|
Joe Foss, WWII ace,
Medal of Honor, Governor of SD, 1st NFL Commissioner,
NRA President, Air National Guard Brigadier General
By Dennis McLellan
- LOS ANGELES TIMES
January 6, 2003
LOS ANGELES - Joe
Foss, a fighter pilot legend of World War II, governor
of South Dakota, and the influential first commissioner
of the old American Football League, died Wednesday
in a nursing facility in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was
87.
Mr. Foss had suffered
a stroke in October.
As a Marine Corps
pilot based on Guadalcanal, the former farm boy shot
down 26 Japanese planes, becoming the first American
pilot to match the record of World War I ace Eddie
Rickenbacker.
Dubbed "the
American ace of aces" by newscaster Lowell Thomas,
Mr. Foss received the Medal of Honor "for aerial
combat achievement unsurpassed in this war" from
President Roosevelt in a White House ceremony in 1943.
He appeared on the
cover of Life magazine, toured the nation making personal
appearances, and received a Hollywood offer to have
John Wayne portray him on the silver screen.
"Back in the deep dark days of the early '40s
when America needed a hero, Joe Foss was there,"
South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow told the Associated
Press Wednesday.
World War II was only the beginning of public life
for the cigar chewing, seemingly fearless Mr. Foss.
After the war, Mr.
Foss, a Republican, served two terms in the South
Dakota legislature and, beginning in 1955, four years
as governor.
In 1959 - after losing
a run for the US House of Representatives against
another South Dakota war-hero pilot, George McGovern
- he became the first commissioner of the new American
Football League, overseeing the bumpy beginnings of
the upstart rival to the firmly entrenched National
Football League.
Over the next half
a dozen years, Mr. Foss played a key role in launching
the AFL's eight original teams, including the Boston
Patriots.
During this time
the AFL changed the way football was presented on
television.
It avoided the NFL
practice of using two clocks - one for the crowd and
one for the officials. The game clock became the AFL's
official timepiece, which allowed the audience to
follow the play with the knowledge that the time remaining
on the clock was the actual time left.
The AFL also adopted the practice of printing players'
names on their jerseys. And unlike the NFL, which
limited television coverage to the plays and non controversial
action between plays, Mr. Foss allowed ABC-TV to cover
personal disagreements and other heated between-play
action.
He also gave reporters
immediate post-game access to the locker rooms rather
than making them wait through the players' standard
"cooling off' period of up to an hour before
grilling them.
Mr. Foss resigned
as AFL commissioner in April 1966, two months before
the AFL and NFL agreed to form a combined league of
24 teams under the National Football League title
in 1970.
An avid hunter and
fisherman, Mr. Foss hosted ABC-TV's "The American
Sportsman" from 1964 to 1967 and produced and
hosted the syndicated TV series "The Outdoorsman:
Joe Foss" from 1967 to 1974.
A staunch member
of the National Rifle Association, he served as NRA
president from 1988 to 1990, proudly appearing on
the cover of Time magazine wearing a black Stetson
and clutching a six-gun to his chest.
By then a retired
Air National Guard brigadier general, he remained
a man of unyielding convictions, telling Time, "I
say all guns are good guns. There are no bad guns.
I say the whole nation should be an armed nation.
Period."
In 2001, Mr. Foss
established the Foss Institute, a Scottsdale based
nonprofit organization designed to build an understanding
of freedom, its cost, and patriotism in school-age
children.
"I come from
a military family, and he was the concept of what
an American could be," said actor Robert Stack,
a hunting buddy of Mr. Foss who joined him on an African
safari for the first segment of "The American
Sportsman."
"He had a great
love of country, a pride in being an American,"
said Stack. "To put it simply, Joe was my hero."
"He was truly
a great man," said NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw,
who became a friend of Mr. Foss in the mid-1950s and
wrote about him in his best-selling book about World
War II veterans, "The Greatest Generation."
"I always had
the attitude that every day will be a great day,"
he said in a 1987 interview. "I look forward
to it like a kid in a candy store, wherever I am."
CONFIDENTIAL Interview
of CAPTAIN J.J. FOSS, USMC
Executive Officer,
VMF-121 in the Bureau of Aeronautics
26 April 1943
Captain Foss
tells of experiences as a fighter pilot on Guadalcanal
. . . .
Distribution:
To all units ashore and afloat concerned with aircraft.
GUADALCANAL - [JAPANESE]
TACTICS
I went into Guadalcanal
in VF-121. Major "Duke" Davis was Commanding
Officer and I was the Exec. We flew off a converted
carrier, about 350 miles off Guadalcanal, arriving
October 9. Our second day there, we started air operations.
At that time the [Japanese]
attacks were with the Type 1 high-altitude bomber,
coming in in formations of from 27 up to 35, with
fighter escort; altitudes from 22,000 to 26,000 feet.
They would send down a fighter sweep before the bombing
attack. About 12 Zeros would arrive 30 to 45 minutes
ahead of the bombers, apparently to draw up all our
fighters to start an engagement. About the time an
engagement started the second wave of Zeros would
come in. They always came in at high altitude, somewhere
about 30,000. By the time they arrived, they were
hoping you were down at a good low altitude where
they could work on you.
The first outfit that came
in would always spar around; they wanted to draw you
down so that the high altitude boys could get a good
pass at you. Once of that was enough to cure me and
everyone in our outfit. We went in to get something
that looked like easy bait and as we started in the
Zeros that were above us came down on us. They had
a little bit too much speed to do much damage. They
didn't shoot down many, but they hit just about all
of us.
