Jerry Yellin in 2015, after attending the Air and Space Conference and National Convention in D.C. (United States Department of Defense)
It was Aug. 13, 1945, four days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan had suffered unimaginable destruction, but Emperor Hirohito refused to surrender.
Capt. Jerry Yellin, an American fighter pilot, was ordered to fly a combat mission the next day over the Japanese city of Nagoya, where his 16-plane squadron would strike targets from the air. As his military unit was briefed on its assignment, Yellin’s wing man, a 19-year-old named Phil Schlamberg, leaned over and told Yellin he had an inexplicable feeling he was going to die.
“If we go on this mission, I’m not coming back,” Yellin recalls his friend saying.
Despite those doubts — and no matter how close the end of war seemed — Schlamberg refused to abandon the mission. He packed his clothes, paid his debts and wrote to his family, Yellin said.
The next morning, on Aug. 14, 1945, Yellin told Schlamberg to fly alongside the wing of his P-51 Mustang fighter plane. He gave Schlamberg a thumbs-up. Schlamberg returned the gesture. Together they entered the blustery clouds.
It wasn’t until eight hours later, after Yellin landed back on Iwo Jima and exited his cockpit, that he learned he had just flown the final combat mission of World War II. The news was a bitter relief: Japan had surrendered and the war was over. But the surrender was announced three hours before the planes would descend over