8/6/1945 - War celebrity, American ace-of-aces, Major Richard Ira "Dick" Bong, the flier that has been rooted for like he was Joe DiMaggio battling Ted Williams for the ALB batting championship as he duels with Major Thomas Buchanan McGuire Jr. for who will be the deadliest fighter pilot of the United States Army Air Force (the final tally for the two men is Bong, 40 aerial victories, and McGuire, 38 aerial triumphs) is killed, not by ground fire or a superior Japanese aviator, but comes after the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter he is testing crashes in a narrow North Hollywood field due to a faulty fuel pump. Bad enough as is, Bong's death will soon be mostly forgotten except for among friends and family because of another little moment that occurs on the same day, with end of the war consequences ... the dropping of the "Little Boy" uranium atomic bomb from Colonel Paul Tibbetts' B-29 heavy bomber, "Enola Gay."
Headlines
The first of nine children born to Carl T. Bong (who comes to America from Sweden when he is seven year old) sand Dora Bryce Bong (of Scots-English descent) of Superior, Wisconsin, Richard Ira Bong begins life on September 24, 1920 (he is named after his father's brother who died at the age of only two). Growing up on a farm near the small town of Popular, Wisconsin twenty miles to the southeast of Superior, Bong is active in the area's 4-H Club, a good fisherman, and is an avid hunter who spends great amounts of his time practicing his marksmanship with a Winchester rifle. Popular Grade School to Popular High School, Bong graduates from Superior Central High School in 1938, after spending his senior year commuting 44 miles daily because the Popular school does not have 12th Grade classes. Eighteenth in a class of 428 students, along with the valuable education he receives, Bong proves to be a highly competent athlete (his size keeps him away from football) who letters in Varsity baseball, basketball, and ice hockey, and proclivity for making music by playing the clarinet and singing tenor in the Bethany Lutheran Church choir.
Young Bong
Superior Central High School
Like many boys of the time, Bong becomes captivated by aeronautics in 1927 when Charles Augustus Lindbergh makes his legendary solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean aboard the Ryan Airlines manufactured "Spirit of St. Louis," wolves down the Medal of Honor aerial exploits of the top American ace (a minimum of five aerial victories is required) of WWI, race car driver Edward Vernon Rickenbacker, and has the hook set on his future when in the summer of 1928, the 30th United States President, Calvin Coolidge vacations near Superior, and establishes a summer White House at the Superior Central High School. The president's mail flown into town each day, the plane bringing Coolidge news from the outside world passes directly over Bong's home. Goal now to someday be a pilot, Bong spends countless hours building a model airplane collection out of balsa wood and glue. Graduated from high school, Bong enrolls at the Superior State Teachers College (now the University of Wisconsin -Superior) and while there, joins the local Civilian Pilot Training and takes private flying lessons in a yellow Piper J-3 Cub and earns his private pilot's license. In early1941, the neophyte flier (known as a "dodo") enlists in the Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet Program (Bong is sent to the Rankin Aeronautical Academy in California, headed by John Gilbert "Tex" Rankin, one of Hollywood's top aerobatic pilots and the president of the Motion Picture Pilots Association, where he enters a 30-week program that includes primary flight training of ten weeks, basic training, and then advanced flight training, producing second lieutenants that become fighter and bomber pilots, or stay behind to become instructors themselves. A typical day in the program, beyond lots of marching and saluting, consists of reveille at dawn, calisthenics, ground school in the afternoon that includes class lessons on navigation, aeronautical engineering, meteorology (and lots and lots and lots of algebra), dinner, studying, and then taps and sleep. Flying a Boeing built Stearman Kaydett, a Vultee BT-13 Valiant, and a North American Aviation AT-6 Texan trainer out of a variety of airfields in California (the only blemish on Bong's early career takes place in September when he clips another plane while taxiing down a runway, but hitting his brakes in time he avoids a major collision and a serious reprimand grounding), Bong is ordered to the new 1,440-acre air force base in Phoenix, Arizona for advanced training, Luke Field (named for Phoenix native and posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor winner of WWI with 18 aerial victories on his resume, including 14 German observation balloons, the "Arizona Balloon Buster,' 1st Lt. Frank Luke Jr. ... opened in June of 1941, the airfield will graduate more than 12,000 pilots from it's advanced courses during WWII, becomes known as "The Home of the Fighter Pilot," and as of 2021, is still in use).