So whenever we'd see about six [Japanese] planes that
seemed to want to engage us, we were quite sure they
had plenty of high cover. If the fighting was on even
terms, they weren't at all anxious to engage us. But
whenever they had the long end of the deal, they were
anxious to engage. Along with the bombers there would
be six to eight more Zeros. They'd fly to the rear
and above, about 3,000 feet above the bombers, doing
loops and slow rolls, to slow them down so they could
stay with the bombers. They were usually up around
30,000 feet. Then there were another six just prowling
around. You never could tell where they were; they
would circle wide and try to come in from the opposite
direction.
When I got there, we seemed
to be getting off late. The [Japanese] got wise to
the fact that if they made a circle and came in over
the mountains we couldn't pick them up on the Radar
as soon as we used to when they came right down the
channel. With the mountain interference on the Radar
we hadn't quite enough warning to make it up there.
On several occasions I reached the same altitude as
the bombers, a bad situation. We didn't have time
to climb into a position to get a pass at the bombers.
Sometimes my outfit made a parallel run to the bombing
formation but couldn't gain a bit on them; we stayed
right there just out of range. Their gunners would
be shooting at us while Zeros stayed up and didn't
seem to want to come down. Finally they could come
down, and then we'd get to fight the Zeros. One reason
why my squadron had [a] lot of Zeros to its credit
is that we always wanted to get into a scrap. When
there was nothing else around, we always went after
the Zeros, if they didn't come after us.
U.S. TACTICS
Instead of scrambling all
the fighters on the first warning, we would send up
one flight of eight and sometimes twelve planes just
to spar around with these first fighters. They circle
around for a long time before they engage; they never
press the attack. We were just trying to hold off
'til we could get some more fighters with plenty of
oxygen and gas up there in time for the bombers.
At that time, we were allowed
40 F4Fs on the field, about 30 of which were operating.
Out of these 30, we could guarantee to have 24 in
the air.
The P-38s didn't arrive
until late in October. The day they arrived was the
last time that the [Japanese] came in with their big
formations for high-altitude bombing.
Until October 25 we had
air combat every day, sometimes two and three times
a day. On October 25 we knocked down 17 Zeros and
5 bombers. That attack was the last that came into
the field. Every day we picked them up on the Radar.
They'd come down to within 40 miles of the field and
orbit. We covered the field, and went out in their
direction far enough to intercept them, if they came
in. That went on for about a week. After that we decided
to see what was out farther. As soon as we'd start
out, they'd evidently see us coming and turn around,
for our Control would call us and say they were departing...
STRAFING
Q. In strafing a destroyer,
what is the maximum distance for attack?
A. I would start shooting
at 3,000 feet. Some of them start shooting at 5,000
feet, but in my opinion that is just wasting time
and ammunition. I go right down and pull up below
l,000 feet. After I pass the destroyer, I am right
on the water. In strafing a troop transport, I'd drop
over the bow or the stern, so that when I went out
I was right on the water. I just cleared the ship,
went over it, and then really snaked along. We shot
all the way in, down to 500 feet -- by that time you're
really going, high speeds -- we were always upward
of 300 when we came by. On the way out none of us
were hit; it was when you were coming down that you
were in a bad spot. You have to look out for crossfire.
The ship that you're strafing isn't the dangerous
one, there's one on each side; they start playing
a crossfire into you, and they pretty well put it
to you. When six or seven or eight destroyers and
cruisers were escorting transports and cargo ships,
we'd come in and attack the corner warships so that
we'd draw fire from these ships and give the dive-bombers
a chance to go in and drop on the cargo and transport
ships. They used to shoot the fighters in preference
to the dive-bombers. Whether they couldn't tell a
dive-bomber from a fighter, I don't know. The Grumman
looked so chubby that they right away thought it was
a dive-bomber with a bomb on it!...
[JAPANESE] TACTICS
They have a rather unusual
way in their attacks. The leader always shies around;
his wing mate flies back far enough so you can hit
him off without the leader's ever knowing it. They
fly more or less in a column -- the wing man is supposed
to stay with that leader. How he does it I don't know.
When you stay 200 or 300 yards behind your leader
and try to follow him, you've really got something
on your hands. The wing man has a tough time of it.
I talked to some of the Japanese through an interpreter,
some of the Japanese pilots, and they'd always shake
their heads about following their leader, and talk
about their heads going around and around. I see their
point.
U.S. TACTICS
In our attacks, we'd move
in close. Eight planes right close together. If we
broke up it would be first one four-plane section
and then the other four-plane section, then into two
planes. In the end it's just a big dogfight. My wing
man would stay right on me until there'd be a plane
in front of me that I was chasing.
Then a plane would be coming
from one side or the other, and that was a farewell
for my wing man. He just made a quick swing out, and
he'd always get a head-on shot -- probably not such
a good shot -- but he'd put out a shot and make a
quick turn. I'd turn around the other way and hope
that we'd come back together; if we didn't see each
other, we joined up on the first Grumman we saw. And
always branch out from that again. I had my boys fly
up more or less on line when they were going into
an attack; they flew pretty well up. If the attack
moved in from the tail end, I'd just call to him;
and he would lead the attack in -- he'd be first man
in, and I'd be last. Instead of all having to slide
over, I'd just call him, and he could take over. We
had very good luck that way. We were never surprised.
He flew back about 30° I'd say, or as much as
45° but never any of this column stuff. I always
want to know where all my wing men are.
Q. Are the [Japanese]
pilots who have been taken prisoner high-grade people?
A. The Zero pilot seems
to be the better of the two, bomber and combat pilots.
They were very young, lads of 19-21, with very good
builds. .The [Japanese] are pretty well broken up
when they're taken prisoner. One told me the only
reason he ever joined up in the Air Corps was so he
could fly. Now he couldn't fly anymore -- by that
he meant that he'd never be able to fly for Japan
again; and we won't take him on. He was out of luck.
He was a 21-year chap who had gone to the University
of Tokyo [sic].
|
