Jefferson DeBlanc MoH winner RIP

Kyt · Dec 5, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/04deblanc.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin

Jefferson J. DeBlanc, a World War II fighter pilot who was awarded the Medal of Honor for shooting down five Japanese planes on a single day while running out of fuel, died Nov. 22 in Lafayette, La. He was 86 and lived St. Martinville, La..

The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his daughter, Barbara DeBlanc Romero.

On Jan. 31, 1943, Mr. DeBlanc, then a lieutenant in the Marines, took off from Guadalcanal in his Wildcat fighter, leading a six-plane section of Marine Fighting Squadron 112. They were assigned to protect dive bombers and torpedo planes attacking Japanese ships off the island of Kolombangara, in the Solomons chain.

Mr. DeBlanc became embroiled in a furious air battle as Japanese planes pounced on the American aircraft. His fighter was using fuel at an unexpectedly rapid rate and he could have returned to his base, but he pressed his attacks.

“We needed all the guns we could get up there to escort those dive bombers,” he told The Times-Picayune in New Orleans in a 1999 interview. “I figured if I run out of gas, I run out of gas. I figured I could survive a bailout. You’ve got to live with your conscience. And my conscience told me to go ahead.”

In the span of a few minutes, he shot down five Japanese planes, but soon afterward his fighter was hit by enemy aircraft fire that knocked his watch from his wrist, peppered him with shrapnel and set his plane afire.

He parachuted into the ocean, then swam for some six hours, making it ashore at Japanese-occupied Kolombangara. He hoped to steal a Japanese Zero fighter and fly it to Guadalcanal, but after resting for several days in an abandoned hut, he was seized by a group of tribesmen.

“I could see myself in the pot,” he recalled long afterward.

He was placed in a bamboo cage. The next day, deliverance arrived. A local man was carrying a gift for his captors.

“This guy came in and threw down a 10-pound sack of rice, which he stole from the Japanese,” Mr. DeBlanc remembered in a 2000 interview with The Baton Rouge Advocate. “He threw it down at their feet, and they picked it up and let me go. From then on, I felt safe.”

His rescuer was affiliated with the coastwatchers, mainly Australians and Pacific islanders who spied on Japanese plane and ship movements in the Solomons and helped rescue downed Allied pilots. Mr. DeBlanc was taken to a nearby island by locals sympathetic to the Americans, and a United States Navy patrol plane picked him up.

Mr. DeBlanc, who had shot down three Japanese bombers off Guadalcanal the previous fall, later downed another Japanese plane off Okinawa, giving him nine “kills” in the war.

President Harry S. Truman presented him with the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor, on Dec. 6, 1946. Recounting Mr. DeBlanc’s exploits off Kolombangara, the citation said that he had “remained on the scene despite a rapidly diminishing fuel supply” and had waged “a valiant battle against terrific odds.”

Mr. DeBlanc, a native of Lockport, La., left active military service after the war, received a doctorate in education from McNeese State University and taught mathematics and science in St. Martinville. He retired from the Marines in 1972 as a colonel in the reserves.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his sons, Jefferson Jr., of Church Point, La.; Richard, of Coteau Holmes, La.; Frank, of St. Martinville; and Michael, of Parks, La.; seven grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. His wife, Louise, died in 2005.

Examining diaries left behind by coastwatchers, Mr. DeBlanc eventually learned the identity of the man who had saved him. He returned to the Solomons in May 2000 to thank the rescuer, Atitao Lodukolo. Mr. Lodukolo was a frail 95 years old by then.

Mr. DeBlanc and Mr. Lodukolo posed together for a video camera, and then they exchanged salutes in a final farewell.

“How about that?” Mr. DeBlanc remarked later. “That’s full circle.”
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Jefferson DeBlanc MoH winner RIP

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