Lindbergh
Rickenbacker
Wisconsin Vacation
Luke In Action
At Luke Field, Bong begins really impressing his superiors with his aerial abilities ... his gunnery instructor, Captain Barry Goldwater (the future senator from Arizona and presidential nominee), will describe him as a "very bright student," and another trainer will call Bong "the finest natural pilot he ever met" because during mock dogfights he could get on the pilot's tail, even when flying a slow AT-6 training plane. Producing his class' best gunnery scores against ground and towed targets, Lt. Colonel Ennis Whitehead decides to retain Bong at Luke Field as an instructor (at first unhappy that he has not received a combat assignment like the rest of the members of his class, the fighter pilot later will realize that his own skills have gotten even better with his teaching of new batches of "dodos" the dangers of military flying) and he graduates from advanced flight training school, receiving his gold second lieutenant's bars and silver pilot's wings on 1/16/1942. After five months of teaching at Luke Field, Bong receives his first operational orders and is transferred to Hamilton Field (during this period, he also finds time to fly loops below the 6,860 foot rim of the Grand Canyon, earns $50 flying as an extra in a handful of scenes in William Wellman's "Thunder Birds" starring Preston Foster, John Sutton, and sultry actress Gene Tierney, and makes regular hops to the towns of Wichita, Amarillo, and Albuquerque, California (named for WWI pilot and Distinguished Service Cross winner, 1st Lt. Lloyd Andrews Hamilton and located to the north of San Francisco, on the western shore of San Pablo Bay in the southern part of Novato, in Marin County) on 5/6/1942 to learn to fly P-38 twin-engine Lockheed Lightning fighters (describing the plane, in a letter home Bong will tell his mother, "Wooey! What an airplane. That's all I can say <because of wartime security restrictions>, but that's enough.") with the 49th Fighter Squadron, 14th Fighter Group, part of the Fourth Air Force. At Hamilton Field, Bong's flying abilities are noticed by the commander of the Fourth, Brigadier General George Churchill Kenney and almost get him grounded and flying a desk for the rest of the war as against standing orders, he joins three other young lieutenants in flying loops over and under the central span of the Golden Gate Bridge, buzzes business offices on San Francisco's Market Street, waving to secretaries in some of the buildings' lower offices, makes a low-level pass over the San Anselmo home of a recently married fighter pilot, and blows the drying clothes off the clothesline of a woman living on the outskirts of Oakland. Called on the carpet by General Kenney (the flier is sent to the laundry lost woman in Oakland for a full day of doing her house chores), Bong winds up his scolding discussing the P38's low-level handling characteristics and having the general tear up his court martial papers (later Kinney will remember his first meeting with Bong and his reasoning behind tearing up the pilot's court martial, "We needed kids like this lad."). Being grounded and confined to quarters for his stunt flying, the unseen silver lining for the young pilot is that he is still at Hamilton when the rest of his fighter squadron is sent to England to fight the Luftwaffe, while Bong gets transferred to first the 84th Fighter Squadron of the 78th Fighter Group (while still at Hamilton Field) and then arriving in Darwin, Australia, is assigned to 9th Fighter Squadron, and then given a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter to fly while his squadron awaits a consignment of new P-38s. Flying a Warhawk for the 