What happened to America's top two fighter aces AFTER the war (1 Viewer)

[TheIronDiaries]

Richard Bong (40 victories) and Thomas McGuire (38) were America's deadliest Pacific fighter pilots — both dead at 24, seven months apart, neither in combat. I put together a 9-minute documentary on their postwar fates using only public-domain archival footage (NARA / U.S. Army), no AI imagery:
View: https://youtu.be/TaThTbcPHZE

Bong's P-80 crash on the same day as Hiroshima is the part that still gets me. Happy to be corrected on any detail — sources are in the description.

 

[R Leonard]

But "America's top two fighter aces AFTER the war" is incorrect as neither actually survived the war. McGuire was killed in action over Los Negros on 7 January 1945 and Bong was killed in a P-80 crash on 6 August 1945 . . . before the Japanese surrendered.

The next highest scoring US ace was David McCampbell, USN, with 34 credited victories; he retired a Captain, USN, in July 1964 and died on 30 June 1996.