THE MAN WHO FOUGHT SIXTY-FOUR

9:27 a.m. — December 13th, 1943

Assam, India

The sky over the Brahmaputra Valley was pale and washed with winter haze when Second Lieutenant Philip “Flip” Adair rolled his P-40N Warhawk Lulu Belle into a climbing turn.

He didn’t know why.

Some intuition — a prickling nudge in the spine that fighter pilots never ignored — told him something massive was coming.

Then he saw them.

Sixty-four Japanese aircraft emerging through the haze like a black tide.

Twenty-four Ki-21 Sally bombers in three perfect V-formations.

Nearly forty Ki-43 Oscar fighters stacked above and below like circling hawks.

They were three miles out, heading straight for his base at Dinjan Airfield.

Flip Adair was alone.

One fighter.
Sixty-four enemies.
And fourteen loaded C-47 transports parked wing-to-wing below him — each packed with critical supplies for China.

If the bombers reached Dinjan, the spine of the entire Hump airlift snapped in half.

He had ninety seconds to decide whether he would die running
—
or die attacking.

He shoved the throttle forward.

The Stakes No One Could See From the Ground

In the last eight weeks, Japanese raids across northeast India had:

Destroyed 47 Allied transports

Killed 112 personnel

Burned fuel stocks needed for the Himalayan airlift

Crippled medical stations

Intel estimated that a formation this size could hit the airfield with 90% accuracy if unopposed.

And the nearest friendly fighters were 38 minutes away at Jorhat.

Dinjan had zero defenders in the air except one P-40 named Lulu Belle.

Flip checked his gauges:

Fuel: full

Ammo: 6× .50 cal Brownings, 240 rounds per gun

Fire time: 12 seconds total

His heartbeat thudded against the oxygen mask.

Standard doctrine?
When outnumbered more than 5:1, wait for support.

Flip Adair was outnumbered 64:1.

He didn’t hesitate.

He rolled inverted.
Picked the sun behind him.
And dove.

The First Strike

He came out of the sun at 380 mph, nose pointed at the lead Sally.

No one saw him yet.

At 800 yards, he pressed the trigger.

Six Brownings tore the sky open.
Tracers walked up the bomber’s left wing.
Fabric flew.
Metal sparked.
Then the port engine erupted into fire.

The formation collapsed like a kicked anthill.

Bombers scattered left and right, the precision V instantly dissolving.

And all hell broke loose.

The Swarm

The Oscars saw him.

Forty fighters rolled, dove, and came at him in a spiral of silver wings.

The Ki-43 Oscar was the lightest, most maneuverable fighter in the East.

The P-40 Warhawk was not.

Flip knew the rule carved into every Burma pilot’s skull:

Never turn with an Oscar.
Never.

He pushed the throttle to the wall.

The Allison engine roared, the Warhawk knifing through the swarm.

Two Oscars slashed past his canopy so close he saw the white scarves around their necks.

Flip rolled, dove, climbed in violent angles — anything to keep speed.

The bombers were reforming behind the fighter screen.

If they re-established formation, Dinjan would vanish under 2,000-pound bomb loads.

Flip had to break them again.

He shoved the stick forward and dove straight back into the bomber stream.

Second Kill — And the Price Begins

He picked the right-hand bomber leader this time.

At 300 yards, he fired.

The right engine blew apart.
The bomber rolled, its wing shearing off in a catastrophic flutter of metal.

Flip skidded left, squeezed off a burst at the second Sally.

Rounds hammered through the fuselage.
Transparent greenhouse windows exploded into shards.

But the Oscars were closing again.

He pulled hard — far too hard.
The Allison engine temperature spiked.

He’d been at full power for eleven straight minutes.

The coolant temp gauge crept past 230°.
Then 240°.

At 250°, the engine would seize.

But he couldn’t stop.

The bombers were nineteen miles from Dinjan.

Four minutes from release range.

And Flip was the only thing between them and a flaming airfield.

He rammed the throttle deeper — and kept fighting.

Third Kill — The Nose Separates From the Sky

The bombers had reformed again, two V’s tightening.

Flip dove past six Oscars, the P-40 hitting 405 mph in the dive—too fast for the lighter Japanese fighters.

He leveled behind the second V.

He stagger-walked his fire across the lead bomber.

A tracer hit the wing root.
The entire right wing folded up and tore away.

The Sally flipped into a flat spin, trailing smoke like a comet.

Three bombers down.

Formations broken again.

But Flip’s engine was cooking itself alive.

The coolant needle hit 248°.

The engine began to detonate — violent metallic pounding from pre-ignition.

He was killing the Allison engine to keep the base alive.

He didn’t stop.

The Oscars Hit Home

Twelve Oscars came down in a perfect diving attack.

He rolled left — too slow.

Rounds smashed through his right wing.
Fabric peeled back.
His aileron felt mushy.

One round punched through the firewall.

Coolant sprayed across the windscreen in a green flash.

Steam erupted from the cowling seams.

