War hero, retired NDIA vice president james mcinerney dies at 84.

• Position: Obituary

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. James E. McInerney Jr., National Defense Industrial Association's former vice president of membership and chapters, as well as a highly decorated combat veteran, died of natural causes at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Oct. 14. He was 84.

Born on Aug. 3, 1930 in Springfield, Massachusetts, where his parents Capt. James E. McInerney and Rose Adikes McInerney were stationed at Springfield Armory, he was the oldest of five children.

McInerney entered West Point in July 1948 after a stint with the 82nd Airborne Division. He was the captain of the Army boxing team and the eastern intercollegiate light heavyweight boxing champion in 1951 and 1952. He passed on an opportunity to tryout for the 1952 Olympic boxing team in order to attend flight school.

After his first assignment at Niagara Falls flying F-86s, he was posted to Korea. He shot down the last Chinese-piloted MIG-15 on May 10, 1955.

His next assignment was the Military Airlift Transport Service, ferrying newly built fighter aircraft overseas. He made dozens of these risky, high-altitude flights across the North Atlantic to Europe and North Africa before the advent of in-air refuelini.

McInerney earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering at Princeton University. Assigned to the research-and-development section of the Tactical Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, he conducted several test flights of the F-105.

He was assigned to the Royal Air Force Staff College at Bracknell, England, shortly after marrying Mary Catherine Hill. His next assignment was in Germany with: the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing.

In 1967, seeking duty in Southeast Asia, then Lt. Col. McInerney was assigned as commander of the 13th Tactical Fighter Squadron. He led pilots on flights to suppress Soviet-built North Vietnamese air defenses, which were exacting heavy pilot losses and threatening U.S. air superiority.

While leading combat operations over North Vietnam, he developed and trained his crews in new air tactics, and personally destroyed 17 surface-to-air missile sites, a world record. He lost no aircrews in...