Richard Bong, the Ace of Aces, and the P Thirty-Eight Lightning That Carried America's Greatest Pilot to Forty Kills Over New Guinea

Richard Ira Bong scored 40 confirmed aerial victories in the Southwest Pacific Theater between 1942 and 1944, making him the highest-scoring American fighter pilot in the history of air combat. He was 24 years old when he died on August 6, 1945 - the same morning the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima - killed when his jet engine failed during a routine test flight in Burbank, California. His name belongs in every conversation about American military history.

Who Was Richard Bong?

Bong was born on September 24, 1920, in Poplar, Wisconsin, the oldest boy among nine children in a farm family headed by his father, Carl. It was the kind of small town where little distinguished one year from the next.

He was quiet, well-liked, and by most accounts an unremarkable student. What set him apart was airplanes. He tracked them across the sky with a precision that went beyond casual interest, built model aircraft with unusual focus, and took flying lessons while attending Superior State Teachers College (now the University of Wisconsin-Superior). He soloed and never looked back.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Bong was already in the Army Air Forces Cadet program. He earned his wings on January 9, 1942, at age 21, and was assigned to fighters - specifically, the P-38 Lightning.

The P-38 Lightning: Why This Aircraft Defined His Career

The P-38 was unlike anything else in the American inventory. Twin booms housed two Allison V-12 engines with counter-rotating propellers that eliminated torque. The pilot sat in a central nacelle at the nose, giving forward visibility no single-engine fighter could match.

Armament was concentrated in the nose: four .50-caliber machine guns and a 20mm cannon. Unlike wing-mounted guns that had to be harmonized at a calculated convergence distance, nose-mounted weapons hit wherever the pilot aimed. You pointed, it hit.

Later variants reached 414 miles per hour. More critically for Pacific operations, the P-38 had exceptional range. The distances between island groups were measured in fuel burn, and a fighter that could escort bombers 700 miles from the nearest friendly runway was irreplaceable. The P-40 Warhawk simply could not reach where the P-38 could go.

The aircraft had real weaknesses: compressibility issues above 30,000 feet that could make controls feel sluggish, persistent cooling problems on early models, and a cockpit that turned brutally cold at altitude. But for pilots who understood what it could and couldn’t do, it was a lethal platform. Bong understood it completely.

Arrival in the Southwest Pacific

Bong arrived in the Southwest Pacific in the fall of 1942, assigned to the 49th Fighter Group under Fifth Air Force, commanded by General George Kenney. Kenney was an operationally aggressive officer with a talent for identifying gifted pilots and giving them room to perform.

The opposition was formidable. The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was light, maneuverable, long-ranged, and flown by pilots with years of combat experience over China and across the Pacific. They were not to be underestimated.

Bong scored his first kill in late December 1942 - a Zero over the Dobodura area of New Guinea. After that, the count climbed with a consistency that attracted attention up the chain of command. He made ace in early 1943. By the end of that year, he had more than 20 victories.

How Bong Actually Flew

Understanding Bong’s method explains how the number reached 40.

He was not a dogfighter in the traditional sense. The rolling, turning energy-fight that defined many aces wasn’t his approach. Bong was a hunter - patient, deliberate, methodical. He would maneuver into position and then press his attack to extremely close range, sometimes inside 100 feet, before firing. He wanted certainty of hits. He wanted each pass to count.

The costs showed in the aircraft he brought back. Debris impact. Paint transfer from enemy airframes. Plexiglass fragments. The ground crews had their own opinions about the major’s methods. Bong kept scoring.

What his squadronmates described as his defining quality was harder to quantify: a spatial awareness in three dimensions that bordered on instinct. An ability to track the positions and projected paths of every aircraft around him and anticipate where they’d be seconds ahead. Tactics and gunnery can be taught. That sense of the sky is considerably rarer.

The Record That Stood for 25 Years

By late 1943, General Kenney officially removed Bong from combat status and reassigned him as a gunnery instructor - an attempt to protect the Army’s most valuable aerial asset while transferring his knowledge to other pilots. Bong accepted the assignment.

He kept flying alongside the pilots he was training. He called these “observation flights.” Kenney, with characteristic pragmatism, chose not to examine the observation reports too closely when they came back with enemy aircraft written off against them.

In the spring of 1944, Bong surpassed Eddie Rickenbacker’s record of 26 kills from the First World War - a record that had stood for more than 25 years. He broke it on a mission he wasn’t officially supposed to be flying, over jungle most Americans couldn’t place on a map.

