GREY FOX GONE

9/2/1913 - The life of notorious outlaw, Ezra Allen Miner, better known as Bill Miner, or "The Grey Fox" (after a book and movie by that name come out in the 1990s), or "The Gentleman Bandit," or "The Gentleman Robber," or "California Bill," a desperado said to have coined the bandit term, "Hands Up!" (it more likely comes from English highwaymen of the 17th-century) while robbing stagecoaches, ends in the state prison farm hospital of Milledgeville, Georgia, where the robber dies at the age of sixty-six from gastritis he caught the year before after ingesting a large amount of fetid swamp water during a failed escape attempt from the institution (the stolen boat he is escaping in capsizes and Miner almost drowns before reaching shore).

The Grey Fox

Ezra Miner is born in the Vevay Township (near Onondaga) of Ingham County, Michigan, to Joseph Miner and his wife, Harriet Jane Cole on December 27, 1846.  Along with his parents, the family he becomes a part of includes his sister Harriet (born in 1836), his brother Henry (born in 1840), his sister Mary Jane (born in 1843), and his brother Joseph (born in 1853).  In 1860, after Joseph Sr. dies in 1856 when Ezra is nine, Harriet packs up her three youngest children (Harriet is married and Henry enlists in the Union Army to fight for the North in the Civil War) and as part of a westbound wagon train, moves all the way across country to California, where she puts down stakes in the notorious Placer County mining town of Yankee Jims (about fifty miles to the east of Sacramento, the name comes from an Australian criminal who hid stolen horses in the area before gold is discovered there).  It is a wild place on the edge of civilization where death comes to easily to residents and visitors alike in the form of shootings, knifings, beatings, and hangings, and there, changing his name from Ezra to William, the youth begins to display a proclivity for criminal behavior.  Towards the end of the Civil War, in 1864, Miner travels to Sacramento and enlists in the Union Army as a private, but quits two months later when he recognizes he does not enjoy being ordered about and doing menial tasks, and deserts.  At around the same time he falls under the sway of local "soiled dove" and to fuel the assignation, robs the man employing him of $300.  Caught, the man refuses to press charges against the 18-year-old and Miner celebrates his freedom a couple of weeks later, now nineteen, by robbing the treasurer of Placer County on the streets of the mining community of Placerville (formerly Hangtown, so named, then on two stolen horses, riding to San Francisco to enjoy his loot.  And when his wallet grows thin, he hooks up with another bad apple named John Sinclair and begins robbing travelers moving through the San Joaquin Valley near Stockton.  After a few months of felonies however, the pair are captured, put on trial, and after being found guilty, sent off to San Quentin State Prison for a three year stay. 

Placerville

San Quentin - 1871

His first time behind bars, the young outlaw is released in 1871 after serving his full sentence, and free, he jumps right back into a life of crime.  Hooking up with an outlaw named "Alkali Jim" Harrington and a bandit named Charlie Cooper, the trio start plundering stagecoaches in California's Calaveras County ... but not for long.  Harrington and Miner caught in the mining town of San Andreas, the men are found trying to saw their way out of confinement, are placed in heavy balls and chains, and then sent back to San Quentin for another stint behind bars (and there will be a failed escape attempt from the prison).  Released once more (not a criminal mastermind, in all, mostly at San Quentin, Miner will spend more than 33 years of his life in jail and prison cells) on July 14, 1880, Miner decides that he might do better in life with a change in scenery, and takes a train to Colorado Springs, Colorado where his sister is living.  Pretending to be a successful gentleman miner from the California gold fields, the outlaw soon recruits a youth from Iowa named Arthur Pond and Pond's brother, Silas (operating under the aliases of Billy and Silas LeRoy, for a brief time, Arthur/Billy will be known as "The King of the Rocky Mountain Bandits") as his new partners in crime and Colorado is beset by a series of stagecoach robberies about the state, the largest of which nets the outlaws more than $4,000 in cash.  Sensing that remaining in Colorado might be dangerous to his health, Miner splits from his partners and goes back to Michigan where he visits family, and using the alias William A. Morgan, becomes engaged to the 20-year-old daughter of an Onondaga businessman, Jennie Louise Willis.  After three months in Michigan, Miner is ready to move on again (after he burns through most of the cash he's plundered), and telling his fiancée he has to leave for awhile to take care of some mining matters in California, he heads west again (Jennie Louise will never see him again and back in Colorado in May of 1881, the Pond brothers are caught trying to take a stagecoach near the San Luis Valley town of Del Norte and lynched by the area's unhappy citizens).   

