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The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

4. Strapping Bazookas Under a Plane to Blow Up Tanks

Charles Carpenter and his L-4 Grasshopper, ‘Rosie the Rocketer’, with bazookas strapped beneath a wing. Wikimedia

US Army Major Charles Carpenter, AKA “The Mad Major” and “Bazooka Charlie”, was a 4^th Armored Division artillery observer during WWII. Flying a military variant of the Piper Cub, the L-4H Grasshopper, Carpenter’s job was to spot German artillery positions in France, then fly back to base – his plane had no radio – and report the position. He wanted more excitement, however, so he decided to take out the enemy himself.

The L-4H carried no weapons and had a combined pilot and cargo capacity of only 232 pounds. That was enough for Carpenter, who strapped six bazookas to his airplane, three beneath each wing, and went Nazi hunting. Within a few weeks, Bazooka Charlie, flying his modified plane, now nicknamed Rosie the Rocketer, took out four German tanks and an armored car. By war’s end, Carpenter’s toll had risen to six tanks, several more armored cars, and assorted other vehicles.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.