December 28, 1944
Tacloban Airfield, Leyte, Philippines
Tommy McGuire set his P-38 down at Tacloban after a thirty-minute flight from Dulag. The roads were still such a mess that it was easier to fly between the bases than to grab a jeep and drive over. He cut the throttles and began to taxi. Tacloban looked very different now, compared to when he first arrived. The second runway was finished. The engineers had drained the swampy ground and built an actual dispersal area with revetments. As he found a place to park, he passed every imaginable type of aircraft, from little L-4 Piper Grasshoppers to strafer-nosed B-25s, P-61 Black Widows, and shiny silver Jugs.
General Kenney wanted to see him. After his two-day, seven-kill streak, this made McGuire nervous. He had good reason to be. When he reached FEAF headquarters, Kenney greeted him with, “You look tired. I’m taking you off flight status.”
The general’s words hit McGuire like a shot to the heart. He sputtered a protest, “General, I’ve never felt better in my life. Besides, I’m only two behind—”
Kenney cut him off, “That’s just it. You are tired and you won’t be rested enough to fly again until I hear that Bong has arrived back in the United States and been greeted as the top-scoring ace of the war.”
McGuire listened to the news. He was being grounded so Bong could get more attention, more accolades. It was the icing on the resentment cake that McGuire and Johnson had baked for months. The special treatment never seemed to stop, even after Bong left the theater. To McGuire, knowing his days in combat were numbered, this seemed like an insufferable slight. General Kenney did not want him to beat his fair-haired boy.
Yet, Kenney had a point. He couldn’t very well send Bong back as the top ace to face all the cameras and reporters only to have that crown snatched from his head by McGuire.
Then Kenney relented a little. “As soon as I get that news, you can go back to work.”
McGuire said nothing for a moment. Kenney added, “If I let you go out today, you are liable to knock off another three Nips and spoil Dick’s whole party.”
That broke the tension. McGuire laughed and assured Kenney he didn’t want to spoil anything for Bong. He agreed to wait and go for the record after the nation properly celebrated Bong’s achievement.
Dick arrived back at Tacloban later in the day. He’d been up at Mindoro Island, which MacArthur’s troops liberated earlier in the month. The engineers there were building an airfield complex to support the final jump to Luzon and Manila, though the Japanese were doing everything they could to disrupt that.
There, at Tacloban, Bong and McGuire said goodbye to each other. Tommy asked Dick to call his wife when he got to San Francisco and tell her that he wasn’t going to be able to get home until February. Dick promised he would. The two rivals had flown together for almost two years, fighting in the same battles, enduring the same hardships. McGuire was sure he was the better fighter pilot, and while he respected Dick, his leadership role in the 431st gave him the sense of superiority he always needed around his peers. Dick was a hired gun; McGuire was a fighter leader.
They were mostly cordial to each other on the ground, and they would never say anything otherwise openly to the press. That would have been a violation of their sense of community as combat fighter pilots. Conflict stayed in that family, and outsiders would only see unity of purpose and teamwork.
But notwithstanding the mutual respect they had for each other, they would never be friends like each was to Gerald Johnson.
It had been a lonely war for Dick. The closest he got to feeling the bond that exists in a fighter unit on this last tour came during the worst days at Leyte, when he and Gerald, Bob DeHaven, and Wally Jordan were all together. After he left the 49th, he never felt that connection again.
As diverse as their personalities were, Dick and Tommy shared a similar loneliness. For different reasons, they were outsiders among their warrior tribe.
Dick left for the States the next day. McGuire returned to Dulag and discovered Kenney had relieved him of command. The 431st Fighter Squadron went to “Pappy” Cline, a fine fighter pilot and officer. Tommy was pulled into the 475th Fighter Group headquarters staff to be MacDonald’s deputy operations officer. This was the traditional track for an up-and-coming officer destined for fighter group command. Still, McGuire’s identity was inextricably linked with the 431st. It must have hurt to lose it. Even if his new job meant he was going places in the future.
