Joe Claiborne DeBona was born 16 August 1912 at Eagle Pass, Texas. He was the second son of Giuseppe (“Joseph”) DeBona, a merchandise broker and an immigrant from Italy, and Adline (“Addie”) May Claiborne Debona.

Joe DeBona attended Main Avenue High School in San Antonio, Texas, where, in 1928, he was on the track team. He then studied at the University of Texas. He was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (ΣΑΕ) fraternity, and played quarterback on the football team.

(On 27 May 1935, Joe C. DeBona, an instructor, married Miss Georgia C. Wiley in Los Angeles County, California.) ¹

On 29 August 1940 Joe Claiborne De Bona married Miss Evelyn Lewis, a graduate of the University of Southern California and an interior decorator. The 4:40 p.m.  ceremony in the home of the bride’s family in Beverly Hills, California, was officiated by Reverend Murray McNeil. They would have a daughter, Eve. Contemporary newspaper articles reported that DeBona was a reserve officer in the United States Army Air Corps.

DeBona registered for Selective Service (conscription) 16 October 1940. He was described as 5 feet, 10½ inches (179 centimeters) tall, 175 pounds (79 kilograms) with black hair and hazel eyes. He had a dark complexion and a birthmark between his shoulder blades. At that time, he was employed by the National Cash Register Company in Los Angeles, California, as a salesman.

Joe Claiborne DeBona enlisted in the United States Army 21 July 1942.

During World War II, he served with the 1st Ferrying Squadron, 6th Ferrying Group, Air Transport Command, United States Army Air Forces, under the command of Colonel Ralph E. Spake, based at Long Beach Army Air Field, California.

While flying a Lockheed F-5A-10-LO Lightning photographic reconnaissance fighter, serial number 42-13113, 19 February 1943, First Lieutenant DeBona made a forced landing at Marajó Island, Pará, Brazil. The Lightning was written off.

The Binghampton Press, Binghampton, New York, reported:

Flier Rescued After 14 Days Alone in Jungle

DeBona, Forced Down in Brazil, Suffered Most From Loneliness

By A. T. STEELE

SPECIAL CABLE

To The Binghampton Press and the Chicago Daily News, Inc.

     Somewhere in Brazil, March 10—(Delayed)—Forced down in the Depths of the Brazilian jungle an American pilot has been rescued from a nightmare experience of 20 days. He is Lieut. Joe De Bona who is today speeding back to his home in Beverly Hills, Cal., for reunion with his waiting wife.

     I met Mr. De Bona at a Brazilian air base shortly after he arrived, bearded and weary from his forest trek. He said he had lost more than 25 pounds and admitted that his long stay in the jungle, fighting the mosquitoes and fever, and worst of all the black solitude had badly shaken his nerves. Mr. De Bona is by no means the first flyer to crash in the Amazon forest but he is one of the very few to come back alive. Mr. De Bona was ferrying a two-motored plane across Brazil when one of his motors suddenly conked out. Twenty-five minutes later the second engine quit and the plane headed steeply for the dense forest below.

     Miraculously Mr. De Bona found a hole in the jungle mass and managed to make a belly landing in the bog. As the radio was still working he ticked out his approximate position to an air base 165 miles away. Then he sat down for a long wait. Three days later an American search plane found him and dropped him iron rations. Mr. De Bona had hoped he might be rescued within a few days but it was not until 14 days after his crash that a small party of natives succeeded in beating their way through the forest to the place where the pilot and his plane waited.

     “I have been to Guadalcanal and I have been through some mighty unpleasant experiences in my life but I’ve never suffered anything like the torture of the fortnight in the jungle,” Mr. De Bona went on.

     “I didn’t dare go far from the plane for I would have been lost in 10 minutes if I tried to penetrate the thick forest which surrounded me. One I started to climb a tree to look over the countryside but I came down in a hurry when I met a snake gazing at me through the branches. The days were blazing hot with occasional squalls of drenching rain. I could do but sit them out under what little shelter my plane could give me. A 6 o’clock night came down with equatorial suddenness. The swamp mosquitoes came on duty, buzzing about me until dawn. I slept or tried to sleep in the tail of my ship, using my rubber raft as a mattress and my parachute as a mosquito net.”

     Mr. De Bona exhibited a leg flecked with spots—ant bites. Unlike the mosquitoes, jungle ants worked 24 hours daily.

     Mr. De Bona said much of his suffering was psychological. The loneliness, the black nights, the long hours of waiting with nothing to read and nothing to think about except his own difficulties, had a cumulative effect as the days passed. Then there were the jungle noises which mounted in crescendo after the sun went down. Sitting in his lonely swamp he saw monkeys, buffaloes, brilliant plumaged birds and snakes. The creatures he liked least were the black scavenger birds which soared continuously over the forest looking for dead meat.

     Mr. De Bona developed a fever a few days before his rescue and was soon “hearing imaginary voices” and talking to himself/ When on the 14th day a Brazilian rescue party of four men driving saddled oxen broke into the clearing, De Bona wept with relief.

     “I never believed anything like this possible outside Hollywood,” Mr. De Bona said. “But now I know Hollywood sometimes is right.”

