Charles Carpenter was a stone cold warrior in a silly little plane.Audie Murphy stood all of five foot five and was rejected by both the US Marines and the Airborne. Once he went to war, however, that guy was a force of nature. Murphy ultimately became the most highly decorated US soldier in American history.
In many ways, Charles Carpenter was also a natural warrior. Carpenter enlisted in the Army in 1942 for flight training. The Army Air Corps then encompassed all land-based aviation assets. Where many of Carpenter’s counterparts flew such hot rods as the P38 Lightning, P47 Thunderbolt, or B17 Flying Fortress, Charles Carpenter got the L-4H.
The Plane
The L-4H was a very slightly militarized version of the civilian Piper J-3 Cub. The L-4H featured a 65-hp Continental A-65-8 air-cooled, horizontally-opposed four-cylinder engine and a top speed of 87 mph. The cruise was a mere 75 mph. With a maximum takeoff weight of 1,220 pounds that left the unarmed L-4H with a useful load of some 455 pounds. Even with a skinny pilot, there wasn’t a lot left over. The Army called the plane the Grasshopper.
The L-4H was a pretty sad excuse for a combat airplane. The fuselage was light welded steel covered in fabric. There was just enough space for two crewmen seated in tandem. The fixed-pitch prop was made from wood.
The L-4H was a reconnaissance aircraft pure and simple. Its mission was to zip ahead of American armored columns at low levels and report enemy troop dispositions. Grasshopper pilots also trained as artillery spotters. Early on German forces assiduously avoided engaging the Grasshoppers for fear of drawing undue attention from Allied artillery or close air support. Charles Carpenter was having none of that.
The Mad Major
By 1944, Carpenter had been promoted to Major and was assigned to the 1st Bombardment Division in France. He supported Patton’s Third Army in its frenetic dash across France. By the time the Allies got a foothold on the continent, Carpenter was ready to fight.
By stripping out the radios and as much ancillary equipment as possible, Carpenter could carry about 230 pounds’ worth of ordnance. An M1A1 Bazooka weighs 13.26 pounds unloaded. Carpenter found that he could strap three of these simple rocket launchers underneath each wing of his Grasshopper and still get airborne. The Nazis were soon to discover that Charles Carpenter’s little insect of a plane packed a fearsome sting.
The Weapon
The Bazooka was a recoilless antitank rocket launcher that revolutionized Infantry anti-armor capabilities. The name Bazooka was drawn from a musical instrument popularized by the comedian Bob Burns in the 1930s. The weapon was the original brainchild of the world’s first true rocket scientist, Robert Goddard.
Working under government contract during the First World War, Goddard and his coworker Dr. Clarence Hickman were tasked with weaponizing early rocket technology. They successfully demonstrated their rocket to the US Army Signal Corps at Aberdeen Proving Ground on November 6, 1918, five days before the armistice. Goddard developed tuberculosis and was forced to withdraw from the project that ultimately led to the Bazooka. His comrade Dr. Hickman subsequently completed the undertaking in the early 1940s.
Shaped charge technology dates back to the 18th century. An Austrian mining engineer named Franz Xaver von Baader first discovered the phenomenon wherein blasting powder might be packed into a cone and used to focus the energy of the blast onto a single point. An American chemist named Charles Munroe further explored the practical applications of this effect in the 1880s. 
A shaped charge is a form of explosive lens wherein the kinetic energy from a high explosive charge is focused onto a single point. This allows a relatively lightweight warhead to punch through a substantial thickness of armor plate. The armor-piercing capability of a shaped charge is generally about seven times its diameter. 
By the late 1930s, American ordnance engineers had developed the M10 antitank grenade. This 3.5-pound monster would punch through 60mm of steel armor but was really too heavy to be thrown. Rifle grenade versions were developed for the Infantry rifles of the day, but they were still relatively inaccurate.
In 1942 Colonel Leslie Skinner tasked LT Edward Uhl with developing an effective delivery system that could get the M10 shaped charge grenade onto the side of a Nazi tank without killing the firer. Uhl created a modest rocket to drive the round easily enough but was struggling to find a way to safely launch the thing. He later said, “I was walking by this scrap pile, and there was a tube that happened to be the same size as the grenade that we were turning into a rocket. I said, ‘That’s the answer!’ Put the tube on a soldier’s shoulder with the rocket inside, and away it goes.” The end result was the M1 Bazooka.
M1 and improved M1A1 Bazookas were powered by batteries held inside their wooden shoulder rests. The M6 rockets they fired were notoriously unreliable. The later M6A1 versions were markedly more effective. Subsequent M9 and M9A1 Bazookas were powered by a magneto system contained within the firing module and did not require separate batteries. 
