Shocking Successes that Came from Stressful Situations in History

14. Willie and Joe Earned Bill Mauldin a Pulitzer Prize

It was a good thing that Bill Mauldin stood up to Patton and did not cave in under pressure. Back home, the Willie and Joe cartoons became a wild success. Not only with the military, but also with civilians after they were syndicated. They earned Mauldin a Pulitzer Prize in 1945. As Band of Brothers author Stephen Ambrose described Willie and Joe: “More than anyone else, save only Ernie Pyle, [Mauldin] caught the trials and travails of the GI. For anyone who wants to know what it was like to be an infantryman in World War II, this is the place to start – and finish.”

After the war, Mauldin returned to civilian life, published collections of his wartime cartoons, and free-lanced before joining the St. Louis Post Dispatch as an editorial cartoonist. In 1959, he won another Pulitzer Prize, this one for a cartoon depicting the lack of civil liberties in the Soviet Union. In 1962, by which point his cartoons were widely syndicated, he switched to the Chicago Sun Times. His work also appeared in numerous magazines, such as Sports Illustrated and Life. Bill Mauldin died in 2003, aged 81, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

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13. A President’s Desire to Boost Public Morale Led to a Daring Air Raid

Seamen aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and her escorting taskforce saw something startling on the morning of April 12, 1942. They had had just linked up with the carrier USS Hornet north of Hawaii, and to their amazement, the Hornet’s flight deck was crammed with strange airplanes, bigger than anything seen before on a carrier. They were North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, chosen to carry out a daring raid that was to be their first major combat operation.

After the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt wanted to boost public morale by bombing Japan as soon as possible. However, America had no airbases close enough to Japan. So a plan was hatched to bring an improvised airbase, an aircraft carrier, close enough for modified B-25 bombers to strike Japan. Execution was entrusted to US Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle, who began training select aircrews on short takeoffs. It was a lot of pressure. Taking off from aircraft carriers was a stretch for the medium bombers, and landing back on them was impossible. So after dropping their munitions, the bombers were to continue westward to land in China.

12. The Pressure of Decision-Making in Adverse Conditions

On the morning of April 18, 1942, 750 miles from Japan, the task force was sighted by a Japanese picket boat. It was quickly sunk, but not before sending a radio message. Fearing loss of the element of the surprise, it was decided to launch the bombers immediately, 10 hours earlier and 170 miles further from Japan than initially planned. Sixteen B-25s, carrying 500lb bombs and incendiaries, lumbered off the Hornet and, flying low to avoid detection, winged their way to Tokyo. They arrived around noon and bombed military and industrial targets.

15 bombers made it to China, where they crash-landed. Another made its way to Vladivostok, where it and its crew were interred by the Soviets. Of eighty B-25 crewmen, three were killed, and eight were captured by the Japanese. Three prisoners were executed, and one died in captivity. The raid inflicted little physical damage, but the psychological impact was huge on both sides of the Pacific. It boosted morale in America, and embarrassed the Japanese high command. Tokyo bigwigs sought to regain face by attempting to seize Midway Island a few weeks later, only for it to end in a catastrophic Japanese defeat.

11. The Perfect All-American?

John Herschel Glenn Jr. was a national icon who personified the American dream, and led an extraordinary and extraordinarily full life. Born in Ohio in 1921, he was raised in a bucolic setting that he likened to a Norman Rockwell painting. Adventurous from an early age, Glenn was fascinated with flying. When he got his first plane ride in an open cockpit biplane at age eight, he was hooked on flight. It spurred a lifelong passion, and a career in which he allowed no obstacle or pressure to keep him from greatness at whatever he put his hand and mind to.

Glenn was a US Marine aviator who flew piston engine fighters in WWII, and jet fighters in the Korean War. He received seventeen Air Medals, six Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. A daredevil test pilot and NASA astronaut, Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth. He then became a millionaire businessman, a United States Senator, and at age 77, became a NASA astronaut once again. Well into his eighties, Glenn continued to fly a twin-engine airplane, drove a snazzy convertible, and speed-walked for miles around his neighborhood nearly every day.