Young Bill Miner

Colorado Springs - 1880

Arthur/Billy

Back in California, Miner hooks up with a group of horse thieves and robbers that includes Stanton T. Jones, Bill Miller, and James Crum.  New gang, but the same results, trying to rob a stagecoach outside the mining town of Sonora, Crum and Miner are caught by Wells Fargo detectives and sent to San Quentin, this time on a 20-25 year armed robbery beef.  In San Quentin for a third time, Miner for the most part behaves himself but still manages to get into trouble from time to time ... he almost has his throat cut during a fight with another convict, and figuring out a way to break the lock on his cell, survives a failed escape attempt in which a guard kills his partner in the plot, Joe Marshall, with a blast from his shotgun that barely misses Miner.  His longest stretch behind bars, 54-year-old Miner is finally released from the prison on June 17, 1901 and again decides to visit his family, this time, venturing north to the state of Washington where his sisters, Harriet and Mary Jane, and his niece, Mary Jane's married daughter Dora.  For a time, he holds down a legitimate job harvesting oysters from the oyster bed his family owns on Samish Bay.

Miner

But by this time Miner is a hard core bandit, and after two years of what he considers unadulterated drudgery, the outlaw teams up with his former San Quentin cellmate, John "Cowboy Jake" Terry, another San Quentin alum, Gary Harshman, and a young teenager from the nearby socialist community, Equality Colony named Charles Hoehn.  Stagecoaches no longer a viable source of wealth, the rookies decide to rob the Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company's passenger train to Chicago near the town of Clarnie, about 10 miles east of Portland, on Saturday, September 19, 1903.  Bungled of course, though the men try and flag the train down, it ignores their waving and goes on its merry way to Chicago instead of stopping.  Undaunted, the gang goes after another train four nights later near the town of Troutdale, but their results are even worse than on their first job.  Access to the train gained, the robbers use dynamite to blow off the doors of the express car, but flee with no money when a hidden messenger unloads a load of buckshot into Harshman's head.  Found later when Multnomah County Sheriff William Storey and Pinkerton Detective Agency Captain James Nevins show up at the scene of the crime later that night.  Somehow surviving being shot in the face, eventually Harshman gives up his confederates, and when Hoehn is arrested, he in turn tells where Miner can be found, but when the authorities finally show up at the 160-acre homestead of the outlaw's sister and husband, they are a day late.  Fleeing the United States for awhile, Miner becomes George Edwards, a mining engineer with gold holdings in Argentina that makes Princeton, British Columbia, a locale 50 miles east of Vancouver, his new base of operations.

