At Home and in Combat, Foss Led by Example

Insight on the News, Jan 8, 2001 by James P. Lucier

Whether running his family's farm as a teen-ager or heroically serving as a fighter pilot in World War II, Joe Foss always has been a leader among leaders.

Gen. Joe Foss is a World War II flying "ace" who has entered the computer age. An ace is a combat pilot who has shot down at least five enemy aircraft, but the legendary Foss downed 26 planes in the Pacific in a four-month period during 1942-43. Based out of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands (a field that still exists) and flying the sturdy but clunky Grumman F4F Wildcat against the more maneuverable Japanese Zero, Foss himself was shot down four times, not counting crash landings. He walked away from them all to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. Later, he twice was governor of South Dakota as a Republican and was president of the National Rifle Association.

Now Foss has teamed up with Microsoft to produce a computer game that allows players to experience the thrills of combat flying while absorbing the lessons of history, geography and heroism from one of the great military tests of our national character. Based on its popular flight-simulator technology, Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator 2: WWII Pacific Theater allows' players using a joystick on their computers to fly either a Grumman Wildcat or a Zero against attackers. Actual scenery of the Pacific islands from satellite photographs, and exact reproductions of the cockpits and gauges of the two planes, give computer aviators of all ages a chance to make mayhem and try to avoid crashing the aircraft.

Foss was born on a farm in South Dakota in 1915 and took over the farm operations in junior high school after his father died, leaving him the sole support of his mother and younger brother and sister "Our life was a tough baby," he tells Insight. "We lived as simple as you could get. When it was 40 degrees below zero out side, it was 40 degrees below zero inside where we slept." Working against the odds of the Great Depression, Foss paid off the mortgage of $5,000 -- then a staggering sum -- earned his bachelor's degree at the University of South Dakota, turned over the farm to his brother and joined the U.S. Marine Corps because he saw the war coming.

Insight: Did you come to your feeling for history as a result of all the stirring events through which you've lived?

Joe Foss: No. I was a kid who enjoyed history from the start. I studied all the World War I stuff, for instance. I was interested in the development of the airplane. I read the papers and followed the news of the day -- that's why I knew the war was coming.

Insight: Did you join the Marines to learn how to fly?

JF: Oh, no. I already knew how to fly. I spent my own money in 1937 to get a private pilot's license; it cost me $64. But I wanted to shoot and I enlisted for combat training. I went through fighter training at Opalaka [Fla.], but they put me in a photo recci [reconnaissance] squadron. When I wanted to transfer to the Navy's ACTG [Aircraft Carrier Training Group] the Marine Corps just laughed. And so I said, "Can I try?" I tried and was thrown out the first day, but I went back the second day, talked my way in and in 30 days I flew 136 hours of fighter [training] time.

When I came back with that credential, the colonels said, "We need an executive officer. Are you ready to go to war?" Two weeks later I was on the USS Matsonia headed to the South Pacific.

Insight: What was your first action in the Pacific?

JF: To get planes off the career and take them to Guadalcanal. All my boys were much younger. The only one older than I was the commanding officer, Maj. Duke Davis. I was second in command, and all the others were 17 to 20 years old. While at the time I had about 1,300 hours in airplanes, those boys -- this is a tough thing to think about -- had a total flying time on average of 113 hours. They had no time at all in the Wildcats, but they had to fly them off the carrier with a catapult. Nobody crashed; nobody got killed.

Insight: What was your first impression of Guadalcanal?

JF: When you've never been someplace before, you have in your mind the way certain things are going to be. I'd seen The Big Parade, an old movie about World War I, but as I approached the island I saw the bomb holes and then the black puffs of smoke coming up from our outfit shooting at somebody. They were nervous in the service and blasting off at us. We got the word down there that we were friends, and that's how we came in.

Insight: Did they give you a heads-up when you landed?

JF: I said to Maj. [John Lucien] Smith, "Are you old veterans going to show us around?" And he said, "In another day, you will be a veteran." The next day, there was a scramble (that would be Oct. 10) and we didn't get enough altitude to tangle with the bomber. The Zeros made a few passes at us; didn't knock any of my outfit down.

The 13th was the first day I was in a position where I could make a run on the enemy. I was above the bombers and off to the side. The Zeros outnumbered us about 6-to-1 at that time. Our group and all of the Navy and the Marine Corps used what you call the "Flatley-Thach" crossweave [maneuver] in which eight planes, in four groups of two, go back and forth and back and forth, so you have eyes and guns pointed in all directions and nobody can creep up on you.