Jocko Podcast 95 w/ Jim Kunkle and Capt. Charlie Plumb

2017-10-12T01:24:22Z

Join the conversation on Twitter / Instagram: @jockowillink @captplumb @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening  0:05:09 - Jim Kunkle.  WWII Army Air Forces Fighter Pilot. 0:50:19 - Capt. Charlie Plumb.  0:59:03 - Jim Kunkle gets shot down. 1:10:52 - Jim's recovery and aftermath. 1:37:51 - Jim and Charlie Link up. 1:46:05 - Additional Thoughts.  Leadership, adversity, and victory. 2:52:001 - Support JockoStore stuff, Origin Brand Apparel, with Jocko White Tea and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.  3:03:34 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

and I thought that the simplicity of it is pretty clear when you think about it you know when you think about the people that you know you know when I think about the the people that I worked for in the military or that worked for me up or down the chain of command what what is it that made them people that because you know there's bad care you know we we can't sit here and pretend like everybody that's just because you're in the military you've got great character that's absolutely not true but what about those people and I you know I thought through this in in three seconds as this guy asked me this question you know I thought to myself what about the guys that I know that have good character that I look to and say you know I love the history of the greater generation and I love your history as well and the things that are going on today that the guys at the point of the spear but what does that mean to the you know to the average guy you know who's never been in the military there's some principles I believe that the three of us learned in combat that can that's transferable I think to to all challenges of life you know that just you know the fact that you face your fears you know you step into the and to the box and and gymbed it and you've done it where you you could have run the other way you know you you could have quit you could have checked out you do the right thing that's what you do and if you do the right thing regardless of what the consequences are that represents character and so then how do you build character it's a beautiful thing because it's the same thing if you want to build character you do the right thing you do the right thing for yourself you do the right thing for your family you do the right thing for the people that you know you do the right thing for your community you do the right thing for your country that's what you do and now on an individual level those things are hard things often right if those are hard things you have to make the right decisions you have to live a disciplined life those build character those little things that you do on a daily basis to make yourself better to improve your health to improve your your situation in life you're doing those things they're hard to do and when you do those things they build your character and ultimately they lead to your your your your character being a good character as opposed to a bad one and you know what your next mission might be being a good dad right and that might be your next mission you know your next mission might be, it might be building airplane hangers you know you don't know what your next mission is going to be but find out what your next mission is going to be make it something productive make it something that's gonna impact you know at least you and your family and get good at it. and I was looking for a hanger for this airplane and Jim was building hangers at the time and this little bit of airport up in the valley above Santa Barbara called Santinez and he helped me build a hanger and it was kind of interesting the attraction and in fact my wife brought this up me said she said you know you're going to have three generations of warriors talking on these telephone I mean today on the spotcast you get Jim Kunkle on 30 years later you got Charlie Pum 30 years later you got Jack O'Wink he said there's a certain attraction with warriors I don't know what it is with our brains you know I you know I challenge an audience to if you've got it if you know a veteran you know talk to them you know give them a purpose you know invite them to enter into your house your club or your church and it make make a difference and that way you can serve your country by serving those who serve their country but he basically dresses someone down in the middle of a firefight for not giving him you know not calling him sir or not calling him lieutenant and you know I'm kind of saying hey guys you know you need to think about when the right type to do this is but as you said he was an extremely principled person and kept those principles at all times well you know he he led the group of Marines through the night to really fox company which is quite a well-known story in the Marine Corps. I don't know who I have in common you know with Jim or I don't know I have no idea who this was over this picture was going to be so we go to Jim's man cave which is in each equally impressive and awesome you know hanger with you know his personal facts and pictures and models and parts of aircraft and everything else and he walks into a corner but there's some kind of a kind of a magnetism or something you just got identified with a guy that had been in combat and so even though they're probably 100 pilots on this airport and Jim and I kind of hit it off without even knowing our history and the more we got to know each other this is like 20 years ago the more we got to know each other the more similar philosophies of life you know we had but he told me that he came up with two names that he had read this book by Callwell there's a story called the War Dary of JG26 the Elendorf's Abby Vullboy's Elendorf aircraft and they he had written on September 16 he had the story about attacking the three these three seven years group and the Germans claimed 4 p38s had been shot down and that wasn't true I was the only one that lost they actually attacked the group after my engagement with them they finally got their act together I guess in the attack the group and didn't do too well like 20 minutes 30 minutes later whatever the time of them but he figured out that one of two people had shot me down one fellow was major Boris major Boris had shot down his first victory was 1939 he shot down the spitfire he had if he got me I was his 40 second victory the other guy was a no follow by the name of Keith Miela and he he got me I would have been his 80 second so these guys were not beginners and so all this information is dribbling in over the last 60 years so by the time I find out about Boris and the lift wapa they've died so I've never got a chance to talk Wayne Hoffman is an Ellen Dorf Germany in the first part of the SIGFRIED line five o'clock in the evening in his letter to his wife he said in a very short letter he said in the Eleanor and there's an airbile going on above us and we get talking and that was me then here we've been friends for a number of years and we'd never really talked about it and he was company D of the 16th regiment and when it's got was company C of the 16th regiment and we never put all this together that's it's amazing what comes out and I found out that two of the people on the German side that I've been involved with a current major Boris this is a long story I don't know how far do you want to go with we go as long as you want to talk they major Boris allowed to go back and step I heard from a gentleman in Holland and they had some information about my airplane and this gentleman had written several big historical books and he lived in that little area where Belgium and Holland and Germany all come together and he had found like 500 wrecks aircraft wrecks in this area and traced them down in the history and recorded it and they came up with a P38 in Elendorf Germany and so they figured out and found it was my airplane and they found it in 1997 this this person I trust you know without question what kind of person is that that's the person that you know is going to do the right thing all the time regardless of the consequences and a couple of things about that first of all it isn't easy in fact usually the right thing is the toughest thing you know it and I spotted them and it called the break and made the break and squadron kept on going and the break is you're saying hey I'm going to break off from the squadron right now or someone needs to come with me or we need to face this other issue over here we got a bunch of enemy aircraft coming that's what that's what calling the break is call your break you know when you call the break they whoever spotted the aircraft leads the break because you don't want to lose them you can't take if you see them you got to keep your eyeball on them or you're gonna lose them but when you're talking to guys they're ready to go and he day commences they just don't you know they don't they don't understand what they're getting into yet and and again maybe to the credit of the planners they decided it's better to have a bunch of guys that aren't really 100% sure of what to expect and it is to have a bunch of people that know what they're getting into and know how hard this is gonna be. and yet it's those kinds of challenges in life that build that character you know that that really make the difference between you know that the the positive life the life lived well and those guys and gals that that don't make those kind of decisions and you're talking about when you were when you were depressed when you were laying there it's because you felt like you had failed right you felt like you had broken you felt like you weren't the man that you thought you were and the 38's and because they were so easy to recognize in the air we were assigned the channel we we flew top cover for the channel all the shipping and everything between England and the beachhead and we at that time it became very apparent that the reason we had been rushed into through training into England is they anticipated heavy losses we expected they lived off the really show during the invasion they didn't I think you read that there were just I think they had two sorties over the beachhead on D-Day and we anticipated that there would be a large effort against the the channel with all the shipping I mean you could probably walk across the channel with a number of ships there were there uh this tremendous target the foothold didn't show up so most of the like my group the the day missions were pretty boring when D-Day was about to go I mean it's every single person you guys must have absolutely known that what you were about to do was that was you know going to be the one of the most epic undertakings of the modern history Well I would assume that because they were very effective and you know some of these boys you we'd run into who had been out of for a long time but as I saw them coming in and as we'd forgive them as I said it's a gaggle I picked the one closest and broke into it made the call that I was making the break and broke and just as I broke somebody got a shot at me and I got hit back in the after all part of the few slides and I I thought I had a little fire going and I'm sure I did and then he told me a lot about what happened they they told me that they estimated there were 20 and 20 enemy aircraft and that somehow or other that story has stuck with with my story I don't know what they were I mean he he actually was where I got most of my information about what had gone on so we we went through the hospital chain and you know what was he in the hospital for something had he been injured as well the the violent piece I mean you could apply that to really many situations in life where you know we see people and they're they're in a bad position in life they need to do something violent to move out of that situation not just there and wait for something to unfold that was not only air combat that's interesting about watching the exhaust because you'd see a change that like a plume come out of the exhaust or you see the exhaust cut off and you'd know what type of maneuver they were going to do he's trying to pull a fast one and you have to power off and you overrun him and he shoots you down but I used to build air cargo buildings and so forth and leasing to the airlines and I did a lot of work with flying tigers and I knew Bob Prescott pretty well who was the president of tigers and they who Wayne Hoffman who was the chairman of the board of tigers so tell us a little bit about the flying tigers if people don't know the flying tigers in the airline cargo airline that was sold to federal express then is now part of federal express and tigers was named because Bob Prescott he was president of tigers had flown with the flying tiger organization in China one of the original flying tigers and right after the war he started a little airline called it flying tigers and it became a gigantic air cargo facility and they were flying all over the world D Day at the long to those youngsters what was the because these these guys were so you know we're inexperienced when you were out at a pub in England talking to these army guys that were getting ready to go in were they just a hundred percent fired up to go I mean that's the only thing because I can imagine myself when I was 18 or 19 years old I first was in the military if you would have told me I was going to do a giant amphibious landing an epic amphibious landing there would have been just nothing but absolute motivation and excitement from me because I was young and stupid and didn't know any better and and there's a certain silent language I think between us that we don't even have to talk to each other and yet we understand what what's going on you know where we're coming from and the accountability that we share just because of the experiences that we've had I got asked the question the other day I was working with a company I was actually know it's in the court with a company I was doing a speech And actually, that, now that I think about it, when I was in Ramadi, I had the book that I read every night was about face by Colonel David Hackworth and I read it every single night, every single night, and then about three months into deployment, I wanted to, I didn't want to think about, you know, I didn't want to go to bed thinking about, you know, the war and war. you said it's all the other idiots that broke their leg riding motor scooters in Hawaii and sure enough all these military guys in this military hospital had broken their leg on motor scooters and so I said I can't do that I'm a fighter pilot you know I just to help start the top gun school I gotta I gotta get out of here you know you're like wait how come this happened you know you're in denial and the guy said okay report to uh wing uh bravo uh floor three I said what's on bravo three

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocco podcast number 95 with echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.
[00:00:10] The President of the United States of America
[00:00:13] authorized by active Congress July 9, 1918 takes pleasure in presenting the distinguished service cross to second
[00:00:22] Lieutenant Air Corps James K.
[00:00:26] K. Kunkl United States Army Air Forces for extraordinary
[00:00:31] haremism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy
[00:00:38] while serving as a pilot of a P38 fighter airplane in the
[00:00:44] 41st fighter squadron
[00:00:46] 377th fighter group 9th Air Force
[00:00:50] in aerial combat against enemy forces on 16 September 1944
[00:00:57] during an air mission over Aiken Germany.
[00:01:01] On this date while flying as rear man in a squadron on an armed reconnaissance mission
[00:01:07] Lieutenant Kunkl noticed that his squadron was about to be surprised by a vastly superior force of
[00:01:13] enemy aircraft. On able to summon his leader on the radio, he alone, on hesitatingly, pulled away from his
[00:01:22] formation and vigorously attacked the enemy immediately destroying one of his aircraft.
[00:01:28] In doing so, Lieutenant Kunkl placed himself in a position to be attacked from rear and above.
[00:01:35] When this attack materialized, many hits were registered on his aircraft,
[00:01:39] which caught fire burning his face, neck and hands.
[00:01:44] Despite his burning plane and the gunfire from enemy planes, Lieutenant Kunkl continued his attack against
[00:01:51] the vastly superior enemy force and succeeded in destroying a second enemy aircraft.
[00:01:57] Breaking off combat only when force to parachute to safety when his left fuel tank exploded.
[00:02:03] Second Lieutenant Kunkl's unquestionable valor in aerial combat is in keeping with the highest
[00:02:12] traditions of military service and reflects great credit upon himself the 9th Air Force
[00:02:18] and the United States Army Air Forces.
[00:02:20] So, that is a military citation for a distinguished service cross and this pilot also flew
[00:02:37] missions just after D-Day, including armed reconnaissance flights and attacks on German trains and
[00:02:46] vehicles and airfields and also this pilot flew close air support missions to help push
[00:02:53] Germany out of France and drive Allied troops towards victory.
[00:03:02] And it is an absolute honor to have this pilot this hero on the podcast with us today.
[00:03:12] Mr. Jim Kunkl, sir, thank you very much for joining us. It is great to have you on.
[00:03:24] And you know, if that wasn't good enough, I am also honored to welcome back to the podcast.
[00:03:31] Jim Kunkl's friend, fellow pilot, another American hero, Captain Charlie Plum, F4,
[00:03:39] Phantom Pilot, shot down on his 75th mission in Vietnam War and spent six years as a prisoner of
[00:03:48] war in Vietnam. Captain Charlie Plum, sir, welcome back to the show.
[00:03:55] Thank you, Junkl. Nice to be back. And for those of you that haven't listened to Captain Plum,
[00:04:00] the first time he came on the podcast, just stop now. Go to podcast number 76,
[00:04:07] because that is a whole incredible story of his time in captivity. It's detailed in the book
[00:04:16] that Captain Plum wrote, which is called I Know Hero, but go back and listen to that and then
[00:04:23] you can return and you can listen to this podcast. But it was interesting because when we got
[00:04:28] done with that first podcast and I was taking Captain Plum to the train station, which is odd in
[00:04:35] its own right to have the pilot riding a train. I don't know if you'd approve of that to have
[00:04:40] the captain on a train, but he said, hey, I got this buddy, you might want to talk to him.
[00:04:47] And he said, he's a World War II pilot, fighter pilot, and he's a big great guy to talk to.
[00:04:54] And of course, I said, yeah, absolutely. So it took us a little bit of time, but here we are.
[00:05:00] And this is also the first time we've had more than one guest at one time on the podcast.
[00:05:04] And sitting amongst you two, my plan is to sit back and listen to you two talk about whatever you
[00:05:10] want to talk about. I've heard some of the stories and actually, interestingly,
[00:05:18] the podcast that just came out last week was about a book called The Minute On Him, which
[00:05:25] detailed the British participation in the in operation market garden, which started on September 17,
[00:05:35] 1944. And as I was reading your citation, if you noticed that was September 16, 1944,
[00:05:43] that you were shot down. And that's that's right at the beginning or right before that,
[00:05:48] that operation took place. That's very true. And of course, I missed it. But I heard some
[00:05:57] very interesting stories later on. I was picked up in a back hospital, by the first, well,
[00:06:07] the first infantry division picked me out. They saw my shooting and came out and got me.
[00:06:12] And thank goodness it was never leave anyone behind. So they didn't leave me behind. And I thank
[00:06:21] them for easily. But through the back hospital, to a general hospital, and then a hospital
[00:06:31] trained to Paris, and the train was completely full of casualties from the Ironheim operation.
[00:06:40] So I wasn't too good at shape at that time to listen to the stories, but later on in the hospital
[00:06:47] in Paris, I heard some real horror stories about what went on up there. And being a night
[00:06:55] therefore as pilot, we were working with the ground troops, and we really appreciated what
[00:07:02] their problems were on the difficulties that they had. And we tried to help them in every way that we could.
[00:07:13] So that was a very trying time.
[00:07:19] So I guess before we get into all that at any greater depth, how did you end up as a pilot?
[00:07:27] What, you know, how did you end up there? In terms of where did you grow up and I knew you
[00:07:32] grew up here in California? No, I was born in Pennsylvania. And New Kensington Pennsylvania, my father
[00:07:40] was in the steel business. And in 1932, my dad passed away from injuries that he had received
[00:07:50] in the first World War. And so we at that time he had retired from his business, even though he was only
[00:07:58] 36 years old at that time. But we were coming to California. And in fact, we were pretty well packed,
[00:08:07] and had closed the house and the whole works. I'm nine years old. And he went to the hospital in New York
[00:08:15] instead and passed away. And my mother who didn't even drive an automobile at that time,
[00:08:24] I can remember her asking me, do you want to go to California? And I said yes.
[00:08:31] And she took some driving lessons and bought a Chevy, and we came to California on Route 66 when they
[00:08:41] were building it. And so my mother prayed to her way to California. I then, if she was a
[00:08:48] driver, I bet she wasn't the only one that was afraid. Even at nine, I can still remember
[00:08:58] she was driving in the mud of Texas, and I'm out pushing. So my mother was a very courageous woman
[00:09:08] without doubt. So my dad had been very interested in aviation, and I picked that up. And back
[00:09:18] he used to do steel castings for Kurdish right in Buffalo, New York, and we'd go up there.
[00:09:29] And every time we went on a trip, and on 6, 7, 8 years old, we'd go flying. Wow, we'd go for a ride
[00:09:37] someplace. And so I picked it up at that time and pursued it. And then you get out to California,
[00:09:46] and that's where you go through high school and whatnot. Through high school, I ended up in
[00:09:52] Beverly Hills High School, and September 1939, as you know, the war started. We'll participate
[00:10:03] of that. I mean, it was all the talk of Europe and the possible over the war, and I decided that
[00:10:10] this is going to be my senior year. And if there's going to be a war, we're going to be in it,
[00:10:17] one way or another. And so I went out and joined the California International Guard.
[00:10:22] They had a squadron that was based in Griffith Park, California, and this is a bunch of
[00:10:33] World War I pilots. We had some old bi-planes, Douglas O38, observation aircraft,
[00:10:43] open cockpit, and some of the later ones had even had a canopy over. And I really
[00:10:50] had been hanging around their ports. My mother was very helpful. She was this before I had a
[00:10:58] driver's license. She would take me out to the local airport's Grand Central Air Term room.
[00:11:04] I'd spend the whole day Saturday out there, and sometimes you'd even get a 10-minute ride
[00:11:10] if anybody had any money to buy gas with. But coming back to the guard, I spent a year with them.
[00:11:18] And it was a very, very interesting year. These fellows that were the pilots, they were all
[00:11:26] mostly combat pilots from World War I. And I set up their knee and listened to all the stories.
[00:11:36] From that, of course, my idea was I wasn't going to be a fighter pilot. I had friends at
[00:11:46] Lockheed, and I knew about the P38. And I decided that I wanted to fly a P38, so I wanted to go to England.
[00:11:55] And luckily it worked out that way. So what year did you transfer from the Air National Guard
[00:12:04] into, and how did you get a commission? Do you get a commission? Do you have to go to college?
[00:12:07] You don't have to go to college at that time to get a commission and be a pilot.
[00:12:09] Actually, the guard was fertilized and we went on maneuvers to Jailus Washington. And we were attacking
[00:12:21] Fort Lewis. And the guard, we were the attackers, and we were up there for three weeks on maneuvers.
[00:12:32] Well, while we were up there, we got noticed that the air guard was going to be fertilized and
[00:12:39] drawn into active duty. And I wasn't 18 years old yet. So I had to have permission.
[00:12:46] Were you already a pilot at this time? Oh no, I'm a gunner. I'm a murderer.
[00:12:52] Gunner and a gunner. I got a plan that would maybe go out in 50 miles an hour.
[00:12:59] So, but no, I was in the armament section and it was run by a sergeant white.
[00:13:08] Sergeant white kind of took me under his wing and I got some pretty nice assignments out of it.
