Army & Navy – MEDALS: Unstable Score

To Major Richard Ira Bong, the ranking U.S. ace, last week went the Congressional Medal of Honor for “conspicuous gallantry . . . above and beyond the call of-duty” from Oct. 10 to Nov. 15. During that time 26-year-old Dick Bong, officially classed as a gunnery instructor, had volunteered to fight, had bagged eight Jap planes.

The citation did not mention Major Bong’s score—36—and if it had, the figure would have been out of date. On the day the citation was made public. Bong went out over Leyte in his Lockheed and bagged two more. In the U.S. ace race he was four ahead of the next contender, the Navy’s 34-year-old Commander David McCampbell, who was out of the contest for awhile—called home to show other Navymen how he did it.