39th Fighter Squadron, he receives his baptism of fire flying cover for American bombers over Buna, New Guinea on Christmas Day of 1942 ... a single bullet from the ground that does no harm to either the pilot or his plane. A combat vet with the holing, two days later, on December 27th while flying wingman for Captain Tommy Lynch in a borrowed P-38, tumbles a fixed landing gear Japanese Aichi "Val" dive bomber into the Bismarck Sea, then takes out a Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" leaving the site when it crosses in front of Bong's gunsights (another Zero escapes a lethal meeting with Bong when the pilot runs out of ammo). Back at base, Bong celebrates his first victories of the war with a glass of whiskey splashed by soda that is provided to the fighter pilot by General Kenney (for the mission he will also win a Silver Star). On 1/7/1943, again flying bomber cover, Bong prevails over a Nakajima Ki-43 "Oscar" fighter plane in a head-on fight, downs another Oscar with more head-on fire from sixty yards in front of his opponent, and then the next day, dogfighting over the Japanese base at Lae, with a rear attack, shoots down another Oscar, officially (he also claims a probable kill for which he receives no credit) becoming an ace (the winner of at least five aerial battles) after only a week of combat, this time winning a Distinguished Flying Cross. Returned to 9th Fighter Squadron after the unit finally receives it's new fighters, for his initial victories in a P-38, Bong (and Lynch) are given two weeks leave by General Kenney to recuperate and relax in Australia.
In Training
Bong
Kenney
Lynch
All of his aerial triumphs coming by way of commanding a Lockheed Lightning, the P-38 that Bong takes into combat is the fighter child of aeronautical engineers Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson and Hall Livingstone Hibbard of the Lockheed Corporation. Designed to meet the needs of a 1937 contract with the United States Army Air Corps, the Lightning features four .50-calber M2 Browning machine guns (with 200 rounds for each gun) and a Hispano 29 mm autocannon (with 150 shells) concentrated in the nose of the fighter with a range of 1,000 yards. Power for the fighter comes from two 1,000 horsepower turbo-supercharged 12-cylinder Allison V-1710 engines fitted with counter-rotating propellers to eliminate engine torque on the plane. Carrying the pilot and his armament is a fighter that makes extensive use of stainless steel and smooth, flush-riveted butt-jointed aluminum skin panels, the Lightning is 37 feet and 10 inches in length, has a wingspan of 52 feet, a height of 12 feet and 10 inches, and with a maximum weight capacity of 21,600 pounds can speed along at 414 mph (the first military aircraft to fly faster than 400 mph in level flight), has a service ceiling of 44,000 feet, and has a range of 450 miles (further with special mission drop tanks). One of the most successful fighters in the Allied arsenal, during the war the Lightning will serve as a fighter, a fighter-bomber, a night fighter, for aerial reconnaissance (it will account for 90% of the aerial combat photography captured over Europe, a bomber-pathfinder, and a long-range escort fighter (the German Luftwaffe will nickname the plane der Gabelschwanz-Teufel, "the fork-tailed devil," while the Japanese say it is an fighter crafted of two planes that can be flown by one pilot). Only 10,037 built by Lockheed before the plane is retired by the United States military in 1949, in the warfare that takes place over the Pacific Ocean, the Lightning will down more than 1,800 Japanese planes, the most of any America fighter during the WWII clash of empires and cultures.