As Bong made his way across the Pacific back to San Francisco, Maj. Thomas McGuire ignored his commanding general’s orders and began flying fighter sweeps. He wanted those three kills, and his fixation on them started skewing his decision-making. McGuire had always been a faithful and loyal officer. Ignoring direct orders was way out of his wheelhouse.
Though everyone in the 475th knew he’d been put on the bench, they looked the other way as he climbed into Pudgy IV and went hunting. When his crew chief asked him about this, McGuire figured a little subterfuge would keep him safe. Should he shoot anyone down, he’d just hold back the news until after Bong was properly adulated back home.
He was skating on thin ice.
He flew three combat missions on December 30, 31, and January 2. Kenney apparently never found out about them. Bong landed in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve and started the publicity victory lap expected of America’s greatest air hero. According to Kenney’s postwar accounts, he cleared McGuire to fly again on January 6.
That evening, Tommy left group HQ , where he had moved his quarters, and returned to the 431st Fighter Group. He went to see his men, and now that they were no longer under his direct command, some of the barriers went down. For months, he bristled whenever anyone in the squadron called him “Mac.” Tommy was even worse. He expected to be called “Major” and gave anyone who didn’t a ration of grief.
Not that evening. In a tent full of fighter pilots, the drinks flowed and the chatter became informal. Douglas Thropp, who joined the 431st in the summer of 1944, heard Tommy was back and slipped into the tent to say hello. He ended up sitting across from him as the festivities continued. Pappy Cline was nowhere to be seen. Later, it came out that the new squadron commander wasn’t in camp that evening.
The typical banter changed when somebody said, “So, Mac, what are we going to do to get you three?” There was no love lost for Bong in the 431st after the past month. Besides, it was natural that the guys would want one of their own to snag the crown.
A lengthy discussion ensued. Where were the Japanese? They used to be everywhere from Mindanao in the south, scattered around the central islands and Luzon. But over the past week, hardly anyone had seen a plane. January 4 was the last time the squadron scored—a single Japanese fighter downed north of Manila.
McGuire knew Kenney would not give him many chances. From now on, he would be on a tighter leash. He could be grounded again at any time, either on Kenney’s orders or Washington’s. He needed to make the most of every mission. So far, the three he’d flown since meeting with Kenney had been dry holes. They needed a sure thing.
Somebody mentioned the Japanese were sending warships down to Mindoro to shell the beachhead there. While this happened in mid-December, there had been nothing like that since. It was pure scuttlebutt, but the idea of going up there to find a Japanese task force took hold. Surely if the Japanese didn’t have fighters patrolling above their ships already, the arrival of some American planes would cause them to scramble interceptors?
It made sense to McGuire. He asked for volunteers. Capt. Ed Weaver and Maj. Jack Rittmayer immediately said they were in. Weaver would fly McGuire’s wing. Rittmayer would take the second element. They needed a tail-end Charlie.
McGuire glanced over at Thropp and asked, “Didn’t I just write you up for one?”
“Yes,” Thropp replied.
“You wanna go?”
Thropp didn’t hesitate. He’d been an infantry officer before becoming a fighter pilot. He was a warrior to the core. “Hell, yes!”
They talked through the mission, then McGuire stood up. “Okay, everyone. Get some sleep. We’re going to start early.”
He left the tent to go secure aircraft and make sure they were prepped with drop tanks before first light. When he saw his crew chief, Sergeant Kish, he mentioned that he wouldn’t be taking Pudgy IV on this flight. The news startled Kish. Had he done something wrong?
McGuire told him he thought his luck had run its course with Pudgy. It was time to change things up. He borrowed Fred Champlin’s P-38 instead. Kish thought it a bad move. Perhaps McGuire did have a bad feeling about the mission, or perhaps he didn’t want anyone to see Pudgy taking off from Dulag. He never got permission for the flight from group or from V Fighter Command. This was going to be strictly off the books.
