James Morehead was born in August 1916 in Peoli, Oklahoma, the youngest of four children in a family that worked a farm. He came of age during the Great Depression and said it was the "worst possible time for a youth"; he didn't have a vehicle and there were no job opportunities to earn a dime for a good time. Morehead finished high school, but didn't have the money to go to college so he worked on the family farm for a year and took various other jobs. For a time he was a "hobo," hitching to follow the summer wheat harvest, because it was the only opportunity for an unskilled farm boy to earn a little money. It was a tough life. Morehead returned to Oklahoma and began working his way through college courses at Oklahoma University [Annotator's Note: now the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma]. He had set his sights on the Army Air Corps, mainly because it was a good paying job, not because he was a "nut" about flying. He had never set foot in an airplane. In order to complete the college requirements, he stayed with his brother in Los Angeles, California to attend his last semester at UCLA [Annotator's Note: University of California, Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California]. At 24 years of age Morehead enlisted, and spent a couple of months after passing the physical waiting to be called. Out of money, he hitchhiked to Washington State and worked in bean fields and on truck farms. On 1 August 1940 the Army sent him by train to Glendale, California [Annotator's Notes: most likely to the 9th Flying Training Detachment at the Grand Central Airport in Glendale, California] where he began his Army Air Corps career as a "budding flying cadet" in a BT-13 [Annotator's Note: Vultee BT-13 Valiant basic trainer aircraft]. Morehead said it was "exciting" training, and that it was a challenge to solo for the first time. Fortunately, he had no "big bloomers."

After ten weeks of primary training, James Morehead moved to Moffett Naval Air Field [Annotator's Notes: NAS Moffett Field in Santa Clara County, California] and on to the AT-6 [Annotator's Note: North American Aviation AT-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft] for advanced training. At this point, he had troubles. The old commandant of cadets was a stickler, and called Morehead out because of an "understanding" with an upperclassman and sentenced him to 100 hours march with full pack. As far as his training in the aircraft, he once had fun in an unscheduled mock combat with a far more powerful plane. Morehead said it might have been a consequence of that prank that he was the only one of his class of 120 pilot cadets who got assigned to a fighter squadron. He told the sad story of a disagreement he had with a fellow student when the Japanese began to emerge as a threat. The other young man vehemently defended the Japanese and, after being sent to the Philippines, ended up dying on a death march.

In April 1941, James Morehead started training at Hamilton Field [Annotator's Notes: Hamilton Army Airfield Field, later Hamilton Air Force Base, in Novato, California] and one morning in November he had a mid-air collision in a P-40 [Annotator's Note: Curtis P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft]. The P-40 was an altered airplane, with a longer nose and in-line engine that meant different handling, and there were lots of accidents in that fast aircraft. On take off, when he and his wingman went to join two other planes of the flight, the planes collided, and Morehead bailed out, but his companion didn't make it. Morehead landed in the bay [Annotator's Note: San Francisco Bay], was rescued, and brought to the hospital. He was bruised, but not severely injured. While he was convalescing, his squadron [Annotator's Note: 70th Pursuit Squadron, 35th Pursuit Group] was sent to the Philippines. Morehead described them as a tough bunch, but they were subjected to cruel treatment at the hands of their Japanese captors, and Morehead was just lucky to have been held back in the states [Annotator's Note: United States]. He finally deployed with 54 other pilots from Hamilton Field on a nice passenger ship, and said the sea voyage was very pleasant; what came afterward wasn't so pleasant. The aircraft the Americans were using were no match for the opposition. Some of the Japanese pilots, according to Morehead, had been flying for ten years, compared to the relatively inexperienced pilots in his squadron [Annotator's Note: 8th Pursuit Squadron, 49th Pursuit Group]. He said it was a terrifying step to go from a pilot to a combat pilot in a "very tough war."