Assembly Line
Cockpit
Flight
Australian holiday over, Bong returns to the 9th and begins flying his P-38 out of Schwimmer Airfield near Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and begins adding to his victory totals in March of 1943 when he participates in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, sending an Oscar into the Pacific with deflection fire (firing at an empty spot that the opponent flies into) while also declaring a second fighter as a "probable." A few days later he is involved again when the Japanese hit Bong's airbase and he goes on the offensive, downing three Zeroes with head-on attacks before diving away from the fighter filled Japanese formation (Bong will claim two victories and a third "probable"). He makes his last kill of March when on patrol he spots a Mitsubishi Ki-46 twin-engine "Dinah" reconnaissance plane near Oro Bay, and after several wounding passes, blows the slower aircraft out of the sky with explosive rounds into the Japanese plane's rear (his victories are now officially at 9). In April of 1943, Bong adds another kill to his victory total (and two more "probables" becoming a "double" ace) when he and his wingman, Lt. Carl Plank, attack a Japanese formation of over 80 fighters and bombers at 26,000 feet that are headed for Allied shipping in Milne Bay (this time his victim is a Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" medium bomber that Americans will nickname the "Flying Cigar" for it's lack of armor and propensity to go up in flames when hit on or near its engines), meets the 24-year-old rookie fighter pilot that will chase his victory total into 1945, Lt. Thomas Buchanon McGuire Jr., sees the fighter he loves so much, the P-38, used by members of the 339th Fighter Squadron to shoot (with the approval of President Roosevelt) the architect of the Japanese sneak attack and their #1 naval figure, 59-year-old Marshal Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto out of the sky over Bougainville, and is promoted to first lieutenant. Returning from another batch of leave days in Australia, in May, Bong's patrols and missions result in no new victories, and during his down time, the fighter pilot finds relaxation through playing his clarinet to Benny Goodman tunes, a hobby half of the squadron enjoys and the other half cringes over. June sees Bong use his nose mounted guns while flying cover for a downed member of the squadron to blow-up a menacing crocodile, move closer to the Japanese base at Lae by flying out of two freshly made airstrips at Garoka and Marilinan, and gets into a dogfight with several Japanese aircraft that has him running out of fuel when he returns to base and is in the process of landing (he also discovers a large cannon holes in his wing, compliments of a Japanese airman), while adding another Oscar to his tally of aerial victories.
Bong
July of 1943 has Bong and his squadron pitching into a flight of Japanese fighters in which they are outnumbered by four to one. Adding four more victories to his steadily rising total, Bong sends a Zero into the sea in another head-on attack, knocks down a Kawasaki Ki-61 "Tony" fighter with a rear attack, turns another Tony into a falling fireball, and finishes his day with another frontal assault that knocks knocks the canopy off Zero ... for his efforts, General Kenney awards the pilot a Distinguished Service Cross and a promotion to Captain. Two days later while flying cover for a group of B-25 Mitchell bombers he shoots down an Oscar with a rear deflection shot that gives him his sixteenth aerial victory. In August of 1943, the battle to become America's ace-of-aces begins in earnest when McGuire takes only two days to become an ace, then adds two more planes to his total before the month ends, and has three more aerial victories in September to bring his triumphs to ten. Meanwhile, Bong remains at sixteen victories (as a result of returning to the States for leave, during which he meets his future bride, Marjorie Vattendahl, at a homecoming dance of his alma mater, the Superior Teachers College). And so the back-and-forth begins and by the end of the year Bong has 21 aerial kills (he has three victories in October and then two more in November) to 16 for McGuire (he will be frozen on that number until April of 1944).