The Germans captured several bazookas intact during the fighting in North Africa and reverse engineered the weapon to form the Panzerschreck (literally “Tank’s Bane” or “Tank Fright”). This rocket launcher featured a larger, more capable 8.8cm warhead and a built-in blast shield. The Japanese developed a similar weapon called the Type 4 AT Rocket Launcher that fired a 70mm projectile.
Rosie the Rocketer
Major Carpenter christened his spindly mount “Rosie the Rocketer” after “Rosie the Riveter” and adorned the side of the fuselage accordingly. In the first months after the Normandy invasion, Carpenter disabled four tanks and a German armored car. Such audacity gained Major Carpenter a fair amount of notoriety. During one interview he stated that his idea of fighting a war was to, “Attack, attack, and attack again.” The media came to refer to Carpenter as “The Mad Major” or “Bazooka Charlie.”
Carpenter was once on the ground at the front scouting landing areas for his Grasshopper when he was attacked by German Infantry. Carpenter leapt atop a nearby Sherman and engaged the Germans with the M2 .50-caliber machinegun. During the course of the chaotic battle that followed Carpenter’s tank inadvertently engaged a friendly Sherman. Though apparently no one was hurt, the Sherman, a bulldozer variant, was disabled.
Major Carpenter somehow bore responsibility for this sordid event and was threatened with court-martial. General Patton got wind of it and dismissed the charges out of hand, awarding Major Carpenter the Silver Star instead. Patton was quoted as having said that Carpenter was the type of fighter he wanted in his Army.
Major Carpenter was ultimately credited with immobilizing a total of fourteen German tanks along with a variety of lesser armored vehicles. Of these, six tanks were completely destroyed, having been penetrated from above through their relatively thin roof armor. Two of the tanks he destroyed were PzKpfw Mk VI Tiger I’s. Two of those immobilized were Mark V Panthers.
In an August 1944 letter home Carpenter wrote, “Lately I have been taking quite a few chances but my luck has been marvelous. Yesterday I got a bullet hole through the wing and hit a church steeple with one wheel.”
The Rest of the Story
In 1945 Major Carpenter was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease and told that he had less than two years to live. He was promoted, medically discharged, and returned to Urbana, Illinois, where he worked as a high school history teacher. Once again defying the odds he lived on until 1966, dying at the age of 53.
Carpenter’s L-4H was abandoned in Europe after the war. The plane changed hands a couple of times and was ultimately the second post-war civil aircraft registered in Austria. Refitted with a more powerful engine and German instruments this old military airplane was painted yellow and used as a tow plane for sport gliders. The machine eventually ended up as a static display at the Osterreichisches Luftfahrtmuseum at Graz Airport in Austria.
In 2017 an aviation enthusiast named Joe Schiel was searching military aircraft serial numbers on the Internet. He serendipitously discovered that the little yellow cub at the Graz Airport was actually the very airplane “Bazooka Charlie” Carpenter had used to destroy all that German armor back during WW2. He contacted Rob Collings, one of the foremost warbird collectors in the US. Collings worked a deal, and the plane was shipped to Oregon for restoration.
Colin Powers, the restoration manager for the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum did the work. He was surprised by what he found once he got the little plane’s skin off.
“One bullet had passed from the bottom through the leading edge of the aileron into the wing, went through the steel-plate hinge for the aileron, tore a big chunk of metal out of one of the ribs, and exited out through the top of the wing…I’ll just put a patch where it exited.”
Powers found a double patch on the front strut from combat damage as well. Once the restoration was complete Charles Carpenter’s granddaughter, herself a graphic designer, painstakingly reproduced the “Rosie the Rocketer” nose art. Now in flyable condition, “Rosie the Rocketer” can be seen at the Collings Foundation Museum in Massachusetts today.
Collings Foundation
Address: 568 Main St, Hudson, MA 01749
The Remington Model 8 and FN 1900 rifles were the brainchild of John Moses Browning. Originally patented in 1900, the design was the first successful high-powered semi-auto rifle made, and it is no surprise the great J.M.B. was the designer. While Remington built the U.S. market version, Browning contracted with FN to build the European market model 1900s as he already had a good relationship with the firm who already produced many of his designs.
The rifle is long-recoil operated and feeds from a fixed magazine. The Remington Model 8 was chambered in four different Remington rimless cartridges, they were the .25, .30, .32, and .35 Remington while the FN produced variant was only made in 9mm FN which for all intents and purposes is .35 Remington.
