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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Thomas W. Olsson
Interviewed by: Bruce Florsheim
Date: October 24, 2018
Location: Seattle, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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Abstract:
Vietnam War veteran Thomas W. “Tom” Olsson is interviewed about his military service as a
helicopter pilot with the United States Army. He discusses his combat tours in Southeast Asia
flying the Bell AH-1 Cobra gunship and describes his later assignments as a flight instructor for
the Cobra and the Hughes AH-64 Apache. He also touches on his post-military careers with
Rockwell Collins and the Boeing Company and on his volunteer work at The Museum of Flight.
Biography:
Thomas W. “Tom” Olsson is a Vietnam War veteran who served with the United States Army as
a helicopter pilot and flight instructor. He was born in the mid-1940s in Kentfield, California to
Ward T. Olsson and Wilma E. Olsson. His father was a career officer with the U.S. Air Force,
and his mother was a housewife and hospital volunteer.
After graduating from high school, Olsson attended the Northrop Institute of Technology
(California), where he studied aircraft maintenance engineering. While in college, he became a
certified A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic and worked for Brittain Industries helping to
install aircraft autopilot systems.
In July 1968, knowing that he would likely soon be drafted, Olsson opted to join the U.S. Army
and become an aviator. He completed training at Fort Polk (Louisiana) and Fort Wolters (Texas),
learning to fly on the Hughes 269 helicopter. He next underwent training in the Bell AH-1 Cobra
at Hunter Army Airfield (Georgia) and was deployed to Southeast Asia. Over the course of his
combat tour, he flew a mix of attack, visual reconnaissance, ground support, and evacuation
missions and accumulated over 1,300 hours of helicopter flight time.
Returning to the United States, Olsson served the rest of his military career as an instructor pilot
in the Bell AH-1 Cobra and Hughes AH-64A Apache. He retired in 1988 at the rank of Chief
Warrant Officer 4. As a civilian, he worked for Rockwell Collins as a human factors engineer
and for the Boeing Company as a systems engineer and engineering manager. His projects at
Boeing included the 767-400 and 787 Dreamliner.
Olsson’s volunteer work at The Museum of Flight includes serving on the Docent Corps and
participating in the restoration efforts of the Boeing 747 and Boeing B-29 Superfortress. He also
donated materials to the Museum from his and his father’s military careers.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
interviewee.
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Interviewer:
Bruce Florsheim worked for The Boeing Company for over four decades, from 1967 to 2008. At
the time of his retirement, he was Vice President of Program Management Operations for Boeing
Commercial Airplanes. As of 2019, Florsheim is a member of The Museum of Flight Docent
Corps and has served as the Docent Leadership Committee (DLC) Chair and DLC Chair
Emeritus.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by Mark Jaroslaw, Jaroslaw Media.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
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Index:
Introduction and personal background .........................................................................................5
Early aviation experiences ...........................................................................................................7
Favorite aircraft ...........................................................................................................................8
U.S. Army training ......................................................................................................................9
Service in Vietnam as a Bell AH-1 Cobra pilot ......................................................................... 10
Personal impact of the Vietnam War ......................................................................................... 16
Instructor assignments and flying the Hughes AH-64 Apache ................................................... 16
Career with Rockwell Collins and Boeing ................................................................................. 19
Experiences as an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic and aircraft owner...................... 21
Involvement with The Museum of Flight................................................................................... 22
Closing thoughts ....................................................................................................................... 23
Favorite aircraft engine ............................................................................................................. 24
B-29 restoration project ............................................................................................................. 24
Overlap with his father’s military career .................................................................................... 26
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Thomas W. Olsson
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
BRUCE FLORSHEIM:
My name is Bruce Florsheim, and we are at The Museum of Flight
in Seattle on October 24th, 2018 for the purpose of interviewing Tom Olsson, a Vietnam
veteran who flew the Cobra helicopter gunship and later the Apache attack helicopter.
I’m going to be talking with Tom primarily about his experiences as an Army pilot in
Vietnam, but we’ll cover the rest of his long aviation-related career as well.
Tom, thank you for taking the time to participate in The Museum of Flight’s Oral History
Program. It’s an honor to have you with us. We’ll start by getting some of the basic
background information. Please state your full name and spell it.
TOM OLSSON:
Thomas William Olsson, O-L-S-S-O-N.
BF:
And just for the record, where and when were you born and where did you grow up?
TO:
So I was born in Kentfield, California, but I’m really a nowhere man because I didn’t
grow up in any given location. My dad was a career Air Force officer, and I spent my
years following him around the world. Everywhere from—right after World War II, he
was in the—an aviator in the Berlin Airlift, and he—we were assigned to Germany, and
then we went to England, and then we went to Alabama and a little bit of everywhere. So
within six months of me being born we were on the road and never stopped.
When I graduated out of high school, I went to college in California. He happened to be
in Washington, D.C. at Andrews Air Force Base. And so I was immediately on my own
heading out, and then the draft and everything else came along, and I found opportunities
within the Army and decided that I’d stay in so that—I just kept moving. And I
actually—the longest time I’ve ever lived anyplace is right here in Seattle. I’ve spent the
last 20—about 20 years here in Seattle.
BF:
All right. Well, I gather your father had an influence on your going into the military?
TO:
That’s a funny story. So I was at a technical college called Northrop Institute in
California, and they—I was studying aircraft maintenance engineering. So a part of that
course was to become an airframe and power plant mechanic, and I was working on—
they had a variety of airplanes and helicopters and stuff for us to work on, and one of
them was a Hughes 269, a little two-seat training helicopter. And so they gave us an
assignment to work on it. I worked on it, and I remember telling a buddy, “Oh man,
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that’s—I’d never get one of those things. That’s really dangerous. Helicopters are
terrible.”
And then the—actually, probably the impetus for going into the military was, at that time,
was Vietnam, and there was a draft going on. I get a letter from the draft board that said,
“Go take a physical.” And I said—I knew I didn’t want to be on the ground running
around, so I went down to the recruiter, and he said, “Well, take this test, and if you pass
it you can go to flight school. The Army’s got this thing called ‘high school to flight’
school.” Well, I’d had three years of college, but he didn’t bother to tell me that there
were other services I could have gone to. He obviously had needed recruits for the Army.
And so I took the test, passed it, and then I went into the military. And when I called my
dad up and told him that I signed up to avoid being drafted, my dad said, “Well, why
didn’t you join the Navy?” [laughs] So that was a pretty funny thing at the time. I don’t
know what I thought at that time, but that’s what happened.
BF:
That worked out fairly well for you.
TO:
Oh, yeah. I did spend 20 years in the military and was very, very happy with my own
career, although—I was a warrant officer, so—as opposed to a commissioned officer,
which commissioned officers in the Army, if they get to be aviators, they don’t get to stay
and keep flying, where a warrant officer, your job is to be an expert and to fly. And so
that’s what I really dearly loved, and so I stayed in. They made the mistake of making me
an instructor pilot, and I had a great time doing that and continued through the career as
a—ended up being an instructor to instructors.
BF:
Okay, let’s round out the basic background information.
TO:
Sure.
BF:
You talked about your father. What was your parents’ names and what—
TO:
So my father Ward T. Olsson. He went by Thomas or Tom. My mother was Wilma E.
Olsson, and she was just a housewife, followed her husband. His career lasted 30 years,
so she just went around and she would volunteer. I can remember her volunteering in
hospitals. I think they called them Candy Stripers or something like that in the Air Force
hospitals, base hospitals, and did those kinds of things.
BF:
All right. Definitely a military family.
TO:
Yeah, she raised three kids, so—I’ve got a brother and a sister.
BF:
Okay. What are their names?
TO:
So my brother is Eric Olsson, and my sister’s name is Mary.
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BF:
You talked a little bit about your education. You went to Northrop, but you’d also had
college at that point and when on to grad school. You want to—
TO:
Yeah. Yeah, when I—after I got out of the military, I went to work for Rockwell
International, at the time, in their division called Collins Radio. And I felt that I had—I’d
gotten a bachelor’s degree—I finished my bachelor’s degree at night in the Army, and I
decided that working for Rockwell, if I wanted to continue in the company or go up in the
company, I needed to get a degree. So I ended up getting an MBA from a college in
Florida.
BF:
You talked about—
TO:
And that was a night school, too.
BF:
You talked about the draft coming up and your decision to go into the Army. What did
you plan to do before that happened?
TO:
Well, I’d been—so I had become an A&P. And I actually was going to college, and I was
working for an outfit called Brittain Industries, who was—built autopilots for small
airplanes. Actually, I ended up putting an autopilot in a P-51. But they were out of
Torrance, California, and so the school was in Inglewood, and so I could go back and
forth from school to down there to Brittain.
And they were—it was an interesting place because they—the engineers would design
the systems, but they’d never designed how to install the systems into the airplanes. Or
they didn’t—when they handed them to me, they wouldn’t say, “Okay, you need to add
this bracket.” What they would do is they’d say, “Okay, here’s the servo. Now figure out
the bracket you need and then give it to us.” And then they would make the drawings to
give to the FAA to certify the systems for the—so they could get the STCs for the
different airplanes. So it was a lot of work like that. And that’s—my real talent is my
hands and being able to work geometry—strange geometries. I seem to think in 3D.
Something like that.
00:08:56
[Early aviation experiences]
BF:
That is a skill, very definitely. Can you tell us about your first plane ride—plane flight as
a pilot or as a passenger?
TO:
[laughs] Well, my—yeah, that’s a good question. So the very first flight was probably a
commercial airliner back when commercial airliners were like the one parked out in front.
Had radial engines. It was probably a DC-6 or a DC-7, following my father someplace
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over Europe. I remember it was—there’s a picture someplace on the web of my sister and
I in a—all dressed up, getting ready to go on an airplane. Back then, everybody got
dressed when they got on an airplane. And so we were the little kids that were going off
to Europe with their mother, unaccompanied—you know, no dad. Dad was already there.
So that was probably my very first exposure to airplanes.
My first exposure to small airplanes was one of my college buddies was a pilot, and he
had a little single-engine, like a very small Cessna, like a 150 or something. And we went
up, and one of the very first things he did is says, “Well, do you want to see a stall spin?”
And I said, “Sure.” So he did this thing, and I’m going, “Wow! That was something,”
when we pulled back out. And so that was my first experience with that.
BF:
All right. Who was the individual who inspired you the most? Mentor or hero?
TO:
You know, to tell you the truth, I just—that’s a question I have a—when you sent that to
me earlier, and I’ve thought about it, and I can’t say that—maybe Lindbergh, but—I
built—I was mechanical. I was hands on, and so it was things like airplanes inspired me.
P-51s, P-47s, those kinds of things were much more the inspiration, trying to figure out,
“How’s that work? Why did they do things the way they did it?” Those were the things
that were important to me.
BF:
All right.
TO:
I had probably—I just can’t point to a single individual.
00:11:32
[Favorite aircraft]
BF:
Okay. And the question we ask all of our interviewees: what’s your favorite aircraft and
why?
TO:
Well, to tell you the truth, probably my favorite aircraft is going to shock a lot of people,
but it’s a Mooney M20C. And the reason is because I owned one for 18 years, flying my
family around the United States. It’s just a wonderful little airplane, very efficient, very
fast for its horsepower. And it was one of the very early models, so it had mechanical
landing gear, and you had a—what they called a Johnson bar that you latched onto the
instrument panel to—for the gear was down, and then when it was up, you pushed the bar
down to the floor. And it was a very reliable system. That was—as a mechanic, I was
always interested in reliable systems, so I didn’t like electric motors running my gear. I
wanted something that I—push-pull tubes and things like that.
BF:
That was a fast airplane, and it had a lot of advancements for its time, definitely.
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TO:
Right. And it could carry four people, and that was—my family was four. And so we
could go from—at the time I bought it, I was in Alabama, and my family all lived in the
Washington, D.C. area. And instead of 55 miles an hour on the freeway up the East
Coast—or I-90, I could get in my Mooney, and at 145 knots, I could be there in half a
day, easy.
BF:
All right. And although we don’t have a Mooney here, what’s your favorite aircraft at
The Museum of Flight?
TO:
Probably the B-17 because of the—I spent two—three years giving tours through the B17, and I was astounded. And it got me interested in the aviators of World War II, and so
I did a lot of reading about what their personal experiences were and—because it just was
fascinating to me. And how—I was impressed with how small it was, and then I started
realizing that most of the guys that flew at that time were about my size, and so even
though I had to squeeze through the bomb bay, it was really—it was typical for them.
They had the same problems, so it was—I was able to personalize that pretty easily.
00:14:04
[U.S. Army training]
BF:
All right. Let’s turn now to your Vietnam War experience. When did you join the Army?
TO:
I joined the Army in July 1988 [sic – meant 1968].
BF:
And where were you sent for training?
TO:
So the very first training was in Fort Polk, Louisiana, basic training, flew a DC—got a
ride—first ride in a DC-3 down to Fort Polk, Louisiana. And the funny thing there was
I’d looked out the window and on the wing somebody had stuck a bumper sticker that
said, “Eat more possum.” [laughter] And I don’t know why, but that’s stuck with me all
these years. That was basic training.
Then from there, after basic training, I went to Fort Wolters, Texas, where we—right
from—so I passed the test, passed the physical for flight physical, and that meant, “Dude,
you’re into it. We’re going to make you a helicopter pilot.” And so they ran us through
basic training, and then we—and then after basic training, we—literally, the day we
graduated from basic training, we climbed on a bus, and we rode a bus ride from
Louisiana to Fort Wolters, Texas, which was—[cellphone rings]—excuse me. Sorry. Let
me turn this off. I don’t—I’m not interested. So we were on the bus, went to Fort
Wolters, Texas, and started—basically you start flight school by doing officer basic—
warrant officer basic training for about six weeks or so, and then you start flying after
that.
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BF:
Started flying on what? What did you—
TO:
So we flew on the—what is a Hughes 269, which is the same helicopter I worked on in
the school that I said I’d never get near. And so I learned to fly that at about a—right
around 100 hours or so in that helicopter. Had my first emergency—true emergency
procedure with an engine failure in a single-engine helicopter during flight school with an
instructor. And the instructor—I was flying. The engine quit, and I thought the instructor
would grab the controls. And he just sat there, and I had to land the helicopter. And that
was a tremendous confidence-builder, obviously, because then I realized that, “Hey, this
training really works.” And became a very good student, let’s say it that way. I just made
it my job to learn as much as I could about flying and helicopters and et cetera.
BF:
All right. How old were you when you arrived overseas? What was the average age of the
pilots?
TO:
Oh, yeah. There—well, so I was the old man. I was probably older than the company
commander. I was 23. Like I said, I’d been to three years of college—I’d actually—
almost four years of college, but I’d started my college career in a junior college that me
and they didn’t get along. And so I transferred out to Northrop, and I found my place
there. But the draft was after me. After four years they said, “That’s it. That’s enough of
that.” So they wouldn’t give me another deferment to finish my degree, so I just—I
joined up with about two or three years of college—I mean, with the four years of
college, and then I—and that made me about 24. I graduated from high school at 18, so I
was a little older than most people that graduated from high school.
The other pilots in the outfit, most of them were—they couldn’t legally buy beer in the
States. They were under 21. Some of them as young as 18. Some of them had fibbed a
little bit about how old they were to be able to fly helicopters. Interesting that—because
the same thing would happen so much in World War II, too, that the kids seemed to be
motivated to do that. Or a certain group of them, anyway.
00:18:38
[Service in Vietnam as a Bell AH-1 Cobra pilot]
BF:
Now, you were a pilot on a Cobra helicopter gunship.
TO:
I was.
BF:
Please tell us about that helicopter.
TO:
So a Cobra is a two-place, tandem seating. The fuselage is 36 inches wide. The rotor
blades are 48 inches wide. So the rotor blades, the wings, are actually wider than the
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fuselage of the aircraft. The reason the aircraft’s narrow is because, back then, we
employed the aircraft very much like a fixed-wing. We made diving attacks. We didn’t
hover around the vegetation very much. In fact, the rules in my Calvary squadron was
that you—we flew around above 1,500 feet because that kept us out of the small arms
fire, 1,500 feet AGL. And then we—if we made a diving attack, we were supposed to
pull out of the diving attack at 1,000 feet or higher. That rule was probably bent pretty
regularly because of the heat of the moment.
So an attack helicopter is—you think of them as escorts, but in my unit, we were a
Calvary squadron, so during the day we went out looking for the enemy. Every day, we
had OH-6 observation helicopters, and then the Cobra would fly high cover for them and
they would go out hunting the bad guys, and we would—and then at night, we would
form up the two search teams into a single light fire team, two Cobras, and then we
provided fire support for the 25th Infantry Division. I flew out of Cu Chi, Vietnam, which
was in III Corps, which was just northwest of Saigon. And so a relatively flat area, some
hills on the northern borders. Also, we did a lot of work down in the Plain of Reeds or the
Mekong Delta area, supporting the Navy and the Riverine, the people in the boats up on
the Mekong Delta. So any time we went on a mission, we were headed for trouble. We
weren’t—it wasn’t like we were going to go out and deliver ammunition or somebody’s
lunch. We would go in loaded ready to shoot and hoping not to be shot at, but that
happened, too, so…
BF:
How many missions a day did you fly and what happened after the missions?
TO:
So typically the missions that we flew within our unit was—we had two days on and—or
three days on and a day off. Two days we’d fly day missions, the visual reconnaissance
mission, the scout and the Cobra trying to find—gather intel on the Viet Cong,
Vietnamese. And then at night—so then those two days after the missions, you couldn’t
do anything because you knew that the next day you had to fly again. And then the third
day you would form up into that fire team for the night missions and then you’d have—
you’d fly night missions on that third day. So you got to sleep in in the morning, but you
got—but you usually ended up staying up late the next night. So then by the time that was
over, now you had—the next day you were off, but by then you were so exhausted you
were just ready to hit the hay. You didn’t do much partying, where the scout guys, they
were—they never flew night missions and so they were always—they would be the
partiers group of our squadron.
The missions lasted—so the aircraft carries about—well, the aircraft carries enough fuel
for about two and a half hours of flight. But because you’re loading all the munitions on
the aircraft, it can’t carry the weight of all that fuel and the munitions, so we always
traded fuel for the munitions. We always went out fully loaded, and we—so that meant
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that we usually ended up with about an hour and a half worth of gas. And my experience
was in one year of flying—and that year was actually about 10 months long because I
was actually grounded for a month—in 10 months, I got 1,200 hours of flight time, and
about a third of that—actually over a third of it was at night. We did a heck of a lot of
night flying because we supported—when I say we supported the 25th Infantry Division,
not only did we support all the brigades, but we also supported the LRRP teams, the longrange six-man teams that go out—that went out searching, and those were some of—
those and the Dustoff missions were probably the more exciting ones of our existence.
BF:
On the “Centaurs in Vietnam” website, they talk about one LRRP mission. And you were
flying wingman to Sam Dooling [Thomas “Sam” Dooling]. Can you tell us about that
particular mission?
TO:
So I’m not—sorry. Well, let me—so I can’t—I don’t really remember that mission, per
se. The thing I would like to say is, for me, it was a job. I tried to do the best that I could,
and it all kind of blended together into one giant exercise of—most of the time, it was
running for a helicopter or landing in a POL point, a petroleum—a refuel location to
refuel the aircraft to go and get reloaded to go back out and do exactly the same thing that
I had been doing.
So there were times when the LRRPs would get into action, and we would go out. The
one that I remember the most probably was we were very close to the Cambodian border,
which is probably another story, but we were very close to the Cambodian border, which
meant that we were a long way from any refuel point. And these guys were in real
trouble, and they were having a heck of a time. And so I rolled in, and when I—at this
point, I was the fire team leader, so I had a wingman now. And I rolled in, and the next
thing I know are these basketballs are coming at me. And the basketballs were .51-caliber
machine gun fire, antiaircraft fire, which was effective above 1,500 feet. So I was diving
right into this stuff, and so I was very busy trying to turn off all the exterior lights and at
the same time shoot rockets. And my gunner was shooting with a minigun, which is in
the front of the Cobra. And the grenade launcher to suppress the enemy fire that was
coming at—not only coming up at us but was being shot at the LRRPs. And then we did
get a lift team. Our UH-1s, the lift aircraft, came in and picked them up, and we got them
out of there. There were many examples of things like that. And those typically happened
in the dark and usually after midnight. It was always a long day, a long thing.
BF:
You talk about flying close to the border. You said that’s another story. Unless it’s
classified, can you tell us the story?
TO:
So the—well—so the interesting thing about flying the border is is that, for most of the
time that we were there, we weren’t allowed to shoot across the border. And so we would
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fly the border—or we’d fly along the border to see who was coming across the Ho Chi
Minh Trail. And the guys would shoot from the other side of the border, and we couldn’t
shoot back.
And then the other thing that would happen is is that guys would go out there and they’d
get lost and they’d fly over the border and then they’d cause an incident. So one of the
commanding generals decided that the appropriate thing to do was to paint the border.
And so one of my jobs one time was to cover a UH-1 that had a spray boom and we
sprayed the border, but we didn’t spray it with just regular paint. We sprayed it with
iridescent paint. So the idea—the general’s idea was is that if you came up to the border
and you weren’t sure where you were, you were supposed to turn on your landing lights
so that this line would show up on the ground. You knew that you were—you weren’t
crossing the border. Of course, the instant you turned on your light in the dark, that
attracted everybody’s attention that was interested in knocking you out of the air, so it
wasn’t very successful.
There were other missions where we flew the border with—I flew cover for a Navy SH-2
Delta, which was their aircraft that had a magnetometer on it. That would be used for, in
the Navy, to find submarines, but what we did was they used it to find large caches of
weapons because it would have a magnetic anomaly. And those caches tended to be right
there near the border, so we’d be trucking up and down the border and the guys are
shooting at us and we couldn’t shoot back, so it was—and then eventually, we did get the
opportunity to go into Cambodia when Nixon sent us in.
BF:
Any other stories you’d like to share?
TO:
Well, yeah. So there is one. I was shot down when I was trying to cover another 25th
Infantry unit that was—there’s a mountain in the III Corps called Nui Ba Den, which is
about a 3,000-foot mountain. The rest of the ground is like 10 or 15 feet above sea level,
and then you got this 3,000-foot mountain sticking up, so it’s a pretty prominent thing.
And the U.S. owned the top. We had a radar and radio transmission station, and then we
kind of owned the jungle around the bottom of it. And then the thing was completely
interlaced with tunnels, and the Viet Cong were in the tunnels. And so every once in a
while, the 25th would decide that they were going to go attack this mountain, and they—
this particular day, they sent a group out and they attacked it. And when they did, they
got into contact, so they called the Cobras to come fire support.
