Nicknamed "Tiger Joe", Major Thompson flew 90 combat missions in 1944 for the Allied forces in Europe, most behind German lines, performing aerial reconnaissance.

Thompson published a book in 2006 entitled, Tiger Joe: A Photographic Diary of a World War II Aerial Reconnaissance Pilot.

His great-great-grandfather, Thomas Thompson (1759–1837), was one of middle Tennessee's earliest settlers, arriving from North Carolina in the winter of 1779 to a site that would become the city of Nashville.

[1]: 20 On February 10, 1944, Thompson was designated for a mission to aid Allied ground forces who were pinned down near Mesenich, a German town on the Moselle River.

[7]: 236  Thompson was skilled in obtaining specialized aerial photographs of enemy positions using a new and highly secret technique which made it possible for Allied artillery to hit a target accurately with the first round.

[9] It involved risk for a pilot to obtain such photographs; he had to fly at 3000 feet over enemy positions for about three minutes on a straight and level path (within the ideal range of anti-aircraft fire).

Coming out of the dive at 350 mph, he turned his cameras on and flew a prescribed heading over the enemy front, as German flak bursts followed his track.

[7]: 237  The footage he obtained using the Merton grid allowed unparalleled accuracy for Allied artillery, a complete surprise to the enemy forces who believed there must have been some sort of secret weapon guiding the ordnance.

[12] Two days before the Allied invasion date known as D–Day (June 6, 1944), Thompson flew a mission that included photographing a list of sites over France, one of which was called "Grandcamp".

[1]: 20  In his later book, Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower said, "Airplane photography searched out even minute details...[and] information so derived was available to our troops within a matter of hours.

[6] On one of his missions over France, anti-aircraft fire penetrated his P-51 Mustang aircraft just behind his cockpit; it destroyed his camera equipment, severed the hydraulic lines and stopped the engine.

After the war, Thompson built a life insurance career spanning several decades and was recognized with a number of national honors in that industry.

About 1995, Lucas G. Boyd conducted a series of interviews with Thompson in a photo-by-photo format in preparation for an exhibit as part of this lectureship,[a] which was later presented at the Tennessee State Museum.

[14]: 16  In 2004 and 2005, Alice Swanson, a library volunteer, conducted a total of over five hours of additional interviews in which Thompson provided a story-by-story recollection of his military experiences.

He published these photos in a book in 2006 entitled, Tiger Joe: A Photographic Diary of a World War II Aerial Reconnaissance Pilot.