Bong & McGuire
Bong's Plane
The Real Thing
Foss
Boyington
Worried that his favorite pilot could perish from weariness, or being too aggressive trying to put even more victories on whatever his final tally will be, General Kenney sends his top ace back to the States for rest and relaxation, advanced gunnery training (to cut down on the number of Bong's frontal attacks), and a lot of hob-knobbing with big shots in the military, politicians, famous entertainers, selling war bonds, and some valuable friends and family time (he will become engaged to Marge during this period). Returning to the Pacific in October of 1944, Bong at first is giving the assignment of giving the rookies of General Kenney's command aerial combat lessons as a "noncombatant" instructor. Out with his students on 10/10 and interpreting his orders very lightly, Bong splashes a Nakajima J1N Gekko "Irving" twin-engine, two seat reconnaissance plane with a rear pass, then takes out an Oscar about to attack Lt. Warren Curton's fighter for his 30th victory of the war. Gloves off and given permission to fly combat again, returning with three other pilots to the American airbase at Tacloban on the Philippine island of Leyte, Bong shoots down an three more Oscars (upon returning to base, a member of Bong's ground crew will find that while dogfighting about the sky during his third victory of the day, the ace has flown into one of his own bullets) tp finish the month at triumph #33 (chasing still, McGuire ends the month at #24). In November, Bong's total goes up to #36 when a forty-degree deflection attack coverts an Oscar into a fireball, and the next day rear attacks flame two more Zeroes. Total now at #36, General Kenney writes up the paperwork, which General MacArthur immediately signs, for the Swede from Popular to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor for his work (in a public ceremony at the Tacloban airbase, he is personally given the medal by MacArthur on 12/12/1944 ... which he follows up by having a cheese sandwich to make up for the breakfast he missed flying in for the medal ceremony). Again wanting to keep his flier alive, General Kenney and Bong come to an agreement that he will be sent back to the states upon earning his fortieth victory, which he does in December of 1944 while shooting down a Sally bomber after a fifteen minute chase, splashing a Nakajima Ki-44 "Tojo" fighter with a frontal attack (both victories taking place on the anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor three years before), wounding then taking down an Oscar with deflection firing and a rear attack, and blowing up another Oscar over Mindoro Island on the 12/17 anniversary of Oroville Wright's first Kitty Hawk flight. On 12/29, Bong heads home to the United States for good.
With Hap Arnold
Another Victory For Bong
Medal Of Honor
Meanwhile, flying out of the same airfield and sharing a tent with Bong, McGuire uses the same two months to advance his aerial victories to thirty-eight, two short of his opponent's total (the pair also manage to have their clocks cleaned in a poker game that costs Bong $1,500 and McGuire a whopping $2,500!), winning himself a Congressional Medal of Honor. Sadly, there will be no more victories for the 24-year-old from Florida (the only other pilot in the race for most victories is Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Navy commander David McCampbell, who, flying a Grumman F6F Hellcat off of carriers ends the war with 34 aerial victories to his credit, including shooting down nine Japanese during a single day of combat during the Battle of Leyte Gulf). Desperate to catch Bong, breaking his own rules of aerial combat at lower elevations, McGuire gets into a dogfight with Japanese fighter instructor, Warrant Officer Akira Sugimoto (a flier with over 3,000 hours in the air) on January 7, 1945 over the Japanese base of Manapla on the central Philippine island of Negros. Battling to negate the attack of Sugimoto's Oscar on his wingman, Captain Edwin Weaver, McGuire puts his P-38 into an extremely tight downward turn, but with his two auxiliary tanks still attached, the fighter stalls, snap rolls inverted at 300 feet, and as McGuire trys to pull up, crashes into the jungle, killing McGuire instantly.
McGuire And Bong On Patrol
McGuire Victorious Again
Ace
McCampbell
Site Of McGuire's Crash
Back in the United States by New Year's Eve, Bong is in Wisconsin finalizing his wedding plans when he receives the news of McGuire's death. On February 10, 1945, officiated by Reverend Paul Boe, Major Richard Ira Bong and Marjorie Ann Vattendahl are married at the Concordia Lutheran Church in Superior, Wisconsin before a crowd of more than 1,200 friends, family, government representatives (head of the air force, General Hap Arnold is unable to attend after suffering a heart attack on January 17), and members of the media (a audio tape of the ceremony will be played on Chicago's WLS and on Superior's WEBC). Honeymooning in California, Bong shows his bride many of the spots where he spent time before the war, and now celebrities themselves for Bong's war exploits, in Hollywood they dine at the legendary Brown Derby and rub shoulders with stars that include Diane Lynn, Eddie Bracken, Bing Crosby, Angela Lansbury, Judy Garland, and Lucille Ball. And in Southern California, the pair are given a private tour of the Lockheed factory that produced Bong's P-38 (walked about by company vice president Carl B. Squier), and as an extra bonus, Bong is allowed to take Marge up in a brand new Lightning that he flies over Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.
