The afternoon of 17 July 1969 was warm and clear above Honduras. Captain Fernando Soto’s Vought F4U-5NL Corsair, FAH-609, climbed out of the haze and into the kind of light that fighter pilots talk about for the rest of their lives. He was about to fight the last piston-engined dogfight in the history of aviation.

Aviation history is full of grand last moments — the last Sopwith Camel kill, the last Spitfire scramble, the last Sabre against the last MiG-15. The last propeller-driven air combat is rarely included because it didn’t happen in a place anyone in Europe or America was paying attention to. It happened in Central America, in a short four-day war fought between two countries that had no business owning fighter aircraft — and yet had inherited some of the finest piston fighters ever built.

The aircraft that should not have been there

By 1969, the jet age was a quarter-century old. The F-4 Phantom was the dominant fighter on the planet. The MiG-21 had been in service for nine years. The U.S. and Soviet air forces had retired every piston-engined fighter except trainers. But arms-supply diplomacy is a slow business, and in the Central American republics, the inventories looked like a 1945 Air Force museum.

El Salvador’s FAS — Fuerza Aérea Salvadoreña — had about half a dozen worn-out Goodyear FG-1D Corsairs, a handful of freshly imported Cavalier Mustangs, and converted C-47 Skytrains. Honduras’ FAH operated a fleet of Vought F4U Corsairs, including F4U-4 and F4U-5 variants. Both fleets were in flying condition, both were maintained by veteran ground crews trained in the 1950s, and both flew with pilots who had logged thousands of hours on these airframes. The Cold War had moved on. Honduras and El Salvador had not.

The two countries had been in a slow-burning political and demographic crisis through the 1960s — Salvadoran emigration into Honduras, land-reform disputes, border tensions. A series of qualifying matches for the 1970 FIFA World Cup tipped the powder keg. Riots broke out at the stadiums. Demonstrators marched. El Salvador severed diplomatic ties on 26 June 1969. On 14 July, the FAS launched a pre-emptive strike against Honduran airfields. The 100 Hour War had begun.

Soto’s afternoon

Soto launched out of Toncontín airfield in Tegucigalpa on 17 July with his wingman, Captain Edgardo Acosta. The pair came to the aid of a third Honduran Corsair pilot who had been jumped by two Salvadoran Cavalier Mustangs while strafing targets south of Tegucigalpa.

The first kill came within minutes. Soto pounced on one of the Mustangs, turned inside it, and put three bursts from his four 20 mm cannon into it, knocking off its left wing. The Salvadoran pilot, Captain Douglas Varela, was reportedly killed when his parachute failed to deploy fully.

Later that afternoon, Soto and Acosta ran into a pair of Salvadoran FG-1D Corsairs. Soto climbed above them and flamed one in a diving pass; that pilot parachuted to safety. The second FG-1D then slid onto Soto’s unprotected tail, and the two Corsairs — one built by Vought, one by Goodyear — twisted through a low-altitude knife fight until Soto pulled a split-S that lined him up behind his opponent. A stream of cannon fire, and Captain Guillermo Reynaldo Cortez — the highest-ranking casualty of the war — died in the fireball. Soto returned to base with three kill markings about to be painted on FAH-609’s cowling.

Why this was the last

The 100 Hour War was over by 18 July. The OAS negotiated a ceasefire, the troops pulled back, and both air forces returned to garrison. Both countries quietly retired their piston-engine fighter fleets through the 1970s, transitioning to jets — Israeli-supplied Dassault Ouragans and Super Mystères, and later Cessna A-37 Dragonflies. No piston-engined air combat has occurred anywhere in the world since.

FAH-609, Soto’s aircraft, survives. It is now displayed at the Mu­seo del Aire de Honduras in Tegucigalpa, with three white silhouettes — two Corsairs and one Mustang — painted on its cowling. The aircraft last flew in 1981; the museum keeps it in running, though not flying, condition. Soto himself died in 2006, but lived long enough to see his story recovered by aviation historians and given the place it deserves. He was the last pilot to score air-to-air victories in a propeller-driven fighter.

The Mustang and the Corsair were among the finest piston fighters ever built. They earned their reputation over Europe and the Pacific in 1944 and 1945. They had their final dogfight, against each other, in Central America in 1969 — a quarter-century after the war that built them, in a corner of the world the headlines had moved past. There was something fitting in that.

Sources: Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine, Britannica, Museo del Aire de Honduras, Air Combat Information Group, Military History Now.