One of our P-39 pilots, named Hall, was shot down over the jungle and had to bail out. We flew with Australian flying boots, which were fleece-lined and very comfortable. You would remove the weevil and eat the bread. The bread was made from flour out of an old bakery at Port Moresby and had weevils in it. My main meal was bread, peanut butter, jelly, and cheese. For food, we were under Australian rations. “Our new home on New Guinea was an airfield called Seven Mile. The first aircraft in line carries the British serial “BW167”. Army personnel or aircraft to reach Guadalcanal. Army Air Force Bell P-400 Airacobra fighters of the 67th Fighter Squadron, 347th Fighter Group, after having arrived at Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, on Aug. “The malaria took me from a normal weight of 165 pounds down to 124,” he said.įive U.S. He remembers having a Japanese bomber in his gunsight and the cannon rounds from the P-39 falling short. Within months, Stephens and his squadron were on New Guinea in the south Pacific, where he fought malaria and the Japanese. The squadron flew in the pre-war Louisiana war games and carried out a demonstration for Air Corps leaders at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C. in July 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor. “The malaria took me from a normal weight of 165 pounds down to 124,” he said.īorn in 1919, Stephens was in the 40th Fighter Squadron, the “Red Devils,” as one of the squadron’s first dozen officers who went to Selfridge Field, Mich. “We didn’t have any chance to think about that.” “We didn’t really know it was an unpopular airplane,” said Stephens. Only the P-39 is not included in the fighter memorial at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. Of the five principal fighters flown by Army Air Forces pilots during the war ( P-38, P-39, P-40, P-47, P-51), only the P-39 never had an association of pilots who met to share their experiences at reunions. 50 calibers in the nose, and a 20 mm or 37 mm cannon firing through the propeller hub. “It was also the only American fighter that didn’t have a fan club.”Ī Bell P-39 Airacobra in flight firing all weapons in a famous publicity still. “It lacked a supercharger for high-altitude performance,” said Stephens in a 2005 interview. But the P-39 also looked better than it flew. With its tricycle landing gear, nose-mounted cannon and 1,300-horsepower Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled, 12-cylinder in-line engine mounted behind the pilot and turning the propeller via a long driveshaft, the P-39 was better looking than the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, which used the same engine. He flew the P-39 in pre-war Louisiana military maneuvers and again during fighting in the steamy South Pacific. ![]() “It was also the only American fighter that didn’t have a fan club.” A handful flew the P-39 in combat in North Africa, the Aleutians and the South Pacific. Most Americans piloted the P-39 only during training and were almost universally unimpressed. This phenomenon occurs when sunlight reflects off a rocket exhaust plume at high-altitude during morning or evening twilight.The Bell P-39 Airacobra may have been the least-loved American fighter of World War II. ET, successfully carried 53 Starlink internet satellites into orbit, with the booster subsequently landing safely on a drone ship.īut perhaps the most intriguing part of this launch was the striking atmospheric effect it created in the sky, which is sometimes referred to as a "space jellyfish." The rocket, which lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center, at around 5:42 a.m. ![]() ![]() At first I thought it was a meteor or some kind of celestial body falling to earth because I could see like the trace of fire on the back," Irizarry told Newsweek. ![]() To be honest I was a little bit scared at first, I didn't know what was going on. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket produced an unusual visual phenomenon in the skies above South Carolina following a launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Friday.įootage of the fireball streaking across the sky was filmed by Argenis Irizarry, who captured a video while he was on his way to work, driving on the highway with his wife and son early Friday morning.
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