Description:
Sugimoto comes up behind Weaver, and Weaver cries out, "He's on me now!"
Weaver turns hard to the left, inside of McGuire, to escape attack.
McGuire turns harder left on edge into a full aileron turn, trying to
avoid hitting Weaver, and come around to protect his wingman and maybe
get a shot off at Sugimoto. Sugimoto, wary of colliding with the
wildly maneuvering P-38s pulls up into a climbing turn in the opposite
direction. McGuire, still pulling hard for a shot, over-banks his P-38;
it snap rolls onto it's back and dives completely inverted toward the
ground from an altitude of only about 200 feet. Nonetheless, he almost
recovers inches from a creek. McGuire was only inches from survival, so
great a P-38 pilot was he.
This painting depicts the final moment, after McGuire's P-38 snap rolled
and has stalled; one last moment of defying gravity before hurtling to
the ground, upside down, ending his life with the same level of
controversy that he lived his life with. From tangible evidence
gathered at his crash site by the artist, interviews with Philippine
witnesses, and years of analysis by AF historian Gary Boyd, this painting is the
best guess and accepted scenario of how Major Thomas McGuire died in
combat on Negros Occidental. McGuire's body was immediately removed
from the wreck by a Filipino who buried it elsewhere to keep him out of the hands of the Japanese
|