An overdue salute to ‘Bazooka Charlie’
Penfield, Illinois, resident Michael Vitoux emailed recently, expressing appreciation for my “dedication to veterans” and wrote, “My father fought in WWII in the Pacific. I ran across a story about Charles Carpenter, who armed his observation plane with rockets to attack the German army and became known as Bazooka Charlie. He was a history teacher before the war and returned to teaching (at Urbana High School) after the war. I do not remember reading anything about him and his heroic efforts.”
I taught for several years at UHS in the ’80s and ’90s and had never heard of him until Vitoux emailed me. As he suggested, a column about him “would be worth some current recognition (and) helping people to remember.” I agreed, so I did some research on Carpenter and reached out to several retired UHS teachers. Not many of them had heard about him, either, but I was able to find a few who gave me some information and found more on the internet.
A little background first: Carpenter was born in 1912 in Edgington, Illinois, a rural community in northwestern Illinois. After high school, he attended Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, where he was educated on scholarships. Before that, he had attended the Roosevelt Military Academy (RMA) in Aledo, Illinois. After graduating from Centre College, he became a history teacher in the Moline, Illinois, high school and entered the Army in 1942 soon after the United States entered World War II.
Grace Ashenfelter, a retired UHS associate principal, said, “Carpenter was discharged from the Army in 1946 due to illness. Thereafter, he taught history at UHS until 1966, the year of his death at age 53.”
Retired UHS history teacher Harold Dean was aware of him and said, “Gordon Burgess and his wife, Pat, were both social studies teachers when I started at Urbana in 1971. He was a WWII bomber pilot and a crusty old guy. I never heard him talk about his experiences, but I think he was involved in the award given in Carpenter’s name.
“We used to give an award to the best social studies students in the senior class,” Dean said. “We voted on it each year. It was called the Charles Carpenter Award in his honor. There was some money collected for it, but it ran out, and we stopped giving it out. That was in the ’70s. I never knew who he was. I think everyone who was involved is deceased.”
Not one of his students, though. Dr. Evelyn Underwood was one of them. She said, “I knew him! He was my history teacher at UHS! I attended Edison Middle School with his daughter, Carol. Met his wife and spent time at his house. Individuals who were in our class of 1960 should remember him because he was very popular. Nadja Lancaster Shoemaker (late husband Pastor Steve), attorney William Hatch, Judy Irle Thompson, also the late Roger Ebert was in class of 1960 and may have been in his class.
“He was an excellent teacher of history,” she said. “Sometimes he would talk about the war and would get animated. He had a love of history and would talk about the historic aspect, but not his experiences. He didn’t talk about them. I remember him and can still see him in my mind’s eye.”
Had he talked about his own experiences, which many combat veterans don’t until they get much older, he would have told quite a story.
Charles Carpenter, aka “Bazooka Charlie”
Carpenter was discharged from the Army Air Force as a lieutenant colonel, and according to his service record, he was “assigned an L-4H Grasshopper for artillery spotter role and reconnaissance missions.” These single-engine planes assumed a 150-pound pilot with no radio. With cargo or a radio and radio operator, the maximum weight was 232 pounds, which was often exceeded.”
He was “inspired by other L-4 pilots who had installed bazookas as anti-tank armament on their planes. Carpenter added bazooka launchers to his plane as well.”
Loaded for bear, he’d dive on German tanks and armored cars and fire high- explosive rounds. On Sept. 20, 1944, during the Battle of Arracourt, Carpenter was credited with knocking out a German armored car and four tanks. His plane, bearing USAAF serial number 43-426, was known as Rosie the Rocketer (a play on Rosie the Riveter). His exploits were soon featured in press accounts, including Stars and Stripes, The Associated Press, Popular Science, The New York Sun and Liberty magazine.
By the end of the war, then Maj. Carpenter “had destroyed or disabled several German armored cars and was officially credited with destroying six tanks.” He was awarded six ribbons, including the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, an Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with four service stars, the American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.
By 1945 he became seriously ill and was diagnosed with Hodgkin disease and given two years to live. But he returned to teaching and taught history at UHS for 20 years before he died.
The actual L-4H he had flown in WWII was located at the Austrian Aviation Museum at Graz Airport and was acquired by the Collings Foundation and returned to its original World War II appearance by a restorer in La Pine, Oregon. The restoration was reported as complete on July 4, 2020, and is now on display at the Collings Foundation’s American Heritage Museum in Portland, Oregon.
I appreciated the email letting me know about such a notable veteran whose story I (and you) might never have learned of otherwise. I’m glad to give Bazooka Charlie one more salute all these years later.