10. Glenn Excelled Under Pressure to Become a Deadly Fighter Pilot, Test Pilot, and Earn a Spot in NASA’s First Batch of Astronauts

After graduating college, John Glenn was commissioned in the United States Marine Corps in 1943. He trained as a fighter pilot, went to war, and gained a reputation for skill and fearlessness. He flew the obsolescent Grumman F4F Wildcat at first, and then the Vought F4U Corsair. In the Korean War, Glenn flew close ground support missions. He was nicknamed “Old Magnet Ass” because of the amount of antiaircraft fire he frequently took while flying low to attack enemy positions. On at least two occasions, he returned in a plane riddled with more than 250 holes.

Glenn then trained to fly the new North American F-86 Saber jet fighter. In the conflict’s waning days, he shot down three MiGs – the Korean War’s final air victories. He then spent most of the 1950s as a test pilot. He excelled in his new pressure cooker of a career, and set speed records as he risked his life and cheated death on multiple occasions. Glenn next tried out for the space program, and joined the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959. He passed the rigorous testing, and became one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts.

9. Glenn Coolly Dealt With a Malfunction in Space to Successfully Steer His Craft and Return to Earth as a National Hero

John Glenn had his heart set on becoming the first American in space, but despite his best efforts, that honor went to fellow astronaut Alan Shepherd instead. However, Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in the space capsule Friendship 7. He was watched by thousands in central Florida as his Atlas rocket took off, and by millions on black and white TV sets. However, early in the flight, the automatic control system failed, and Glenn had to fly manually.

It was a matter of life and death, but Glenn handled the pressure and coolly rose to the occasion. He took the controls and completed three orbits around the planet at speeds of 17,500 miles per hour. He then calmly steered through reentry, and came back to earth a national hero and an instant celebrity. Glenn got a New York City ticker-tape parade, addressed a joint session of Congress, and met the president. He did not get what he wanted most, however: another space mission.

8. Back on Earth, Glenn Became a Successful Businessman and Finally Became a Successful US Senator

By the time he completed the Friendship 7 mission, John Glenn was over 40-years-old and was deemed too long in the tooth for additional space missions. On top of that, President John F. Kennedy was reluctant to risk the life of a national hero who might have a future in politics. So Glenn retired from NASA and returned to Ohio where he made a failed bid for the US Senate in 1964. After that fizzled, he got a job with RC Cola, where he rose to vice president.

He also invested in hotels near the new Disney theme park in Orlando, and became a millionaire by the early 1970s. He tried again for the US Senate in 1970, but lost the primary. The pressure of repeated failures in politics did not get to or daunt Glenn, however. He tried once more in 1974, and the third time was the charm. He won the Democrat primary, went on to win the general election, and was comfortably reelected by Ohio voters in 1980, 1986, and 1992. He served in the Senate for 24 years, before retiring from politics in 1998. That same year, he got another gig as an astronaut.

7. The Oldest Astronaut and Human Being in Space

36 years after his first and only orbital flight, John Glenn returned to space. The astronaut whom NASA had deemed too old for another launch when he was in his 40s, returned to the space program as a crew member of the shuttle Discovery when he was 77. That made him the oldest astronaut in history, and the oldest human being to venture into space. It was a well-earned victory lap, and a fitting reward for a man who had dutifully served his country for six decades, from the Pacific in WWII, to “MiG Alley” in the Korean War, to the blackness of space, and the halls of Congress.

As he later described his thoughts before returning to space: “It was hard to imagine that virtually the entire history of space travel had occurred between my first ride and my second. Somebody had pointed out that more time had passed between Friendship 7 and this Discovery mission than had passed between Lindbergh’s solo trans-Atlantic flight and Friendship 7. It didn’t seem that long to me, but that is the way lives pass when you look back at them: in the blink of an eye.” John Glenn died on December 8^th, 2016, aged 95, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

6. Japan’s All-Or-Nothing Gamble to Reverse the Tide of Defeat

By late 1944, WWII was going terribly for Japan, and all signs indicated that worse was in store. Things had started well for Japan, after it kicked off the war by mauling the US Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor. Over the following six months, Japanese forces achieved a series of stunning victories. They overran Hong Kong, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, Burma, sundry Pacific islands, and knocked on the doors of India. Then came a severe check at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, in which the Japanese suffered a stunning defeat that turned the tide.

