the united nations high

command planned a second front invasion to be the beginning of the end of the european war. >> d-day for operation overload was fast approaching in may of 1944, but america's number one ace in europe, bud mahurin was on the ground in france and caught up in a suffer real nightmare. with the help of the french resistance, he was able to avoid the gestapo while hiding in hey stacks while awaiting rescue. >> the airplane that was to pick me up got shot down. and it took about four or five days for the spy gang to re-establish a flight to come over and get us. during that four or five days, i lived with the inspector of police in the city of orleon. >> bud was hiding in plain sight. >> if you were writing a movie, you couldn't write it any different than this. and unfortunately, without my knowledge, i was the star player. it was terrible.

and each day as the inspector would go into gestapo headquarters, again, grade b movie, there would be a big flag outside with the gold ss signs out and german guys standing in those pill boxes at attention. and they'd leave me on a sidewalk. and i kept pretending like i was goofy. i'd walk and talk to myself and stumble and all that. in case somebody came up, i could pretend like i was nutty. >> after several days of acting crazy, another rescue attempt was made. >> that time the pilot came in and made it. we flew back to england. >> after several days of debriefing and a tour back in the states, bud was reassigned to the pacific where he shot down yet another enemy plane. >> more fun than a barrel of monkeys. it's a part of you. it's the part of you that can go mach four. >> it was quite a sight.

i'm sure you saw "saving private ryan." the first minutes of that film are very, very accurate. >> robin oles arrived in england in may of '44, just in time to protect the landings from german air attack. he had dutifully attacked ground targets, but he was a fighter pilot. >> and here it was august and i had been flying since early may and had never seen an enemy airplane. >> in the middle of august, all that changed. flying alone over france, robin smoked two german 190s. just 11 days later, he joined the elite. >> he and another pilot in p-38s formed a gaggle and i felt sorry for them. >> see or be seen. you better see first. going after some bogeys, bandits, i'm headed north. where are you? i didn't even answer. i didn't want them to know. hell, they were mine. i didn't want to share it with anybody.

>> unseen, he slid in behind his next kill. >> just as i lined up, about to pull the trigger, both engines quit. mine. i had forgotten to switch tanks after dropping my drop tanks. i was so excited. so i shot anyway. so to this day i claim to be the only fighter pilot in the history of warfare that ever shot down an enemy airplane while in the glide mode. >> robin downed another me-109 and then rolled into a dive as he raced toward the ground, his controls froze. >> we just went straight down and that was it. i did manage to pull up and just barely cleared the ground. this boy had had it, that's enough. no more fighting, i just want to go home. i looked over my left shoulder and there was a 109 shooting at me. i thought that's not fair. can't he see that i'm scared and want to go home, you know? i mean he's taking undue

advantage of me. but instinctively you pull heart break and that old 38 shuttered, almost stopped. the poor 109 pilot overshot. i just rolled the wings level, he was right in front of me, so i shot him down. then i went home. >> after escaping occupied france, chuck yeager shouldn't have flown again over europe. to protect the french resistance, downed pilots weren't allowed to go back into combat over europe for fear if they were captured, they might divulge the underground secrets. >> i said bs, i'm not going home. that's when i met general eisenhower. he said i normally don't see you guys but i've got people shooting themselves in the foot to go home. why don't you want to go home? i said i haven't done my job yet, general. >> by october 12th, 1944, yeager and his laser sharp 20/10 vision were back in the hunt. >> i saw 16190s.

we came up within 200 yards. man, this is a piece of cake. i opened up on the tail. he broke, ran into his leader and they exploded. then all hell broke loose. there's airplanes going every way. and i remember this one guy started to turn. he had a wingman. and i was in pretty close to him. i led him, like you have to for deflection shooting, and he blew up. and then this wingman had cut his power back trying to get behind me. and so when he did that, i cut the power back. i skidded out and kicked right rudder and it was all he could do with the 650. here i've got four now. another guy heads to the deck so i followed him down and blew him up. >> five kills in one day. a month later, yeager became one of the first pilots to shoot down an enemy jet, the me-262. the jet age was just dawning in

1945. but in the next war, jet aircraft would be traveling at twice the speed of their predecessors in world war ii. when "war stories" continues, fighter ace john bolt does it all again, this time over korea, in a sabre jet. liberty mutual stood with me when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night, so he got home safe. yeah, my dad says our insurance doesn't have that. what?! you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. liberty mutual insurance. hit could be the next big thing i should totally get that domain name... get your great idea online too... get your domain today, and get... ...a free trial of gocentral from godaddy

