When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, plunging the United States into World War II, Jerry Yellin was a teenager living with his family in Hillside, N.J. Having been intrigued by flight since he was a youngster — he constructed planes modeled on World War I aircraft — he joined the Army Air Corps in February 1942, on his 18th birthday, and became a fighter pilot.
