especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice. theirs is a war story that deserves to be told. i'm oliver north. good night. tonight on "war stories". >> it was right in front of me so i shot him down. >> details of men with extraordinary skill. >> so you hold it until you think you're about to lose consciousness, and then you whip back around. >> and the courage to match it. >> i kept thinking i'm going to live as long as i can. >> they exploded and then all the fighter agents. that's next on "war stories." tonight inside the world of

the fighter ace, the brave men who battle in the sky like ancient knights, their single steed replaced by engines with thousands of horsepower. good evening, i'm oliver north. welcome to "war stories." this is the u.s. air force museum in dayton, ohio. imagine a swirling mass of mustangs, f-4s against mig 21s. the plane's movements limited by thin blue sky, the air flow and daring and skill of their pilots. they twist and turn, climb and dive, all in pursuit of each other. to become an ace, a pilot must score five air-to-air kills, requiring extraordinary proficiency and courage. some say it also requires a killer instinct, a warrior gene that allows them to overcome fear, to engage in deadly combat. climb into the cockpit and join us in the wild blue yonder with some of america's greatest aces. >> if you don't get him, he will get you. >> you don't have time for fear.

>> the next thing i say, he is a dead man and i don't care if i have to chase him back to the kremlin. >> from the mythical to leonardo da vinci we have always dreamt of achieving the freedom of flight. two bicycle builders from ohio, orville and wilbur wright would be the first to make this plight of fantasy a reality. on december 17th, 1903, the first powered aircraft flew over the sandy beaches of kitty hawk, north carolina. their 12 seconds aloft would change the world forever. >> i've been to kitty hawk, you've been to kitty hawk. they were test pilots, weren't they? >> yeah. they were pretty interesting guys. >> born in 1923, charles "chuck" yeager grew up a typical west virginia farm boy. he didn't even see an airplane up close until he was 18. his first flight didn't go very well.

>> we took off and motion sickness took over and i puked all over my airplane. i'll never forget when i got back and got on the ground saying, man, you've applied for pilotry, you've made a big mistake. >> just 11 years after the wright brothers' first flight, europe erupted in war. the battlefield was like none other in history. new horrors like german's machine gun mowed down scores and chemical weapons like chlorine and mustard gas wafted over the lines, wreebing wreaki. there was a new arena for battle, the sky. >> as soon as people got airplanes in the air, they wanted to hang guns on them. >> walter has written more than 30 books on the history of aviation. >> by 1918 everything that has been done in combat today with the exception of nuclear weapons and space satellites and things like that had been done by

airplanes. >> the airplanes real success came on the tails of daring men like the red baron who scored 80 kills and eddie rickenbacher captured the imagination of millions. >> it was nightly. and so it rapidly became the focus of the press and all these young heroes became prima donnas and stars in their own right. after world war i, surface military aircraft were cheap and guys wanted to continue flying them. by flying in air shows and doing the waldo pepper thing, they put out the idea aviation was still viable. >> aviators like charles lindbergh and amelia earhardt were the astronauts of the day, pushing to go higher, fut and faster. >> aviation was the hot ticket in those days. >> you might say walker of ft.

wayne, indiana, was born to fliechlt as a boy no one could imagine what the future held for this son of an architect, although his childhood mischief would offer some ominous foreshadowing. >> my big delight was to make a model airplane made of balsa wood, go up on the roof, send it off and see how long it took it to crash. >> many of the military's top brass had disdain for the aeroplane. but some in uniform did believe. none more outspoken and zealous than billy mitchell. >> billy mitchell believed that air power could be decisive in warfare and that the next war would be won by air power. >> mitchell's visionary idea that the united states should have a separate air force made him some enemies, but it also made him friends. many of them, world war i pilots like captain robert oles. >> this is my dad. >> his son can still remember hearing the fly boys spin their yarns. >> i used to sit at the top of

the stairs as a little boy and listen to my dad and his contemporaries. it was back during the depression years, so the entertainment was whatever they did right there on base. i'd hear their tales of flying. >> robin oles was born in 1922 and he'd follow his father into the skies, becoming a legendary ace and military leader. >> dad took me up on my birthday when i was about 8. it was a biplane, open cockpit. it's still a thrill to think about it. it's quite different from flying a jet. sitting there with the breeze in your face, wonderful. >> mitchell knew that overcoming the military's prejudice against the airplane required a dramatic test. in july of 1921, with scores of military brass and cameras looking on, mitchell's air crews attacked a group of obsolete american captured vessels off the virginia capes. they included a battleship. >> here was this big german battleship considered