Happy
Checking Out A P-38
And it is there where the fighter pilot becomes entranced with Lockheed's and America's first successfully turbojet-powered combat aircraft, the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star. A quick answer to Nazi Germany unleashing the world's first jet fighter, the Messerschmitt Me 262 "Schwalbe" ("Swallow"), the P-80 is the brainchild of Lockheed dynamo, Kelly Johnson, and the team he leads of 28 engineers. Using blueprints of the recently released Bell P-59 Airacomet, working 24/7, Lockheed's "Skunk Works" team takes just 143 days to create an airframe which is delivered to California's Muroc Army Airfield (now Edwards Air Force Base) for testing on November 16, 1944. The testing is problematic and extremely dangerous ... Lockheed's chief engineering test pilot, 41-year-old Milo Garrett Burcham, the first man to fly the P-80, dies in a fiery crash caused by a malfunction in the plane's fuel pump, and his replacement, 32-year-old test pilot, Anthony W. "Tony" LeVier barely survives his time in a P-80 (nicknamed "The Gray Ghost"), suffering a broken back after bailing out that takes six months to mend when a faulty turbine blade causes massive structural damage to the jet's tail ... as in there is no more tail. The third pilot to test his luck on the Lockheed Shooting Star is America's Ace of Aces, Major Dick Bong.
Johnson (R) Congratulates Burcham After
Successful First Flight Of A P-80
The Gray Ghost
LaVier
Readying itself for the Jet Age, the Air Force transfers Bong from Wright Field in Ohio to the main Lockheed manufacturing facility in Burbank, California. After a long cross-country drive, the newly weds move into a small furnished bungalow apartment in Hollywood on 7/12/1945. Though he begins working at Lockheed six days a week, Bong enjoys his post-combat life with his happy wife, especially enjoying breakfast in bed, curling up with Western novels, going bowling at least once a week, taking in movies, watching his wife paint (intrigued, Bong will produce an oil painting of Marge) and listening to "Your Hit Parade" on the radio, particularly, Doris Day's hit recording of "My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time." Expecting a lifetime of such productive bliss, plus the promise of children, with horrifying suddenness, it all blows apart on the Monday afternoon of August 6, 1945. Originally scheduled to play golf with Bing Crosby later in the day (Bong cancels the round when he discovers he has forgotten to put his golf shoes in his car), the test pilot drives to the Lockheed Air Terminal to make a routine flight of a brand new P-80 from the manufacturing line that has been flown only once before, for an hour and a half. Preflight completed, Bong closes the jet's canopy, taxi out to Runway 33, and takes off at around 2:30 in the afternoon from the 6,000 foot runway, intent on making his twelfth flight in a Shooting Star and of adding to his four hours and fifteen minutes of flight time in the jet's cockpit. Accelerating to 120 mph, Bong lifts off the runway and turns right as he moves over the Southern Pacific rail lines that parallel Vanowen Street. Going over Valhalla Memorial Park cemetery he climbs to two hundred feet, where witnesses on the ground see the jet emitting puffs of black smoke and making popping noises within the sounds of the craft's jet engine as Bong fruitlessly attempts to gain altitude. Something catastrophically wrong (another bad fuel pump will later be determined to be the problem, but why it fails is never figured out), knowing the jet is coming down, Bong points his failing jet towards an empty field at Oxnard Street and Satsuma Avenue in North Hollywood, a bit of urban nothingness surrounded by a dense ocean of suburban Valley homes. Seconds from impact, Bong opens his cockpit canopy and jumps from the jet as he pulls the ripcord on his parachute. Too low to deploy properly, Bong dies instantly hitting the ground at speed and from about three stories in height. The pilot is 24-years-old when he goes into his forever.