The engine temp spiked past 260°.
The oil pressure needle slid to zero.

Then the engine caught fire.

Flip smelled the burning glycol and oil, hot and sweet and deadly.

Standard procedure:
Shut the engine down and bail out.

He stayed in the cockpit.

He leaned the mixture for 3 seconds.
The flames weakened.
He pushed it back.
The engine coughed…and kept running.

Barely.

The Nightmare Begins

Engine: dying
Oil pressure: zero
Coolant: gone
Right aileron: damaged
Oxygen: none
Cockpit: filling with smoke

He was twelve miles from friendly airspace.

He turned Lulu Belle southwest toward Naguli, his emergency field.

Six Oscars followed.

Circling.

Watching.

Waiting for gravity to finish their job.

At 7,000 feet, the Allison engine began making a grinding, metallic chewing noise.

Flip knew what it meant.

With no oil, the bearings were gone.
The pistons were scoring metal.
At any moment, the entire engine could seize.

Then the coolant system ruptured further.

A jet of green vapor sprayed into the cockpit.
Flip opened the canopy.
Cold December air blasted in.

The plane dropped to 180 mph, barely above stall.

The Oscars closed.

Nobody fired.

They knew he was dead already.

They were watching the American crash.

Control Cables Snap

At 4,000 feet, the right aileron control cable snapped.

The P-40 rolled into a death spiral.

No elevator.
No aileron.
No pitch control.

The jungle rushed up at 260 mph.

Flip hauled the stick back with both arms.
Nothing.

The P-40 dove.

3,000 feet.
2,500.
2,000…

He was going to die in the next five seconds.

Then—

He realized something insane.

If he rolled the plane upside-down…

…the damaged controls would reverse.

What killed him upright might save him inverted.

At 1,800 feet, he slammed the stick sideways.

The P-40 rolled fully inverted.

Negative G forces hammered him into the straps.
Blood rushed into his skull.
His vision reddened.

The nose came up.

Just barely.

Lulu Belle leveled off at 1,200 feet — upside down.

The Oscars watching above had never seen anything like it.

They pulled away.

This American wasn’t dying today.

He was fighting physics itself.

The Rolling Climb to Freedom

Flip flew Lulu Belle inverted for 40 seconds until the fuel system starved the engine.

He rolled upright.
The nose dropped — too fast.

He rolled inverted again to climb.
Upright to breathe.
Inverted to buy altitude.

Flip. Climb. Flip. Descend.
Flip. Climb. Flip. Survive.

The jungle blurred below.
Smoke filled the cockpit.
His head throbbed from carbon monoxide.
His limbs turned heavy.

He kept flying.

Against the engine.
Against the odds.
Against the dying P-40 beneath him.

He clawed his way up to 5,000 feet.

Naguli Airfield appeared through the haze like a dream.

—

The Last Problem — No Hydraulics

Landing gear: hydraulic
Flaps: hydraulic
Hydraulic system: dead

He needed gears down before the engine died.

He jammed the gear lever.

Nothing.

He unbuckled, tied his lap belt around the control stick to hold it roughly level, and grabbed the manual pump on the cockpit wall.

He pumped like his life depended on it.

Because it did.

23 strokes.

THUNK.
Left gear down.
Right gear down.

Drag increased.
Airspeed dropped to 135 mph.

The engine staggered.

Then died completely.

The propeller froze.

He was now a glider.

A very heavy, very wounded glider.

Two miles from the runway.

He needed one more impossible idea.

The Inverted Glide — The Trick No Instructor Taught

A P-40 glides badly.
A damaged P-40 glides worse.

But an inverted P-40…

…it generates slightly less drag.

Just enough.

He rolled upside down one last time.

The world flipped.
Trees were above him.
Sky was below.

He rode the inverted glide to within 300 yards of the runway.

He rolled upright.

The damaged aileron immediately tried to kill him.

He fought it.
Pulled back.
Held center.

The runway rushed at him.

At 90 feet, he slammed down onto the concrete.

The right gear collapsed.
The wing dipped.
Metal screamed.

The P-40 skidded 200 feet, spun backward, and stopped.

Silence.

Flip Adair opened the canopy.

Stood up.

And walked away.

Aftermath

Not one Japanese bomb hit Dinjan.

Fourteen C-47 transports remained operational.
The Hump airlift never paused.
Sixty-three wounded soldiers in the field hospital lived another day.
Fuel stocks for China survived.
The Japanese raid failed utterly.

Because of one pilot.

One P-40.

And a refusal to die.

Adair flew 95 more missions, became an ace, and retired as a full colonel in 1971.

His maneuver — the inverted glide landing of a shot-out P-40 — was never repeated.

Flight surgeons said he should have passed out.

Mechanics said the engine should have seized.

Physics said the airplane should have crashed in the jungle.

Reality said otherwise.

Because on December 13th, 1943, Philip Adair did something sixty-four Japanese aircraft could not stop:

He decided to live.