So I was with a Pink Team. I had an OH-6 with me and myself. And I contacted the
ground commander, and the guy’s telling me [unintelligible 00:30:50] shooting. There
was an Air Force-issue FAC above us, which was an OV-10 aircraft flying around above.
Above him was some F-4 Phantoms that were going to try to supply close air support to
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these guys on the ground. And so I called the guy on the ground, and I said, “Hey, the Air
Force wants you to pop smoke.” And the guy on the ground says, “Hey, no way. I’m not
doing that.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what. I’ll just—I’ll fly over your position and
you tell me when you’re—when I’m over the top of you, and then I’ll tell the Air Force
and they can do it that way.” And he said, “Okay.”
So I flew up. So now this puts me like maybe 250, 300 yards from the mountain, and I
got—I started seeing traces go by the aircraft, and so I transmitted—so I was talking to
the FAC on one radio and the guy on the ground on a different radio. And I called the
FAC up, and I said, “I’m taking fire.” And then I started hearing it. I could feel the
aircraft getting hit. And the next thing was I’m taking hits. And then the next thing that
happened was the engine quit. And I said, “I’m going down. Rotors in the green.” And so
we land. I did another autorotation, just like I did in flight school. Hey, the system
worked twice. That’s—so it’s got to be really good training.
And I got on the ground. We got on the ground, and there was a lieutenant in my front
seat, and he—the instant we hit the ground, he was gone. He just disappeared. And I
grabbed the classified stuff out of the aircraft, and zeroed our classified information and
jumped out of the aircraft and ran over a rice dyke that I—I landed in a—it was a dry
season, so I landed in a rice paddy that was dry. And the next thing that happened was the
OH-6 guy lands—my scout lands next to me and says, “Are you okay?” And I said,
“Yeah.” And he says, “Okay, Six,” Six, which is our CO, “is coming to pick you up.” So
they came and picked us up and away we went. The Cobra—I’d hit a rice—when I
landed, I’d hit a rice dyke and knocked the skids out from underneath the aircraft, but it
just stayed upright. No other damage. And a Chinook came in the same day and hauled it
back.
Thinking back to your previous question, I think I know which mission you were asking
about, if you want to go there?
BF:
Yeah, please.
TO:
So this was when I was a new guy, a new aircraft commander. So the progression was,
when you got in country, you sat in the front seat of the Cobra. You were the gunner, and
you learned the mission. You learned how to talk on the radio. You learned how to
navigate around. You learned the area of operations so you could find your way around
without having to look at a map constantly. And you shot the turreted weapons on the
aircraft. So there was a minigun and a 40-millimeter grenade launcher. Once you went
through that training, then you would get transitioned—or you’d be moved to the
backseat, where you would fly—you physically flew the aircraft. The front seat had a set
of controls. They were side-arm controls like an F-16. As an instructor pilot, they were
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wonderful. I loved flying the Cobra and teaching in the Cobra. It was a wonderful
aircraft. Loved the side-arm controls.
So I got in the back seat, and I was being trained. So this is like—I started flying combat
missions in November of ’69, and in December, they made me an aircraft commander. So
you can—the pressure was always on. And I was an aircraft commander, so now my job
was I was the wingman. I was the number two guy in a gunship formation. I wasn’t
allowed to take—to cover a scout yet because that’s pretty sensitive. You got to be up—
pretty astute at that point. You got to be thinking all the time, covering a scout. So I’m
flying wingman, and we’re going up—the guys—the LRRPs are in contact. We’re a fire
team, so that mean it’s—this is pretty urgent, and this is a pretty big deal. They’ve got
two aircraft. It’s daytime, and we’re heading north and up the main supply route. And so
my job as the wingman was I was to call the artillery people and tell them where I was
going and get clearance to make sure that we weren’t flying through any gun target lines,
so they—or through where the artillery rounds were going.
So I call up the artillery, and I tell them where I’m at, tell them where we’re going, and
they say, “You’re in the middle of a GT line.” So that just scared the ever-loving bejesus
out of me because I’m probably—a week before we’d had a—one of the guys at night
had been hit be a 105 round. Luckily, the round was so new out of the tube or so—it had
an arm, so it just went through as a big bullet through a UH-1. So I was concerned that
these guys could actually hit a helicopter.
So as I’m keying the mic, which is on the stick, I key the mic to transmit to lead that
we’re in the gun target line. I also slammed the cyclic stick hard right and rolled the
aircraft completely upside down. So I’ve got—now I’ve got a Cobra upside down. Well,
helicopters, especially Bell helicopters, are not designed to fly upside down at all. And
once I’m upside down and the world is in the wrong place, that scares me again, so I roll
the aircraft right side up again. And then I think, “Nope, I’m in the gun target line. I got
to do something.” So then I had—I realized—so at that point, I saw lead. He was already
probably 130 or 140 degrees. He was heading—he knew what he was doing. He was
getting out of the way. So I rolled my aircraft upside down, and I did what would be in
the fixed-wing parley a split-S. I did a—and after I did it, I realized, “Oh, I kept a positive
G on the aircraft the whole time.” And that was the secret to the Cobra, was it really
wasn’t—you couldn’t fly at negative G. You had to maintain a positive G on the aircraft.
So I rolled the aircraft upside down, and eventually we exited the gun target line and
went up and did the thing. I think that was the story you were talking about.
BF:
Yes. Yes, it was.
TO:
I was slow, but I’ll get there.
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0038:04
[Personal impact of the Vietnam War]
BF:
How did the Vietnam War change you?
TO:
Like I said, I always thought of it as a job and the most important thing that I could do.
So when I left there, I was on the UH-1 and—[chokes up]—sorry. I remember my
aircraft was right next to us. And I thought I was leaving a job not done. I just felt that it
was—that I was abandoning my other buddies. Sorry. [wipes away tears]
[production talk]
00:38:04
[Instructor assignments and flying the Hughes AH-64 Apache]
BF:
Did you ever want to travel back to Vietnam after—
TO:
I’m not interested. Like I said, the Army, through their wisdom, made me an instructor
pilot. I came back from Vietnam with 1,200 hours—at that point, 1,300 hours of
helicopter time, which made me more than qualified to be an instructor. And they sent me
to—back to Savannah. So part of flight school was—half of it was at Fort Rucker, and
half of it was—half the class went to Fort Rucker, half the class went to Savannah,
Georgia to Hunter Army Airfield. I went to the Hunter Army Airfield group and went
right from flight school to Cobra school to Vietnam and back—right back to Savannah to
Hunter to teach people to fly Cobras. And then they made me an instructor, and then
within a year of that I was transitioned to be an instructors’ instructor, and I did that for
the rest of my career. So for 18-plus years, I was—no, 19 years, I was an instructors’
instructor of one form or another.
BF:
An instructors’ instructor, that’s impressive. Later you flew the AH-64 Apache attack
helicopter. How did that differ from flying the Cobra?
TO:
So in an—an Apache is—it’s actually—so I flew an A-model Apache. I flew—I was in
what they called the IKPT, which was the Initial and Key Personnel Training. I was one
of the first 13 pilots to fly production aircraft. When I started flying, we had four
helicopters total. Now they’ve got a thousand or something like that. So I was the top of
the pyramid. My job was to train the cadre of people that would teach people to fly the
Apache. And the Apache was a very complex—it had 13 different computers. It had
multiple ways that you interfaced with the—the human interface to the computers was
different depending on if you were talking to the Doppler radar, which was our
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navigation system, or if you were talking to the fire control computer. There was different
ways that you had to enter data into them. So it was a complex and difficult aircraft to fly.
The interesting thing was—well, there were several interesting things. So the Cobra
was—when they built it, it was a VFR aircraft. It had—it never had a VOR, it never had
any instrument navigation equipment in it, so it was never certified to fly IFR, Instrument
Flight Rules. But the Apache was, and it had—the Apache had two engines, and the
Cobra only had one, so that was—that made a significant difference. And the other thing
was is that, like I said earlier, the Cobra couldn’t—if you put everything on it, even the
last models, which was an S-model Cobra—so I started in a G-model, and by the time I
had finished flying Cobras, we were at S, was the model, which at that point was an
antitank aircraft and was designed to fly as close to the ground as possible. But you still
couldn’t carry all the missiles and a full load of gas.
The Apache, I could put all the gas in it I wanted, fill the tanks up. I could put all the
bullets on it I wanted, all the .30-caliber machine—or cannon ammunition on it, all the
Hellfire missiles, and fill up the rocket pods or I could carry 16 Hellfire missiles. And
then I could throw four or five cases of C-rations in the back, and I could throw my duffel
bag in there, and I could throw my ditty kit in there, and I could throw some stuff for the
guys down the line that had asked for something, and I’d still be under gross weight. It
was a fabulous aircraft to fly. It was—unlike the Cobra, it was capable of negative-G
flight. And it was just fantastic.
BF:
Any exciting stories about the Apache?
TO:
Well, so the Apache—for me, the Apache, I was—like I said, I was at the top of the
pyramid and I was towards the end of my career, so I was really teaching instructors to be
instructors—I was teaching—I was actually—ran the platoon that ran—that taught the
instructors to be instructors in Apaches. So we were—so that meant that you had to know
both seats, how they work. A typical line pilot tends to get assigned a particular seat and
that’s it. Apache has two different, very distinctive systems on it. One’s called Pilot Night
Vision, or PNVS. And that Pilot Night Vision System is a monocle that you wear over
your right eye, and it’s essentially—for the aviators, it’s a heads-up display that—but it
does something else. It also projects a FLIR image, an infrared image of the world around
you to your right eye. And so you can look—and it’s tracked by—you’ve got a head
tracker on your helmet, and it—the turret follows your head. The only problem is is that
that turret is—the sensor is not your eyeball here, but the sensor in front of the aircraft,
which is 13 feet in front of you and about two feet down, so it’s a little—you get a little
disoriented when you start moving your head around a lot. But it’s essentially designed to
be instantaneously—when you move your head, that’s where it’s going to look right
there.
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There’s a reticle for the cannon, so I could shoot the cannon off axis of the aircraft, where
in a Cobra, the only way I could shoot the turreted weapons was just to lock them up with
the center line of the aircraft and shoot them straight ahead. So if I spot something—so if
my gunner’s busy shooting in an Apache, if my gunner’s shooting the missiles or
tracking a target with the targeting system, then I can use the cannon for self-defense,
because now we’re flying the aircraft—instead of the 1,500 feet, now the strategy is to fly
as close to the ground as you can to put as many obstacles between you and the bad guys
as you can. The good news is is that you’re shooting a missile that’s got a range in excess
of five miles, so you just sit there and plunk at them and they don’t—the first thing they
know is when something starts blowing up. They don’t have any idea that they’re being
engaged.
So the Pilot Night Vision system has like four modes of symbology on your helmet. You
control that through another button on your cyclic stick. So if you’re at a hover, you’ve
got one set of symbology. As you transition from a hover, then you can switch to a
transitional one where you actually have an attitude indicator. And then there’s a third
mode—or a third and fourth mode where you’re up and away flying. And there’s also a
precision hovering mode, so if you’re in a hover hole where you don’t have a lot of
clearance—the rotor diameter’s 48 feet, so if you’re in a 60-foot-wide hole, you don’t
want to be drifting around. You want to stay put. So there was a method where you could
instantaneously drop a mark and it would—the aircraft could then—through your
symbology, you could keep the aircraft in a very tight position.
The Apache doesn’t have an autopilot. All the helicopters that I flew didn’t have
autopilots. You flew the aircraft 100% of the time. Unlike a fixed-wing, you never let go,
because if you let go, something bad is going to happen. So that was the backseat. So the
guy in the back in an Apache, he’s the driver. He’s driving the helicopter. The guy in the
front has weapon systems that, on the wings, are 2.75 or 70-millimeter rockets that are
the same—those are the same rockets that we used in Vietnam. Different warheads, so
they were a little more effective. And then some—they have a later model that’s got a
little more horsepower in the rocket motor itself.
There was also the Hellfire missiles. They’re a—at that time, they were laser seekers. So
the targeting system had a laser that we put a spot on the target and as long as that spot
was on the target the missile would fly to the target. The TOW missile system, which was
on the Cobras, was a wire-guided missile. Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wireguided. That’s TOW. And so what that meant was I had to put a set of crosshairs for a
target from my sighting station on the target and then keep that crosshairs on the target
until such time as the missile struck the target. And the signals were computed in the
aircraft and sent via two wires to the missile as it was going down range. That missile had
a range of 3,750 meters. That was it. That was as long as the wires. Once the wires broke,
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the missile just—by that time, it wasn’t going very fast and would essentially fall to the
ground.
The Hellfire missile, you can launch it at—there’s several different launch methods. You
can—but the idea is that you could launch a missile and then put a—you could have the
missile lock on before you launched the missile. So you put a spot on the target, launch
the missile, the missile follows the spot to that target. Or you could launch the missiles—
we would practice launching sequentially a series of missiles. And you’d put the spot on
the target. The first missile would go to that spot. Once it impacted, you’d move it to the
next target. So you could become very effective. Sixteen Hellfires would—were very
effective at knocking out tanks. The Hellfire missile was probably twice as big as the
TOW missile.
00:50:39
[Career with Rockwell Collins and Boeing]
BF:
Now, after 20 years in the Army, you went on to a second career with Rockwell Collins,
which does cockpit instrumentation systems. What did you do at Rockwell?
TO:
Well, so I went there as an Apache subject matter expert. And what my job was was
human factors. We were trying to figure out how to make it easier to talk to all those
computers and make it one system that you could enter data and it would go across the
aircraft. And we worked with McDonnell Douglas Helicopter, eventually Boeing, to
make that happen on the Apache. And then eventually, later model aircraft, they’ve got—
they had those types of systems.
That was the beginning of my career there. I ended up sort of being a firefighter.
Problems would pop up, and I was able to—the first example that I give is is we were
giving our critical design review to the Army on our Apache system, and I’d been at—
with the company maybe a month, maybe a month and a half, and I’d learned what the
engineers there wanted to do. And we were giving this briefing. There was probably 75
Army guys in the briefing room, a big theater, and the technical director for the aircraft
walks up to me from Rockwell and says, “Hey, so-and-so is—can’t show up. Can you do
this?” I said, “I guess so.” I had no idea what I was doing. But I walked up there, and I
gave them a presentation, and the Army guys all thought that was okay.
And from then on, it was like every time there was a problem, they’d come to me and
say, “Hey, can you do this or can you do that?” So I’ve done some very strange things,
like trying to sell GPS to farmers, back when this was just a concept. We were—
Rockwell was very early in the GPS business, built the very first satellites, and so they
were interested in trying to spread the architecture around and build different systems.
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And so we started outputting GPS on trains so that the train companies could understand
where their engines were, because they didn’t have systems that could transmit back to
them. And we were a radio company, so it was easy for us to figure out how to have a
location—now we knew where the location was, so now it was just a matter of
transmitting it. And then eventually we built—ended up selling systems to bus companies
and police departments so they could follow how buses followed around the cities or
could quickly assist policemen that needed help or those kinds of things. So it was kind
of a very interesting thing. I ran a program to test our system when we started putting the
GPS on the combines for corn harvesting and trying to figure out—how to figure out
yields and stuff like that, and that was pretty, pretty interesting stuff.
And after that, Rockwell decided that we should get back to our knitting and do avionics
and not all these other things. So they sold off that part of the company, and I had to
wander around and look for another job within the company. And I had—my son had
come out to the University of Washington to go to college here, and I’d been assigned to
Fort Lewis at one point during my Army career, and we really like the Northwest, so I
started nosing around to see what was out here. And there was a—at that time, there was
an airplane that Boeing was building called the 767-400, and they needed systems
engineers out here. So I was an engineering manager back in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where
the headquarters is of the company. So I talked to the manager out here, and I came out
here as a systems engineer on that aircraft. And then within a few months, they promoted
me to be the engineering manager of the facility here, and I was—did that for 13 years.
And we built—after the 767, then I started—got right into what eventually became the
787. We actually started that in 1999.
BF:
Yeah, that was an exciting project, and that lasted over 10 years.
TO:
Absolutely. And it was very interesting because I’d never been around the development
of a commercial airplane before, so that was another learning experience to find all the
things that can happen and all the things that needed to happen. But eventually Rockwell
Collins built all the displays: the pilot controls, the throttle quadrants in the cockpit. And
as the engineering manager, I was the guy that, when the aircraft was going through flight
test, got the call at 3:00 in the morning: “Your system doesn’t work.” And so I would
come down to Boeing Field and the experimental test flight area and go troubleshoot the
airplane to figure out what we needed to do and what engineers I needed to get out here
to get the problem solved. That was the bad news. The good news was, 99% of the time,
the problem wasn’t us. It was some sensor in the aircraft that was not giving us the
information we needed or that system had failed. But it was—my wife always said, “You
were so—you’re so polite on the phone when those guys call. I would be so mad.”
[laughs] But—
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BF:
Part of the job.
TO:
That was part of the job.
00:57:10
[Experiences as an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic and aircraft owner]
BF:
You’re also an A&P mechanic and an aircraft owner. Tell us about that.
TO:
Yeah. So I became an A&P. Probably the best thing I ever did was do—was take the
FAA test while I was still at Northrop to become an A&P. And then like I said, I went to
work for—as an A&P with Brittain Industries, which got me started in avionics. One of
the interesting things is is that I’m very mechanically inclined and I like working with my
hands, but me and electronics don’t get along. So how I ever got into an electronics
company and did as much as I did is hard to believe. Because my first radio was a
Heathkit, and it—when I plugged it in, it smoked and that was it. I said, “Okay, I’m not
doing that again.”
But that’s just—so I was—as an A&P, it was on my Army record, so I ended up also—
besides being an instructor pilot for any unit I went to for Cobras, I also ended up being,
in a lot of units, the maintenance officer for the Cobras, which was a heck of a lot of fun.
I had a tour in Korea where we were—the Cobra was an interesting aircraft to fly because
it changed throughout my career. I flew it for almost—well, for about 14 years, and
during that 14 years the aircraft changed tremendously. It went from an underpowered,
not-terribly-reliable helicopter to a very mature, very deadly, extremely capable
helicopter.
And so in Korea, I was the maintenance officer, and we were—at that point, Bell was
improving the rotorheads, which we’d had a lot of problems in Vietnam with dust getting
into the bearings and the rotorheads, and they were—and the rotorheads were failing.
And helicopter pilots don’t like rotorheads that fail. So they’d come up with a different
bearing design that used what they called elastomeric, which is basically a great big
rubber shock absorber, as opposed to a bearing, so you had a flex in the rubber. And we
put those on the aircraft, and I was astounded when I—the first time I test flew one with
that. And I’d tracked the rotor system, and the aircraft was just so much smoother. And
anytime you could take vibrations out of the helicopters, that just made all the other
systems much more happy.
00:59:54
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[Involvement with The Museum of Flight]
BF:
Now you’re a volunteer at The Museum of Flight and sharing your aviation knowledge.
You’ve served the Museum in many roles. What things have you done at the Museum?
TO:
So I was a—well, I started out as a gallery ambassador, and then I worked in the area that
we called the—ah, crud, lost it—the Airpark. So I worked in the Airpark giving—talking
about all the airplanes we had parked outside, which at the time was the 747, the Air
Force One, there was the 737, and the Connie. And we would control the people as
they’d go through the aircraft. And then in the summertime, I would do—we would bring
our B-17 out of the hangar, park it on the lawn in front of the Museum, and I would give
internal and external tours of the B-17.
And then I started helping repair the 747—restore the 747. The 747 was the very first 747
ever built, was used by Boeing for many, many years as a test platform, and had been
kind of abused in its later life, and so we were trying to restore it back to some semblance
of a working aircraft. And so I got involved in fixing things while it was still outside.
Now that we have the Aviation Pavilion, it’s under cover, so it’s a lot better taken care of
than it was before.
And I got involved in the B-29 as a—working on the pressurization system for that
aircraft. Then I became a docent, and then I ended up on the—with my training
background, I ended up on the Docent Training Committee and helped bring new docents
into our community.
BF:
Very good. Now, we’re aware that you donated items to the Museum’s collection.
TO:
Yup.
BF:
What are the most significant items you donated?
TO:
Well, I think—so I was the executor of my father’s estate, and I think that’s really—from
a historical perspective, I think that’s the jewel in the crown. The stuff that I gave was
that—my personal stuff was my Army career and some of some of the Rockwell stuff.
My father’s stuff goes from the time that he was an engineering student very much like
me. He was an A&P. He wasn’t an A&P, but he was going to school and flying on
airplanes as a test observer and writing down—back then, they didn’t have telemetry in
electronics. They would throw somebody in the back and hand them a piece of paper, and
the guy’d say, “Okay. That was a 1.2.” And he’d write down 1.2. He had no idea what it
meant, but he wrote it down. And so they—that’s the way they gathered data back then.
And this was all before World War II. He became a—went through flight school very
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early in World War II, flew combat missions in B-25s in Alaska, and then spent 30 years
in the military.
When he retired, he was working at the executive offices of the White House as the
communications officer, responsible for putting the radios on Air Force One. So he was
the comms guy for Air Force One and anything that was involved in the President’s
communications. So his stuff is, you know, his—lots of boxes. Lot of stuff.
BF:
What motivated you to donate?
TO:
Well, so I had a—so my dad was a son of the Depression, and as I have learned over the
years, they didn’t throw anything away. I found stuff from—I found receipts from 1940s
that—a stick of gum or whatever. I mean, it was astounding. But he never threw away
any of his—he had boxes and boxes and boxes of his military stuff, and so there’s stuff
like—he worked on projects like the Distant Early Warning Systems for intercontinental
ballistic missiles coming over the poles. He did all kinds of different things like that. He
was very involved in the early missile systems and the early manned missions in some
electronics fashion. So he had a lot of that kind of background, a lot of that kind of
information.
He also wrote an autobiography, and he kind of detailed his flight school experience. And
that kind of got me started in the thing, along with the B-17, was starting to go back and
read about these guys, how they got through flight school and then comparing that to
what my experience in flight school was like. And then here recently, I’ve done a little
reading on the guys that had gone through the Navy flight school, so it’s—and it’s kind
of interesting how they—they all have different flavors, but they—we all end up with
about the same amount of hours and about the—probably the same level of knowledge
when you come rolling out the door.
01:05:47
[Closing thoughts]
BF:
Any last topics we may have missed or that you’d just like to talk about?
