Looking at a list of the top fighter aces of all time, the first 120 slots are all held by German pilots. At the top of that list is World War II Luftwaffe fighter pilot Erich Hartmann, who flew 1,404 combat missions and was involved in 825 aerial combat engagements. He is credited with shooting down a total of 352 aircraft. Of those, 345 were Soviet Union and seven were American.

That’s right — 345 Soviet aircraft. Hartmann, like the other German pilots who occupy all those top ace slots, got there because their skills and fighter aircraft were infinitely superior to those of the sorry Soviet pilots. A military historian friend adds: “Like everything, the Soviet answer was simply throw more manpower and firepower. Volume, that’s what would ultimately win the day for the Soviets over Germany.”

But it came at great cost for their pilots. In effect, aerial combat with Soviet pilots amounted to shooting goldfish in a bowl. But despite the obscenely high Soviet pilot attrition rates, once the U.S. was on the continent, the German days were numbered as Allied forces closed in from the west and the Soviets from the east.

American pilots in Europe faced the best of the German pilots, much as American pilots in the Pacific Theater faced the best of the Japanese pilots, until they thinned the enemy pilot ranks out in both theaters as the wars neared conclusion.

That would be the case with America’s top ace, Richard Bong, who faced the best of Japanese pilots.

Unlike many of the Pacific Navy and Marine aces I have profiled, including LCDR Edward “Butch” O'Hare (USN) and LtCol Gregory “Pappy” Boyington (USMC), Bong was an Army Air Force pilot.

Dick grew up on a farm in Poplar, Wisconsin, the oldest of nine children. His earliest interest in aviation was sparked by aircraft carrying mail to President Calvin Coolidge’s nearby summer White House. At age 18, he enrolled in his college’s Civilian Pilot Training Program. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet Program. Notably, one of his primary flight instructors was then-CPT Barry Goldwater, who would later become the stellar conservative senator from Arizona and a close friend of Ronald Reagan.

In 1942, Dick earned his wings and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Air Force Reserves. His first operational assignment was with the 49th Fighter Squadron (FS), 14th Fighter Group at Hamilton Field, California. It was there he learned to fly the formidable twin-engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Foreshadowing his maverick skills as a fighter pilot, it was with the 14th FG that he was reprimanded for some of his flying pranks, like a very low pass over a fellow pilot’s house who was just married, looping the Golden Gate Bridge, and flying down Market Street in San Francisco. In his reprimand of Bong, GEN George Kenney declared, “If you didn’t want to fly down Market Street, I wouldn’t have you in my Air Force, but you are not to do it any more and I mean what I say.” He later said, “We needed kids like this lad.”

He shipped out to the Pacific with the 49th FG, 9th FS, “The Flying Knights.” It was in December of 1942 that Bong claimed his first kill, shooting down a Mitsubishi A6M “Zero” and a Nakajima Ki-43 “Oscar.” On July 26 the following year, he chalked up four Japanese fighters in one day, which earned him the Army’s Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism in combat, the second-highest award for valor under the Medal of Honor. He continued to accumulate air kills at a remarkable pace.

Dick assessed his gunnery skills to be mediocre, but compensated by getting daringly close to his target, on one occasion even colliding with an enemy aircraft, sending it to the ground in what was an unconfirmed kill.

On leave in late 1943, Dick met his future wife Marjorie, and on returning to the Pacific in early 1944, he named his famed P-38 “Marge” and adorned its nose with her image. It was in April of that year that he shot down his 26th and 27th Japanese aircraft, surpassing the 26-kill record of famed World War I Ace Eddie Rickenbacker. Flying missions in the Philippines campaign, then-CPT Bong increased his record air-to-air victories to 40, becoming America’s Ace of Aces.

It is a record that will never be surpassed given that air-to-air combat was mostly displaced by surface-to-surface and surface-to-air munitions as technology made the accuracy of those weapons lethal. That lethality was aptly demonstrated during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Bong accumulated those 40 kills in 207 combat missions over his three tours.

In December of 1944. Bong received the Medal of Honor in a field ceremony, presented by GEN Douglas MacArthur, who would later be presented a Medal of Honor for his defense of the Philippines, becoming one of two father/son recipients.

Bong’s Medal of Honor citation notes: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty in the southwest Pacific area from 10 October to 15 November 1944. Though assigned to duty as gunnery instructor and neither required nor expected to perform combat duty, Maj. Bong voluntarily and at his own urgent request engaged in repeated combat missions, including unusually hazardous sorties over Balikpapan, Borneo, and in the Leyte area of the Philippines. His aggressiveness and daring resulted in his shooting down eight enemy airplanes during this period.”

In addition to his Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Cross, he also earned two Silver Stars, seven Distinguished Flying Crosses, and 15 Air Medals.

His record 40 kills were just two ahead of another Army Air Force P-38 pilot, MAJ Tommy McGuire, also a Medal of Honor recipient who had 38 aerial victories over the Pacific. Behind them was the third-ranking fighter ace in the Pacific, another P-38 pilot, COL Charles MacDonald.

Clearly, the P-38 proved its lethality, as it also did over Europe.

Dick Bong returned stateside before the end of the war to Burbank, California, and married Marge in February of 1945. He continued flying as a test pilot for Lockheed’s P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter.

On August 6, 1945, the same day of the bombing of Hiroshima and the beginning of the end of the war with Japan, Dick was on his 12th test flight in a P-80 when the fuel pump failed on takeoff. He ejected but was too low for his parachute to deploy and perished. The font page of the LA Times the next day featured headlines of both Hiroshima and the death of our Ace of Aces.

MAJ Richard Bong: Your example of valor — a humble American Patriot defending Liberty for all above and beyond the call of duty, and in disregard for the peril to your own life — is eternal.

“Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Live your life worthy of his sacrifice.

(Read more Profiles of Valor here.)

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Follow Mark Alexander on X/Twitter.

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