WW2 Fighter Ace Dies

[Keith Heitmann]

Joe Foss, first AFL commissioner, dies at 87


Jan 1, 9:33 PM (ET)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Joe Foss, the first commissioner of the American Football League, died Wednesday. He was 87.
Foss also was a World War II fighter ace, who won the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Flying Cross after shooting down 26 enemy planes. After leaving the Marine Corps, Foss entered politics and became governor of South Dakota in 1955.

Foss never regained consciousness after suffering an apparent aneurysm in October. He died at a hospital in Arizona, South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow said.

He became commissioner of the AFL in 1960, and remained in the job until 1966.

Foss also served as a colonel in the Air Force in the Korean War.

He also hosted the television show "The American Sportsman" on ABC, and was president of the National Rifle Association from 1988-90.

"I always had the attitude that every day will be a great day," Foss said in a 1987 interview. "I look forward to it like a kid in a candy store, wherever I am."

Foss was born in 1915 on a farm near Sioux Falls. He once said his love of flying dated to his childhood, when he watched pilots fly over his family's home and wave from the cockpit.

"I thought, 'Someday I'm going to trade these horses for an airplane,' " he said.

[Keith Heitmann]

Joe Foss, who died on New Year's Day aged 87, was one of the great American fighter aces of the Second World War, officially credited with shooting down 26 Japanese aircraft while serving in the Pacific; he later embarked on a successful career in public life, becoming Governor of South Dakota.

As a Marine Corps pilot during the war, Foss led a unit which became known as "Joe's Flying Circus"; including Foss's own tally, the unit of Grumman Wildcat naval fighters accounted for a total of 72 enemy aircraft.

When he received the Congressional Medal of Honour from President Roosevelt at the White House in 1943 for "aerial combat unsurpassed in this war", Foss was immediately hailed by the national media as "the American ace of aces". He was also awarded the American DFC, Bronze Star, Silver Star and Purple Heart.

Early in November 1942, Foss and his "Circus" played a major role in frustrating Japanese attempts to retake the island of Guadalcanal, which they wished to use as a staging post for attacking Australia, 1,600 miles to the south.

On one mission, Foss was strafing Japanese ships 150 miles to the north of the island when fire from a Japanese fighter hit his Wildcat's engine. The bullets also shattered his canopy, narrowly missing his head. His engine failed, and Foss had to ditch. Having struggled to get free of his sinking aircraft, he floated in his lifejacket for five hours, circled by sharks.

Eventually he was rescued by members of a Roman Catholic mission who were paddling canoes from a nearby island, Malaita. They fed him on steak and eggs until - a fortnight later - he was picked up by a Catalina flying boat.

By the New Year of 1943, Foss's air strip, Henderson Field, had expanded into a substantial base, and had become an important target for the enemy. On January 15 a large force of Japanese bombers with escorting fighters made an attempt to destroy it.

Leading 12 Wildcats, Foss outwitted the enemy's attempts to lure his pilots into a scrap, which would have allowed the bombers to slip through and attack Henderson Field. He "stooged" in the vicinity, waiting for the Japanese force to start running out of fuel; eventually they were obliged to return to their bases on Bougainville and Munda, and Henderson Field never again became the target of a sustained attack.

[Keith Heitmann]

After these actions, Foss found himself lionised in Life magazine and elsewhere in the American press, and came to enjoy playing up to the image of a rugged, cigar-chomping war hero as he made personal appearances from coast to coast.

John Wayne was keen to portray him in a Hollywood film. As part of this project, Foss was offered $750,000 for his life story, but the deal fell through when he refused to countenance the inclusion of a fictional love story. Instead, he decided to concentrate on a career in politics and business.

Joseph Jacob Foss was born into a Norwegian-Scottish farming family at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on April 17 1915. His fascination for flying began as a boy, when he saw Charles Lindbergh with his plane, Spirit of St Louis, at a local airfield.

A joyride in a Ford Tri-Motor, and the spectacle of a Marines' aerobatic display, confirmed him in his ambitions - though his ability to fulfil them was delayed when his father was killed in an accident, and Foss had to help his mother and brother keep the family farm going during the Depression.

Yet he graduated in Business Administration at the University of South Dakota, taking flying lessons until the Marine Corps offered him the chance to train as a pilot. He was awarded his wings in May 1941.

After demobilisation, Foss opened the Joe Foss Flying Service at Sioux Falls, offering charter flights and tuition in flying; he also set up a car dealership in Studebakers and Packards.

He found time to organise the South Dakota Air National Guard, himself commanding a squadron. Then, at the outbreak of the Korean War, the US Air Force appointed him a director of training, with the rank of colonel. He was later promoted brigadier-general.

After the Korean War Foss was elected, as a Republican, to the South Dakota legislature, serving two terms before becoming State Governor in 1955. He served as governor for four years before failing in a bid to represent South Dakota in the House of Representatives in Washington. He was defeated by another distinguished war pilot, George McGovern.

Foss found some consolation, and considerable satisfaction, in his role as the first Commissioner of the new American Football League, as it battled to compete with the already-established National Football League. He was responsible for a number of innovations in the sport, including printing the players' names on their jerseys, and making both players and staff more readily available to the television networks. He even encouraged one television station to report on his League's internecine feuds.

From boyhood, Foss had enjoyed hunting and fishing. Between 1964 and 1967 he was the host on ABC-TV's programme, The American Sportsman; thereafter, for seven years he appeared in a syndicated television series, The Outdoorsman: Joe Foss.

His interest in country pursuits - together with his prestige as a war hero - led to his appointment as head of the National Rifle Association from 1988 to 1990. He was uncompromising in his championship of the universal right of Americans to bear arms. Time magazine portrayed him on its cover, wearing a Stetson and nursing a six-shooter, as he proclaimed: "I say all guns are good guns. There are no bad guns. I say the whole nation should be an armed nation - period."

Joe Foss was married twice. With his first wife, June, he had three children. His second wife, Donna ("Didi") Wild was an activist with an organisation called Campus Crusade for Christ International - a cause to which Foss also gave his full support.

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