—Binghamton Press, Vol. 64, No. 283, 13 March 1943, Page 11, Column 2

The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, reported:

Ferry Pilots Learn World Hardest Way

Get Aquainted With Geography At First Hand

By JOHN FRYE

     Cincinnatti, June 26 (AP)—The cables said 300 United States planes poured bombs on Italy, another 150 were over Germany, General MacArthur’s Lightnings shot down a hatful of Zeroes over New Guinea.—

     First Lieut. Joe C. DeBona of Beverly Hills, Calif., learning geography the hard way, licked the jungle dew off the cockpit canopy because he was thirsty.—

     Lieutenant DeBona’s connection with the ships that are making American air power felt over the world is this: He is one of the thousands of Army pilots, most of them anonymous, who take the planes from the factories to the battle. Gen H. H. Arnold, chief of the Air Forces, told West Point graduates the other day that 1,800 planes were taken out in May alone.

Engines Died Over Jungle.

     One of the incredibly few who have accidents, Lieutenant DeBona didn’t get there on this particular trip. Both his engines quit over the jungle. He got back alive two weeks later to add the the data that is making the Ferrying Division of the Air Transport Command one of the world’s greatest repositories of geographical information.

    The Ferrying Division’s headquarters told Lieutenant DeBona’s story as an incident in its operations, which are greater than those of all commercial airline put together.

     DeBona had to drop out of a formation of six pursuit ships. He landed in country he described as “jungle, marsh, and swamp, all combined. Because it is combined, you have the jungle with marsh and swamp beneath it, then you have marsh and swamp out in the open, thick groves of tall trees resembling our oaks, much bamboo and tall grass resembling our Johnson grass and alfalfa, growing in water from six inches to a foot deep. Water ranged throughout the land except in dry spots, anywhere from six inches deep to over my head.

Water, Water Everywhere.

     “This was brackish water which I did not touch, being informed in the pilot’s briefing that this water, even though boiled, is sometimes dangerous, unfit to drink.

     “The ants worked twenty-four hours a day. They never quit, those guys. The ground was covered with ants and ticks. The ticks resemble snails. They pierce the skin with both the head and the tail of the body, then suck the blood.

     “During the night the animal noises were constant. I could hear all kinds of animals being killed or killing. And I, in my own thinking, adopted the saying that jungle life is kill to live. I noticed too that all the animals were terrifically alert all the time, constantly on the lookout.

     “I had only the turbo canvas covers to catch the rain and I did. I guess I salvaged a quart of water, rain water. Whenever it rained, I was up, even if it was the middle of the night.

     “Every morning I would lick the dew off the canopy over the cockpit. I didn’t lick it off the ship because I was afraid it would poison me. But I was tempted on many occasions to lick it off the plane. When one is thirsty—it’s hard for me to explain here—your reasoning is poor, your fears are exaggerated.”

A Home On the Ice.

     First Lieut. Harry E. Spencer, Jr., of Dallas, Texas, and his crew crashed somewhere in the Arctic, learned another branch of geography, which he later reported personally to President Roosevelt in the White House.

     “I learned to keep my fingers away from the fire as much as possible to get them used to the cold. I learned that clothes will dry in the wind, freezing stiff, and the ice evaporating.

     “I found the main thing to keep warm was to keep the wind out and my clothes dry. I learned to keep the heat off the snow house, for the heat would melt the snow on the ceiling and drip on the sleeping bags and wet them.

     “Our snow house—the idea of a hole in the snow is to dig down to solid ice. In the fall this would be only a couple of feet as there would be no soft snow on top. As new comes, the ice level is further beneath the surface. Our first house was little more than three feet below the surface, with just enough room to barely crawl around. Later, when more snow fell, we dug out the ceiling to make more room.”

     Lieutenant DeBona and Lieutenant Spencer both started out from an airplane factory or modification center. One went south and one went north. On the next trip, they might swap directions. Or they might swap types of ships.

     There are few specialists in the Ferrying Division’s great bases scattered over the country. Many pilots may fly anything from a Grasshopper liaison plane to a Flying Fortress or Liberator. The destination may be England or China.

     Like the more familiar cargohaulers of the Air Transport Command, the Ferrying Division pilots are making routine out of trips over vast wastelands, some never before seen by men.

     All but a small fraction of the pilots starting on a delivery complete it.

     Lieutenant Spencer and Lieutenant DeBona had their troubles and came back. Some haven’t. But none is forgotten when he fails to report on time.

—The Courier-Journal, Vol. 177, No. 178, 27 June 1943, Page 8, Column 1

47 days later, 6 April 1943, DeBona was involved in another accident while taxiing a Boeing B-17F-70-BO Flying Fortress, 42-29810, at Morrison Army Air Field (now, Palm Beach International Airport, FAA location identifier PBI). The accident was a result of a mechanical failure. The B-17 was repaired and returned to service. Flown across the Atlantic Ocean to England, it was assigned to Mediterranean Theater of Operations. 42-29810 was salvaged in Italy, 16 June 1944.

