EP323: Summer Adventures Running a Fireworks Tent, The Company Without Corner Offices and Where Everyone Has a View and The Greatest Fighter Pilot in American History

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Even if you're not feet deserve a go to like that like to do to live comfy good to go to. I'm always upgrading my car because I need to because I want to today it's custom rims for my ride tomorrow, it might be a new driver side seat cushion and eBay motors.com always has what I need. They got over 122 million car parts all at the right price that's perfect for me because I'm a car guy arrives killing the morning almost on okay I'm a car fanatic eBay motors. Let's ride this is Lee Habib and this is our American stories we tell stories about everything you're on the show including your seven hour American stories.com. Some of our favorites. Today we bring you a story. Joel Wegener from Loveland, Ohio just outside of Cincinnati.

Joel and his wife have 10 children and working in education.

Joel has always had to find ways in the summer to make some extra cash. My dad was a teacher and I always remember wild and crazy summer jobs often to use Joel to tell us about one of the most explosive businesses. He was ever in so anyway the fireworks business for about 15 years. It was a tent business and it was along Highway 61 between St. Louis and Hannibal a busy highway. There and it was a relatively small tent and we leased the area and then we brought in a tent every year but fireworks in it.

The people that that frequent a fireworks stand are just a little bit different and not in a bad way. In fact, there was one part of me that just kind of related really well with them. And so it was always a fun time just to go and hang out with pyromaniac's and my daughter. My oldest daughter actually named our business pyromaniac paradise and the that's what we call the business but up.

Yeah we we met some some very interesting people. Unfortunately, many of the people that buy fireworks and many of the events around 4 July also involve alcohol and that is never a good combination of fireworks and alcohol but that was often the case, and I remember one evening we were getting close to the end of the day guy rolled up in his pickup truck and what had obviously been drinking and in the back of his truck. He told us that there was a fireworks that didn't work and he was very upset that the fireworks was not working. As we looked in the back of his pickup truck and the big 500 g cake of fireworks had a smoldering fire inside of it and it had not been discharged and he had there were some ropes that you were supposed to use to carry the product that he thought that was what you led, so he'd been trying to wipe these two ropes along the side and so it was smoldering as he backed out with his truck so we quickly assess the situation that we needed to get his truck and the fireworks away from the fireworks that and so we were able to do that and I would probably looking back. The wise thing would've been to try to get some water and put it all out but in our pyromaniac tendencies we decided just to go ahead and discharge at its edge that we had quite quite the fireworks right there at a safe distance from the 10th another event that happened we will have a fireworks tent and about a mile from us. Someone in a competitor came in and had put in a tent and that always always got so nervous if I had competitor ceramic so I was nervous that he was going to steal all my business and all that but be that is a vague but I did notice every night when I left I drove past there to go to my parents house to sleep and we always either packed up all of our fireworks are we had someone stay there all night to guard so I noticed that it seemed that they dropped the tents and left and I wasn't there to see them packing up, but I never saw them packing up all I saw was the tents were dropped was a camper there wasn't anybody around and I found it very unusual, so about a week into the fireworks season someone called me and said did you hear on the news that a fireworks tent went up in smoke north of Troy, which Troy was in town. I knew I downloaded all of mine. So when the mind – curious and so we went and looked and lo and behold they had left all the fireworks in this tent unguarded. Night after night somebody figured that out and so they put a trail of gasoline under the flap of the tent and trailed it out away and let it in the whole fireworks tent went up in smoke.

Yeah, they made the mistake of sticking around to watch it into law, not the smartest pyromaniac surround and so it was going off the neighbor woke up and saw these guys running across his yard due on the ground and so the police were able to track their tracks back into the woods and find, but anyway it was a it was an exciting time.

Not the way that I really want to get rid of competition deftly levitated that competition for that year so we got a lot of stories, a lot of interesting people that we met that we always had fun, always excitement happening of fireworks in the great job as always my Robbie on the production storytelling in the editing and thanks to Joel Wegener for sharing his summer job stories. By the way, if you got a good summer job story of first job story. Mine was quick Rick's and it was a little like Competitor to the local 711 and I have this great idea that we should build in arcade and asteroids packed minutes and pinball machines and I would run the arcade and I get 10% and that made a lot of money but I forgot about expenses I didn't make nearly as much money as I thought and took on a whole lot of responsibility appoint my friends love me because you're the only place in town that had an asteroids machine, summer jobs, first jobs, chairman of the Sedona American stories Joel Wegener's interesting summer gauge, at least for a while. Running a place called pyromaniac paradise here on our American stories told to view of the great American stories we tell and love America like we do for asking you to become a part of the all American stories fanned if you agree that America is a good and great country. Please make a donation monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for support our American stories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming without American stories.com Tory Johnny went to 1 GB class.