The 1900 models were offered starting in 1911 by FN retailers and were available as late as 1931-1932. Some believe that the rifles were mostly all built before the outbreak of WWI but there may have been a small parts clean-up run in the years following.
FN only produced 4,913 of these rifles and they were never officially imported into the United States, there was really no reason to do so when Remingotn was selling the model 8. Considering the price of the 1900 was also $17 dollars more than a Grade III Model 8, it was a wise business decision to not spend the time or money importing them when Americans could get, effectively, the same gun with a different roll mark.
Compared to its sibling made by Remington, the FN model has a few differences, namely the markings, the more elegant looking bolt knob, the lower tang locking screw…and most have a rib. This is an already rare rifle made even rarer by not having a rib and is an early variant with the proofs on the left side.
There are some rumblings that I expect to get louder now that our elite is realizing that they have totally alienated the traditional Americans who traditionally make up our Armed Forces, and that they are thinking about the necessity of a draft. The Army War College, of which I am an alum, recently published an article that talks about the casualties you can expect in high intensity warfare – several thousand a week.
So, in a few weeks, you’ve got more dead than you had in Afghanistan and Iraq combined over 20 years. Our military, which has shrunk dramatically over the last three decades, simply cannot accept that rate of casualties, especially when it can’t fill its ranks with volunteers anymore. So, the answer is apparently to not rely on volunteers.
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Don’t count out establishment pressure for a new draft. After all, it’s not a meat grinder without meat. The bodies have to come from somewhere. There’s no calling guys back to active duty. At the height of the global war on terror about 20 years ago, we had a lot of dudes signing up because they were excited and patriotic and wanted to avenge 9/11.
Well, they learned, the hard way that this establishment is not only grossly incompetent but cares nothing for them. When you treat troops like garbage, they know it. And it’s not like you can call them back. Their service obligations are up. Most of them are pushing 40 at the low end. Do you know what you call a 40 year-old infantryman? Sergeant major or colonel. And we’ve got plenty of those. In fact, we have too many.
The ridiculous Mark Milley, basically Alexander von Sausage Vindman with more stars, waddled his way up to a podium to retire the other day. He’s a freaking disgrace to the uniform. This is the guy who wanted to know what “white rage” was in front of one audience, but in front of another denied that he knew what woke is. I wonder if they really think their soldiers are stupid enough not to know when they’re being lied to. Well, our troops are not that dumb. And they certainly know when their lives are being squandered, as 13 of them were in Kabul.
It’s not a question of patriotism. Our guys are loyal to our country. But our senior leaders, from our Commander-In-Crusty to the newest woke major at Fort Saul Alinsky, are loyal to social justice ideology.
They pretend the organization that used to be the most respected institution in American society is still the institution that America once respected. But it isn’t. And they will not guilt us into unseeing that reality. Who wants to serve in the Great Pronoun War of 2023? Who wants to be forced into taking vaccines that don’t vaccinate? Who wants their commander to have breasts and a penis?
Not anyone normal. They will try to play the service card. That might work better if that service would be protecting our borders instead of Ukraine’s. When one of these hacks asks you to go serve your country, your proper response should be to ask what is the name of the general fired for what happened in Afghanistan. The fact that they can’t answer that question is all the answer you need.
But they need troops – it’s no fun being a general without any. Who would a draft be targeted at? Traditional, conservative Americans, from mostly the rural South and Midwest, the traditional recruiting grounds for a substantial percentage of our troops.
And those are, not coincidentally, the very people that the folks in charge hate the most. Our soldiers understand that and our soldiers are leaving in droves while young people are foregoing the military. Much of that is because vets are telling them not to join.
Let’s be really clear about what’s going on in the veteran community, because what you hear in the media is a lie. There is almost no one out there who is a veteran who is excited about having his or her kids serve.
It is not that we are not supportive of the troops – if they serve, we back them 100%. But we’re not recommending that they do. The fact is that the leadership of this country is unworthy of our troops, and our potential troops are refusing to volunteer. It’s only going to get worse as the military gets woker and the establishment gets more warmongery.
So, of course, the establishment’s answer to young people’s failure to volunteer is to volunteer them. But we all know who’s going to get volunteered. It’s not going to be Kayden and Ashley from Santa Monica.
It’s going to be your kids. Right now, 70% of kids cannot join the military because of various physical mental and other qualifications. When there is a draft, they may try and be clever and not have the kind of student deferments that made sure that college kids like Joe Biden never saw action, except in mortal combat with Corn Pop.
The way the rich kids will get out of it is to have some psychiatrist talk about their PTSD from being exposed to non-gluten-free noodles or the like. The rich kids are going to get out of it again, or they’re going to get some baloney “alternative” service reading stories to gang members. Your kids won’t get that option. Your kids will get sent to some foreign hellhole for some purpose that our glorious establishment doesn’t feel it needs to explain to you, and they’ll get killed.
