October 21, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Richard "Dick" Bong was a farm boy who learned to fly and never stopped pushing the limits of what a pilot could do. Flying the P-38 Lightning, he downed forty enemy aircraft, making him the nation’s Ace of Aces and one of the most decorated WWII aviators in history. Yet behind the record was a quiet Midwestern pilot who wrote letters home, worried about his friends, and carried the weight of fame he never sought. The History Guy shares the story of how Major Richard Bong rose from his rural Wisconsin roots to the national hero we all know today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next comes
a man who's simply known as the History Guy. His
videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of
all ages over on YouTube. The History Guy has also
heard here regularly at our American Stories. Richard Bong was
a hero in an era of heroes. Here's the History
(00:32):
Guy with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It has often been said that war is the most
dramatic of human endeavors. Of the millions of people who
served throughout the globe in the Second World War, they're
countless stories of those who went above and beyond to
serve their country, to protect their comrades, and to do
their part to try to bring an end to the
most destructive war in human history. And among those stories
is the story of Richard Ira Bong, a US Army
(00:58):
fighter pilot and the Pacific who was so success that
he became America's Ace of Aces. Richard Ira Bong was
born September twenty fourth, nineteen twenty in Superior, Wisconsin, the
oldest of nine children born to Carl Bong, a Swedish
immigrant and American door bryce. He had an interest in
(01:18):
planes from a young age and saw air mail planes
fly over the farm. When President Calvin Coolidge was at
his summer white house in Superior, he recalled that the
mail plane flew right over our house, and I knew
that I wanted to be a pilot. He attended the
Superior State Teachers College beginning in nineteen thirty eight, where
he enrolled in the civilian pilot training program started just
(01:38):
that year to train pilots both for civilian roles and
the possibility of war. On May twenty ninth, nineteen forty one,
Bong enlisted in the Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet program.
His gunnery instructor in Arizona was Barry Goldwater, later a
Senator in presidential nominee, who said that Bong was a
very bright student and was already showing his talent as
a pilot. Earned his pilot wings and was commissioned a
(02:01):
second lieutenant in the Army Air Force Reserves on January ninth,
nineteen forty two, just a month after the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor. Bong was kept at Luke Field for
several months, where he worked as a gunnery instructor until
he was transferred to Hamilton Field near San Francisco. Where
he trained to fly the Lockheed P thirty eight lightning.
(02:22):
A number of stories have come out of Bong's time
at Hamilton. On June twelfth, nineteen forty two, we cited
for buzzing the house of a pilot who had just
gotten married. The same day, several other pilots were cited
for a flying a loop around the center span of
the Golden Gate Bridge. Bong has awesome been accused of
looping the bridge, though he always denied it. Later, however,
he did apparently fly low down Market Street in San Francisco,
(02:44):
so low that he knocked some laundry off a line
and waved at people in the lower floors of some
of the buildings. General George Kinney, commander of the Fourth
Air Force, remembers dressing Bong down for the stunts, saying, now,
I don't need to tell you again how serious this
matter is. If you didn't want to fly down Market Street,
wouldn't want to in my Air Force. But you're not
to do it anymore. And I mean what I say.
Kenny made Bong help the woman with her laundry. Douglas MacArthur,
(03:09):
Supreme Alleyed Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area chose Kenny
over General James Doolittle to command the Fifth Air Force
who were flying out of Australia. Bong was hand picked
by Kenny as one of fifty P thirty eight pilots
brought to Australia in September, Bong was assigned to the
ninth Fighter Squadron of the forty ninth Fighter Group, nicknamed
the Flying Knights. In a P thirty eight, he and
(03:30):
several others engaged a larger force of Japanese planes near Buna,
New Guinea on December twenty seventh, nineteen forty two. Bank
scored his first aerial victory here, shooting down two Japanese
planes himself. He was awarded the Silber Star for the action.
On January seventh, he squadron attacked to convoy bringing reinforcements
to New Guinea and he shot down two more planes.