TO:
[pauses] I don’t—my experience here at the Museum has been just fantastic. And as you
know, Bruce, unfortunately, I’m leaving to join my family on the East Coast.
BF:
Unfortunately for us, yes.
TO:
So that’s bittersweet. It’s sort of like my thing with Vietnam in that I feel like I’m leaving
without the job being completed and—but it was very pleasurable and a wonderful group
to work with.
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BF:
And any final thoughts you’d like to leave for students or future researchers regarding
your career in aviation?
TO:
Well, I guess I’d like to see people go look at the helicopters. And I realize that I’m kind
of prejudice that way. But I think that the books that I have read tend to glorify it a little
bit, and I think that the vast majority of guys that went over there really worked hard to
make—to support the ground troops, no matter what service they were in. So I’d like—I
think that I’d like to see a little more research. I’d dearly love to see the Museum get
more than just the UH-1 to represent some other facets of the aviation experience there.
We have lots of fixed-wings, but there was a whole group of guys that worked pretty hard
to support everybody.
01:07:42
[Favorite aircraft engine]
BF:
Absolutely. Now, our videographer today has been Peder Nelson. Peder, do you have any
additional questions?
PEDER NELSON: Like, I guess I was intrigued by your early statement about the—of engine
that you worked on with your own personal aircraft or that you like tinkering with pieces.
And I was wondering if there was any—if you had a favorite aircraft engine?
TO:
Well, I’m partial to Lycomings because that happened to be the engine that was in the
airplane. I am much—my experience with helicopters, after the first 100 hours of flight
school, was all with turbine engines. And you’d think, “Well, that means that he really
likes turbines.” But actually, radials and inlines and reciprocating and those massively
complex engines fascinate me. That’s probably why—I just—why I stayed an active
mechanic for so long was because I just—I really liked that and figuring out what’s
wrong, be it a car or an airplane or a boat. I’ve done a little bit of everything.
BF:
Great career. Tom, thank you for taking the time and letting us record this piece of
history from someone who lived it. And thank you so much for your service. We salute
you.
01:09:25
[B-29 restoration project]
BF:
A couple of additional questions from Kelci Hopp [Oral History Administrator at The
Museum of Flight] here.
TO:
Okay. Hey, the best way—I’ll be happy—I can answer questions. I have a hard time
adlibbing, but a question usually—
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BF:
Just two more here.
TO:
Okay.
BF:
Can you talk a little bit more about your work on the B-29 restoration?
TO:
Well, so the B-29 is a very big airplane, and it was very—it’s very complex. There’s a
great group of guys working on it, and so I was just one little piece. And so if I may tell a
quick joke—and it probably won’t go over very well, but—so this kid asks his father,
“What do you do as an engineer?” And the dad says, “Well, I design airplane parts.” And
so they’re out at the airport, and the kid says, “Well, Dad, is that the airplane you
designed?” And he says, “No, no, no. I just designed a piece on the front landing gear.”
And the kid says, “Well, where was that?” He says, “Oh, that’s in that front one, right
there in front.” “Oh yeah, Dad, did you design that?” And the kid says—and the father
says, “No, no. You see halfway up, there’s a bracket on the left-hand side there?” And the
kid says, “Yeah, yeah. Did you design that?” And he says, “No, no, no, I didn’t design—
see that bolt that’s holding that bracket?” “Yeah, yeah.” “That’s what I designed.”
And so that’s sort of what I did on the B-29. It was a little piece of a very big airplane.
And the airplane was—after the war—so it flew in the war, flew—it bombed Japan, it
then came back and was converted to a tanker. Well, when they converted it to a tanker,
they stripped a whole bunch of stuff out of it to make it lighter. Just like the Cobra, they
were trying to carry as much gas as they could and anything that they didn’t need they
didn’t put in it. So they ripped out most of the pressurization system on the aircraft. And
so what we’re trying to do is return it to what it was like when it flew over Japan, and so
that meant it needed a pressurization system. Well, there’s valves missing. There’s
ductwork missing. There’s all kinds of stuff like that.
So I said, “Okay, I’ll work on the pressurization system.” And so I started on it, and there
were a couple of valves, and so I did things like—I literally got pictures of the valves,
and then I got some drawings of the valves, and I made these valves in my garage. So
they look just like what was on the airplane, but please don’t run any hot air through them
because they’re all made of papier-mâché and stuff like that. And then I put the ductwork
in, and I put some of the insulation stuff. So when you—most of the stuff was done—it’s
actually in a part of the airplane that hardly anybody ever sees because it’s actually up
over the wing in the bomb bay. So you have to go inside the bomb bay, in the aft bomb
bay, and look forward to the wing, and there’s this valve. And eventually there’ll be some
cabling and other stuff up there that will indicate it’s just part of that pressurization
system that ran through the whole airplane.
01:12:44
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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[Overlap with his father’s military career]
BF:
All right. And the second question is did you and your father’s military careers overlap at
all?
TO:
Yes. Not a lot. The funny story there was I was—so I was in flight school, and we got a
Christmas break. So that meant I’d gotten through the warrant officer training and now
we were actually starting to fly—or we were scheduled to fly in January. And so I got a
Christmas break. And I was married, so I went back to Washington, D.C. to my mom and
dad’s house. And my wife was there. And my dad had some official military function. So
I’m—at that point, I am an E5—rank wise, I’m an E5.
And they—my mother or my dad—somebody wanted something taken to my dad. So,
“Tom, go do it.” So I said, “Okay.” So I jump in the car, and I go down to wherever this
thing is. And I walk into this place, and the first person I bump into is like a three-star
and the next guy’s a four-star. And I’m going, “Holy mackerel. What am I doing here?” I
wasn’t in uniform, but I was still very intimidated by all of this. And kind of sheepishly
went up and handed my father’s—whatever the piece of paper or whatever he needed.
And then I went off—went back to flight school at the end of that.
I can’t remember the date that he retired, but it was only like a year or two overlap. There
wasn’t a lot. I do remember he was in uniform when I graduated from flight school,
which would have been in July of ‘69.
BF:
Any last questions? All right. As they say in the business, “It’s a wrap.”
TO:
Thanks. Thank you. It was a pleasure.
BF:
Thank you.
01:14:54
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
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2013-current
Creator
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Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
Source
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<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
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English
Rights Holder
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The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
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Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
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2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
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<a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/assets/Transcripts/OH_Olsson_Thomas.pdf">View the transcript</a>
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Thomas, Olsson W.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Florsheim, Bruce
Biographical Text
<p>Thomas W. “Tom” Olsson is a Vietnam War veteran who served with the United States Army as a helicopter pilot and flight instructor. He was born in the mid-1940s in Kentfield, California to Ward T. Olsson and Wilma E. Olsson. His father was a career officer with the U.S. Air Force, and his mother was a housewife and hospital volunteer.</p>
<p>After graduating from high school, Olsson attended the Northrop Institute of Technology (California), where he studied aircraft maintenance engineering. While in college, he became a certified A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic and worked for Brittain Industries helping to install aircraft autopilot systems.</p>
<p>In July 1968, knowing that he would likely soon be drafted, Olsson opted to join the U.S. Army and become an aviator. He completed training at Fort Polk (Louisiana) and Fort Wolters (Texas), learning to fly on the Hughes 269 helicopter. He next underwent training in the Bell AH-1 Cobra at Hunter Army Airfield (Georgia) and was deployed to Southeast Asia. Over the course of his combat tour, he flew a mix of attack, visual reconnaissance, ground support, and evacuation missions and accumulated over 1,300 hours of helicopter flight time.</p>
<p>Returning to the United States, Olsson served the rest of his military career as an instructor pilot in the Bell AH-1 Cobra and Hughes AH-64A Apache. He retired in 1988 at the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 4. As a civilian, he worked for Rockwell Collins as a human factors engineer and for the Boeing Company as a systems engineer and engineering manager. His projects at Boeing included the 767-400 and 787 Dreamliner.</p>
<p>Olsson’s volunteer work at The Museum of Flight includes serving on the Docent Corps and participating in the restoration efforts of the Boeing 747 and Boeing B-29 Superfortress. He also donated materials to the Museum from his and his father’s military careers.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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OH_Olsson_Thomas
Title
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Thomas W. Olsson oral history interview
Language
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English
Bibliographic Citation
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Source
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Creator
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Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Description
An account of the resource
Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Thomas W. "Tom" Olsson and interviewer Bruce Florsheim, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, October 24, 2018.
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Date
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2018-10-24
Coverage
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Cambodia
Vietnam
Washington (State)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Air pilots, Military
Bell AH-1 Cobra Series
Boeing Company
Engineers
Helicopter pilots
Hughes AH-64A Apache
Hughes OH-6 Cayuse (Type 369H) Family
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Rockwell Collins (Firm)
Thomas, Olsson W.
United States. Army
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 25th
Vietnam War, 1961-1975
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Boeing Company--Employees
Extent
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1 recording (1 hr., 14 min., 54 sec.) : digital
Rights
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In copyright
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>Vietnam War veteran Thomas W. “Tom” Olsson is interviewed about his military service as a helicopter pilot with the United States Army. He discusses his combat tours in Southeast Asia flying the Bell AH-1 Cobra gunship and describes his later assignments as a flight instructor for the Cobra and the Hughes AH-64 Apache. He also touches on his post-military careers with Rockwell Collins and the Boeing Company and on his volunteer work at The Museum of Flight.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- Early aviation experiences -- Favorite aircraft -- U.S. Army training -- Service in Vietnam as a Bell AH-1 Cobra pilot -- Personal impact of the Vietnam War -- Instructor assignments and flying the Hughes AH-64 Apache -- Career with Rockwell Collins and Boeing -- Experiences as an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic and aircraft owner -- Involvement with The Museum of Flight -- Closing thoughts -- Favorite aircraft engine -- B-29 restoration project -- Overlap with his father’s military career
-
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/3e3884ee2694c534b1610f4d0fc07d39.mp4
2d15fc09208d23e557c7d303c8999269
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/e05a964c4415b22baf011bd17ef68d90.pdf
d8e9d843799d60ffd5c381e7cb28618a
PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Herb Phelan
Interviewed by: John Barth
Date: February 22, 2018
Location: Seattle, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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Abstract:
Aeronautical engineer Herb Phelan is interviewed about his career in the aviation industry and
his involvement in several aircraft restoration projects. He discusses his work with various
aviation companies and his career at Boeing, circa 1950s-1990s. Projects discussed include the
727, 747, SST (Supersonic Transport), Minuteman III missile, and the AWACS program. He
then discusses his restoration work on the Boeing Model 80A, the B-17F Flying Fortress, and the
B-29 Superfortress. All three of these vintage aircraft are now on display at The Museum of
Flight in Seattle, Washington.
Biography:
Herb Phelan is a retired aeronautical engineer who has worked on several restoration projects of
vintage aircraft. He was born on March 6, 1928 in Everett, Massachusetts and grew up in a foster
home in Dorchester. He attended John Marshall Elementary School, Grover Cleveland Junior
High School, and Hyde Park High School. While in high school, he studied drafting and worked
as an apprentice draftsman for the Clifford Manufacturing Company (Boston, Massachusetts).
He then apprenticed for Westinghouse.
In 1946, Phelan received his draft notice from the U.S. Army. He completed basic training at
Sheppard Field (Texas) and advanced training at Scott Field (Illinois), where he earned his
qualification as a teletype operator. He served at Holloman Air Force Base (New Mexico) until
1947, when he was honorably discharged.
After completing his military service, Phelan enrolled in the aeronautical engineering course at
Cal-Aero Technical Institute (California). He completed the course in two years and then worked
a series of engineering jobs with Lockheed, American Machine and Foundry Company, Chance
Vought, and Pratt & Whitney. During this time, he also completed an aeronautical engineering
degree at Boston University. He was hired by the Boeing Company in 1960 and relocated to
Washington State.
During his career at Boeing, Phelan worked on a variety of engineering projects and contributed
design details to numerous aircraft, including the 727, 747, SST (Supersonic Transport), and the
E-3 and E-6 AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) programs. He also worked on the
Minuteman III missile and served as the Boeing representative to the Dornier Company in
Germany.
Phelan assisted in the restoration of The Museum of Flight’s Boeing 80A by repairing the lower
left outboard wing. His next aircraft restoration project came in 1993, when he joined the team of
volunteers restoring the Museum’s B-17F Flying Fortress. The team successfully restored the
aircraft to flying condition, and Phelan served as the B-17 crew chief when it went on display at
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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the Museum’s main campus. He also served as the crew chief for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress
restoration project, following the passing of crew chief Dale Nicholson in 2009. As of 2018,
Phelan is still an active volunteer at the Restoration Center and has logged over 13,000 hours of
volunteer work at the Museum.
Phelan married his wife, Isabel, in 1954. They had four children together.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
interviewee.
Interviewer:
John Barth is a member of The Museum of Flight Docent Corps, which he joined in 2016. He
has over 30 years of experience in the aerospace industry, including manufacturing, supervision
and management, and research and development.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by Mark Jaroslaw. Jaroslaw Media.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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Index:
Introduction and personal background............................................................................................ 5
Aeronautical engineering career and early projects at Boeing ....................................................... 6
Next Boeing projects: SST, Minuteman III, and AWACS ............................................................. 8
Model 80A restoration project ...................................................................................................... 10
B-17 restoration project ................................................................................................................ 11
B-29 restoration project ................................................................................................................ 18
Career reflection and closing thoughts ......................................................................................... 20
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Herb Phelan
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
JOHN BARTH:
My name is John Barth. It’s 5:00 in the afternoon on February 22nd, 2018.
We’re located here at The Museum of Flight in Tukwila, Washington, and we are here to
interview Herb Phelan. Thank you for taking the time to participate in The Museum of
Flight’s Oral History Program. Herb, can I get you to state your name and spell it?
HERB PHELAN:
Yes. My name is Herb Phelan, P-H-E-L-A-N. Phelan. That’s a fine Irish
name. My ancestors came from Waterford County in Northern Ireland. I think they were
in charge there in the 11th or 12th century. I’m not sure. I wasn’t there. But they spelled
it F-I-O-L-I-N, Fiolin. It means “little wolf.”
And I was born on March 6th in 1928 in Everett, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston,
grew up in a foster home in Dorchester, Massachusetts, also a suburb of Boston. I
attended an elementary school, which was next door to the foster home, called John
Marshall, and then went to junior high school, Grover Cleveland Junior High School,
in—also in Dorchester.
Then I went to Hyde Park High School in Hyde Park, Mass, and enrolled in a cooperative
industrial course. Now, cooperative industrial is where you go to school a week and you
go to shop a week, go to school a week, go to shop a week. And the shops were a
machine shop and a drafting class. Now, in my sophomore year, I was in the machine
shop, and then when I got to my junior year, I switched over to a drafting class with an
expert teacher called Mr. [Ekroyd?]. And he taught me all the basics of drafting:
orthographic/isometric projections and perspectives, line work, and lettering. And when it
came time to go to work at the A-16, I contacted Mr. [Lee?], our coordinator, and he
wanted me to go to work in the machine shop. And I said, “No, I want to go to drafting.”
So he said, “Well, I’ll miss you. Go check with Mr. [Ekroyd?].” So Mr. [Ekroyd?] pulled
out my records, and there’s a long string of straight As. So Mr. Lee says, “Oh, okay.”
So he got me a job at Clifford Manufacturing Company in South Boston as an apprentice
draftsman, and I stayed there through my senior year. Okay.
JB:
So after your high school and your co-op work, what was next for you?
HP:
Well, I worked as—still as an apprentice draftsman, this time at Westinghouse, until
March of 1946, and I got this really nice letter from the government inviting me to join
the Army. So I did. And they sent me to Sheppard Field, Texas in Wichita Falls for basic
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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training. Then I went to Scott Field, Illinois, near St. Louis, for advanced training as a
teletype operator. And then they sent me to Alamogordo, New Mexico, which is now
Holloman Air Force Base, and I was there for a year as a teletype operator. And I was
discharged in 1947.
[scene transition]
00:03:36
[Aeronautical engineering career and early projects at Boeing]
JB:
At the end of the war when you were discharged, what was next for you?
HP:
I was still working at Westinghouse as an apprentice draftsman, and I decided I wanted to
go to school at Cal-Aero Technical Institute in California. They had an aeronautical
engineering course that seemed attractive, so I went down there to Glendale, California
and completed a 4,000-hour course in two years. After that, I went to work for Lockheed
in Burbank as a stress analyst. And after that, I decided I didn’t like Los Angeles very
much, and I went back to Boston. And got to work at the American Machine and Foundry
Company, where I met my wife. And I transferred jobs again to Chance Vought Aircraft
in Boston, at which time—that’s when I married my wife, in 1954. I was working for
Chance Vought as a design draftsman on the Regulus missile.
Then I went to work for Pratt and Whitney as a design draftsman on jet engines. Then
Pratt and Whitney picked up and left home, and I went to work for Raytheon as a
methods engineer, doing time and motion study. All during this time with these three
companies, I was going to school at Boston University. And fortunately, the companies
were sub-subsidizing the tuition. All I had to do was buy the books.
So that brings us to 1960, when I graduated from Boston University with an aeronautical
engineering degree. So here I am in Boston with this degree, and there are no airplane
companies in Boston. What am I going to do? So fortunately, Boeing was in town
recruiting, and I saw the ad and I went to an interview. And shortly thereafter, I got an
offer from Boeing, and I picked up, put the dog in the back of the car, and drove to
Seattle. And my wife came in later. She stayed back to finish selling the house and work
with the movers. And she came all the way across the country with these four kids, one of
them 18 months old that screeched all the way across. I don’t know how the heck she did
that, but she did.
So then that’s when I started working for Boeing. My first job was on the 727, and I did
detail design work on the mid-spar and then design work on the fin tip fairing. And then I
went over to a proposal for the CX-4, which turned into the C-5A Galaxy, and we lost
that contract to Lockheed. And then I went back to the 727, doing design work,
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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sustaining work, where we had to make changes if the shop ran into trouble or there was
a mistake. And I was there for a while, then I went to the TFX, which is the F-111
Tornado. And that—we lost that one to General Dynamics.
JB:
I got a photo here. [hands photograph to Phelan] Maybe you could tell us about that.
HP:
Oh, this is the B-52 that lost its tail in 1964 somewhere over Colorado. And I was
assigned to go down to Wichita to figure out how to make that not happen again. And
what we did was add an auxiliary spar to the leading edge to keep it from bending. And
they had string gauges on the airplane, so they knew that was the problem. Yeah. You
know, I am amazed when I look at this photo at how these pilots got that airplane back
down on the ground. And I can only imagine they must have used differential thrust for
yaw control and eventually got to Barksville—or Barksdale, Louisiana and landed the
airplane in one piece. And that was an amazing piece of pilotage.
JB:
So after fixing the tail on the B-52, where did you go next?
HP:
Next I went to the 707-800, which was a proposal to stretch the 707 even further than it
was on the Dash 300. And I was working on the vertical tail, which needed to be
enlarged, and trying to figure out how we could enlarge the acoustic vertical tail without
having to make a brand-new one. While I was in the middle of that study, all of a sudden
the word came down, “Cancel everything. We’re not going to do that.” “Oh, okay.”
So they sent me over to 747 preliminary design and working for Joe Sutter. I was doing a
lot of different things, and then finally I got into the landing gear support structure and
the wing box. Then all of a sudden, they sent me out to the design group where LTV,
Ling-Temco-Vought, was doing the actual design work on the tail feathers in Section 48.
So, again, I was assigned to work on the vertical tail, and they sent me down to Texas,
where LTV was doing their design work, as a—to do oversight. And I was down there for
a year, then I came back from Texas to work on the 747.
JB:
So, Herb, after the LVT [sic – meant LTV] design, what was next for you?
HP:
Well, I worked on the 747 here at Boeing for a while, and then I went down to California
to do oversight with the Northrop Corporation on the body sections. And I was down
there for a year, and then I came back to Boeing again and—I forget what I did.
JB:
Upper deck supports, overhead, luggage bins.
HP:
Oh, okay. Want to start that one over?
JB:
So let’s cut in about—after Northrop, okay?
HP:
Go ahead.
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JB:
So, Herb, after Northrop, a year down there working on the fuselage for the 747, what
was next for you?
HP:
Well, I came back, and I was working on the 747 design work and doing detailed design
on the floor for the upper deck, 747 upper deck. And then also did the design work for the
overhead luggage bins that runs down the center of the airplane.
JB:
So if we were to walk out to the 747 in the Pavilion out here, where would we look to see
your designs and the work you did on that?
HP:
If you go in the forward entry door, just look straight up and you’ll be underneath the
upper deck floor, and you’ll see the floor beams and all the control cables running
through them. And the support structure for the baggage bins runs the entire length of the
airplane. The bins aren’t there, of course, because the airplane out on the Pavilion is in a
flight test configuration.
00:11:01
[Next Boeing projects: SST, Minuteman III, and AWACS]
JB:
So about that time, the 1970s, there was a big sign in Seattle that said, “The last one out
of Seattle, turn out the lights.” Seven thousand out of 10,000 engineers were laid off.
What was it like? What was it like in Seattle?
HP:
That was a terrible, terrible time. I was very nervous, wondering, “Am I going to be one
of ones that’s getting laid off? And if I do, what am I going to do?” Fortunately, I was not
one of the ones that got laid off, and I wound up at Everett for a year, twiddling my
thumbs with absolutely nothing to do. Then they sent me back. Did I go to the SST or the
Minuteman first?
JB:
SST.
HP:
Oh, okay.
JB:
So after—let me start that over. [laughs] After working in Everett with very little to do,
what program did you work on next?
HP:
They sent me back to work on the SST proposal. We were making the mockup over there
in the 101 Building, and my job was to design the aft section behind the pressure
bulkhead. That was going to be a fuel tank. And I was really looking forward to doing
that work, but it was going to be a real challenge. But the Congress scratched the funding
for that job, so we didn’t—we never did get to do it. So I went on to the—what did I do
next?
JB:
Minuteman missiles.
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HP:
Oh, yeah. So after the SST, I went on to—
[production talk]
JB:
After the SST program, what was next for you, Herb?
HP: They sent me to the Minuteman III, and I was on there for a year. I was designing clamps
for the guidance and control cable. One of the guys decided to call me El Clampo. [laughter] I
thought that was funny. Then—God, I can’t remember that sequence. After Minuteman, where
did I go?
JB:
So, Herb, after—
HP:
AWACS.
JB:
Yeah, AWACS. A-3 base unit, and then A-3 and A-6 [sic – meant E-3 and E-6].