But I’m not sure we’re going to see passive compliance here. In Vietnam, few people know that most of the folks who fought were actually volunteers. Yeah, a lot of the rich college kids weaseled out of their duty, but a lot of others signed up voluntarily.
They did it because their dads did it and their dad’s dad did it. But right now, all the dads are saying “Hell no, you won’t go,” not because they hate the red, white, and blue, but because they hate the desiccated old pervert in the White House masquerading as our commander-in-chief, and his coterie of morons that has failed every national security challenge in the last 30 years.
If you start trying to make normal Americans send their kids off to yet another stupid war, that may be the line in the sand where things get ugly. After all, you saw what the moms did over drag queen story hour. What happens when the moms see their sons being sent off to get killed so Lindsey Graham can be the toast of Kyiv? It’s not going to be pretty.
And do not think boots on the ground in Ukraine can’t happen. That big offensive we’ve been hearing about has gone almost nowhere. It has stalled. And the Russians are going to build up their forces, like they have through history, and they’re going to counterattack, and there is a significant chance the Ukrainian army – despite gallant resistance – is going to collapse.
This doesn’t make me happy, because I like Ukrainians – I helped train them. But the facts are the facts. At some point, to save Ukraine, or some piece of it, somebody’s going to get the bright idea to send American bodies in and we’re going to realize what high intensity combat against a peer competitor looks like.
And it looks a lot different than chasing a bunch of goat herders around the Hindu Kush. We’re going to see young Americans get killed in numbers that we can’t even conceive of today. And heaven forefend that it goes off with China, because you can double that figure. If you tell America we can’t lose 5,000 souls on an aircraft carrier pulverized by hypersonic missiles, then you are either lying to us or lying to yourself.
To fight a modern war, they are going to need bodies in numbers not needed for generations. They’re not going to fill the ranks with volunteers. They will have to draft them. That kind of move could re-define American politics because you’re going to get a lot of people elected on an isolationist platform at the next election, assuming there is one.
I am not an isolationist. I’m a Jacksonian. I believe in fighting when you have to, and then you kill the SOBs. But our foreign policy establishment doesn’t believe that. It considers itself smarter than the teachings of 5000 years of military history. And it doesn’t care about our young people.
That seems pretty harsh, but let them try to tell us it’s not true. Let them make the case that our foreign policy establishment believes it has some obligation not to squander the lives of our young people on poorly conceived, planned, and executed overseas military misadventures. They can’t. Their whole response would be “You love Putin,” or something along those lines. But the truth is undeniable. To them, our sons and daughters are nothing more than cannon fodder.
Hell no, our young people will not go.
Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get his non-fiction book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America, as well as the newest volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, Overlord.
In a move that will surely make my colleagues Jeff Charles and Ward Clark happy, renowned firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson ditched deep blue Massachusetts and moved its headquarters to friendlier pastures in Tennessee. Although the move was announced in 2021, it was on Saturday that the company officially opened its new 650,000-square feet building in Marysville as part of a $125 million relocation effort.
The company has been in New England since its founding in 1852, but Massachusetts’ strict gun laws are at least partly to blame for their exodus:
The gunmaker had been located in Springfield, Massachusetts, since the mid-19th century, but company officials have said legislative proposals in that state would prohibit them from manufacturing certain weapons. Massachusetts is known to have some of the country’s strictest gun laws.
I’m sure the high taxes didn’t help either; there’s a reason some call the state “Taxachusetts.” It’s also certainly not a coincidence that Tennessee is far friendlier to law-abiding gun owners than Mass.:
Smith & Wesson President and CEO Mark Smith spoke at the event Saturday, which drew a large crowd to the new facility, The Daily Times reported.
“From where I stand, the next 170 years of Smith & Wesson are looking pretty good,” Smith said. “It is something special here in Tennessee.”
He cited a welcoming regulatory environment and close collaboration with the Tennessee state government as a crucial piece of the plan to relocate. The company has said the new facility would create hundreds of jobs.
Tennessee has moved to loosen gun restrictions in recent years under Republican leadership. In 2021, the state passed a law to allow most adults 21 and older to carry handguns without a permit that requires first clearing a state-level background check and training.
The National Rifle Association applauded the move and congratulated the company on their ribbon-cutting ceremony:
“Congratulations to Smith & Wesson on their grand opening in Tennessee. This move is a testament to their enduring legacy, their commitment to firearm excellence, and to the importance of preserving America’s gun industry and Second Amendment rights in a fair environment,” NRA Executive Director of Advancement Tyler Schropp told Fox News Digital in an exclusive comment.