unsinkable. all of a sudden it just rolls over and sinks. that's what the world was looking at. if you think this would immediately convince everybody that, okay, we're going to go to airplanes, that didn't happen. >> billy mitchell's, unwavering and aggressive manner made him more adversaries than allies. he resigned after being court-martialed for insubordination. he died ten years later. of all of his predictions about air power, none is more chilling than the one he made in 1923. in a report he labeled the masterpiece of his career, he told of japan's expansionist ambitions. that 1923 report predicted a pacific war that would begin with a naval and air attack on pearl harbor at 7:30 a.m. the attack came at 7:55 a.m. mitchell was off by just 25 minutes. four days later, the germans declared war on america.

>> both of these nations were determined to go to war. and so they were determined to have an air force. we were about two years behind the germans and the japanese, because we hadn't spent the money on it. >> when pearl harbor was attack, oles was following in his father's footsteps. cadet oles was 19 and in his second year at west point. >> i was on my way to the gym, it was a sunday. somebody coming toward me very excitedly said they bombed pearl harbor. who? the japanese. >> where were you the day the japanese bombed pearl harbor? >> i was checking a beautiful young lady back into agnes scott finishing school in atlanta, georgia. we could see it coming before that, so it was no great surprise. >> five months before pearl harbor and short on cash, john bolt dropped out of the university of florida.

joining the marines, he scored well on an aptitude test and was selected for flight school. 20-year-old jack, as he prefers to be called, was on the way to becoming a legend. >> there's a certain instinct that a really good fighter pilot has. >> yes. >> what is it? >> it's just a killer. >> i enlisted in september, '41, just after i finished high school. i was crew chief on an at-6. and on saturday, we went downtown and spent the night and the next morning, the radio was announcing that the japs had bombed pearl harbor. we were told to report to our base. >> big excitement. when the gong on the headquarters building rang after dark and we were all called out and went into formation. >> bud joined the arm air corps in 1941. by december, he was in flight training. >> we were convinced that the japanese were -- the aircraft carriers were down in the gulf of mexico and they would be

bombing oklahoma any minute. >> there would be no attack on chickasaw. by the summer of 1942, the three all shared a goal, to become fighter pilots. within a year, the first of these american heroes would see the face of battle and kill or be killed. >> the biggest concern, i think, that all of us had was what does the german airplane look like. >> coming up, as bud makes his way to europe, john joins one of world war ii's legendary fighter outfits, the black sheep squadron.

by early 1943, 60,000 american troops, including several thousand aviators, had been killed in combat. in may of that year, john bolt

finally made it to the south pacific. the spanish for holy spirit was the name of the island that was home to a pool of replacement pilots refining their skills and growing anxious to face off against the japanese. >> and what aircraft were you assigned to fly? >> the f-4u. a beautiful bird. had lots of bugs in it, but it had an engine that was almost twice the horsepower of the zero. >> what were some of the bugs in the early ones? >> planes would cut out at high altitude. the guns would freeze up. if they spilled gas at the top of the fuselage, it could run down inside and the plane blow up. but despite all that, it was really a god send because it was so superior in speed. >> while training there, one man in particular stood out to john bolt. a gruff, hard-drinking pilot named gregory boyington, older

than the rest, he soon picked up the nickname pappy. >> he was a great instructor. he had the benefit of a couple of years of fighting in china and boyington was our senior officer. later, the pool became a squadron, the black sheep squadron. >> in september of '43, the soon-to-be legendary squadron was sent to the russell islands, nearly 1100 miles northeast of australia. >> it was after you got to the russells that you saw japanese airplanes for the first time. >> the first zero that i saw just was going perpendicular to my line of flight and it was with a sun on it and that great big meatball was just blinding you, it was so big. it was just there for a second. and then it zipped on off and disappeared. >> it was a beautiful airplane,

but also structurally very, very delicately built. they didn't put armor in it. when it came across the united states airplanes, it was gone, disintegrated. >> just four months later, john bolt was on his way to becoming an ace. september 16th, 1943, you get your first two kills. tell me about that. >> that particular day, they were just a little slow getting off the ground. they climbed out underneath us. we'd circle around, get in behind them. the two planes we'd sneak up on them and blow them up. >> the competition in the skies to rack up kills was fierce, and any claims of victory needed to be verified. >> usually it required visual evidence from another flier with you seeing the airplane either blow up or hit the ground. then camera film, if you showed