The press found out. A stateside war bond tour followed. America needed heroes, and Bong was handed the role whether he wanted it or not. He shook hands, gave speeches, and smiled for photographs with the practiced discomfort of a man who wanted to be somewhere else entirely. He was built for flying, not celebrity.

Balikpapan and the Medal of Honor

Bong returned to the Pacific in the fall of 1944, covering the invasion of the Philippines. In October and November, he flew missions over the oil refineries at Balikpapan, Borneo - among the most heavily defended targets in the Pacific Theater. Japan needed that oil and defended it accordingly. American bomber crews compared Balikpapan to Schweinfurt, the ball-bearing factory deep in Germany whose raids had cost the Eighth Air Force so dearly.

The actions Bong took over Balikpapan and the Philippine Sea - destroying enemy aircraft while protecting bomber formations under concentrated anti-aircraft fire - formed the basis of his Medal of Honor citation.

On December 12, 1944, General Douglas MacArthur pinned the Congressional Medal of Honor on Bong at Tacloban, Leyte, Philippines. MacArthur - a man not given to understatement - called him the greatest aviator in the world.

Bong’s kill total at that moment: 40.

MacArthur then grounded him. The war wasn’t over, but 40 kills was enough. Sending him back up was a risk the country could not afford. Bong fought the order informally, found allies, and lost. He came home to Superior, Wisconsin, where he married Marge Vattendahl - the woman whose portrait had flown on the nose of his P-38 for two years of Pacific combat.

The Loss of Tommy McGuire

Thomas McGuire was Bong’s closest rival in the kill standings and a genuine friend. With 38 kills flying P-38s out of the Philippines, he was the second-highest-scoring American ace in the war. On January 7, 1945, McGuire attempted to protect a wingman with a Zero on his tail. They were low and slow. McGuire broke hard for a shot, the P-38 stalled at low altitude, and he went in.

The statistical gap between 38 and 40 had never been close enough to matter to the record. The personal loss was different. They were the same age. They were flying the same airplane. McGuire wasn’t coming home.

August 6, 1945

Bong took a position as an acceptance test pilot at Lockheed, evaluating the P-80 Shooting Star - America’s first operational jet fighter. The jet age required a completely different kind of flying: no propellers, no torque, just thrust and speed and new muscle memory. Bong was learning it. He was good at it, as he was good at flying any airplane.

On August 6, 1945, he performed a routine acceptance flight from Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank, California. Witnesses reported the engine stopped shortly after takeoff. The subsequent investigation pointed to the fuel booster pump not having been activated - whether procedural error or mechanical failure was never definitively resolved. There was no altitude, no time. Bong was 24 years old.

On that same morning, the B-29 Enola Gay was making its bomb run on Hiroshima.

The news of Bong’s death was released the following day. The atomic bomb consumed every headline, every broadcast, every conversation. The man who had shot down more enemy aircraft than any American pilot in history died on the morning that redefined modern warfare, and the front pages barely had room for him.

How Richard Bong Is Remembered Today

Wisconsin kept its own account when the national memory moved on. The Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin houses a P-38 finished in his markings. His name appears on a bridge, an airport, and a veterans memorial.

Tommy McGuire gave his name to what is now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. The two great aces, the two friends, both have military installations carrying their names. Neither one lived past 25.

Marge Bong, who lived to her 90th year, spoke of her husband in later years without bitterness. She said he was just a boy who loved to fly - that he never thought of himself as what the newspapers made of him. That he just did what needed doing.

Key Takeaways

• Richard Ira Bong scored 40 confirmed aerial victories in the Southwest Pacific Theater, more than any American fighter pilot in the history of air combat - a record that has never been surpassed.
• Flying the P-38 Lightning with the 49th Fighter Group, Bong distinguished himself through patient, close-range attacks - often inside 100 feet - rather than traditional energy-fighting dogfights.
• He broke Eddie Rickenbacker’s 25-year-old record of 26 kills in the spring of 1944 and received the Medal of Honor from General MacArthur on December 12, 1944, at Tacloban, Leyte.
• Bong died on August 6, 1945 - the same morning as the Hiroshima bombing - when his P-80 Shooting Star lost engine power on takeoff from Burbank, California. He was 24.
• His legacy is preserved at the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior, Wisconsin, where a P-38 stands in his markings.