HP:
Oh, we’re going to forget the base unit. Okay, good.
JB:
Okay, let’s forget the base unit. So after being called El Clampo and working on the
Minuteman, where’d they put you next?
HP:
[laughs] I went to the E-3 program, the AWACS, and my job was the interface control
drawing for the radar that Westinghouse was providing. And we started off with a couple
of sheets, and that gradually grew and grew and grew, and eventually we had a 21-sheet
ICD for the Westinghouse radar that was in the aft lower level on the upper deck.
Then also the E-6 came into play here towards the end of that, and I was involved with
the aft antenna. There was a five-mile long antenna that sprang out of the backend. And
there’s this huge bent winch on the main deck. That thing must have weighed over a
thousand pounds. Then shortly after that, I retired.
JB:
During the A-3 and A-6 program [sic – meant E-3 and E-6 program], weren’t you a
representative for Boeing in Germany?
HP:
Yes. I had several trips. I went to Germany and interacted with the liaison people for the
Dornier Manufacturing Company in Oberpfaffenhofen, which is a little town close to
Munich. And I was anywhere from two weeks to two months over there. In fact, I
managed to go one time with Isabel. I took my wife there. And so she spent two months
shopping, and I spent two months working at Dornier.
00:15:20
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[Model 80A restoration project]
JB:
[laughs] Yeah, that sounds about right. So during all this time—and you had quite a
lengthy and varied career here at Boeing—you moved several times for work, you raised
four children, and during that same period of time you were volunteering at The Museum
of Flight. Let’s talk about those projects next.
HP:
Well, I originally was told about the 80A, which is the genesis of the Museum, that was
being restored down in Auburn. And so I went down there because I was interested in
restoration stuff. And they needed to have the wings repaired. So I took the lower left
outboard wing back to my house and hung it in the garage, and I spent about a year
repairing all the rips and the other structure. And then they came and sent a Boeing
flatbed truck, and they retrieved the wing and brought it down to—back down to Auburn
for assembly. And that was the end of my association with the 80A.
JB:
What was the condition of the 80?
HP:
Oh, it was a disaster. They had thrown a choke chain around the tail up in Anchorage and
dragged it off to the dump, when this reporter—I’ve forgotten his name—got ahold of it
and managed to get it down to Seattle and—yeah.
JB:
Who was in charge of that project?
HP:
As far as I know, it was a fellow named Al [Beheimer?].
JB:
How was that project funded? Do you know?
HP:
I don’t know. No.
JB:
Okay. Where did you work on it, other than your garage?
HP:
That was the only place.
JB:
The only place, just in the garage?
HP:
Yeah.
JB:
So you weren’t too involved with a lot of the other people in the restoration?
HP:
No. No, I wasn’t. In fact, the fellow who brought me down there, his name was [Rod
Franklin?]. That’s the only guy I actually interacted with.
JB:
Do you recall how many volunteers there were on the Model 80?
HP:
No. Uh-uh [negative].
JB:
Okay.
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HP:
I was never down there onsite very much. Once I got the airplane in my—the wing into
my garage, that was it. I just didn’t go down to Auburn.
00:18:01
[B-17 restoration project]
JB:
So then you moved on to the B-17 project. That started, actually, in 1991, when it was
flown into the Renton plant. How and when did you get started on it?
HP:
I got started—[clears throat]. Excuse me. I got started on it in 1993. A fellow who I’d
been working with on the AWACs program told me, “Hey, we got a B-17 down at the
Renton plant. You want to come down?” “Well, okay.” So I came down there, and I
walked in, and here’s this wreck of a B-17 sitting up on scaffolds. And I looked around. I
said—the control surfaces were gone. There was a big patch on the left side of the
airplane. Windows were gone. Nacelles, propellers, everything was gone. I said, “Well,
this looks like a pretty good challenge.” So I signed up. And I started off with small jobs
and generally—gradually grew up to bigger jobs as they came up on the learning curve.
JB:
Can you tell us about this photo? [hands photograph to Phelan]
HP:
Oh. [laughs] That’s when I first saw it in—up on the scaffolds that I just told you about.
All the control surfaces are missing and everything. It’s a wreck. And there were, I don’t
know, some of these—you can see there’s a lot of people standing around and working
on it. Yeah.
JB:
So back in those days, you were working from microfilm?
HP:
Yes. We had these—
JB:
What was that—
HP:
…thirty-three rolls of 35-millimeter microfilm with the B-17 drawings on them. So we
had to put those in a machine and roll the thing once you found—got from the index, you
knew what drawing you were looking for. You’d roll it up and say, “Well, okay. Maybe
that’s it. Yeah, that’s it.” Very hard to see. So you peg it and then you print it. And we
had a Dry Silver printer, and the prints that came out were terrible quality. I think that’s
why my eyesight is so bad, from working on those prints. [laughter] But that’s what we
had to do.
JB:
Who supplied the material for that project?
HP:
Oh, Boeing did most of everything. In fact, if Boeing hadn’t—if we hadn’t had the
support that Boeing gave us for the seven years that we were there, this airplane would
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not be in the shape it is now. I don’t think we could’ve ever flown it off to Boeing Field
from Renton.
JB:
So with a project that big, what kind of a system did the team use for the restoration?
How do you decide what gets fixed or what’s wrong, that kind of thing?
HP:
It was a matter of search. We didn’t know what we needed to do at first, that thing was in
such bad shape. So we just started in on it. And there was no way to make a list of things
because we didn’t know what we needed to fix. As we went through the process for the
seven years that we were there, somebody would see something that needed fixing, and
he’d call us over, and we would—we’re treating the airplane just as if it was a production
airplane on a production line. We had quality control, engineering—that was me—and
working on rejection tags.
And as I said, somebody would see something that needed fixing and call us over and
show us what it was, write it up on the [unintelligible 00:21:46] work order, and then
write a disposition and give that disposition to the mechanic who was going to do the
work. And he would finish it up, then we’d go inspect it, sign it off, move on to the next
one. Yeah.
JB:
So how did you decide to divide up the projects? Who would get what? Or how they
would get divided into different—to different volunteers?
HP:
We never did do that. It was just the guys were there and—we didn’t decide to divide
anything. Whatever anything you—whatever anybody discovered would be what we
would work on.
JB:
So you had approximately 280 of these rejection tags?
HP:
Yes. So that—those 280 rejection tags actually describe the restoration. It was a history
of the restoration.
JB:
Got a couple more photos here. Maybe you can tell us about them. [hands photographs to
Phelan]
HP:
Okay. This is the male mold that was used to make the blister, the nose blister. The one
that was on there was in terrible shape. In fact, that’s over in the Red Barn now. This
male mold was used to make the female molds, and from there we got to there, which is
the blister—the completed nose blister. A perfect rendition. Okay. You got that one out
of sequence. [referencing photograph]
JB:
Yeah, you—no. Well, tell us about this one, too.
HP:
Oh, okay.
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JB:
This is another one of the projects that you worked on there.
HP:
Yes, it is. This is the Station 5 bulkhead, as if you were standing in the bomb bay looking
up at it. And I did all of the work on the bench and just made all these parts. And still
working from an existing Boeing drawing and those crummy prints that came off the Dry
Silver printer. Yeah.
JB:
That’s a pretty substantial part of the structure.
HP:
It is. And that’s just Station 5. There’s another one very similar to it at Station 6 that I
did.
JB:
You also had to replace all the gears and the mechanical parts for the bomb bay doors?
HP:
Yes. I had to reinvent that whole thing. There was nothing there, so we had—except we
did have the jackscrews. Then I had to repair the gearboxes and then torque tube,
[unintelligible 00:24:31] torque tubes and pushrods, and the electrical system had to be
repaired.
JB:
What about this photo? Can you tell us about that? [hands photograph to Phelan]
HP:
Oh, here’s the bombardier’s instrument panel. And that’s another one that I worked on.
The box itself that the instruments are in was all beat up, and I had to straighten things
out, maybe cut a piece out, put a—replace it with a new one. And so any—that is also an
authentic replica of the bombardier’s panel. Yeah.
JB:
Herb, another project that you and I had talked about was the new overhead hatch for the
radio map.
HP:
Yes. The glass was all crazed and in terrible shape, so I took the glass off and I used it as
a template to make a mold with one of our local vendors. And from that mold, I made a
new glass, which I then assembled back on to the hatch structure—the frame. Yeah.
JB:
Okay, Herb. I have another photo for you. Maybe you could explain this one to me.
[hands photograph to Phelan]
HP:
Oh, okay. That is the—that’s the other side of the Station 5 bulkhead, with the brackets
on it to support the radio equipment. And that’s just one example of the brackets all
around the radio rooms supporting all kinds of different equipment.
JB:
Do you have any idea how many sets of brackets you made for radio equipment?
HP:
There’s two there, there’s two on the Station 6 bulkhead, and the—I think there’s three
on the other side of the Station 5 bulkhead.
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JB:
Here is a couple of photos of another section of this aircraft. [hands photographs to
Phelan]
HP:
Okay, that’s the—under the floor of the radio room was completely corroded and just a—
we had to tear it all out. So I’m making this thing. It’s upside down on the bench, you
see. And the other volunteers took a look at it, and they decided that’s Herb’s coffin. So,
anyway, that’s me in the middle there. And this is the—completed. Do I got that in the
right—no, this way. Yeah, that’s the completed unit. Now, of course, I had to take that all
apart in order to install the sections on the airplane.
JB:
Yeah, I can see it’s all held together with clecos there. That’s a pretty substantial
structure piece—structural piece, also.
HP:
Yeah. And where would we be without clecos? I don’t think we could build airplanes
with clecos.
JB:
That could possibly be so. You also restored all the walkways, didn’t you?
HP:
Yes. There’s a walkway that goes from the aft end of the radio room all the way back to
the aft entry door. It wasn’t there. People have been walking on the circumferentials, and
they were all crushed. Those all had to be replaced, too. And, yeah. It’s wooden, and we
got that replaced.
JB:
Can you explain this one? [hands photograph to Phelan]
HP:
Oh, this is the APU, mounted in the backend right inside the aft entry door. We didn’t
have this structure here that supports it, so I got the drawings and made the parts and got
it installed. Now, the APU itself is—it’s shown here, but the airplane doesn’t fly with an
APU. It’s only used if you need to start the engines if the batteries are dead or for some
other reason. And I’m told they delivered one with every fifth airplane. But anyway, to
take it out of the airplane, use it to start the engines, and then the airplane goes away.
JB:
Do you take it back out again and save it for the next airplane or—
HP:
Yeah.
JB:
Oh, okay. So they—one of out of five, they rotated the APU between planes?
HP:
Yeah. I think it’s one out of five because they didn’t need one for every airplane and it
was only there for—just to be ferried.
JB:
Okay.
HP:
I think once they took it out of the airplane, they probably never put it back in.
JB:
I have a couple more photos here. [hands photographs to Phelan]
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HP:
Yeah. Oh boy, do I remember that. This is the instrument panel. And this is an example
of what the airplane looked like when we first got it. It was just a wreck on the inside.
There was nothing there, just a shell, wire bundles hanging down and all that kind of
thing. I don’t know how the heck they would explain it. But anyway, we worked on that,
and we wound up with that. And that is a perfect replica of the 1940s B-17 instrument
panel.
JB:
Where were you able to find the gauges, the instruments that went in there and the
controls? It must have taken a lot of research and work and—
HP:
That’s right. It did take a lot of research and work. But I don’t know where they came
from. I didn’t work that part of the airplane.
JB:
I have a couple more photos. This is about 1998. [hands photographs to Phelan]
HP:
[laughs] Yeah. This is May 9th, 1998. We’re doing a preflight on the engines, getting
ready for flight. Now, when we flew, we were supposed to fly on May 9th at about 10:00
in the morning, and there was a big gathering at the Museum waiting to do the reception.
Well, the weather was so crummy that we didn’t get off the ground until 3:00 in the
afternoon.
Anyway, we finally did get off, and there we are flying over Elliott Bay. Now, I think the
airplane was just supposed to leave Renton and do a quick turnaround and land at Boeing
Field. Well, I think the pilots all said, “Well, everything’s in the green. Let’s see—we’ll
play with this for a while.” And I think they stayed out for about an hour before they
came back. And then they did a missed approach and flew by the Museum and then
turned around and came back and landed. And then that’s when we had the reception.
JB:
What was the mood like? What was the mood like when you guys fired up those engines
and got ready to take it out after all those years in the plant restoring it?
HP:
Well, we were very excited while we’re doing the preflight and getting ready to fly, but
when the airplane took off and lifted up, at Renton Field it was a very, very emotional
time. I got all choked up and watched that airplane just fly away in the distance. Then I
drove over to Boeing Field to be there when the airplane landed, and then that was
another exciting time. All in all, it was a lot of fun.
JB:
How’d you become the crew chief on the B-17?
HP:
Oh. [laughs] After that flight in 1998, the Museum hosted a dinner for all of the
volunteers. And when I got to the dinner, there was a signup sheet there and everybody
signed up on the top block as who wants to be in charge, the chief interpreter, because
they were planning on putting the airplane on display and having people stand around to
answer questions. That block was empty. And I said, “Oh, okay. Well, nobody else wants
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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to be in charge. I’ll sign it.” So I did. So I guess I became crew chief by default.
[laughter]
JB:
How long was it here at the Museum on display?
HP:
Oh, I think about a year.
JB:
With the new crew chief?
HP:
Yeah, with this new crew chief. [laughter]
HP:
I think it was about a year. And we finally wound up in Plant 2, the 204 Building, along
with the B-29. And that’s when we continued with the restoration. A lot of things we
didn’t do on the inside. And what we did, up till 1998, was to get the airplane airworthy
so we could fly it. But there was still a lot of work to do on the inside, and so we
continued on with that. Yeah.
JB:
Is that about the time you received actual prints for it?
HP:
Oh, you—I think you’re talking about the digital. Yeah, yeah.
JB:
Yeah.
HP:
We were finally able to get digitized prints. I got them from a group that was restoring an
airplane in Urbana, Ohio that they called the Champagne Lady. And they sent me the
digitized version on discs, along with the index. And that was a godsend, to be able to get
easy access to whatever drawing you were looking for without having to go through all
this cumbersome activity with these doggone reels. And as I say, that was a godsend.
JB:
So do you have any idea how many volunteers worked on that plane?
HP:
We always thought about a hundred, but a lot of guys would come in for a little while and
then they’d leave. And I’ve always thought that 90% of the work was done by 10% of the
people.
JB:
That sounds about right. Did you ever get to fly in it?
HP:
Once, when the Boeing—sent the airplane over to Renton back from Boeing Field, and I
flew as flight engineer on that one flight. Yeah.
JB:
What was that like?
HP:
[laughs] It was pretty doggone exciting.
JB:
I bet it was.
HP:
To fly in an actual B-17. Yeah.
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JB:
Did you guys take the long way around?
HP:
No. They were more direct this time.
JB:
[laughs] Okay. The B-17 is—has been touted as a very airworthy plane that could take a
lot of abuse and continue to fly. What can you tell us about that?
HP:
Well, I’ll tell you, I think that’s a bit of a myth. The airplane was very vulnerable in many
places, and in other places, it would take a lot of abuse. But 4,700 of these were lost
during the war to—in combat, forming up accidents, and things like that. So I saw a
video one time of an airplane like this one just going down in a spin. [demonstrates with a
scale model] And there was no apparent damage on it, so the only conclusion I could
make is that the flight crew was disabled. And the airplane just went down in a spin.
JB:
It also had redundancy in controls. Tell us about some of those.
HP:
Yes. The control cables. There were two sets, one for the pilot and one for the copilot, so
if one side went, the other side was okay. There were also backup systems for the flaps,
the landing gear, and the bomb bay doors. The hand cranks in case you lost the electrical
system. Yeah. So you could operate the flaps, operate the landing gear, and operate the
bomb bay doors.
JB:
So when you and your fellow volunteers started the restoration on this B-17, it was on the
brink of the boneyard. It had been modified several times. It was used for spraying crops,
fire retardant, dusting crops. You people, in 25 years—approximately 25 years—took it
from that to the most complete, accurate B-17 anywhere.
HP:
Yeah.
JB:
What are your current projects?
HP:
There aren’t many. Right now, we’re polishing the windows on the top. But we only—
we’ve only gotten the waist gun windows and rear window because the weather started
turning bad and we put the covers on. So we’ll be able to finish that to work next
summer. Currently, I’m doing some research on the camera doors, the ones that are
underneath the camera floor—underneath the radio operator’s floor, and going to check
the feasibility of adding those. It’s a little complicated mechanism for opening and
closing them.
JB:
Herb, where did the aircraft come from?
HP:
After the war, in—when it was—I think to a little town in Arkansas called Stuttgart.
[unintelligible 00:37:45] And they had it in their main square, and it was painted white. It
was called “The Great White Bird.” And it was there for about five years, and I think the
patriotic fervor wore off, and the city fellows wanted to get rid of this great big thing in
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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the middle of the main square. So it was taken apart and trucked over to the airport,
where a pair of brothers—I think their name was Weimer [sic – meant Biegert]—they
bought it. And there was a big controversy about that. The Air Force still owned it when
it was at Stuttgart and—some difficulty in the sale. But eventually, they—I think they
bought it for $25,000. And those are the folks who used it for the crop dusting and
firefighting and all that.
And a fellow named Bob Richardson bought the airplane. He used it as a personal
transport just to fly around and have fun with. And he donated it—or, no, I’m sorry. He
sold it to the Museum. And the number I’ve heard is $750,000, but that could be wrong.
But that’s where it came from.
00:39:02
[B-29 restoration project]
JB:
Herb, can you give us a little bit of the history on that B-29 and how we came about
getting it?
HP:
Yes. It was at China Lake, and it was being used for target practice down there. And then
I think it went to Lowry Field, and they were doing some restoration there. And then the
Museum somehow or another made contact with the Air Force, and apparently, it was
taken apart and trucked up here to the—start the restoration.
JB:
Any restrictions on that aircraft from the Air Force?
HP:
Yes, a lot of restrictions. The original intent was to get the airplane to taxi. We were
going to start the engines and taxi the airplane. And the Air Force says, “No, you can’t do
that. You’re not even going to start the engines.”
JB:
Have we missed any subjects or anything we didn’t cover on the B-29 that’s—
HP:
Well, no, nothing that I can think of right now, anyway.
JB:
Okay. How did we—how did you get involved in the B-29 restoration?
HP:
Well, in February of 2009, Dale Nicholson, who was the crew chief, passed away,
unfortunately. And Tom Cathcart, the Director of Restoration, asked me to step in and
take over. So I did.
JB:
Can you tell us about that restoration project? What condition was it in?
HP:
I’m not sure because I came in so late, but at the time, most of the equipment was ready
to be installed. And when I got there, I looked around and I saw all this equipment sitting
on the benches, and I wondered why it’s not in the airplane. So I told the guys, “Hey,
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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let’s start getting this stuff in the airplane.” So we did. And I got to say that the B-29 right
now is pretty close to the same condition of accuracy as the B-17.
JB:
But the B-29 never flew again.
HP:
No. It will never fly. It still belongs to the Air Force, and their edict is, “Don’t fly it.
Don’t even start the engines.”
JB:
So from what we talked about on the B-17, this was sitting next to it in Plant 2?
HP:
Yes.
JB:
Is that where you were working on it?
HP:
Yes. Working on both of them.
JB:
Okay. In that project, how did you divvy up or pick the projects or divide up the work?
HP:
It was the same as the B-17. Look and find something wrong. Although now, since
almost everything is done, it’s easier to identify the remaining work because there’s not
much of it. So the guy who is now running things—his name is Dale Thompson—he has
a to-do list, and it has about maybe 15 items on it.
JB:
So that’s getting pretty close.
HP:
Yes.
JB:
So, again, you started with microfilm on this project. You had 150 rolls and 125,000
images.
HP:
Yes. And—
JB:
Tell me about that.
HP:
I talked to Bonnie Dunbar, who was the chief of the Museum at that time, and explained
our problem that we’re having with these microfilm reels. And she understood, so she
gave me a purchase order for “Not to exceed $15,000.” That was the estimate I got from
a local vendor. So I sent those 150 rolls down to that vendor, and he took them. I think he
sent them down to Wichita, and he had it all digitized. And we now have both the B-17
and the B-29 on computers. So much easier to access drawings than it was with those
microfilms.
JB:
During your restoration, where did you get the materials to make the new brackets, all the
new components, to restore the B-29?
HP:
Same as with the B-17. Most of that stuff came from Boeing.
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JB:
Were you again supported with their manufacturing processes?
HP:
Yes, yes. We had the same kind of support. The shop right next to us in the Plant 2
building—machine shop, a sheet metal shop, welding. Just about anything we needed.
JB:
So maybe you can tell us about some of the some of the projects, like the supports for the
APU.
HP:
Oh, yes. We had to support the APU and then did a lot of sheet metal work on brackets
for supporting different kinds of radio equipment. One of them was a challenge, the one
for the IFF equipment. It was very similar to what I was doing when—on the B-17.
JB:
You did the walkway for the tail gunner?
HP:
Yes, yeah. And then—oh, one of the more challenging ones was the support for the radar
that hangs underneath the airplane. We didn’t have any drawings for that. I had to work
from a photograph.
JB:
Oh, that must have been very challenging.
HP:
It was fun. Yeah.
JB:
Yeah. So isn’t some of the fab work for that being done here at the Museum?
HP:
Yes. We now have—we’ve moved the break in the shear from where it was in the Plant
2, and now—it’s now in the woodshop downstairs here in the Museum, so we can
continue on with the project. As I say, there’s not that much left to do on the B-29, so it’s
easy to do here. We don’t need a lot of big, heavy work.
JB:
Can you give us a comparison between the B-17 and the B-29? What do they—what are
their differences, strong points?
HP:
There’s a world of difference between the two. The B-29 is an order of magnitude
advanced in technology. Pressurized airplane, much bigger, two bomb bays, and flies
higher and faster. It’s just a much bigger airplane.
00:45:46
[Career reflection and closing thoughts]
JB:
So you’ve led a very interesting career as an engineer, and it must have been very
rewarding in itself. You’ve also got over 30 years and 13,000 hours of volunteer work in
the Museum, leading the restoration of both the 17 and the 29. What’s been the most
enjoyable and satisfying for you?
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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HP:
That’s an easy one. My interaction with all of the B-17 and B-29 volunteers and the folks
here on staff, that has been my most satisfying part of all of this.
JB:
What advice do you have for a young person today pursuing any kind of career?