Terry

Pinkerton Poster

Miner

Though he is well liked about town (he builds an ice rink for a little girl who wants to go skating though there are no ponds in Princeton), needing a crook's adrenaline rush once more, Miner, Terry, and a new recruit from the area, an American named J. William Grell who is operating in Canada under the alias of William J. "Shorty" Dunn. hit the Canadian Pacific Railway Transcontinental Express #1 outside the town of Mission (40 miles east of Vancouver).  Striking at around 9:30 on the evening of September 10, 1904, using a dense ground fog as their ally, everything finally right for the gang and the robbers ride off into the night after thirty minutes of plundering the railway with $1,000 in cash, $6,000 in gold dust, $50,000 in U.S. government bonds, and another $250,000 in Australian securities securities (the first successful train robbery in the area in over 30 years, compliments of a cocked pistol being thrust into the face of express messenger Herbert Mitchell, who opens the car's safe for the bandits).  A clean getaway sets the men up for life (the rewards for info on the bandits goes up to $11,500), but the itch to rob and ride hits Miner again in 1905, and he and Terry (absent from his friend's capture, in 1907 the gunman will take two .38 slugs to the head and be killed by a telegraph lineman named Gust Lindey, angered into murder by the outlaw sleeping with his wife), using dynamite on the train's safe rob the eastbound Great Northern Railway Flyer outside of Seattle, Washington taking $36,000 in gold bullion, then in 1906, Miner, Dunn, and Louis Colquhoun hit the westbound Canadian Pacific Railway Imperial Limited No. 97 train at Ducks, British Columbia, 17 miles east of Kamloops ... a bungled job due to uncoupling the wrong car and leaving it back at the train station that nets the men only $15.50 and a box of catarrh pills for upset stomachs and liver problems.  Mounties, railway detectives, cowboys sworn in as special constables, Siwash Indian trackers, bloodhounds, and on the American side of the border, police officers and Pinkerton agents.  Given a second opportunity "to get their man," working in conjunction with a posse led by B.C. Provincial Police Constable William L. Fernie, a detachment of Royal Canadian Northwest Mounted Police under the command of Sergeant J. J. Wilson locates the trail of the outlaws, follows it south, and on Monday, May 14, surrounds the bandits at a place called Douglas Lake and demands their surrender.  Miner and Colquhoun comply, but Dunn draws his pistol and is rewarded with a bullet to his leg.  Secured, the men are transported to Quilchena, where Dunn's wound is treated, then are brought to Kamloops in a borrowed buckboard for trial at the British Columbia provincial court. 

Manhunters

Shorty Dunn

Colquhoun

Miner

Somehow, the first trial of the defendants ends in a hung jury (throughout, Miner insists he is George Edwards, even when the warden of San Quentin identifies him as being the stagecoach robber, William Miner).  The second trial goes much better for the authorities  ... evidence presented during the day of Saturday, June 1, the jury unanimously brings back a verdict of guilty later that same night (the most damning bit of evidence is Miner being in possession of the liver pills).  Not happy that an American criminal would seek plunder in Canada, and that a good part of the population sees Miner as a folk hero for his battles against the evil railroads of both countries, presiding judge P. A. E. Irving decides to throw the book at Miner and Dunn (a model prisoner, Dunn will have his sentenced reduced from life to fifteen years, is paroled in May of 1915, becomes a Canadian citizen under his real name, J. William Grell, and dies hunting for gold in northern British Columbia when the canoe he is guiding capsizes in the cold waters of Testa River in 1927) and sentences both men to life in prison at the British Columbia Penitentiary at New Westminster, while Colquhoun is sentenced to 25 years behind bars (suffering from tuberculosis, he will die at the prison's hospital in 1911).  

The Prisoners Arrive

On Trial

Ongoing Construction At The B.C. Pen

Intensely watched and kept in maximum security during his first year in prison (Miner has boasted that no prison walls can hold him), the prison staff, thinking Miner is a kindly old man too aged and feeble for any escapes, eventually relaxes their guard on the bandit, only to discover the error of their way on August 8, 1907, when the outlaw, and three other convicts, tunnel under a board fence, obtain a ladder from a work shed, scale a 12-foot wall, and vanish from the institution without anyone being the wiser.  His partners captured shortly after their escape, Miner gets away and is never seen in Canada again.  Later, it will be determined that the tunnel (too small for Miner to slink through), ladder, and fellow escapees are all mere props, and that the outlaw has actually secretly bribed his way to freedom by agreeing to return the $300,000 (the equivalent of nine million dollars in modern money) in securities and bonds he hid in 1904 after the Mission train robbery.  Embarrassed, the Canadian government, after much back-and-forth in parliament, decides not to institute a full inquiry into the incident.  Slipping back into the United States, using loot he has hidden over the years, Miner sets up shop in Denver and begins living a lavish life of wine, women, fine clothes, and good food ... until the money runs out.  Almost broke, Miner travels back to Michigan and once again begins thinking of his next heist and recruiting new confederates, eventually settling on an acquaintance named Charles Hunter, and an itinerant laborer from Nebraska that he meets while working at a sawmill, James Hanford.