They rose just before dawn, meeting up for chow before heading out to the flight line. Four P-38s awaited, each with a pair of 150-gallon tanks slung under the wings between the fuselage and engine nacelles. They’d need the extra gas to get to Mindoro and back, but the tanks had proven to be a major problem with the new P-38Ls. Not only did they sometimes refuse to come off the shackles, as had been the case for two years, but now their tails often sliced through the dive flaps when released. Other times, they stuck to the fuel standpipe, twisted in the slipstream and tore open the engine nacelles or fuselage. Both the 475th and 49th ran tests on this and discovered 70 percent of the time when the tanks were dropped, they inflicted damage on the P-38s, especially when empty. The ground crews took to smearing castor oil on the standpipes, hoping that would help the tanks slip clear. It offered only marginal improvement.
Still, to get to the enemy, the tanks were a necessary evil.
They took off from Dulag at 0620, McGuire in the lead, with Ed Weaver on his right wing. Rittmayer took up station behind the lead element and offset to the left, with Thropp off his left wing. Rittmayer had just come over from the 13th Air Force. He flew with Tommy because they had known each other in Alaska during the days in the 54th Fighter Group. Weaver knew Tommy as well, though the ace didn’t remember it. Back in cadet training, Tommy was an upperclassman who nailed Weaver with several demerits. He ended up on punishment duty, something that Captain Weaver never forgot.
Radio silent, they climbed to ten thousand feet, heading west to cross over northern Negros Island before turning north to Mindoro. The Japanese had several airdromes on Negros that were used as staging bases for missions against Leyte. McGuire intended to check them out first to see if they could find any aircraft.
A half hour after takeoff, they ran into bad weather. A solid wall of overcast stretched above them. Below, they saw scattered clouds. Instead of trying to climb above the scud, Tommy decided to drop down low. He threaded the formation through the scattered clouds. The trail element began to fall behind.
They hit a solid patch of cloud cover and flew into it. Thropp kept his eyes fixed on Rittmayer’s P-38, concentrating on keeping formation in the soup. When they cleared the bottom of the cloud, Thropp saw Weaver and McGuire at least a mile or more ahead of them. They were way out of position.
McGuire saw it too and radioed to Rittmayer to catch up.
“I’m having engine trouble,” Rittmayer reported.
McGuire came back. “Okay. Thropp,” he said. “Take the element and close it up.”
Thropp bumped his RPMs up, advanced the throttles, and passed Rittmayer on his right. The major stayed in his position and didn’t swing over onto Thropp’s left wing, as the number-four man usually would.
Thropp approached McGuire and Weaver. He was still a couple of hundred yards away when Weaver’s voice broke the silence.
“Zero! Twelve o’clock low. Coming straight at us.”
It wasn’t a Zero, but a late-model Hayabusa flown by Sgt. Akira Sugimoto, an extremely experienced, high-time Ki-43 pilot who was returning to Fabrica Airdrome after conducting a search for a reported American naval convoy.
The setup was so close, barely anyone had time to react. Sugimoto started the fight a thousand feet ahead of the lead P-38s, converging at perhaps 520 feet per second. McGuire and Weaver had two seconds to react, nowhere near the time needed to prep a P-38 for combat.
The Ki-43 sped straight underneath the lead P-38s, Sugimoto possibly unaware of their presence. At the same instant they merged, McGuire horsed his P-38 into a tight left turn. Weaver stayed with him. Both pilots did not have time to drop their nearly full external fuel tanks. Now, committed to a turn, they couldn’t release them. McGuire just entered a dogfight with almost two thousand pounds of extra weight under his P-38. This radically changed the turn rate, speed, and stall characteristics of their Lightnings.
As they turned, Thropp saw the Japanese fighter. He needed to make a split-second decision. He could turn into the enemy plane and take a head-on shot at it, or he could break left and entice the Japanese to follow him. That would let McGuire turn onto the Japanese plane’s tail. And if McGuire missed him, Rittmayer behind Thropp’s right wing could cut inside his turn and get a burst in at the Oscar.
Thropp turned left and started to climb. This was McGuire’s show, and the whole point was to get him kills. Sugimoto took the bait. He rolled right, stood his Oscar on its wing, and bent around after Thropp. He closed quickly. Thropp saw him right on his six, getting into firing position.
Thropp was running full throttle now, but still had his tanks on. He’d never been in a situation quite like this one. He was about to release them when he heard McGuire order, “Daddy Flight! Keep your tanks!”
