Japanese Couldn't Believe One P-47 Would Attack 48 Fighters — Until He Set an Unbeaten Record

Описание: Why Colonel Neel Kearby attacked 48 Japanese aircraft with just 4 P-47 Thunderbolts during WW2 — and destroyed 6 enemy fighters in 15 minutes. This World War 2 story reveals how one pilot proved the "wrong" aircraft could dominate the Pacific Theater.

October 11, 1943. Lieutenant Colonel Neel Kearby, commanding the 348th Fighter Group, led three P-47 Thunderbolts over Wewak, New Guinea. When he spotted twelve Japanese bombers escorted by thirty-six fighters, every tactical principle said withdraw. Four American fighters versus forty-eight enemy aircraft. Low fuel. Mission complete. Kearby ordered the attack anyway. Every training manual said this was suicide. General Kenney and every P-38 pilot in the Pacific called the P-47 "too heavy" for Japanese fighters.

They were all wrong.

What Kearby discovered that morning over Wewak wasn't about turning with Zeros. It was about diving speed and altitude advantage in a way that contradicted everything fighter pilots learned. By the end of the mission — later called the greatest single-mission record in the Pacific — other P-47 pilots started doing what Kearby had done. And they survived.

This dive-and-zoom technique spread unofficially through Fifth Air Force units, pilot to pilot, saving hundreds of lives before appearing in any training manual. The principles discovered at 28,000 feet over New Guinea continue to influence fighter tactics today.

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