Chesley Peterson; WWII Ace in Both British and U.S. Forces

Chesley Peterson, who was booted out of the U.S. Army after he lied about his age but later became one of the most highly decorated flying aces in both Great Britain and the United States during World War II, is dead.

The retired Air Force major general died Sunday in Riverside. He was 69 and had suffered heart and lung disease for three years, funeral home director John A. Lindquist said from Ogden, Utah.

Peterson was born in Salmon, Idaho, and attended Brigham Young University but quit at age 19. He forged a birth certificate to get into military pilot training in 1939, but was found out two months later and discharged.

In 1940, more than a year before the United States entered World War II, Peterson went to England and joined the Royal Air Force’s elite Eagle Squadron, a group of foreign volunteers. Flying Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires in battles with the German Luftwaffe, Peterson advanced to squadron commander at age 21 and colonel at 23.

He kept the rank when he moved to the U.S. Army Air Corps to fly P-47 Thunderbolts in 1943, becoming the corps’ youngest colonel.

In more than 200 combat missions, Peterson claimed nine kills and nine probable kills, twice parachuting from damaged Spitfires while with the RAF. In a single dogfight, on April 27, 1942, over northern France, he downed three Focke-Wulf 190 German fighters.

Airman magazine said Peterson is the only American fighter pilot to win both the U.S. Distinguished Service Cross and Britain’s Distinguished Service Order, each country’s second-highest military decoration.

Lindquist, also a longtime friend, said Peterson did not like the way the Air Force was fighting in Vietnam and quit at age 49 rather than take a desk job.

Peterson retired to Ogden, where his mother and sister lived, in 1970. For medical reasons he moved to an Air Force retirement village in Riverside last October and died at March Air Force Base Hospital.

He is survived by his wife and a son and daughter.