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🇺🇸 Most Badass Marines You Don’t Know: #10 Jefferson J. DeBlanc Jefferson J. DeBlanc is an American badass. He was a Marine fighter pilot who shredded five Japanese Zeros to save his bomber formation. He is also probably the only Marine ever traded for a sack of rice. Born February 15, 1921, in Lockport, Louisiana. As a young boy in Louisiana, he became obsessed with flying after a barnstormer made an emergency landing near his home and let him sit in the cockpit. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1941 and became a fighter pilot. Assigned to VMF-112, the “Wolfpack” squadron and was working out of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. On January 31, 1943, over the Solomon Islands, DeBlanc was leading a section of six F4F Wildcats escorting a formation of Marine dive-bombers on a long strike mission. His Wildcat had mechanical trouble with the experimental wing tank. It wasn’t feeding fuel properly, so he was burning gas far faster than expected. He knew his tanks were nearly empty and he might never make it back to Henderson Field. He refused to turn back. A massive swarm of Japanese Zeros suddenly roared in from above. The escort flight engaged the enemy. DeBlanc turned straight into the swarm and led the charge. In the next frantic minutes he tore through the Japanese formation, shooting down two Zeros while his wingman was shot down beside him. The enemy pilots swarmed him from every direction. Bullets ripped through his cockpit. A round tore into his leg, but he kept fighting. He locked onto two more Zeros and sent them spiraling into the sea. With his plane shot to pieces and fuel gauges on empty, he still refused to stop fighting. Spotting the vulnerable bombers suddenly under attack below, he broke away from the main dogfight, dove to low altitude, and chased down a fifth Zero and blasted it out of the sky. Five kills and becoming an ace in one blazing dogfight. Only when his engine finally quit did he roll the crippled Wildcat over and bail out over the water. He spent six hours in the sea, wounded, and supported only by his life jacket before he finally crawled up onto an enemy-held beach. He hid in the jungle and survived on coconuts for three more days with untreated wounds until friendly native islanders found him and put him in a bamboo cage. They did not know what to do with the “white man who fell from the sky.” They traded him the next day to a friendly islander for a 10-lb sack of rice. He moved him to an allied tribe. A Navy PBY Catalina flying boat finally picked him up 12 days after he ejected. For his extraordinary heroism First Lieutenant Jefferson J. DeBlanc was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1946 by President Truman. After the war he became a high-school math and physics teacher He lived a long life and passed in 2007 at the age of 86. Jefferson J. DeBlanc is an American Badass 🇺🇸