[00:13:14] And I learned a lot. I got the fly in the back seat and I'd go out on weekends.
[00:13:23] You know, we had duty once a month in the guard, but you could go out on weekends and I'd work at the
[00:13:29] airport and dinner next to a flight in and the pilots of the guard were if they knew you were interested,
[00:13:40] they would take you under their wings. So I got quite a bit of flying time.
[00:13:44] And it's for a 17 year old. If you're 17 years old, I was just 17. In fact, I was 16 when I joined.
[00:13:53] And so, but you know, this cut into my school, not the academics because I wanted to be
[00:14:06] Air Force pilot. You had to be 21. You had to have two years of college.
[00:14:12] And in 1941, this is getting pretty tight to win re-enered reward.
[00:14:21] So I didn't really figure I was going to graduate from college. So I wanted to get in the
[00:14:27] classes that would do me the most good if I could become an aviation cadet.
[00:14:34] And it all worked out. We, the interesting thing was to me,
[00:14:43] in April, I took some time off on school and I went down and got a job at North American aviation.
[00:14:53] And I worked on the first 10 P-51s bill. I didn't see them once today on the line. In fact,
[00:15:01] one of the original first 10 is in the museum of Ashkosh. So someplace within that airframe,
[00:15:09] there's some of my work. And that was, that would have been the summer of 1941.
[00:15:22] September and I was going back to school and I had become accustomed to all that money.
[00:15:28] I had been making it North American. We got 35 cents an hour when I started there.
[00:15:33] But you know, 35 cents an hour wasn't too bad because I worked alongside people that had two or three
[00:15:41] kids and they're supporting the whole family on their 35 cents an hour. We had a little
[00:15:48] labor dispute at North American and they raised it to 50 cents. So we were really rolling in cash.
[00:15:56] But in September, I wanted to get back to school, but I enjoyed that income. So I went to
[00:16:04] Lockheed. They had a graveyard shift. And I worked at 7th and Santa Fe, downtown Los Angeles,
[00:16:14] Lockheed aircraft had taken over this big warehouse and they were building the wings and the
[00:16:21] emmenaged for the P38 and there are also building the wings for the Hudson bomber,
[00:16:28] which they'd gotten a very large contract from from the British. And it, I was there when the
[00:16:38] war started actually. I was there the night that they attacked Los Angeles and the whole place
[00:16:43] was blocked out. If you remember the famous story of the air raid on Los Angeles,
[00:16:50] I don't remember that story. Well, he clearly actually I wasn't even close to being born,
[00:16:55] but neither was my dad. So what happened with the attack laws in Los Angeles? Well, I miss out on
[00:17:02] those. The probably the most logical story that I ever heard was that a navy,
[00:17:09] PBY flew over Los Angeles and somebody hit the panic button and all the search lights came on and
[00:17:16] you could hear an aircraft in the background probably from Fort McArthur or someplace like that.
[00:17:24] And the whole Lockheed plant was blocked out. So we sat there in the dark for about three hours
[00:17:31] while they fought this battle with the unseen enemy. And it, of course, made all of the newspapers
[00:17:39] with a big story. So anyway, World War II started as far as the U.S. was concerned December 7th.
[00:17:52] Right after that, they dropped the age limit from 21 to 18 for the aviation cadet program.
[00:18:02] They dropped the two-year college requirement to a high school. And so I went down and signed up
[00:18:12] with about 300,000 others dressed. There was that many people that wanted to be pilots all
[00:18:23] there. They were thick. Wow. In fact, I was quite concerned. I signed up. They
[00:18:34] that would have been in June. I waited until September before they called me down to
[00:18:40] downtown Los Angeles. Swarming in is a private as a duration as cadet. And so I will now
[00:18:50] I'm on my way. Well, and I went home and waited another four or five months before they called us.
[00:18:56] They had so many people that, and there was no place to put them. They were trying to build
[00:19:02] San Ann Army Air Base, which was the induction area for cadets on the west coast.
[00:19:11] And every just overwhelmed with, they didn't even have the barracks to put them in.
[00:19:17] So eventually I got called up and I went through in a little lesson 10 months to Santa Ana,
[00:19:29] which was a pre-flight, went up to Larry, California, for primary in Stermons,
[00:19:37] to Tex Rankin School, and Texit Binae, the aerobatic champion of the U.S. And so
[00:19:45] there was a fun school. So they hired the best civilian pilot and had them come out and train you guys?
[00:19:52] That's correct. In fact, Tex actually owned that operation. They appointed most of the primary
[00:20:00] was a private enterprise. There were set up by the Air Force for cadet training in primary
[00:20:10] bases. And so you went through about 60 hours, I flew this theorem and we have behind us our
[00:20:20] competitor, but this aircraft was used mainly on these coasts. We didn't see many of them out,
[00:20:27] California, we had Stearmons and Ryan's and the west coast. Got through primary, went the basic
[00:20:36] now we're on a military base and I went to the Moore, California. And that was one of the largest
[00:20:46] air force bases or Army Air Corps bases. And it's just, on final you can still see the hangars
[00:20:57] and everything. But final at the Moore Naval Air Station, you can still see all the hangars
[00:21:01] from, from our old base. But got through basic, went down to Williamsfield, Arizona and
[00:21:13] that brought me closer to the P38. Most of the P38 came out of Williamsfield to South of Phoenix.
[00:21:22] And from there we were on a fast track and we weren't quite sure why we were on this big fast track
[00:21:30] but all of a sudden we get 90 days, I got to fire the guns once in the P38. One gun, we had
[00:21:41] four fifties in the 20 millimeter and the nose and they let us fire one of the fifties.
[00:21:47] All of a sudden we're on a train going to the east coast and we're heading for England.
[00:21:53] Wow. When you, when you said you wanted to fly a P38 and yet you had worked on the P51s,
[00:22:01] what was the deciding factor that made you want to fly a P38 instead of a P51?
[00:22:07] The P38 was a high-old, a two fighter. It was, it was our first real combat aircraft. The
[00:22:16] P40 was a stop-capped airplane, did very well. P39 didn't do well at all. The P38 was the only
[00:22:26] high-performance airplane we had. The P51 at the time that I worked on, it was a low-altitude airplane.
[00:22:32] Got an Allison engine and then you think above 11 to 12,000 feet you were out of power.
[00:22:39] So the P51 was going to be a low-altitude British-used aircraft and that's what they wanted.
[00:22:52] Extremely fast and they used it for tactical work. So that, as far as I wanted to be in
[00:23:02] an aerial combat, I wanted to be a fighter pilot and shoot down a bunch of airplanes. So I stuck with
[00:23:11] the 38 and of course I didn't realize the British were putting the Merle an engine in the P51
[00:23:17] about that time and we were going to get the greatest there to hear combat airplane of the war.
[00:23:22] But yeah, I guess that's what threw me off was because I always thought of the P51 as being
[00:23:28] the best air to air combat aircraft of the war but I didn't realize that it didn't get there
[00:23:36] immediately and it had to get there in stages so that makes sense to me now.
[00:23:40] Well, they did come in stages and plus the fact that when they did get the Merle an engine that
[00:23:46] went to the 8th Air Force and the 8th Air Force had the greatest P01 group in the whole world.
[00:23:52] They had access to all the newspapers. They got all the publicity. The P51 was the greatest
[00:24:03] airplane in the whole world. The Pural P38 had been soldering from early 1942 in the Pacific
[00:24:12] on to North Africa and doing well all the way and no matter what you ask it to do it could do it.
[00:24:19] So I was still a P38 fan. I got to England and I had great interest in aerial combat.
[00:24:35] There was a fellow by the name of Scroop Ball Burling who was an RAF pilot and he was one of the
[00:24:42] greatest deflection shooting experts in combat I guess and he was the hero of Malta in the RAF.
[00:24:53] So you said the greatest what deflection shooting?
[00:24:57] Which is what is that? That means that when you're coming in on an aircraft
[00:25:04] if you're on his tail you got zero deflection. If he's in a turn now you've got to move the
[00:25:12] note your your aim point out in front of that airplane. Got it and you've got what they call
[00:25:17] a hundred millsite which was it I forgot now I guess but it was about so many inches for
[00:25:27] thousand feet and on radio I would say if you were in a 30 degree turn you might put one
[00:25:38] radio I or radio I on half in front of him and it's all eyeball 90 degrees you're out maybe seven
[00:25:47] radii way out here and so best deflection shooting. Now this is before we got the gyrosite
[00:25:58] which we never got in the p38 but the 51 got the gyrosite that computed that for you.
[00:26:04] So you put the size of the airplane would be put into the site by a little slide
[00:26:11] not adjusted your site on your reflector and so then you'd put the paper right on the aircraft
[00:26:24] in the site with compute got it the the leads necessary to hit it so anyway I had studied
[00:26:33] those angles off you know an hour before you go to sleep after you go to bed you're doing
[00:26:40] computations on how many radii lead from what position whether you're going up or going down
[00:26:47] or sideways or whichever way you want to go but I'll set for real combat I get the England
[00:26:56] and all of a sudden I'm in the ninth era forse now this is the mydera force and the support
[00:27:05] of the ground troops and all operations usually have fairly low aldeclics so you're calling them
[00:27:13] the mud to air force is that what you said yeah and that's just a that's delineating that these
[00:27:19] guys are working with the ground troops and you're flying low and the dream of aerial combat
[00:27:23] is not so much there right now it's not right now the glimer force has got the all the
[00:27:30] you guys must have been all ears though I mean you talked about screwball but but the RAF pilots
[00:27:36] that had fought the battle of Britain I mean did you guys getting lessons learned from them and
[00:27:41] and were they actually directly teaching you guys at all they talked to us we didn't have any
[00:27:48] formal instruction from them the conversations and usually at the bar at the O club or officers club
[00:27:55] as we called it I got two two good points old RF sergeant who had flown in the battle of Britain
[00:28:04] told me that if you have a jury on your tail do something violent
[00:28:10] I said definitely any difference what it is just make sure it's violent and the second thing
[00:28:15] was keep your eye on his exhaust because that's the first indication you're going to get
[00:28:21] of what's worth is trying to do and I thought those were two good points and I used a couple times
[00:28:30] yeah the the violent piece I mean you could apply that to really many situations in life where
[00:28:36] you know we see people and they're they're in a bad position in life they need to do something
[00:28:40] violent to move out of that situation not just there and wait for something to unfold that was not
[00:28:46] only air combat that's interesting about watching the exhaust because you'd see a change that
[00:28:54] like a plume come out of the exhaust or you see the exhaust cut off and you'd know what type
[00:28:59] of maneuver they were going to do he's trying to pull a fast one and you have to power off and you
[00:29:05] overrun him and he shoots you down so but the mud air force that came along we begin to realize
[00:29:15] just how much help we were to the ground forces and and it was pretty primitive I covered
[00:29:24] you a lot of area here in the big and we were really short time but you know we we had we had no
[00:29:32] navigational radio we could have four channel BHAs that meant that usually we could talk
[00:29:41] amongst the squadron but the word was don't be a near-aix squadron don't talk on the RT
[00:29:48] yeah stay off we had that same philosophy and all my seal puttunes and seal task you know
[00:29:56] it's stay off the radio and now you're trying you know we're doing ground support they give us
[00:30:05] coordinates on the chart now you're going to go out and find it with the and it's all i ball
[00:30:13] so when you're eyeballing the ground and you're looking for ground targets you're wide open
[00:30:19] in your six six o'clock position so so would you fly with multiple people or multiple aircraft
[00:30:29] so someone had the duty of watching the rear yes we did in fact that's I got the duty several times
[00:30:38] what we did we've usually flew as a squadron sometimes we'd fly as a group with three squadrons
[00:30:46] usually we'd try to put out at least twelve aircraft as a squadron max would be maybe four flights of
[00:30:55] four sixteen and so to answer your question about you know being attacked from the rear and so
[00:31:08] forth in the six o'clock the Germans developed the tactic against the the tactical aircraft
[00:31:15] which we were and they would they started vectoring their fighters in with ground control radar
[00:31:24] and your first indication there was all of a sudden you had a swarm of the enemy aircraft that
[00:31:31] you six o'clock and in early August 44 one of our sister groups p thirty eight group nine
[00:31:41] therapores lost a half a squadron just they got hit they were surprised and so we thought well
[00:31:53] well we better start we better do something about that so we started putting a couple of
[00:31:58] experienced people instead of putting your your first mission following the rear end purple
[00:32:06] heart corner we called it let him drag along where we stop well let's put somebody back there
[00:32:13] of this gonna have a little experience anyway and and so we we did that and I drew one of the first
[00:32:20] the missions back there and and sure enough really came and I spotted them and it called the
[00:32:29] break and made the break and squadron kept on going and the break is you're saying hey I'm
[00:32:35] going to break off from the squadron right now or someone needs to come with me or we need to face
[00:32:39] this other issue over here we got a bunch of enemy aircraft coming that's what that's what
[00:32:43] calling the break is call your break you know when you call the break they whoever spotted the
[00:32:49] aircraft leads the break because you don't want to lose them you can't take if you see them you
[00:32:55] got to keep your eyeball on them or you're gonna lose them and so you make the you call the
[00:33:02] break you make your break into them from whatever position they're coming from the squadron
[00:33:07] then we'll break with you and so all of our craft are now turning into the enemy and
[00:33:14] probably an experienced air-derer combat group that was just an orable procedure
[00:33:25] our 9th therefore guys we didn't do much of this and so when I called I called the break I made
[00:33:34] the break and all of a sudden I'm by myself it's quadron kept on going and now whether they didn't
[00:33:40] hear me or whatever I I have no idea so all I had was a couple of W1 90s and around circle
[00:33:50] sitting on a flat wing and all that up 20 millimeters and we're doing we got into a pretty tight
[00:33:57] turn and and all of a sudden I lost them in the turn and I'm looking at my six o'clock and
[00:34:08] you might have been facing backwards it would have been a lot easier but I turned around front
[00:34:16] and in my gun sight here's a W1 90 I mean I'm on top of it and he apparently spotted me about
[00:34:27] the same type I think I fired a burst at him I'm not even sure but he did a flick roll so quick
[00:34:34] but I literally he just flick rolled out of my thing P30 it wouldn't do that the early ones
[00:34:43] the later ones had a yellow-rong boost and they would actually could perform that fast roll
[00:34:49] radar roll so he he got away from me and I was in a perfectly wonderful shot position to shooting down
[00:34:58] so that was our first encounter the second encounter was going where you had read the citation
[00:35:08] I made the right nobody came with me and I had more than I could have handled
[00:35:15] when you before we get to that one when you were doing close air support for troops on the ground
[00:35:20] and you had four radio nets that you could be on would you be talking to the guys on the ground
[00:35:26] yes and sometimes you could you be under with the control now the the night therefore
[00:35:34] it was mainly P47s we had one group of P51s 354th and they had been the pioneer group with the
[00:35:42] Merlin power 51 but they ended up in the ninth Air Force but usually they were used with the
[00:35:50] eight therefore for the escort of the bombers but so the majority and the ninth Air Force was
[00:35:59] a big Air Force we had a lot of fighter groups I forgot now how many we actually have but most
[00:36:05] of them were P47s and 47 was a great aircraft for close support and we had four groups of P38s in the
[00:36:18] evening so most of the close support work was done by the P47s in a real max effort we were used
[00:36:28] to close support but the P47 was very short ranged 38 we had a lot of range we could carry a
[00:36:38] larger bomb load than either the 47 and the 51 actually the 38 could carry two
[00:36:45] thousand pound bombs that's four thousand pounds and that's your up in B17 country with that so
[00:36:57] we couldn't always get them usually we could find some thousand pound but normally we carry two
[00:37:03] 500s I like the thousand because the bigger the bang is the less chance you have to go back and do it again
[00:37:11] and when you went back to do it again they're waiting for you so up until that point that was kind
[00:37:20] of your primary mission that was going in and hitting railway stations or new nation's factories
[00:37:26] are in reconnaissance anything that moved and if you're good and finding a thing you moved you try
[00:37:32] to shoot the insulators all the high tension lines so any anything you could get
[00:37:38] we there was no problem finding targets and different from the eight there of course
[00:37:49] we were over the target area in a relatively short time so they were shooting at you most of the time
[00:37:59] how long did you how long did you arrive in England before D-Day actually happened?
