On October 28, 1971, military aviator and World War II hero Colonel Jesus Villamor died at the age of 56 in Washington, D.C. A recipient of the Philippines' highest military award, the Medal of Valor, he was one of the few Filipino pilots who shot down an enemy aircraft in an air-to-air combat.
Born on November 9, 1914, he was the son of Supreme Court justice and former U.P. President Ignacio Villamor. In pursit of his childhood dream of becoming a pilot, he took aviation courses in the Philippines and in the U.S. To comply with the commissionship requirements of the Philippine Army Air Corps (now Philippine Air Force), he returned to his high school alma mater, the De La Salle College (now a university), to take an Associate of Arts in Commerce. In 1936, upon receiving his commission as PAAC Third Lieutenant, he was sent to the U.S. for advanced flight training. Two years later, he returned to the country and assisted in the training of other PAAC aviation cadets.
Villamor was the commander of the PAAC's 6th Pursuit Squadron when World War II broke out in the Philippines on December 8, 1941. Despite being equipped with the obsolete Boeing P-26 Peashooters, Villamor led his unit in engaging the numerically and technologically superior Japanese air forces on December 10 (over Pasig and Quezon City) and on December 12 (over Batangas). In those two sorties, Villamor was able to shoot down two enemy aircrafts, prompting General Douglas MacArthur to award him twice the second highest military award of the U.S. Army, the Distinguished Service Cross. He also did infantry and air reconnaissance missions during the Bataan Campaign before joining MacArthur in the latter's evacuation to Australia in March 1942. Villamor would then join the Allied Intelligence Bureau, and in December 1942, he returned briefly to the Philippines to lead a daring intelligence mission. The information he gathered was soon used by the AIB for their military plans. After this, he was reassigned to the U.S. for the rest of the war.
He resigned from military service after the war and returned to the United States to be a consultant with the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board (now abolished). He later served with the U.S. Air Force as part of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Vietnam. In 1954, he received the Medal of Valor for his heroism during the Second World War. He was buried with full military honors at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. The PAF renamed their headquarters in Pasay City after him, and the DLSU Office for Student Affairs annually confers its Gawad Col. Jesus Villamor to the most outstanding ROTC cadet of their university.
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