Wanted Poster

Shorn In Prison

Georgia selected because it has never experienced a train robbery and Miner believes the state authorities won't know how to react, at 4:00 in the morning on Saturday, February 18, 1911, near White Sulfur Springs, Georgia the three outlaws hit the Southern Railway fast mail train No. 36 (the train is headed from New Orleans to New York City) for $2,200 in loot.  Loot that the bandits never have a chance to spend because the trio are all behind bars four days after the robbery.  Placed on trial in Gainesville, the guilty men are advised of their futures on March 3, 1911 ... mastermind Miner is sentenced to 20 years behind bars, while Hunter and Hanford, who both are sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.  The men begin serving their sentences on the chain gang of the Newton County Convict Camp at Covington, Georgia on March 15, 1911 ... and the 64-year-old Miner begins planning his next escape.  Claiming his health is too poorly to work on a chain gang, Miner is transferred to the Georgia State Prison Farm at Milledgeville on July 8, 1911.  Three months later, with the support of two other inmates, Miner is in the wind again.  This time his freedom lasts a couple of weeks.  Wisely surrendering when a posse surrounds the men and one of the convicts is killed in a shootout (put in cuffs, the outlaw will be heard to mutter, "I guess I'm getting too old for this sort of thing."), Miner is returned to Milledgeville at the beginning of November and starts thinking about his next exit.  The beginning of the end, again accompanied by two other desperate convicts, Miner escapes Milledgeville once more on June 27, 1912.  This time to lose any posses that might be chasing them, the men venture into a swamp near the town of Toomsboro, only 20 miles away from the prison farm.  Instead of the swamp helping the flight of the convicts though, the swamp proves to be the undoing of the group when the small boat the prisoners have stolen capsizes and Miner almost drowns in the fetid wet he's pitched into.  Found shivering and close to death in an abandoned boxcar, the outlaw is brought back to Milledgeville, and now too weak for flight, he stays put for the last year of his life, tending to a small flower garden within the prison walls and giving a friendly detective his version of the major adventures of his life.  Frail, he finally is put in one of the prison's hospital beds suffering from the gastritis he picked up gulping down swamp water during his last escape attempt.  The stomach affliction does in Miner on September 2, 1913.

Miner

  .   

BEN KUROKI - AMERICAN HERO

9/1/2015 - Under hospice care, a very special American passes away at his home in Camarillo, California at the age of 98, a technical sergeant during WWII who wins a Distinguished Service Medal, a Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaf clusters, an Air Medal with five oak leave clusters, a Presidential Unit Citation, a Good Conduct Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a World War II Victory Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with one silver and three bronze campaign stars, and a Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with two bronze campaign stars for flying 30 combat missions over Europe (at a time when 25 missions gets one sent home) and an additional 28 combat missions over Japan ... Ben Kuroki.

Kuroki

Part of a family that will have ten children, Ben Kuroki is born to Japanese immigrants Shosuke (in America he will call himself Sam) and Naka Yokoyama Kuroki on May 16, 1917 in Gothenburg, Nebraska.  When Ben is only one, the family will relocate to Hershey, Nebraska (a small town of only 500), where they own and operate a local potato farm.  Growing up, Kuroki will help run the farm while attending Hershey High School, where he becomes Vice-President of his senior class and plays on the school's varsity basketball (despite being only 5'5") and baseball teams. He graduates in 1936 into a world preparing for war.  When war comes in December of 1941 by way of a Japanese sneak attacks on American military bases on Hawaii, like thousands of other Americans, Kuroki is angered and wants to fight back, and heeding the encouragements of his father, Ben and his brother Fred, seek to enlist in the army two days after the attack, undergoing physicals at a recruiting station in the town of North Platte.  There the pair though run into the rampant prejudice current at the time against the Japanese and are told to go home and the service will contact them with notification of their inductions,  When the brothers hear nothing for two weeks, they decide to act upon a radio call they have heard for volunteers for the army's air corps, and with hopes of Ben becoming a pilot (and when that doesn't work out, an aircraft mechanic) and Fred becoming a navigator, they drive 150 miles to Grand Island, sign up (the recruiter could care less what the men look like, he is only interested in the $2 fee he gets for every man he signs up), and are in.  In, but not accepted, both brothers experience hatred from fellow recruits, NCOs, and officers.  Frequently on KP or tasked with menial chores (Fred will eventually be drummed out of the air corps and is transferred to the engineers) like cleaning the latrines and digging ditches, Kuroki completes basic training in Texas and is sent to Fort Logan, Colorado for clerical training ... an occupation Kuroki's warrior heart has no interest in.

