On 6 August 1945 the crew of the “Enola Gay” dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk was the navigator on this historic mission. Van Kirk joined the Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet Program in October 1941. On...
George A. Vaughn, Jr. is the highest scoring American ace from World War I. Born in 1897, he grew up in Brooklyn, NY and enrolled in Princeton University in 1915. In February 1917, Vaughn signed up for the Princeton Aviation School. Concerned about passing the...
Stanley W. “Swede” Vejtasa was the only World War II carrier pilot to receive Navy Crosses for both dive bombing and aerial combat. Born in Montana in 1914, Vejtasa attended both Montana State College and the University of Montana. He enlisted in the Navy...
Flying only 57 combat missions in 7 months, John Voll became the highest scoring ace in the Fifteenth Air Force during World War II. After completing pilot training and commissioning in January 1944, he was assigned to the 31st Fighter Group (FG). This group was one...
Over 47 years ago, Roy M. “Butch” Voris formed, trained and led our nation’s longest flying aerial demonstration team, the Blue Angels. A native of Santa Cruz, California, Voris received his “wings of gold” at NAS Corpus Christi in...
Born in East Chicago, Indiana, Alexander Vraciu became the Navy’s fourth ranking ace during World War II by shooting down 19 Japanese aircraft and destroying 21 more on the ground. After graduation from DePauw University in 1941, he entered naval flight training...
Aleksandr I. Vybornov scored 28 aerial victories during the Great Patriotic War. Born in 1921, in the town of Kashira, near Moscow, Vybornov enlisted in the Soviet Air Force in 1939. He earned pilot wings at Chuguyev military flying school one year later. In September...