We have such a special episode brought to you by near attack ODT we recorded at radius to and windows down near attack ODT were not dependent 75 mg can help migraine sufferers still set an exciting event like window tango. I had when I took minor attack ODT and I was present amazing time. A little glimpse of our conversation with some of our closest friends & was brought to you by near attack ODT were magic pants 75 mg life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family, but thankfully near attack ODT were magic pants 75 mg is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines and adults sound lively events like window tango town have to be next to millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and United healthcare can help you feel confident about your choices for those eligible Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15 through December 7.

If you're working past age 65. You might be able to delay Medicare enrollment.

Depending on your employer coverage.

It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be this@uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more United healthcare helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop for small business insurance.

I need my State Farm agent make sure my business and company business owners to help the past. State Farm is in your corner and on neighbor. There call your local State Farm agent for quote today we continue with our American stories, and now it's time for the right thing series about ethical and is sponsored the great folks at the Daniels fund and our own Alex Cortez brings us today's addition they could away.

Alex Kirk Aubrey is the CEO of Savage in a second generation 75-year-old family company supply chain services help feed the world's power in our lives and sustain the planet before Kirk became CEO of anything.

He was a poor kid in Windsor, Ontario. I had a mentor when I was a kid who was radiologist and he owned a number of radiology clinics watching him run his business saw him go through a situation where he was doing what he thought was the right thing in terms of how he will let provincial government didn't see it that way.

The issue actually had to do with the number of x-rays that were allowed for an individual patient. It was an interpretation of a medical evaluation that the individual Dr. radiologist. In this case had to make to determine whether or not he could get an accurate reading on the condition and so this particular individual made the call that this number of images was required to get an accurate reading on a given medical condition in the province disagree.

Not unlike a lot of the requirements today. There is a certain amount of interpretation how things can get billed and this individual who is basically like a father to me. I watched him go situation where initially there was an inquiry and investigation and ended up going back five years and looking into his practices and billing procedures. Charges were laid against him and he had to spend a significant amount of money on lawyers to defend himself and the business was really torn apart and personally he suffered a lot of stress.

This family was under a lot of stress. I actually remember painting his fence and I remember him coming home in the middle of the day sitting down next to me on a chair and just seeing them just looks so completely devastated and this was a guy who always was on top of things always out in front and he was just feeling like there was no way out of the situation that no matter what he was gonna lose and at the end of the day.

He did lose in terms of a financial perspective because of the money it took to defend himself, but he prevailed and made the case that he was honoring the regulations but during the time there were lots of people who question his integrity and now here he was long standing member of the community know highly respected and was shredded in the newspaper and in media and in the interesting thing was that we actually just died was 95 years old and you know we would talk fairly regularly and I think until the day he died.

He still carried some amount of resentment for the fact that he held his own integrity is such an important part of who he was and that this situation had caused it to be tarnished and left a kind of an indelible impression with me to make sure even though you see a person of high integrity. They can still be subject to people who may be in a position to to really do damage to them and that whole situation for him is demonstrated for me how fragile integrity is that you really do have to care for her trip preserve it. Make sure that there's never anything you would do that you couldn't really and easily defend the notion of certain things you know aren't there not always black and white and you know if you're going to interpret something from my perspective better be able to defend it because there frequently.

Any people that might say that's not the right way to do things in this case that was that was the situation for a long time is think about the air.

This was 45 years ago that was still an era where doctors felt they should not be question, and that was you know very much part of his persona was sort of the new veteran's regulator should be asking questions and so yet he did feel like he if he had to do over again, he could've been more forthcoming, and he could've been more transparent with folks asking questions. We see this in our business. Today we deal with virtually all of our many of the regulatory bodies in the country and we actually take a very proactive stance when dealing with regulators. We believe that it's far better to bring people in a supposed to wait until you know an inspection or not.

It is coming.