The very next day, he was escorting a bomber formation
(03:52):
when he and seven accompanying pilots attacked approximately twenty enemy fighters.
The citation for his distinguished Flying Crows said that Lieutenant
Bong shot down at enemy aircraft with a long burst
at a distance of two hundred yards. A difficult shot
and already his fifth confirmed kill, Lieutenant Dick Bong had
(04:13):
become a fighter ace. Not two weeks after his first engagement,
Bong participated in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, where
American planes attacked transports and destroyers carrying nearly seven thousand
reinforcements to New Guinea. He shot down a Mitsubishi A
six M zero, known as a formidable fighter aircraft in
the combat, and eight transports were destroyed in a significant
(04:35):
defeat for the Japanese and a major propaganda victory for
the Army Air Force. By April, he shot down five
more planes, becoming a double ace and was promoted to
first lieutenant. On July twenty sixth, leading a flight of
ten P thirty eighth over New Guinea, he spotted a
formation of twenty Japanese planes. He led three attacks on
the formation, shooting down two of the aircraft himself. When
(04:56):
fifteen more Japanese planes arrived, Bong, disregarding the greatly superior
numbers of the enemy, attacked the new planes, taking down
another to himself. In all, outnumbered three to one, Bong's
team shot down eleven planes without a loss. Bong himself
taking four. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for
(05:16):
the action. In August, he was promoted again to captain.
An engagement later that year nearly cost him his life.
According to General Kenney, Bong saw a Japanese fighter chasing
down an injured P thirty eight, which was flying towards
a nearby cloud bank. For cover, Bong turned off one
of his engines and drew the attention of the enemy.
Once the other plane was clear, he flipped his engine
(05:36):
back on and outraced the Japanese pilot back to base. Unfortunately,
on his return he noticed that the plane was damaged
worse than he thought. Half of his tail was gone,
and as he prepared to land, he found that his
ailerons were also damaged. When he finally touched down, he
discovered that he had no brakes and one of the
wheels was punctured. He ended up in a ditch alive,
(05:56):
but his plane was a total loss. The plate behind
his head was pitted with dance, and the plane had
fifty bullet holes in it. Both fuel tanks were punctured,
but a self sealing rubber system that kept them from leaking.
In another engagement, he was circling above the jungle, where
a pilot had ditched below him. Soldiers had gotten in
a rubber boat across a lake to get to the pilot,
and Bong sided a crocodile following them. He dipped load
(06:19):
to the water, sided and blasted the encroaching crocodile with
twenty millimeters a round. Captain Bong was granted leaf stateside
when he reached twenty one confirmed kills. He was able
to spend the holidays nineteen forty three at home in Wisconsin,
where he met Marjorie Vtendahl and began dating her. He
also participated in a ship launching where the Welderettes named
(06:42):
him their number one pinnock boy. When asked how he
was so good at what he did, he modestly answered, Oh,
I'm just lucky. I guess a lot of Japanese happened
to get in my way. I keep shooting plenty of
lead and finally some of them get hit. When he
returned to the Pacific in nineteen forty four, he christened
his plane March and had his girl's face painted on
the nose. He was reassigned to the Fifth Air Force HQ,
(07:05):
but allowed to freelance Bong had on April twelfth, been
credited with three more victories, which brought his total to
twenty eight, officially beating Eddie Rickenbacker's twenty six. During World
War One, Kenny made Bong a major and took the
chance to send him home. Rickenbacker and Kenny had earlier
promise cases of Scotts to ever beat Rickenbacker's record first,
and both of them sent along a case. For three months,
(07:28):
he was on leave in the United States, doing publicity tours,
surging civilians to buy bonds and generally supporting the war effort.
When he got back, he was put in charge of
gunnery training and told not to engage except in self defense.
On October tenth, he accompanied his trainees shotdown two more
planes solely in self defense. Of course, Bong, still officially
gunnery instructor and not required to fly combat missions, continued
(07:50):
to find ways to do so, and between October tenth
and November fifteenth, he engaged in unusually hazardous orties and
shot down eight more planes. He was recommended for and
received the Medal of Honor. MacArthur gave it to him
personally with a short congratulations. Major Richard Ira Baung, who
has ruled the heir from New Guinea to the Philippines.
