Joseph Jacob Foss was a United States Marine Corps major and a leading Marine fighter ace in World War II.
46 Facts About Joe Foss
2.
Joe Foss received the Medal of Honor in recognition of his role in air combat during the Guadalcanal Campaign.
3.
Joe Foss was born in an unelectrified farmhouse near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the oldest son of Mary Esther and Frank Ole Joe Foss.
4.
Joe Foss worked at a service station to pay for books and college tuition, and to begin flight lessons from Roy Lanning, at the Sioux Skyway Airfield in 1938, scraping up $65 to pay for the instruction.
5.
Joe Foss graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1939 with a degree in business administration.
6.
Joe Foss joined the Sigma chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and excelled at sports in USD, fighting on the college boxing team, participating as a member of the track team and as a second-string guard on the football team.
7.
Joe Foss served as a Private in the 147th Field Artillery Regiment, Sioux Falls, South Dakota National Guard from 1939 to 1940.
8.
Dissatisfied with his role in photographic reconnaissance, Joe Foss made repeated requests to be transferred to a fighter qualification program.
9.
Joe Foss checked out in Grumman F4F Wildcats while still assigned to VMO-1, logging over 150 flight hours in June and July, 1942, and was eventually transferred to Marine Fighting Squadron 121 VMF-121 as the executive officer.
10.
Joe Foss soon gained a reputation for aggressive close-in fighter tactics and uncanny gunnery skills.
11.
Joe Foss was sent to Sydney, Australia for rehabilitation, where he met Australian ace Clive "Killer" Caldwell and delivered some lectures on operational flying to RAF pilots, newly assigned to the theater.
12.
On January 1,1943, Joe Foss returned to Guadalcanal, to continue combat operations which lasted until February 9,1943, although the Japanese attacks had waned from the height of the November 1942 crisis.
13.
In three months of sustained combat, Joe Foss's Flying Circus had shot down 72 Japanese aircraft, including 26 credited to him.
14.
On May 18,1943, Joe Foss received the Medal of Honor from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
15.
The White House ceremony was featured in Life magazine, with the reluctant Captain Joe Foss appearing on the magazine's cover.
16.
Joe Foss then was asked to participate in a war bond tour that stretched into 1944.
17.
In February 1944, Joe Foss returned to the Pacific theater to lead VMF-115, flying the F4U Corsair.
18.
Joe Foss had an opportunity to meet and fly with his boyhood idol, Charles Lindbergh, who was on assignment touring the South Pacific as an aviation consultant.
19.
Joe Foss again contracted malaria, and was sent home to the Klamath Falls, Oregon Rehabilitation Center.
20.
In October 1945, Joe Foss was ordered to appear at Navy Day ceremonies in four cities there and was finally relieved from active duty in December 1945 but was retained in the Marine Corps Reserve on inactive duty until 1947.
21.
In 1946, Joe Foss was appointed a lieutenant colonel in the South Dakota Air National Guard and instructed to form the South Dakota Air National Guard, becoming the commanding officer for the Guard's 175th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron.
22.
Joe Foss had previously appeared on the long-running game show What's My Line on May 1,1955.
23.
In 1958, Joe Foss unsuccessfully sought a seat in the US House of Representatives, having been defeated by another wartime pilot hero, the Democrat George McGovern.
24.
Joe Foss tried to re-enter politics in 1962 in a campaign to succeed Sen.
25.
Joe Foss oversaw the emergence of the league as the genesis of modern professional football.
26.
Joe Foss stepped aside as commissioner in April 1966, two months before the historic agreement that led to the merger of AFL and NFL and the creation of the Super Bowl.
27.
Milt Woodard, the assistant commissioner under Joe Foss, was named to the new office of president of the AFL in July and served through the league's final season in 1969.
28.
Joe Foss then hosted and produced his own syndicated outdoors TV series, The Outdoorsman: Joe Foss, from 1967 to 1974.
29.
Joe Foss was portrayed on the cover of the 29 January 1990 issue of Time Magazine wearing his trademark Stetson hat and holding a revolver.
30.
Joe Foss, who had a daughter with cerebral palsy, served as President of the National Society of Crippled Children and Adults.
31.
Joe Foss did many of these school visits himself, speaking to children of all ages about service, responsibility, patriotism, integrity and commitment.
32.
Foss co-authored or was the subject of three books including the wartime Joe Foss: Flying Marine ; Top Guns ; and A Proud American by his wife, Donna Wild Foss.
33.
Joe Foss provided the foreword to Above and Beyond: the Aviation Medals of Honor by Barrett Tillman, and was profiled in Tom Brokaw's 1998 book about World War II and its warriors, The Greatest Generation.
34.
Joe Foss was larger than life, and his heroics in the skies over the Pacific were just the beginning of a journey that would take him to places far from that farm with no electricity and not much hope north of Sioux Falls.
35.
American Ace: The Joe Foss Story was an award-winning, hour-length television documentary, produced by the South Dakota Public Broadcasting, first aired in fall 2006.
36.
Joe Foss was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1984.
37.
Joe Foss was a president and board chairman of the Air Force Association and as a Director of the United States Air Force Academy.
38.
Joe Foss was scheduled to deliver an address at the National Rifle Association and speak to a class at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
39.
Joe Foss eventually lost a souvenir replica bullet, but was able to retain his Medal of Honor and commemorative nail file, by shipping it back to himself.
40.
Joe Foss suffered a stroke in October 2002 when he bled from a cerebral aneurysm.
41.
Joe Foss died three months later on New Year's Day, 2003, never having regained consciousness, in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he and his wife had made their home in later years.
42.
Joe Foss was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Section 7A, Lot 162 on January 21,2003.
43.
The Joe Foss Shooting Complex in Buckeye, Arizona, is named in his honor.
44.
In 1984, Joe Foss was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.
45.
Joe Foss was inducted into the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, in 1994.
46.
Joe Foss's remarkable flying skill, inspiring leadership and indomitable fighting spirit were distinctive factors in the defense of strategic American positions on Guadalcanal.