We would much rather interact with folks and shown what were doing Tom were doing and solicit feedback on whether they see any problems or issues, and there are some people when I say that the think that's just crazy but the idea of wanting to make sure were on the right side of an issue is more important to us than whatever inconvenience it may cause in terms of somebody coming in assertive uninvited. There was a second person whose example talk a lot about ethics. Kirk had bought and turned around a struggling company culture your communications, but not without some trouble I have one example of an individual that he was president of our local bank and I got to know them through a charity and we became friends as well and we had a situation where we had the only bad that we ever had in 12 years and it was about $400,000 and it was for company of our size and enormous loss was a company went bankrupt. That was a customer of ours and left us without holding the bag for about $40,000. I was at breakfast with this individual and I was telling him how I was contemplating what we're going to have to try to do to survive situation. I went back to my office and he went back to his in about an hour later he walked into my office and he put a check on the desk for $50,000 and it was on his personal account. NEC said I don't care if I ever get this back. I just want to make sure you when someone else has a need like you have you paid for and did them back and paid back with interest in so that was an incredibly generous thing that he did in assertive unsolicited was idle.

I learned over time that was very common for him.

Not that he would walk and get people $50,000, but that he would help out when people were in trouble and that was another huge lesson for me in terms of how to help people when they need it most, and how to pay attention to the situations. Kirk's company was already a client at the bank and after experiencing their ethical leader in action, respecting their clients and concerned about their viability. I doubt Kirk was going to change. Thanks anytime soon. No, there's no way I'm in there was there was no way we had lots of opportunities to go different places for banking relationships and I would just never never even considered. And although the health was incredible. They were still another $350,000 in the hole and how you ethically react to a crisis like this is a dilemma of its own and so we suddenly became members of the committee that you never want to join, which is the creditors committee.

We learned an awful lot about bankruptcy law in a very short period of time and we had to work with our suppliers to negotiate extended terms and try to get people to understand know we want to continue with the question whether or not we could continue in business at that point the cash flow situation was such that that could potentially put us under. And so we had to go out talk all of our creditors and critical suppliers, which was another lesson I took forward that would never trade is the ability to have conversations with people explain what's going on.

Keep them informed and then it's amazing how much help you can get from people once they really do understand your situation where if we just try to slow pay people in string about what had angry suppliers and angry partners and understandably they would necessarily want to do business with us.

Over time, and I don't apologize. I don't have the quote right in front of the Warren Buffett's quote about how to handle crisis situations is all about speed and transparency. And he basically says get it out get it out fast and make sure people understand what you're gonna do about it and most people not all but most people really do respond when they sense that someone is being candid and forthright and well attended. If somebody perceives that your truck pull something you know who can blame them for not really wanting to cooperate. But if you really are trying to dig your way out of a tough situation that you didn't cause a lot of people will catch a lot of slack.

It was at one of the most painful experiences of that 12 years of owning my own business, but it was really instructive because it ended up serving me later when we bought a company out of bankruptcy and I really understood what those folks were dealing with, who were suppliers and creditors to that organization. Some of the strongest relationships I had from that experience. I maintain to this day world know when you've gone through something tough for somebody and done it ethically and honorably that frequently makes the relationship stronger and you been listening to Kirk Marbury talking about will so many things. The focal point is integrity and how to keep it when we come back more of Kirk Marbury story more of our do the right thing seared beer on our American story.

Tory and Johnny went to 1 GB class.

We have such a special episode brought to you by near attack ODT we recorded at radiused windows hanging down near attack ODT were not to plant 75 mg can help migraine sufferers still such an exciting event window tango I had when I took minor attack ODT. I was present amazing time of our conversation with some of our closest friends & was brought to you by near attack ODT were meant to plant 75 mg life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family, but thankfully near attack ODT were magic plant 75 mg is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines else sell lively events like window tango town have to be next to millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and United healthcare can help you feel confident about your choices for those eligible Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15 through December 7. If you're working past age 65.

You might be able to delay Medicare enrollment. Depending on your employer coverage. It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be this UHC Medicare health plans.com to learn more United healthcare helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop for small business insurance.