[00:38:03] uh just a short time before D-Day and I forgot the exact date that we did arrive in England
[00:38:09] and had you filmed missions before D-Day started? no so your first missions were actually
[00:38:16] right right and the 38's and because they were so easy to recognize in the air
[00:38:24] we were assigned the channel we we flew top cover for the channel all the shipping and everything
[00:38:32] between England and the beachhead and we at that time it became very apparent that the reason we
[00:38:42] had been rushed into through training into England is they anticipated heavy losses
[00:38:52] we expected they lived off the really show during the invasion they didn't
[00:38:58] I think you read that there were just I think they had two sorties over the beachhead on D-Day
[00:39:07] and we anticipated that there would be a large effort against the the channel with all the shipping
[00:39:15] I mean you could probably walk across the channel with a number of ships there were there
[00:39:22] uh this tremendous target the foothold didn't show up so most of the like my group the
[00:39:35] the day missions were pretty boring when D-Day was about to go I mean it's every single person
[00:39:45] you guys must have absolutely known that what you were about to do was that was you know going to be
[00:39:51] the one of the most epic undertakings of the modern history oh yes it was a hundred percent
[00:39:59] you guys all knew that and it was every little by road in England there's jammed with equipment
[00:40:08] and you know it's funny coming back to some of the things we hear today about our country
[00:40:16] in 1940 41 I was well 1940 I was up into Hale, Swarsington and we were flying
[00:40:28] those old 38s we had two brand new airplanes from North American, oh 47s
[00:40:35] half thousand horsepower greater aircraft not worth a damn combat but
[00:40:41] we knew that we were again working with the with the ground troops and we would fill
[00:40:51] a little paper socks with a white with a flower and that was our bombing we attacked them what the
[00:40:59] bridge had and throw toilet paper out and these little socks full of a flower and if you drape
[00:41:07] toilet paper over a bridge on the squally river the infantry couldn't use it anymore so they had to
[00:41:14] get across the river some other way and mortars crossed two by fours served as a mortar
[00:41:25] cavalry on horses we they got lost we had to go look for them now that's in 1940
[00:41:32] in June 44 as far as you could see is American made equipment everything not only what we were
[00:41:44] carrying but we supplied the British and everyone else this magnificent effort by this magnificent
[00:41:51] country and you just it's unbelievable when you think back just before D Day as I say every
[00:42:00] every little robe was jammed with stored equipment can't imagine that's one of the island didn't
[00:42:08] sink but no I I've actually on a recent podcast I was talking about the fact that
[00:42:16] many of American or at least as much of America's victories in many cases have to be attributed to
[00:42:24] our ability to produce and make things and America's incredible ability to like you said
[00:42:29] build such incredible equipment and such a short amount of time it's it's epic it really was and we switched
[00:42:37] from isolation Henry Ford was the nice solution that's I understand and he turns around and build
[00:42:45] the bomber plans to turn it out six seven eight ten B twenty fours a day yeah so
[00:42:51] this fantastic effort but we all stood together in those days yeah when when I always read that
[00:43:02] for D Day they they wanted troops not all but they were looking for they brought a lot of troops
[00:43:08] that didn't have any combat experience I don't think five percent of the people that hit the
[00:43:14] beaches have experience you know as funny I got in trouble in Paris a few years out of your
[00:43:20] good now this is a good story my wife can hear it she was there in fact but we were in a dinner in
[00:43:30] Paris and D Day celebration and I made a mistake I stood up and said to the people in the room
[00:43:40] that the ground troops here the infantry all you people that landed on D Day I said D Day is
[00:43:49] your day it's not the air forces day the missions we flew on D Day were what we've been doing for
[00:43:57] two years out of England and it was there was no better no worse but when you stop and think
[00:44:06] of those kids that hit that beach no experience a lot of thesters no experience in combat
[00:44:15] and so in my opinion and all stand by it and I had a few people at the dinner who objected to what I said
[00:44:25] but D Day was the guys that hit the beach we we supported them but we didn't do much more than
[00:44:34] what we have been doing day after day you know you can talk about the eight there force and
[00:44:41] the heavy bombers and the fact that they're there losses were heavy and total marine loss
[00:44:49] and were a war too so we we've been hurt but D Day at the long to those youngsters
[00:45:02] what was the because these these guys were so you know we're inexperienced when you were out
[00:45:08] at a pub in England talking to these army guys that were getting ready to go in
[00:45:14] were they just a hundred percent fired up to go
[00:45:19] I mean that's the only thing because I can imagine myself when I was 18 or 19 years old
[00:45:25] I first was in the military if you would have told me I was going to do a giant amphibious landing
[00:45:31] an epic amphibious landing there would have been just nothing but absolute motivation and excitement
[00:45:40] from me because I was young and stupid and didn't know any better you know we were all young
[00:45:47] yes yeah I guess at some point young and stupid goes a long way does it well I tell you a little
[00:45:53] story about that I was I was in camp Kilmer we were in fact we thought we were going to fly across
[00:46:02] to England we expected air transportation for they were a group of about 18 pilots
[00:46:10] and I think we were set to fly and all of a sudden they gave us all this equipment
[00:46:18] and leggings and backpacks and helmet and all this stuff that kind of stuff makes pilots
[00:46:29] nervous
[00:46:30] well it normally made it nervous made them full of it
[00:46:35] nobody knew how to use this stuff and I know I got the leggings on and I know they were from
[00:46:43] World War I they gave me this backpack and all of this gas underware and everything and they
[00:46:52] didn't tell us how a packet and I went out behind the barracks and there was a close line back there
[00:46:58] and I got some close line and I tied to stand pack up for closed line and they gave me a helmet
[00:47:07] and I never tried it on so that that evening get ready and we start marching down some
[00:47:18] to the gates of the camp Kilmer they load us on trucks and we're over getting on the Queen Elizabeth
[00:47:27] and you had to go down a pier and then up a whole bunch of stairs to get to
[00:47:33] the entrance to the ship and I had to be four bags with all of my clothes and everything
[00:47:40] and I had a bottle of scotch in there and I packed very carefully and I had a portable radio
[00:47:49] and portable radios and those days were like 36 inches long full of batteries so I'm carrying
[00:47:57] this thing and they gave me this damn helmet but they didn't give me the interior of it and so this
[00:48:05] damn without the inside of it every time I took a step it was coming down hit me on the nose
[00:48:13] and then bouncing back again we go up the stairs and someplace along the line I set that bag down too long
[00:48:22] and now I got scotch really out the bottom hit me four bags and we we come to where they're
[00:48:32] checking us and there's a full kernel army kernels and he says my god we're gonna lose the war
[00:48:40] so there you go we got people that don't know how to wear their helmets back at their bags
[00:48:54] filled with scotch and no one to war so but when you're talking to guys they're ready to go
[00:49:04] and he day commences they just don't you know they don't they don't understand what they're
[00:49:08] getting into yet and and again maybe to the credit of the planners they decided it's better to have
[00:49:15] a bunch of guys that aren't really 100% sure of what to expect and it is to have a bunch of people
[00:49:20] that know what they're getting into and know how hard this is gonna be. Well that's very in fact
[00:49:26] what I started to say before I got off again you have to watch me very carefully. Wait you have
[00:49:32] scotch in your body down there we go down the Alcise Club just before we we're gonna take off
[00:49:40] for England and it's quite a party going and there's a little spirits flowing and if you
[00:49:49] the World War II barracks buildings where the club was they had a mezzanine on the second floor
[00:49:56] and then it's open in the center and all these damn fools from the airborne for up on the second
[00:50:04] four yellow and drawn a bow and jump an off and this one kid broke his leg and so I've heard about
[00:50:13] guys breaking their leg and then going on to combat that's another story from my friend Charlie Plum what's
[00:50:22] that what about oh brother we got so many stories to tell you I was on my way to combat on the
[00:50:31] aircraft carrier kitty-off we stopped in Hawaii for our last who raw and so we went out and found
[00:50:38] some pubs and whatnot well I had rented a little a motor scooter you know like a little vespot
[00:50:44] all right and that's gonna work out well so I'm driving around on Honolulu and I look back and
[00:50:53] when I look forward I'm a borsided on an 18 wheeler and so I so I laid that motor scooter on
[00:51:02] its side and slid underneath the axle of this truck and pin my right ankle between the frame
[00:51:10] and the motor scooter in the truck and so I came out and dusted myself off I'm thinking
[00:51:16] okay I'm gonna try to walk you know I'm not walking very well and so I go up to the closest
[00:51:21] house and knock in the door and say you know I guess I need a ride to the hospital I went over to
[00:51:27] tripward hospital big hospital in Hawaii and then in the dock there looks me and he takes an
[00:51:36] x-ray in my leg and you know it was really funny when you see an x-ray of a broken part of your body
[00:51:42] you know you you're in disbelief you know you're like wait how come this happened you know you're
[00:51:47] in denial and the guy said okay report to uh wing uh bravo uh floor three I said what's on
[00:51:56] bravo three you said it's all the other idiots that broke their leg riding motor scooters in Hawaii
[00:52:01] and sure enough all these military guys in this military hospital had broken their leg on motor scooters
[00:52:08] and so I said I can't do that I'm a fighter pilot you know I just to help start the top
[00:52:13] gun school I gotta I gotta get out of here and I gotta go win the war you know and and it on
[00:52:19] there we've got this doctor is named as gents and doctor gents and said son take my advice
[00:52:26] um you can get into war in six months or so after your leg heals and so what I said I can't
[00:52:33] do that I gotta go back to the ship he said you said you can't ride around on a ship of the broken
[00:52:38] leg I said no an aircraft carry we've got hospital is the next ray of machines and all this good
[00:52:42] stuff we had doctors and surgeons and all this stuff oh no I can't let you do that you know
[00:52:47] you report to all the other characters that broke their legs no no I can't do that so I find
[00:52:53] I am arguing with this doctor who outranked me my about three ranks and then uh I said tell you
[00:52:59] what let me call this ship I'll let you talk to our flight surgeon and he can assure you that
[00:53:06] I'll be okay by going back to the ship because I gotta go to the war I so I so I call this ship
[00:53:13] well of course the flight surgeon out getting drunk too you know so he went there and in fact
[00:53:20] the only one in sick bay on that ship was a was a a corpsman like a third class corpsman okay
[00:53:27] and he didn't know what he's doing but I said okay I'm whispering to the guy so okay
[00:53:31] to tell tell this doctor that you're in charge of the hospital and that it's okay for me to come back
[00:53:36] so sure enough you know he does what I he does the doctor so so I get a cab I got this cast on
[00:53:43] now from my way stall went down on my toe got a big toes I mean I broke my ankle you know
[00:53:50] not not the rest of my leg but I got this 20 pound cast on and so I got these crutches and I
[00:53:56] crutch up the gangway you know and the questionation come warn and the the O.D. says the permission
[00:54:03] granted and and I hobble my way into the sick bay okay here's the same third class corpsman
[00:54:10] sitting there and he didn't know what he's doing and he doesn't sign me in or anything he says
[00:54:15] you know go to the officers quiet room that we got one of those in sick bay and so I crutch my
[00:54:20] way back to his quiet room and I I am exhausted I'm totally in this leg of starting to swell
[00:54:26] inside the cast and I'm in pain and so I just flopped down in this in this rack okay and the quiet room
[00:54:33] well the next thing I hear is the engines of the ship starting up you know we're about to leave
[00:54:39] now meanwhile my squadron buddies you know one need to leave no man behind says where's Charlie
[00:54:48] they went back on the beach searching for me for the last place they saw me was disappearing towards
[00:54:54] diamond head on a vespas and so they look all over for me and come back and report that I'm a wall
[00:55:02] okay I miss ships movement all right okay so so I wake up and I know what's happening I
[00:55:09] and I gotta tell somebody I'm here nobody else I'm here I'm at the third class corpsman he didn't
[00:55:13] sign me and he didn't know who I was okay so so you know yeah these squeeze bottles you know
[00:55:21] and in a hospital room and it's supposed to some squeeze on this bottle trying to track the nurse
[00:55:27] or something you know it didn't there squeeze squeeze squeeze I finally looked up and the hose from
[00:55:32] the bottle was cutting I would just squeeze an air so I get my crutch out which is the only thing I
[00:55:38] can move I'm paralyzed I'm banging on the hatch you know and I finally attracted a tension to
[00:55:45] this sailor and to say you'd better go up to the ready room and squadron 1114 and you better tell
[00:55:52] him up there that I'm down here well it wasn't probably two minutes later the committee
[00:55:57] and officer standing in the doorway all right and he is none happy he said I've got 17 pilots it's
[00:56:04] said and I got 16 he said he said first of all I said what are they telling you when are you
[00:56:09] gonna be ready to fly again I said six weeks well I you know weeks months I kind of got that
[00:56:19] confused and he said you're going home I'm gonna get a replacement pilot you oh no please please
[00:56:25] please let me stay I gotta stay with the squadron you don't gotta be with the troops and
[00:56:29] all please and so now you're going home oh please be I said okay Skipper what if I
[00:56:36] you need you need a pilot from the squadron to run the the amateness on a cuby point and
[00:56:44] Philippines you know a pilot stand behind it for battle damage and stuff you know it's I'll take
[00:56:50] here and I'll run those troops and for you I can do that on a crutch and so he said okay so
[00:56:55] he let me he let me off on on the Philippines and well the rest of the squadron you know went
[00:57:02] to the first line period they went out there and I'm cracking my way around the Philippines
[00:57:10] with you know I had probably six or eight chiefs and I had mechanics you know working
[00:57:17] on these airplanes well and so they would send these airplanes back to me but I didn't have
[00:57:23] any way to test them but the army a trip or hospital had not taken my wings they they they
[00:57:30] did not give me a down ship so I told me I couldn't fly you know so I talked to doctor
[00:57:37] there at the Subic Bay to put on a walking cast okay so I got a little cast and so I can you know
[00:57:45] I'm qualified to test these airplanes I can do this and so the problem was first of all I couldn't
[00:57:50] get into the airplane because my cast was too big to go into to the togo and so I'd have
[00:57:56] my crew fork lift me up and into the airplane my second problem was I couldn't use my right foot
[00:58:04] to push the right rudder and this is kind of a nose wheel steering airplane the F4 where you
[00:58:10] got to be able to push the rudder to steer so I would I'd go out and test these airplanes and I come
[00:58:15] back and land at at QB point and to fill the paints and instead of making they they'd say okay
[00:58:21] you're you're cleared right hand turn couldn't make a right hand turn I made three left hand turns
[00:58:26] to get off the line so the the squadron finally came back and and I got back with them got
[00:58:34] my little cast off and I started flying missions but until the day I was shot down I was still
[00:58:40] limping on that ankle and I was really afraid with a diet in the prison camp but that was never
[00:58:45] gonna heal but you know as as luck and and fate would have it it heal up fine and so you know
[00:58:54] but yeah that that's my story of I've get breaking my leg on the way to combat
[00:59:01] yeah thanks for bringing that up Jim
[00:59:02] you know let's let's do we're talking about now we're talking about getting shot down you know
[00:59:10] you're ended up in a prison camp let's you you were about to get to the to the engagement or you
[00:59:16] actually did get shot down you want to talk through that one a little bit further Jim and just
[00:59:21] give us some details on that. Well sure at some of the details are not original but back to the
[00:59:35] purple heart corner you spot them coming in again and this time there were two different
[00:59:42] gaggles that I could see and the gaggle is a word that we use for the Germans because they didn't
[00:59:48] fly a real tight formation they kind of they were just there was that was that intentional?
[00:59:55] yeah it must have been because they were you know the German pilots are sharp by him yeah but
[01:00:01] I would guess especially in Germans are generally orderly people so you'd think they'd want
[01:00:07] to fly tight formations but I guess if you think about it from a from like even from a basic
[01:00:13] camouflage perspective when you see things in a pattern it stands out more so maybe they did
[01:00:17] that to break up their pattern a little bit. Well I would assume that because they were very effective
[01:00:23] and you know some of these boys you we'd run into who had been out of for a long time
[01:00:30] but as I saw them coming in and as we'd forgive them as I said it's a gaggle I picked the one
[01:00:38] closest and broke into it made the call that I was making the break and broke and just as I
[01:00:47] broke somebody got a shot at me and I got hit back in the after all part of the few
[01:00:53] slides and I I thought I had a little fire going and I'm sure I did but as I made my first pass
[01:01:03] through them I lined up and if you could get the P38 nose on a target those four
[01:01:12] fifties in that 20 millimeter were devastated and 30 rounds of 50 cow would you have. We usually
[01:01:20] carry 400 rounds per gun and 130 rounds of 20 millimeter and we arranged our triggers so that
[01:01:33] we we want to fire them all at the same time we didn't carry any tracer we put five tracers in
[01:01:39] at about 25 rounds remaining so that you knew you were you had to have something to go home on
[01:01:46] the start conservative in your ammunition and so I got a line on a clear shot fire that
[01:01:57] in but I don't I didn't know what the results were because all of a sudden I'm in the middle of
[01:02:01] the fire storm a literal fire storm inside your cabinet inside your cockpit or just still outside
[01:02:11] the plane outside there were there were lots of targets and apparently I went through them
[01:02:20] really at this late day in my story it's how much I really remember about this I heard stories
[01:02:31] later which I'll get to but it seemed like it went on forever and finally I'm on the tail of
[01:02:42] a 190 I saw I saw some I knew I was involved with 190s but I saw a couple one-on-one lines
[01:02:50] someplace in my peripheral vision so there were there were other aircraft involved and they're
[01:02:56] out there apparently they're all with me I didn't know it at the time but we made a number of
[01:03:06] passes I was very concerned about the model of ammunition if you hold a fire button down
[01:03:13] you're gonna be out in about 20 seconds so I was very concerned about using all my ammunition
[01:03:20] so I was trying to fire very short bursts and we go around and round and we're enjoying up and down
[01:03:30] I got on the tail of a 190 again I'm right up on top of them and when the p38 through your
[01:03:39] gun sight you could also see your two top 50s and it looked like I had those two 50s right around
[01:03:47] the rudder post of this 190 and out of the corner of my eye I see these flashes out on my wing tip
[01:03:55] and they're coming up the wing tip and I get closer and closer and this is milliseconds and he
[01:04:04] hit me right in by the left engine and we had an air scoop that came in through the leading edge of the
[01:04:16] wing and into the cockpit by your left knee which is our only cold air into the p38 and again I see this
[01:04:28] peripheral vision and I'm concentrating on the guy in front of me I see this air vent making like a
[01:04:35] boat torch and so this is not good yeah again my next memory is I'm out falling through a cloud
[01:04:49] I don't remember our emergency relief was above us p38 had actually had windows and you crank them up
[01:04:57] on both sides and the only way you could get them down is to hit the little release and then crank them
[01:05:05] down and so we had a top hatch which was our escape hatch which is about this wide and you have a
[01:05:15] backpack shoe dawn and all your equipment and I don't know I don't remember releasing
[01:05:28] anything pulling the safety belt or the shoulder harnesses but this is
[01:05:34] unlike you know Charlie you're you know the modern rigs where you pull the ejection handle and you
[01:05:40] this is all stuff I mean in a modern aircraft you pull the ejection handle and you're getting
[01:05:45] shot out of the aircraft all automatic that's all that's all you do yeah we didn't have to think
[01:05:51] about anything we weren't smart as these guys were you so so this is all stuff you manually
[01:05:57] had to do unbuckled yourself get an open up the hatch or the window and and get all that done while
[01:06:04] the the plane is burning and and then you have to get out and that's kind of when you come back
[01:06:09] in a constant so you did that either instinctively or or at some point while all this mayhem was
[01:06:16] going on that's right I don't remember even reaching up above for the to pull the top hatch
[01:06:25] well I was just floating down to a I knew the clouds were around 5,000 feet because we've been
[01:06:32] you're you're an up and down during this time and also just one more point on a ejection sheet
[01:06:39] a modern ejection seat you come out your parachute opens automatically right oh yes so your
[01:06:43] you're still in a rip-cord scenario right we're you're gonna have to make this parachute open so
[01:06:48] when you say when you say you're floating down you're actually falling down at a hundred and
[01:06:52] twenty miles per hour towards the earth somewhat like that so anyway I come out to bottom of a
[01:06:59] cloud and I'm facing up and I thought well I better turn over so I turned over that I can remember
[01:07:09] to simply watching the ground and I thought I was behind German lines because we were a
[01:07:14] talking Germany and I had just knew that I was we were east of Wacke and I knew we're
[01:07:24] approximately where this bite started and I didn't think it had gotten any better about going
[01:07:30] west so I figured we were we were all different territory and so we we've been told to not pull
[01:07:41] your rip-cord that out to get down you're a lot less of target glory you can get so I rolled over
[01:07:51] and fell actually just fell face down and watched the ground come up when it looked like it was
[01:07:56] pretty close I pulled a rip-cord and this is your first time parachuting or did you guys do any
[01:08:03] parachuting in preparation for this? No no no okay yeah that's interesting having
[01:08:13] having jumped out of at least a decent number of airplanes this is not something you want to do
[01:08:18] for the first time you know I remember thinking well you know I got to be ready to move
[01:08:35] and when I get down so I unbuckled the two lower straps on the shoe and I got them unbuckled
[01:08:43] and I had a 45 in the shoulder holster I got to 45 out and I'm trying to cock it
[01:08:51] to get around in the chamber and I dropped it I didn't realize my hands were burned
[01:08:56] and so I'm not sure how I got the the shoot buckles up and so I must have been pretty low when I
[01:09:03] pulled a rip-cord because just instantaneously I came down in a red brick building
[01:09:11] and it had a courtyard and a tree in the middle of a courtyard and I could if I could find the building
[01:09:20] I'd recognize it today and my shoot caught in this little tree and I jerked to a stop and I'm
[01:09:27] probably six inches off the back and I remember doing that but then I don't remember
[01:09:36] for a period and I kept thinking it's getting dark and I thought I'm going down what I was like a
[01:09:50] little hedge row and I had my 45 and I saw these guys down in this ditch I thought they were German
[01:10:00] and I saw they had a net on their helmet and hard guys had net on the helmet and I threw my hands
[01:10:08] up through the 45 over my shoulder never saw it again but it was first infantry division
[01:10:17] and they had seen my shoot and I came down between the German positions and first infantry division
[01:10:25] and what had happened and I found this all later they first infantry we were trying to take
[01:10:32] off and you know we started and this is mid-September to try to take off and we didn't get
