Monday, Feb. 21, 1944
The Major Shaves
Major Walter Carl Beckham was browned off (fed to the eyebrows) by the European Theater. He felt and looked like a fighter pilot; he had grown the bushiest, sharpest-pointed fighter-pilot mustache in England. The mustache even drew civilians' stares, which added to the Major's mortification because there was nothing to justify it. In 20 sorties over western Europe in his Thunderbolt he had failed to make a kill.
He shaved the mustache off.
Next day the Major shot down his first enemy plane. Life grew brighter. He shot down some more. The exultant Major got kill after kill. Last week he flew his "Little Demon" over Frankfurt and shot down an Me-109 and an FW-190. They were his 17th and 18th victories and they made 27-year-old Major Beckham top-ranking ace in the European Theater of Operations.
Beckham was still eight short of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's U.S. record of 26, far under the R.A.F.'s brilliant Spit-fireman, Group Captain Adolph "Sailor" Malan, who destroyed 32 Nazi planes, most of them during the 1940 Battle of Britain. Top R.A.F. pilot still in combat is Squadron Leader Colin Grey, with
27 1/2 victories in the Mediterranean area. Top-ranking U.S. aces in World War II are thickest in the Pacific, where two Marines--Major Joe Foss, and Major Gregory Boyington, who was killed in combat (TIME, Jan. 24)--have tied Rickenbacker's score of 26. Last week Lieut. Robert N. Hanson went hunting in his Corsair for his 26th victim near Rabaul, failed to return. Two other Marine pilots (Lieut. Kenneth Walsh, Captain Donald Aldrich) have destroyed 20 or more enemy planes.
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