I need my state for me to make sure my business people, and competent business owners to help the past. State Farm is in your corner and on neighbor. There call your local State Farm agent for quote today we continue with the stories of Savage CEO Aubrey do the right thing series sponsored by the great folks the Daniels fund. Let's return to Alex on the second generation and 75-year-old family come Savage has powerful vision and legacy statements by their little long, so Kirk and the team decided to boil down to three guiding principles do the right thing. Find a better way and make a difference anybody anywhere of our 4500 team members know that if they're practicing those three phrases. There never getting in trouble fairly early on I got here 10+ years ago we had a situation where for many of our customers. These are long-term relationships, their long-term contracts and they have escalation clauses and they have complexity in them that you really have to stay on top of and although we work really hard to make sure were on top of these things. There was one. That calculation was not being performed correctly and so it wasn't caught by our customer wasn't caught by our auditors. It wasn't caught by anybody other than somebody in our accounting department who uncovered the fact that we've been overcharging customer to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars and I was actually is one of my first meetings here and I was sitting in a meeting and someone had they came in, just tell us what they had done and when I say tell us what they had done. Not the mistake they came and told us what they had done to correct the problem which was to immediately notify the customer that we had miscalculation and immediately credit the account and so to me what that it was sitting there thinking that's amazing that nobody came in and checked hey should we talk about this, should we tell the customer they didn't catch it was never a question, and should we pan back that was never question it was working to do the right thing and that's that's where we start. And so that was a really reassuring I came here primarily because of how connected I felt to that approach to business. I got to witness it early in the process and everybody. No one was surprised nobody was angry we did. Santa had this happen and happily prevented the future.

But that was not to lay blame nobody ever asked who did this, whose fault was it. And so that was a really important early lesson for me coming in the safe. This is the county company.

I thought it was when I decided to join in. Next, Kirk shares a story that occurred before he had even joined Savage they had sold their cement assets to a partner named Geneva rock and in return acquire Geneva's trucking assets at what they believed was a fair market value is what happened after that. That originally peak my interest in after the transaction was completed, Savage is able to sell some of these assets at a significantly higher value than was anticipated in the transaction with Geneva and so we went back to Geneva basically wrote them a check for the difference. Even though that was not required by a contract it was just again it was just viewed as the right thing to do. Geneva's Ben partner and customer of ours for probably 30 years and so you know, again, you go back to the story I told you about that that bank president try to get somebody in Geneva to try to go to somebody other than Savage. After having that relationship that that kind of a gesture made pretty hard to do this the kinds of relationships that we want to continue to promote and continue to earn the right to provide service to customers and continue to build the relationship in ways that they want to give us more. That's the thing about all the stories right there are lessons that you learn in one of the things I love about this company is this notion of finding a better way which makes it not a bad thing to go back and look at how can we be better. How could we have done this better.

How can we have been more accurate. We shouldn't be in the habit of having to write checks to people when we make a mistake on valuation and so that's a big part of who we are, actually, is a big part of our safety process in our culture of safety where we are wide open to both identifying hazards and things before they happen, but also going back when something hasn't turned out the way we wanted to and doing a really full thorough root cause analysis to understand that root cause analysis mentality goes across lots of our business.

A lot of times were out working with our customers assets and working with their materials and doing things and there's not an ability to have that much oversight, so there's there's gotta be inherent and inherent trust in the relationship and so the one thing I can tell you that I think is most interesting in terms of biggest complement. I think we've ever been paid by customer, somebody asked for a reference point. Talk to a current customer and we gave him the name and contact information of of a large energy customer of ours and the prospective customers asking about that tenure of our contract.

How long is the contract and current customer said I don't even know. He said I know the contracts there, but he said, with more important is we have a relationship and relationships don't and it was a really important thing for our team to hear and understand that yes there needs to be a contractual underpinning to what we do but we also have to honor the nature of these relationships in all of the things that go into having a strong relationship based on trust and integrity so I can give it tons of examples of things were. Customers have said boy you you guys went above and beyond and did things that we didn't expect and that's just kind of what is expected of our team and there's also the more rare expectation that the language which the team uses with each other is in the spirit of the ethical principles of respect and fairness, and builds mutual trust. There been some things that we've done in the past 10 years or so were we've gotten very purposeful about language that we use to describe situations so we don't have a headquarters we have a service support center and nobody is allowed to refer to it as a headquarters because of what that can represents so this building is here to serve and support the team that's out in the field and we frequently remind people who are here in this building that disability doesn't exist without the people who are doing the work on the front lines every day for our customers.

We don't have employees. We have team members and so I still opened the people. Every once in a while who refer to an employee but we don't have and we don't have bosses. We have team leaders.

We don't have an HR department because I think the notion of human resources is a little insulting so we have a people group and we have a chief people officer and those things can sound maybe a little trite but they send a message about what's important to us. We built our service support center and nobody has a corner office. We did that intentionally because of what the idea of a corner office represents and everybody in the building has a view actually today.

We don't cousin that somehow the mountains are missing over there but because we got some some something going on some weather going on, but everybody in this building. We designed it so that we don't have kind of folks who don't get to enjoy that benefit and in our view is that there is no position.