Crash Site
Debris Field
Home To Wisconsin
Last flight aboard a USAAF Air Transport Command C-54, Bong's remains, accompanied by his wife, arrives at the Duluth Airport on August 8, where it is met by a crowd of roughly a thousand souls that include Bong's parents, his brother Bud, and his sisters, Jerry and Nelda. All the pomp and pageantry of a patriotic military farewell, celebrants of the flier's life attend services at the Concordia Lutheran Church of Superior (the same church the Bongs were married at six months before) that feature Reverend Paul Boe and Reverend Arvid Hoorn, a funeral procession of over two dozen cars, color guards and bands, a flyover of P-47 fighters (why the P-38 wasn't used is never explained), the reading of the 91st Psalm, the playing of "Taps," and Marge receiving the flag that had been draped over her husband's casket. After, Marge will return to Southern California and continue on with her life, conducting negotiations with James Cagney, Howard Hughes and others on making a biopic of Bong's life (a film is never made), thanks to Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper, gets a job at the Preble Model Agency in Los Angeles training young ladies that she holds for ten years, marries for a second time in 1946 (to a woolen goods salesman, James Baird ... they have one daughter), divorces and marries magazine publisher Murray Drucker (she will have a second daughter from the marriage, which lasts until Marge's death at the age of 79 in 1991 from cancer), and in her old age begins attending events around the country honoring her dead first husband (the first is the dedication in 1985 of the Richard Ira Bong Memorial Bridge connecting Duluth and Superior). And there are many events to attend, entering the history books as America's top ace of WWII (and probably of all-time thanks to the myriad of changes that have occurred in the realm of aerial warfare ... gone but not totally forgotten like some of that generation, there is a Richard Bong Recreation Area on the Wisconsin site of what was the Bong Air Force Base, the aforementioned memorial bridge, the Richard I. Bong Airport in Superior, Wisconsin, the Bong Barracks of the Aviation Challenge program, the Major Richard I. Bong Bridge in Annandale, Australia, the Major Richard Ira Bong Squadron of the Arnold Air Society at the University of Wisconsin, there are Richard Bong theaters in Misawa, Japan and at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, Bong Avenues exist at decommissioned Richards-Gebaur AFB (air force base), Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas, Luke AFB in Arizona, Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, Alaska, Fairchild AFB in Washington, Kadena AFB on the island of Okinawa, there is a Bong Blvd. on the Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, a Bong Street in Dayton, Ohio that leads to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, along with another Bong Street at the Holloman AFB outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico, a neighborhood in New Jersey built in the 1950s called Bong Terrace, the pilot is named the class exemplar at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado of the Air Force Class of 2003, and thus far, inductions into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame, and the International Air and Space Hall of Fame.
Marge In Later Life
Richard Ira Bong Memorial Bridge
And of course, in Bong's hometown of Superior, Wisconsin, inside a structure resembling an aircraft hangar is the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center featuring a museum, a film screening room, and a restored P-38 Lightning made to resemble Bong's "Marge" fighter. Lots of fitting tributes to a 24-year-old pilot, but perhaps the words of three different Americans measure the man better than place names and dusty museum exhibits. Eddie Rickenbacker, the aerial warrior of WWI will state of Bong "This gallant Air Force hero will be remembered because he made his final contribution to aviation in the dangerous role of test pilot of an untried experimental plane, a deed that places him among the stout-hearted pioneers who gave their lives in the conquest of sky and space." President Harry Truman will state that Bong "stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die that freedom might live. And grow. And increase its blessings. Freedom lives. And through it, he lives - in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men." And his commanding officer, General George Kenney, the man who sends Bong home so that he might survive the war states, "His country and the Air Force must never forget their number-one fighter pilot, who will inspire other fighter pilots and countless thousands of youngsters who will want to follow in his footsteps every time any nation or coalition of nations dares to challenge our right to think, speak, and live as a free people." Amen!
Major Ricard Ira Bong
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