Jacksel Markham "Jack" Broughton (January 4, 1925 – October 24, 2014) was a career officer and fighter pilot in the United States Air Force (USAF). He retired in the rank of colonel on August 31, 1968, with 43 separate awards and decorations, including four Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Silver Stars and the highest Air Force service decoration for heroism, the presidentially-awarded Air Force Cross. Broughton avowed that his proudest accomplishment was being combat-qualified in every air force fighter from the P-47 Thunderbolt to the F-106 Delta Dart. He authored two personal memoirs of the Vietnam War that were highly critical of the direction of the air war there and the rules of engagement. Biography Broughton was born January 4, 1925, in Utica, New York. He was a 1942 graduate of Brighton High School in Rochester, New York. He was an Episcopalian. Broughton entered the United States Military Academy on July 15, 1942, appointed from New York's 38th congressional district, in the wartime three-year curriculum that consolidated the cadet second (junior) and first class (senior) years into a single 12-month period. He graduated 839th in general merit among the 852 members of the Class of 1945, completing his flight training while still a cadet at Garner Field, Texas, and Stewart Field, New York. He was commissioned into the United States Army Air Forces on June 5, 1945. Broughton married on December 25, 1951, to Alice Joy ("AJ") Owen, and produced a son and three daughters. Following his retirement from the USAF in 1968, Broughton worked as a pilot for Antilles Air Boats in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, for Conroy Aircraft managing a contract for aerial resupply of Mobil Oil operations on the Alaska North Slope, and as a manager in the flight test program and a technical planning advisor for the Space Shuttle Endeavour for Rockwell International. He also formed a corporation seeking to develop a practical bus-sized air cushion vehicle. He died in Lake Forest, California on October 24, 2014, at the age of 89. Air Force career World War II ended before Broughton could participate in combat missions. He initially combat-qualified as a pilot in North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers at Enid Army Air Field, Oklahoma, and was in training to become a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress pilot at Hendricks Army Air Field, Florida, when he received orders in December 1945 transferring him to Europe as a fighter pilot.