Aces

The U.S. Air Forces in the European Theater got a new No. 1 fighter pilot last week: Captain Walker ("Bud") Mahurin. His three kills in the second U.S. raid on Berlin boosted his score to 20.

Boisterous, boyish (25) Bud Mahurin was a mediocre student at Fort Wayne (Ind.) High School because he spent too much time tinkering with motors. He learned to fly during two years of engineering study at Purdue. Holder of the D.S.C. and D.F.C., Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, he did not achieve top-scoring distinction easily. He flew his Republic Thunderbolt on 28 missions over Nazi territory before making his first kill.

Three Trumps. Mahurin is tied for fifth place among U.S. aces of World War II. Of the first ten, Major Walter Carl Beckham is the only other one who fought Germans. His Thunderbolt was downed by flak three weeks after his 18th victory (TIME, March 13). The only other Army man on the list is much-decorated Lockheed Lightning Pilot Captain Richard R. Bong (D.S.C., D.F.C., Silver Star, Air Medal, a cluster of ten Oak Leaf Clusters), whose 21 Jap kills put him in fourth place.

Like Captain Bong, the other seven, all Marines, racked up their records in the Pacific. Tops with 26 each are veteran Major Joe Foss (Grumman Wildcat) and Major Gregory Boyington (Vought Corsair), who disappeared after knocking down his last victim (TIME, Jan. 24).

Lieut. Robert Hanson (Corsair), who crashed to death in a strafing dive, is runner-up with 25. Tied with Mahurin are Captain Donald Aldrich and Lieut. Kenneth Walsh (Corsairs).

No. 8, with 19, is 28-year-old Lieut. Colonel John Lucian Smith Jr. (Wildcat) and No. 9, nosing out Beckham with 18, is Major Marion E. Carl (Wildcat).

Conspicuously out of the running are Navy flyers, whose carrier-based planes cannot tangle with the enemy as frequently as land-based planes.

In spite of the increasing intensity of aerial warfare, no U.S. flyer has yet been able to beat Captain Eddie Rickenbacker's alltime record of 26 kills in World War I.

But the record is in danger. This week Joe Foss turned up again in the South Pacific. He had just taken command of one of the Marines' crack Corsair squadrons, was on the prowl again.

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