Richard Bong, America's Ace of Aces, and the Forty Kills in a P-38 Lightning That No American Has Matched Since

Richard Ira Bong scored 40 confirmed aerial kills flying a Lockheed P-38 Lightning in the Pacific Theater of World War II, earning the title of America’s Ace of Aces. He received the Medal of Honor at age 24, personally awarded by General Douglas MacArthur. He died on August 6, 1945 - the same morning the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima - when a fuel pump failed during a test flight in Burbank, California.

Who Was Richard Bong?

Bong was born in 1920 in Poplar, Wisconsin, the oldest of nine children on a dairy farm near Lake Superior. He built model airplanes as a kid and discovered flight at a local airfield with his first paid lesson. His instructors in advanced training kept making notes about something they struggled to define precisely: coordination, aircraft feel, the ability to place the airplane exactly where it needed to be without visible effort.

Early in that training, Bong did something that should have ended his career. While flying a P-38 over California, he made an unsanctioned low pass around the Golden Gate Bridge, then flew down Market Street in San Francisco at rooftop level. Civilians in apartments reportedly looked down at the aircraft going past their windows.

General George Kenney, commanding Fifth Air Force, called Bong in and made his views clear. Then he read the flight records. What he saw was rare enough that instead of washing Bong out, he reassigned him to the Pacific and kept close watch on his new problem asset.

What Made the P-38 Lightning the Right Aircraft for Him?

The Japanese called it the fork-tailed devil. Twin booms, twin Allison engines, a center nacelle where the pilot sat looking through a greenhouse canopy - the P-38 looked unlike anything else in the sky and flew differently too.

Its range was the critical advantage in the Pacific. The distances between island airfields and targets were measured in hundreds of miles over open water. The P-38 could cover that distance and still have fuel for a fight. Other American fighters of the era could not.

The armament was centralized: four .50-caliber machine guns and a 20mm cannon, all mounted in the nose on the same axis. There were no wing-mounted guns converging at a fixed range. At any distance within the sight picture, rounds landed where the pilot aimed. For a precise shooter, that detail was significant.

How Bong Built a 40-Kill Record

His first confirmed kill was December 27, 1942, over New Guinea. What followed was a methodical, patient two-year campaign conducted in some of the most demanding conditions in the war.

New Guinea in 1942 was a massive island covered in largely unmapped jungle. Weather over the Owen Stanley mountains could close from clear to zero visibility before a pilot had time to react. Thunderstorms reached 50,000 feet. A forced landing in that terrain was, in most cases, not survivable. The pilots who lasted developed what one observer described as quiet fatalism - not despair, but clarity. You flew the mission. You came home if you could.

Bong’s tactical approach was disciplined to the point of defining him. He flew boom-and-zoom: dive from altitude with energy, make one precise firing pass, extend away before the enemy could respond, climb back, repeat. Never get slow. Never turn. Use the P-38’s speed and energy retention.

His exceptional long-range eyesight gave him a structural advantage. He routinely called contacts at ranges where his wingmen saw empty sky. By the time they found the aircraft, Bong had already worked out his attack geometry. In aerial combat, seeing first is often the entire game.

Why the Discipline Behind His Method Mattered

The contrast with Major Thomas McGuire clarifies what Bong’s tactical consistency actually cost to maintain. McGuire flew the same theater, the same P-38s, the same mission profiles. He accumulated 38 confirmed kills - the second-highest total of any American pilot in the war.

In January 1945, McGuire found himself in a low-altitude engagement over the Philippines. A Zero was attacking one of his wingmen. McGuire broke off his altitude advantage to intervene, got into a turning fight at slow speed, and lost aircraft control. He was 24 years old.

McGuire knew you did not turn with a Zero at low altitude. He had built his survival on that knowledge. But with a wingman going down, he broke the rule.

Bong never made that departure. Not once across 40 engagements. The patience to execute the tactic and not deviate was as much his weapon as the aircraft.

Passing Rickenbacker’s Record

Eddie Rickenbacker had set the American aerial combat record at 26 confirmed kills in World War I. That record held for 26 years.

In December 1944, during the Philippines campaign, Bong reached 38 kills and passed Rickenbacker by 12. Rickenbacker sent a telegram of congratulations. The newspapers ran it on the front page. General Kenney periodically pulled Bong back to the United States - managing his visibility and preventing the country’s best fighter pilot from becoming a statistic - but Bong returned each time and went back to work.

In January 1945, Bong scored kill number 40. Kenney ordered him home for good. Not because his skills had diminished. Because the Army Air Forces had concluded they could not afford to lose the Ace of Aces over Japanese territory, and removing him from the combat zone was the only way to ensure it.

He came home and married Marjorie Vattendahl in February 1945, the woman whose name he had painted on the nose of his aircraft throughout the Pacific campaign. The letters he wrote to her during the war are preserved. He did not write about combat in detail. He wrote about missing Wisconsin. Missing the cold. Wanting a glass of cold milk.

The Medal of Honor and MacArthur

General Douglas MacArthur flew to the Philippines to award the Medal of Honor in person. He placed the medal around Bong’s neck himself - an unusual gesture that reflected how the command regarded this pilot. The citation documents specific engagements in the formal language citations use. What it describes is a pilot who flew into the worst fighting the Pacific had to offer, repeatedly, and returned.

How Richard Bong Died

Bong was assigned to test the P-80 Shooting Star at Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank, California. The jet age was arriving, and the Army Air Forces needed experienced combat pilots to evaluate aircraft that behaved fundamentally differently from anything flown in the Pacific. The P-80 was fast, clean, and still revealing its edges in flight rather than on the ground.

On August 6, 1945, shortly after 7:00 a.m., the fuel boost pump failed. The engine flamed out at approximately 100 feet above the ground. Bong was thrown clear. His parachute was found still packed. There was no altitude to use it.

He was 24 years old.

Five thousand miles away, the Enola Gay was completing its bomb run over Hiroshima. By the time the news of Bong’s death reached Washington, the war he had spent three years fighting was effectively over. He never knew.

Why the Record Has Never Been Broken

Bong’s 40 kills have never been approached by an American pilot in any subsequent conflict - not in Korea, not in Vietnam, not since. The structure of modern air warfare makes direct numerical comparison complicated, but the record stands unchanged.

The Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin, opened in 2002 and houses a P-38 painted to represent his aircraft, with Marge on the nose. It honors all veterans from the region, but Bong is the center’s defining presence.

General Kenney, writing about him after the war, left one line that serves as a complete biography: He never seemed to get excited when things got difficult. He got clearer.

Key Takeaways

• Richard Bong scored 40 confirmed aerial kills flying a P-38 Lightning, a record no American pilot has matched in any war since.
• He flew boom-and-zoom tactics exclusively - altitude, one precise pass, extension - and never deviated from that discipline, even under extreme combat stress.
• The P-38 Lightning’s long range and nose-mounted armament made it uniquely suited to Pacific warfare and to Bong’s precise shooting style.
• Bong passed Eddie Rickenbacker’s 26-year-old record of 26 kills in December 1944 and received the Medal of Honor from MacArthur personally.
• He died August 6, 1945 - the same day as the Hiroshima bombing - in a P-80 Shooting Star test flight, killed by a fuel pump failure at 100 feet of altitude, one month before the war ended.