Stranger people of History. Bazooka Charlie.

The second world war is filled with interesting characters from Winston Churchill to cocaine addict Herman Goering, who led Germanies air force in the war. But all of these people, Churchill especially, pale in comparison to major Charles Carpenter. A man known to history as Bazooka Charlie.
The good major was a pilot attached to the first bombardment division of the United States Army. He was not a combat pilot who flew missions in iconic aircraft like P-51 Mustang fighters or B-17 flying fortresses. Rather Charlie flew a l-4 Grasshopper observation plane named Rosie the Rocketeer. That may sound like a weird name for and airplane that has no armament, but we will get to that later in the story.
Now Charlies job was to act as an airborne artillery observer. Basically he flew around and watched were artillery shells landed and reported it to the gunners for correction. Overall not the most exiting job to have during the biggest armed conflict in human history.
However Charlie did not let that stop him. One day he realized that during his flying he saw quite a number of German tanks, tanks he could not kill because he had no guns on his plane. He had an idea however and with the help of an ordinance technician he fitted six Bazooka rocket launchers on his planes wings (Hence the name).
Well from then on whenever Charlie saw anything moving he shot at it. Proved to be a good shot to. At the end of the war he could claim several armored cars destroyed, a number of regular trucks. And six tanks, two of which were Tiger tanks.
Bazooka Charlie did not limit his "heroics" to the air however and during a German attack commandeered a M-4 Sherman tank and went at them. He shot at several enemy tanks and soldiers, but the highlight of the battle was when he fired on a friendly Sherman tank equipped with a bulldozer blade. Fortunately for everyone the tank was not destroyed and only lost its blade.
When the battle was over Charlie was arrested and threatened with a court-martial for not only shooting at a friendly tank, but stealing a tank to shoot with in the first place.
The court-martial did not stick however as he was the personal pilot of the commander of the 4th armored division and a favorite of US General Patton. Instead he was given a medal and promoted to colonel. His medals were the Bronze star and Airmedal with oak cluster.
Well when the war ended Charlie was kicked out of the army and went home back in the states. He got a job which required him to ride a train from one side of town to the other. On his way home everyday he would throw his bag out the window just before the train reached the station. After a while of this going on someone finally found the nerve to ask him why he did it. He said "Well my house is just over there and I don't want to carry my bag".