On 22 December [Annotator's Note: 22 December 1941], James Morehead headed south from San Francisco, California for Manila [Annotator's Note: Manila, Luzon, Philippines], but he didn't make it. The ship made a stop in New Zealand, and because the Philippines had been taken over by the Japanese, it sailed on to Brisbane, Australia. The Australians made an airport available to the Americans, and they unloaded airplanes, pilots, mechanics, and armor and went to work. The pilots helped assemble the 55 P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtis P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft], and were moving the aircraft when they had their first taste of war on Java [Annotator's Note: then Java, Netherlands East Indies, now Java, Indonesia]. Japanese spies gave their position away, and while Morehead's squadron [Annotator's Note: 17th Pursuit Squadron, 24th Pursuit Group] was on the ground, 31 enemy bombers made three runs over the airport, trying to destroy the American fighters. About half of the planes were gassed and ready to go when Morehead saw an enemy airplane in the distance. The planes that were ready took off, but some were intercepted in their climb and a couple of them were shot down, while others were riddled with bullets, but made it out. Morehead, who was still on the ground, jumped into a couple of the standing planes, and kicked up a lot of dust to obstruct the enemies' view while taxiing them into a field and safety. Then he and a friend ran away from the airport, but ran into Dutch ground troops who took shots at them until they could explain that they were not invaders. Morehead had another adventure during this time, and the two actions merited him a Distinguished Service Cross. Morehead escorted Captain Kurtz [Annotator's Note: then USAAF Captain, later USAF Colonel Frank Allen Kurtz, Jr.] as he flew his transport plane to one of the remaining American outposts on Java. Just before they reached their destination, Japanese Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] arrived. Morehead drew them off and chased them to another other part of the island while the officer safely landed. Afterward he was assigned to a defending squad out of a little grass field at Surabaya, where they operated for a few weeks until returning to Australia. Morehead said Yamamoto [Annotator's Note: Imperial Japanese Navy Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto] sent a greeting party to raid their airfield at Broom, and they killed 17 experienced crew chiefs. Morehead had left a just a few minutes before the raid, ended up at Adelaide, and was reassigned.

James Morehead's first combat action was an intercept of bombers determined to destroy the 19th Bomb Group's [Annotator's Note: 19th Bombardment Group] airfield on Java from which it operated its B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. Often, pilots would take their planes away from an airfield when a raid was imminent. He told the story of a lead pilot whose plane got stuck in the mud from the day before's rain turning a mission over to him, a rookie pilot. Five Japanese Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] dove toward his formation, and Morehead met them head-on; he fired at the leader, but didn't know what happened to the plane he attacked. Morehead called it a just a "little brush," but he did get to fire. When he got back to the base, he learned that one Zero was shot down, but his wingman claimed it. The next encounter was a "called-in" raid, and the flight leader took four planes up to oppose it; the plane Morehead was flying was sluggish, and kept falling back, but when he reached the formation he did some shooting, and knew he'd done some damage. When the sky cleared, he put down at an airfield that appeared to be abandoned. When the ground crews came out of their foxholes, they refueled and reloaded his plane, and gave him "confirmation" that in the battle above their heads he had destroyed two of the enemy aircraft. They were Morehead's first certain victories. After a few more days, the Japanese invaded [Annotator's Note: at this time, Morehead was serving with the 8th Pursuit Squadron on Java, Netherlands East Indies; now Java, Indonesia], landing several hundred ships at three different places on the island. The Americans scheduled a strafing mission, and Morehead was anxious to go and "kill somebody" in retribution for Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. But he was kept on the ground, and before a second mission was pulled together, the squadron got word to evacuate. A staff car took him and five other pilots to the B-17 airbase, where planes were burning, and they jumped into a bomber and got away in what Morehead said looked like a "movie ending." They flew the 1,400 miles back to Australia.

When James Morehead arrived at Broom, Australia, the little airfield where they landed didn't have modern pumping facilities, and it took a long time to hand pump the thousands of gallons needed to refuel the B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. The captain, Col. Eubanks [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel Eugene L. Eubank] who was the commanding officer of the 19th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 19th Bombardment Group], insisted on leaving and about an hour out of Broom, the plane's communications specialist [Annotator's Note: radio operator] made contact with the base they had just left, and learned that it was under attack. Altogether, over 540 people were killed there that day. Morehead went on to Perth, Adelaide, and Canberra, Australia's capital, where he trained for two weeks, and got assigned to a new unit [Annotator's Note: 8th Pursuit Squadron, 49th Pursuit Group]. He was sent to the front at Darwin, which was expecting an invasion, and the entire city of Darwin was evacuated. Morehead's unit occupied a gravel strip along the road where they operated until the end of 1942. It was a critical time. If the Japanese had taken Australia, the Americans would have lost their presence in the Southwest Pacific. Morehead said the patriotic fervor of any young man at that time was sufficient to make him a good soldier, and the new pilots were quick to become good fighters. Morehead led a flight of P-40s [Annotator’s Note: Curtis P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] several thousand miles from the training base at Canberra to Darwin and after a late night, he fell "flap asleep" on one leg of the four-part flight, waking just in time to save himself and his crew. He got a lot of grief about the incident. The Japanese were bombing almost every day, "softening Australia up," but made a strategic shift to take the Solomon Islands.

