I Fed a Bigfoot for 40 Years, And I Understand Why It Fears and Avoids Us – Sasquatch Story
The sky over Schweinfort, Germany, on October 14th, 1943, burned with fire. Sixty B-17 Flying Fortresses, proud behemoths of American might, plunged in flames, their crews of sons, brothers, and fathers disappearing into the cold void. The losses were catastrophic—unsustainable. The Luftwaffe’s dominance over Europe was absolute. American fighters could only watch helplessly as their bombers were shredded in the skies, the nightmare repeating itself day after day.
In November 1942, Luftwaffe ace Major Egon Mayer discovered a terrifying truth: the B-17’s nose, where the pilot and bombardier sat, was a glaring weakness. Protected by just four machine guns, it was vulnerable to frontal attacks. Mayer perfected a deadly maneuver—head-on attacks at breakneck speeds of 600 mph, pulling away at the last second. It was a dance of death, requiring nerves of ice and perfect timing. One mistake meant mutual destruction. And the Americans paid the price, their heavy bombers falling like stones, the statistics brutal. Most crews never survived past five missions.
The Eighth Air Force was dying. American fighter pilots were trapped in a nightmare of impossible odds. The P-47 Thunderbolt, nicknamed the “Jug,” was a beast—7 tons of armor, eight .50 caliber machine guns—but it had one fatal limitation: range. It could escort bombers only so far into German territory before turning back, leaving them defenseless. Each mission was a funeral ticket, a grim roll of the dice.
Then, in August 1943, something extraordinary happened. Captain Walker “Bud” Mahuran, a seemingly ordinary pilot from Fort Wayne, Indiana, did something no one expected. Born December 5th, 1918, Mahuran was just a college student when the war began. He had no military lineage, no exceptional records, only determination. Assigned to the 56th Fighter Group, he flew escort missions with no kills, following doctrine, staying within the safety of formation.
Everything changed on August 12th, 1943. A rookie mistake nearly ended his career. Curious or reckless, Mahuran flew too close to a B-24 Liberator. The bomber’s propeller shredded his plane. He bailed out, humiliated, grounded, and avoided by his squadron mates. Most would have crumbled. Most would have waited for redemption that might never come. But Mahuran did something different. He studied. He watched gun camera footage, analyzed German tactics, and noticed a pattern everyone else missed.
When German fighters committed to a head-on pass at the bombers, they were fully committed. For three seconds, focused entirely on their target, they were vulnerable. Most American pilots responded predictably—dive, break formation, extend, reset. Mahuran asked himself a daring question: what if, instead of fleeing, you turned toward them? What if you met the attack head-on, forcing the enemy to blink first? It was a terrifying gamble. One wrong calculation, and both planes would vanish in a deadly collision.
On August 17th, 1943, over Schweinfort, Mahuran tested the theory. Flying a P-47 not even his own, he throttled forward and turned into the incoming German FW-190s. His wingman screamed over the radio, but there was no time to answer. The German pilot, focused entirely on the bomber, didn’t see Mahuran until it was too late. Guns roared. Tracers arced across the sky. Pieces of enemy aircraft tore off in a fireball. The first kill was his. Minutes later, another German fighter, a Bf-109 flown by Major Wilhelm Wutz Galland—the brother of the famed ace Adolf Galland—was obliterated. Mahuran had done the impossible: turned their own deadly tactic against them.
Word spread quickly. The room was divided. Some called him reckless, suicidal. Others could not ignore the results. In the span of months, Mahuran became the first American ace in the European theater to score ten confirmed kills. Yet, his genius was not in his personal score but in his understanding of timing, geometry, and psychology. He had discovered that fear and surprise were weapons just as deadly as bullets.
By December 1943, Mahuran was training others. Twelve pilots volunteered for his intense head-on training, pushing each other to the edge, almost colliding in the process. The margins for error were razor-thin. But slowly, they mastered it. By March 1944, the 56th Fighter Group was transformed. On a single mission, five P-47s, led by Mahuran, intercepted waves of Luftwaffe fighters attacking American bombers. The Germans, expecting the usual defensive posture, were unprepared. Three FW-190s went down in flames. Bomber losses dropped dramatically. One pilot radioed his thanks: “Thank God for those crazy jug drivers. You just saved our asses.”
Mahuran’s own aircraft became a symbol of resilience. On March 8th, 1944, during a mission to Berlin, he destroyed three enemy fighters in twelve minutes, all with head-on attacks. His P-47 was riddled with 27 bullet and shell holes, yet he brought it home. “You can’t keep flying like this,” his crew chief warned. “One day your luck will run out.” Mahuran simply shrugged. “Then I’d better make every mission count.”
His victories were impressive: 19.75 confirmed kills over six months, plus additional victories in the Pacific, totaling 21 across two theaters. But the true victory was tactical. American fighters were no longer just defending—they were hunting. Luftwaffe pilots were forced to reconsider, adapt, and endure new terror. Mahuran had shifted the balance of power in the skies, using ingenuity, courage, and sheer audacity.
In the end, Mahuran’s war continued beyond combat. In March 1944, he was shot down over France, narrowly avoiding capture, aided by ordinary French citizens who risked everything to hide him. Weeks later, he returned to England, only to be grounded permanently to protect resistance networks. He survived, returned home, and continued service in Korea, enduring captivity and torture before retiring as a colonel.
When asked about his tactics, Mahuran never boasted. “Someone had to figure out how to stop them. It happened to be me,” he said simply. He died in 2010, age 91, buried with full military honors at Arlington.
Mahuran’s story is not just about skill—it is about the power of one mind to question the impossible, to confront fear, and to act when everyone else freezes. The sky over Germany was a graveyard, but through courage, innovation, and relentless determination, one man turned it into a proving ground, saving hundreds of lives and rewriting the rules of aerial combat forever.
Sometimes, the greatest victories come not from machines, not from numbers, not from doctrine—but from the audacity of a single human being willing to do what no one else dares. Walker “Bud” Mahuran was that human being.
