Richard Bong, the Ace of Aces, and the August Morning in Burbank That Ended America's Greatest Fighter Pilot

Richard Ira Bong, America’s highest-scoring fighter ace of World War II, did not die in combat over the Pacific. He died on a runway in Burbank, California, on August 6, 1945, testing a jet aircraft, six months after coming home. He was 24 years old. He had survived 146 combat missions.

Who Was Richard Bong?

Bong was born on September 24, 1920, in Poplar, Wisconsin - a farming community of a few hundred people, flat land and pine forest in every direction. The oldest of nine children, his father was a Swedish immigrant who worked the land. He came to aviation the way Depression-era kids did: through balsa wood models, borrowed books, and no one around to tell him that dreaming bigger than the county line was unusual.

He trained through a Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) program, the same pipeline that sent thousands of young Americans to war. He graduated as a fighter pilot.

The Market Street Incident That Sent Him to the Pacific

In the summer of 1942, Second Lieutenant Richard Bong flew a P-38 Lightning down San Francisco’s Market Street low enough that people on upper floors could look out and see him at eye level. The complaints reached General George Kenney, then commanding the Fourth Air Force.

Kenney did not wash him out. He ordered the 21-year-old to fly precision patterns over the Headquarters building as punishment - and then sent him to the Pacific. It was one of the better personnel decisions of the war.

How Bong’s Technique Made Him Untouchable

By November 1942, Bong was flying P-38 Lightnings with the Fifth Air Force in the Southwest Pacific. The P-38 was the right airplane for that theater: twin Allison engines, counter-rotating propellers that eliminated torque on takeoff, roughly 400 mph at altitude, and range no other American fighter in the region could match.

His combat approach was unconventional and brutally effective. Most fighter pilots of that era trained in deflection shooting - calculating a lead angle, placing rounds where a turning target would be. It is a difficult skill. Bong largely bypassed it.

He focused on positioning. He would maneuver his P-38 directly behind and slightly below a target, reduce the deflection to near zero, and close to as little as 50 yards before firing. The muzzle blast from his own guns occasionally damaged his own aircraft. His gunnery scores were ordinary. His kill count was not.

If the angle was not right, he would not shoot. He would wait, maneuver, and sacrifice the opportunity rather than waste ammunition on a low-probability shot. When the geometry was right, he was precise.

Passing Rickenbacker and Reaching 40

By the summer of 1944, Bong had accumulated more aerial victories than any other American pilot in the war. He passed Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I record of 26 kills somewhere over the Philippine Sea and kept flying.

He flew with the name Marge painted below the cockpit of his P-38 - for Marge Vattendahl of Superior, Wisconsin. He carried her photograph and wrote her letters his fellow pilots described as the most direct they had ever read. No poetry. Just a farm kid telling the girl he loved that he was coming home.

By December 1944, his aerial victory count stood at 40. General Douglas MacArthur personally presented the Medal of Honor and made clear that Bong was finished flying combat. America’s ace of aces had become too important a symbol to lose.

Coming Home

Bong returned to Wisconsin and married Marge Vattendahl on February 10, 1945. The whole town turned out. The newspapers ran the photographs. For a moment it looked like the kind of ending a war story is supposed to have.

He accepted an assignment as a test pilot for Lockheed, working out of the Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank, California. The aircraft he was evaluating was the P-80 Shooting Star - America’s first operational jet fighter.

What Made the P-80 So Dangerous in 1945

The transition from propeller-driven fighters to jets in 1945 was not a gentle learning curve. A reciprocating engine communicates constantly - through vibration, pitch changes, the sound of a rough cylinder. A pilot who has spent years reading those cues has a continuous stream of information about what the engine is doing.

A jet engine is quiet until it fails. Early P-80 powerplants were unreliable in ways engineers were still working to understand. Flame-outs were not uncommon. The P-80 had already claimed other test pilots. The question on every takeoff was whether you had enough altitude to restart and enough options beneath you.

August 6, 1945: The Morning the World Changed Twice

On the morning of August 6, 1945, Richard Bong taxied a P-80 Shooting Star onto the runway at Burbank. He ran up the engine, released the brakes, and accelerated down the runway.

The engine flamed out - during the takeoff roll or just after liftoff, accounts vary slightly - at low altitude and low airspeed. He ejected. The parachute did not have enough altitude to fully deploy.

Somewhere over the Pacific that same morning, a Boeing B-29 called the Enola Gay was climbing to altitude with the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima. The news of that event consumed the world. The death of America’s greatest fighter pilot was noted in the coverage and largely swallowed by it.

The telegram reached Marge in Superior, Wisconsin, later that day.

Why Pilots Hold This Story Differently

Bong flew 40 missions in the P-38 before scoring his first aerial victory. Forty. He was building precision and patience before the results arrived. He flew 106 more missions after that, carrying Marge’s name on his nose cone across the Pacific sky.

He survived the Imperial Japanese Navy over New Guinea, over Leyte Gulf, over the Philippine Sea. He did not survive a runway in the San Fernando Valley.

The airplane that killed him was not a Zero. It was an American machine, the future arriving faster than the safety record and reliability data could support. The P-80 went on to fly in Korea. Ejection seats improved. Test facility safety culture slowly got better. None of it arrived in time for Bong.

Where the Story Lives Today

The P-38 Marge is on permanent display at the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. The name on the nose has been touched up over the decades. It is still there.

The Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin holds records related to his career and is worth the visit if you are in that part of the state. Additional documentation is held by the Air Force Historical Research Agency. Dan Hampton’s account of Bong’s Pacific career is the most thorough single narrative available.

He was buried with full military honors in Poplar. Wisconsin named a highway after him. He is in the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

Key Takeaways

Richard Ira Bong (September 24, 1920 – August 6, 1945) finished as America’s highest-scoring ace with 40 aerial victories across 146 combat missions in the Pacific theater.
His technique relied on extreme close-range positioning rather than deflection shooting, closing to as little as 50 yards before firing.
He received the Medal of Honor from General Douglas MacArthur in December 1944 and was removed from combat at that point.
He died testing the P-80 Shooting Star at Burbank after an engine flame-out during takeoff - on the same morning the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
His P-38, Marge, is preserved at the Air Mobility Command Museum, Dover Air Force Base, Delaware.