Maj. Thomas McGuire, #2 air ace shot down in P-38 fighter in Philippines
Maj. Thomas McGuire, the number two fighter ace-of-aces in the U.S. Air Force with 38 kills during World War II, was searching the Philippine sky on Jan. 7, 1945 for three more Japanese plans to splash when he was shot down and killed in “Pudgy V” his P-38 “Lightning” twin-engine fighter.
McGuire and three of his buddies in the 431st Squadron, 475th Fighter Group, 5th Air Corps took to the clouds that day to try and make him the American fighter pilot with the most enemy kills. With three more Japanese planes he would be one up on Maj. Dick Bong who had shot down 40 planes.
Bong was on his way home from the air war in the Pacific to receive the Medal of Honor for his ability as an extraordinary aviator with a lot of luck and a superb ability to down enemy aircraft. All McGuire had to do was put three more rising sun flags on the fuselage of his P-38 in Bong’s absence and he would be number one!
The four P-38s were on an unauthorized fighter sweep over Negtos Island when they were intercepted by two Japanese fighters. McGuire was attacked by a Ki-43 “Oscar.” At that point his wing-man joined the fight and tried unsuccessfully to shoot the enemy fighter out of the air.
Ensign Saburo Sakai (1916-2000) who shot down Major Thomas McGuire in the Philippines was the leading Japanese fighter ace to survive the Second World War. Photo provided
McGuire’s plane crashed and burned moments later.
Like his friend and leading fighter ace Bong, McGuire would also receive the Medal of Honor posthumously. Only three dozen Air Force pilots received this nation’s highest commendation for gallantry during the Second World War.
McGuire was a graduate of Sebring High School. He also attended aeronautical engineering school at Georgia Tech before the war. He enlisted in the Aviation Cadet Program in 1941 at Tampa and went off to war without finishing his college education..
Former Staff Sgt. Von Spahr of Englewood was McGuire’s armorer for most of the pilot’s time in the Air Corps. He was the non-com in charge of putting the machine-gun bullets and bombs in McGuire’s P-38.
The fighter ace was temperamental and demanding. As squadron commander he made his ground crew jump though hoops for him.
“He had to have his officer’s cap on to fly his P-38,” Spahr recalled decades later.“ He was suspicious and wouldn’t fly without his hat. All pilots had superstitions.”
Von Spahr was a sergeant who served as an armorer for McGuire, the number two fighter ace in the U.S. Air Force in the Second World War. Photo provided
Spahr vividly remembers the day McGuire flew back to base mad as hell because his machine-guns jammed while he was in a dogfight with a Japanese fighter plane..
“He was jumping up and down because his machine-guns quit firing,” he said. “His crew chief and I checked out his plane. What we discovered was that all four of his .50-caliber guns had run out of bullets. Each one had fired 500 rounds to begin with.
“That day McGuire shot down five Japanese airplanes,” Spahr said. “He also had three more probable kills.
“When he found out his guns hadn’t jammed, he had simply run out of ammunition, he found me and apologized. That didn’t happen often that an officer would apologize to an enlisted man.”
Then there is the story about Spahr and McGuire on Hollandia in the southwest Pacific. Their squadron had run the Japanese off and taken over the enemy fighter base on the island.
“My squadron commander told me to take a Jeep and go out to the flight line and pick up a guy that was flying a P-38 into base. I went out there, the P-38 landed. the pilot pushed his canopy back as I jumped up on the wing beside him. He was sitting there filling out his flight log as I watched. I was looking down as he signed his name: Charles A. Lindbergh!
“When he looked up at me my face was a foot or two away from his. He was one of the biggest names in aviation in those days. All I remember I took him back to the squadron headquarter’s and I had been ordered. I’m not sure I said a word to him.”
Lindbergh was sent out to the island by Lockheed, the plane’s manufacturer, to show the group’s P-38 pilots how to lean out their gasoline mixture and get more mileage out of a tank of aviation fuel.
“Lindbergh flew with our squadron. He was McGuire’s wingman. On his last mission with the squadron he shot down a Japanese reconnaissance plane. After that flight he was grounded by the 5th Air Force.
“In December 1944, shortly after the invasion of the Philippines, I had enough points to come home. I was on a troop transport off Luzon watching Mac Arthur’s troops come ashore,” Spahr said. “A few weeks later I sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge three years to the day from when I had sailed to war.”
After riding a slow-moving troop train from San Francisco to Ohio City he reached home and was discharged from the Air Corps. He went to work for the post office in his home town a short while later. It was the beginning of a 34-year career with the post office.
After a dozen years Spahr retired and moved to Englewood. Again he signed up and worked for the local post office down here in 1960.
Spahr’s File
D.O.B: 3 Sept. 1923
Hometown: Ohio City, OH
Currently: Englewood, FL
Entered Service: 1 Nov. 1941
Discharged: 15 Sept. 1945
Rank: Staff Sergeant
Unit: 431st Fighter Squadron, 475th Fighter Group, 5th Air Force
Commendations: Asiatic-Pacific Ribbon w/3 Bronze Stars, Philippine Liberation Ribbon w/1 Bronze Star, Distinguished Unit Citation w/1 Oak Leaf Cluster
Battles/Campaigns: Pacific Theater
This story was first published in the Charlotte Sun newspaper, Port Charlotte, Fla. on Monday, Sept. 12, 2016 and is republished with permission.
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There exists a color photo of the cocky Japanese (IJAF) army pilot and his Ki-43, who claimed to have shot down PUDGY & McGuire.
This was unusual, but not the only such claim… besides “SAMURAI” by Sakai, Fuchida & Genda survived and wrote historical accounts of everything from the USS PANAY sinking, the Earhart/Noonan capture, the hijacking of the Hawaii Clipper that resulted in the final construction of the A6N ZERO and the well-planned & initiated attack on Pearl Harbor in which both participated as well.
Genda was the chief technical advisor for movies “TORA, TORA, TORA” and “PEARL HARBOR” and was honored in America with ‘Commander’ level Order of Merit by the US government (other recipients were Jimmy Doolittle & Claire Lee Chennault, both certainly deserving such an honor!)
Thanks for the information. You can see we located the image and added it to the story. Thanks for reading War Tales.
Even more amazing is the fact that at the time McGuire was killed, there was no such organization as the “U.S. Air Force”
in existence! I hope for your sake any future articles you may write will be more factual, as the “U.S. Air Force” did not come into being until after WWII. During WWII there was only the “Army Air Corps” then later the “Army Air Forces”.
Our error. Corrected.
It’s amazing in this age of almost unlimited info on the internet that so much garbage is posted as fact. Thomas McGuire was not shot down by Saburo Sakai, the Japanese Navy ace. Sakai was posted to Iwo Jima from August 1944 until the end of the war. And all evidence points to McGuire crashing as a result of a dangerous maneuver at low speed at only 300 feet of altitude with both of his auxiliary fuel tanks still attached to his P-38. This is another example of a lazy, irresponsible effort that could have been easily avoided with about 30 minutes of research.
Very true. McGuire crashed following a high speed stall, the result of not dropping his fuel tanks. Have a look at a YouTube video of Sq Leader ‘Hoof Proudfoot crash in a P38 at Duxford some years ago.
So much mythology in versions of events. McGuire was most likely shot down be either the Oscar or the Frank (KI 84). He had been shot down previously but rescued. Score for the day- two of four P-38s shot down, one of two JAAF aircraft downed.
Let’s be clear. Saburo Sakai was not the pilot who engaged McGuire’s division on Jan. 7th, 1945! It was Warrant Officer Akira Sugimoto! And the photo of the Japanese aviator is not Saburo Sakai either.