[01:10:39] off and until early November where we actually took the town and the first infantry had
[01:10:48] pushed up during on the night of the 15th had pushed up and taken this little area where I came down
[01:10:58] it was a little town called the Elendor which was a suburb of Bokken and they were having trouble
[01:11:07] holding it and so they were getting ready to pull back and they saw my shoot and the guys came out
[01:11:16] and picked me up to meet a back hospital but before they did that they took me in and into an area
[01:11:28] and I was in a command post and I met a full kernel and I found out later who he was he was
[01:11:36] the commander of the 16th infantry regiment and he said he asked me if you wanted to dinner and I said
[01:11:44] I don't know what I said anyway I apparently sit down and had dinner with him right with him and
[01:11:53] I do remember going outside this area and throwing me up so I knew I had eaten something but
[01:12:01] they put me on a two and a half toned truck and when they put the the stretchers they put them in
[01:12:12] between the what are the side gates and I there was some Germans in there and some Americans
[01:12:20] and me and they hauled a spank and I they took me to what I found out later was the 45th of
[01:12:25] back hospital and they treated me there but I'd write at that moment I don't remember too much
[01:12:37] about all this going on except I thought it was getting dark so I thought I'd been on the ground
[01:12:42] for quite a while and I found out later that my eyes were had been pretty flash burns in my face
[01:12:51] and hands and everything and I couldn't see for a couple of days so apparently I was having
[01:12:58] my eyes were swelling shut or something and I think it's getting dark but they hauled the
[01:13:06] end of the the the hospital and I was very fortunate they had a doctor there who
[01:13:16] either had developed or was using a new technique on burns and they took me in they
[01:13:22] this operating room and it's colder and hell and I'm vibrating like blazes and they start picking
[01:13:29] like this and kind of the old drive me crazy and what I wanted to say developed this new
[01:13:38] technique where they picked this all the burn areas out and they've to get it off there so you
[01:13:45] heal from from the inside out and as I went back through the the hospital system they used me as
[01:13:54] a demonstration to these kids that have been caught in tanks and badly burn what's worse than I was
[01:14:04] and they were telling them that look what we did here look how quickly he's healing me
[01:14:12] using this technique and so apparently I was one of the very first that they'd ever used this
[01:14:18] on but when we we were put on this train the hospital train and taken to the American hospital
[01:14:29] in Paris and they haul me in there and this guy comes up to me and he says hell I know you
[01:14:38] he says we picked you up and his name was Walter Leonard Scott he was with the first
[01:14:46] representative vision company C and he was the second lieutenant and he became my friend he stayed
[01:14:55] with me for quite a while and he had witnessed almost all of this operation as we yo-yoed around
[01:15:02] the area why he was seeing a good part and then he told me a lot about what happened they they told me
[01:15:10] that they estimated there were 20 and 20 enemy aircraft and that somehow or other that story has stuck
[01:15:19] with with my story I don't know what they were I mean he he actually was where I got most of my
[01:15:32] information about what had gone on so we we went through the hospital chain and you know what
[01:15:41] was he in the hospital for something had he been injured as well yeah he we get the England and he's
[01:15:49] telling me a little bit about infantry life and he had landed with the first infantry division
[01:15:56] in North Africa they went all through North Africa and went to Sicily and he had been very badly
[01:16:08] wounded in Sicily and they he and another officer had manned a man of tank gun in some big
[01:16:21] operation in Sicily and the two of them stayed with this antitank gun when everybody else
[01:16:30] had departed and anyway he had received a distinctly service cross and that was the first time I
[01:16:39] ever heard the turn distinctly service cross and so now I'm starting he started in 42 and he went through
[01:16:48] North Africa he went to Sicily he went to England he made D day and wow yeah I see well
[01:16:57] how come you're still a second lieutenant we we hadn't been in what we were sent to England they
[01:17:08] took us to the Nettley hospital which was this gigantic hospital right outside of South Hampton
[01:17:15] that had been built in the war wars something like that big look like a castle and so we hadn't been
[01:17:26] in their two hours and this cute little nurse shows up with a class a uniform for Leonard Scott
[01:17:35] and Scott was gone I mean we didn't see him for 10 days so I figured it's Leonard Scott
[01:17:45] was probably a first lieutenant four or five times it sounds like from the cuteness it might have been
[01:17:52] worth it sure but you know we we were quite close for just a few weeks and for years and years
[01:18:04] and years I tried to find Leonard Scott I knew that he made it through the war I knew that
[01:18:10] he'd gotten all separated from active duty and at Fort Lewis and he was from the Dalsor
[01:18:17] I didn't and I tried to find him and about a year ago my wife said down at the computer
[01:18:25] in an amount of a couple hours she finds his two his two daughters and he had passed
[01:18:34] he'd gone through Korea went back on active duty went through Korea he was
[01:18:42] he had just this thing we service cross he had the purple heart with seven clusters
[01:18:48] and he had been hit he said he made the D.D landing and in 20 minutes he was on a
[01:18:59] landing craft on his way back to England he's gotten hit that quickly
[01:19:03] and then he the day after I was shot down he got hit again and he went back
[01:19:11] after we separated he went back to the first infantry division company see
[01:19:18] and it's funny coming up to more recent times I built a number I used to build
[01:19:30] and we're still building airport facilities but I used to build air cargo buildings and so forth
[01:19:36] and leasing to the airlines and I did a lot of work with flying tigers and I knew Bob
[01:19:43] Prescott pretty well who was the president of tigers and they who
[01:19:50] Wayne Hoffman who was the chairman of the board of tigers so tell us a little bit about the
[01:19:54] flying tigers if people don't know the flying tigers in the airline
[01:19:58] cargo airline that was sold to federal express then is now part of federal express
[01:20:06] and tigers was named because Bob Prescott he was president of tigers had flown with the
[01:20:14] flying tiger organization in China one of the original flying tigers and right after the war he
[01:20:22] started a little airline called it flying tigers and it became a gigantic
[01:20:27] air cargo facility and they were flying all over the world and so I started building facilities
[01:20:35] and leasing to them and so the new Bob and the new Wayne Hoffman were well and I knew that Wayne
[01:20:42] Hoffman had been in the army and been in the infantry but that's we never talked about them
[01:20:49] and Wayne's wife wrote a book and she took all of Wayne's letters that he had written home
[01:21:03] from Europe during the war and put them in this book and so they gave me a book and I read it
[01:21:11] and I come to September 16th Wayne Hoffman is an Ellen Dorf Germany in the first
[01:21:19] part of the SIGFRIED line five o'clock in the evening in his letter to his wife he said
[01:21:27] in a very short letter he said in the Eleanor and there's an airbile going on above us
[01:21:37] and we get talking and that was me then here we've been friends for a number of years and we'd
[01:21:45] never really talked about it and he was company D of the 16th regiment and when it's got
[01:21:54] was company C of the 16th regiment and we never put all this together that's it's amazing what comes
[01:22:04] out and I found out that two of the people on the German side that I've been involved with
[01:22:12] a current major Boris this is a long story I don't know how far do you want to go with
[01:22:23] we go as long as you want to talk
[01:22:27] they major Boris allowed to go back and step I heard from a gentleman in Holland
[01:22:38] and they had some information about my airplane and this gentleman had written several
[01:22:49] big historical books and he lived in that little area where Belgium and Holland and Germany
[01:22:57] all come together and he had found like 500 wrecks aircraft wrecks in this area and
[01:23:06] traced them down in the history and recorded it and they came up with a P38 in
[01:23:17] Elendorf Germany and so they figured out and found it was my airplane and they found it in
[01:23:26] 1997 and so anyway in the series of steps I didn't they get in contact with me and
[01:23:34] he had studied that air warfare in that area and was writing another book about that
[01:23:46] and he said what you want to talk to me about and we did but unfortunately he passed away
[01:23:53] but very early he was a young man and so I never got a sooner from the record my airplane
[01:24:02] it's there someplace waiting for me to find it but he told me that he came up with two
[01:24:09] names that he had read this book by Callwell there's a story called the War Dary of JG26
[01:24:21] the Elendorf's Abby Vullboy's Elendorf aircraft and they he had written on September
[01:24:33] 16 he had the story about attacking the three these three seven years group and the Germans claimed
[01:24:43] 4 p38s had been shot down and that wasn't true I was the only one that lost they actually attacked
[01:24:53] the group after my engagement with them they finally got their act together I guess in the
[01:24:58] attack the group and didn't do too well like 20 minutes 30 minutes later whatever the time
[01:25:05] of them but he figured out that one of two people had shot me down one fellow was major
[01:25:11] Boris major Boris had shot down his first victory was 1939 he shot down the spitfire
[01:25:22] he had if he got me I was his 40 second victory the other guy was a no follow by the name of Keith
[01:25:30] Miela and he he got me I would have been his 80 second so these guys were not beginners and so all this
[01:25:46] information is dribbling in over the last 60 years so by the time I find out about Boris and
[01:25:54] the lift wapa they've died so I've never got a chance to talk but but through Scott we found
[01:26:04] Scott's daughter is a very famous interior decorator in San Francisco and so we're going to get
[01:26:14] together with her and she said that her father passed away at very early a I think he was in these
[01:26:21] 50s but so all of this keeps coming in we keep in there more and more if I'm something
[01:26:29] old accidentally be on earth to her interesting stories are Jim but you haven't told us about the nurse
[01:26:38] up and you with your clothes all the nurse this is a g-rated podcast most of the time
[01:26:53] another echo can you know bleep it somewhere down there were some lovely nurses
[01:27:00] and I think we all know what happened they were you know they were so wonderful I mean these
[01:27:09] gals were just unbelievable how they took care of you know it's actually you know we've read
[01:27:15] some books on the podcast where there is nurses that were over in France and they were receiving
[01:27:19] guys right off the front lines yeah well they they had me on this 45th and I wake up and I'm here in
[01:27:27] all of this big bang and going on well the 45th hospital is here and there's a right behind
[01:27:34] there here there's a 105 or 105 artillery fire and over the hospital and they took me to from there I
[01:27:48] went to the hospital the general hospital in Brussels no not Brussels were there a man mastery
[01:27:59] and I left there one day and then the next day after I left be one rock rocket me
[01:28:11] right into the side of the hospital and I have pictures of it that I took this is later my second
[01:28:20] tour through the hospital which was another story but so that that was a big tragedy
[01:28:28] I killed a number of the people in one of the wards so and and those those were nurses that I knew
[01:28:36] but how long did it take you to recover and did you fly again or was that was being shot down
[01:28:43] and wounded was at the end of the war for you? No well it was in combat really I went through the
[01:28:51] hospital chain and I was released in England and went back I was going through Paris and you know
[01:29:06] when the hospitals would collect the uniforms they took all my flying jacket and everything was
[01:29:14] burned from the red so it's all they stripped you down throw it all away and so now I'm in a
[01:29:19] hospital in England and they're gonna release me and I'm going back to my squadron I'm very
[01:29:24] to fly this is in November and my burns had healed pretty well and so they give me a uniform
[01:29:36] to wear and I don't know how many guys or how many times if sky whoever's uniform it was it
[01:29:44] been hit but there was a sure a bunch of holes in it and I found a hat and so I had no money
[01:29:54] and so I'm I'm freaking my way back I went to London and then I got to flight the Paris and I got
[01:30:02] the Paris and so I decided well I'm in Paris and I'm on my way back the squadron
[01:30:06] I'm gonna see something so I went down to the leado club and I used to like I'd still like to dance
[01:30:17] but I like swing and so I'm in the leado club and and they have this pretty little gal singing
[01:30:27] some French tunes and then they want to they ask the few people if they wanted to do a little
[01:30:33] jar of bug so we had quite the night and so I left early and I'm figuring on where I'm going to sleep
[01:30:46] I'm walking down the avenue and here comes a gaggle like a hint of the guys with pinks on and
[01:30:55] the green jersey's and everything damn here comes my battle jacket my pants these are all
[01:31:02] friends of mine and there were in my clothes so I thought there were staying at the
[01:31:10] Clary's hotel right next to the leado club so all of a sudden I'm better dressed
[01:31:21] I borrowed some money and we enjoyed Paris and then did you get back to the squadron
[01:31:26] went back to the squadron with them and they had transportation so I went back with them and I'm there
[01:31:33] for a guy I walked in and everybody's glad to see me and and let's say Kylie just got a brand new
[01:31:41] P38 in right from Ireland just came through and she was and boy it was a beauty so I'm already
[01:31:50] to start flying again and Doc Berg who was our flight just comes to me and he says Jimmy says I don't
[01:31:56] like the way you're walking and I said well I'm just a little bit sore but everything's fine and
[01:32:03] he said well we're going over this we were at a 78 at that time for end's Belgium
[01:32:10] since we're going over the shallow run and just check yeah I'm so I go over the hospital with
[01:32:15] Charlie while with him and the next so you knew I got a cast from here down to my ran and they
[01:32:23] x-rayed me and and I had a broken back that they hadn't treated so back to the hospital
[01:32:34] and so I went through that and back to third military well they had them what they did
[01:32:44] they had a central medical section and they run all the pilots through there and then they
[01:32:52] would determine what happens to you and so I kept saying well I want to go back to the squadron
[01:32:58] and so they said okay we're going to you got your cast and they took the big cast off and put
[01:33:04] a small one on and say we're going to send you to England for at least 30 days to a flycouse
[01:33:10] well flycouses were they run by the red cross and mainly were for bomber crews if the
[01:33:24] bomber crew had been getting a little nervous of something that sent them down for a week or so
[01:33:31] so they sent me to this black house and the first thing I get in trouble with with the red cross
[01:33:38] is this fighter pilot it's like to talk about combat and flying the bomber guys didn't want to have
[01:33:46] anything to do with that kind of conversation so the red cross gets upset with me and they told me
[01:33:52] I got to keep my mouth shut and I said well fine I'll keep my mouth shut but I'm going to do this
[01:33:58] give me a set of orders and I'll go off to some base because I'm I can walk so I had a little plan
[01:34:07] used to get your flying time your pay you had to fly four hours a month so I would have I'd
[01:34:16] write a set of orders and said that I just temporary duty and I want four hours of
[01:34:26] flying time so I'd go off to some base and with with a small cast on and I'd say I'd walk in and
[01:34:37] say here's my orders I need four hours flying time so they'd arrange it not fly for four hours
[01:34:43] and go back to the flycouse in a couple days later I'd write some more orders and go someplace else
[01:34:51] so I got to fly a number of aircraft well I was there and so pretty soon my 30 days are over I
[01:34:58] get back to third minute medical and they sent me back to the squadron you know Godkberg was not
[01:35:06] happy to see me at all and at that time I got orders to report to General Spotshead quarters and
[01:35:15] in Paris and they said they didn't tell me what I was going down there for and some Colonel came
[01:35:24] came to the squadron he's also assigned on the same deal same set of orders and so we go down to
[01:35:30] Paris together and his name was in Galito and he ended up two or three star general but he had
[01:35:39] decorations from his neck down to his waist already and so I get down to Paris and I'm going to
[01:35:47] get the distinct reservist cross well outside of Leonard's squad we never really told me what the
[01:35:54] distinct reservist cross was I wasn't sure what we were about to get and anyway we got that and
[01:36:04] went back to the squadron again thinking everything at least is pretty close to right and the
[01:36:11] berg says you're going home and so that was the end of that except I'm grounded and that's
[01:36:20] why I'm going home I'm grounded so I had I had all these records with me and you know we
[01:36:26] officers then I suppose they still do you carry your own records with you so I'm going home
[01:36:34] grounded now I got my records well I still have those records and they're in a footwalker down in my
[01:36:42] hangar nobody else ever got I got home and took a medical and passed it and so I'm back on flying
[01:36:53] it towards the lawn looks like we could might be going to the out to the Pacific to make the
[01:37:03] invasion to plan I'm flying the latest P51 P51 age got married and with my childhood sweetheart
[01:37:15] do I met when she was 15 and everything is right in the world and Harry Drooman dropped the bomb and
[01:37:25] ruined a perfect good war so that was just about it I stayed in until 1948 and I got to
[01:37:38] apply our first jets and had a wonderful time had a wonderful experience learned a heck of a lot
[01:37:46] we got to do things that would have never happened to me and if we hadn't had gotten involved in all of
[01:37:54] this so work that great and so how did you to end up meeting? Well I had this old antique airplane
[01:38:03] and I was looking for a hanger for this airplane and Jim was building hangers at the time and this
[01:38:10] little bit of airport up in the valley above Santa Barbara called Santinez and he helped me
[01:38:16] build a hanger and it was kind of interesting the attraction and in fact my wife brought this up
[01:38:26] me said she said you know you're going to have three generations of warriors talking on these
[01:38:31] telephone I mean today on the spotcast you get Jim Kunkle on 30 years later you got Charlie Pum
[01:38:38] 30 years later you got Jack O'Wink he said there's a certain attraction with warriors I don't know
[01:38:47] what it is with our brains you know but there's some kind of a kind of a magnetism or something
[01:38:52] you just got identified with a guy that had been in combat and so even though they're probably
[01:38:59] 100 pilots on this airport and Jim and I kind of hit it off without even knowing our history
[01:39:07] and the more we got to know each other this is like 20 years ago the more we got to know each other
[01:39:12] the more similar philosophies of life you know we had and so it's not just our flying because
[01:39:20] Jim still flies of course I still fly and of course I've got an old antique airplane that
[01:39:26] from his training days and but more than that the technology has changed the the enemy has changed
[01:39:38] from World War II to Vietnam to Iraq you know but the camaraderie of military guys you know
[01:39:47] that there's just something and a lot of stuff that you talk about Jack O in your podcast and
[01:39:53] then your books just the you know the fact that we're all accountable we're responsible not just
[01:40:02] for our lives with for our buddies and something about that that community of warriors that really
[01:40:09] connects so that's how Jim and I got started to be built to hang her for me and and I moved in my wife
[01:40:16] made a man cave out of it so I mean that's where we're we're here doing this yeah that was
[01:40:24] we we joke about that on the first time you were on the podcast that that you had the ultimate man
[01:40:29] cave and you know I kind of threw that out there but now that I've been here it is actually
[01:40:33] factually true that you do have the ultimate man cave and I'm going to take a gop and take a
[01:40:38] bunch of pictures maybe we'll even do a video like a little tour of it and just show everyone
[01:40:42] kind of what this is all about and and all the I mean the history that you have here and the
[01:40:49] pictures and the photographs and the you know pieces of aircraft and everything else is it's
[01:40:54] its phenomenal to look at and you know it's interesting so when I got here you know we're walking
[01:41:02] around and and Jim's hangers a few hangers down and you know you said hey Jim wants to show you
[01:41:08] something and and I said oh well you know okay you know I didn't really have any idea what it was
[01:41:14] so we we get out and we walk from your hanger and we're walking down towards Jim's hanger
[01:41:19] and you know we shake hands and I meet Jim for the first time and he says you know I want to show
[01:41:25] you something and I say oh okay you know neat and he goes it's a picture and I said oh awesome
[01:41:31] and I have no idea what to expect and he says it's someone you know and I said okay well that
[01:41:38] narrowes it down but I don't know you know I don't know who I have in common you know with Jim or
[01:41:44] I don't know I have no idea who this was over this picture was going to be so we go to
[01:41:51] Jim's man cave which is in each equally impressive and awesome you know hanger with you know
[01:41:58] his personal facts and pictures and models and parts of aircraft and everything else and he walks
[01:42:03] into a corner and and he picks up a picture and he hands me this picture and the picture I
[01:42:09] immediately I know who it is and it's it's this second lieutenant from the Marine Corps it's a picture
[01:42:16] of a young Chinese American second lieutenant from the Marine Corps and it's it's currently
[01:42:23] who I I talked about in podcast number 53 colder than hell and I I went kind of off about him
[01:42:32] a little bit I talked about him a lot because if you remember from this particular podcast
[01:42:37] and from that particular book this was at the chosen reservoir and and this second lieutenant
[01:42:44] currently he was while of these guys are engaged in just intense continuous combat
[01:42:51] in order to lead his men he fashioned a fluorescent orange vest out of some signaling material
[01:43:02] and or out of some parachute material or something he made this vest for himself so that he would
[01:43:06] be completely visible to all of his men now that also means he's obviously completely visible to
[01:43:12] the enemy as well but that was what kind of a leader that this guy was you look I'm going to take
[01:43:18] extra us but I'm where I'm going to make this happen I'm in charge going to know where I am and you
[01:43:23] can follow me through whatever and it's an incredible story of heroism so that's the picture
[01:43:31] that Jim puts in front of me is this picture of of currently and I kind of look at him and I you know
[01:43:38] and and it turns out that you that you knew currently yesterday Kirk was a good friend of dear friend
[01:43:46] and quite a story and I had tremendous respect for him I have tremendous respect for his principles
[01:43:56] to the last day of the before he died and uh fond memories yeah it was it's an interesting story too
[01:44:05] because that's another thing that we talked about was in part of that what he did at one point in
[01:44:10] that book and I don't remember it specifically but he basically dresses someone down in the middle
[01:44:15] of a firefight for not giving him you know not calling him sir or not calling him lieutenant and
[01:44:20] you know I'm kind of saying hey guys you know you need to think about when the right type to do this
[01:44:23] is but as you said he was an extremely principled person and kept those principles at all times
[01:44:31] well you know he he led the group of Marines through the night to really fox company which is quite
[01:44:41] a well-known story in the Marine Corps. Buck Company was holding a hill that commanded the
[01:44:50] escape route for the whole chosen reservoir group army uh Marine Corps and they they were under heavy
[01:45:02] attack and the idea was to get down and support them and currently I could speak three or four
[01:45:11] different dialects of Chinese and so he's leading these he's the scout who was actually
[01:45:17] leading the whole contingent of Marines through the night through heavy snow
[01:45:22] terrible terrible conditions and actually as they came across Chinese centuries troops
[01:45:34] he would talk to them in Chinese and they got the whole whole contingent got through
[01:45:42] and they made it in time they relieved fox company tremendous story.