US forces gathered their strength, and went on a counteroffensive that steadily picked up the pace as it rolled back Japan’s conquests and rolled over the Japanese. By October 1944, a series of defeats had severely reduced Japan’s might in the Pacific, and the gap between its strength and that of US kept growing. So the Imperial Japanese Navy decided upon an all-or-nothing gamble, to throw virtually all of its remaining strength at Americans recently landed in the Philippines. The result was the Battle of Leyte Gulf, history’s biggest naval engagement. It witnessed one of the most dramatic examples of poise under pressure, as an unheralded American admiral averted disaster by successfully leading a tiny force in turning back a massive Japanese armada.

5. The Pressure Faced by a Rear Admiral When He Discovered That a Powerful Enemy Armada Was Steaming Straight Towards His Tiny Command

The Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 23^rd – 26^th, 1944, was history’s biggest naval brawl. At its core was a complex Japanese plan that featured many moving parts and attacks from various directions. The intent was to draw off the US Third Fleet commanded by Admiral William F. Halsey, tasked with guarding recent American landings at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines, and send it chasing after a Japanese bait force. With Halsey out of the way, a powerful Japanese naval contingent would fall upon the unprotected US forces there and devastate them.

Japanese aircraft carriers were dangled as bait for Halsey, and he steamed off with the Third Fleet to sink them. He failed to inform the chain of command what he was up to, or that he was leaving Leyte Gulf virtually defenseless. Left behind was a small fleet of escort carriers – small aircraft carriers too slow to keep up with the main fleet – and destroyer escorts. However, they were armed for ground attack and support duties, and had little in the way of anti-ship weapons. Their commander, Rear Admiral Clifton Albert Frederick “Ziggy” Sprague (1896 – 1955), was about to face all the pressure in the world when a massive Japanese fleet arrived at his doorstep.

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4. Impossible Odds? Ignore Them and Attack

Admiral William F. Halsey abandoned Leyte Gulf to chase after Japanese bait. While he was gone, a powerful Japanese fleet of 23 battleships and heavy cruisers, including the world’s most powerful battleship ever, the 18.1-inch gun Yamato, showed up north of Leyte Gulf. The fleet had been battered in an earlier engagement and was thought to be in retreat, but it was not. Commanded by Admiral Takeo Kurita, it turned around and steamed towards the US landing sites at Leyte, chock-full of troops and defenseless transport and supply ships. The Americans were caught by surprise.

Everybody had assumed that Halsey and his powerful Third Fleet were in the north, guarding against attack from that direction. Instead, they were hundreds of miles away, chasing Japanese decoys. The only surface warships standing between the Japanese and a massacre of the Americans at Leyte was Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague’s tiny command, Task Unit 77.4.3, call sign “Taffy 3”. It was an underwhelming collection of three destroyers and four destroyer escorts, nicknamed “tin cans” for their lack of protection. Sprague did not crack under the pressure. His forces lacked the firepower and armor to take on the heavy warships headed their way. Sprague took on them anyhow, and in what came to be known as The Battle Off Samar, he went on the attack.

3. Sublime Courage Under Great Pressure Averted an American Catastrophe

Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague knew that his destroyers’ 5-inch guns were useless against the 23 armored Japanese battleships and cruisers steaming towards Leyte Gulf. He also knew that thousands of Americans would die if the Japanese reached Leyte. So he ordered Taffy 3 into a suicidal charge. The “desperate attacks of the “tin cans” were supported by planes flown from escort carriers. The American planes, lacking anti-ship bombs, repeatedly made strafing attacks and dropped high explosives suitable for ground attack but mostly useless against the Japanese ships. When they ran out of ammunition, they made dry strafing and bombing runs to discomfit the Japanese. The gadfly attacks were so reckless and incessant that Japanese admiral Kurita, who had an overwhelming victory in his grasp, lost his nerve.

