When Jimmy Morehead was growing up in Oklahoma back during the Great Depression, times were so tough that, as a kid, he would spend hours hunting the central part of the state to supplement the family dinner table with fresh game. He learned early, just like the rest of us boys, that if you aim directly at a bird in full flight, you’re almost guaranteed to miss it.

“No,” he explained many years later, “it’s a matter of interception. You cannot look at the target, shoot at the target and ever hit the target. You’re going to hit eight feet behind that pheasant if you point right at him.”

That one bit of advice – it’s a matter of interception – ought to be chiseled onto the fresh tombstone of Col. James B. Morehead in the days to come. Morehead, one of the greatest fighter pilots in our country’s history before he died peacefully recently on his ranch in California, was evermore an authentic hero and it was all because he learned very early how to “intercept” the streak of a pheasant in full flush.

You see, when World War II broke out Jimmy was just like millions of other heroes who have fought and died to keep our country free. The minute World War II appeared imminent, he stood in a long and proud line to enlist and was assigned to the Army Air Corps, which by chance deemed he should become a pilot. Not only was he a crack marksman, he reveled in fear – once flying the 50 miles from his base in Novato, Calif, to Sacramento with his plane upside down the whole way to the delight of his squadron mates.

Earning the nickname of “Wildman,” he was a brilliant pilot, this despite almost getting himself killed in a mid-air collision just before Pearl Harbor, (he parachuted at 400 feet) and because he was still in the hospital when the Dec. 7 attack occurred, he angrily missed going to the Pacific in retaliation with his friends who he had flown with during months of training.

Finally his first orders were to Australia, which really rankled him, because teaching flying to yearling pilots was hardly the same as the real action in the then-raging Pacific Theater. On April 25, 1942, on a routine patrol near Darwin, his squadron of eight P-40s broke through the clouds to shockingly find about 30 Japanese bombers surrounded by a swarm of sleek Zero fighter planes.

Our Lt. Jimmy, then 25 years old, at full throttle, tore into the enemy planes, using his stick and rudder with such skill and his guns with such ferocity he knocked three – including two “Betty” bombers – out of the sky. “Take THAT for Pearl Harbor!” he screamed over his radio as his enthused men fanned out to shoot down eight more Japanese airplanes that day before the Japs high-tailed and Jimmy’s squadron returned intact despite heavy damage from the enemy guns.

“At first I went into a slow roll,” he remembered, this to surface away from the first bomber’s rear guns, “and led the bomber by about 90 feet. I could see my bullets hitting his cockpit and engine.”

For his heroics he earned the coveted Distinguished Service Cross (second in valor only to the Congressional Medal of Honor) and that day’s aerial victory – huge for Allies because the P-40s were so inferior to Japanese planes – was a legendary win in America’s control of the Pacific at the time.

Morehead nailed four more Japanese planes in the months that followed before being transferred to Europe where – on D-Day itself – he bagged a German Messerschmitt 109 over Romania. The German plane made him one of very few “aces” in World War II with trophies in both the Pacific and Europe theaters.

After the war, he remained in what would become the Air Force and, during the Korean War, taught pilots in Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces, “Aerial gunnery is a matter of interception,” before ending his career at the Pentagon.

For the record, Col. James B. Morehead, age 95 when he died, actually earned two Distinguished Service Crosses, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Silver Star and a trove of other medals and citations. Upon retirement from the military, he was a successful real estate developer in California and loved hunting big game, as a hippo skull in front of his home and a lion’s rug in his den would attest.

And as we await the tombstone for his grave, it should be made of a granite to last the ages. We must never forget the heroes, especially the ones who in the middle of a frantic dogfight would scream into the radio for all the men to hear, “Take THAT for Pearl Harbor!”

Or who would quietly remind us in the years of freedom that would follow, “It’s a matter of interception.”