[01:45:49] It is unbelievable story and unbelievable that you handed that picture to me and that you knew
[01:45:56] him I mean that's just this phenomenal phenomenal situation. Was there anything Charlie that
[01:46:03] when when you were on last time was there anything that you know I know we we talked for a few hours I
[01:46:09] think. Yeah we did. Yeah. Was there any major things that as you listened to it again that you said to yourself
[01:46:15] you know what I should I should talk about this as well. Not nothing that which specifically comes
[01:46:21] to mind but now that you know that the three warriors are here together you know I think we should
[01:46:29] talk a little bit about philosophies of combat and the fears that we faced because I think you know
[01:46:35] to the general public the vast majority of your listeners and viewers are not in the military
[01:46:41] and so you know my my thought is well how do they relate oh it's interesting history you know
[01:46:48] I love the history of the greater generation and I love your history as well and the things
[01:46:54] that are going on today that the guys at the point of the spear but what does that mean to the
[01:47:01] you know to the average guy you know who's never been in the military there's some principles I
[01:47:07] believe that the three of us learned in combat that can that's transferable I think to to all
[01:47:14] challenges of life you know that just you know the fact that you face your fears you know you step
[01:47:20] into the and to the box and and gymbed it and you've done it where you you could have run the other way
[01:47:27] you know you you could have quit you could have checked out but you know I mean all all three of us
[01:47:34] felt like that we had a duty a duty to our country to duty to our brotherhood and so we you know
[01:47:41] picked up the you know picked up the baton and and continued on and so you know to me that's sort of
[01:47:49] the important part the part that you can you can transfer more than just the military history that we all
[01:47:55] have the the philosophy of meeting challenges because I'm convinced you know you can you can you can
[01:48:03] be in just as much of a challenge in your life you don't you don't have to be flying jet airplanes
[01:48:09] or running around the seal teams you can face challenges when a person is diagnosed with cancer
[01:48:17] or loses a child or for that matter gets cut out of your land on the freeway you have a choice
[01:48:23] and and the choice that you make that certainly depends on not only your character but then it also
[01:48:31] transmit into the outcome of the character that you continue to be in life and so while we're
[01:48:40] you know thirty sixty years apart in our in our generations here are philosophies of life and the warrior
[01:48:50] psyche continues and so I'm just really really proud to be a part of this and proud to be
[01:48:57] with you jockel and of course with you Jim Jim and I see each other probably a couple times a
[01:49:03] month we get together we have dinner our wives you know cook good meals and we go fly sometimes
[01:49:11] and and there's a certain silent language I think between us that we don't even have to talk to
[01:49:20] each other and yet we understand what what's going on you know where we're coming from
[01:49:26] and the accountability that we share just because of the experiences that we've had
[01:49:34] I got asked the question the other day I was working with a company I was actually
[01:49:39] know it's in the court with a company I was doing a speech and I was doing some Q&A at the end
[01:49:44] and a guy asked me how do you define character and how do you build it and I'd actually never
[01:49:53] been asked this question before and quite frankly I hadn't really thought about it very much
[01:49:58] and this guy had to thought about it and I talked to him afterwards and it was something that
[01:50:03] he was why he really wanted to hear me talk because he wanted to get my perspective on this
[01:50:10] and I answered the question like this I said you know for me character is not a very complex thing
[01:50:22] for me character is you do what's right you do what's right you do the right thing that's what
[01:50:33] you do and if you do the right thing regardless of what the consequences are that represents
[01:50:40] character and so then how do you build character it's a beautiful thing because it's the same thing
[01:50:46] if you want to build character you do the right thing you do the right thing for yourself you do
[01:50:51] the right thing for your family you do the right thing for the people that you know you do the right
[01:50:55] thing for your community you do the right thing for your country that's what you do and now on an
[01:51:00] individual level those things are hard things often right if those are hard things you have to make
[01:51:06] the right decisions you have to live a disciplined life those build character those little things
[01:51:12] that you do on a daily basis to make yourself better to improve your health to improve your
[01:51:18] your situation in life you're doing those things they're hard to do and when you do those things
[01:51:25] they build your character and ultimately they lead to your your your your character being a good
[01:51:30] character as opposed to a bad one but I've never been asked that question before and I thought that
[01:51:35] the simplicity of it is pretty clear when you think about it you know when you think about the
[01:51:40] people that you know you know when I think about the the people that I worked for in the military
[01:51:44] or that worked for me up or down the chain of command what what is it that made them people that
[01:51:50] because you know there's bad care you know we we can't sit here and pretend like everybody that's
[01:51:53] just because you're in the military you've got great character that's absolutely not true
[01:51:57] but what about those people and I you know I thought through this in in three seconds as this guy
[01:52:01] asked me this question you know I thought to myself what about the guys that I know that have
[01:52:05] good character that I look to and say yeah this this person I trust you know without question
[01:52:10] what kind of person is that that's the person that you know is going to do the right thing all the
[01:52:14] time regardless of the consequences and a couple of things about that first of all it isn't easy
[01:52:21] in fact usually the right thing is the toughest thing you know it it's the it's the hard decision
[01:52:26] the second thing is it doesn't always turn out for the best we need to do the right thing lots
[01:52:31] of times we stumble you know and and your listeners may think that the three of us you know have always
[01:52:37] you know been on the top of the heap but all three of us have fallen short you know I mean
[01:52:44] I'll tell you this languishing then prison camp the first the first month in that prison camp I
[01:52:50] laid there in in in in blood and sweat and tears and and my mental state was just in the tank
[01:52:59] because I'd given up fighter pilots are not supposed to give up Jim and I weren't trained to
[01:53:04] surrender and my mental but the depression that I had just because of that and I think that
[01:53:11] largely in life you know when you do do the right thing and it doesn't turn out right then you
[01:53:18] have to get up dust yourself off get back in the back in the in the fray and that's tough to do you
[01:53:26] know the last thing you want to do when when when you're getting beat up every from every side
[01:53:32] and you really want to quit the last thing you want to do is to is to stand up and be forceful again
[01:53:38] to you know to to take control of the situation and yet it's those kinds of challenges in life
[01:53:46] that build that character you know that that really make the difference between you know that
[01:53:52] the the positive life the life lived well and those guys and gals that that don't make those
[01:54:00] kind of decisions and you're talking about when you were when you were depressed when you were laying
[01:54:08] there it's because you felt like you had failed right you felt like you had broken you felt like you
[01:54:13] weren't the man that you thought you were and they'd found your breaking point and you'd found your
[01:54:21] breaking point and you didn't like that and what if I remember correctly what what got you through that
[01:54:29] was you know you you went broke down and to go into your point of your cell mates and said well this
[01:54:34] is horrible I'm a disaster I'm a failure I broke and he kind of said oh yeah welcome to the club
[01:54:42] we all break it was like one of those things and I think to your point absolutely
[01:54:48] everyone everyone has a point where they go ah you know I I I failed to hear I didn't do what I was
[01:54:55] supposed to do I lacked the character that I needed at that time to to be a good leader or to
[01:55:01] even stand up and fight one more time I failed and the point is also sitting around at this table
[01:55:07] and every single person that's listening to this right now you can find a spot in your life where
[01:55:12] you said you know what I didn't do it I didn't hold the line I my character broke and I wasn't
[01:55:17] the person that I should have been at that moment and that's that's absolutely true but what's
[01:55:22] more important than the fact than that we all get to a point where we break is number one that
[01:55:29] everybody breaks and number two that doesn't mean it's over that just me that's just it's a bump
[01:55:34] in the road it's a bump in the road and you got to rebuild from it you got to come back and you can
[01:55:38] you can do that and not only that but largely that bump in the road builds your character
[01:55:44] even further because you understand your limitations and you understand that you can overcome these things
[01:55:49] and you know back to the story of the prisons of war 591 of us came home and from that 591 men we
[01:55:58] produced 17 generals and six admels and most of us retired as senior grade military officers we went
[01:56:04] back to flying planes and commanding fleets and and battalions all over the world we have a
[01:56:09] bunch of congressmen two united state senators vice president and jacanity president or candidate
[01:56:14] all from 591 guys and and so and and we all felt like we'd fail we all felt like we'd given up
[01:56:23] but even because of that adversity you know we we came out stronger than ever before
[01:56:30] yeah I think this really goes also to the fact that I mean what you're saying is essentially
[01:56:37] the fact that you have to know you have to understand what your weaknesses are you really do and
[01:56:45] and you have to understand human beings and what human beings weaknesses are and for me you know
[01:56:52] and I've talked about this a ton on on this podcast you have to understand that there's that human
[01:56:57] beings are capable of doing very dark and horrible things and if you can't and if you can't
[01:57:02] recognize that you yourself are capable of the dark and horrible things and of the weak things
[01:57:09] well then you're not really being truthful with yourself and and with your existence really as a
[01:57:14] human being and you ignore those things and I think when you ignore those things I think that's when they sneak up on you
[01:57:20] I think you're right you know I think that's the crux of our real serious challenge with suicide
[01:57:26] within the veteran population and and I've worked on this and jams worked on this and and you've
[01:57:31] worked on it as well and what are the advantages we had as prisoners of war is that we
[01:57:39] that we exposed ourselves you know we recognize our weakness and and to a man we knew that we weren't
[01:57:45] as strong as we wanted to be and so just just that community that we built within the prison camp tapping
[01:57:54] on walls and tugging on wires and our secret codes very difficult to communicate with everybody else
[01:58:00] but we had leadership there that turned that that turned that whole thing around and
[01:58:06] and the leadership had weed him and you're not a victim and I'm a very junior officer there
[01:58:11] and I'm a Lieutenant J.G. and wait a minute I'm in a communist prison camp
[01:58:16] I'm leading to four open wounds I have no medical care and I'm starving I've been tortured
[01:58:23] I'm down 115 pounds and I'm not on the defensive I'm not a victim you pull up your big boy pants let's
[01:58:31] get on with this thing we got a word of fight and and and and so the leadership totally
[01:58:36] reap the the refocus the whole purpose of of our being there and that and and gave us a mission
[01:58:45] and I think that's one of the challenges we face when a guy gets out of the military or a gal
[01:58:49] and takes off that uniform he loses the purpose he loses that mission and he uses loses that
[01:58:57] community and he puts on a coat and tire you know puts on a golf shirt and goes out and tries to
[01:59:05] reconnect with people and it Jim is what you were talking about you know being in civilian clothes
[01:59:12] and Paris and you you were looking for some way to reconnect with with your unit and ironically
[01:59:20] here they come marching down the Champs-Alysée that Alito and and there you were back in uniform
[01:59:28] and and so you and you had a wrestling dattra you know you had a purpose a reason to live
[01:59:36] just because of the group that you were associated with and and whenever I speak publicly I you know
[01:59:44] I challenge an audience to if you've got it if you know a veteran you know talk to them you know
[01:59:50] give them a purpose you know invite them to enter into your house your club or your church and
[01:59:58] it make make a difference and that way you can serve your country by serving those who serve their country
[02:00:04] yeah it's interesting you know Jim you kind of you kind of made that joking comment you know
[02:00:12] hey Truman drop the bomb and and ruined a perfectly good war and we all laughed at it but
[02:00:17] we all also kind of understand that there's some level of of reality to that and you think when
[02:00:24] you're in the military and I always you know I was I was talk about the fact that when I joined
[02:00:28] the Navy it was 1990 and I just missed the first Gulf War and like I was completely dismayed by that
[02:00:34] because you know there hadn't been a war since basically since Vietnam so it'd been 20 years
[02:00:40] and I'm thinking okay there was there was my shot to fight in the war and I just missed it and and
[02:00:45] so that that what you're talking about of hey you feel like this is your purpose and and this is what
[02:00:52] I'm supposed to be doing with my life and it's a higher purpose and it's a higher cause and it's
[02:00:57] something that is is bigger than you and so when you're a part of it it feels good and you want to
[02:01:03] participate and you want to help and then when it's over you look around and you go wait a second
[02:01:08] what's my higher purpose now and and I think you're right that's where people get in a trouble
[02:01:12] because they're so tied to their old higher purpose and they can't transition to the new one
[02:01:18] and you know I get great feedback from from that's all the time that they do they open up they go okay
[02:01:23] what am I gonna do that's that's what I'm looking at what's your next mission going to be
[02:01:26] what is and you know what your next mission might be being a good dad right and that might be your next
[02:01:30] mission you know your next mission might be, it might be building airplane hangers you know
[02:01:35] you don't know what your next mission is going to be but find out what your next mission is going to
[02:01:40] be make it something productive make it something that's gonna impact you know at least
[02:01:45] you and your family and get good at it.
[02:01:47] Even if you pick something that's somewhat selfish
[02:01:49] and you say, hey, I wanna surf on every continent.
[02:01:55] Okay, that sounds like a good mission.
[02:01:56] Actually, that sounds like a really good mission.
[02:01:58] I might have to participate in that one.
[02:02:00] But you come up with something,
[02:02:01] you can hear my mission.
[02:02:02] And this is what I'm gonna do with it.
[02:02:03] And this is how I'm gonna go forward.
[02:02:05] But yeah, I think that the lack of purpose
[02:02:07] and the lack of mission that guys stumble into
[02:02:10] is problematic and it is problematic too,
[02:02:13] because in the military, it's,
[02:02:15] I don't wanna make this sound the wrong way
[02:02:17] because I always talk about the fact that for us,
[02:02:19] we didn't get tasked missions.
[02:02:22] Like when I was in Iraq,
[02:02:24] there was no higher up telling me,
[02:02:25] you guys are gonna take this target
[02:02:26] or you guys are gonna take that happen occasionally,
[02:02:28] probably less than 5% of the time,
[02:02:30] most of the time we developed our own missions.
[02:02:32] But overall, when you're in the military,
[02:02:35] you have a broad mission that you're trying to accomplish,
[02:02:38] which again is for societal good.
[02:02:42] And so when that disappears, guess what?
[02:02:44] You have some autonomy now.
[02:02:45] Now what are you gonna choose as your next mission?
[02:02:47] And what are you gonna do?
[02:02:49] How are you gonna improve yourself?
[02:02:50] How are you gonna improve your life?
[02:02:51] Your families, your communities,
[02:02:53] or your countries, or the world?
[02:02:55] What are you gonna do to make it better?
[02:02:56] And you see the vets that are out there
[02:02:58] that are doing that, and they go.
[02:03:01] They excel.
[02:03:01] They excel.
[02:03:02] You know when I was in the hospital,
[02:03:03] like great lakes after the war,
[02:03:06] I was in the hospital up there.
[02:03:07] I mean, I didn't have any serious problems,
[02:03:09] but I was in a debriefing thing.
[02:03:11] But I had figured out in that hospital,
[02:03:14] and even on the way home,
[02:03:16] that my next stage of life is going,
[02:03:19] I'm going to try to forget all that six years
[02:03:22] of in that prison camp, that six years of pain.
[02:03:26] And I even had it figured out,
[02:03:28] I'm gonna go to some little town in the middle of nowhere.
[02:03:30] Where they've never heard a Charlie Plum,
[02:03:31] and if they have, I'll change my name,
[02:03:33] because I don't want anybody knowing my history.
[02:03:36] I want to slide back into the shadows of life.
[02:03:40] And I was serious about that.
[02:03:42] You know, my high school sweetheart had just
[02:03:46] filed for divorce three months before I came home.
[02:03:49] And so I was, you know, I mean, I felt free,
[02:03:53] and I felt energized, but I really didn't want to have
[02:03:57] anything to do with the Vietnam War
[02:03:59] or any of the pain that I had faced there.
[02:04:00] So I saw no value in it.
[02:04:03] And so I was the first guy back from the war
[02:04:07] in the Midwest, and so the news media,
[02:04:10] you know, really wanted to talk to me.
[02:04:12] And so I found myself surrounded by about 150 photographers
[02:04:16] and reporters in the basement of that hospital.
[02:04:19] And it told my story.
[02:04:20] And on the way back up to my hospital room,
[02:04:22] just as the elevator door is closed,
[02:04:24] this young reporter came up to me.
[02:04:27] And I'm nose to nose with this young guy,
[02:04:29] but he's got lines of anguish in his brow
[02:04:31] and tears in his eyes.
[02:04:32] And he said, Mr. Plum, you really got to me in there.
[02:04:35] He said, I've had a miserable year, my family's falling
[02:04:38] apart, my job is terrible.
[02:04:40] He said, even wondered if I wanted to go on living.
[02:04:44] He said, you've given me hope.
[02:04:47] Well, I hadn't intended to give anybody any hope.
[02:04:49] I'm just telling my story here, you know,
[02:04:51] and it surprised me that there was some value
[02:04:56] in the experience.
[02:04:58] And so, and so I said, well, if in fact,
[02:05:03] that the pain of that experience can help one person,
[02:05:07] you know, in life, then maybe there is a purpose to it.
[02:05:12] And so, so I wrote a book, my autobiography,
[02:05:15] and I started to promote that book.
