Col. Perry Dahl, an Army Air Forces fighter pilot who shot down nine enemy aircraft in the Pacific during World War II while surviving emergency landings, a runway crash, a midair bailout and two days in a life raft, died on Dec. 2 at his home in Tampa, Fla. He was 101.
His death was confirmed by Chris Dahl, his grandson.
Colonel Dahl was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and needed extra seat cushions to reach the pedals of his plane. But his exploits brought him the Congressional Gold Medal, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Legion of Merit.
Perry John Dahl was born on Feb. 18, 1923, in North Battleford, a city in Saskatchewan, Canada, but his family settled in Seattle when he was a boy. After high school, he enlisted in a U.S. National Guard unit that had been called to active duty.
He was selected for fighter pilot training in an early version of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, and he excelled in mock battles against Marine pilots flying Corsairs.
A lieutenant at the time, he was assigned after training in the P-38 to the 475th Fighter Group and was based in New Guinea.
He scored his first aerial victory in November 1943 when he shot down a Zero fighter plane while escorting bombers on a strike against a Japanese airfield.
In April 1944 he downed his fifth plane, achieving the minimum required to become an ace, and was promoted to the rank of captain.
In November, during the Philippines campaign, he notched his seventh “kill” while escorting American B-25 bombers that were attacking Japanese shipping. Moments later, Japanese fire forced him to bail out of his plane, which he ditched in Ormoc Bay. But his co-pilot was unable to bail out and perished. Captain Dahl was initially captured by a Japanese Army patrol before being rescued by Philippine resistance forces, who hid him.
He later shot down another Japanese plane. His ninth and final aerial victory came on March 28, 1945, while he was escorting bombers attacking a Japanese naval convoy off the coast of French Indochina, earning him the Silver Star.
He lost four of his P-38s to Japanese fire and midair collisions.
“One more destroyed P-38 and you’ll be a Japanese ace,” the 475th Squadron commander Charles MacDonald once remarked, according to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Colonel Dahl had flown 158 combat missions by the time the war ended.
He later earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Southern Colorado, now Colorado State University Pueblo, and was assigned to Air Force headquarters at the Pentagon from 1966 to 1970.
He went on to hold administrative posts at an air support squadron during a tour of duty in Vietnam. He was vice commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs from June 1971 to July 1974. In his second tour of duty in the Vietnam War, he commanded an air wing.
Colonel Dahl was recalled to active duty during the Korean War and was stationed at bases in Texas and France. He later worked as a test pilot for the Air Force and was the editor of Flying Safety magazine.
He was promoted to the rank of colonel upon his retirement from the Air Force in June 1978.
In addition to his grandson, he is survived by his daughter, Jody Dahl; a granddaughter; and nine great-grandchildren. His wife, Barbara (Cox) Dahl, died in 2020.
“When you play sports in school, you become a team,” the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum quoted Colonel Dahl as saying. “If you mess up a play, you may lose the game. In war, if you make a mistake, you lose a friend or you die. The stakes were high but our focus on victory never wavered.”
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