(08:11):
I now inducted you into the Society of the Bravest
of the Brave, the wearers of the Congressional Medal of
Honor of the United States. But December seventeenth, Bong got
his fortieth victory and Kenny ordered him home. In fact,
Kenny was convinced that Bong actually had many more victories
than that. Stories abounded that he had given away kills
to wing men when he had really done the shooting.
(08:32):
He had flown one hundred and forty six combat missions
and had four hundred hours of combat time. Richard Ira
Bong married Marjorie Battendahl on February tenth, nineteen forty five,
having already given so much in the services country, to
come one of the most dangerous jobs a nation could ask,
becoming a test pilot for Lockheed testing their new P
(08:53):
eighty Shooting star jet. On August sixth, nineteen forty five,
Bong took off and his twelve flight in the plane.
A Lockheed service mechanic later reported, we knew something was
wrong when we saw puff of black smoke come out
just as he level off in flight. Within four minutes
of takeoff, the plane exploded just some fifty feet off
the ground over North Hollywood. A witness quoted in the
(09:15):
Los Angeles Times saw Bong eject from the plane, but
he was too low for his parachute to open and
it was caught in the explosion. America's Ace of Aces
died the same day the first atomic bomb was detonated
over Hiroshima. His death shared front page news with the
first reports. Among American fighter pilots in the Second World War,
only five percent became aces, and yet those five percent
(09:38):
accounted for half of all enemy aircraft claimed in air
to air combat. And simply put that means that a
huge burden was placed on the shoulders of a very few.
When Major Dick Bong died, he was just twenty four.
In his brief life, he became one of the most
(09:58):
decorated pilots in American history, having earned the Medal of Honor,
the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, seven Distinguished Flying Crosses,
and fifteen Air Medals.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
And a special thanks to Greg Hangler for the terrific
production into The History Guy, who you can find at
his YouTube channel, The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered.
And my goodness, what a story. One hundred and forty
six missions. That's crazy. The story of Richard Dick boung
Here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Up next comes
a man who's simply known as the History Guy. His
videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of
all ages over on YouTube. The History Guy has also
heard here regularly at our American Stories. Richard Bong was
a hero in an era of heroes. Here's the History
(00:32):
Guy with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
It has often been said that war is the most
dramatic of human endeavors. Of the millions of people who
served throughout the globe in the Second World War, they're
countless stories of those who went above and beyond to
serve their country, to protect their comrades, and to do
their part to try to bring an end to the
most destructive war in human history. And among those stories
is the story of Richard Ira Bong, a US Army
(00:58):
fighter pilot and the Pacific who was so success that
he became America's Ace of Aces. Richard Ira Bong was
born September twenty fourth, nineteen twenty in Superior, Wisconsin, the
oldest of nine children born to Carl Bong, a Swedish
immigrant and American door bryce. He had an interest in
(01:18):
planes from a young age and saw air mail planes
fly over the farm. When President Calvin Coolidge was at
his summer white house in Superior, he recalled that the
mail plane flew right over our house, and I knew
that I wanted to be a pilot. He attended the
Superior State Teachers College beginning in nineteen thirty eight, where
he enrolled in the civilian pilot training program started just
(01:38):
that year to train pilots both for civilian roles and
the possibility of war. On May twenty ninth, nineteen forty one,
Bong enlisted in the Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet program.
His gunnery instructor in Arizona was Barry Goldwater, later a
Senator in presidential nominee, who said that Bong was a
very bright student and was already showing his talent as
a pilot. Earned his pilot wings and was commissioned a
(02:01):
second lieutenant in the Army Air Force Reserves on January ninth,
nineteen forty two, just a month after the Japanese attack
on Pearl Harbor. Bong was kept at Luke Field for
several months, where he worked as a gunnery instructor until
he was transferred to Hamilton Field near San Francisco. Where
he trained to fly the Lockheed P thirty eight lightning.