HP:
Just to pay attention, study, and work hard. That’s—those are the three elements for any
endeavor.
JB:
I can’t express—I don’t believe the Museum can express the gratitude owed to you for all
of your work, volunteers, and years of what you have accomplished for this Museum.
And I want to thank you for your willingness to participate in this oral history program,
and I would also like to wish you the best of luck of finding that toilet.
HP:
Well, thank you very much. And again, it has been a huge pleasure. These last 25 years
have been among the best in my life.
00:47:25
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2018 © The Museum of Flight
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-current
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
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2019-00-00.100
Oral History
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Transcription
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<a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/assets/Transcripts/OH_Phelan_Herb.pdf">View the transcript</a>
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Phelan, Herb, 1928-2020
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Barth, John
Biographical Text
<p>Herb Phelan is a retired aeronautical engineer who has worked on several restoration projects of vintage aircraft. He was born on March 6, 1928 in Everett, Massachusetts and grew up in a foster home in Dorchester. He attended John Marshall Elementary School, Grover Cleveland Junior High School, and Hyde Park High School. While in high school, he studied drafting and worked as an apprentice draftsman for the Clifford Manufacturing Company (Boston, Massachusetts). He then apprenticed for Westinghouse.</p>
<p>In 1946, Phelan received his draft notice from the U.S. Army. He completed basic training at Sheppard Field (Texas) and advanced training at Scott Field (Illinois), where he earned his qualification as a teletype operator. He served at Holloman Air Force Base (New Mexico) until 1947, when he was honorably discharged.</p>
<p>After completing his military service, Phelan enrolled in the aeronautical engineering course at Cal-Aero Technical Institute (California). He completed the course in two years and then worked a series of engineering jobs with Lockheed, American Machine and Foundry Company, Chance Vought, and Pratt & Whitney. During this time, he also completed an aeronautical engineering degree at Boston University. He was hired by the Boeing Company in 1960 and relocated to Washington State.</p>
<p>During his career at Boeing, Phelan worked on a variety of engineering projects and contributed design details to numerous aircraft, including the 727, 747, SST (Supersonic Transport), and the E-3 and E-6 AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) programs. He also worked on the Minuteman III missile and served as the Boeing representative to the Dornier Company in Germany.</p>
<p>Phelan assisted in the restoration of The Museum of Flight’s Boeing 80A by repairing the lower left outboard wing. His next aircraft restoration project came in 1993, when he joined the team of volunteers restoring the Museum’s B-17F Flying Fortress. The team successfully restored the aircraft to flying condition, and Phelan served as the B-17 crew chief when it went on display at the Museum’s main campus. He also served as the crew chief for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress restoration project, following the passing of crew chief Dale Nicholson in 2009. As of 2018, Phelan is still an active volunteer at the Restoration Center and has logged over 13,000 hours of volunteer work at the Museum.</p>
<p>Phelan married his wife, Isabel, in 1954. They had four children together.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
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OH_Phelan_Herb
Title
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Herb Phelan oral history interview
Language
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English
Bibliographic Citation
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Creator
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Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Description
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Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Herb Phelan and interviewer John Barth, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, February 22, 2018.
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Date
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2018-02-22
Coverage
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Washington (State)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Airborne warning and control systems
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Family
Boeing B-29 Superfortress Family (Model 345)
Boeing Company
Boeing E-3 Sentry (AWACS) Family
Boeing E-6A Hermes (TACAMO)
Boeing Model 707 Family
Boeing Model 727 Family
Boeing Model 747 Family
Boeing Model 80A
Engineers
Minuteman (Missile)
Museum of Flight Restoration Center
Phelan, Herb, 1928-2020
Supersonic transport planes
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Airplanes--Design and construction
Boeing Company--Employees
Extent
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1 recording (47 min., 25 sec.) : digital
Rights
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In copyright
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>Aeronautical engineer Herb Phelan is interviewed about his career in the aviation industry and his involvement in several aircraft restoration projects. He discusses his work with various aviation companies and his career at Boeing, circa 1950s-1990s. Projects discussed include the 727, 747, SST (Supersonic Transport), Minuteman III missile, and the AWACS program. He then discusses his restoration work on the Boeing Model 80A, the B-17F Flying Fortress, and the B-29 Superfortress. All three of these vintage aircraft are now on display at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- Aeronautical engineering career and early projects at Boeing -- Next Boeing projects: SST, Minuteman III, and AWACS -- Model 80A restoration project -- B-17 restoration project -- B-29 restoration project -- Career reflection and closing thoughts
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https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/1acdebd2bff2bcec59eaf6f441d764b3.mp4
eaa35ec3919e21401c04b8d1b54343b1
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/65ba21b643af526db1d3f834ec6c0067.pdf
633de88e3329c0f841d5b718b5bd815d
PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Joseph Polocz
Interviewed by: Dan Hagedorn
Date: October 22, 2014
Location: Everett, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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Abstract:
World War II veteran Joseph Polocz is interviewed about his military service and his expertise in
mechanics and machine restoration. He describes his wartime experiences as a member of the
Royal Hungarian Army and Royal Hungarian Air Force, his time in a French prisoner-of-war
camp, and his post-war life as a laborer in Germany and France. He then discusses his
immigration to the United States and his technician career with Philco and RCA. The interview
concludes with an overview of Polocz’s volunteer work at The Museum of Flight Restoration
Center, where he served on the restoration teams for the Boeing 247 and several Link Trainers.
Biography:
Joseph Polocz served with the Royal Hungarian Army and Royal Hungarian Air Force during
World War II and afterwards immigrated to the United States, where he had a decade-spanning
career with RCA as an electronic technician. He was born on May 10, 1921 in Pannonhalma,
Hungary. His father was an ornamental metalsmith. During his youth, Polocz studied his father’s
trade, worked at a brick factory and movie house, and assisted family members on the family
farm.
During World War II, Polocz was called to military service with the Royal Hungarian Army. He
later transferred to the Royal Hungarian Air Force, where he trained as a mechanic and served as
an instructor at a mechanical school. He also participated in glider training. At a late point in the
war, Polocz and another serviceman escaped from advancing Russian forces by flying an
obsolete Dornier Do 23 aircraft out of their abandoned airfield. Polocz’s unit was captured by
American forces soon after, and he spent approximately three months in a French prisoner-ofwar camp. Following his release, Polocz worked in Germany as a farmhand, then attempted to
return Hungary. When he learned that many returning Hungarian soldiers were being sent to the
Gulag, he decided to return to Germany.
In the post-war years, Polocz worked as a coal miner in France but soon became worried that the
heightened international tensions might lead to another war. With the help of UNRRA (United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), he immigrated to the United States and
settled in Pennsylvania. Though he initially did not speak English, Polocz’s strong mathematic
and mechanical skills led to a job opportunity with the Philco Corporation. He later was hired by
RCA as an electronic technician. During his 38-year career with RCA, Polocz worked on
technology related to the Moon program and the guided missile cruiser, among other projects.
After his retirement, Polocz relocated to Washington State and settled in the Everett area. In the
1980s, he joined The Museum of Flight Restoration Center as a restoration volunteer. He served
on the restoration team for the Boeing 247 and also helped to restore several World War II-era
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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Link Trainers to operational status. As of 2014, he is still an active volunteer at the Restoration
Center.
Polocz married his wife, Mary, shortly after his immigration to the United States. The two had
one daughter, Maxine.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
interviewee.
Interviewer:
Dan Hagedorn served as Senior Curator and Director of Collections at The Museum of Flight
from 2008 until his retirement in 2016. Prior to his tenure at TMOF, he was Adjunct Curator and
Research Team Leader at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Hagedorn is
a graduate of Villa Maria College, the State University of New York, and the Command and
General Staff College, and served in the U.S. Armed Forces for almost three decades. He has
written numerous books and articles about aviation history in general and Latin American
aviation in particular. For his work in documenting Latin American aviation history, he received
the Orden Merito Santos-Dumont from the Brazilian Government in 2006. Since his retirement
in 2016, Hagedorn has served as a Curator Emeritus at the Museum.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by Peder Nelson, TMOF Exhibits Developer.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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Index:
Introduction and personal background .......................................................................................................... 5
World War II and call to service ................................................................................................................... 8
Early aviation memories ............................................................................................................................. 10
Mechanical school instruction and glider training ...................................................................................... 10
Escape in a Dornier Do 23 .......................................................................................................................... 12
Time in a French prison camp and post-war life......................................................................................... 17
Coming to the United States and career with Philco and RCA................................................................... 19
Settling in the Pacific Northwest ................................................................................................................ 21
Restoration Center work and restoring Link Trainers................................................................................. 22
Favorite airplane and closing thoughts ....................................................................................................... 24
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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Joseph Polocz
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
DAN HAGEDORN: It’s October 22nd, 2014, Wednesday, 2014. We’re at The Museum of
Flight’s Restoration and Reserve Collection at Payne Field in Everett, Washington. With
us today is Joe Polocz.
JOSEPH POLOCZ:
[correcting pronunciation] Polocz.
DH:
Polocz
JP:
Polocz. P-O-L-O-C-Z.
DH:
And he’s one of the restoration volunteers here at the Restoration Center. And Joe, we’re
so glad that you’re here with us today. What I’d like to do is ask you first to tell me your
full name and pronounce it as slowly as you’d like.
JP:
My name is Joseph Polocz. That’s P-O-L-O-C-Z.
DH:
And your first name is Joseph?
JP:
Joseph.
DH:
How is that spelled?
JP:
Uh… [pauses] I never spelled that before. [laughs]
DH:
Okay. All right.
JP:
I would have to read it.
DH:
That’s okay. And can you tell us your date of birth, Joe?
JP:
May 10th, 1921.
DH:
My birthday is May the 10th as well.
JP:
[laughs] Wow. Wonderful.
DH:
We’re going to celebrate birthdays together.
JP:
Yeah.
DH:
Mine was a little bit later than yours, however.
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JP:
[laughs] Probably.
DH:
And can you tell us what city or town you were born in?
JP:
I was born in a small town with a big heritage, a place called Pannonhalma. It’s three
hills in a row, and it has a monastery on one of them. And in Roman times, it was part of
Rome in the early centuries.
[scene transition]
DH:
So tell me the name of your place of birth again.
JP:
It’s called Pannonhalma, which means “hills of Pannonia.” And under the Roman
Empire, it was called Pannonia. And there are some—there’s a—after the Romans,
priests came from Italy, and they established a monastery up on one of those hills.
DH:
So what nation was that in at that time?
JP:
Rome, at that time.
DH:
At the time you were born, it was part of—
JP:
No, back in—a thousand years before.
DH:
So when you were born, it was part of Romania?
JP:
No, it was Hungary.
DH:
Hungary. That’s what I thought. Did you go to school there?
JP:
I went to school. I had a sixth grade education. That was my—and I loved school. I
missed it. I cried for days when I graduated from the sixth grade because I know this is it.
This the end. And I loved the teachers. I loved school. I liked it. I liked to learn, and I did
anything and everything to make it as pleasant as I could. And I was a good student. And
I just keep thinking back, even nowadays, that—what a wonderful time it was when I was
in school.
DH:
What does your father do, Joe? What was his profession?
JP:
My father was an ornamental metalsmith, and he did gates and railings that—elaborate,
hand-formed. It’s all hand-and-foot operation. And I tried to do like my father. And I did,
and I did some little odds and ends things. I have some [at] home—every once in a while.
When I lived back in Pennsylvania, on the river, Delaware River, where William Penn
landed, there’s a place called Penn’s Landing. And it’s a historical place, and they have
old-fashioned blacksmith shop and an old carpenter shop and things like that. And I used
to go there on my weekends. All week I was working for RCA on electronics and things,
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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and on the weekends, in 90-degree heat, I was in the forge and doing demonstrations for
all of these visitors. [laughs]
DH:
Bet it reminded you of your father.
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DH:
Did you have brothers and sisters?
JP:
Yeah. I was the last one, the seventh. And now everybody is gone, you know. I’m 93
years old. And everybody passed away, and I have no relations left.
DH:
So you grew up in Hungary in the 1920s and 1930s.
JP:
Yes. Yes.
DH:
Tell us about your life then. After you finished school, what did you do then—what did
you do following school?
JP:
There was a brick factory there, and I worked in the brick factory. They were cutting
those red—mud bricks, and they’re loaded in little carts, and the kids—us kids were
pushing these little carts out into the areas where they had a roof over, where they put it
in a certain way to dry. And it took a couple of—two or three weeks to dry for those
bricks.
DH:
How old were you then when you were doing that work?
JP:
Oh, about 12, 13, 14.
DH:
What kind of workday did you have when you were working in that brickyard?
JP:
6:00 to 6:00. That was the norm. And an hour break for lunch.
DH:
So what was life like back in Hungary in those days? I know that you probably suffered
from the Depression, just like everyone else did.
JP:
Yes, it was, except it was worse because Hungary was—lost more territory than it
remains because other countries, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Serbia—and they all
took—
DH:
Help us to place your hometown in our mind’s eye. Which direction was it from
Budapest?
JP:
I can show it to you on a map.
DH:
Oh, that’s okay. Was it northwest or—
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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JP:
It’s roughly my—my hometown, roughly halfway between Vienna and Budapest.
DH:
Okay.
JP:
So it’s sort of west.
DH:
So it’s actually south of Budapest—west of Budapest. Yeah.
JP:
Southwest.
DH:
Southwest. Yeah. Just kind of wanted to get it in my mind’s eye there. I think that’s a
beautiful part of the country if—I’ve been over there once myself. And beautiful,
beautiful part of the country.
JP:
Yes. Yeah. It’s nice country. And then it go a little further, and you get to the Lake
Balaton—that’s the biggest lake in Europe. So it was very nice in pictures. No big
mountains. Just little hills and things.
DH:
So did you work at the factory long during your teenage years?
JP:
And I worked—we had some—a few acres of land, and I worked, helped my
grandmother, my mother. I was—I liked to do things, and I was busy helping everybody,
whoever needed help. I worked with my father, then I worked with my grandmother. She
was doing things, and I would help her, whatever she was doing. And with my mother,
we went to pick the fruits, the apples, pears, plums—whatever was in season—and
carried it home in baskets on our head. [laughs] It was a little bump—you know, wind-up
rags, so you can carry it on your head. Because there’s really no other way. You can’t do
it on your shoulder because you have to hold it. So this way we used to carry that home.
00:10:00
[World War II and call to service]
DH:
So let’s fast forward a little bit toward the late 1930s. The world situation is deteriorating.
JP:
Yeah.
DH:
At what point did you become aware that war was coming?
JP:
I was very young. I was born in 1921, and it was after the war, and people were drifting
back from Russian prison camps. And I saw the situation as it was, and I saw it coming.
It was just a matter of when. When Hitler came on, it was just a matter of time.
DH:
So you must have been around 20, 21 years old when Germany invaded Poland in 1939.
JP:
Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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DH:
Yeah. Do you remember that event at all?
JP:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I was—you know, like I say, I liked to do things. On Sundays, I
used to clean the movie house. We had a movie house opened up, and I used to sweep it
and clean it and then I become a flunkey in the projection room. I could handle the films,
glue it, patch it together, fix it, glue it, because they were old films. And I was watching
all the newsreels. And I was very much aware of—I saw, just a matter of time, you know.
I saw Hitler came prancing along, Stalin and—because it was—for me, it was so obvious.
And I know I’m going to—I tried to figure out how can I get out of it, but there’s no
place to run. It’s a landlocked country. There’s no place to go. So I figure, well, I can’t
run away from it, but maybe I can survive it. And that’s what I did. I volunteered for this,
volunteered there for that, I volunteered there for technical things and things I liked. And
that’s what saved me.
DH:
Were you called to service in the Hungarian Army?
JP:
Yes, yes.
DH:
Okay. So you—what type of unit did they induct you into?
JP:
Eventually, I got into the Air Force. [laughs]
DH:
Very good. Tell us about that transition. I’m sure you must have gone through basic
training. And how did you come to be in the Hungarian Air Force? I think it was—at that
time, it was the Royal Hungarian Air Force, wasn’t it?
JP:
Yeah. Yeah. But—well, people—I liked to learn things, and I volunteered. I volunteered
from here to there. But [if] I didn’t like something, I volunteered for something else.
[laughs] And I loved to learn, and I loved it. And it saved my life, more or less, because I
was in a training school, you know, where they were training mechanics. And then I
became a teacher.
DH:
So you were an instructor?
JP:
Instructor. But I didn’t like to talk to people who didn’t know what I was talking about,
so I—like I said, I was a handy kid. I made things out of metal and wood and wire,
whatever it take to demonstrate what it was, like made a compass and things and basic
fundamental pieces. And one [of] my commanders—officers saw it. I didn’t have to teach
anymore, talk to the kids anymore.
DH:
Do you want to cut? [referring to lawn mower noise in background]
PEDER NELSON:
DH:
Yeah, we might need to cut for a second.
I thought those guys were done out there. They’re getting close again. Doggone it.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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[lawn mower noise stops]
DH:
Sounds like he cut it then. Okay.
JP:
You shut him off. [laughs]
00:14:42
[Early aviation memories]
DH:
You ready to roll? Well, let me back up just a minute, though. I want to ask you another
question, and this is something I ask everybody we interview. What is your earliest
memory of an airplane or of aviation?
JP:
Well, I didn’t bring a picture, but I just find some old pictures I have from when I went
back to Hungary. And I made a model airplane. I mean, in those days when you wanted
to make something, you make it. You don’t buy it. And I made a model airplane out of a
piece of copper because it was easier to work with than iron. And we didn’t have
aluminum.
DH:
Do you remember what the model was of? What type of airplane it was?
JP:
It was just a plane with one engine. And I just—the one I saw in pictures or I saw
sometime flying over.
DH:
Do you remember how old you were when you did that?
JP:
Oh, about 10, 12. That’s when I—
DH:
So you had an early fascination with airplanes.
JP:
Yes, yes. Because I saw some planes flying and I thought it was fascinating, you know.
DH:
Very good.
JP:
Technology fascinated me.
DH:
Want to cut again? [referring to lawn mower noise in background]
[scene transition]
00:16:24
[Mechanical school instruction and glider training]
DH:
So you built small airplanes when you were younger, and then later, around 1940, ’41,
you became a member of the Hungarian Army and then the Royal Hungarian Air Force.
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JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
You were an instructor in a mechanical school.
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
What type of mechanical instruction did you give? Was it on engines or airframes or…?
JP:
We train mechanics, you know. And funny things happened at the time, once the war was
on and schoolkids were transferred out into the country, because the cities were bombed
all over the place [unintelligible 00:17:15]. And some school evacuated into that—and
we were evacuated into—from the city to a place called [unintelligible 00:17:31]. It’s a
small town. And it had a patch of grass on the end of the town, and we had some old
airplanes the guys were working on. You know, just practicing. No flying, just
mechanical.
DH:
Instructional airframe? Yeah, uh huh [affirmative].
JP:
And we were in that small town and—
DH:
Were these Hungarian Air Force airplanes or German Air Force—Luftwaffe planes?
JP:
Mostly German, you know, because I think—yeah, there was, I think, one fighter plane
was my—I forget the name of it, but very few and far between was Hungarian.
DH:
Did you see much aerial activity during that period in terms of air combat or—
JP:
No, not much. And once schoolkids get bombed out from the cities, then they were
hanging out there. And they were—had a glider school there. Flying gliders, the glider
plane. And they fly by, have a drum on the rear end of the pickup truck, jacked it up, and
it was full of wire. And we pulled it out, hooked up the glider, and then you got pulled
up. Then you watched down—because the plane was just a wing and a tail and a structure
to hold the thing. We had no body on it—
DH:
What they called a primary glider.
JP:
Yeah. Very primitive. It was made by some people. And you were sitting out there
looking down between your feet, you know. And you controlled—had your feet and you
were strapped into that seat and that’s it. But it was nothing around you.
DH:
Did you take that type of training yourself?
JP:
Yes. Yes, I did. And it helped me an awful lot. And the reason I’m telling you this,
because you have that story about the Dornier. That was our training to fly the Dornier.
DH:
So that’s the only training you had prior to that event?
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JP:
That’s the only—
DH:
So this was like 1942, ’43, ’44?
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
00:20:15
[Escape in a Dornier Do 23]
DH:
Okay. So one of the airplanes that happened to be on this field was the Dornier Do 23?
JP:
Yeah. Well, our field got emptied because the Russians were coming, so all the planes
were loaded on railroad cars and transferred out.
DH:
I see.
JP:
The Dornier, they left it there because it was too big and too old. It was 1935.
DH:
So describe this airplane for me. As I recall, it had two engines.
JP:
Yeah.
DH:
It was a monoplane. Basically designed as a bomber, I believe, originally.
JP:
Yes.
DH:
And how many—a three- or four-seat? Pilot, copilot, gunners?
JP:
It was one gunner in the back, one gunner in the front, and a pilot.
DH:
So a single pilot? No copilot?
JP:
No. And that was it.
DH:
But it was a pretty big airplane for that time?
JP:
Yes, yes. For those days.
DH:
Yeah.
JP:
And we were training the glider—well, you have that—
DH:
Yeah, we’ll find it. That’s okay.
JP:
So anyway, that’s one of—oh, we were out in some kind of—they set up some kind of
a—we set some kind of a defense line. And we were out there. And I was a pretty handy
kid, and the captain know me pretty well, so he told me how about I go in and—because
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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all of the other planes were gone—to see what’s going on with the Dornier, if it’s still
there. Because this were—we were in enemy territory, and the people were stealing—
DH:
This must have been in early 1945 then.
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I went back to see the Dornier. And we were trying to fix it up
because, like I said, they couldn’t fly it out. And it was too big to take it apart. So I don’t
know why, but the captain thought that maybe we can do something with it, you know,
maybe—
DH:
Was it primarily the engines were the problem or was it—
JP:
Yeah, the engines.
DH:
Primarily the engines.
JP:
And I remember the left engine because the covers were off of it and I was working on
the valves arrangement and things and trying to get something done on it. And I saw
Russian soldiers on the other end of the field. You know, on our end, so it wasn’t close,
but that’s as close as I got to the Russians when we went back there. And then we tried to
find the captain. We couldn’t find him. And me and another guy, Pete—
DH:
Do you remember Pete’s full name?
JP:
Uh… Yeah, wait a minute. What’s his name? Pete. [pauses] I’ll think of it.
DH:
Don’t worry about it.
