When 5 Japanese Tanks Forced Him to Drop His Bazooka — He Killed Every Crew With Just His Colt .45 скачать в хорошем качестве

When 5 Japanese Tanks Forced Him to Drop His Bazooka — He Killed Every Crew With Just His Colt .45

A two-man weapon was fired by one man. Five enemy tanks moved in single file toward an American roadblock, and the position held anyway. The odds stayed the same. The outcome changed the campaign timeline. December 15, 1944. Ormoc Road near Limon, Leyte, Philippines. Dirk John Cornelius Vlug, Private First Class, 126th Infantry Regiment, 32nd Infantry Division, was isolated at a thin roadblock with no bazooka assistant, six rockets, and five Japanese Type 95 tanks closing fast. U.S. doctrine and field manuals treated solo bazooka operation against armor as non-survivable. He left cover, engaged the lead tank at range, then used his Colt .45 to stop a dismounting crew before reloading and finishing the second vehicle. For the remaining tanks, he refused a fixed position, moved through jungle concealment, attacked from flank angles, and fired only when the shot was certain—until the last tank was struck and driven off the road. It worked because he exploited a real mechanical limitation: the tanks’ turrets traversed by hand, too slow to track a single moving rifleman in dense vegetation. He turned the reload window from a death sentence into a cycle of displacement and reappearance, violating the manual’s assumption that the gunner would be pinned in place and overwhelmed by concentrated fire. The physics of the shaped-charge warhead did the rest once he achieved a hit. The roadblock remained in American hands. 🔔 Subscribe for true WW2 American combat stories: @ww2americans 👍 Like if you learned something new 💬 Comment: Which American WW2 soldier should we cover next? #ww2 #wwii #worldwar2 #ww2history #militaryhistory #ww2americans ⚠️ Disclaimer: This video is narrative storytelling based on documented WW2 events and secondary historical sources. While accuracy is prioritized, this is not an academic publication. For scholarly research, consult primary archives and professional historians.