that you had significant hits or the airplane blowing up, that was good for it. >> there was so much action going on, planes blowing up all around you and going by that it wasn't difficult to find somebody who saw you do whatever you did. a kill is a pretty spectacular thing. >> half a world away, bud mahurin became an ace over germany on october 4th, 1943. >> they were 110s. i came into the closest one i could and fired at it and hit it. it eventually went down. pulled off of that one and turned over and saw another one. went after that, shot it down. finally found a third, shot it down. and then found one that was headed back into germany and i followed that for a while and shot at it and damaged it. the main thing that i really

learned from that one was that as i went by the first airplane, the gunner in the back end of it had obviously been wounded and probably killed, but he was stuck in the back cockpit and his body was flailing in the breeze as the airplane went down. and so now i'm aware of the fact that we're after human beings and not just a machine that's flying in the air. >> when "war stories" continues, two of our warriors face a pilot's worst nightmare, goininn

on november 26th, 1943, less than two months after becoming an ace, walker "bud" mahurin down's three f-10s in a raid. now with ten kills he was the first double ace, an impressive achievement to everyone but him. >> our victories and our challenges were not that impressive. remember that there was a battle of britain and the royal air force, a lot of guys had shot down 20, 25 airplanes. it's a matter of self-survival. if you don't get him, he will get you. >> after months of pilot training in the states, chuck ya yeager finally arrived in europe with the 347th fighter group. he took to the skies in a new plane, a p-51 mustang. >> with the mustang we had eight hours of endurance. we could go all over europe and

poland and all the way to russia and back. >> while chuck yeager was logging missions over europe, john bolt was in heavy dogfights against the japanese in the south pacific. bolt finally hit that magic number, five kills on january 4th, 1944. >> when you made ace, was there any celebration of any kind? >> i certainly celebrated myself. it's a silly thing, but making ace is a big deal. >> march 4th, 1944, chuck yeager is on his seventh mission in the skies over germany. his p-51 mustang, nicknamed glamorous glenn. he suddenly looks down and spots a german me-109 flying alone. >> i pulled up in a big roll and came back and rolled under the 109. he never seen me. i just got up within 200 yards. he blows up. >> yeager had gotten his first kill. but the very next day in a wild dogfight over france, it's yeager who's on the losing end.

a first of german shells takes him down. >> the prop game off my airplane, part of the left wing, the canopy. so i just -- you know, me and my airplane partner, it's that simple. >> one minute you're up there head to head with a german pilot. the next minute you're -- >> coming down. i came out of the airplane, i don't know, probably around 18,000 feet, free fell because you don't open your parachute because it had been rumored that maybe the germans get you in your parachute so i free fell until the ground starts rushing and pulled a d ring. swung by the top of a tree and let myself down. >> in those days there was very, very primitive understanding of what to do, how to survive when you're shot down. >> yeager's upbringing as a west virginia farm boy paid big dividends as soon as he hit the

ground in enemy-occupied france. >> well, there's not a german in the world that can catch a west virginian in the woods anyway. i rolled up my parachute and took off. the next day i made contact with a french wood cutter. i couldn't speak french, he couldn't speak english. he went to get a guy that could. he said what do you want to do? i said i want to get into spain. it's a neutral country. >> chuck yeager spent a month on the run with the french underground before they turned him loose at the spanish border. before making it to safety, he and a felly downed pilot had to cross the rugged pyrenese. >> how long were you in spain? >> almost two months. i was the first guy in my fighter group to return after being shot down. and so they all wanted to ask questions. so we had a big meeting and said, you know, how did you evade? i said the french put me up in the cathouses. which wasn't true.

i said germans weren't allowed to visit the cathouses so they kept me in the cathouses all the time. the guys in the group were all ready to go and bail out the next day. >> bud mahurin's stint behind enemy lines would begin when he too was shot down over france. >> i had no idea what france would even look like, had no idea what europe looked like. i'm from ft. wayne, indiana. i'm not exposed to this kind of stuff. >> chuck yeager was safe but bud was still on the run in nazi-occupied france. hear the amazing tale of his escape when "war stories" returns.

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