When the Japanese moved their area of concentration from Australia to the Solomon Islands, James Morehead's 8th Fighter Squadron [Annotator's Note: 8th Pursuit Squadron, 49th Pursuit Group] joined with the 7th and 9th, and set up camp. The 8th squadron was already on its third commander. The first had been killed in Java and the second lost in Australia. This left a greenhorn [Annotator's Note: an individual with no experience] in charge. In an early scramble under that pilot's command, two flights of four aircraft went out to meet a force of 31 Japanese bombers. Morehead described the action [Annotator's Note: which took place on 25 April 1942], during which he aggressively took the lead, and executed "just right." After his first run he was over an island. He liked to have "real estate" under a confrontation so he wouldn't have to bailout in water. He then proceeded to menace more enemy planes. Morehead points out that these skirmishes all happen in split second timing. He had throttled back, and was almost overtaken by a Zero [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] coming from below. Morehead said it was then he learned how steep a climb that light-weight plane could execute. The Zero zipped up in front of Morehead and was flying above him, dropping oil on his windshield. Morehead couldn't see, and went back to base with both tires shot flat and landed on the plane's tail. The airplane had to be retired but Morehead had three victories that round and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for the mission.

Another incident James Morehead felt worth recounting happened when he was flying a protection flight while other aircraft were landing, which was always a vulnerable position in terms of an attack on an airfield. After everybody was landed, Morehead got the notion to chase the Japanese raiders as they were leaving. He spied three Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero], headed out in neat formation. One of the American pilots, a "chicken" according to Morehead, reported engine trouble and turned back, leaving Morehead at an unfavorable two-to-three ratio. He decided to even the odds, and his hunting instincts kicked in. He stalked the trio, excited but in control, and almost cut one of the planes in two. He then attacked the lead, and "decapitated" him. The third plane, more maneuverable than Morehead's, veered away and completely disappeared. Morehead continued firing and when he looked back, the third plane was falling to the sea "like a maple leaf." Looking to his side, he spied a parachute, and decided to "thumb his nose at the guy." On closer inspection, he realized there was nobody in the chute; he later read that the Japanese didn't buckle their straps. He didn't get credit for the victories because he didn't have confirmation. When he got back to base, his crew chief told him he had almost shot himself down on the mission. There was his own characteristic blue ammo embedded in his oil cooler radiator which had ricocheted back into his plane.

When activity became concentrated at Guadalcanal, they [Annotator's Note: James Morehead and the rest of the 8th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Group, 5th Air Force] were moved to New Guinea. One of the stops along the way was at Townsville, Australia, where he flirted with a pretty girl, the colonel's secretary, and they dated for the week he stayed there. He mentioned the native women were "really cute," and "well constructed," and he didn't have to know the language to interact with them. Morehead's records were destroyed in Java, but he had been flying two or three times a day, and he thinks he was in the South Pacific about a year when he was among those, who had done the most dangerous duty, returned to the United States. On the way he stopped over in Brisbane [Annotator's Note: Brisbane, Australia], and roomed with a friend who told the story of his neighbor, a major, who had gone berserk and threatened the base commander with a knife. Morehead related the tale of how he, a captain, got into a fight with the miscreant major, and won; he had him taken to the hospital and then to the brig. Morehead said he was anxious to get out of Brisbane and all the legal entanglements that could have come from that altercation. The next morning, he caught a plane out and put the incident 14,000 miles behind him.

On arrival in San Francisco, California, James Morehead reported to headquarters, and didn't like the planes he would be flying for his next assignment. Instead he signed on to train with a P-38 [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightening fighter aircraft] squadron. He married a girl who had waited for him in San Francisco and stayed there until February 1944. He was sent to Foggia, Italy to fly with the 1st Fighter Group [Annotator's Note: 94th Fighter Squadron, 1st Fighter Group, 15th Air Force]. There, he protected bombers on their way to the oil fields and other important targets in southern Europe. He flew 50 missions, with plenty of dramatic experiences, but he only "bagged" one enemy aircraft. Morehead did not feel the P-38 was a good plane for victories because it had a compressibility flaw. As an example, on one mission to Ploesti, Romania, Morehead's intelligence officer lost oxygen and turned green; in his hurry to save the man's life, Morehead dove too fast, and almost crashed into a mountain. On another mission in Italy, Morehead was flying wingman, and his flight leader made a "bad mistake" by flying into a frontal air mass. The squadron had to fly on instruments through a massive cloud, and three or four of the planes crashed, and other pilots had to bail out. Fortunately, Morehead had the training to get through the blind spot, but said it was terribly stressful to get the instruments settled, and make it back. When he landed he got the sad news of the squadron's serious losses. Morehead's missions in Europe were "pretty hard," mostly strafing and dive-bombing. He recalled strafing a well defended roundhouse full of German steam engines, and that he shot a lot of ammunition and felt good about it.

