Major General George C. Kenney had had enough. Ever since a certain pilot arrived at Hamilton Field for combat training on May 6, 1942, he had been using nearby San Francisco as his private playground, looping his Lock­heed P-38 Lightning around the Golden Gate Bridge and waving at secretaries as he zoomed past their office windows. But when the young hotshot’s prop wash blew a housewife’s wet clothes into the dirt and she reported it to his air base, Kenney called him on the carpet for disciplinary action.

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“Lieutenant Bong,” the general ordered, “Monday morning you check this address out in Oakland, and if the woman has any washing to be hung out on the line…you do it for her. Then, when the clothes are dry, take them off the line and bring them into the house. And don’t drop any of them on the ground or you will have to wash them all over again. I want this woman to think we are good for something else besides annoying people. Now get out of here, before I change my mind. That’s all!”

While 2nd Lt. Richard I. Bong carried out the order, Kenney made a mental note to have that headstrong but undeniably skillful fighter pilot with him at whichever overseas assignment he got. Within the coming year, Bong would indeed prove himself good for something besides annoying people — except, of course, for the enemy.

Born in Superior, Wis., on September 24, 1920, Dick Bong was the eldest of nine children raised on a farm in Poplar, Wis. His life changed in 1928 when President Calvin Coolidge spent his summer vacation in Superior. “The President’s mailplane flew right over my house,” Bong recalled. “I knew then I wanted to be a pilot.”

Graduating from high school 10th in his class of 428, Bong had found time between studies and chores to play baseball, basketball and hockey. A skilled hunter, he also built and flew model airplanes.

In 1938 Bong began studying engineering at the State Teachers College in Superior. At the same time, he enrolled in the Civil Pilot’s Training Program, soloing on his 20th birthday and earning a private pilot’s license in a Piper Cub. After completing two years of college, Bong enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces Aviation Cadet Program in June 1941. From primary training in Boeing-Stearman PT-13 biplanes, he went on to fly Vultee BT-13s at Gardner Field, Calif., and North American AT-6s at Luke Field, Ariz. One of Bong’s instructors at Luke, Captain Barry Goldwater, later said of him: “He was a very bright gunnery student. But the most important thing came from a P-38 check pilot who said Bong was the finest natural pilot he ever met. There was no way he could keep Bong from getting on his tail, even though he was flying an AT-6, a very slow airplane.”

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor plunged the United States into World War II, Bong’s high gunnery scores resulted in his being retained as a gunnery instructor for several months. Finally, on May 6, 1942, he was sent to train on P-38s at Hamilton Field, where his extracurricular stunts drew both the ire and admiration of General Kenney. Selected by General Douglas MacArthur to lead the Fifth Air Force in the South Pacific, Kenney wanted 50 of the best P-38 pilots he knew to join him when he took command at Brisbane, Australia, on September 3. Bong was one of them.

Bong was assigned to the 9th Squadron of the 49th Fighter Group, but that unit was still flying Curtiss P-40s. Rather than waste Bong’s time on an aging fighter when he had already mastered its imminent replacement, in December 1942 Lt. Gen. Kenney attached him temporarily to the 39th Squadron, 35th Fighter Group, based at Laloki airfield near Port Moresby, New Guinea. There, Bong made the acquaintance of Captain Thomas J. Lynch, who had scored three victories the previous May while flying Bell P-39 Airacobras. Hailing from Cata­saugua, Pa., Tommy Lynch was a good pilot and a cool-headed, technically minded tactician whose aerial audacity never clashed with his sense of responsibility for the men he led. Honing his fighting skills under Lynch’s tutelage, Bong came to regard him as both a mentor and a friend.

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