JP:
But anyway—
DH:
Was he another mechanic or—
JP:
Yeah, he was like me. And anyway, we were buddies, and we were flying the gliders and
things. Anyway, when we saw the Russians and we couldn’t find the captain, what are we
going to do, you know? So we figured if we just go in the other end of town, across the
railroad track there is another big, grassy patch. So we figured if we just go up over there,
we would be away from the Russians and safe. That was the plan. So we figured if we
can make it there, we’ve got it made, you know. So we cranking and cranking and trying,
and I crank, and he cranked, and his—keep changing and things. And finally he was in
the seat, and I did the cranking, and he got both engines working. But we never had the
cover—I remember the valve covers, we never put back on the plane. [laughs]
DH:
So this is the type of engine you had to hand-crank the engine to start it.
JP:
Yeah, yeah. [demonstrates] Hand-crank it and then you pulled—
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DH:
That’s a lot of cranking, as I recall.
JP:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we got it—got two engine running. So Pete was in the pilot seat. He
just sit there, and I hold on to everything we got, and we took off. And we had nothing. It
was cold up there. And I went back to the—because it was empty, the bombing area—
bombing section. It was nothing, just a flat—and I saw a guy sitting there in the middle of
the—[laughs].
DH:
So there was another man in the airplane?
JP:
A guy climbed in behind us, which I didn’t—we didn’t even know. So we had a
passenger. [laughs]
DH:
A stowaway.
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DH:
So neither of you had ever flown this airplane before.
JP:
No, no. [unintelligible 00:26:43] we flying gliders.
DH:
You knew the basic theory.
JP:
Yeah.
DH:
But nothing like that or nothing anywhere near that large before.
JP:
And I remember when we were flying gliders, and in the gliders we tried to gain all the
altitude you possibly can. So you go up like this—[demonstrates]—and when you reach
the top point, somebody down there waves the flag and then you disconnect and then you
try to fly on your own, try to fly a—find a thermal or updrift or something, stay up as
long as you can possibly can. That was the practice. Anyway, the plane was going up,
and the plane was going up like this. [demonstrates] And it took me 50 years to figure it
out. The reason, because that’s the way we were training. And that plane wasn’t—but it
was empty, you know. Two engine, empty. We had enough power, and then we was
climbing like this.
DH:
Did you know how much fuel you had on the airplane?
JP:
Well, we checked it out. We divided evenly between the two tanks. We had a half a tank
in each one.
DH:
Do you know if the Russians on the other end of the field were shooting at you by that
time?
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JP:
We didn’t know—if they did, we didn’t know. And we didn’t care. But we figured if we
just go to the other end of the town and over the railroad station—and the other
possibility which I was thinking, our headquarters, the management, was at the next
town. So I figure we going over the railroad station, turn right, fly over the railroad, and
come down at the next town and down—here’s the plane. Okay, we made it. That was the
plan.
So when we were flying, finally I climb up there, up front, and I’m looking down, and I
didn’t see no railroad station. I saw about 15 or 20 towns under it. We were so high, we
passed—I couldn’t see railroad tracks. Nothing. We were lost, literally. So I figured we
come and—Russians come from the east, so we have to go west, by the sun. The sun was
out, so we were flying by the sun toward the west. And we figured, well, at least try to
cross the Danube now that we got this far because if we land anywhere, that should be
a—
DH:
So how long were you in flight then?
JP:
Oh, for about an hour or—
DH:
So figuring going 100 miles an hour, you went at least at 100 miles.
JP:
Quite a bit, quite a bit.
DH:
And you must have landed then in Austria?
JP:
No, we landed—we crossed the Danube because you can’t miss it, you know. It’s the
only big river there. And we crossed the Danube, and then we were flying north. And we
came down because we didn’t know where we were. We saw the railroad tracks, came
down, and must be a railroad station. And I’m trying to read the railroad station—it has a
big sign on it—so we know where we are. And we passed that little town, and then we
tried to get back up, but the plane keep on coming down. And the left engine was
smoking. Well, we didn’t have the valve covers on, and it was pumping out the oil all
[unintelligible 00:30:56]. And that was a life-saver because what we didn’t know, the Air
Defense guys under us [had] been watching ever since we—flying. And they watched the
plane, and they couldn’t identify it. There was no insignia on it.
DH:
Oh, dear.
JP:
Because it wasn’t an operational airplane. And the wings were covered with fabric. They
were waving in the breeze, falling apart. [laughs] And they couldn’t identify the plane,
and they were handing us over and following us with the guns and tried to talk to each
other to identify the plane, but nobody saw anything like it ever or heard anything like it.
And we made it across the Danube, and the agreement among them was we can come
down but we cannot go any further. Because there’s a bridge was coming, which was
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very critical, and we [were] approaching Budapest, and that was a no-no. And
fortunately, the left engine started to smoke, and we were losing altitude. We were
coming down. So we had no choice. We came down, and that’s what saved us because
we would have been pulverized. And the guys who came—you know, the military guys
came and checked us out and all that. We had IDs and everything. And they told us that
you’re lucky because you could—agreement was this is [as] far as we can go.
DH:
So did you make a decent landing? Clearly you walked away from it.
JP:
We made a—[demonstrates]—little bumps, but we made a decent landing and everything
was okay. I was standing up there.
DH:
So what happened next, once you got out of the airplane? Did you just run or—
JP:
No, no. We just stayed there. And people from town came out because they heard noise
and things. And police came, and then the military came, and they told us the story that
we had been watched and it was a good thing we landed because the agreement among
them was this is [as] far as we can go because from here on out there is no more. And
that’s what saved us. And through the country that we were flying, they were following
us with their guns, handing over one from another. And it was almost a miracle. I
didn’t—we didn’t know. We didn’t know any of that.
DH:
That’s miraculous.
JP:
It is. It’s almost by the grace of God. It’s—
DH:
So what happened next after you landed and safely got away from the aircraft?
JP:
Pete, he—because he started the—and I didn’t like to be the head honcho, so I told him,
“You go—the report into our headquarters.” They told us where it is and things. So he
went, and I was staying there with the plane. And then finally—he didn’t get back, but
somebody came and told us that—told me that was the story, he’s not going to come
back, and I should pack up and go report to my command.
DH:
So did you head west then or—
JP:
So I left the plane there, packed up, and I went to report to my captain and things. And he
chewed us out, how stupid we were. [laughs]
DH:
They had more important things on their mind, though, I expect at that point.
JP:
And they were getting ready to transfer again from someplace else.
DH:
So you knew that, basically, things were starting to unravel, that the Russians were
coming from the east. The Allies were coming from the west.
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JP:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
DH:
What happened next?
JP:
I asked my captain and—because my hometown wasn’t too far from there, where they
were stationed—let me go to visit my parents because my father was sick—was old and
sick. And I went home to visit for a day or so. Very short visit. But trains were bombed
out in the area and things and I couldn’t get back, so my group went out to Germany and
I [was] left behind. And I joined some other group which wasn’t our group, but they were
going to the same place and went with them to Germany into a city called Plauen in
Northeast Germany.
00:36:43
[Time in a French prison camp and post-war life]
DH:
Do you remember when the surrender was announced? Did it become clear to you right
away or how was it made known to you?
JP:
Well, we know that it was just a matter of time, you know. And we were captured by
Americans and within a few weeks was handed over to the French because it became a
French-occupied zone.
DH:
I see.
JP:
And we were in a prison camp and just—
DH:
Were you interrogated by the French?
JP:
No.
DH:
Okay.
JP:
No, no. Because we were by the thousands.
DH:
So they basically just released you and sent you home?
JP:
Well, not yet. We were in a prison camp, and it had lights around it. And I was—I could
hardly stand up, but I volunteered to work on the lights. And they didn’t want Germans to
work on the lights because the Germans get out and they never come back. [laughs] They
went home or just disappeared. But they know we couldn’t do the same thing, so they
picked us Hungarians. And we were working on that light—on the lights. And that’s what
I did.
DH:
How long were you in the camp?
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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JP:
Oh, about three months. And because I worked on the—they closed the camp and put the
prisoners somewhere else, but they let me go because I was working on the thing there.
They let me out.
DH:
So did you go home then or—
JP:
And it was three of us, and we—I didn’t speak a word of German. So we stumbled into a
small town which wasn’t bombed called [Eppelsheim?]. It’s [unintelligible 00:39:15]. It’s
a little south of where we used to be. And I worked for a farmer, and we used to talk on
the weekend—three of us for three different farmers—and we figured we can do that [at]
home, too, so why work here? And we didn’t—we got some—I think 20 marks a month,
but you couldn’t buy anything in Germany. Money wasn’t—it was useless. You couldn’t
buy anything. But we were working for what we got to eat, which was potatoes morning,
noon, and night, seven days a week, because that’s all they had. But at least we were
eating.
So we packed up and went home and went through all the things, you know, the cities,
the big cities like Vienna and—I don’t know. I forget the names of some of the cities.
They were all Four-Power occupied. Russian zone, American zone, British zone, French
zone. And you got checked out. We had our [unintelligible 00:40:33], as they say, that
the—pass. So they let us go. And we get to the Hungarian border. And some people
spoke some Hungarian. They told us, “You’ll never make it home because Stalin is
sending everybody into the Gulag.” So we turned around and worked our way back—
[laughs]—
DH:
Good for you.
JP:
…to the same old farmer, but a couple of months later because trains weren’t running.
Sometimes we walked for days, and sometimes we catch a train or catch some kind of a
ride.
DH:
So there were other Hungarian soldiers with you?
JP:
Yeah. There was three of us. We were buddies. And we went back to the farmers who are
there, and it was just going on and on and on. And I was in the French zone, and I have to
check in with the French commandant once in a while. And he told me in German that—
“Why don’t you go to France? You can earn money and things.”
DH:
So you picked up some German by that time, huh?
JP:
Oh, yeah. I spoke very good German. So I went to France, and I figured I don’t know
anything. It was a distribution center somewhere down in Toulouse. That’s Southern
France. And they sent me to a farmer. But now we were treated like—well, I was—not
“we.” I went to a farmer, and the other guys went some other places. I don’t know. We
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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got split. But the French farmers, I was—lived over the pig sty in a haystack. That’s
where I was sleeping. And when I was eat—when they come and call me to lunch or
something, it was in the kitchen. I was eating with the dogs and the kids. I couldn’t sit at
the table. It was—and I figured, “Oh, hell, this is ridiculous.” So I went back to the—
when we left from Germany, the French stole some clothing and things, and they give us
a set of clothing, pants and a jacket and things. It was brand new as a reward for us to go
to France. And I find somebody, and I sold it to them for whatever, but it was enough for
me to get a bus ride and back to the command center. And I told them I don’t want to
work for a farmer. So I went to the coal mines, and I worked in the coal mines for three
years.
DH:
That’s a tough living.
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was better than anything else. But it was brutal because it was
very deep, it was very hot, it was burning all over the place. Every once in a while some
section became so hot, you could—you drill into the chute, put a dynamite in there, and
you saw the fire on the end of the—when you pulled the drill out. So we closed it up,
started to drill somewhere—
DH:
So this must have been in Northeastern France.
JP:
No, southwest.
DH:
Oh, Southwestern France. Oh, okay. Down near the Pyrenees.
JP:
Toulouse—yeah, yeah, yeah. I could—saw the Pyrenees.
DH:
I see. Yeah.
JP:
And Toulouse, Marseilles, all the area there. And it was a small place called
[unintelligible 00:44:59]. [unintelligible 00:45:00] of the mines.
00:45:04
[Coming to the United States and career with Philco and RCA]
DH:
So did you have any concept at that point in time that you would ever be in the United
States?
JP:
No. But it came the ‘50s—1950s—the Berlin Crisis started, and I thought it’s going to be
another war. And there was a place called UNRRA. That’s for the refugees in big cities.
So I went to Toulouse, and I told them I would like to go to Canada, United States,
Brazil—anywhere, just out of Europe. Because I thought it’s going to be another war.
And I volunteered for wherever they send me. And by the grace of God, I wind up in the
United States. [laughs]
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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DH:
So you came by steamer, I suppose. Some sort of ship.
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
Leaving from France?
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
Where did you land when you came to the United States?
JP:
In the Philadelphia area.
DH:
Philadelphia?
JP:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DH:
And, of course, you didn’t know a word of English.
JP:
Not a word. But I could do things. And in Philadelphia, a lot of German population—I
went somewhere, and they sent me to an area where the Germans lived in Philadelphia.
And it was like home. And I worked for the Germans. I worked for a builder for a while,
digging ditches, whatever flunkey—mortar bricks for the guys who were doing the job
and doing that kind of a work and living on that.
And then I went to the school, [unintelligible 00:47:12] school, I had discovered
electronics. And I still didn’t speak any English, but I gobbled it up. And I never forget it
because I was—surprised the hell out of me. I heard Philco Corporation is hiring. They
were making televisions. Television was coming on line. And I went there, and I—gave
me a sheet of paper, and I could read everything and answer—do the mathematics,
trigonometry, geometry, whatever. I did the math. I answered the—put down the answers
to the question. It was all mathematic—electronic questions. Mathematics. And I was
working for Philco. And Philco was laying off, and I heard RCA in Camden, New Jersey,
I go over there, give me a sheet of paper, I answered all the questions. Without interview,
nothing, I was in. [laughs] I couldn’t speak English, but I was working for RCA. And I—
DH:
So what was your job title when you were hired by RCA?
JP:
Electronic technician. And—
DH:
So you had no formal training as electronic technician at all?
JP:
No, no. Well, I learned a little bit, yeah. But it was my passion. It was my entertainment.
It was my hobby. I loved it. I like it. I was fascinated by it. And I give it everything I got,
you know. And I eat it up. And I work for RCA for 38 years. Now, RCA paid for
education, and I was taking courses, college courses, until I was 60 years old because the
technology was changing, you know. Everything was vacuum tubes and then integrated
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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circuits, you know. Microchips and things. And I had to keep up with it. And I was
working on the Moon program, the guided missile cruiser. Everything that was avantgarde, I was on it. I had degreed engineers working for me because I know what I was
doing. I was in California installing the [unintelligible 00:49:55] on the Aegis ships. It
was Port Hueneme in California. And I just—
00:50:07
[Settling in the Pacific Northwest]
DH:
So how did you end up in Seattle?
JP:
Well, I lived in Philadelphia, and my daughter was out—they moved out—my daughter
moved out here to—
DH:
Well, wait a minute. We haven’t asked you about your family life. Somewhere along the
line, you stopped being a bachelor.
JP:
Yeah. Because in Philadelphia, I got to know a lady who was Hungarian descent, spoke
perfect Hungarian, and we were—
DH:
What was her name?
JP:
Mary.
DH:
Mary.
JP:
Yeah, yeah.
DH:
And you had children, obviously.
JP:
One daughter.
DH:
One daughter.
JP:
One daughter. And they lived out here, and when I retired, we packed up, sold
everything, and moved out here.
DH:
That’s a long way from Hungary.
JP:
[laughs] Yes. Yeah, yeah.
DH:
A long way from a Dornier Do 23.
JP:
But it worked, you know. It was a smart move because, like I say, I figured it out. This is
the best place in the United States to live.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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00:51:18
[Restoration Center work and restoring Link Trainers]
DH:
How did you find out about The Museum of Flight and the Restoration Center?
JP:
There was an air show here. And I came out, and I stumbled in there. A bunch of old
guys—George, you know, and company. There was an old airplane. They were hanging
around that old airplane, the Boeing 247, on that air show. And I got to know George,
and we lived very close, and we became like buddies, you know. I still visit George’s
grave every once in a while when I pass by. I got in there, and they didn’t even let me
work on the 247 because I wasn’t Boeing. And then they discovered—George
[unintelligible 00:52:19] was the guy who saw that I could do things.
DH:
You know, come to think of it, a Boeing 247 bears an uncanny resemblance to a Dornier
Do 23.
JP:
Yes. Yes, it’s similar. [laughter] But I could do things. I can [ask?] and get that surface
plate, and I made things, you know. All the Boeing employees wind up working for me
because I could do whatever I wanted to do and it worked. And I got a flight in a 247, and
they let me fly it. And I have a picture to prove it.
DH:
There’s not very many people who can say that, that’s for sure.
JP:
I flew it.
DH:
That’s wonderful. So had you ever heard of a Link Trainer before you came to the
Museum Restoration Center?
JP:
No, I never—I didn’t—I never heard of it. I never saw it. I didn’t know what it was. But
like I said, I’ve been training for this stupid job all my life. I’m the only one who could
do it because nobody knows what the hell was going on. The only thing I didn’t know,
was new for me, is the bellows, which was a piece of rag, you know. It’s no big deal. We
find organ makers in Massachusetts, and we dig them up, and we bought the fabric.
DH:
So what was the first one that you saw? Was it a C3 or was it this C8 behind you?
JP:
C8.
DH:
This was the first one you saw. Was it a wreck? Was it pretty much used up?
JP:
It was so beat up that it’s almost incomprehensible. [stands up and walks to work table]
Somebody stole it. Anyway, I had a picture. [walks back to Link Trainer]
DH:
That’s okay. We’ll find that later. So it was in pretty bad shape.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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JP:
We took everything out. I mean, everything. Because this was all crushed in. The bottom
was destroyed, and this was all just a rusty, dirty mess. The bellows were all rotten. And
so we removed everything, and we got some woodworkers—guys who can do the
woodwork. They fixed up the body here. And this thing was all—oh, we didn’t have a
desk. [moves to desk] And we got the instruction books for it, and we know what we
needed. And we get this desk and modified it. I made the pipes and things and made the
changes, lowered the—made different things for this. [indicating drawer] Big enough to
put the things in here—put all that in there, because it just had a little slide. And we made
the handles and things and installed everything.
DH:
So this is probably the most complete Link C8 assembly in the world.
JP:
[returns to seat] As far as I know. And this was our first one. And we did the one
downtown and—
DH:
But you also did the C3s. Now, were the C3s smaller and less complex than the C8?
JP:
Yes. Yes, they are.
DH:
And they’re fully operational, also.
JP:
Yes, every one of them. And I made one for Bellingham Museum, too.
DH:
What do you think the significance of the Link Trainer is in aviation history?
JP:
I think it was a big breakthrough at the time. It was a big thing because they could—I
read—there’s a book here somewhere about the Link Trainer. It can separate the men
from the boys. People who volunteer to become a pilot, they put them in here and close
that door, and if he has the knack for it and the instructor can determine—select the guys
who had the capability, and then they graduated from here, went on to flying lessons. The
ones who couldn’t make it, they went for—somewhere else. And I think it was a big
thing to—
DH:
This is a wonderful contribution to the history of this Museum and to aviation history. I
think is—between this and the Boeing 247, they’re probably your crowning achievements
here at The Museum of Flight.
JP:
[laughs] Yeah, yeah. I did more than anybody. I’m not a bragger, but I know I’m here,
you know, for a long time.
DH:
Well, just the other night, I gave you an award for 15,000 hours of service as a volunteer.
That is an extraordinary number. It has never been achieved here before.
JP:
Yup. My daughter’s friend and I put it up there. [pointing off-camera] And Bob [Port?]
and myself—and Bob, he came much later than I did, but he puts in more time, you
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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know. Nowadays, I don’t stay six, seven, eight hours. He stays longer, so he accumulated
more hours. But in the olden days, I was here.
00:58:21
[Favorite airplane and closing thoughts]
DH:
Well, Joe, I have to ask you this because this is a question I ask of everybody that I
interview for our series. What’s your favorite airplane?
JP:
The 247. [laughs]
DH:
I kind of thought that might be the response. And finally, if you have to leave a message
for the youth of both America and the youth of all nations as to what is the secret of the
incredible life that you’ve had, what is the secret?
JP:
I don’t know. I’m thinking back, and I come to the conclusion that I never was the
outstanding one, generally speaking. I never stick my head up. I keep my head low and
keep doing. And I keep doing no matter what. The bombs were coming down, and
everybody was running. I was doing things, you know. Whatever you do, keep on doing
what you’ve been doing, and that’s—I think that’s what saved me a lot of times.
DH:
Perseverance.
JP:
Yes, yes. Yeah. I was committed to do something, and I stayed with it.
DH:
I think this is evidence of that, that’s for sure. [indicating Link Trainer]
JP:
I didn’t cut and run. I stayed with whatever I was doing, no matter what was going on
around me. And I think that’s what saved me.
DH:
Is there anything that you would like to add that we maybe missed or that you would like
to expand upon?
JP:
I don’t know. I think I told you just about anything and everything I can think of. If I left
out something, it isn’t much. [laughs]
DH:
You’re a fascinating gentleman, and we really appreciate you doing this with us today,
Joe.
JP:
It just happened that way, like I say. I didn’t plan it, and I didn’t expect an interview or
anything or, you know—
DH:
Well, we’re honored to have you as part of our oral history program.
JP:
I just do, you know. I just like to do what I like to do. Find something to do and do it.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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DH:
Words to live by.
JP:
That’s my word of wisdom.
DH:
That’s your motto. There you go. Okay, I think that’s a wrap.
01:00:59
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-current
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from an item
<a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/assets/Transcripts/OH_Polocz_Joseph.pdf">View the transcript</a>
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Polocz, Joseph, 1921-
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Hagedorn, Dan
Biographical Text
<p>Joseph Polocz served with the Royal Hungarian Army and Royal Hungarian Air Force during World War II and afterwards immigrated to the United States, where he had a decade-spanning career with RCA as an electronic technician. He was born on May 10, 1921 in Pannonhalma, Hungary. His father was an ornamental metalsmith. During his youth, Polocz studied his father’s trade, worked at a brick factory and movie house, and assisted family members on the family farm.</p>
<p>During World War II, Polocz was called to military service with the Royal Hungarian Army. He later transferred to the Royal Hungarian Air Force, where he trained as a mechanic and served as an instructor at a mechanical school. He also participated in glider training. At a late point in the war, Polocz and another serviceman escaped from advancing Russian forces by flying an obsolete Dornier Do 23 aircraft out of their abandoned airfield. Polocz’s unit was captured by American forces soon after, and he spent approximately three months in a French prisoner-of-war camp. Following his release, Polocz worked in Germany as a farmhand, then attempted to return Hungary. When he learned that many returning Hungarian soldiers were being sent to the Gulag, he decided to return to Germany.</p>
<p>In the post-war years, Polocz worked as a coal miner in France but soon became worried that the heightened international tensions might lead to another war. With the help of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), he immigrated to the United States and settled in Pennsylvania. Though he initially did not speak English, Polocz’s strong mathematic and mechanical skills led to a job opportunity with the Philco Corporation. He later was hired by RCA as an electronic technician. During his 38-year career with RCA, Polocz worked on technology related to the Moon program and the guided missile cruiser, among other projects.</p>
<p>After his retirement, Polocz relocated to Washington State and settled in the Everett area. In the 1980s, he joined The Museum of Flight Restoration Center as a restoration volunteer. He served on the restoration team for the Boeing 247 and also helped to restore several World War II-era Link Trainers to operational status. As of 2014, he is still an active volunteer at the Restoration Center.</p>
<p>Polocz married his wife, Mary, shortly after his immigration to the United States. The two had one daughter, Maxine.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
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OH_Polocz_Joseph
Title
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Joseph Polocz oral history interview
Language
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English
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Creator
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Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Description
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Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Joseph Polocz and interviewer Dan Hagedorn, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, March 17, 2017.