(02:22):
A number of stories have come out of Bong's time
at Hamilton. On June twelfth, nineteen forty two, we cited
for buzzing the house of a pilot who had just
gotten married. The same day, several other pilots were cited
for a flying a loop around the center span of
the Golden Gate Bridge. Bong has awesome been accused of
looping the bridge, though he always denied it. Later, however,
he did apparently fly low down Market Street in San Francisco,
(02:44):
so low that he knocked some laundry off a line
and waved at people in the lower floors of some
of the buildings. General George Kinney, commander of the Fourth
Air Force, remembers dressing Bong down for the stunts, saying, now,
I don't need to tell you again how serious this
matter is. If you didn't want to fly down Market Street,
wouldn't want to in my Air Force. But you're not
to do it anymore. And I mean what I say.
Kenny made Bong help the woman with her laundry. Douglas MacArthur,
(03:09):
Supreme Alleyed Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area chose Kenny
over General James Doolittle to command the Fifth Air Force
who were flying out of Australia. Bong was hand picked
by Kenny as one of fifty P thirty eight pilots
brought to Australia in September, Bong was assigned to the
ninth Fighter Squadron of the forty ninth Fighter Group, nicknamed
the Flying Knights. In a P thirty eight, he and
(03:30):
several others engaged a larger force of Japanese planes near Buna,
New Guinea on December twenty seventh, nineteen forty two. Bank
scored his first aerial victory here, shooting down two Japanese
planes himself. He was awarded the Silber Star for the action.
On January seventh, he squadron attacked to convoy bringing reinforcements
to New Guinea and he shot down two more planes.
The very next day, he was escorting a bomber formation
(03:52):
when he and seven accompanying pilots attacked approximately twenty enemy fighters.
The citation for his distinguished Flying Crows said that Lieutenant
Bong shot down at enemy aircraft with a long burst
at a distance of two hundred yards. A difficult shot
and already his fifth confirmed kill, Lieutenant Dick Bong had
(04:13):
become a fighter ace. Not two weeks after his first engagement,
Bong participated in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, where
American planes attacked transports and destroyers carrying nearly seven thousand
reinforcements to New Guinea. He shot down a Mitsubishi A
six M zero, known as a formidable fighter aircraft in
the combat, and eight transports were destroyed in a significant
(04:35):
defeat for the Japanese and a major propaganda victory for
the Army Air Force. By April, he shot down five
more planes, becoming a double ace and was promoted to
first lieutenant. On July twenty sixth, leading a flight of
ten P thirty eighth over New Guinea, he spotted a
formation of twenty Japanese planes. He led three attacks on
the formation, shooting down two of the aircraft himself. When
(04:56):
fifteen more Japanese planes arrived, Bong, disregarding the greatly superior
numbers of the enemy, attacked the new planes, taking down
another to himself. In all, outnumbered three to one, Bong's
team shot down eleven planes without a loss. Bong himself
taking four. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for
(05:16):
the action. In August, he was promoted again to captain.
An engagement later that year nearly cost him his life.
According to General Kenney, Bong saw a Japanese fighter chasing
down an injured P thirty eight, which was flying towards
a nearby cloud bank. For cover, Bong turned off one
of his engines and drew the attention of the enemy.
Once the other plane was clear, he flipped his engine
(05:36):
back on and outraced the Japanese pilot back to base. Unfortunately,
on his return he noticed that the plane was damaged
worse than he thought. Half of his tail was gone,
and as he prepared to land, he found that his
ailerons were also damaged. When he finally touched down, he
discovered that he had no brakes and one of the
wheels was punctured. He ended up in a ditch alive,
(05:56):
but his plane was a total loss. The plate behind
his head was pitted with dance, and the plane had
fifty bullet holes in it. Both fuel tanks were punctured,
but a self sealing rubber system that kept them from leaking.