As part of the opening day ceremonies, guns were naturally fired, and shooter Jerry Miculek set a world record:
This is how it’s done, folks. If a state is treating a company badly, they should get the heck out of dodge and relocate to where they’re appreciated. California Gov. Gavin Newsom knows this all too well, as dozens of corporations have headed for the exits during his disastrous tenure. The full list is lengthy, but here are just who have fled the Golden State in just the last three years: McAfee (cybersecurity), Boingo Wireless, American Airlines (flight attendant base), Chevron, Tesla, Charles Schwab, Oracle…
Ok, you get the idea. The point is, just like Bud Light and Target learned, the power of the purse is tremendous. If you’re not wanted, then why not take your money and go elsewhere?
Nice shot, Smith & Wesson.
So-called “red flag laws” have become a recent favorite of gun control activists, who portray them as a way to keep firearms out of “dangerous hands.” The laws empower judges to issue case-by-case firearm prohibition and confiscation orders, upon a petitioner’s showing that the respondent of the order poses a danger to themselves or others.
The concept has at times held superficial appeal even to those who might normally support Second Amendment rights. But it’s constitutionality and efficacy wilt under close, critical scrutiny, which is why the NRA opposes the concept.
Last week, an unusually revealing article by Bridge Michigan, an independent news source from the Wolverine State, brought another critical voice to the debate: that of the police who will actually be tasked with executing the orders. Entitled “Michigan police agencies sweating enforcement of ‘red flag’ gun laws,” it vividly underscores the difference between theory and practice when it comes to gun control.
Among the officials quoted in the article is Robert Stevenson, executive director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police. He said he supports the idea that people who are “not mentally balanced” should not have firearms, but he is concerned with the practicalities of how police will enforce Michigan’s new red flag law, which takes effect next spring. Stevenson offered several scenarios in which the supposedly “lifesaving” law could itself pose lethal risks.
As he explained to Bridge Michigan:
What happens if the person with the order tries to hurt the officers? What if the person who was deemed suicidal becomes overwhelmed and still poses harm to themselves when their guns are being seized? What if the individual with an order has to be detained by force or even be killed, due to the threat they pose?
From the citizen’s perspective, Stevenson said, it could be a case of: “We’re trying to save somebody in the family. We went to the police to save them, and they killed them.”
The legislator who spearheaded Michigan’s red flag effort, Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak), claimed to Bridge Michigan she “studied the laws in other states, such as California and Florida” and “found no instances of a gun being fired during a seizure of weapons.”
Sen. McMorrow’s research, however, was seriously flawed.
A simple Internet inquiry should have revealed to her that Gary J. Willis, a 61-year-old African American man, was killed by police in Anne Arundel, Md., as they attempted to retrieve his firearm under a red flag order shortly after 5:00 a.m. on Nov. 5, 2018.
Willis’s wife, Dolly, was also home at the time. Police claim that Willis became increasingly agitated as officers explained the requirements of the order to him and that he reached for the gun after he had voluntarily set it aside at their request.
Willis died on the scene after being shot at least five times by police. A Baltimore Sun article quoted the local police chief as saying the execution of red flag orders involves, by definition, “a tense, dangerous situation,” one he would prefer to be handled by SWAT teams.
Gun control advocates like to claim any intrusion on constitutional rights is justified, if it “could save just one life.” Apparently, however, they don’t hold themselves to that same standard when promoting policies that themselves pose lethal risks.
Also expressing skepticism of the red flag concept to Bridge Michigan was Matt Saxton, the executive director of the Michigan Sheriffs’ Association. Sexton said his “organization was never asked to comment on conversations of how to enforce the new law.”
He described being “left in the dark, not sure what to strategize for and what to envision when [the new law] takes effect.” It appeared to him that localities would be left to figure out the logistics of implementation on their own, perhaps in collaboration with each other. Sexton told Bridge Michigan “he doesn’t believe that extreme risk protection [i.e., red flag] laws are the best laws that could be passed,” but he hopes for the best.
No wonder that the most consistent experience states have when passing red flag laws is to later discover they are little known, little utilized, and don’t live up to their billing as a game-changing way to prevent “gun violence.”
A Duke University sociologist who studies red flag laws and their effects told PBS, “It’s too small a pebble to make a ripple. … It’s as if the law doesn’t exist.”
When a law is almost universally treated as if it doesn’t exist, it may be because it should have never existed in the first place. Disuse, indeed, might be the best that could be hoped for when it comes to red flag laws.