Aces landing

Friday, May 22, 2015

Two World War II fighter aces are helped from a private jet on their way back to California after receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington on Wednesday. Dean S. "Diz" Laird, left, 94, is the only Navy ace to down both German and Japanese aircraft, sharing credit for two German planes while patrolling off Norway in 1943 and destroying four Japanese planes between 1944 and 1945. His final kill came over the Japanese home islands, flying an F6F Hellcat. He retired from the Navy in 1971. Leslie C. Smith, 97, tallied seven kills in two tours in Europe in a P-47 Thunderbolt, leaving the Air Force in 1962. They were flown to the nation's capital in a plane owned by Kevin Wells, back, a former Apple executive who is now executive director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. They were also accompanied by Steve Fulton, an Alaska Airlines technical pilot who pioneered new navigation and instrument flight procedures. Fulton is also on the board of trustees of Seattle's Museum of Flight, home to the Gazette's "Newsboy," the Curtiss Robin which pioneered aerial delivery of newspapers in 1929. McCook's Ben Nelson Regional Airport provided a convenient refueling point Thursday for the trip back to the San Francisco Bay area where the two aces live. More coverage of the Washington ceremony is available here.

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