Richard Bong, America's Ace of Aces and the forty victories that changed the Pacific War

Richard “Dick” Bong shot down 40 enemy aircraft during World War II, more than any other American fighter pilot before or since. Flying the P-38 Lightning across the brutal expanse of the Pacific Theater, the quiet farm kid from Wisconsin became the United States’ Ace of Aces and a Medal of Honor recipient, only to die at age 24 in a jet test flight on the same day the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.

From a Wisconsin Farm to the Cockpit

Richard Ira Bong was born in 1920 in Poplar, Wisconsin, a tiny town in the state’s far north. His father was a Swedish immigrant farmer, and nothing about young Dick’s surroundings suggested a future in aerial combat. That changed the day a barnstormer landed in a field near the family farm. From that moment, Bong was consumed by aviation.

He scraped together money for flying lessons through the Superior State Teachers College aviation program and earned his private certificate. Instructors noticed something immediately: Bong had an extraordinary natural feel for the airplane. He was quiet, almost shy on the ground, but in the air he was something else entirely.

The P-38 Lightning and the Stunt That Nearly Ended His Career

Bong enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1941, moved quickly through primary and basic training, and was assigned to the P-38 Lightning. The twin-engine, twin-boom fighter was fast, climbed aggressively, and had the range to operate deep in the Pacific where single-engine fighters couldn’t reach. Many pilots found it intimidating. Bong thrived in it.

Before reaching combat, though, he nearly derailed his own career. While training in California, he buzzed a house in the San Fernando Valley so low that a woman’s laundry blew off the clothesline. On a separate flight, he looped his P-38 around the center span of the Golden Gate Bridge.

His commanding officer, General George Kenney, dressed him down but recognized the raw talent. Kenney’s response, according to accounts, was essentially: if you’re going to fly like that, I’ll send you somewhere you can shoot at people shooting back at you.

Forty Victories Over the Pacific

In late 1942, Bong deployed to the Southwest Pacific with the 49th Fighter Group. The Pacific air war was grueling. Pilots launched from muddy jungle strips in New Guinea, flew hours over open ocean, fought, and navigated back before fuel ran out. Heat, humidity, malaria, and skilled Japanese pilots made every mission a survival exercise.

Bong’s first confirmed victory came on December 27, 1942, a Mitsubishi Zero over Buna, New Guinea. The count climbed steadily from there.

By his own admission, Bong was not a natural marksman. His solution was simple and terrifying: he closed to point-blank range before firing, sometimes pressing in to 50 yards. At that distance, the P-38’s four .50-caliber machine guns and 20mm cannon were devastating. His wingmen described it as a knife fight, not a dogfight. He also possessed an intuitive gift for deflection shooting, solving the geometry of air combat instinctively rather than mathematically.

By April 1944, Bong had tied Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I record of 26 confirmed victories. Rickenbacker sent him a case of Scotch whisky. Bong didn’t drink and shared it with his squadron.

The Race to Ace of Aces

A friendly rivalry developed between Bong and Major Thomas McGuire, another P-38 pilot with the 475th Fighter Group. Newspapers back home followed the competition like a sports pennant race.

General Kenney, now Bong’s biggest advocate, felt mounting anxiety as the score climbed. He periodically pulled Bong from combat for war bond tours and leave, but Bong always returned. Part of what drew him back was a sense of duty. Part of it was a girl.

Marjorie Vattendahl of Superior, Wisconsin had been his anchor throughout the war. He wrote to her constantly. Her photograph was painted on the nose of his P-38, which didn’t carry a tough-guy callsign. It simply said Marge.

Forty and Done

On December 17, 1944, Bong scored his 40th confirmed aerial victory. No American pilot has matched that number. General Douglas MacArthur personally presented Bong with the Medal of Honor, then grounded him. MacArthur had lost too many pilots and refused to risk the country’s top ace in another dogfight. Bong was ordered home at age 24.

He returned to a hero’s welcome of war bond tours, parades, and public appearances. On February 10, 1945, he married Marge.

A Test Pilot’s Final Flight

Bong was assigned as a test pilot, first at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, then at Lockheed’s facility in Burbank, California. There he transitioned to the P-80 Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter. Powered by a General Electric I-40 turbine, the P-80 exceeded 500 mph in level flight, but the technology was new, untested, and unforgiving. Early jet engines flamed out, surged, and ran on fuel systems still being refined.

On August 6, 1945, the same day the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Bong took off from Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank on an acceptance test flight. Shortly after takeoff, the engine quit. The P-80 rolled. Bong got the canopy off and attempted to bail out, but he was too low. His parachute never fully deployed.

He was 24 years old.

The investigation determined Bong had not activated the auxiliary fuel pump, a critical step in the P-80’s startup procedure. Some historians have questioned whether a deeper mechanical failure was involved, but the official finding stood.

The Weight of Irony

Dick Bong survived 40 aerial engagements against experienced Japanese fighter pilots. He flew through anti-aircraft fire, tropical storms, and the grinding attrition of the Pacific air war. He died on a clear day over a California suburb during a routine test flight.

His rival Thomas McGuire had died seven months earlier when his P-38 stalled during a low-altitude dogfight over Negros Island in the Philippines. McGuire had 38 victories. Between the two of them: 78 confirmed enemy aircraft destroyed.

Remembering Dick Bong

The airfield at Camp Douglas, Wisconsin was renamed Bong Field. In 2002, the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center opened in Superior, Wisconsin. A restored P-38 Lightning painted as Marge, with Marjorie’s photograph on the nose, is on display there.

Marjorie Bong never remarried. She carried his memory for the rest of her life.

Bong was not the showman type. He was quiet, methodical, and lethal. He didn’t need an audience. He got in the airplane and did the work, forty times meeting the enemy in the air and winning every single one.

Key Takeaways

Richard Bong scored 40 confirmed aerial victories, the most of any American fighter pilot in history, all while flying the P-38 Lightning in the Pacific Theater.
His unconventional tactic of closing to extremely short range compensated for self-admitted poor marksmanship and made his firepower devastatingly effective.
He received the Medal of Honor from General MacArthur, who then grounded him to protect America’s top ace from further combat risk.
Bong died on August 6, 1945, at age 24, when his P-80 Shooting Star’s engine failed on a test flight in Burbank, California, the same day as the Hiroshima bombing.
The Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin preserves his legacy with a restored P-38 painted as his personal aircraft, Marge.