Thropp did as he was told, then checked his rearview mirror. The Japanese plane was right behind him, gun muzzles flashing.
Where was McGuire? He should have been able to roll out of his left turn and get right in behind this Oscar. But he and Weaver remained in a tight left bank.
Rittmayer saved Thropp’s life, firing as he approached from behind and to the left of Sugimoto’s Ki-43. A rain of bullets struck the Japanese fighter. He pulled off Thropp, whipped around as Rittmayer passed him, and went straight for Weaver.
Weaver called, “He’s on me now!” Thropp didn’t hear him, but saw the Ki-43 heading for the other P-38 element. He turned to try to save Weaver, but lost sight of the Japanese fighter. As he came around, McGuire and Weaver were down below him, off his left wing. He passed over them, looking for the Japanese plane.
McGuire saw Weaver’s predicament. The Ki-43 cut inside their turn easily, closing behind the trailing American Lightning. Thropp couldn’t help. Rittmayer seemed out of position. They were at two hundred feet, so Weaver couldn’t dive away. McGuire was his only chance.
He tucked the yoke in tighter, trying to pull the P-38 around to get a shot on the Oscar. The nose shuddered; suddenly the P-38 snap-rolled. The nose dropped. McGuire ended up inverted for a split second, then his fighter plunged straight into the ground and exploded.
Sugimoto used the moment to break and run. Rittmayer may have gotten a second shot on him in the chaos that followed. He limped out of the fight, his Oscar riddled with holes, and disappeared into the clouds above them. Thropp saw a plane burning on the ground and the Oscar duck into the cloud. Unsure of what just happened, he straightened out just under the base of the scud and punched his tanks. If the Japanese pilot returned, he’d be ready for him.
Sugimoto crash-landed a few miles away. He survived, only to be caught at his crash site by Filipino guerrillas, who executed him on the spot. He was found by Japanese troops with six bullet wounds in his chest.
Just then, a Japanese fighter careened out of the clouds to make a point-blank, overhead pass on Thropp. He looked up and saw the fighter’s nose and props seemingly just above his head. It zoomed past him and pounced on Rittmayer. Weaver and Thropp assumed this was the same fighter that they’d been battling. Instead, it was a Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate, the latest-generation Japanese Army fighter, with capabilities none of these Americans had ever seen. With a top speed of four hundred miles an hour, two cannon, and two heavy machine guns, it could out-turn a P-38, outclimb it, and outrun it down low.
Flown by Sgt. Mizunori Fukuda, another experienced pilot, the new plane was just landing at a nearby airfield when Fukuda saw Sugimoto’s desperate fight on the deck. He turned, raised his landing gear, and bolted to the rescue. He dove into the fight, blasting past Thropp and targeting Jack Rittmayer. Weaver fired on him but missed. The Ki-84 pulled into an impossibly tight turn, spun around, and planted itself on Rittmayer’s tail. A long burst sent cannon shells straight into his cockpit. He closed to less than ten yards and fired again before passing the crippled P-38. As he did, Fukuda thought he saw Rittmayer through the shattered canopy, wearing a white scarf decorated with purple and red. Jack didn’t wear a scarf that day. Fukuda saw bone and blood. The P-38 plunged into the ground and blew up a moment later.
Thropp, confused and momentarily out of the fight, stood his P-38 on edge and turned back into the fight. He saw the second explosion but didn’t have any idea what had just happened. He thought the Japanese plane had knocked down Rittmayer in a head-on pass and Jack had damaged the Ki-84 with return fire before dying.
At this point, Fukuda charged after Thropp, closing behind him. Thropp saw him in his rearview mirror and realized he was cold meat. All he could was try to dodge bullets. When he saw Fukuda’s gun muzzles wing, he kicked the rudder, skidding left. The burst missed him. Fukuda fired again. Thropp skidded the other way. Two more times he skidded out of Fukuda’s web of tracers. He figured he was out of time, and luck. Throttles to the firewall, he arrowed up in a zoom climb and vanished into the clouds.
“McGuire, this is Thropp,” he called. “I’m out of the fight. You’re alone.”