This company is any more important than any other position are no reserved parking spaces. That's just it's all part of you know what we think is important to create the culture so that team members do you really believe that we want them to do the right thing. We want them to find a better way.

We want them to make a difference. I've been in companies where I've seen what we characterize this essay do gaps right. I've been in companies where there are lots of statements about integrity and the importance of integrity in all those things and then you see behavior that isn't consistent that's worse to me than if the statement and never been made right. I'd rather the beauty of what we have created over 75 years is it is part of a system that were constantly working on constantly trying to get better and were never going to get there never going to just arrive always be looking for a better way and a great job as always to Joey on the production and to Alex for bringing us the story and a special thanks to cavalry as well, CEO of Savage.

My goodness he talked about integrity, trust and fairness and those are just three of the principles in the Daniels fund ethics initiative. I do the right thing series about ethical dilemmas is always sponsored by the Daniels fund and to learn about bringing their ethics programs to your school business. Church Police Department any other organization or part of coded Daniels fund.org story of Kirk Aubrey story of Savage second-generation 75-year-old family company still working hard to keep the trust of their customers to keep doing the right thing. I do the right thing series is always sponsored by the Daniels fund here on our American story. Tory and Johnny went to 1 GB class.

We have such a special episode brought to you by near attack ODT we recorded at radius and windows hanging down near attack ODT were not apparent 75 mg can help migraine sufferers still such an exciting event like window tango. I had when I took minor attack ODT. I was present amazing time of our conversation with some of our closest friends & was brought to you by near attack ODT were magic pants 75 mg life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family, but thankfully near attack ODT were magic pants 75 mg is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines and adults sound lively events like window tango town have to be next to millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and United healthcare can help you feel confident about your choices for those eligible Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15 through December 7. If you're working past age 65. You might be able to delay Medicare enrollment. Depending on your employer coverage. It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be this@uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more United healthcare helping people live healthier lives.

I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop for small business insurance. I need my State Farm agent make sure my business people, incompetent business owners to help the past.

State Farm is in your corner and on a neighbor. There call your local State Farm agent for quote today and we continue with our American stories. Next comes a man who simply known as the history guy's videos watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages over on you to miss you guys also heard here regularly American stories. Richard Bowen was a hero of heroes is the history guy with the story. It has often been said that war is the most dramatic of human endeavors. Millions of people who served throughout the globe.

In the second world war there countless stories of those who went above and beyond to serve their country to protect their comrades to do their part to try to bring an end to the most destructive floor in human history. Among the stories is the story of Richard all U.S. Army fighter pilot in the Pacific. It was so successful that he became America's ace of aces Richard Ira Bob was born September 24, 1920 in superior Wisconsin. The oldest of nine children born to Carl Bahn, the Swedish immigrant and American door price yet an interesting plate young gay male planes fly over the farm present. Calvin Coolidge was at his summer White House in superior. Recall that the mail plane flew right over that I wanted to be a pipe dispute or state teachers College 38-year-old in the civilian pilot training program started, just that year to train pilots for civilian roles possibility will May 29, 1941 bond listed in the Army air Corps.

If you think that program is generally instructor in Arizona was Goldwater. Later Sen. and presidential nominee said that Bob was very bright student was already showing his talent as a private pilot wings was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army Air Force reserves on January 9 42. Just a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was At the field for several months where he worked as a gunnery instructor until he was transferred to Hamilton field near San Francisco where he trained to fly the lucky P 30 lightning number stories of come out of bonds time 12 2042 lycée pork buzzing the house just got married the same day some other pilots were cited for flying a loop around the center span of the Golden gate Bridge is often been accused of flipping the bridge the boys tonight. Later, however, he did apparently Fly Low Down Market St. in San Francisco so low that he knock some laundry off the line and waved at people in the lower floors of some general George Kinney Cmdr., the fourth Air Force remembers dressing bomb down for the stop saying I don't need to tell you again how serious this matter is if you can market your course but you're not to do it anymore.

I mean what I say Kinney may bog with her laundry. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific area chose Kinney over Gen. James Doolittle in the fifth Air Force were flying about bomb was handpicked by Kinney is one of 50 P3 Australia in September I was assigned to the ninth fighter squadron nicknamed the flying lights. P. 38.

He and some others engage the larger force of Japanese planes near New Guinea on the 27th 42 scored his first real victory, shooting down to Japanese planes himself.