[02:05:17] And I found that, yes, there's a lot of connection
[02:05:21] with people with challenges.
[02:05:23] And you don't have to be in a military.
[02:05:25] It had a challenge.
[02:05:26] And while my experience might have been a little more dramatic,
[02:05:30] you know, than most, and an interesting story.
[02:05:32] Just a little.
[02:05:33] Just a little.
[02:05:34] Just a little.
[02:05:35] It's still, you know, the challenges I faced
[02:05:40] were the challenges that, you know,
[02:05:42] that a single mother trying to make ends meet makes,
[02:05:45] you know, the frustration and the loneliness
[02:05:47] and the lack of confidence
[02:05:51] and the feeling that you're not measuring up.
[02:05:53] And you know, all of these things,
[02:05:55] these are common human feelings.
[02:05:57] You know what to be in a prison camp,
[02:05:59] to be in prison.
[02:06:00] You know.
[02:06:01] That's a great, well actually I was curious
[02:06:04] because I never heard before about the flat houses
[02:06:08] and that the bombers, the bomber crews were being sent
[02:06:12] to when they'd basically said,
[02:06:15] all right, we're done right now.
[02:06:16] I mean, what was the casualty rate of the bomber crews?
[02:06:20] It was something completely insane, wasn't it?
[02:06:23] Well, it was.
[02:06:24] They had a 25-mission requirement
[02:06:27] and the percentages said they couldn't make it.
[02:06:31] Now we're talking in early 43,
[02:06:34] the started the heavy bomb and things, late 42.
[02:06:38] So let me just focus in on that for one second
[02:06:41] just to explain to everyone what that means
[02:06:42] because I did know about the 25.
[02:06:44] So if you were a bomber crew,
[02:06:47] you were flying in what, a B-17?
[02:06:50] B-17, B-24.
[02:06:52] A B-17 or B-24, big giant flying fortresses
[02:06:56] and they would get attacked ruthlessly attacked
[02:07:00] and they'd fly deep into France and on into Germany
[02:07:03] and they would get swarmed and attacked by German fighter pilots
[02:07:09] and also anti-aircraft guns from the ground.
[02:07:12] And so it was, it was hellish to get through
[02:07:16] and it was so bad that they said,
[02:07:19] okay, well, all you have to do is this many missions
[02:07:21] and the number was 25, which I did know that number.
[02:07:25] You had to make it through 25 of these bomber ones
[02:07:27] and you were done.
[02:07:28] You, that was it, you didn't have to do anymore.
[02:07:30] But you're saying the chances of actually making it
[02:07:34] through those 25 was minimal.
[02:07:36] Yeah, percentages were against you.
[02:07:39] Now sure, some people are gonna get through,
[02:07:41] some people are gonna be shot down on their first mission.
[02:07:44] They don't get a second mission.
[02:07:46] But, and this was the problem with the heavy bomber forces
[02:07:50] and we almost lost that one.
[02:07:53] I mean, we came close.
[02:07:54] Well, we were at the ragged edge and all,
[02:07:58] and I'm repeating what I learned as a youngster
[02:08:03] that that time trying to be an aviation cadet.
[02:08:06] Guys, we're hanging on by our fingertips.
[02:08:09] When you say we almost lost that one, you mean we almost
[02:08:12] had to stop the bombing campaign?
[02:08:13] Well, the British were after us,
[02:08:16] they had switched to light bombing for this very same reason.
[02:08:20] It's stay away from the fighters.
[02:08:23] And so our philosophy of Everett Bombar
[02:08:27] was back to General Mitchell in the early and 30s
[02:08:33] and late 20s, in fact early 20s,
[02:08:37] that the bombers will fight their way through.
[02:08:39] And that was the theory of the B-17.
[02:08:43] And I should know they were heavily armed,
[02:08:47] but they were up against the determined enemy.
[02:08:51] And there are 500 miles from home and German fighters,
[02:08:56] all they gotta do step out.
[02:08:58] They don't like what's going on bail out.
[02:09:01] They're coming down and we'll go get another airplane.
[02:09:04] But those were dark days.
[02:09:08] And they were dark days until the first fighters,
[02:09:13] the beep, the P-47s could only go so deep.
[02:09:17] What could they go like, 200 miles deep?
[02:09:19] That 200 miles, yes, and having that fuel to get home.
[02:09:24] And the rest of the times, the other 300 mile round trip
[02:09:27] or 400 extra miles were all the bombers by themselves.
[02:09:30] If it was 50 miles, it was hell.
[02:09:33] Once the fighters turned back.
[02:09:36] So they sent, they ended up with four groups of P-38s.
[02:09:41] And 38 was not ready to go to war over what Germany
[02:09:47] at that time at the altitude.
[02:09:48] We were having trouble with the airplane.
[02:09:50] And we didn't have the latest modifications to the airplane.
[02:09:55] So part of our problem was engine problems with the Allison
[02:10:01] engines, but they went anyway.
[02:10:04] And so then the 51 came along.
[02:10:07] The 51 had a British engine, which had been developed
[02:10:11] in that very same area.
[02:10:19] And they weren't having the cold.
[02:10:23] Their engine had been designed at Aubrey 60 degrees below zero.
[02:10:28] And so they matched the two up and so on late 43,
[02:10:32] they get the first group over there.
[02:10:33] And now there's a little hope.
[02:10:36] The airplane could go the hallway.
[02:10:37] The 38s had been going to go the whole way.
[02:10:40] But 38 had been modified for the Pacific.
[02:10:44] And there was no heat in the cockpit.
[02:10:46] And you're sitting up there.
[02:10:47] It's 60 degrees below zero.
[02:10:49] Freason in your tail off with the oxygen.
[02:10:52] The oxygen in the mass is actually frozen to your face.
[02:10:56] Heat came in.
[02:10:57] You had one warm spot in the whole cockpit.
[02:11:01] And that was your right foot.
[02:11:02] That's the way the heat came in.
[02:11:05] So everything else is freezing your pan and off.
[02:11:09] So we had problems.
[02:11:13] Luckily, the British engine in the 51 and North American's tremendous design,
[02:11:22] put together the airplane that could do the job.
[02:11:28] And then they could, it could be 51s.
[02:11:29] I scored in the whole, the whole way.
[02:11:31] And it goes around and goes someplace else.
[02:11:34] Wow.
[02:11:35] The 38 could do that.
[02:11:37] It had the fuel to do it.
[02:11:39] But again, there's an old story about the 38
[02:11:44] to kind of broke our heart.
[02:11:47] There was two great modifications to the P38.
[02:11:51] The 38 had altitude up with the bombers.
[02:11:54] And they're hit with fighters.
[02:11:56] You can get into a scrap.
[02:11:58] And the German rolls over.
[02:12:00] And they had explained the flick roll that I encountered.
[02:12:05] They'd do a flick roll in split S. Make a dive to the deck.
[02:12:09] If the 38 did that and tried to follow them,
[02:12:13] the airplane would accelerate into what we call a compressibility.
[02:12:18] And compressibility was nothing more than a shockwave off
[02:12:21] of the wing that killed it to all the control in your impenade.
[02:12:27] So you couldn't pull out.
[02:12:29] So all you could do is ride it down until you got into what we
[02:12:32] called the figure.
[02:12:36] Then your trim tab, if you set it properly,
[02:12:41] would gradually bring you out of that dive before you hit the ground.
[02:12:45] Some of them hit the ground.
[02:12:48] So we didn't have, we had a very slow rate of roll in the 38.
[02:12:53] So they developed ill-arron boost.
[02:12:58] So we could roll with anybody.
[02:13:03] They had the dive flap.
[02:13:05] So if you went in, you could actually hit the dive flap button.
[02:13:10] Put that airplane straight down and dive with anybody.
[02:13:13] It ate German fighter.
[02:13:15] So what Lockie did, they got 400 sets,
[02:13:20] shift sets of dive flaps, an aileron boost.
[02:13:24] And they put it on an air force, transport plane, and they sent it to England.
[02:13:31] It got intercepted off the English coast by the RIF.
[02:13:34] You didn't know anything about it.
[02:13:36] They thought it was a German condor for an engine air base shot at down.
[02:13:42] Oh, my God.
[02:13:43] There goes all of our improvements.
[02:13:46] And so what do you do now?
[02:13:48] It took quite a while to pull all those 400 units together and get them over there.
[02:13:54] So for the next couple months, the 38s are doing the same old thing.
[02:13:59] We don't have the improvement.
[02:14:00] If E51 comes along, thank God.
[02:14:04] And it can do the job.
[02:14:06] So it's all history.
[02:14:08] Yeah.
[02:14:09] E51s had trouble.
[02:14:10] I know of one that pulled out of a dive and a whole day on the engine.
[02:14:13] Fill out the airplane and the dive that killed.
[02:14:17] But they had engines quit.
[02:14:21] That was a single engine fighter.
[02:14:23] That's the problem.
[02:14:25] Somebody throws a rock dutch and it hits it right here.
[02:14:27] You're all done.
[02:14:29] So, but those were trying times.
[02:14:33] Yeah, I guess I was with all that, you know, thinking about these guys that were in those
[02:14:41] bomber crews that would need a break.
[02:14:43] And they say, OK, you need to go over here and not think about this.
[02:14:46] And it reminds me of talking about Dick Winners from the first the 506 band of brothers
[02:14:52] and what he would say when he would see guys were getting stressed out.
[02:14:54] He'd get them off the line, get them out of it and give them the rest that they need.
[02:15:01] And then I think there's a certain part of you that goes, OK, I need to not think about
[02:15:05] this right now.
[02:15:07] And then I think you got to say, OK, now I'm going to talk about this.
[02:15:10] And the fact that you get around, you're friends, and that's what a lot of people that
[02:15:14] listen to podcasts, a lot of veterans that listen to podcasts, they go, you know, now, you
[02:15:17] know, I've had my break, but now you're talking about this stuff and I appreciate it.
[02:15:21] And I, you bring, let's me know that I'm not the only guy that thinks this way or had those
[02:15:26] thoughts or, you know, went through this.
[02:15:28] And I think that's, that's good.
[02:15:30] So I think it's, I think you do need a break.
[02:15:32] And actually, that, now that I think about it, when I was in Ramadi, I had the book that
[02:15:37] I read every night was about face by Colonel David Hackworth and I read it every single
[02:15:40] night, every single night, and then about three months into deployment, I wanted to, I
[02:15:46] didn't want to think about, you know, I didn't want to go to bed thinking about, you
[02:15:50] know, the war and war.
[02:15:52] And so there was a random book sitting around and I picked up, it was actually a book called
[02:15:57] the Electric Coolade Acid Test, which is about the hippies in, it's written by Tom Wolf,
[02:16:03] who wrote the right stuff.
[02:16:04] Sure.
[02:16:05] But it's a great book.
[02:16:06] And it was so completely outside of what I was doing that it gave me, you know, like a
[02:16:12] mental break.
[02:16:13] And I read that book and it was, you know, it took me four days to read that book.
[02:16:17] And I got done and I put it away and pulled about face back out and I continued on.
[02:16:22] But I just needed a little bit of a breather, right?
[02:16:24] Just a little bit of a mental breather.
[02:16:26] And I guess hippies and LSD provided me with that.
[02:16:30] Reading about those hippies and LSD provided me with this mental break.
[02:16:36] And it was actually, it's a very interesting book and it shows the mentality that those
[02:16:42] people had, you know, which was the way he summed it up was, was me, me, me, me, everything's
[02:16:51] about me.
[02:16:52] And that was what was good for me to read this book.
[02:16:54] I'm like, okay, that's not how I want to be with my life.
[02:16:58] It's not about me.
[02:16:59] It's about, you know, what we're trying to do here.
[02:17:02] So yeah, I think sometimes people need a mental break.
[02:17:04] I can't even imagine what was going on in one of those flat houses with those guys.
[02:17:09] That's like an R&R for you.
[02:17:12] It's an R&R and they were run by the Red Cross and I was at Maltzord Manor, which was
[02:17:19] right on the Tim's River.
[02:17:21] Of course, I was there when we had the ice storms.
[02:17:26] And in fact, when I left the black house to go back to Paris, I couldn't get a ride across
[02:17:34] the channel and just what our friend Len Miller got a ride and disappeared.
[02:17:41] And so I'm trying to get across the channel to Paris and it's between Christmas and
[02:17:49] New Years.
[02:17:51] And I went out to several of the bases around London to get an ATC aircraft to go to Paris
[02:18:01] and they're all grounded.
[02:18:04] And so I went down to Southampton and two ships had just commended to Southampton that were
[02:18:13] going on to Lahar.
[02:18:15] And so I got on board and they were hospital ships with complete complement of general
[02:18:24] hospitals, like two or three different general hospitals and full of nurses.
[02:18:31] And so New Years Eve, we're on this ship with all these nurses.
[02:18:39] And we're on, I guess you'd call it, battle stations because the e-boats from the Germany
[02:18:48] boats were operating in the channel and we're going across from Southampton to Lahar and
[02:18:57] all these nervous nurses from the US needed comfort.
[02:19:02] Did you get a medal for that?
[02:19:08] No.
[02:19:09] So anyway, that was a story.
[02:19:14] Now, just how I got to the end of this story, I forgot.
[02:19:18] I don't even care anymore.
[02:19:19] I picked up a couple of things when we were talking.
[02:19:27] And when I got shot down, you read this citation.
[02:19:33] Well, I didn't know anything about that citation.
[02:19:37] I had gotten my fany shot off.
[02:19:40] I was not happy.
[02:19:42] I said, I kept thinking, what could I have done different that I could have stayed in that
[02:19:48] bite longer?
[02:19:52] I never came up with the answer.
[02:19:56] What could I have done?
[02:19:58] So for about from September to like, at this orders to go to Paris, the spots is head quarters.
[02:20:07] I was not the highest.
[02:20:10] I didn't think much of myself.
[02:20:12] I was why I couldn't have done a better job.
[02:20:22] Reading that citation and then belonging to a group called the Legion of Baller, which
[02:20:30] there are not too many Air Force guys left.
[02:20:35] And I read what these people have done.
[02:20:43] These ground, because in fact, what am I very close friends and had the distinguished service
[02:20:44] cross and they just operated it to Congressional Medal of Honor.
[02:20:48] And he's gotten quite a bit of publicity.
[02:20:50] And he was in Vietnam.
[02:20:53] And my comment when I saw that he had gotten the Congressional Medal of Honor at this
[02:21:00] late date, that was God.
[02:21:04] But he finally read his citation.
[02:21:08] And when you think that what all of these guys did, a lot of the fellows in the Legion
[02:21:18] of Baller are medics.
[02:21:21] What they did in combat conditions and got to just English curves across the Navy,
[02:21:28] cross and so forth.
[02:21:30] I read my citation, it took six minutes.
[02:21:35] That's all.
[02:21:37] And then I read a book called I'm No Hero.
[02:21:40] And I think Charlie Poem, six years of bat, my six minutes for me.
[02:21:52] I mean, what he went through is just unbelievable to me.
[02:21:56] And so don't give me the monk about him.
[02:21:59] I'm no hero, he's my hero.
[02:22:02] But it's deep thought.
[02:22:09] Thanks for that, Jam.
[02:22:10] I appreciate you're saying that.
[02:22:11] But let me toss one more question that you, Jaco, because Jim and I have both talked about
[02:22:17] getting shot down and feeling miserable.
[02:22:19] After your fight where you accidentally killed one of the Iraqi soldiers, but you felt
[02:22:24] pretty little about that.
[02:22:26] Yeah, that's about as bad as it gets.
[02:22:31] And it was a horrible situation.
[02:22:34] It was the fog of war.
[02:22:36] It was multiple units out on the battlefield.
[02:22:39] It was actually not me that shot an Iraqi soldier.
[02:22:44] It was one of my small teams that was in a position where amongst the confusion, they
[02:22:52] were assaulted by a friendly group of Iraqi soldiers with one.
[02:22:58] They had one Marine with them.
[02:23:01] And yeah, it's something that you can, it's hard to make definite statements or say,
[02:23:11] I know this for a fact, but there's pretty much not anything worse in war than friendly forces
[02:23:18] killing friendly forces.
[02:23:20] Because that's just as bad as it gets.
[02:23:22] And it's a real taboo in special operations for sure.
[02:23:26] It's a taboo in any.
[02:23:28] And I'll tell you, during the, during the, I guess we'll say the dry years in between Vietnam
[02:23:35] and the current wars were in.
[02:23:38] There was, we actually lost the understanding of how these things could happen.
[02:23:46] And no one really understood the fog of war anymore.
[02:23:49] And therefore we didn't train to it properly.
[02:23:52] And so when it happened, it was, it was like an unbelievable thing.
[02:23:59] It was so bad.
[02:24:00] It was the absolute worst thing that it could happen.
[02:24:03] Actually, I would say there'd be one more thing.
[02:24:05] You know, the, the person that was killed, the soldier that was killed was an Iraqi soldier.
[02:24:09] You know, if it had been a seal or an American, I guess that would make it one level higher
[02:24:13] from he, because I would have known the person.
[02:24:15] You know, in this case, it was an Iraqi soldier again, a tragic loss nonetheless.
[02:24:20] But, you know, how did I feel?
[02:24:22] It felt absolutely horrible.
[02:24:25] And the thing that, you know, the thing that changed the mindset for me was when I realized
[02:24:31] that as I sat there and, and reviewed, because, you know, my commanding officer was coming
[02:24:36] to inspect and review what had happened along with the investigating officer.
[02:24:41] And, you know, the thing that changed my mindset was, as I sat there and said, okay, who's
[02:24:47] fault is this?
[02:24:48] Who's fault is this?
[02:24:49] Who's fault is this?
[02:24:50] Who's fault is this?
[02:24:51] And I'm looking at all the different mistakes that were made by all the different units
[02:24:53] and all the different people.
[02:24:55] And as I'm looking to blame this on someone, it became very clear to me in a, like a
[02:24:59] bolt of lightning that there's only one person in charge of this and therefore there's only
[02:25:02] one person responsible for what happens out there.
[02:25:04] And that's me.
[02:25:06] And honestly, when I had that transition in thought and it was, it was the first moment
[02:25:15] that I felt actually okay.
[02:25:20] There's a horrible sinking feeling that you get in, in, in, in wartime situations.
[02:25:26] I guess you can get another time soon and I've talked about it with, with some of my friends.
[02:25:30] It's, it's like when something is just really horrible is happening.
[02:25:35] You get this, not in your stomach and this, it's, I've never felt it any other times,
[02:25:41] but when I was overseas, of, like this is, I have, it's, it's the most horrible feeling.
[02:25:49] And that was, that was the most severe I ever felt it was leading up to my own recognition
[02:25:59] that, you know what?
[02:26:00] And, and where that was coming from was the unknown and I didn't know how to react to it.
[02:26:05] And here I was, you know, Mr. Experience, Seal, Mr., you know, in charge of the task unit,
[02:26:10] whatever.
[02:26:11] And yet here I was going, how do I deal with this?
[02:26:14] And I didn't understand how to deal with it.
[02:26:16] And what I had to do is go to what I actually did know, which is if you're in a leadership position,
[02:26:21] you take responsibility for what happens.
[02:26:23] That's what you do.
[02:26:24] So, hey, that's what you do.
[02:26:27] And if, if they're going to fire you, you get fired.
[02:26:31] If they're going to reprimand you, you get reprimanded.
