Major Jesse Lee Birchett Jr.
U.S. Army Air Forces • U.S. Air Force • West Virginia Air National Guard • P-47 Thunderbolt Pilot
Jesse Lee Birchett Jr. was born December 23, 1917, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The son of a baker, he followed his father into the trade and worked as a baker himself. His son John recalled that Jesse’s lack of formal education presented an obstacle, but he persuaded officials to allow him to take the Aviation Cadet qualifying examination. He passed.
When World War II began, Birchett enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces and applied for the Aviation Cadet Program. According to family recollections, his lack of formal education presented an obstacle, but Birchett persuaded officials to allow him to take the qualifying examination. He passed.
Birchett first solo
ed in a Piper Cub and was briefly assigned to Berry Field in Nashville before beginning military flight training in the PT-17 Stearman at Marianna Army Air Field in Florida. After earning his wings and commission as a second lieutenant, he received advanced training in the P-40 Warhawk at Eglin Field and aircraft weapons training at Bluethenthal Field in Wilmington, North Carolina.
He eventually advanced to the powerful P-47 Thunderbolt.
Birchett served in the Pacific with the 1st Fighter Squadron, 413th Fighter Group. Operating from the recently secured island of Ishigaki in the Ryukyu Islands, his missions included attacks against Japanese positions and targets along the eastern coast of China. Family records indicate that he flew 15 combat missions.
More than six decades later, Birchett still remembered how quickly one of those missions nearly ended his life.
During a flight, his P-47 was running dangerously low on fuel even though its external tanks still contained approximately 150 gallons. The fuel simply would not flow. With the engine nearing fuel starvation, Birchett prepared to bail out. A U.S. Navy PBY Catalina crew radioed that they were nearby and would pick him up from the water.
Then the engine coughed. Fuel began to flow.
Birchett kept flying.
He also carried a vivid memory from the final days of the war. On August 10, 1945, the day after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Birchett recalled escorting B-24 bombers over the city and seeing the devastation below.
After World War II, Birchett married Doris Petty. His military flying career continued when he joined the West Virginia Air National Guard in 1951. There he flew the P-51 Mustang and the SA-16 Grumman Albatross amphibious aircraft.
When the bakery where he worked as superintendent closed in 1960, Birchett began yet another aviation career, this time on the ground. He joined the Federal Aviation Agency as an air traffic controller. After an initial assignment in Elmira, New York, he later served at the Federal Flight Service facility in Bowling Green, Kentucky, remaining there until his retirement in 1986.
Birchet
t’s military decorations included the Air Medal, American Defense Service Medal, Army of Occupation Medal, American Theatre Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with four Bronze Service Stars, and World War II Victory Medal.
Major Jesse Lee Birchett Jr. died July 10, 2008, at age 90.
His aviation career was remarkable not simply for the aircraft he flew or the combat missions he survived. Birchett began as a young baker with little formal education who wanted badly enough to become an aviator that he persuaded the Army to give him a chance to prove he could do it.
He passed the test. Then he spent much of the rest of his life in aviation.
