but there's
simply none available in the area.
As the diving aircraft grows in size the men are even more confused- it's a L-4 Grasshopper,
a light, unarmed aircraft used exclusively for aerial reconnaissance.
The Germans however are keenly aware of what this airplane is, and more specifically, of
the madman who pilots it and what he's able to do.
Desperate machine gunners atop the tanks and infantry fighting vehicles fire up at the
diving airplane, and despite the hail of gunfire the plane keeps coming.
Then just a few hundred meters from becoming a smoking crater on the ground, there's a
rapid series of popping sounds as two bazookas jerryrigged to the wing of the aircraft fire.
The anti-armor rounds hit home on two of the tanks, easily penetrating the thin top armor
and knocking them out of commission.
As the small Grasshopper pulls up, it begins to bank, ready to make another attack run-
it still has four more bazookas left to fire.
In a panic, the German tanks scatter, giving the Americans the opportunity to withdraw
safely.
Two years earlier 29 year old high school teacher Charles Carpenter couldn't have been
further from a feared combat ace.
Mild mannered and well educated, Carpenter was well liked by his community, and had a
job teaching history at the local high school.
However, when war came for the United States in 1942, Charles immediately volunteered for
military service.
Thanks to his education, Carpenter was commissioned as a second lieutenant after going through
boot camp and a shortened version of officer candidate school.
Then due to his intelligence and calm demeanor, Carpenter was chosen to be a pilot, and the
ever-eager Carpenter happily accepted.
Unfortunately though Carpenter was assigned to be a spotter for Army artillery, meaning
he would be learning to fly the L-4 Grasshopper and the Stinson L-5 Sentinel.
These aircraft were incredibly light and carried no armament, designed instead to be fast,
agile, and able to loiter over a battlefield for a long time so as to serve as a spotter
for friendly artillery.
With an aircraft in the area radioing back firing directions, artillery was many times
deadlier than without, and despite being initially disappointed that he wouldn't be flying in
a fighter, Carpenter accepted his equally important, if less glamorous job.
Disappointment it seemed would follow Carpenter though, as after finishing his flight schooling
Carpenter was stuck training others in the US, and left out of the war until getting
orders to head for France in 1944.
Taking advantage of his many flight hours in the US though, Carpenter had mastered the
handling of both the Grasshopper and Sentinel, a skill which would come very handy soon.
In France Carpenter was assigned to the 1st Bombardment Division, under the command of
Major General R.B. Williams.
Many he met routinely underestimated Carpenter, who very much gave off the vibe of a calm
and collected history teacher, surely someone very out of place from the chaotic battlefields
of western Europe.
Then Carpenter got a chance to prove himself in combat when he was assigned temporarily
as an artillery liaison to a ground unit.
Despite being a pilot, Carpenter was well versed in the techniques for calling in artillery
fire, as well as the different types of fire support available to the US Army.
His unit's responsibility was to move ahead of friendly lines and scout out locations
that could be turned into suitable landing strips for friendly aircraft.
During the scouting mission, Carpenter's unit stumbled across an under-strength unit of
infantry pinned down by heavy enemy fire coming from a nearby village.
The German soldiers spotted Carpenter's unit approaching, and immediately set up a blocking
force- the tactical picture was simple, and deadly clear to all: if Carpenter's unit didn't
break through this blocking force and engage the enemy in the town ahead, the pinned down
infantry would be killed to a man.
The tank platoon commander in command of the unit's tanks hesitated however; their job
was to act as scouts and not become decisively engaged, and taking tanks into an enemy-held
town without proper infantry support to cover them was very dangerous.
That's when Carpenter acted however, unable to watch the pinned down infantrymen die from
a distance.
Much to the shock of the tank's crew, Carpenter rushed to one of the lead tanks and hopped
atop the turret, grabbing the butterfly trigger on the .50 caliber machine gun mounted there
and letting loose on the enemy ahead of them.
Roaring like a madman, Carpenter screamed out “Let's go!”, and the rallying cry
immediately set the men in the tanks into action.
Surprised by the zealous charge of tanks, the Germans holding the town beat a hasty
retreat.
When the fighting stopped however, Carpenter was arrested by military police on behalf
of the tank commander.
Carpenter was not even in the unit's chain of command, as he'd been attached temporarily
to act as a liaison, and then he had completely usurped that chain of command he wasn't even
a part of to boot.
Threatened with court martial, General Patton himself dismissed the charges, proudly exclaiming
that Carpenter was exactly the type of man he wanted in his Third Army.
It seems however that Carpenter's brief stint in ground combat left him with a deep frustration
when flying air recon missions overhead in his unarmed aircraft.