The Kuroki Family - Ben Is The Second Person

Standing On The Left

Pearl Harbor Sneak Attack

Upon completion of the army's administrative course, Kuroki is sent to Barksdale Field in Shreveport, Louisiana where a new air group is being formed to fly Consolidated B-24 heavy Liberator bombers and is assigned as a clerk-typist to the 409th Bomber Squadron of the 93rd Bombardment Group (Kuroki is so frightened of something happening to get him kicked out of the air force that he spends earned leave time on base and never ventures into Shreveport).  When the group is ordered to prepare for overseas deployment at Fort Myers, Florida, Kuroki discovers his name has been red-lined off the list of men going overseas by a senior NCO, he tearfully entreats the squadron's adjutant, Lt. Charles Brannon to put his name back on the list, which Brannon does.  But it is only the beginning of Kuroki's fight to fight.  Left off the movement list that will send Ben first to Grenier Army Airfield in New Hampshire, and then on to England as part of the Eighth Air Force, he seeks help from the unit's chaplain, Lt. James A. Burris.  Burris in turn escalates Kuroki's case up to the group's commander, Colonel Edward J. "Ted" Timberlake who orders that the clerk stay with his squadron.  In England, Kuroki is an orderly that types up flight orders and keeps track of squadron records.  Chaffing to flight (the group, as the Eighth's first B-24 squadron flies its first cross-channel bombing mission against military targets at Lille, France on October 9, 1942), Kuroki spends as much time as he can out on the flight line helping out on whatever might be needed and learning to operate the .50-caliber machine guns of the B-24, and becomes so proficient in their operation that he can strip the weapon down and reassemble it while blindfolded.  Passing a two-week gunnery course, constantly requesting flight status, he finally gets his chance when one of the turret gunners of the B-24 of 23-year-old pilot Lt. Jacob Burress "Jake" Epting Jr. is grounded for medical reasons.  Allowed at the time to choose his own crew, Epting offers Kuroki the spot, and the youthful clerk receives the silver wings of flying status and a promotion to NCO.  Almost immediately the status change pays dividends for Kuroki's squadron.   Sent to Africa for temporary deployment, on Ben's first mission, a raid on the docks and supply depot of Bizerte, Tunisia, Kuroki's bomber is hit by flak, a piece of which grievously injures Sgt. Elmer Dawley in the head.  About to receive morphine for the injury, Kuroki realizes the drug should not be used for head injuries and intervenes, saving the sergeant's life with his quick actions.  Accepted now as a fighting member of the squadron, the crew of Ben's bomber begins affectionately calling him, "the Most Honorable Son" (the perfect crew for Kuroki, Epting's crew has a crew with German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, and Lakota ancestry ... Americans all!).   

Epting

B-24

Tail Turret

Helping stop Rommel and his Afrika Korps in North Africa, the "Red Ass" of Lt. Epting and Kuroki flies over a dozen missions (the first takes place on December 13, a raid on docks and supply bases of Bizerete, Tunisia) against various Axis bases before being transferred back to the Eighth in England.  Flying back to England in February of 1943, the B-24, carrying a crew of ten and five ground crew passengers, encounters huge swaths of fog blanketing their planned course, and trying to find their way through it, the bomber becomes lost, runs out of fuel and has to make a forced night landing in Spanish Morocco.  Interned by Spanish authorities, Kuroki attempts to escape back to Allied territory disguised as an Arab, is caught, and then flown to Spain, where he is interned in the mountain town of Alhama de Aragon, northeast of Madrid.  Finally freed by authorities after three months, Kuroki returns to England and is reunited with Lt. Epting in a new B-24, a bomber this time called "Tupelo Lass" for the pilot's hometown.  Barely back, the 93rd is sent back to North Africa to take part in Operation Tidal Wave, an operation to stop the oil production of refineries around the town of Ploesti, Romania.  Established by this time as one of the best gunners in the squadron, in a bomber containing Lt. Epting and the 409th squadron (known as the "Eager Beaver" squadron) commander, Major Kenneth "K.O." Dessert, flies the August 1, 1943 mission from the top turret of the plane, where he has a dangerous grand view of the proceedings from an elevation of only fifty feet (of the nine B-24s of the squadron that attack Ploesti, Kuroki is one of only two that make it back to their base in Benghazi).        