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two years after the end of world war ii, the army air corps became the u.s. air force. and the jet age was on cruise control. 24-year-old chuck yeager was an air force test pilot. on october 14th, 1947, in the x-1, he broke the sound barrier for the first time. >> probably the most useful thing i ever did was break the sound barrier, but the most exciting flying i've ever done is combat. >> little did chuck yeager know but the u.s. was marching yet again toward war. june 25th, 1950, north korea

invaded south korea. >> what goes through the mind of jack bolt? >> that i wanted to get in the action. >> at the controls of the 700-mile-per-hour sabre jet there would be plenty of action. 31-year-old major john bolt was flying with the 51st fighter interceptor wing. their mission, seek and destroy. enemy, soviet flown mig-15s supporting the north koreans. >> they really had a far superior plane. you could do a number on the mig if you could get it to hold still for a few seconds. >> tell me about some of the maneuvers you would use in air-to-air against the mig. >> if you get jumped and the mig is in the shooting position behind you and you're down low, the technique for shaking one like that was to pull around on about a 60 turn and you go

black. you lose your vision, but you don't lose your consciousness. so you hold it until you think you're about to lose your consciousness and then you whip back around and the plane pursuing you as probably slid off from the track behind you so you whip back in behind him and get him. >> almost passed out but not quite. >> yes, yes, right. >> bolt had a few tricks up his sleeve. on july 11th, 1953, at the controls of darling dottie, he bagged migs number 5 and 6. >> you become an ace in both wars. >> yes. >> and there's only a small handful of people who were. >> quite a few. >> aren't you the last one? >> the last one? >> i think so. >> there were seven to start with and they're all dead except me. >> what is mig alley? >> it was the yalu river. the migs knew that we weren't

supposed to cross the river and they felt some security in that. you know, that was poorly founded. >> the enemy hoped basing their migs in communist china would protect them from air strikes. >> the migs would climb up to altitude on their side of the river, which was a demarcation line between north korea and n manchuria. our forces would dive across the demarcation line, come over at high speed and attack our people and then turn around and fly back into a sanctuary as fast as they could. >> the rules said don't fly into china. the rules were broken. >> general evers was tracking in the command center and he just raised hell and said you're not supposed to do that, it's against the law. when he got through, he stood up and started to storm out. we all stood at attention and he

got out of the conference room, closed the door, opened it up, poked his head around and he said if you're going to do it, turn off that identification friend or foe. so it was sort of carte blanche. >> there he goes, he's going down. about halfway up toward the yalu river, as i circled, i looked down and saw a truck going down a dirt road. and i thought, well, i'll just nail that truck. and on the way home i'll have a keen story to tell the other guys at the bar. so i finally got all squared away and went down to shoot that truck up and i'm low and slow. and ground fire hit me. so i ended up flying it into the ground. within maybe three or four minutes, north korean soldier and a chinese soldier had me and that was that. i was gone. >> the enemy finally got their hands on colonel walker "bud"

mahurin. he spent 16 months as a prisoner of war, all of it in sill taer. >> it was what we refer to as brainwashing technique. no sleep, practically no food, constant interrogation. they wanted me to confess to having waged warfare against them. so i decided this is it, i can't take it anymore. and then i started to slash my wrists. i got it so blood was spurting out pretty far and i sat down in my chair and put my arms in my uniform and said good-bye to my family. >> but a guard discovered him before he bled to death. >> they started to feed me intravenously for what i guess was about 11 days. and then as soon as that was over, they started the interrogations again. >> he was finally released three months after the cease-fire was signed in july of '53. he retired three years later and

went on to enjoy a successful career in the aerospace industry and he still makes regular trips to luke air force base, home to his world war ii squadron. >> those moments that you're here and that you're flying that airplane, nobody can take that away from you. and they are wonderful moments. >> his suffering as a p.o.w. was not in vain. today u.s. pilots undergo intense training for the kind of horrors he endured. >> i try to think that i made a contribution. it's a damn small contribution, but i made a contribution. >> in this very plane more than two decades after he made ace in world war ii, robin oles blasted two more enemy pilots out of the sky. this time in vietnam. that's coming up on "war stories." making just one connection during recovery from mental and substance use disorders can put the strength of family and community behind you. we're all connected, offering encouragement, support, and hope. join the voices for recovery:

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by 1966, america was embroiled in the vietnam war. before its end, almost 9 million men and women would serve in vietnam. more than 50,000 would never come home. the best jet in the world was the f-4 phantom. its top speed 1650 miles an hour. 1200 miles per hour faster than the p-51 mustang. it relied not on guns but on heat-seeking, radar-guided missiles. >> i loved the f-4. >> in october of 1966, world war ii ace robin olds went into combat again. for the now 44-year-old colonel, the planes looked different but dogfights were very familiar. >> so you were thinking in a three-dimensional sphere of action. trying to keep track of some 20-odd airplanes all at once. and everything changes. second to second to second to second. so your mind is just buzzing.