Watching German tanks and armored troop transports rumble by below and unable to do anything
about it was too great a frustration to bear, and Carpenter got an idea.
By now the rumor mill spoke of pilots who had experimented with attaching bazookas to
their aircraft, and using them to attack tanks from above.
Firing a rocket-propelled explosive penetrator, the M1A1 Bazooka had an effective range of
between 250 and 300 yards.
Against the thick front armor of a German tank, the Bazooka was useless, and American
infantry had to wait to take shots at the sides or ideally the rear of German tanks.
A dangerous prospect, it was still better than being completely helpless against these
lumbering behemoths.
Carpenter immediately attached two bazookas to the wings of his Grasshopper, and then
rigged an electric switch he could toggle from the cockpit that would fire them.
Carpenter's airplane was soon nicknamed Rosie the Rocketeer, and it would be a well-earned
name.
He soon scored his first kill against a German armored car, diving down from the sky and
getting a direct hit with a single bazooka shot.
Not long after Carpenter was hunting for German tanks, and shortly after his first kill on
an armored car, he got his first Panzer kill.
From the sky the Bazooka could easily penetrate the very thin top armor of even a King Tiger
tank- one of the most feared tanks of World War 2.
To do so though, Carpenter had to dive down onto his target until he was only a hundred
meters or so above it, as he had no way of aiming his bazookas and had to ensure an accurate
hit.
This daredevil maneuver saw him then pulling several Gs as he immediately yanked back on
the throttle in order to avoid smashing his airplane into the ground below.
At first, Carpenter was ignored by German infantry and vehicles below.
The sight of small artillery spotter planes was a familiar one to the Germans, and opening
fire on one was generally a bad idea as it would give their position away and invite
the pilot to call in an artillery strike on them.
This let Carpenter earn kill after kill, blasting apart armored cars, tanks, and even groups
of infantry with his bazookas.
Soon though the Germans grew wise to Carpenter, and upon spotting his small plane would light
it up with all the firepower they had.
Despite flying into virtual walls of lead, Carpenter refused to give up his attacks,
and he continued to rack up enemy kills.
His original two bazookas grew to six, and soon other pilots were hearing of his successes
and trying the tactic out for themselves.
However the extreme flying maneuvers required and the sheer amount of return fire the pilots
faced quickly discouraged many from the suicidal act.
Carpenter's greatest deed though would come late in 1944, when the Germans launched a
blistering counterattack against the 4th Armored Division.
Caught completely off guard, the Germans advanced deep enough into the lines of the 4th Armored
that they now threatened the unit's battlefield HQ- if they could take the HQ it would throw
the entire Division's defense into disarray, leading to the destruction or capture of hundreds
of men.
Carpenter immediately took to the air, his trusty Grasshopper fitted with six bazooka
tubes ready to fire.
Unfortunately thick ground fog prevented Carpenter from getting a visual on the fight below,
and so he decided to loiter until the fog cleared up.
By noon the fog had finally lifted enough for Carpenter to see what was going on below,
and that's when he spotted a column of APCs and tanks heading to reinforce the attack
on the Division's HQ. Carpenter immediately put his plane into a dive and lined up with
two leading personnel carriers, taking them out with his bazookas and getting the attention
of the Germans below.
The Germans broke formation as they tried to evade the aerial attack, buying enough
time for the Americans to redeploy to face this new threat.
Flying back to rearm twice, Carpenter launched deadly strafing attack after strafing attack
on the German unit, allowing the 4th Division's HQ section to successfully retreat.
Carpenter would go on to fly his Grasshopper with reckless abandon throughout the war.
Thanks to the very light construction and the plane's incredibly lift capacity, unless
an enemy round managed to hit the cockpit, the fuel tank, or the engine directly, the
small plane could take a major beating and keep on flying.
Often Carpenter would return back to base with his fuselage and wings full of bullet
holes, only to patch them up and be back up in the skies the next day.
Sometimes though, Carpenter wasn't satisfied playing his part of the war in the skies,
and once he strafed a column of German tanks and then landed on a field next to them, picking
up a discarded German rifle and taking six of the men prisoner.
By war's end, Carpenter was known to all as the “Mad Major”, and though he was only
officially credited with six tanks destroyed or disabled, his unofficial record was much
higher.
Carpenter however fell seriously ill in 1945, effectively ending his participation in the
second world war.
It was discovered that he had Hodgkin's Disease, and though doctors only gave him two years
to live, Carpenter once more defied the odds.
He returned back to the states and to his role as a quiet, unassuming high school history
teacher, where he would remain until his death in 1966 to cancer.
Rarely speaking about his part in the war, Carpenter taught hundreds of young students
who no doubt had little clue that they were being taught by one of the bravest, and most
insane, pilots of all time.
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