He was cut off from his squadron over the most heavily defended harbor in the Pacific. More than twenty Japanese fighters between him and the bombers he was supposed to protect. Most pilots would have turned back. He flew straight in.
First Lieutenant Robert Hanson was twenty-three years old and flying with a Marine squadron that almost nobody has ever heard of — VMF-215, the Fighting Corsairs. While the world remembers Pappy Boyington and the Black Sheep, this forgotten unit quietly broke every single record the Black Sheep ever set. More kills. More aces. More destruction in less time.
And their best pilot — a reckless replacement who terrified his own wingmen — went on a streak so intense that it rewrote Marine Corps history. Then, one day before his twenty-fourth birthday, it all ended over a lighthouse.
This is one of the greatest untold stories of the Pacific War. And it was almost lost forever.
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