Before he was an astronaut. Before he orbited the Earth. Before he was a senator.

He was a Marine fighter pilot so aggressive, so willing to dive into enemy fire to hit his target, that he kept coming home with hundreds of holes in his jet.

His squadron joked he must have a magnet in his backside.

They called him Magnet Ass.

This is the story of John Glenn..🧵1/4

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John Glenn left college after Pearl Harbor and became a Marine aviator, earning his wings in 1943. He flew 59 combat missions in the Pacific during the Second World War, attacking Japanese positions across the islands.

But it was Korea where his reputation as a pilot was made.

In February 1953 he joined Marine Fighter Squadron 311, flying the F9F Panther jet on low-level close air support missions, diving down to hammer enemy positions while every gun on the ground fired back at him. He flew so low and pressed his attacks so hard that he kept coming home with his aircraft riddled by bullets and shrapnel.

His squadron mates joked that he must have a magnet in his rear end, the way he attracted enemy fire. The nickname stuck. Magnet Ass Glenn.

One of his aircraft was later photographed with more than 700 holes torn in it from shrapnel. He flew 63 missions in Korea this way, and kept going back up.

One of the men who flew on Glenn's wing in Korea was a Marine reservist named Ted Williams, the Boston Red Sox slugger and one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball, pulled out of his career to fly combat jets.

Williams later said of Glenn, "Absolutely fearless. The best I ever saw. It was an honor to fly with him." The two stayed friends for the rest of their lives.

In the closing weeks of the war, Glenn got himself transferred to an Air Force squadron flying the F-86 Sabre, hunting enemy MiG fighters in the deadly stretch of sky known as MiG Alley. He painted "MiG Mad Marine" on his jet and flew 27 more missions.

In the last nine days of the Korean War, John Glenn shot down three MiG-15s in air-to-air combat. The final kill came less than a week before the guns fell silent.

Across two wars he flew 149 combat missions, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross six times, and was awarded 18 Air Medals.

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After Korea, Glenn became a test pilot. In 1957 he made the first supersonic transcontinental flight across the United States, averaging supersonic speed from coast to coast.

That record brought him national attention, and when America went looking for its first astronauts, the Marine fighter pilot was a natural choice. In 1959 he was selected as one of the Mercury Seven. On February 20 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling the planet three times and turning into a national hero.

He later served nearly 25 years as a United States senator from Ohio. And in 1998, at the age of 77, he flew on the Space Shuttle and became, at the time, the oldest person ever to go to space.

But long before any of that, he was a young Marine diving his jet into a wall of enemy fire, coming home with his plane shot to pieces, and going back up the next day.

This was the story of John Glenn.

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