"Red Ass"

 

Top Turret

Crew Of The "Tupelo Lass"

Ploesti

Mission survived, the group rests while mechanics repair the unit's planes, then fly more missions from North Africa before returning to England where they participate in a raid against the aircraft manufacturing facilities at Weiner-Neustadt, Austria, the third most heavily defended Axis target in Europe.  Mission after mission completed, battling combat fatigue that causes the gunner to lurch about in his bed and cry out over his sky fighting nightmare, Kuroki eventually reaches the magic number of twenty-five that allows an airman to go home.  Kuroki though decides to prove his patriotism and honor his brother (who is still back in the States) by flying five more missions to reach a total (a decision that the other members of the squadron think is insane) of thirty ... and it almost costs the airman his life.  Bombing the German city of Munster, from his position in the top turret (he is now flying with Epting's former co-pilot, full blooded Sioux warrior, Lt. Homer Moran), Kuroki stretches his neck a split second before shrapnel goes through his turret, metal that a second before would have taken his head off and does shatter his goggles and pierces his oxygen mask.  He survives his last combat mission over Europe breathing through a spare oxygen mask given him by another member of the bomber's crew.

Sitting With Friends In Alexandria, Egypt

Kuroki Next To "Tupelo Lass"

Above Munster

Lucky Kuroki

Back in the States, Technical Sgt. Kuroki returns to both praise and prejudice.  Taking time out for some well deserved R&R at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Santa Monica, the sergeant becomes the first Japanese-American to visit California since President Roosevelt signed the order putting members of the state's Nisei community, United States citizens all, in internment camps (he also becomes the first Japanese-American to dine at Hollywood's legendary Brown Derby since the war began.  Time magazine and the New York Times will both run articles about him, starting a landslide of interest in Kuroki's story.  And ordered forth by the powers in Washington D.C., the gunner is ordered to visit Nisei camps where he is considered a hero, to give speeches recruiting the internees to join the army to fit against the Nazis in Europe (eventually 25,000 join up and serve with heroism and honor), duty that galls him as he makes speeches about freedom to people being held behind barbed wire.  And despite his service to a country he loves, Kuroki still experiences moments of prejudice and hatred ... NBC pulls the plug on a national radio interview because it finds the sergeant too controversial, a female producer, for the same reason, at the last minute cancels his appearance on the popular Ginny Sims Show, wealthy media magnate, William Randolph Hearst, allows his San Francisco newspaper to run the headline "Jap to Address S.F. Club," and in full bemedaled dress uniform, when the gunner tries to share a taxi ride in Denver, he has the door of the vehicle slammed in his face as the occupant in the back seat screams, "I don't want to ride with no lousy Jap!'

Addressing Internees

Kuroki And Recruiting Poster

On February 4, 1944, as news of details of the Bataan Death March of captured Americans in the Philippines is released to the public for the first time, Kuroki is coaxed into delivering the speech he is scheduled to make at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club to a room full of hostile businessmen and wealthy citizens.  Making a forty minute speech, Kuroki states, "I learned more about democracy, for one thing, than you'll find in books, because I saw it in action,  When you live with men under combat conditions for fifteen months, you begin to understand what brotherhood, equality, tolerance and unselfishness really mean.  They're no longer just words."  He relates the tale of saving the wounded crewman from death from morphine, telling his audience, "What difference did it make what a man's ancestry was?  We had a job to do and we did it with a kind of comradeship that was the finest thing."  Describing his quest to fight for the country of his birth, he says he was "waging two battles, one against the Axis and one against the intolerance of my fellow Americans, and states that the bigotry he faced during basic training was so bad that "I would rather go through my bombing missions again than face it."  A boffo performance straight to the heart, at the conclusion of his presentation, Kuroki receives a standing ovation ten minutes in length, is recalled to the stage twice, and has most of his audience, including his army escort in tears (and after, a member of his audience, Monroe Deutsch, the vice-president of the University of California at Berkeley will write him a letter thanking Kuroki for making a big difference in tempering anti-Japanese sentiments in the state).  And still he holds a burning desire to do even more.  

