Frederick Payne
America’s oldest surviving Second World War fighting ace
Frederick Payne, Born: 31 July, 1911, in New York. Died: 6 August, 2015, in Rancho Mirage, California, aged 104.
FREDERICK Payne was a retired Marine Corps brigadier general who was honoured for his exploits as a fighter pilot in the Pacific in the Second World War. He was 104 and the oldest of the United States’ surviving fighter aces.
During two and a half weeks in 1942, from behind the guns of his Grumman F4F Wildcat flying over the Pacific near Guadalcanal, Payne, a major at the time, downed three Japanese bombers and two Zero fighters, having already shared credit with another pilot for bringing down an enemy bomber.
When he was awarded the Navy Cross, the citation read in part: “Throughout that strenuous period when the island airfield was under constant bombardment and our precarious ground positions were menaced by the desperate counterthrusts of a fanatical foe, Major Payne repeatedly patrolled hostile territory and intercepted enemy bombing flights,” downing six aircraft in “five vigorous fights against tremendous odds”. He was also awarded the Silver Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The surviving aces were honoured with the Congressional Gold Medal in May in a ceremony in Washington. Like about half of the recipients, Payne was too frail to attend. He received his medal at the Palm Springs Air Museum in California.
With Payne’s death, there are 71 surviving aces, said Arthur Bednar, co-ordinator of the American Fighter Aces Association.
According to Bednar, only 1,450 US pilots qualified to be called ace, a distinction reserved for pilots who downed at least five enemy planes in aerial combat during the First and Second World Wars and the wars in Korea and Vietnam; in addition, six aces are recognised from the Russian civil war, the Spanish Civil War, the Sino-japanese War and the Arab-israeli War. Payne was credited with five and a half.
Frederick Rounsville Payne Jr., known as Fritz, was born in New York in 1911. His father was a US Naval Academy graduate who served in the Spanishamerican War and First World War. His mother was Ethel Louise Gorton.
He was raised in Indianapolis and attended the Naval Academy, but after two years transferred to the University of Arizona, graduating in January 1935. Hoping to become a flier, Payne enlisted in the Marine Corps, was commissioned a second lieutenant and logged his first solo flight at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on 1 July, 1935.
The day after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, he embarked for Midway Island aboard the USS Saratoga as a member of Marine Fighter Squadron 221.
While he saw combat throughout the Pacific, from the Aleutians to New Guinea, Payne recalled that his only brush with death was when, suffering from malaria, he vomited in his oxygen mask and passed out.
He recovered as his plunging plane passed 8,000 feet, but managed to pull out and land safely.
He served in Korea in 1952, was involved in testing atomic weapons in 1957 and retired in 1958. He worked for Southern California Edison until 1976.
His wife, Dorothy, died in 2011. His survivors include his sons Robert and Dewitt; a daughter, Ann Wilson Payne; and three grandchildren.