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Date
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2014-10-22
Coverage
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France
Germany
Hungary
New Jersey
Pennsylvania
Washington (State)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Aviation mechanics (Persons)
Boeing Model 247
Dornier Do 23
Gliders (Aeronautics)
Hungary. Magyar Királyi Honvéd Légier?
Link trainers
Museum of Flight Restoration Center
Polocz, Joseph, 1921-
Prisoners of war
Radio Corporation of America
Royal Hungarian Air Force
World War, 1939-1945
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
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1 recording (1 hr., 59 sec.) : digital
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In copyright
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>World War II veteran Joseph Polocz is interviewed about his military service and his expertise in mechanics and machine restoration. He describes his wartime experiences as a member of the Royal Hungarian Army and Royal Hungarian Air Force, his time in a French prisoner-of-war camp, and his post-war life as a laborer in Germany and France. He then discusses his immigration to the United States and his technician career with Philco and RCA. The interview concludes with an overview of Polocz’s volunteer work at The Museum of Flight Restoration Center, where he served on the restoration teams for the Boeing 247 and several Link Trainers.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- World War II and call to service -- Early aviation memories -- Mechanical school instruction and glider training -- Escape in a Dornier Do 23 -- Time in a French prison camp and post-war life -- Coming to the United States and career with Philco and RCA -- Settling in the Pacific Northwest -- Restoration Center work and restoring Link Trainers -- Favorite airplane and closing thoughts
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https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/9f45d26ee34563ee82ee8cf3a09eb108.mp4
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PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Paul L. Weaver (Part 1 of 2)
Interviewed by: Steve Little
Date: March 11, 2019
Location: Seattle, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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Abstract:
In this two-part oral history, Paul L. Weaver is interviewed about his decade-spanning career as
an aircraft mechanic and pilot. In part one, he describes his military service with the U.S. Navy;
his career with the Boeing Company during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; and his involvement in
the Pacific Northwest aviation scene. He also shares stories about other aviation enthusiasts and
the early days of the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation (PNAHF), the
predecessor of The Museum of Flight. Topics discussed include his World War II service aboard
the USS Lexington (CV-16); his flight demonstration and mechanic work at Boeing; and his
experiences maintaining, restoring, and building aircraft.
Biography:
Paul L. Weaver is a World War II veteran, aircraft mechanic, and pilot who worked for the
Boeing Company for almost thirty years. He was born in 1922 in Roseville, Ohio to George and
Hazel Weaver. As a young adult, he worked for the Ohio State Patrol as a radioman and at
Wright-Patterson Field (Ohio) as a radio electrician for the Douglas B-18 Bolo.
Around 1940, Weaver joined the U.S. Merchant Marine as a radio operator. He soon after
transferred to the U.S. Navy and received training at Naval Station Great Lakes (Illinois).
Assignments from his service include serving aboard the USS Lexington (CV-16) as a radioman
and plane captain and serving in a squadron support unit at Sand Point Naval Air Station and
Naval Auxiliary Air Station Quillayute (Washington). He remained in the Navy Reserve after the
end of World War II and later served as an ECM radarman aboard the USS Yorktown (CV-10).
After World War II, Weaver attended college under the GI Bill and received his certification as
an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic. In 1951, he was hired by the Boeing Company.
Over the course of his career, he maintained, modified, and repaired a variety of Boeing aircraft,
including the 367-80, 737, and 747. He retired from the company in 1980.
Outside of his professional work with Boeing, Weaver was also heavily involved in other aspects
of the Pacific Northwest aviation scene. He built and flew homebuilt aircraft, participated in
seaplane operations on Lake Union, and contributed to restoration efforts of vintage aircraft. He
also was involved with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation (PNAHF), the
predecessor of The Museum of Flight.
As of 2019, Weaver is an active Museum volunteer, participating in the Living History program.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
interviewee.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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Interviewer:
Steve Little worked in the finance and statistical analysis field for 38 years and retired from
General Electric Capital. He holds a degree in economics from the University of Colorado at
Boulder and is a licensed pilot. As of 2019, he is a member of The Museum of Flight Docent
Corps and is the Vice Chair of the Docent Leadership Committee. He also volunteers for the
Museum Archives.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by Peder Nelson, TMOF Exhibits Developer.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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Index:
Introduction and personal background............................................................................................ 5
Joining the U.S. Navy and assignment to the USS Lexington (CV-16) ......................................... 7
Early interest and experiences with aircraft .................................................................................. 10
Family background ....................................................................................................................... 14
Navy experiences, part one ........................................................................................................... 15
Flying the Boeing 367-80 (Dash 80) and experiences with Howard Hughes............................... 17
Navy experiences, part two ........................................................................................................... 22
Experiences as an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic .................................................... 25
Seaplane operations, part one ....................................................................................................... 28
Stories about Pete Bowers and other aviation enthusiasts ............................................................ 30
Organizing a fly-in fundraiser ....................................................................................................... 33
Aircraft restoration work............................................................................................................... 35
Navy experiences, part three ......................................................................................................... 37
Story about Eddie Rickenbacker ................................................................................................... 41
Aircraft restoration and maintenance ............................................................................................ 41
Discussion of Boeing career, part one .......................................................................................... 50
Stories about John Glenn and Jimmy Hoffa ................................................................................. 52
Flying boom program ................................................................................................................... 55
Discussion of Boeing career, part two .......................................................................................... 59
Seaplane operations, part two ....................................................................................................... 60
Experiences with the Volksplane, Fly Baby, and other homebuilt aircraft .................................. 62
Involvement with PNAHF and The Museum of Flight ................................................................ 68
Closing thoughts ........................................................................................................................... 70
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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Paul L. Weaver (Part 1 of 2)
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
STEVE LITTLE:
Greetings. My name is Steve Little, and we’re here at The Museum of
Flight in Washington, and it’s March 11th, 2019. We are here to interview Mr. Paul
Weaver. Paul is one of the original members of the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical
Foundation, the predecessor to The Museum of Flight, and remains a volunteer to this
day, some 50 years later. He has had a wonderfully varied life, ranging in service in the
USS Lexington in World War II, CV-16, a long career with Boeing, restoring light
airplanes as an aircraft A&P, and a homebuilder of airplanes and, from what I remember,
maybe even a Fly Baby.
PAUL WEAVER:
Well, it was a—I’ve had a—what—a Volksplane. I helped old Pete
Bowers, I helped him on all of his airplanes.
SL:
Oh, okay. Very cool. I remember the Volksplanes.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Well, I really want to say thanks. We really appreciate your coming in and spending a
little time talking with us.
PW:
Thank you.
SL:
Great honor, great honor. No doubt. Let’s start a little bit about some background
information. I’d like you to state your full name, how you prefer it pronounced, and then
spell it for us.
PW:
My full name is Paul L. Weaver. And do you want—spell it?
SL:
If you would please.
PW:
Okay. P-A-U-L, then the middle initial’s L, and then the last is W-E-A-V-E-R.
SL:
Great, thank you. That gives us a tracking spot, so we know it’s correct.
PW:
I see.
SL:
When and where were you born?
PW:
I was born in a little town in Ohio that was made—makes ceramics.
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SL:
Interesting.
PW:
And I had quite a history in ceramics with—my great-grandfather was—his brother—not
great. Grandfather. His brother was—manufactured and developed Roseville Pottery,
which is still a collectible today after all of these years. And I used to throw against the
wall and break, but—throwing rocks at whatever. It was worth probably 50 bucks today.
[laughter]
SL:
Probably more than that. So was that the name of the town then, too, was Roseville?
PW:
The town was Roseville, Ohio.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Yeah, that’s just south of Zanesville about, oh, I’d say roughly 10 miles, probably less.
SL:
Okay. How long ago was that, if I may ask?
PW:
Oh, my God.
SL:
When were you born?
PW:
Is that my—oh, when was I born? Oh, now, that’s a hard question. It’s been so long ago,
I almost forgot. [laughter] No, I was born in 1922. And if you figure that up, you’ll see
I’ll be 97 years old.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. That’s fabulous.
PW:
I usually tell everybody, though, I’m only 79.
SL:
[laughs] You started counting backwards a few years ago?
PW:
Well, I just turned my numbers around.
SL:
There you go. There you go. So did you grow up there then?
PW:
Oh yeah. That’s—yeah, I worked up—I was set up to be in the pottery business. I
eventually did but—started out with—I went—was going to go after—I was going to go
to Ohio State to be a ceramic engineer. That’s what—
SL:
Oh, interesting.
PW:
And then we came into a big squabble, you know, the World War II. That kind of
changed the plans, and so I was—in the meantime, prior to that, for a sideline I was into
radio. And how did that—get that into sequence here. But yeah, I was—in high school, I
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had shortwave radio and all this sort of stuff, and I used to communicate with Batista in
Cuba, you know. [laughs]
SL:
Really?
00:04:16
[Joining the U.S. Navy and assignment to the USS Lexington (CV-16)]
PW:
[laughs] And that’s long before all this happened. But after radio—oh yeah, while I was
in radio, the Merchant Marine Academy in Boston, Gallop Island, they had a Marine
college there for officers, and they had me down for a radio operator on one of the
Merchant ships.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And about that same time, the casualty rate was pretty high for Merchant ships off the
coast, and although we weren’t really in the war yet, so to speak, but they still were
sinking. So I gave that idea up, although I was still there. I left. So I called the
Commandant of the Ninth Naval District and told him the situation going on now, that I
was waiting for the—my appointment at the college and that—so perhaps they’d like to
have me come into the Navy, because I had to be in reserve status in order to even start
going to college there.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so I—now, let me see. Yeah, so I joined the Naval Reserve, and pretty soon the
Commandant sent me in the mail some tickets for food, some tickets for transportation,
and then told me to report to the Ninth Naval District in Great Lakes, Illinois, and that
they—Navy wanted me for a radioman.
SL:
Okay. This—what—would this had to have been—you would have been about 18, 20
years old?
PW:
This is right after college. I mean, right after high school.
SL:
Right after high school.
PW:
No, wait a minute. Excuse me.
SL:
So about 19—
PW:
It was slight—about 1940 time.
SL:
’40? Yeah.
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PW:
1940 times. Uh-huh [affirmative]. But anyway, I was—but my training at Great Lakes
and all that, and I was put into an outgoing unit. OGU, they called it. And there, the
people were waiting for assignments. Meantime, I had became familiar with a lot—some
of the guys talking to them, and they were destined to go on an aircraft carrier. And I
said, “Well, that sounds interesting.” But I talked more and more with them and—
although I was supposed to be—I was a radioman and waiting for Chicago to accept me
there. And in the—then one day there was a manifest put up on the bulletin board for
people to go to this aircraft carrier. And then my buddy said I’d made—they were going
on. And so I went to the person that handled the manifest, and I told this guy, I says,
“You know, they forgot my name on that list.” And so I don’t think he knew too much
about his job in a way because—anyway, he put my name on the list. [laughs]
SL:
Just by telling him?
PW:
I just—because I had friends that were going on an aircraft carrier, and I knew as much
about airplanes, I think, as they did, you know. Just casual. And so anyway, it worked
out.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
I got—I went aboard this aircraft carrier. It was a new one, just built, and it was in
Boston. And it’s called—was the US Lexington, USS Lexington. This was the number
two Lexington because the first one was sunk in the Coral Sea. And so the number two,
the one I was on was named another—had another name. But since that was on the—
good propaganda, you know, we’d just make this Lexington II and fool everybody. Well,
it did, you know. [laughs]
SL:
Well, I see your hat says “Blue Ghost.” Was that part of the fooling it?
PW:
Yeah, that’s why—we came to—the Blue Ghost because we were reported so many times
of being sunk and—or damaged beyond, and we showed up again all over the place. And
so that’s how they got—think old Tokyo Rose really had something to do with that.
SL:
Oh, okay. So she’s talking about you guys?
PW:
Oh yeah. She couldn’t keep track of us because we were sunk, but we were on the news
the next day. [laughs] But that’s the way it was then and because everybody was grabbing
at something to talk about. And so anyway, and then we told them that—then I got
assigned to the carrier. And when I was on the carrier, why, there was all kinds of talk
about schools and things for aircraft. And so every time I applied for them, they says, no,
I didn’t—they didn’t want me to go to school because I had as much knowledge about
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airplanes as they had already, the people who were there. So I never got a school. Mine
was all—mine was all I developed myself.
SL:
Well, let’s talk a little about that. How did you get—was that when you were in high
school or younger or—
PW:
No, no, no. This is when I got aboard—my Navy time. This is Navy time. No, I
graduated in school in—when was it? 1940—yeah, 1941. And—no, these—oh, anyway,
I’m trying to get it all in my head right now. It’s been a few years ago. [laughs]
SL:
It’s been a couple. But I was thinking, what does a radioman really do? And how do you
take that radioman and make yourself an airplane mechanic?
PW:
That is your—it’s all you. I mean, I’ll attempt anything.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, what were you supposed to be doing as a radioman? What
would that be?
PW:
Aboard the ship—aboard ship in the radio room and doing—communicating from the
ship to shore and all that, or between ship or whatever. Same way with the Merchant
Marine. That’s what it was. And they had a lot of associated duties, too. But I was the—
that was what radio was. But after this time and training and meeting these guys on an
aircraft carrier, that sounded a hell of a lot better—interesting to me than sitting in a room
punching the key, you know, [mimics Morse code and laughs].
SL:
Do you still remember Morse code?
PW:
A little bit. [mimics Morse code and laughs] CQ, CQ. And then—but I don’t know too
many. But I had a very good buddy that was part of this. His name was Dick [Callahan?].
Dick and I were good buddies and—but he went—got called to college before I did, see.
And that got me—we separated. And from that point on, I thought, well, we should be
close together again. I thought we would. Well, we—to get onto something, my friend
Dick, he stayed with the Maritime.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
And eventually, after he got out of the Maritime, then he was assigned to one of our
offshore—or—what does everybody call that now, where they—embassies.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
So he went to an embassy and—after he left the ship. And that’s all right. I went to my
carrier. [laughs] No, I—
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00:12:48
[Early interest and experiences with aircraft]
SL:
Yeah. Tell us a little about the carrier, yeah.
PW:
Yeah. That was—I’m talking about carrier. I’m talking about aircraft. My first things I
would like to mention, the fact that I talked to my dad years ago when I—we first—one
day, we’d seen something in the air flying by. It was an aerial plane. [laughter] And so
that intrigued me, watch him go through the sky like that. So I talked to my dad about it,
and he said, “Oh, you better forget that because there’s no room for you in there because
the pilot was heavy enough. They would—it would never get off the ground.” And so he
kind of discouraged me from getting in the airline part of it—or airplane line. Not
discouraged, but just make a comment.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
But I still—and then [unintelligible 00:13:44]—further on. Well, in the—right after high
school, then I got—before—well, I was still waiting for Maritime duty to get me—call
me up. But I went to Wright-Patterson Field, and I worked on the B-18s.
SL:
Oh, you did?
PW:
Bombers. Yeah. I was a radioman on B-18s.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And that—then that job required me to rig up antennas and balance them out and all that
good stuff. But it wasn’t working on the airplane, although I was radioman on the
airplane. Radio electrician, they called it.
SL:
Okay. So you’re doing more than just the radio wiring. You’re taking care of—
PW:
Yeah, I did—yeah. I was going to be the whole darn thing associated with—but I didn’t
want—at that time, we had a lot of military—at Patterson Field, we had a lot of military
action going on, training and—because we were hurting for pilots and everything. And I
was hoping to get that—into that line. But I just never was able to swing it.
SL:
Had you flown before?
PW:
Oh, way, way back when—first flew in an old Piper plane. And where in the world was
that now?
SL:
Was that back at high school at that time?
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PW:
Well, no, just right out of the high school. I had a lot of things all bunched together, a lot
of things.
SL:
You really did.
PW:
Because I was searching for what I wanted to do for my life, you know. And I worked at
a place that made stringers for buildings, rafters at—up in Canton, Ohio. And in Canton,
Ohio, they had a little airport right there in town, so I used to go over there and take a ride
down then with them to kind of rekindle or keep that it my mind, the flying part.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
And—oh, God. And then after—well, anyway, I’m getting back on track a little bit here.
SL:
Oh, this is fine.
PW:
It is. All right, fine.
SL:
This is very interesting.
PW:
You have to cut and edit this down.
SL:
No, this is—because I’m thinking the early flight experience, I’d like to hear a little more
about that.
PW:
Oh yeah. Well, it wasn’t—well, the early flight experience is—the airplanes were flying
there. I think probably mail planes at that time, because this was just the beginning of
flight. Oh, if you want to back up just a little bit, while I was a junior—was it junior in
high school—I was selected to go to this school for government—of the state government
to—called boys’ something. I forget the name of it. But I’ll tell you about how the
operation [unintelligible 00:16:50] goes.
SL:
Yeah, I remember those.
PW:
Do you remember? Okay. Well, anyway, I was there and since I was—they all had me
down as a radioman all the time, so they put me with the radio department of the State
Patrol. And so then Governor John Bricker—and I knew a guy that knew him
[unintelligible 00:17:14] here with me now.
SL:
Oh, very cool.
PW:
Yeah, he knew John. But anyway, John appointed me—he put me—he made me an
honorary lieutenant in the Ohio State Patrol. I was still in high school. [laughter]
SL:
That’s wonderful.
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PW:
Yeah, it is. And so there again, I met another guy while I was there about the aviation
part of Ohio [unintelligible 00:17:46] that was going to get airplanes or something, the
National Guard. They had some old biplanes there they called the Air—the National
Guard. And old sticks and fabric and—
SL:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
PW:
Yeah, that was all new then. Or that was the only thing. And so the office I was at was on
the airport at Columbus, Ohio, and that’s where they kept the airplanes, and I kept an eye
on them while I was over here doing this. [laughter] And I kept—and watched it going
on, and I thought, “That’s very interesting.” And that’s why in the background I kind of
fudged a little bit at my experience in aircraft, because I knew I wanted to go that way.
SL:
You bet. You had to push it somehow.
PW:
Yeah. And so anyway, that is—I’m trying to get an alignment here in my thoughts. But I
was with the Ohio State Patrol as a radioman, and that’s before—just while I was still in
high school—senior.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so aircraft has always been in my mind, even though my dad told me I’d never be
flying because I’d be too heavy. Because the pilot would be heavy enough, they
wouldn’t—I wouldn’t—
SL:
Well, in some of those early planes? Yeah.
PW:
Yeah. And he had it in his head that there was just room for a pilot.
SL:
Do you remember what the first plane was that you flew?
PW:
Well, probably an old Piper up at Canton, Ohio.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Yeah. But I went—rode only as a passenger. I didn’t fly it. I was just getting familiar
with the aviation.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Sure.
PW:
But I enjoyed it. So like I say, let’s go back to where I went aboard the ship. And when
the officer in charge of the manifest, he put my name down there on—with the other guys
that I knew.
SL:
Right.
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PW:
And so they were all going on the carrier Lexington. And so off they went to Lexington,
and here I went right along with them. [laughter]
SL:
I’d love to know what happened on the other side of that where you were supposed to go.
PW:
Well, I don’t really want to know. But I often said to myself, “I wonder when—that
position that the Navy wanted me in, whatever happened when they called my name and I
wasn’t nowhere around?”
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
But things were hectic at that time. The war effort or thing going on. And so they just had
billets to fill, and I happened to be a guy to fill a billet. And so as long as I could—knew
what I was going to do, wanted to do what I was going—want you to do, that was all
really required. As far as any formal training of any kind, I didn’t have anything, oh,
except stringing wires, antennas, and installing radio gear in B-18s.
SL:
You must have a marvelous mechanical aptitude then.
PW:
Yeah, you know, I did. I think I even surprised myself. [laughs] No, no, I had
confidence—have confidence in what you want to do. That’s the big thing, you know.
SL:
Was there someone at some point that was sort of a mentor to you to give you this level
of confidence?
PW:
No. Well, the—might—I can’t put it down, except I had a doctor that bought an airplane
in my—in an adjoining town, and so every time he’d go—they’d go out to go flying,
he’d—I think he was probably learning to fly it. But every time I’d hear that engine
running—it’s a small town, Roseville, and I could hear it. And I’d go over there however
I could. And occasionally I’d be allowed to wipe oil off the fuselage, and that was—I was
getting close to aviation.
SL:
Getting close. And it sounds like, even though your dad may have said—but he didn’t
discourage it?
PW:
No, it wasn’t—he didn’t really—he just gave me some negative thoughts, which I didn’t
accept.
SL:
Good. I’d say your method worked out pretty well.
PW:
Yeah. But anyway, they—like I say, I was at Wright-Patterson—well, Patterson Field.
And, oh, one thing of humor there, but I was there when they landed the B-18. And—or,
no, not—yeah, with the B-18. It was a big, new bomber. And they taxied off the main
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runway and went all through the—broke up all the blacktop on the taxiways. [laughter]
But—no, not the 18—B-19s. Excuse me.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
B-19 was the newest one. I was working on the B-18s. But anyway, I got along. I’m a
person that if I want to do something I’ll make it happen.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. It sounds like very much so, yes.
PW:
Because you have to be self-taught, lots of things you do, no matter what you do. But I
never did get to be my ceramic engineer. [laughter] But I don’t regret that at all because
the ceramic industry has now gone by the wayside almost, because there’s plastics and all
that and so many things made out of plastic.
00:24:05
[Family background]
SL:
If I may ask, what were your mom and dad’s names and what did they do?
PW:
Oh, my dad was named George Zane Weaver.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Yeah. And my mother’s name was Hazel Jane Weaver.
SL:
Pretty name, pretty name. Yeah.
PW:
But that was in a little, small town. I think it was—if the dogs were all home, we would
probably at least have two thousand people. [laughter]
SL:
So did your dad work in the pottery business? Ceramics?
PW:
Oh, he was—his work—the family for generations were in ceramics.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
And that was—my cousins and all that and uncles. They were all in the ceramic business.
