No. 1 Ace

Seven enemy planes shot down is a good bag in any flyer's war (five is the minimum for designation as an ace), but Jap planes were being knocked off so rapidly by the U.S. Air Forces in the Solomons that until this week neither the Army the Navy nor his own Marine Corps knew exactly whether Captain Joe Foss had tallied 22 or 29 of the 450-plus destroyed around Guadalcanal. This week at Pearl Harbor Admiral Nimitz fixed Foss' score at 22 (in six weeks' flying), which made him officially top man among U.S. combat flyers in World War II.

Nearest to Foss's record are his fellow Guadalcanal Marine flyers, Major John Lucian Smith (19) and Captain Marion B. Carl (16), but Foss still has not equaled the 26-plane score of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker in World War I. Joseph Jacob Foss, 27 years old, single, dark-haired and ruddy, medium big (5 ft. 10 1/2 in., 182 lb.), is still under the score of the late Squadron Leader "Paddy" Finucane (32) and Wing Commander Adolph Gysbert Malan (35) and astronomically distant from legendary German Captain Manfred von Richthofen's 80, British Major Edward Mannock's 73, Billy Bishop's 72 and French Major Rene Fonck's 75.

Still tops in World War II is the score of late Lieut. Colonel Werner Molders, designated "Ace of Aces" by Hitler, decorated with the diamond-encrusted insignia of the Oak Leaves with Swords of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. He shot down, according to the Germans, 103 planes, then was killed in the crash of a plane in which he was a passenger.

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