Back home in South Dakota after the war, rugged, curly-haired Joe Foss, the Marine Corps' top South Pacific air ace, found politicking almost as simple as a wingover and just as much fun. Everyone remembered that he had been the first U.S. flyer to tie Eddie Rickenbacker's World War I record by shooting down 26 Japs over Guadalcanal. In 1948, Minnehaha County elected him overwhelmingly to the state house of representatives.
Soon Joe Foss, who had left the Marines to become a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, was flying all over the...
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