In another engagement, he was circling above the jungle, where
a pilot had ditched below him. Soldiers had gotten in
a rubber boat across a lake to get to the pilot,
and Bong sided a crocodile following them. He dipped load
(06:19):
to the water, sided and blasted the encroaching crocodile with
twenty millimeters a round. Captain Bong was granted leaf stateside
when he reached twenty one confirmed kills. He was able
to spend the holidays nineteen forty three at home in Wisconsin,
where he met Marjorie Vtendahl and began dating her. He
also participated in a ship launching where the Welderettes named
(06:42):
him their number one pinnock boy. When asked how he
was so good at what he did, he modestly answered, Oh,
I'm just lucky. I guess a lot of Japanese happened
to get in my way. I keep shooting plenty of
lead and finally some of them get hit. When he
returned to the Pacific in nineteen forty four, he christened
his plane March and had his girl's face painted on
the nose. He was reassigned to the Fifth Air Force HQ,
(07:05):
but allowed to freelance Bong had on April twelfth, been
credited with three more victories, which brought his total to
twenty eight, officially beating Eddie Rickenbacker's twenty six. During World
War One, Kenny made Bong a major and took the
chance to send him home. Rickenbacker and Kenny had earlier
promise cases of Scotts to ever beat Rickenbacker's record first,
and both of them sent along a case. For three months,
(07:28):
he was on leave in the United States, doing publicity tours,
surging civilians to buy bonds and generally supporting the war effort.
When he got back, he was put in charge of
gunnery training and told not to engage except in self defense.
On October tenth, he accompanied his trainees shotdown two more
planes solely in self defense. Of course, Bong, still officially
gunnery instructor and not required to fly combat missions, continued
(07:50):
to find ways to do so, and between October tenth
and November fifteenth, he engaged in unusually hazardous orties and
shot down eight more planes. He was recommended for and
received the Medal of Honor. MacArthur gave it to him
personally with a short congratulations. Major Richard Ira Baung, who
has ruled the heir from New Guinea to the Philippines.
(08:11):
I now inducted you into the Society of the Bravest
of the Brave, the wearers of the Congressional Medal of
Honor of the United States. But December seventeenth, Bong got
his fortieth victory and Kenny ordered him home. In fact,
Kenny was convinced that Bong actually had many more victories
than that. Stories abounded that he had given away kills
to wing men when he had really done the shooting.
(08:32):
He had flown one hundred and forty six combat missions
and had four hundred hours of combat time. Richard Ira
Bong married Marjorie Battendahl on February tenth, nineteen forty five,
having already given so much in the services country, to
come one of the most dangerous jobs a nation could ask,
becoming a test pilot for Lockheed testing their new P
(08:53):
eighty Shooting star jet. On August sixth, nineteen forty five,
Bong took off and his twelve flight in the plane.
A Lockheed service mechanic later reported, we knew something was
wrong when we saw puff of black smoke come out
just as he level off in flight. Within four minutes
of takeoff, the plane exploded just some fifty feet off
the ground over North Hollywood. A witness quoted in the
(09:15):
Los Angeles Times saw Bong eject from the plane, but
he was too low for his parachute to open and
it was caught in the explosion. America's Ace of Aces
died the same day the first atomic bomb was detonated
over Hiroshima. His death shared front page news with the
first reports. Among American fighter pilots in the Second World War,
only five percent became aces, and yet those five percent
(09:38):
accounted for half of all enemy aircraft claimed in air
to air combat. And simply put that means that a
huge burden was placed on the shoulders of a very few.
When Major Dick Bong died, he was just twenty four.
In his brief life, he became one of the most
(09:58):
decorated pilots in American history, having earned the Medal of Honor,
the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, seven Distinguished Flying Crosses,
and fifteen Air Medals.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
And a special thanks to Greg Hangler for the terrific
production into The History Guy, who you can find at
his YouTube channel, The History Guy. History deserves to be remembered.
And my goodness, what a story. One hundred and forty
six missions. That's crazy. The story of Richard Dick boung
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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