A Finite Fraternity: Combat Fighter Ace

Frederick Payne, America’s oldest surviving combat fighter ace, died August 6 at age 104. According to his obituary in The New York Times, the retired U.S. Marine Corps brigadier general earned this singular achievement at the controls of a Grumman F4F Wildcat in the skies over Guadalcanal in 1942.

What’s interesting to me is that the pilots who will likely be America’s last two combat fighter aces, Duke Cunningham and Steve Ritchie, joined this finite community a mere 30 years after Payne, when they each downed the requisite five enemy aircraft in 1972 in the skies over Vietnam. Flying the F-4 Phantom, their back-seaters, William Driscoll and Charles DeBellevue, share this combat achievement. American aviators have logged a lot of combat time in the ensuring 43 years, but conflict has changed, and most of their targets are on the ground—or on the screen.

It seems clear that the era of the combat fighter ace exists only in history, and that those who’ve earned this distinction are members of a finite fraternity.

“With Mr. Payne’s death, there are 71 surviving aces, said Arthur Bednar, coordinator of the American Fighter Aces Association,” said his Times obituary, adding that “only 1,450 American pilots qualified to be called ace, a distinction reserved for pilots who downed at least five enemy planes in aerial combat during World Wars I and II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.”

Most of them are from World War II, perhaps the zenith of aerial combat. General Payne was but one of 122 U.S. Marine Corps aviators who earned the distinction of ace by downing at least five of their foes. Aces in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army Air Force are more than five times the number of Marines. Regardless of when they achieved this distinction of aerial combat, the resource of their first-hand experience shrinks as each of them goes west.

Some may argue that some future conflict may anoint new aces, but given the economics and technology and employment of human resources in modern conflicts, that seems highly unlikely. In the time that’s left for this finite community of American aces, we should recognize their contribution to what is now aviation history long past. — Scott Spangler, Editor