Jerry Yellin

Jerome "Jerry" Yellin (born February 15, 1924) is a former United States Army Air Forces fighter pilot, who flew the final combat mission of World War II in a North American P-51 Mustang against a military airfield near Tokyo on August 14, 1945 (August 15, 1945 local time in Tokyo). Captain Yellin's mission was executed five days after a U.S. Army Air Force Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Bockscar had dropped a second American nuclear weapon on Japan, with the second being dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

Captain Yellin flew the final combat mission along with another pilot, First Lieutenant Phil Schlamberg, who was piloting a second P-51 as Captain Yellin's wingman. Yellin and Schlamberg were executing their mission against the airfield at or about the time that Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, meaning that Japan would accept allied terms for unconditional surrender. Yellin and Schlamberg did not hear the military's attempted radio broadcast alerting them that the war had ended.

Immediately after carrying out their mission against the aifrield, Yellin and Schlamberg banked steeply into a cloud cover. Yellin emerged from the cloud cover, but Schlamberg had disappeared, apparently shot down, and became the final known combat death of World War II. Schlamberg's body was never recovered. Short on fuel, Yellin began his four-hour flight back to his home base on Iwo Jima, where he learned that the war had ended.

The story of Yellin's historic final flight is told in the book The Last Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II, by author Don Brown, released by Regnery Publishing on July 31, 2017. Yellin was a contributor and wrote the foreword for book.

Yellin and Brown appeared together to kick off the book's release and to discuss Yellin's final, historic mission at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on August 1, 2017. They appeared again together on August 3, 2017, at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California to discuss the book and Yellin's experiences in the war.

Captain Yellin currently lives in Orlando, and travels the country, speaking in support of veterans.