Earlier, before Lindbergh’s visit, Carter faced another emergency landing when he lost a wheel during takeoff from a runway at Nadzab, where he had landed to refuel before returning to Port Moresby.
After discussing his situation with tower personnel at Nadzab, Carter told them he would fly back to Port Moresby and deal with the problem there.
Arriving at Port Moresby, Carter asked to talk with his squadron commander, Major Harvey B. Carpenter. After discussing his options with Carpenter, he decided to make a wheels-up landing, but first he needed to burn up more of his fuel to reduce the likelihood of a bad fire. He had already dropped his belly tank and had fired up all of his ammunition.
While working out his plan with Carpenter, Carter noticed jeeps and trucks and people coming out of the jungles and gathering around the airstrip below. He thought, “My goodness, what’s going on?” “Well,” he explained, “it turned out that they wanted to see this plane that was going to crash land.”
Since he had an audience and needed to burn up some more fuel, Carter decided to put on a show. “I came down and buzzed the strip doing about 450 miles an hour,” he said, “and pulled up and then came back around and did some loops.”
When the time came to land with his landing gear up, he moved over to the side of the runway to avoid the steel matting laid down by the engineers. “I was going to stay off of that steel – I didn’t want the sparks.”
Carter described his landing as follows:
I believe it was the best landing I ever made in my life. I came down and
everything worked just perfectly. I hit the ground real easy; it was a
real soft landing. And the thing scooted and scooted and scooted because I
landed probably at about 120 miles an hour. And that thing just kept going
and going. I didn’t think it was gonna ever quit. But finally it
started slowing up. And then, right at the very last, it rocked up a
little bit on its nose, and then flopped back down
As soon as his P-47 stopped, Carter made a quick exit. When an ambulance reached him shortly thereafter, the driver asked if he needed medical assistance. Carter replied, “No. I just want a ride.”
In spite of his two forced landings due to mechanical failures, Carter preferred the P-47 over any other aircraft. Flying the Thunderbolt enabled him to make significant contributions to the war effort as he served with the Minutemen of the 340th Fighter Squadron. But he flew his way into the history by helping give birth to a new squadron of the 348th Fighter Group – the 460th Fighter Squadron.