James Morehead discusses his aerial victory while he was on an escort mission over Romania. He saw two planes that looked like enemy aircraft. Morehead said he pulled away from his squadron [Annotator's Note: 94th Fighter Squadron, 1st Fighter Group, 15th Air Force], having recognized the planes as Me-109s [Annotator's Note: German Messerschmitt Me-109 or Bf-109 fighter aircraft], and shot one down. The interesting part of the story is the aftermath. Much later, an author who wanted to mention Morehead's experience over Europe in a book contacted him, and Morehead told the man that he had a total of eight victories. The author called him back to say that when he tried to verify that number, the Flight Data Record Center at Montgomery, Alabama contradicted Morehead's count. He contacted the Center and learned that they had no record of his victory at Ploesti. But two years later, further research proved that the records for Morehead's 71st Fighter Squadron, 1st Fighter Group for the period between 4 and 8 June 1944 were lost in shipment from San Sevaro to Naples during the war. The Center sent Morehead a letter of apology. Continuing with his exploits while stationed in Italy, Morehead observed that he had little respect for the commanding officer of his 1st Fighter Group because his judgment was almost always poor. He recounted a strafing mission of an airport in southern France after the invasion, that had a number of Ju-88s [Annotator's Note: German Junkers Ju-88 multi-role combat aircraft], which were killing American troops. Morehead suggested an unconventional high approach, and accepted responsibility for possibly trading the lives of a few pilots for those of many ground troops. Fortunately, the enemy aircraft had fled the field. Another mission, once again in southern France, Morehead encountered five Me-109s attacking his squadron. He described how his squadrons "wrapped around" with the German aircraft and after forcing one pilot to bail out, Morehead chased the remaining aircraft into a canyon, where one German crashed into the mountain, but Morehead soon found himself outnumbered, and left the pursuit.

The 71st Fighter Squadron [Annotator's Note: 71st Fighter Squadron, 1st Fighter Group, 15th Air Force] usually guarded "big strings of bombers," and James Morehead said when the Americans turned into the German fighters, they usually fled. The American policy held that they were not to be pursued. Morehead disagreed; he felt it should have been left to the pilot's discretion. He wasn't successful in getting that policy changed, but he did force a change that identified fighter plane squadrons by the color of their tail. Asked what life was like on the ground in Italy, Morehead remembered two "delightful" events. The attrition of fighter pilots was so great that he went through two complete sets of tent mates in just of few weeks. The other unhappy memory is of waking up at four in the morning and having to dress for combat in a freezing cold tent, all the while facing the possibility of getting shot down before he could return to base. Morehead said it was on of the most miserable times of his life. Morehead was a major and squadron leader when he deployed to Italy, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel before he left. He said it was impressive that the Americans could turn the war around on two experienced militant nations, and put them on the defensive. He had a theory of how a peace-loving, peace-seeking nation could do that. He feels that the young folks of America were different and, being an avid international hunter himself, maybe the hunting licenses that 22 million Americans hold had something to do with it.

On VE-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945], James Morehead was base commander at Chico Air Force Base in California. On VJ-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945] he was home in Oklahoma. When the news came out about the atomic bombs, Morehead at first thought it was newspaper propaganda. When people were sure it was true, it was a very joyous occasion. And when people say "shame on the atomic bomb," it makes him want to "puke." He believes it was a terrible situation, but it would have been more terrible if Americans had to kill all of the Japanese in their country. Morehead said he hasn't learned to like them yet. When the war ended, Morehead remained on active duty. He went to Korea during that conflict, and trained Nationalist Chinese pilots in Taiwan. Morehead retired in 1967, and went on to a civilian business career. He has traveled a great deal, and enjoyed his retirement, making up for his deprived youth.