He was awarded the Silver Star January 7 two squadron attacked a convoy bringing reinforcements to New Guinea shut down two more points very next day. He was a screen above her formation when he and seven, the company pilot approximately 20 enemy fighters. The citation for his distinguished flying Cross said that Lieut. Bob shot down enemy aircraft with a long burst at a distance of 200 yards a difficult shot and already his fifth confirmed kill bomb had become a fighter ace not to weeks after his first engagement participated in the battle of the Bismarck Sea where my complaint detect transports and destroyers. Nearly 7000 reinforcements, New Guinea, shut down the Mitsubishi ASICs. M0 is a formidable fighter aircraft to become an eight transports were destroyed in a significant defeat for the Japanese propaganda victory for the Army Air Force by April he checked out five more plaintiffs becoming a AA sin was promoted to first Lieut. July 26 Lena flight of Tempe, 38, of New Guinea, spotted formation of 20 Japanese planes. Three.

Taxable formation shooting down to the aircraft himself with 15 more Japanese planes arrived bomb disregarding the greatly superior numbers of the enemy. The new planes taking out another to himself. In all, outnumbered three to one bonds team shot down 11 planes without a loss himself, taking he was awarded the distinguished service cost. In August he was promoted to Capt. engagement.

Later that year, nearly cost him his life.

General Kinney bonsai Japanese fighter chasing down and injured P 38, which is fine for the nearby public for cover bomb turned off one of his engines into the attention of the enemy was.

The other point was clear. He flipped his back on and outrace the Japanese base. Unfortunately, on his return he noticed that the plane was damaged worse than he thought. Half of his tail was gone as he prepared to land. He found that his hands were also damaged.

When he finally touched down. He discovered that he had no breaks and when the wheels was punctured up in the ditch, but he's pointing a total loss. The plates shield behind his head was pitted with depths and the .50 bullet holes in it. Both fuel tanks are punctured by a self-sealing rubber system. I kept them from leaking in another engagement he was circling above the jungle where soldiers got a boat across the lake to get to the following load to the water and Capt. Von was stateside. When he reached 21 confirmed kills. He was able to smooth the holidays. 43 at home in Wisconsin where he met Marjorie that began dating her.

He also participated the ship watching where the mother named him their number one. When asked how he was so good at what he did. He modestly answered. I'm just lucky I guess a lot of Japanese have to get in my way. And finally, some of them when you return to the Pacific and 4040 Chris and his plane. Mark had hispeople on the he was reassigned to the fifth Air Force HQ freelance article 12 been credited with three morbid bricks which is total 28 usually beating any record August 26 during World War I Kinney meatball the major took the chance to send them home. Rickenbacker and Kinney had earlier promised cases of Scott B Rick about his record first. Both of them settling the case for three months he was on leave in the United States doing publicity to certain civilians by bonds and generally supporting the war effort.

We got back, he was put in charge of gunnery training and told not to engage in self-defense attempted company is training to our plate solely in self-defense course still officially gunnery instructor not required to fly combat missions continue to find ways to do so between October 10 and November 15. He engaged in unusually hazardous. Ortiz shot down eight more points. It was recommended for and received the metal MacArthur give to them personally with a short major Richard fireball who is rule be here from New Guinea to the Philippines. I know that you into the society of the bravest of the brave wearers of congressional United States December 17 among copies 40th victory and Kinney ordered Kinney was convinced Yvonne Ashley had many more victories in stories about it been given away kills to wingmen when you really know the shooting hundred 46 combat missions 400 hours combat time. Richard Ira Bond married Marjorie back dollar and 45 already given so much of the services country become one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation becoming a test testing their new shooting star on August 6, 1945 bomb took off in his 12 flight in the plane blocking service mechanically reported. We knew something was wrong with black smoke coming just as he leveled off in flight. Within four minutes of take off the plane exploded some 50 feet off the ground over North Hollywood is quoted in the Los Angeles times up on the deck and the plane to the first explosion, America's basis that the same day, the first atomic bomb was that made it over here.

She shared front-page news first reports among American fighter pilots in the second world war.

Only 5% became a six and yet those 5% accounted for half of all enemy aircraft claimed in airfare, but that means that a huge burden was placed on the shoulders of a very few with major Dick bonk died. He was just 24.

In his brief life he became one of the most decorated pilots in American history. Having earned the medal of honor, the distinguished service Cross to Silver stars seven distinguished flying crosses and 15 air battles and a special thank you Greg for the terrific production and to the history guy you can find his YouTube channel. The history guy history deserves to be remembered. My goodness, what a story 146 missions. That's crazy story of Richard Dick here on our American stories