[02:26:33] If they're going to replace you with someone else, you get replaced, you salute, you do the best turn over you can.
[02:26:38] You try and do the, you know, give all the information you can.
[02:26:41] That's what you do.
[02:26:42] And as soon as I accepted that and looked at it and said, okay, well then, that not started to go away.
[02:26:49] And I realized that, okay, the real problem here is, is you, the way that you're looking at this.
[02:26:55] But, uh, and then the other big thing is once you admit what those, or, and you take ownership of those problems,
[02:27:02] and you actually, not just take ownership of the problems, but you say, here's the problems and here's what we're going to get them solved.
[02:27:08] Here's the standard operating procedures that we're now going to follow to make sure that this never happens again.
[02:27:14] Well, then people look at you and they go, okay, he's got a plan.
[02:27:18] He's not sitting here dodging the, the blame for this.
[02:27:22] He's actually taking ownership of the problems and he's going to get himself.
[02:27:25] And I think, you know, I've never had this conversation with my commanding officer about his reaction.
[02:27:32] But I could see it, you know, I could see it.
[02:27:34] And the fact that I, the fact that he said, okay, you know, let's make sure it doesn't happen again.
[02:27:39] I like the procedures that you're putting in place.
[02:27:41] Use caution, proceed.
[02:27:43] You know, where is I believe that if I would have said, well, what was my fault?
[02:27:47] It was his fault.
[02:27:48] And therefore, the other guy's fault, he would have said, okay, you need, you're not going to have this job anymore.
[02:27:52] And I think that's the same thing with life.
[02:27:54] You know, a minute that you're, you're looking around you and you're saying, hey, it's someone else's fault that this,
[02:27:58] that I'm in this bad situation.
[02:28:01] And again, you know what?
[02:28:02] Okay, there's things that happen.
[02:28:04] I get that there's things that happen to people.
[02:28:08] You mentioned one of them.
[02:28:09] You can get a disease that you can't control.
[02:28:11] You know, you can get, you can have a child get hit by a car.
[02:28:16] I mean, there's awful things that can happen that you can't have control over.
[02:28:20] But what you can have control over is how you proceed and how you go forward.
[02:28:25] And that's the part that you need to focus on because the, the opportunity to fix what happened in the past,
[02:28:30] it's gone.
[02:28:31] I'm sorry.
[02:28:33] There's no time machine.
[02:28:34] There's no way of going back.
[02:28:36] It's happened.
[02:28:36] It's gone.
[02:28:37] Okay, how are you going to move forward?
[02:28:39] Where are you going to go now?
[02:28:40] That's what you need to focus on.
[02:28:42] And I've said that about regret, too.
[02:28:43] People say, oh, you know, I live with no regrets.
[02:28:45] I'm like, oh, there's all kinds of things.
[02:28:47] I'll tell you, I regret, but I don't walk around with them because I can't do anything about them.
[02:28:51] Like, you know, maybe you would have maneuvered your aircraft a little bit different on September
[02:28:55] 16th, 1944.
[02:28:57] You've looked at it, maybe you couldn't, but maybe you could have, but you don't walk around
[02:29:01] carrying that because it doesn't matter anymore.
[02:29:03] And it's the same thing with the things I've been through.
[02:29:05] It's like, okay, look, I made mistakes.
[02:29:07] You made mistakes.
[02:29:08] We've all made mistakes.
[02:29:09] Okay, what are we going to do?
[02:29:10] Are we going to do all those and let them, you know, bear down on us and even things
[02:29:14] that we can't control.
[02:29:15] Maybe the mistake wasn't ours or something that we couldn't control.
[02:29:18] Not going to carry that.
[02:29:20] I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm not going to carry that regret.
[02:29:23] I'm going to say what, what can I do to move forward?
[02:29:25] And actually, there's a great guy just had on the podcast named Rob Jones.
[02:29:28] He's a Marine.
[02:29:30] He fought in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
[02:29:33] And he ended up, he was a bomb disposal digging for mines, a combat engineer.
[02:29:40] And he ended up finding a mine.
[02:29:42] And he found that mine, you know, with his own feet.
[02:29:45] And he lost both of his legs.
[02:29:47] And he said something that was, was awesome.
[02:29:51] He said, you know, you've got this weight that's bearing down on you.
[02:29:54] And he was sitting in a hospital bed.
[02:29:55] And he had this weight that was bearing down on him.
[02:29:57] Of he's going to live now the rest of his life with, you know, both legs, amputee, amputee
[02:30:02] it above the knee.
[02:30:04] And he, you know, he said, what am I going to do with this weight?
[02:30:08] Am I going to let it, am I going to let it push me down and bury me under the ground?
[02:30:13] Or am I going to use that weight to make myself stronger?
[02:30:16] And I think that's an incredible attitude to have.
[02:30:21] And by the way, he's about to run 31 marathons.
[02:30:23] It's 31 days.
[02:30:24] He's going to run 31 marathons in 31 days.
[02:30:27] Good.
[02:30:28] Yeah.
[02:30:29] Unbelievable.
[02:30:30] So, you know, the toughest flying that I ever did was in combat and support of the ground
[02:30:37] troops.
[02:30:38] And they'd bring us in with rockers or bombs or napoms.
[02:30:43] We didn't have any guns on that airplane.
[02:30:45] And but we knew that we had to get close, but not too close to the, to the friendlies,
[02:30:50] to be effective.
[02:30:51] So we couldn't put our weapons, you know, 40 clicks away and do it to get it all.
[02:30:59] But we get in too close to start sending them mustaches or those soldiers and Marines down
[02:31:04] there.
[02:31:05] And by the way, if you get too close, actually it goes way beyond sending mustaches.
[02:31:11] If you go too close, you can kill from the troops and again we're back to what we just
[02:31:14] thought about.
[02:31:15] So that's a nightmare.
[02:31:16] And it was done.
[02:31:17] You know, I mean, again, the fog of war.
[02:31:20] That's what happens.
[02:31:21] And it's really, really unfortunate.
[02:31:23] So I would get that not in my stomach.
[02:31:26] When era was called in to support ground troops and in fact, you know, torch off the smoke
[02:31:32] signal.
[02:31:33] And I'd look at the wind and try to figure out exactly how I can get in there close.
[02:31:37] And lots of times I would go below the frag pattern of the bomb I was dropping just so I could
[02:31:43] get more accuracy.
[02:31:46] And we all did that.
[02:31:47] You know, we weren't supposed to.
[02:31:48] But you know, an average bomb, you know, five in a pound bomb would have a frag pattern
[02:31:53] of 2400 feet above the ground.
[02:31:55] That's what you were flying through after you dropped the bomb.
[02:31:59] And we'd go below that just to get more accuracy.
[02:32:03] Because we knew that those guys were dependent on us.
[02:32:06] And boy, there were some happy facts.
[02:32:08] You know, after we, after we would support those ground troops.
[02:32:13] But it was, you know, it was pretty scary stuff.
[02:32:18] But back to your point about blaming other people.
[02:32:21] I had a coach early on that a very losing team.
[02:32:25] Sorry to say.
[02:32:26] But he would, he told us this because we'd start blaming other things for the problem.
[02:32:32] You know, yeah, we were away and we didn't, you know, the things weren't right.
[02:32:38] And so we blamed somebody for this or somebody that had the, you know, the riffs were
[02:32:42] called a bad call.
[02:32:45] It's not all that stuff.
[02:32:45] And he'd said, you know, said, the difference in success and failure in life is not the
[02:32:52] things around you.
[02:32:53] It's the choices you make about things around you.
[02:32:56] And you can blame everybody else for your problems.
[02:32:59] But in doing so, you give away control of your life.
[02:33:03] And I think that's the accountability issue that you're talking about.
[02:33:06] You know, is that there's, there's certainly freedom in discipline.
[02:33:10] There's also freedom in accountability, I think, because when you, like you say, you know,
[02:33:14] when you say, okay, yeah, lots of people made a lot of mistakes, but away, I was in charge.
[02:33:20] And so, you know, the owners is really on me.
[02:33:23] And I find that when I, when I practice taking, when I practice taking responsibility for
[02:33:32] some of the bad things that really weren't my fault.
[02:33:36] And I practice doing that.
[02:33:38] It frees me up.
[02:33:39] I think to let you know, to let a, um, freer life.
[02:33:43] Yeah, that's actually an interesting point because sometimes people, they, they hear, like,
[02:33:50] they'll read the book, extreme ownership that we wrote.
[02:33:52] And they go, okay, cool.
[02:33:53] All I need to do is take ownership of the problems.
[02:33:54] And then I'm, then I'm a good guy, right?
[02:33:56] They go, oh, you know, hey, these mistakes happen.
[02:33:59] This is my fault.
[02:34:00] You know, so let's get them fixed.
[02:34:02] And that actually doesn't work.
[02:34:04] Actually, and, and when I say, hey, there's all these mistakes that were made on the battlefield.
[02:34:09] And different people made actual mistakes.
[02:34:11] They made mistakes.
[02:34:12] Though the, the day we had that blue on blue, there was other people that made mistakes.
[02:34:17] What I'm saying isn't like, oh, those were my mistakes.
[02:34:20] Hey, it's my fault.
[02:34:21] No, no, no, what I'm saying is actually truthfully those mistakes were things that I should
[02:34:26] have, for seeing that I should have understood better, that I should have planned better, that
[02:34:30] I should have trained guys better for.
[02:34:33] They, they, they made the mistake.
[02:34:35] But the root problem of that mistake is my fault.
[02:34:38] It's not just saying, hey, my boss states, it's, you know, oh, yeah, that was my fault.
[02:34:43] No, no, no, and actually is my fault.
[02:34:44] And I have this conversation too, where people say, well, what if I do, what do I do
[02:34:49] if I tell my employees, oh, guys, it was my fault.
[02:34:53] And then my employees say, yeah, that's right.
[02:34:55] It was your fault.
[02:34:56] And the people don't know what to do.
[02:34:58] And I said, well, it is your fault.
[02:35:03] That's what I'm saying.
[02:35:04] I'm not saying this so that it makes people not look at you and blame no, no, and
[02:35:08] someone says, if I say Charlie, we screwed up this mission.
[02:35:11] It was my fault.
[02:35:12] And you go, that's right.
[02:35:12] It was your fault.
[02:35:13] I don't go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what
[02:35:16] works.
[02:35:17] I say Charlie, I was the commander of this mission.
[02:35:19] I didn't give you enough information.
[02:35:20] I didn't, I didn't review your plan well enough.
[02:35:23] I didn't give you the training that you needed.
[02:35:24] I didn't give you the support that you needed.
[02:35:25] That was my fault.
[02:35:27] That is what, and here is what I'm going to do to fix it.
[02:35:29] So when I look at you and say, hey, this is my fault that this happened, and you say
[02:35:32] you're right, it was.
[02:35:33] I go exactly.
[02:35:35] These are the things I'm going to do to fix it. Here's where the way we're going to do this
[02:35:38] from now on.
[02:35:39] Here's some procedures we're going to put in place so that this doesn't happen.
[02:35:42] So yes, extreme ownership is not by any stretch on a skate patch.
[02:35:48] It's not.
[02:35:49] In fact, when you take ownership, you shut the hatch and you walk there.
[02:35:52] You're not getting out.
[02:35:54] The only way to get out is to find solution for the problems and move forward.
[02:35:57] So it's an interesting, it's interesting.
[02:36:00] So that brings me up to civilian life. Now you've talked about a mission and having something
[02:36:07] out in front of you.
[02:36:09] Well, I got off active duty in 1948, June.
[02:36:13] Exactly two years before Korea started.
[02:36:17] And my father and law who actually became almost like a father to me, we'd, by that
[02:36:24] time, we'd been married for three years.
[02:36:29] He was deeply involved in the paper industry.
[02:36:32] He was president of Western wax paper here in Los Angeles.
[02:36:37] He had sold the company to crown Zellor back.
[02:36:42] His best friend was Richard McDonald who was an executive vice president of Crown Zellor
[02:36:48] back.
[02:36:50] And between the two of them, they found this little paper company.
[02:36:57] And they're going to take care of their son and laws and son.
[02:37:01] And so Dick McDonald got off active duty as an engineer in the army before I did.
[02:37:12] So he arrived at the paper company, maybe almost a year before I did.
[02:37:18] And I had put my all the money I had into this company before, well, I was still an active
[02:37:26] duty.
[02:37:27] So I come home in June, 48.
[02:37:31] And it's 4th of July coming up.
[02:37:33] And my father and law takes me down and we buy three civilian suits.
[02:37:40] And all of a sudden I'm a civilian and I'm going to go work for this little company and
[02:37:45] Dick McDonald was running with company because he was there a year before.
[02:37:51] But we had a partner in this company.
[02:37:54] And so I go down and I go to work.
[02:37:57] And boy, I'm because I'm going to be technically aligned and minded.
[02:38:02] They put me in charge of the operation, the plan operation.
[02:38:07] So now I'm a civilian and I'm working hard.
[02:38:11] And it goes for about three months.
[02:38:13] And then I begin to notice that we get an order in.
[02:38:18] And we, by that time we had maybe 50 employees.
[02:38:21] We were making paper napkins and shelf paper and all these little items we were what was
[02:38:27] called a paper converter.
[02:38:29] And so I noticed in running the plant that we get an order in and I'd look at the inventory
[02:38:36] and we'd had so much paper back in the inventory and I go back and check it and we ain't
[02:38:41] got it.
[02:38:43] And so now what's wrong?
[02:38:44] And so we had a little meeting and each side, well, maybe we'd better take an inventory
[02:38:49] and see what's in the back of a plant there.
[02:38:52] And it turns out that our partner who actually had control of the company was definitely
[02:39:00] afraid to admit that he had been losing money.
[02:39:05] And he wasn't dishonest or anything.
[02:39:07] He just didn't want to admit it.
[02:39:09] And so to cover the losses he had inflated the inventory.
[02:39:15] So now we have this big meeting.
[02:39:19] 90 days into being a civilian.
[02:39:23] And we take the inventory and we add all this up and Dick McDonnell and I, oh, crowned
[02:39:30] Zeloback Corporation about $20,000.
[02:39:35] That's $19,48.
[02:39:37] And let me tell you $20,000 is one hell of a lot of money.
[02:39:44] Wow.
[02:39:45] And this is when a house would cost what $500,000.
[02:39:47] Oh, yeah.
[02:39:48] Wow.
[02:39:49] So now what do we do?
[02:39:54] Well, the first thing we do is, well, we're welcome to the business world.
[02:39:59] We work in the business world.
[02:40:02] We decide that we'd better do something.
[02:40:07] And our father and my father-in-law Richard McDonald's father said, well, what are you going
[02:40:16] to do?
[02:40:17] Well, the first thing we had to do is you had to go up and talk to Crown Zeloback
[02:40:21] in San Francisco.
[02:40:23] And so in order to do that, I had to buy a top coat and a hat.
[02:40:28] Because you didn't go to San Francisco on a business meeting without having a hat and
[02:40:34] a top coat.
[02:40:36] And so we get on the train and we go to San Francisco and we're plotting the whole way up
[02:40:43] there up.
[02:40:44] What are we going to tell them?
[02:40:46] I had no idea.
[02:40:48] And I got off the train of the station up there.
[02:40:51] Got a taxi and we get down to the Sanson Street to this big beautiful buildings.
[02:40:56] It's Crown Zeloback.
[02:40:58] And I'm wearing my hat, my new top coat.
[02:41:02] And I'm going to see Mr Zeloback himself.
[02:41:07] And just as I walk in the front door, some got them pinching.
[02:41:11] I'll put both, let's go.
[02:41:14] Right down across my brain, brand new top coat.
[02:41:18] Now the world can't be any worse than this.
[02:41:23] Now what are we doing?
[02:41:25] Well, we had our meeting with Mr Zeloback and he was very, very, very, very, very, very, very,
[02:41:32] gracious.
[02:41:34] He said, was when he was going to pay us the $20,000.
[02:41:40] So we said, well, we're going to work on it.
[02:41:43] And we did.
[02:41:44] We worked very hard for about two years.
[02:41:47] And we finally began to make some money getting ahead and career started.
[02:41:54] The 25th of June.
[02:42:02] About a week later, the fellow walks into our office and he said, we have a problem from the
[02:42:08] US government.
[02:42:10] And he said, you know, we have to build up our supplies.
[02:42:17] And one thing that we just can't seem to solve is toilet tissue for k-rashings.
[02:42:27] Little packet toilet tissue for the little piece of paper around it too.
[02:42:33] And so he said, we got one machine that belongs to one of the paper companies.
[02:42:38] And he said, we got that machine working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
[02:42:45] And we're not getting enough toilet tissue into these k-rashings.
[02:42:50] What can you do?
[02:42:52] I don't know how in the heck you found us, but anyway you did.
[02:42:55] So we took a look at it.
[02:42:58] And we figured that we could go to crowns our back and get in-or-fold tissue paper.
[02:43:04] And you could sit down and you could flick 20 sheets of in-or-fold, make two folds in
[02:43:12] it.
[02:43:13] And then we had to have a tube.
[02:43:15] And so our superintendent, I went out and we bought a little machine and made a nickel
[02:43:22] pack for dollars worth of nickels, a tube, 20 nickel.
[02:43:27] We made the tube and we cut it in half.
[02:43:30] Now we got a tube to put the 20 sheets in.
[02:43:34] And so I sit down for about an hour and I fold the paper and they time me and they figured
[02:43:40] it was rough as I am.
[02:43:44] If I can do it that much in an hour, then a young lady could do it.
[02:43:50] So we hired about 50 gals.
[02:43:54] And we put them to work and making these little toilet tissue wraps and putting the tube on
[02:44:00] it and throw it in a box and we put them on piecework.
[02:44:04] And they were doing very well.
[02:44:12] In fact, we were out producing Scott Tissue's machine almost immediately and these little
[02:44:14] gals down in East Los Angeles were making more money than anybody else in East Los Angeles
[02:44:20] on piecework.
[02:44:22] And so everything's going great.
[02:44:23] We're making money.
[02:44:24] We're paying off the balance of the $20,000 way out two years later.
[02:44:31] And the guy walks into the office, he came into my office and says, you know, he said,
[02:44:36] we got a situation here and he had some of my, it's packs.
[02:44:41] And he said, I'd like to see your operation.
[02:44:46] So we took him out and planted and he picked up some of these tubes and he looked at
[02:44:49] and took him apart, counted the tissues in front of me and they were all perfect.
[02:44:54] And he said, I got something to show you.
[02:45:00] And Paul's little notes out and he said, just read him.
[02:45:05] And here's his little note written at hand writing in this tube.
[02:45:10] And these young ladies have been writing these little notes and putting them inside the
[02:45:17] tissue and they left nothing to your imagination.
[02:45:23] And he says, can you imagine some GI in a box hole in the rain, taking this apart
[02:45:36] and reading this note, how is he going to feel?
[02:45:43] Oh, this is both.
[02:45:45] What are we going to do?
[02:45:47] What are we, he says, why don't we just leave it alone?
[02:45:51] Let him keep on doing it.
[02:45:54] That has to be him or own.
[02:45:57] Anyway, that's how we paid off the $20.
[02:46:00] So believe me, that two years are trying to pay that off.
[02:46:07] That military training that I had really was very helpful.
[02:46:15] It must be a museum somewhere that's looking for those two.
[02:46:22] You know, I have one.
[02:46:23] It's not original.
