Jack Bolt was the only United States Marine to shoot down five enemy aircraft in WWII and then do it again in jets over Korea
A Pirep featured story · KEVB New Smyrna Beach Municipal, New Smyrna Beach, FL
New Smyrna Beach Municipal sits on a pre-war public golf course with an old grass airstrip. In 1942 the United States Navy seized the property and paved it as an outlying landing field for naval flight training at NAS Daytona, NAS Sanford, and NAS DeLand. The field was decommissioned in 1947 and returned to the city. It operated uncontrolled for the next 57 years.
In 2006, the city renamed it Jack Bolt Field after a man buried in the New Smyrna Beach cemetery whose record no Marine has ever matched.
John F. "Jack" Bolt was born in Laurens, South Carolina in 1921 and grew up in the small Florida coastal town that the airport now serves. He earned his wings in 1943 and joined Marine Fighter Squadron 214 — the Black Sheep, commanded by Major Greg "Pappy" Boyington. Flying F4U Corsairs out of Vella Lavella and Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, Bolt shot down six Japanese aircraft between September 1943 and January 1944. Ace at 22. Distinguished Flying Cross.
After the war, most aces went home. Bolt stayed in the Marines. He flew F4F Hellcats, then F2H Banshees, then transitioned to jets. When Korea came, Bolt was 32 and a major. The Marines didn't have a jet fighter capable of dueling MiG-15s, so the Air Force loaned him out to the 39th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron flying F-86 Sabres out of Suwon Air Base. Between May and July 1953 — the final two months of the war before the armistice — Bolt shot down six MiG-15s.
That made him the only Marine aviator in history to achieve ace status in two wars. Double ace, two different conflicts, two different generations of fighter aircraft, with combat tours separated by a decade. Navy Cross. Six Air Medals. Distinguished Flying Cross with three gold stars.
Bolt retired from the Marines in 1962 and went home to New Smyrna Beach to practice law. He died in 2004 at age 83 and was buried at the cemetery a mile from the airport. The renaming came two years later, with a ceremony attended by surviving Black Sheep pilots. Land at KEVB and you're landing on a field named for the last man in his uniform who flew two completely different wars and won both of them.