All Kurita had to do was ignore the annoying but relatively harmless attacks, and steam on for another hour to bring his heavy guns within range of the defenseless Americans at Leyte. Instead, he convinced himself that the opposition he faced was far stronger than it actually was, and must be the first outer layer of a powerful US naval presence. Unlike Sprague who kept his nerves under pressure, the Japanese admiral cracked under the pressure of imagined threats. Instead of seizing a victory that had been his for the taking, Kurita turned his ships around and sailed away. Sprague’s and Taffy 3’s sublime courage had averted a catastrophe, and earned the Americans in Leyte Gulf a seemingly miraculous reprieve.

2. A Daring Hostage Rescue Raid

In the early hours of July 4, 1976, Israeli special forces carried out a daring raid at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The goal was to spring hostages taken from an Air France jetliner that had been commandeered on June 27^th. While en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, after a stopover in Athens, the airplane was boarded by four hijackers. Two belonged to a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and two were from a German Red Army Faction revolutionary cell. They seized the jetliner and diverted it to Uganda, whose president, Idi Amin, was sympathetic to their cause.

At Entebbe, the hijackers removed the passengers to a disused airport terminal building. There, they were joined by three more accomplices. After sifting through the passengers’ passports, the hijackers released those who were neither Israeli nor Jewish. They kept as hostages 94 who were, plus 12 members of the Air France aircrew. Then they made their demands: in exchange for freeing the hostages, the hijackers demanded the release of 40 prisoners held in Israel, plus another 13 held in other countries.

1. A Pressure Cooker Hostage Situation

As the days passed and the prisoners were not released, the hijackers grew more strident. The pressure mounted on the Israeli authorities, as the hijackers vowed to kill the hostages if their demands were not met. Fortunately for the Israelis, an Israeli engineer who had worked with Idi Amin in the 1960s had blueprints of the Entebbe terminal building where the hostages were held. He handed them to the authorities, who used them to plan a rescue mission. On the night of July 3^rd, 1976, 100 Israeli special forces boarded C-130 cargo planes and, escorted by F-4 Phantoms, took off on a 2500-mile flight to Uganda.

Within 90 minutes of touching down at Entebbe, the commandos had killed all seven hostage-takers, along with about forty-five Ugandan soldiers. They also destroyed 30 Ugandan jets at the airport. The cost was one commando killed and five wounded, plus three hostages dead and ten wounded. Commandos and hostages then boarded the C-130 transports for a short flight to Nairobi, Kenya. There, the planes refueled and the wounded were taken to an awaiting hospital plane, before all flew back to a rapturous welcome in Israel.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Chun, Clayton K.S. – The Doolittle Raid 1942: America’s First Strike Back at Japan (2006)

Drabkin, Artem – The Red Air Force at War: Barbarossa and the Retreat to Moscow (2007)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Entebbe Raid

Encyclopedia Britannica – John Glenn

Glenn, John – John Glenn: A Memoir (1999)

Gordon, Yefim, and Khazanov, Dmitri – Soviet Combat Aircraft of the Second World War, Volume 2: Twin-Engined Fighters, Attack Aircraft and Bombers (2006)

History Collection – Last Words: 10 Memorable Dying Statements From Famous Figures

History of War – Thomas, Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby c. 1433 – 1504

Hornfischer, James D. – The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the US Navy’s Finest Hour (2005)

Library of Congress – Bill Mauldin Beyond Willie and Joe

Mauldin, Bill – Up Front (1945)

Naval History and Heritage Command – Doolittle Raid

New Atlas – Curta Calculator: The Mechanical Marvel Born in a Nazi Death Camp

Smith, Peter C. – The Petlyakov Pe-2: Stalin’s Successful Red Air Force Light Bomber (2020)

United States Marine Corps History Division – Colonel John Glenn, Jr.

Wikipedia – Curt Herzstark

Wikipedia – Remilitarization of the Rhineland

Wikipedia – Thomas Stanley, 1^st Earl of Derby

Wolfe, Tom – The Right Stuff (1979)