On 14 December 1943, Captain Joe C. DeBona, O-483618, arrived at Washington, D.C., aboard a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, 41-20140, from Prestwick, Scotland, via Borinquen, Puerto Rico.

By 1945, Captain DeBona was flying the Douglas C-54 Skymaster on transpacific flights, transporting wounded soldiers back to the United States.

Joe Clairborn DeBona was discharged from the Army Air Forces 6 December 1945.

On 7 April 1948, the Joe De Bona Racing Co., 133 N. Robertson Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California, purchased a North American Aviation P-51C Mustang, N5528N, serial number 2925, from Leland Cameron. (The company was a partnership between De Bona and Academy Award-winning actor and World War II B-24 bomber pilot James Maitland (“Jimmy”) Stewart.)

Over the next several months, N5528N, now named Thunderbird, was prepared for the upcoming 1948 Bendix Trophy Race. Unnecessary equipment such as the self-sealing fuel cells, the fuselage fuel tank, etc., were removed to save weight. The airframe seams were filled with putty and sanded smooth. Many coats of primer were applied followed by the the high-gloss “cobalt blue” paint. Gold decorative trim was applied. Thunderbird‘s airworthiness category, EXPERIMENTAL, was painted under the canopy rail on each side. Sponsors’ logos and crew member’s names were painted on the left side of the fuselage beneath the canopy. (The significance of the anvil logo with the numbers “1853” is not known.) The rudder was painted in a checkerboard pattern and the race number 90 applied to both sides of the fuselage. The registration was painted vertically on the fin, the top of the right wing and the bottom of the left wing.

The start of the 1948 Bendix Trophy Race took place on 4 September at Van Nuys, California. Joe De Bona was entered with Thunderbird, but was unable to complete the race. Reportedly low on fuel, he landed at Norwalk, Ohio.

On 29 March 1949, Thunderbird, with De Bona in the cockpit, took off from the Lockheed Air Terminal, Burbank, California, at 6:20:50 a.m., Pacific Standard Time (13:20:50 UTC) and flew across the North American continent to land at LaGuardia Airport in New York City at 2:20:50 p.m., Eastern Standard Time (18:20:55 UTC). This flight was observed by the National Aeronautic Association and timed at 5 hours, 0 minutes, 5 seconds. The official distance flown was 2,453.085 statute miles (3,947.858 kilometers), with an average speed of 490.625 miles per hour (789.584 kilometers per hour). This established a new U.S. national speed record.

Joe DeBona had made two prior unsuccessful transcontinental record attempts with Thunderbird. On March 6, he was forced to land at Smoky Hill Air Force Base, Salina, Kansas. (Some contemporary news reports said that the problem was a fuel pump, while others said it was an oil pump.) On 24 March, Thunderbird‘s propeller governor failed near Pueblo, Colorado. DeBona aborted the attempt and returned to Burbank, California.

The start of the 1949 Bendix Trophy Race was relocated from Metropolitan Airport at Van Nuys to Rosamond Dry Lake, 40 miles (64.4 kilometers) north of Muroc Air Force Base (renamed Edwards AFB just two months later). This year, Joe De Bona was successful. He won the 2,008 mile (3,231.6 kilometers) race to Cleveland, Ohio in an elapsed time of 4:16:17.5, averaging 470.1 miles per hour (756.6 kilometers per hour).

On 31 March 1954, DeBona took off from Los Angeles International Airport, on the shoreline of southern California, in a North American Aviation P-51C Mustang, N5528N. Departing at At 7:18:08 a.m., Pacific Standard Time (14:18:08 UTC), he flew across the North American continent non-stop, and arrived overhead New York International Airport at 2:42:25 p.m., Eastern Standard Time (18:42:25 UTC). The total elapsed time for the flight was 4 hours, 24 minutes, 17 seconds. DeBona’s average speed was 560.74 miles per hour (902.424 kilometers per hour).

This was a new U.S. national speed record, certified by the National Aeronautic Association.

A major event of 1953 was the Coronation of Elizabeth II on 2 June. American television networks CBS and NBC had arranged to have films of the ceremonies flown across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. From there the film would be flown on to the United States by Jimmy Stewart’s P-51 and another owned by Paul Mantz, NX1204, flown by Stanley Reaver.

Joe De Bona was once again in the cockpit of N5528N. He arrived at Boston 24 minutes before his rival, Stan Reaver, but a third network, ABC, was actually the first to broadcast the films of the Coronation.

Attempting to set another transcontinental speed record, De Bona took off from Los Angeles International Airport at 7:18:08 a.m., Pacific Standard Time (14:18:08 UTC), 31 March 1954, and flew to Idlewild Airport in New York City. He landed there at 2:42:25 p.m., Eastern Standard Time (18:42:25 UTC). With an official elapsed time of 4 hours, 24 minutes, 17 seconds, the National Aeronautic Association credited him with a U.S. national record speed of 560.74 miles per hour (902.42 kilometers per hour).

Joe C. DeBona died at Newport Beach, California, 23 January 1975. He was 62 years of age.

¹ This Day in Aviation has been unable to determine if this was the same Joe C. DeBona.

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