>> olds commanded the tactical fighter wing better known as the wolfpack. >> i managed to get four migs only because they got in the way, not because i was looking for them. but i was told that when and if i got number five, they'd bring me home. so i said okay. migs are not important. needing that wing is what's important. >> there's a twinkle in his eye and you get the definite impression that there may well have been victories that he scored that he chose not to record. >> i was only in nine more fights. unfortunately, nothing worked, you know. >> robin olds' last combat mission was in the fall of 1967. in two wars separated by 23 years, he flew 259 combat missions. his final official tally, 17 kills. >> does a fighter pilot need a particular attitude? >> it's basically a can-do attitude. >> robin olds may have been out

of the action, but in the spring of 1972, 29-year-old north carolina native steve ritchie was in the thick of it. on his second tour in vietnam, ritchie was assigned to the 555th triple nickel fighter squadron based in thailand. after his first stint in vietnam, he trained at the air force fighter weapons school in nevada. >> we have a reputation of being very arrogant, very cocky and all of that. you have to have a little bit of that to go into combat. but it has to be tempered with a judgment and training and all of those years of preparation. >> that preparation paid big dividends for ritchie. just four months into his second tour. on 10 may, 1972, he downed his first russian-built mig 21 with an f-4 phantom's radar-gieuided sparrow missile. >> this is a scaled-down model of the sparrow missile that i was using that day and every day. i downed all five mig 21s with

sparrow missiles. >> i second kill came later that month. on 8 july, 1972, ritchie downed two more migs in less than 90 seconds. >> in a dogfight, a gun fight is what we use to hang and shoot. so the job is to maneuver so the mig is in the gun sight and then i actually lock on the radar. and normally it takes a few seconds for it to pulse and lock on. on a mig it was an immediate lock. it was just one of those days where it all worked perfectly. the first missile impact was 47 seconds. to the second mig was 42 seconds. so it was a minute 29 seconds. all this happens in a hurry. we did have a party that night. >> his fifth kill came six weeks later, when ritchie blew another mig out of the sky. >> when you got back from that mission and everybody knows you're an ace now, what's the celebration like for that one? >> that was a great celebration.

that's when you could finally relax and -- because there had been a lot of pressure. the navy, of course, had an ace and the air force was always in competition. >> the highly decorated pilot with 800 combat hours during his 339 missions retired from the air force reserve as a brigadier general in 1999. his achievement in the skies over southeast asia made him an air force legend, and member of an exclusive club, fighter ace. >> i got the greatest message from robin olds when i got number five. i certainly believe that he's the greatest combat leader the air force has ever had. the cable read, fox-trot bravo, absolutely sierra hotel tiger. been pulling for you since may. thousands of blue suitors around the world are standing taller. robin olds. >> don't go anywhere, "war >> don't go anywhere, "war stories" will be right back.

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is there such a thing as a natural pilot? >> no. the pilot with the most experience is the best. >> there's been hundreds of thousands of fighter pilots trained since fighter pilots became a commodity. >> only 1% -- of 1% that went in, only 5% became aces. >> just my family, grandchildren, wife, just remembered by them, that's all. >> jack bolt retired as a lieutenant colonel from the marine corps in 1962 and entered law school five years later at the ripe old age of 46. a successful attorney for many years, he's now retired and living in florida. robin olds retired from the air force as a brigadier general in 1973 and now lives in colorado. but the lure of flight has never left him. >> flying across the united

states late at night, it's spread out below, towns and cities are like jewels laid out on a velvet cloth. you're all by yourself. and right over your head through that canopy, the stars. there are times like that when you really don't want to land. it seeps totally into your soul. >> it's almost poetry. these men were also warriors. they were able to combine a sense of duty with the romance of flight. it's that, not the thrill of the kill that got them into the cockpit. their contribution was extraordinary. billy mitchell laid the groundwork for these pilots' great achievements, and for this he was posthumously awarded this medal of honor. the inscription reads in part, for outstandsing pioneer service and foresight in the field of military aviation. the modern american fighter aces we met tonight from the inheritors of his legacy. theirs is a war story that deserves to be told. i'm oliver north. good night.

>> lou: good evening, everybody. president trump making clear his frustration on the russian colougz investigation that produced no evidence of wrongdoing and in the president's mind a witch hunt and a language witch hunt at that. with the fbi investigating the issues, since juvenile last year, it is a year long and the house and senate and intelligence committees since january. in a wide ranging interview with the new york times,