No response. He tried again. Nothing. A moment later, Weaver called and said he was above the overcast. Thropp wanted to join up, but Weaver told him to just head back to Leyte.
Fukuda’s Ki-84 was badly damaged in the fight. As both Americans vanished in the clouds, he turned back for his airfield. Only one landing gear came down as he made his approach. He set the Ki-84 on the runway, but when the wing struck the ground, the Hayate cartwheeled across the field. It came to rest upside down. Mechanics pulled Fukuda from the wreckage. His injuries kept him off flight status for two weeks. Later, his crew chief told him his Hayate had taken twenty-three hits.
Weaver would later claim he shot Fukuda off Thropp’s tail. Thropp, after corresponding with Fukuda, never believed that.
Flying home, both Americans must have been in shock. Thropp kept thinking, Two majors. Plus a national hero in McGuire. How are we going to explain this?
He landed ten minutes ahead of Weaver. MacDonald called for him immediately. As Thropp walked into the headquarters tent, Mac demanded, “What the hell just happened, Thropp?”
He explained everything he saw. He was a second lieutenant, tail-end Charlie, who had to tell his commanding officer the unauthorized flight he’d been on violated every single rule of his leader’s own tactics manual. They’d fought down low. They’d not dropped their tanks until disaster already struck, and they tried to turn with the enemy.
It was a complete disaster.
Weaver was pulled in next. Mac was utterly confounded. How could one Japanese plane take on four P-38s and kill two men? When he got done relating his account of the fight, Mac sent him away. He looked around at his staff and said, “Their stories are so different it’s like the two men were in different fights.”1
The debacle only got worse. When Kenney heard the news, he was devastated. He second-guessed himself for not sending McGuire home. He’d more than earned leave, but Kenney had chosen to leave him in theater, knowing he was determined to beat Bong’s score. When he relieved him of his squadron command, he unmoored the great ace from the one thing that kept his ambition in check—taking care of his men.
Kenney sat down and wrote a deeply emotional letter to Marilynn:
Dear Mrs. McGuire,
The word that Tommy had been shot down brought me one of the worst of a number of bad moments I have had to face since the war began….
There were no right words for the loss. He went on to write that “Tommy was one of the most capable fighter pilots I have ever known. I cannot express the depth of my regret.”
The letter arrived in San Antonio on January 17, 1945. Marilynn opened it, totally unaware of her husband’s death. There had been no telegram from the War Department, no Army Air Force officers at her door. She read Kenney’s words and sobbed as she held the letter.
Frank Kish came back from a short leave and was told the news by another ground crewman. He was devastated. The men had waited for him to return, holding his five-hundred-hour cap as they always did. Tommy would climb out of the cockpit, shuck off his helmet, and slap the filthy hat on his head. It was his ritual. Now it was almost a sacred artifact to Kish. He took the cap and promised to get it to Tommy’s family one day. It would be his way to honor the pilot he’d so long admired.
At 49th Fighter Group headquarters, Gerald Johnson felt Tommy’s loss and felt a sense of profound shock. When he learned more of his friend’s final battle, he became reflective and sober. Between what befell Neel Kearby and how Tommy died, the lessons were clear. There was a line between duty and ambition that should never be crossed, and Tommy, who was perhaps most reluctant of all the aces to cross it, blew right through the line on his last mission. Some called it getting “Zero happy.” It was a fixation on personal score that afflicted not just those in the ace race, but even some of the youngest pilots now coming in to fill the ranks as the New Guinea veterans went home. It led to ignoring the axioms of survival in air combat and risks too great to justify.
One night, alone in his tent, he wrote his thoughts to Barbara:
McGuire was out the other day and made a fatal mistake, so now he is gone.
I’ve lost many of my closest friends, and they were the best pilots I’ve known. Yet each one became too eager to do the fighting and consequently stuck their necks out too far. Be assured, Barbara, I intend to die of old age with great grandchildren well through the tooth cutting age.
I have really slowed down in the flying game, Darling. I intend to be the father of several children, and I am satisfied with my present score.
The race of aces was over.