Flak bloomed around him. Tracers lanced past like electric needles. Captain Robin Olds didn’t flinch; he was already lining up his next target.Scat II, his silver P-38 Lightning, screamed across the sky, twin engines snarling as it tore through Messerschmitts.Then, he saw movement below. A lone Mustang, twisting hard, two Bf 109s welded to its tail. No time to think.Olds flipped Scat II over and dropped like a sword from the clouds. Engines howled. Guns ready.But his controls were not working.Compressibility.He’d read about it—few lived to explain it. A coffin made of physics. Dive too deep, too fast, and lift vanishes. The plane becomes a projectile. You’re no longer flying. You’re falling at nearly supersonic speeds.Olds was trapped in it now. Scat II hurtled past 500 miles per hour, canopy warping, control stick useless. The ground was coming up fast.Engineers had theorized the P-38 could survive this.Now, Olds would prove it, or leave a crater in Germany.