First-Rate Runner-Up

In two hard fights spaced two days apart, one over Manila Bay and one over Ormoc, Commander David McCampbell last week downed two more Jap planes, brought his air-combat total to 34. It was still two shy of Major Richard Bong's top score. But in some respects, the Navy ace's record was more remarkable.

Flying from carriers, Navy fighter pilots have fewer chances to fight than Army pilots. When they do go out, they usually fly as escorts for bombers and torpedo planes, dare not leave their charges to go hunting.

Under these ace-race handicaps, 34-year-old David McCampbell, an elderly airman as fighter pilots go, failed to bag a single Jap until he reached Saipan last June. Then he had still another handicap: he was promoted to group commander. i.e., battle boss of all the planes of one carrier, and had to direct dive bombers and torpedo planes as well as his fighters. But the Pacific war was moving west and the carriers were closing on the enemy. McCampbell's fighter squadron, which had not yet downed a single Jap, was getting set to start scoring.

On June 1, Annapolisman McCampbell jubilantly radioed his group's first tally. On June 19, McCampbell, who directs his group from a Hellcat, helped them set a new Pacific record for one day's combat (68 1/2) by bagging seven himself. His biggest spurt in the ace-race came in the second battle of the Philippines when he set a Pacific (and perhaps World War II's) solo record for one day's combat. That day he shot down nine planes in 95 minutes (TIME, Nov. 13).

Everybody's Race. What makes McCampbell's record doubly notable is the fact that it was not a single performance by a featured star. During the five short months that he was piling up his score, his wing man, Lieut. Roy Rushing, shot down 13. Meanwhile McCampbell's carrier group set a new Pacific group record: at least 295 Jap planes destroyed in the air (mostly by the fighters), 30 "probables," 423 destroyed on the ground. In that time no bomber in the McCampbell group was shot down by enemy aircraft: on protection his fighters scored 100%.

Fellow flyers ascribe McCampbell's success to: 1) crack marksmanship, 2) "more goddamned guts than any man you ever saw," 3) a sober regard for the enemy that keeps him primed for battle ("I have been shot full of holes three times but never shot down," says McCampbell, "and I never forget that"). But probably the biggest reason for it is that he fights for all he is worth. After one battle, the other pilots in his squadron returned with an average of 20 gallons of gasoline and 100 rounds of ammunition; McCampbell, who had his command job as well as fighting to do, had two gallons and two rounds.

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