George H. W. Bush was not a fighter pilot. He was a war hero, but he flew a TBM Avenger torpedo bomber in the Western Pacific.
I already knew that he flew an Avenger in WWII. What surprised me about the news report was that his plane was a jet fighter. This is along the same lines as every firearm being an AK-47 in news reports. (The joke loses something when it has to be explained)