Donald M. McPherson obit

Donald McPherson, Naval Fighter Ace in World War II, Dies at 103

One of the last surviving combat aces from the war, he took down five Japanese aircraft and helped save a destroyer during the Battle of Okinawa. 

He was not on the list.

On April 6, 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa in the final months of World War II, a 22-year-old Navy ensign, Donald McPherson, was piloting a Hellcat fighter with “Death N’ Destruction” painted on the side.

As his squadron, the VF-83, joined an aerial assault on the island of Kikaijima, between Okinawa and mainland Japan, Mr. McPherson spotted Japanese dive-bombers rushing toward him from below. He lowered the nose of his Hellcat and fired, notching his first hit before positioning himself behind a second enemy plane.

“By using full throttle, my Hellcat responded well, and I squeezed the trigger, and it exploded,” he said, referring to the enemy plane, in an interview for Fagen Fighters WWII Museum in Granite Falls, Minn. “Then I turned and did a lot of violent maneuvering to try to get out of there without getting shot down.”

In his log book, which tersely described 70 missions (including “strafed airfield” and “air support on Okinawa”), Mr. McPherson, who was a Nebraska farmer before enlisting in the military, denoted his marksmanship by drawing two little Japanese rising-sun flags.

Less than a month later, on May 4, Mr. McPherson’s squadron faced an onslaught of kamikaze fighters. Within minutes, he had shot down three, helping to save an American destroyer, the Ingraham, from being sunk as two others had just been.

In his logbook, he drew three more Japanese flags. He was now officially an ace — a pilot responsible for destroying at least five hostile aircraft in combat. Myron Truax, another member of the VF-83 squadron, shot down six aircraft that day.

“I was told we shot down a hundred planes in an hour’s time,” Mr. McPherson said in a 2015 article in The Omaha World-Herald. “But we didn’t get them all.”

About a decade ago, a gunner from the Ingraham tracked down Mr. McPherson to thank him.

“When he got to talking to the guy,” Mr. McPherson’s son Dean recalled, the gunner “said he was amazed that Dad had the courage to barrel in there when the Ingraham was shooting guns to protect themselves.”

Dean McPherson remembered that “without talking about his bravery,” his father had said, “I just knew you guys were good shots and weren’t shooting at me.”

A few weeks later, Mr. McPherson received a signed photograph taken at a reunion of surviving members of the Ingraham.

Mr. McPherson, who received three Distinguished Flying Crosses and four Air Medals, and was among the combat aces honored in 2015 with a Congressional Gold Medal, died on Aug. 14 in hospice care at a hospital in Lincoln, Neb., near his home in Adams, his grandson Daniel McPherson said.

He was 103, and one of the last surviving American combat pilots from World War II recognized by the American Fighter Aces Association as combat aces, Jon Guttman, the group’s historian, said.

Donald Melvin McPherson was born on May 25, 1922, in Adams, Neb., the youngest of seven children of Samuel McPherson, a farmer, and Minnie (Petz) McPherson, who managed the home.

When Donald was 19 and saving money to attend the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, he enlisted in the Navy Reserve. After finishing a flight training program and serving in a replacement squadron, he joined the VF-83 squadron aboard the aircraft carrier Essex in early 1945.

During Mr. McPherson’s first combat mission — an attack on a Japanese airfield on the island of Kyushu — he destroyed a Japanese Betty bomber on the ground. Soon after, his engine died; by the time he restarted it, he was facing antiaircraft fire, including a 20-milimeter shell that pierced the fuselage.

“I came home that day with some holes in my airplane,” he told The World-Herald, adding that a mechanic put it another way: “It looks like you picked up a little lead today.”

On Aug. 6, 1945, Mr. McPherson noticed something unusual happening on the Essex — none of the fighters were in the air over the Pacific. Then he heard an announcement: “If you look to the west, you see a big mushroom cloud. The United States has dropped an atomic bomb.”

In an interview with The Oshkosh Northwestern newspaper in 2021, he said, “We didn’t know there was such a thing, you know?”

After his discharge, Mr. McPherson returned to work on his family’s farm and then spent about 30 years as a rural mail carrier. He was active in the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and his local Methodist church, and was a Scoutmaster and organized baseball and softball leagues.

Although he never flew a plane again, Mr. McPherson was reintroduced to the F6F Hellcat when Fagen Fighters museum — which restores, displays and flies World War II-era planes — refurbished a similar one in 2021, soliciting his approval to paint it navy blue, the color of his plane, and adding the “Death N’ Destruction” motto. He reacquainted himself with the aircraft in person that year when it was flown to a ceremony at an airport in Beatrice, Neb.

At a 2022 event at the Fagen Fighters museum, Mr. McPherson said, “You people just can’t believe what all this has meant to me. That beautiful airplane.”

With a smile, he asked Evan Fagen, the museum’s chief pilot, “Can I take it home with me?”

In addition to his son Dean and his grandson Daniel, Mr. McPherson is survived by two daughters, Beth Delabar and Donna Mulder, and 45 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. His wife, Thelma (Johnston) McPherson, died in 1998. Another son, Steve, died in 2004.

Before Japan surrendered, Mr. McPherson’s missions included dropping packages filled with candy, cigarettes and gum by parachute to American prisoners of war in Tokyo.

At one of the camps, prisoners used large white lettering on top of a building to write, “Thanks VF-83. News?” Dean McPherson said his father realized that they didn’t know what was going on outside the camps.

“When he returned to the Essex,” he said, “they fired up the printing press, and printed leaflets that they dropped over the P.O.W. camps that said they would be freed soon.”

He added: “Dad said that was his favorite thing about the war.”