Joseph Elsberry; One of 1st Black Combat Pilots

A funeral service was held Monday for Joseph Dubois Elsberry, one of a handful of black pilots commissioned in the Army Air Force during World War II.

His wartime exploits included shooting down three German planes in one day.

Elsberry, winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross, died March 31 of a heart attack in his San Francisco apartment. He was 63 and was given a hero’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery here.

He was among the first group of fighter pilots to receive training at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where blacks were trained for service in all-black squadrons. He became the 37th black pilot in the Army Air Force in September, 1942.

Elsberry’s squadron once sank a German destroyer without bombs. His team of fighters sank the destroyer in Trieste harbor in Italy on June 23, 1944, using only 50-caliber machine guns. The sinking was denied by the Germans, but later confirmed by films of the attack.

One month later, Elsberry shot down three German Focke-Wulf 190s in a single day as a squadron of P-51s and P-47s was flying bomber escort out of a base in southern Italy. Eight days later he shot down a fourth German plane.

Elsberry, who had flown both fighter planes and bombers in combat, remained in the Air Force after World War II, served in the Korean War and retired in 1962 as a major.

He lived several years in his native Oklahoma, then moved to San Francisco in 1962 where he worked for Western Electric Co. until an operation for cataracts forced his retirement seven years ago.