NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Walker “Bud” Mahurin, a fighter pilot who shot down two dozen planes in two wars and was regarded as one of America’s top aces ever, has died, his wife said Sunday. He was 91.
Joan Mahurin said Bud Mahurin died of natural causes at his home in Newport Beach last Tuesday.
She said her husband kept flying small planes — and kept receiving fan mail — for most of his life.
“He would get letters from teenagers to old war veterans,” Joan Mahurin said.
A native of Benton Harbor, Mich., Mahurin joined the Army Air Forces in September 1941 — three months before Pearl Harbor.
Doug Lantry, a historian at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio, said Mahurin’s name is familiar to all in the Air Force. He went by the call sign “Honest John,” a title he’d later adopt for his memoirs.
By October 1943, he had become an ace, meaning he had scored five aerial victories. The number rose to ten later that year, making Mahurin the first “double ace” in the European Theater of Operations.
“Bud Mahurin was the only Air Force pilot to shoot down enemy aircraft in the European theater of operations and the Pacific and in Korea,” Lantry told the Los Angeles Times. “He was known as a very courageous, skilled and tenacious fighter pilot.”
Mahurin was shot twice during World War II and once in the Korean War, which led to his capture and 16 months in a prison camp.
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