Tonight's Speaker

Still feeling he has to prove he is a loyal American citizen, instead of riding out the war, Kuroki volunteers to next fly in the Pacific, as a member of the crews being put together to bomb the Japanese homeland from the new long distance super bombers the United States has added to its weaponry ... the Boeing B-29 Superfortress.  Once again though, at first, the powers that be aren't interested in the idea at all and plan to enforce the rule they have about no Japanese-Americans being allowed to fight in the Theater.  Savvy to the way things work by this point in the war, Kuroki passes all his training classes at the Superfortress base near Harvard, Nebraska and allows the host of friends he has made in the air and back in the States do the heavy lifting needed to get him where he wants to go.  Soon, letters and telegrams begin flooding into the War Department to let Kuroki go to the Pacific ... a paper campaign that eventually results in Nebraska Representative Carl Curtis bringing the matter to the attention of Army Air Corps commander, General Henry "Hap" Arnold, and Arnold's boss, Army Chief Of Staff, General George C. Marshall.  Heavyweights in his corner, the pair bring the problem to the attention of FDR's Secretary of War, Henry Lewis Stimson.  Problem solved, Stimson writes a letter which Kuroki carries with him for the rest of the war in which the secretary states, "I an now happy to inform you that by reason of his splendid record, it has been decided to except Sgt. Kuroki from the provisions of the policy."  Green light, and yet the gunner's tribulations will continue.  Twice, once at Kearney Field in Nebraska and once at Mather Field in California, federal agents try to stop Kuroki from flying training missions, forcing the sergeant to dip into his duffel bag and produce the Stimson letter giving him permission.  When a third time is about to take place, the pilot of the bomber Kuroki has been assigned to, Lt. Jim Jenkins, simply ignores the speeding security coming his way, taxis down the runway, and lifts off for the Pacific theater in a B-29 the crew has nicknamed for their tail gunner ... "Sad Saki."

Curtis

Stimson

"Sad Saki"

Setting up base on Tinian Island (a pimple of Pacific coral captured by the United States Marine Corps in the summer of 1944), the "Sad Saki" joins the B-29s of the 505th Bombardment Group's 484 Bombardment Squadron (part of the Army's Twentieth Air Force), commanded by Major General Curtis Emerson LeMay.  Training flights to milk runs over Iwo Jima and Truk Island to firebomb and napalm raids on Japan, from February of 1945 to the end of the war from the island's North Field, Kuroki flies 28 more combat missions without receiving a scratch.  On the ground, it is a different story.  Worried that seeing Kuroki on the island, he might be mistaken for a Japanese straggler coming out of hiding, and security personnel might shoot first and ask questions later, Ben remains in his tent at night, not even going out to use the latrine.  Moving about during daylight, Lt. Jenkins insists that his tail gunner wear a helmet and dark glasses, and never goes anywhere alone, and even during trips to the mess hall, Kuroki is surrounded by members of his crew and squadron (his friends will tease that Ben owes them protection money and Kuroki kids back that if they are ever shot down over Japan, he will find his crewmates plenty of fish heads and rice to dine on).  And he is almost killed anyway.  Relaxing in his barracks after flying his 58th mission of the war, Kuroki is suddenly accosted by a drunken GI from New York who bursts into the area screaming about Tojo and the sergeant being "dirty Japs."  Fighting words, Ben jumps out of his cot, but before he can lay a hand on the man, the private produces a combat knife and slashes the gunner's head open, and might have killed him if not for the intervention of a B-29 flight engineer, Sgt. Russell Olsen, who disarms the drunk (Kuroki's attacker will be court-martialed and spends six months in the stockade doing hard labor).  Death once again only an inch or so away, Kuroki is in the hospital with his scalp held together by 24 stitches when he hears the news that an atomic bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima by a Tinian B-29, the Enola Gay of Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr.

