Talk:Thomas George Lanphier Jr.

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Thomas G. Lanphier Jr., 71, Dies; U.S. Ace Shot Down Yamamoto By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN Published: November 28, 1987 LEAD: Thomas G. Lanphier Jr., the World War II fighter pilot who shot down the Japanese airplane carrying the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, died Thursday at the San Diego Veterans Administration Hospital at La Jolla, Calif. He was 71 years old.

Thomas G. Lanphier Jr., the World War II fighter pilot who shot down the Japanese airplane carrying the architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor, died Thursday at the San Diego Veterans Administration Hospital at La Jolla, Calif. He was 71 years old.

Mr. Lanphier, who lived in La Jolla, had been a cancer patient most of the year and was hospitalized three weeks ago, his family said. His illness had halted his work on a book, Fighter Pilot, on the mission that made him a hero.

In a varied postwar career, Mr. Lanphier was an editor of The Idaho Daily Statesman, special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force and to the chairman of the National Security Resource Board, a vice president of the Convair Division of the General Dynamics Corporation and a vocal critic of military policy.

But it was as a wartime ace in the South Pacific that Mr. Lanphier won fame, flying 112 combat missions, sinking a Japanese destroyer and downing 17 enemy planes, including the fighter-bomber carrying Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese Imperial Navy. Japanese Message Intercepted

Having cracked the Japanese code, American intelligence intercepted a secret message noting that Admiral Yamamoto, on an inspection trip, would fly from Rabaul, New Britain, to Kahili on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands on April 18, 1943.

With orders from the White House to intercept and destroy Admiral Yamamoto, Mr. Lanphier, then a 27-year-old captain in the Army Air Forces, and a small attack group of P-38's took off in predawn darkness from Guadalcanal, 435 miles to southeast, and, skimming the waves to avoid radar, kept the surprise rendezvous over Bougainville at 9:35 A.M.

Mr. Lanphier, in an article for the North American Newspaper Alliance, described twisting, blazing dogfights with a half-dozen Zeros escorting the admiral's twin-engine Mitsubishi bomber, and then the final pursuit of the bomber, which had peeled away and skimmed the jungle, heading for the safety of a Japanese base 11 miles away. Downing of Yamamoto Bomber

Captain Lanphier took on the lead Zero as it dived toward him. My machine guns and cannon ripped one of his wings away, he recalled. ''He twisted under me, all flame and smoke. I spotted a shadow moving across the treetops. It was Yamamoto's bomber. I dived toward him.

''I fired a long steady burst across the bomber's course of flight from approximately right angles. The bomber's right engine, then its right wing burst into flame. The men aboard the bomber were too close to the ground to jump.

''Just as I moved into range of Yamamoto's bomber and its cannon, the bomber's wing tore off. The bomber plunged into the jungle. It exploded. That was the end of Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto.'' The Japanese did not announce the death until a month later, and the United States did not credit Mr. Lanphier until five months later because his brother, a Marine Corps fighter pilot, was believed to be a prisoner of war. Mr. Lanphier was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and many other decorations. Wings Before Pearl Harbor

Thomas George Lanphier Jr. was born in the Canal Zone of Panama on Nov. 27, 1915, the son of a World War I Army officer, and grew up at Army posts in the Detroit area. He graduated from Stanford University, joined the Army Air Corps and received his wings a month before Pearl Harbor.

After the war, he was an editor in Boise, Idaho, for several years, then went to Washington as an assistant to W. Stuart Symington, then Secretary of the Air Force, whose Presidential aspirations he later supported.

Mr. Lanphier leaves his wife, Phyllis Fraser Lanphier of La Jolla; five daughters, Judith Strada, of La Jolla, Patricia Mix of Point Loma, Calif., Janet Lanphier of New York City, Kathleen Lanphier of San Francisco, and Phyllis Lanphier of La Jolla, and five grandchildren.

A memorial service with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery is planned.

Age of death.
The fellow in question died one day prior to his 72nd birthday, yet the infobox calculates his age at death to be 7. How can it be changed? Mtaylor848 (talk) 17:12, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

External link to interview on nuclear policy?
Would an interview with Thomas Lanphier from 1986 be useful here as an external link? Focus of conversation is nuclear weapons policy. http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_7D5B4D37FFC441D4924F9C64D2135822 (I helped with the site, so it would be conflict of interest for me to just add it.) Mccallucc (talk) 16:31, 24 March 2016 (UTC)