[02:46:24] Somebody picked it up after it must have been for a bit long.
[02:46:30] They picked it up more producing.
[02:46:32] So I just, I have one of my doubts.
[02:46:35] This is a reminder.
[02:46:37] But it's, you know, I have an emission.
[02:46:42] I got a mission real quick.
[02:46:46] And it's, there was a very discouraging one to think of going $20,000 from that.
[02:46:53] Well over twice what I paid for my house.
[02:46:58] I just looked at my watch.
[02:46:59] We've been going for about two hours and 45 minutes.
[02:47:04] I say we wrap up this run echo you got anything else.
[02:47:09] Have you said anything today?
[02:47:10] No.
[02:47:11] Okay.
[02:47:12] Do you have anything to add?
[02:47:13] Yeah, I do.
[02:47:14] When I lived in Honolulu, I had a motor scooter as well.
[02:47:18] Really?
[02:47:19] Crashed it.
[02:47:20] Didn't break my leg.
[02:47:21] That's relating to you.
[02:47:24] But yeah, they can get you.
[02:47:26] You feel so free with it and you want to distance and yeah.
[02:47:32] Be careful on the scooter.
[02:47:34] Oh yeah, for sure.
[02:47:35] Touching Honolulu.
[02:47:36] Go everywhere.
[02:47:37] Yep.
[02:47:38] That's it.
[02:47:41] Thank you both very, very much.
[02:47:42] Oh, hey, proud to be with you.
[02:47:44] Charlie Pum sir, anything else you want to say?
[02:47:46] I think we covered it all really great being with you guys.
[02:47:50] I think the transfer of our, not necessarily our knowledge but our, our war stories, but just the philosophy.
[02:47:58] You know, the we're coming up with because it, it spans the test of time, I think.
[02:48:05] And we'll continue to span the test of time.
[02:48:09] You know, the accountability issue, the, the face your fears issue, the making choices issue,
[02:48:17] the refusal to blame other people if you're a problem, you know, take control of your life and it's just not just a military thing.
[02:48:25] I think it's true with, with our kids and it's true with students and politicians and all, all manners of our society.
[02:48:34] Just, I think needs a, a little shot in all of the, of accountability.
[02:48:42] I agree.
[02:48:43] Well, I agree with that.
[02:48:44] And I think that, you know, meeting Charlie and what a wonderful,
[02:48:49] sport person he is.
[02:48:51] He's actually got me into a position that I had to talk in front of the crowd of these times.
[02:48:59] And I always try to get in first because I, I don't want to follow it.
[02:49:03] People will be walking now.
[02:49:07] So, well, well, they're captive by one of the talk to, but I would love to be able to read some of the, as you are doing,
[02:49:17] read some of these young people who, who, who, not that, they're, just because they're not thinking the way I think, but I think they're losing something, they're losing something that this great country has given to a novel a lot of people.
[02:49:41] I, I feel that I'd like to reach them and I can't, and I think you're reaching them. I think Charlie's reaching them.
[02:49:49] You have to. You're reaching them.
[02:49:51] But there's so much we could say.
[02:49:54] And my granddaughter just graduated from the University of Michigan four years.
[02:50:01] And it's pretty liberal school.
[02:50:04] And we, we pay a lot of money in our center, kids to school and sometimes they get some wrong thoughts and at least I think they're wrong. Maybe they're not.
[02:50:14] Maybe they're right.
[02:50:16] But I don't think so.
[02:50:18] And so, I think the work you're doing and Charlie's is only, and the three of you are doing is so, so important for the future.
[02:50:33] Well, obviously, thank you for coming for coming on the show, both of you.
[02:50:38] It's, it's such an honor to be sitting here with you guys.
[02:50:42] And, and also, we wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't, you know, for, for men like you that stood up and fought.
[02:50:51] And that's why we're here. And that's why we have the freedom to be here, to do this and the freedom to try and pass that information on.
[02:51:00] So people understand what kind of sacrifices were made so that we can live in this amazing country with this incredible amount of opportunity to do just about anything you want.
[02:51:13] And whether that's, take care of your family or go out and build some kind of a corporate empire.
[02:51:20] You can do it here and you can be happy in any one of those categories.
[02:51:24] And it's amazing.
[02:51:26] So thank you for coming on.
[02:51:28] And again, I think if it wasn't for generations of men like you answering the call to fight, then our great nation would have perished long ago, and it would have perished to tyranny, and it would have perished to darkness.
[02:51:52] But because of you and men like you, we do live in freedom.
[02:52:00] And we provide hope and light to the world.
[02:52:05] So thank you both for giving that to us.
[02:52:10] So we wrapped up with Charlie Plum and with Jim Kunkl in the hangers.
[02:52:25] I got a little off track at the end there.
[02:52:28] I know that we were going to mention, at least some social media and Charlie Plum's information.
[02:52:36] I failed to do that. We're now back in the studio to do that right now.
[02:52:40] So if anybody wants to link up with Captain Charlie Plum, you can find him on Twitter.
[02:52:51] He is at Captain Captain Plum Plum.
[02:52:56] So C-A-P-T-P-L-U-M-B. That's on Twitter. He's also Charlie Plum on Facebook or you can go to CharliePlum.com if you want to get in touch with him.
[02:53:10] Also, if you do want to find either myself or Echo Charles, you can find us also on Twitter, on Instagram, and also on the Facebook.
[02:53:24] You can find us there. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocca Willink.
[02:53:29] And if you want to support this podcast in any way, Echo, how can we do that?
[02:53:34] Anyways, keep this brief. Try to origin.
[02:53:40] Originmain.com main the state. So originmain.com.
[02:53:45] Good stuff. You're all made in America from the cotton.
[02:53:50] The actual raw cotton to the material to make it.
[02:53:54] All the way into what shirts, pants, geese, is geese their flagship kind of...
[02:54:02] Faction, yes. That's the origin of origin. This is to make a geese in America.
[02:54:08] But now we're making all kinds of stuff.
[02:54:10] It's a cool stuff anyway. Go to the website, check those ones up.
[02:54:13] Compression gear. Also.
[02:54:15] Yeah.
[02:54:16] Now just rash guards. Yeah, compression gear.
[02:54:20] Are we calling the rash guards compression gear? I don't know.
[02:54:24] You were going to have to figure that one out.
[02:54:26] Compression gear sort of sounds all technical.
[02:54:28] Rask guards sort of the reality, the scenario, in the surfing situation.
[02:54:32] Yeah. So both whatever you like.
[02:54:34] You know what we mean. You know what we're coming from all that one.
[02:54:38] Ultimately, yeah.
[02:54:40] Also.
[02:54:42] Superkrill.
[02:54:44] That's Jocelyn superkrill.
[02:54:46] So krill oil.
[02:54:48] That's out.
[02:54:50] Yeah.
[02:54:50] Origin main.
[02:54:52] And then you click on labs, right?
[02:54:54] Yeah.
[02:54:54] The labs tab.
[02:54:56] And then you got a little bar.
[02:54:56] You'll see it.
[02:54:58] Yeah.
[02:54:58] Go there.
[02:54:58] Good origin main.com.
[02:55:00] And then a bunch of people pre-ordered it or did it.
[02:55:02] So what?
[02:55:02] They should start.
[02:55:04] Oh, it's made in the mail there.
[02:55:04] Get in it.
[02:55:05] People have it now.
[02:55:06] Oh, dang.
[02:55:06] Okay.
[02:55:07] Yeah.
[02:55:08] And yeah.
[02:55:08] If you want more, you can get it there.
[02:55:10] Yeah.
[02:55:11] And join warfare.
[02:55:12] That's a good one too.
[02:55:14] So if you got this blend, you got the,
[02:55:16] the, the, the double, you know,
[02:55:18] situation.
[02:55:20] That's ultimately the kit, right?
[02:55:22] The joint maintenance.
[02:55:24] Excellent.
[02:55:25] It's kit.
[02:55:26] That's it.
[02:55:27] Yeah.
[02:55:28] Boom.
[02:55:29] And then yeah.
[02:55:30] Like I said, geez,
[02:55:30] rash guards.
[02:55:31] All kinds of cool stuff.
[02:55:32] Just going there.
[02:55:33] And that's a good way to support.
[02:55:34] Also fitness gear, kettlebells.
[02:55:36] You know how like you mentioned this.
[02:55:38] And I posted a little Instagram video of me.
[02:55:41] I was like, you know, you said,
[02:55:43] I'll random.
[02:55:44] Yeah, I ran.
[02:55:45] I'm walking through that.
[02:55:46] I saw that Instagram.
[02:55:47] That was a, I'll give you credit.
[02:55:49] That was a very good Instagram video.
[02:55:51] I liked it.
[02:55:52] That actually, that is exactly what that was.
[02:55:56] It was when you said, yeah, I keep my,
[02:55:58] Yeah, I just do a snatch.
[02:56:00] Yeah, I just do a clean and jerk clean and jerk.
[02:56:02] Yeah.
[02:56:02] So that's what it was.
[02:56:03] You know, you walk by it.
[02:56:04] You notice it.
[02:56:05] Boom.
[02:56:05] Hit it.
[02:56:06] Yeah.
[02:56:06] That thing was calling you out.
[02:56:07] You know,
[02:56:07] who's to call about who now.
[02:56:12] But I will admit now that I have like the whole set.
[02:56:13] Pretty much.
[02:56:14] Champ.
[02:56:15] Where Wolf.
[02:56:16] Gorilla 72 pounds.
[02:56:18] Bigfoot 90 pounds.
[02:56:19] They're all out there right away.
[02:56:21] You know, right where I made that video.
[02:56:23] I feel the same way, is you want to walk by you.
[02:56:25] You just, you kind of want to.
[02:56:26] And that's good for you.
[02:56:27] Yeah.
[02:56:28] Unless you're all super cold and stiff and then you want
[02:56:31] to grab the 90 pounds.
[02:56:32] That's not good for you.
[02:56:33] Go a little lighter.
[02:56:34] Yeah.
[02:56:34] Sure stiff.
[02:56:35] Yeah.
[02:56:36] Anyway.
[02:56:36] Anyway, point there being a digress.
[02:56:40] Anyway, I get my kettlebells from on it.
[02:56:44] So, kettlebells are cool.
[02:56:46] Of course, I'm not going to go into a whole kettlebell thing.
[02:56:49] No, I'm not going to.
[02:56:50] But if you want the cooler kettlebells
[02:56:52] that kettlebells the artistic ones,
[02:56:55] I like the on-it ones.
[02:56:58] The brunt, where we'll find out
[02:56:59] because my favorite one is dope.
[02:57:01] You can get the regular ones too.
[02:57:02] Anyway, also a bunch of other stuff,
[02:57:04] the maces, battle ropes, like any kind of,
[02:57:07] kind of the functional train is,
[02:57:10] we call it functional stuff.
[02:57:12] Functional.
[02:57:13] It's functional, and it's, I guess,
[02:57:15] the word is fitness, even though I don't like that word.
[02:57:17] That's why I was kind of asking for something.
[02:57:18] It's a functional training, I guess.
[02:57:20] Hardcore functional training.
[02:57:22] Yeah, there is some cool stuff on there.
[02:57:24] And all the info behind it too.
[02:57:26] Anyway, on it.com slash juggle,
[02:57:27] that's a good way to support.
[02:57:29] Also, when you buy books,
[02:57:32] including but not limited to Charlie Plum's book,
[02:57:37] Jockel's book, go to the website.
[02:57:39] Charlie Plum's book is called, I'm no hero.
[02:57:44] Yeah, that's what it's called.
[02:57:45] I'm not a hero, I'm no hero.
[02:57:47] Anyway, go to jugglepodcast.com.
[02:57:50] Yeah, for that book, actually get it from CharliePlum.com.
[02:57:54] Okay.
[02:57:55] That's the best place to get that book.
[02:57:55] Okay, actually, you know what,
[02:57:56] I'm gonna link it to Charlie Plum.
[02:57:58] Yeah, go on, I'll do it.
[02:58:00] Oh yeah, it's gonna do it.
[02:58:01] So nonetheless, go to jugglepodcast.com,
[02:58:04] go to the book section,
[02:58:05] boom, click through there when you get your books.
[02:58:07] It's a good way to support.
[02:58:08] It brings you to Amazon and, and,
[02:58:10] could you do another shopping?
[02:58:12] You sure could.
[02:58:13] Like it.
[02:58:13] Let us in, duct tape, ear, earphones.
[02:58:18] Sarah Armstrong bought something big.
[02:58:20] I forget what.
[02:58:21] A lot more.
[02:58:22] A lot more.
[02:58:23] If you need a lot more, definitely.
[02:58:25] Yeah.
[02:58:26] It was on click through.
[02:58:27] Good way to support.
[02:58:28] Very good way.
[02:58:29] Also, subscribe to the podcast
[02:58:30] on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play,
[02:58:33] and all other podcast providing platforms.
[02:58:36] Seems obvious, but hey, that's a good way.
[02:58:38] Also, on YouTube, put some excerpts on there.
[02:58:41] Put one out the other day.
[02:58:45] Good one.
[02:58:47] Very shareable.
[02:58:48] But nonetheless,
[02:58:49] a subscribe to the YouTube.
[02:58:51] That's a good way to support.
[02:58:52] You get other stuff on top of the video version
[02:58:56] of this podcast excerpts and,
[02:58:58] how should I say?
[02:59:00] Other creative short films by one echo Charles.
[02:59:04] Sure.
[02:59:05] With people that we know acting in them.
[02:59:08] Yes.
[02:59:09] Sometimes.
[02:59:10] But yeah, some value there.
[02:59:12] Anyway, yeah, YouTube, subscribe to YouTube.
[02:59:14] That's a good way.
[02:59:15] Also, jocos, a store.
[02:59:16] It's called jocosdore.jocosdore.com.
[02:59:18] There are some good shirts on there.
[02:59:22] Literally.
[02:59:22] Literally.
[02:59:24] Sure, this is good backwards.
[02:59:26] Anyway, I'm not saying to buy something,
[02:59:28] just go on there, check out stuff.
[02:59:30] If you like the stuff on there, get something.
[02:59:33] This stuff for women, shirts, patches,
[02:59:36] rashguards, hoodies,
[02:59:39] any day now, the hoodies are,
[02:59:41] they're heavier,
[02:59:43] yes.
[02:59:44] And I'm gonna put some new ones.
[02:59:45] I have a vest.
[02:59:46] They're, well, here's the thing.
[02:59:49] But they have a vest.
[02:59:51] So I'm going through the options, you know,
[02:59:54] how there's one that's like too heavy.
[02:59:57] And it's like super expensive.
[02:59:59] You've never been to Michigan.
[03:00:00] They're like, you've never been to Maine.
[03:00:02] Yeah, well, I have.
[03:00:03] Oh, there you have been to Maine.
[03:00:05] You've never been to Maine.
[03:00:05] You've never been to Maine.
[03:00:06] It wasn't that cool.
[03:00:07] Yeah, and I get it.
[03:00:08] Um, put it this way.
[03:00:10] I'm convinced for whatever that's worth.
[03:00:14] I'm convinced this is the appropriate one.
[03:00:16] Okay.
[03:00:17] That's what I think.
[03:00:18] Well, we, meaning everyone that listens to this
[03:00:22] and myself, we will be the judge of that.
[03:00:25] Especially people that are from the north of America.
[03:00:28] Yeah.
[03:00:29] Oh, our Canada.
[03:00:31] Sure.
[03:00:32] The northern region.
[03:00:33] I got you.
[03:00:34] And I'm confident.
[03:00:35] Excellent.
[03:00:36] Yeah, just keep me the feedback.
[03:00:37] Oh, good.
[03:00:38] We will.
[03:00:39] Also, psychological warfare on your journey.
[03:00:43] Slash campaign against weakness.
[03:00:47] If you run into those days where you're not feeling like it
[03:00:49] and that's affecting you, where you're led to make or potentially make
[03:00:54] the decision to slack hit the snooze, skip the workout, cheat on the
[03:01:00] diet, procrastinate more or other forms of weakness.
[03:01:07] You listen to this album with tracks, jockel tracks, telling you
[03:01:13] pragmatically why you shouldn't give into those weaknesses.
[03:01:21] The results do not vary 100% success rate on that one in my experience.
[03:01:28] Psychological warfare on iTunes, Amazon, music, anywhere where they sell MP3s.
[03:01:33] It's a good one.
[03:01:34] Very effective.
[03:01:35] Good way to support as well.
[03:01:37] Also, on Amazon, jockel white tea, you can get that through Amazon.
[03:01:44] You just search jockel white tea.
[03:01:45] Then you order it and then you drink it and you start throwing things around
[03:01:49] and smashing everything around you.
[03:01:51] That's what it does.
[03:01:52] No big deal.
[03:01:53] Be prepared.
[03:01:54] Do have some books there too.
[03:01:56] You can get them way the warrior kid.
[03:01:59] That's a kid's book.
[03:02:01] Extreme ownership.
[03:02:02] That's a book about leadership.
[03:02:04] Displaning goes freedom field manual.
[03:02:07] That comes out October 17th.
[03:02:09] It's a book about getting after it for a lack of a better word.
[03:02:16] Now what's interesting about this is the book is the
[03:02:19] book is not going to be available through audible itself.
[03:02:25] It's going to be available through MP3 platforms such as iTunes, Google Play,
[03:02:34] what other platforms are there.
[03:02:37] Amazon, Prime, music, music.
[03:02:41] That's what's going to be available.
[03:02:42] The reason we did that is that the beats that we could instead of just make it a big
[03:02:46] long multi-hour drone of talking, it's cut up as an album with tracks.
[03:02:57] Which seems to be the way that way you can utilize it for just quick listening for almost
[03:03:04] like you'd use psychological warfare album.
[03:03:06] Yeah.
[03:03:07] It's a manual that's why.
[03:03:09] It's not like this.
[03:03:10] No, it's not a story.
[03:03:11] No, it's not a story.
[03:03:12] No, it's not a story.
[03:03:13] Yes.
[03:03:14] It's not like it's a simple freedom field manual is not a story.
[03:03:20] It's a field manual.
[03:03:22] It's instructions.
[03:03:23] So you can get that there for your business.
[03:03:27] Esslon front leadership.
[03:03:30] Me, Wave Fab and JP to know Dave Burke if you want to get tied into that.
[03:03:34] If you want us to come out and work with your company info at Esslonfront.com.
[03:03:39] So that is that.
[03:03:40] Those are all great ways to support this podcast.
[03:03:44] We appreciate it.
[03:03:45] And thanks to everyone for your support and mostly for listening to the podcast, especially
[03:03:51] those that are out there in uniform that provide the freedom and protection that we will
[03:03:59] never take for granted.
[03:04:04] Freedom that men like Charlie Plum and Jim Kunkel fought and sacrificed to uphold for us.
[03:04:14] And I would simply ask everyone to make something out of the freedom that you have.
[03:04:20] Don't waste it.
[03:04:23] And the way that you get the most out of your freedom, I'll tell you that what way that
[03:04:28] is the way you get the most out of your freedom is discipline.
[03:04:32] That's how you get the most out of your freedom.
[03:04:35] Push yourself hard, get things done, create and build and make yourself the best you
[03:04:44] can.
[03:04:47] In everything that you do, but getting out there and getting after it.
[03:04:58] So until next time this was Mr. Jim Kunkel Captain Charlie Plum and Echo and
[03:05:10] Zach McCunejoz out.