North Field, Tinian

Firebombing Japan

Hiroshima

Calling his fight against racism his "59th Mission," when Kuroki returns to the states, as a patriotic American hero, the sergeant gives a series of lectures around the country on his war experiences and how they were colored by prejudice (the gunner will state, "I had to fight like hell for the right to fight for my own country."), speeches he partially bank rolls with donations, his own savings, and proceeds from the sale of the book Ralph G. Martin writes about him in 1946, "Boy From Nebraska: The Story of Ben Kuroki."  Using the GI Bill of Rights to continue his education, Kuroki will enroll in the journalism school of the University of Nebraska and graduate with his bachelor's degree in 1950.  Immersing in the world of journalism, Kuroki will have a career in as a small newspaper owner in Nebraska, as a reporter and an editor in Michigan and California until he retires in 1984.  He also finds time to marry, have a family, and play many rounds of golf.  Active in reunions of the 93rd Bombardment Group, the patriotic gunner becomes the focus of a campaign by fellow veterans to receive a higher award than the two DFCs he won during the war.  Campaign successful, in a ceremony at the White House on August 12, 2005, Kuroki is awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, America's third-highest award for military valor, by President George W. Bush (also in 2005, Kuroki receives an honorary Doctorate from the University of Nebraska).  Survived by his wife, Shige, his daughters, Julie, Kerry, and Kristyn, his sister, Rosemary, four grandchildren, and one great-grandchild when he passes from pancreatic cancer while under hospice care in Camarillo, California on September 1, 2015, at the age of 98       

Later Life

Thank you for your service, Technical Sergeant!

Kuroki 

 

  

END OF AN AMERICAN ACE

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

1944 starts slowly for both men (deeply in love, until the plane is borrowed and destroyed, Bong flies a P-38 adorned with a photo of Miss Vattendahl), but Bong does manage to add a 22nd victory in February by sending a Tony into the sea with a rear pass from seventy-five yards (he also destroys a Japanese transport plane containing a major general, a brigadier general, and a batch of high ranking staff officers (he will receive no kill credit for shooting up the transport because it has already landed), and before he leaves the area, Bong and Lynch machine gun over a hundred Japanese soldiers waiting on the tarmac.  In March, Bong adds two more Japanese to give him a total of 24 victories, downing two Sally bombers as they are about to land at the Tadju Japanese airbase on the northern coast of New Guinea.  Sadly, the month also sees the death of Bong's friend, Lt. Colonel Thomas Lynch (now an ace with twenty victories), killed by ground fire before Bong's eyes as the colonel strafes a group of coastal supply ships on the way to the Japanese base at Hollandia.  Sent to Australia for more R&R with General Kenney concerned with his fighter's morale after seeing his friend, Bong returns to combat in April and pots an Oscar with a rear attack ... and making newspapers in America happy, is only one victory away from tying WWI ace-of-aces, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker with 26 triumphs, two away from the leaders on the pyramid, Guadalcanal Congressional Medal of Honor winner, Marine Major Joe Foss, and three away from tying Marine legend, Black Sheep squadron commander, Colonel Gregory "Pappy" Boyington.  On April 12th, Bong sends an Oscar into the waters of Tannemerah Bay, shoots another Oscar off the tail of a member of his squadron, then adds a 28th victim to his tally by splashing another fighter at almost wavetop.  Top ace, Bong is again pulled from combat, promoted to major, and receives two cases of Coca-Cola as a reward (the reward was to have been a case of Scotch from Rickenbacker and a case of champagne from General MacArthur, but is changed when religious groups back in the states protest ... eventually General Kenney will secretly supply Bong with both the Scotch and the champagne).

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

Rest In Peace

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!   

Readying To Sortie

Major Ricard Ira Bong