SL:
Did you have brothers and sisters?
PW:
Yes. I ended up with two brothers and a sister, yeah.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Did they stay there and—
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PW:
Well, they all stayed around there pretty much. My sister married a person who was in
the ceramics—didn’t—wasn’t in it—he worked in ceramics.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And my brothers, they worked in ceramics.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
But let’s see. Basically, that was it. That was their livelihood, is ceramics. Yeah.
SL:
So you were the one that went on and did something completely different?
PW:
Yeah, altogether different. Altogether different. I mean, I was intrigued by flying
airplanes and stuff, and I really wanted to be a pilot down deep. I really did. I think I
could have. But somehow or other, it just never—they’d rather have me take care of
them, get them so they’re back in the air again. [laughs]
SL:
Well, that’s pretty darn important.
PW:
Yes, it is.
SL:
It really is.
00:25:57
[Navy experiences, part one]
PW:
Yeah. But then after what I’m talking about, then I went aboard the Lexington.
SL:
Right. Let’s talk about that a little.
PW:
And then there in the Lexington, when the classes come up for different schools, I was—
I’m not bragging, but they always said, “Well, you know more than what they’ll teach
you there and we need you here on the carrier.”
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. So you were given the opportunity to do everything—
PW:
Yeah, that was—no, I never was given the class—school.
SL:
But you didn’t need it. They—you knew it.
PW:
No. And as a matter of fact, I pride the fact that they assigned me to the skipper of the
scouting squadron as his plane captain.
SL:
Oh, fascinating.
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PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
So the—
SL:
So as a plane captain, what kind of plane and what does that entail?
PW:
You take care of all of the problems that developed on the plane, whether—what it was,
you know. And you make—eyeball it all—every day. We used to say, “Mark Eights.”
[points to eyes and laughs] No, you maintained and had the airplane up and running as—
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Whether it’s—Oh yeah, whether—whatever problems it has. Like one time, I got to—
they found metallurgy or something, that the keepers for the valve stems that goes up to
the cylinders, they were breaking and the engine would swallow a valve every once in a
while. So they had to get a whole new set of keepers, which was two.
SL:
On each side of the valve stem?
PW:
Yeah, on—and so one of my first big jobs is replacing all the keepers in the valve stems
and making sure that you don’t drop a valve into the cylinder. And you don’t take a
cylinder off [unintelligible 00:28:17]. You do it right on the plane.
SL:
Oh, man.
PW:
Yeah, and you had to be thorough and cautious of what you’re going to do. So I did a lot
of that to help things go along.
SL:
Were there other people on the crew with you that were working on that airplane? Did
you have—
PW:
Oh, no. Well, only if something major comes along.
SL:
Okay. Otherwise, you’re it?
PW:
Oh yeah. He relies on me to do—make sure his airplane was in good shape.
SL:
That’s a tremendous responsibility.
PW:
Oh, it is. It was—especially since I was a radioman. [laughter]
SL:
You exceeded radioman a long time ago.
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PW:
But I always enjoyed whatever I was assigned. And, yeah. But anyway, that’s—then all
through the war and all that, and then after the war, after we got torpedoed—
SL:
Well, yeah. Let’s talk a little about that. That sounds pretty scary.
PW:
Well, you can’t do nothing about it. [laughs] No, if it’s not fixable, you can’t—
SL:
I take it you’re not a worrier.
PW:
No. No, I don’t, because there a reason something happens. And you don’t—that’s been
my life with the company I work—retired from. I gave—I got fantastic assignments, and
one of them I’m real proud of today. I’m going to step ahead here a little bit.
SL:
That’s fine.
00:29:55
[Flying the Boeing 367-80 (Dash 80) and experiences with Howard Hughes]
PW:
The Dash-80, you know, [unintelligible 00:29:58], I flew that plane.
SL:
You did?
PW:
Yeah, I did, because Lew Wallick [S. L. “Lew” Wallick], who’s got a plane sitting down
on the floor now, Lew knew me and I knew him and he knew what I flew. So we headed
down to Los Angeles, demonstrating—selling the airplanes, 707s. See, this was in the
early days. And so the other pilot was out, and so [unintelligible 00:30:30] and Lew
Wallick for the crew. And so Lew asked [Hart?], he says, “Did you clear a flight plan for
us?” Well, it seems as though [Hart?] was too busy or something happened that we took
off ahead of time. So Lew told [Hart?], “Go file the flight plan.” So he—and says, “Paul,
come up here and take us home.” [laughs] It was like flying a Piper Cub.
SL:
Wow.
PW:
You know, it’s very, very easy to fly, you know.
SL:
Really?
PW:
And so anyway—and then I flew along. I even received the orders from Center telling me
altitudes and directions and all that stuff. And so after a few of them, Lew reached over
and pulled the armrest—his armrest up, turned around, and he says, “Perfect. Take us
home.” So I did. But when we come to Portland—then at Portland, he’d said to me, he
says something about—he says, “I don’t think the company would like you to land this
airplane.” [laughter]
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SL:
Probably not.
PW:
I’d never landed anything [unintelligible 00:31:41] in my life. But I could—I would’ve. I
would’ve because I knew what I was supposed to do.
SL:
So were you a salesman at that time for the Boeing Company?
PW:
I was what they call a—I was traveling around taking orders for the airplanes. No, I
wasn’t in sales. I was on the airplane. Flight demonstration, you might call it.
SL:
Ah, okay, okay.
PW:
And so that’s what—and—
SL:
So who are you demonstrating it to in Los Angeles?
PW:
Well, everybody. Howard Hughes.
SL:
Really?
PW:
I was his guest for over two weeks.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Yeah. And, oh, Howard, he treated us pretty good. He took me to the movie studio. And
there was a few of us, and he took us to the movie studio where he was filming. But I
needed a break, so I went into the coffee room. He says, “Go in there and have a cup of
coffee,” in the—where the actors and actresses sat. And so I went in and the chairs were
all filled—or the stools were all filled. And I stood behind a lady, and so she turned
around to me and says, “I’ll be through here in a minute. You can have my seat.” And
that was Eve Arden. [laughs]
SL:
Oh yeah. Our Miss Brooks.
PW:
Our Miss—so Eve got up and let me have her seat.
SL:
Oh, that’s cool. Wow.
PW:
Oh, it was fun. But anyway. Oh yeah, I remember—and these trips were fun things.
We’re getting away a little, but like Jerry Brown, you know. I mean, the old man and
Humphrey and all of them guys.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
We all swam together in the same pool and all this sort of—
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SL:
Was this at Howard Hughes’s—
PW:
This is—yeah, with Howard. [laughs] A guest of Howard Hughes.
SL:
That’s impressive.
PW:
Well, to me it was—I never thought it would happen, you know. But it was things in my
life, you know. Things in my life. And I could still see them and do them today like I did
then, really [unintelligible 00:34:04].
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
And details and all. Like the Tar Pits that are on Los Angeles, you know. That was one of
the things. He had his chauffeurs take us to the Tar Pits. Boeing—as it was Boeing then,
you know. And so we landed there, and we taxied out to our—the plane—and there
was—the Boeings had their cars all for us and everything, you know. And so he wouldn’t
even let us get our car. He says, “I’ll have chauffeurs take you where you want to go.”
And he put us at the—uptown at Wilshire. He put us in a plush hotel. And so we didn’t
even see where Boeing had already assigned—and he says, “No, I’ll do it.” He says, “I’ll
call—I’ll make the calls.”
SL:
Wow.
PW:
So he put us in this big hotel, and everything was so—I’m not used to a life like this. And
there again, we met people in the music [unintelligible 00:35:29] industry—you know,
movies. And Phil Harris was a guitar player, you know. He’d seen what we—we had a
Howard Hughes account going on. So he come joined us, and so he—[laughter]. Now,
I’m talking just maybe three or four guys in all of this going on, you know. And it was
like a vacation you wouldn’t think you’d ever see.
SL:
Oh, wow.
PW:
But you didn’t—you don’t take your billfold out of your pocket at all. Anything you
want, you just sign your name on it and put down 20% tip.
SL:
Wow.
PW:
Yeah, at that time, you—that’s—
SL:
That’s huge.
PW:
So because of this, all the people in the kitchen, waitress and all, knew we were going to
tip good, so they’d just bend over. You wanted a haircut. You’d go get a haircut. Just sign
your name and Howard took care of the bill. Boeing didn’t have to—so we were on a per
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diem-type thing with Boeing, and so the Boeing people rebelled a little bit about that
because we were being paid by Howard Hughes. We did not—and so they wanted to take
our per diem away from us because Howard was picking up—and so we got a little
rebelling going on like that. And we finally got our per diem, too, because we were
working for Boeing.
SL:
That’s right.
PW:
And so it didn’t hurt them any. They made it in sales of their airplanes anyway. But the
idea that Howard took care of everything. One time after one of the flights—Howard
always liked to eat peanuts, Planters Peanuts in a can. And so one time, he and his
crony—I forgot his name now. I’m sorry about that. But I dropped his name. But they
were conversing near the—where instrumentation and everything, and they had a can of
peanuts and they were both eating peanuts. He handed me the can of peanuts when he got
his, and he says, “Here, you finish them.” So, “Here, you finish them.” And I was the
only one in there, so he must have thought I was Mister Big Shot. [laughter]
SL:
You played the part very well, I’d say.
PW:
No, no, he was a very nice man. I have never—I hear all the stories, and I just can’t
believe it. I cannot believe that.
SL:
Because that’s not what he was like at the time. He was—
PW:
No. He was a very down-to-earth person and he conversed. Even some of his girlfriends
he brought on the airplane, you know.
SL:
Oh yeah, yeah. So he was—or you were selling him, so he was learning to fly the
airplane or—
PW:
Yeah. Oh, yes.
SL:
He flew it?
PW:
Oh yeah. Yeah, he had—sometimes he had a little trouble. He would land and blow a tire
or two and—
SL:
[laughs] That’s a little trouble.
PW:
Yeah. And then one time he was up and he had the flaps down, and somehow or the
other, his excessive speed, he damaged the fore flaps on a couple of the flaps. So we had
to borrow his equipment in there in the shop. He had the—oh, TWA.
SL:
Right. Okay.
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PW:
Yeah. And so we had the full use of their TWA shops. And then we had to repair these
because—and they’re metal. Got the metal, and everything worked fine. We put it back
together, and it kept the airplane flying.
SL:
That’s impressive. [laughs]
PW:
No, it’s—do what you have to do to get the job done. And so we made him happy, kept
him out of the limelight too much about it, and so—but he—the airplane’s a little bit too
big and a little bit too fast at that time for him. I mean, he could handle fighters and all
that, but here he’s got more mass to handle, more things to do. And I could understand
that fully because I know aircraft flight. I’m a commercial pilot myself.
SL:
Oh, okay. Well, that’s interesting. Very cool.
PW:
Yeah. Because I wanted to be a commercial pilot.
SL:
So you finally got to fly?
PW:
I finally got it. I finally got it. And [unintelligible 00:40:43], more about me. But I was
going to go with the airlines. United Airlines, when they were downtown in Seattle, they
hired me to go to Denver and fly cargo planes from Denver to Chicago.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And this was after all this other stuff going on. But anyway, I came time to go, to get on a
plane to go to Denver for their introduction—or to be in the company, and I changed my
mind. I said, “No, I think I’m better off at Boeing.”
SL:
So they were trying to hire you away from Boeing?
PW:
They weren’t hiring—I was—my choice.
SL:
You were looking, yeah. Just to see.
PW:
Yeah, so that I could get another plateau of what I—
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so I says, “No, no. Boeing treats me well, and I’m going to stay with them.” And so
therefore, that ended my air cargo business. Although I didn’t really want a truck driver’s
job anyway. [laughter]
SL:
I hadn’t heard it put that way before, but, yeah.
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PW:
Yeah, because all you do is land, they load you up with like a truck, and you fly away.
And then unload and load back up again. I says, “That’s a truck driver’s job.” I didn’t
want to be a truck driver.
SL:
Yeah. Could’ve done that a long time ago.
00:42:20
[Navy experiences, part two]
PW:
Oh, okay. I’m kind of getting things a little bit like this. But just me is what you want to
talk about.
SL:
Well, that’s exactly it. We want your experiences. And you were talking a little bit about
the Lexington and the war, so let’s transition maybe from the Lexington. How did you get
to Seattle and the Boeing Company and that whole time period in there?
PW:
Oh, okay. Let me go back to the Lexington thing.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
One time it was up around—and during the war now—we’d help and support all of the
islands out there and the invasions and getting it back. And we get into Kwajalein Island.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And one of them ornery guys put a torpedo in it. He shot us with a torpedo, and so we
had to go back into Honolulu to see—you know, reassess the damage and whatever. And
we found out we were—had too much damage for them to handle there in their dry
docks. And so the conclusion was, “You’re going to go have to Bremerton to get this
work done,” because it’s so big, you know.
SL:
Sure.
PW:
So anyway, this is—so we came to Bremerton, and we stayed there at Bremerton for
some time. And I didn’t have to go because I was what you might call an Airedale. I was
in the aviation. And that’s all—that’s regular black shoe or regular Navy for the work
they wanted. And so they sent me off to—over here to—oh, what is it called?
SL:
Oh, Sand Point? Sand Point Naval Air Station?
PW:
Oh, excuse me. Yeah, I was searching for the name. But that’s right, Sand Point. And so
they transferred me, and they sent the—the planes were all taken into California and—the
pilots to continue. And the crew I was with, we went into Sand Point. And while they’re
doing all this work repairing the airplanes, the—
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SL:
Yeah, the carrier. Yeah.
PW:
Carrier. Uh-huh [affirmative]. And let’s see. Boy, I’m unraveling a lot of stuff here.
[laughter]
SL:
Take your time.
PW:
Yeah. But anyway, it—after there—I went to Sand Point, and then at Sand Point the
aircraft carriers were repaired and they were ready to go back out again. Somehow or
other, somebody made an arrangement for me not to be on that carrier. So they kept me at
Sand Point.
SL:
Oh, wow.
PW:
But that’s all right because—so from Sand Point, they organized some places they called
“casual groups” and—supporting aircraft squadrons. And not being a member of that
squadron, but you were—you had to take care of them, like you had to mother—be
mother to them. So the first thing I did, they sent me to, of all places, Quillayute. You
remember Quillayute up here?
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
Okay. That used—they used to have that as an Army base, I think.
SL:
I never knew that.
PW:
Yeah, and—but an aircraft group. And I’m not sure of that, but they tell me that it was
Army. But anyway, Navy—Sand Point took it over, and they called it a “casual unit.”
And let’s see, what’s the number of that cas—well, I was out of Division 7, Casual 7.
And so we supported Quillayute.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so it was a small group of us, and we had—a little humor along with it. We had one
ruling, though, [unintelligible 00:46:40] trainees. They were all flying the F4Fs—or FMs,
at that time. And so they—one ruling was that you do not put ammunition in them
airplanes up there. You had to go down to Port Angeles and land, and then you put the
ammunition in. And then you had to come back to Port Angeles and—to take the
ammunition out before they come back to Quillayute, because they didn’t trust those
pilots. [laughs]
SL:
Really? [laughs]
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PW:
That was the word we had. They’re just learning. So when they had gunnery going on,
you just—you flew down to Sand Point, but the ammunition—then you did your gunnery
practice.
SL:
So gunnery practice was out over the Sound or something like that?
PW:
Yeah. Out in the ocean, yeah.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
But some of the islands or little rocks they have out there. I wasn’t involved with that,
but—although we had a lot of tow targets, too. You’re towing the target, too.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
But anyway, they—I’m getting back to lying again here. Anyway, the thing was out
there, we weren’t allowed to have any live ammunition in the guns at all to come back
into Quillayute.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. A populated area. I—yeah.
PW:
Yeah. So then after we got through with these training squadrons, they called me back to
Sand Point again, and then I was there for a while. And then pretty soon, they said they
wanted me over at Pasco, but that was a [unintelligible 00:48:28]. So off I went to Pasco.
[laughs] And so at Pasco—I don’t know whether my fun stuff should be included in this
or not, but—
SL:
Sure.
PW:
But I had the fortune of conning some of the top pilots to take me out in some of the Cubs
we had there for emergency out in the desert. And they always went along. They liked to
have a—shouldn’t be saying this, but they had—they would go to recreation and they’d
get a shotgun, and we’d go out and we’d—and they’d want to chase coyotes.
SL:
Sure. That was common.
PW:
Yeah. And so therefore—and therefore I got some more flying time.
SL:
So you get to fly while they’re—
PW:
So I get to fly and they get to shoot.
SL:
Yeah, they’ve got the door.
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PW:
They get to shoot coyotes. [laughter] And then I got to the point—the AT-6 was a bigger
airplane and everything. One day they put me under the hood, the hood that’s in the back
rear seat, and you fly on the instruments.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so this one pilot, he says, “Sorry.” He says, “Let me—let’s do a little roll.” And I
said, “Well, okay.” So I went into a roll. I turned the airplane up on its back like—with
my belly up, and all of a sudden the engine went [makes sounds effect]. And it stopped.
And I said, “You better take this thing over.” He laughed at me. And he—“Oh,” he says,
“that does that all the time.” Because the carburetor doesn’t have no—get no fuel in it
when it’s upside down. So this was just another little thing that happened. So that’s one
of the incidents that I remember about that. Oh, these are all memories I’m playing with
here now, you guys.
SL:
This is fun. I’m really enjoying listening to this.
PW:
Oh yeah. Well, I figured mine was—I always made life enjoyable. I always made—even
down here today, I enjoy getting these young men—kids, you know, and just to get their
attention and talk to them a little bit, you know. But anyway, they—after Moses Lake,
then—I think then the war ended in Europe. And then I got called back to Sand Point
because they didn’t need me anymore for any more training. And that’s where I was
when the Japanese surrendered.
SL:
Oh, okay. Okay.
PW:
So I said, “Well, playday’s over.” But I gave you some Dash 80 stuff there, which came
after all what I’m talking about now.
SL:
Right. Yeah, that was kind of how you got here.
00:51:59
[Experiences as an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic]
PW:
Yeah, and then I got here. But I got so many things that I’ve been so thankful for, but—at
Boeing here—
SL:
So you went from—Sand Point is where you ended up applying for the Boeing
Company?
PW:
Yeah. After I left Sand Point, then I went to Oregon to continue education again.
Because, see, all my—I’ve been self-taught all this time.
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SL:
Right.
PW:
And so I had a little bit of the GI Bill, and I was going to go to college down in Corvallis
and everything. And then that’s where I left and came back up to Seattle from Corvallis.
But I never did complete college because I didn’t really need it. So I did have enough
training that I got an A&P license, a government license, you know, and I got that while I
was in Corvallis.
SL:
Okay. So that’s where your—the A&P, that’s an airframe and powerplant—
PW:
That’s where that came into the picture.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Because—but that—at the time, that was a two-year course. We took—I was there for
one year, and the instructor called me aside, and he says, “You’re wasting your time,” to
me. He says, “How would you like to take a test—or examination?” And so I says, “Well,
you know me. And I know me. I don’t think I’ll have any problem.” Well, he says, “All
right. And then you—I’ll call the instructor—or examiner from out of Portland to come
down and you can take the test.” And I did, and he just signed me out right now. “You’re
an A&P.” You know what he said? “You’re wasting your time because you know
everything.” You have it in the Museum down here. You have here—what’s his name?
He’s out of Portland area, and he had a Great Lakes trainer. And anyway, I think the
Great Lakes trainer was logged in to a girlfriend. But anyway, he one day drove it
between two oak trees in—down in Willamette Valley somewhere. Out of the eight spars
on that thing, seven of them were broke.
SL:
Whoa.
PW:
And it didn’t have a tailwheel on it. It had just a metal skid to ride on. So that’s what I
did. I had to replace all the—not replace the spars. Had to repair the spars. You know, put
splices on them. And then I had to put a tailwheel on it, steerable tailwheel, which they
didn’t have on airplanes like that. And then it came to the fact that we needed to increase
the area of the elevator—or the—yeah, elevator and rudder, so we had—did all of that.
And then I had to go through all the sandbag testing and everything for the CEA, at that
time. So they bought it all. So the air—Johnny [White?] bought that airplane. And then
another thing about it, it had an old Cirrus engine in it. But with the Cirrus engine, you
had a bag full of rings, and those rings were to—were there either to put them in or take
them out to up—raise and lower the compression ratio.
SL:
Interesting. I’ve never heard that before.
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PW:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to take all the hold-down bolts and lift them up, put the rings
under to raise and lower the—
SL:
I’ll be darned.
PW:
Well, see, Tex Rankin is who I’m trying to think of.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
Yeah, he’s—got a write-up down there about him.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. But old Tex drove it in between two oak trees and caused all that
trouble. But anyway, Johnny bought this somehow or other from Tex’s girlfriend or
something, and so we restored that. We spent a lot of time on that. But when he got
through with it, it was really good. Old Johnny, he’d fly it all over. A lot of people
wanted it because it belonged to Tex Rankin. He was noted for that airplane.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
And I don’t know where that airplane is, whether—it probably doesn’t exist anymore.
SL:
Probably not.
PW:
No. But then more aircraft stuff going down the line. Then I used to buy airplanes. If
somebody can’t—didn’t know what to do or anything. I was licensed by this time now,
and so I’d buy it. They didn’t want—they wanted—thought that, oh, there’s too much
damage. “I’ll buy it from you.” So that’s what I did. I’d buy—do you remember Sam
Younker? Had an auto dealership here in Renton?
SL:
Yes.
PW:
Well, he had an old high-wing, and he had broke his spar in that, and it was going to be—
it was going to cost him a lot of money to get it fixed. So I—“Sam,” I says, “Sam, I’ll
buy that from you.” “All right.” He wanted to get rid of it.
SL:
Sure.
PW:
He didn’t know anything about it.
SL:
Wasn’t doing any good for him. Yeah
PW:
So I gave him $200 for that airplane. [laughter] He says—he [unintelligible 00:58:03] get
rid of it. “I’ll give you $200.” And so I took it home, and I spliced the spar and repaired it
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back together, and then I took it—to come back to Renton with it again, and it was flying
out here. [laughs]
SL:
Yeah. Were you doing that—that’s after the war but before you started Boeing?
PW:
Yeah, that’s after the war. Yeah, I’m past the wartime now, see.
SL:
And before you were with Boeing. So you were doing this—
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Did you work for a company that way or was this—
PW:
No, no, no. I was learning—I was—no, I was teaching—learning—working myself.
SL:
Just do it yourself. Yeah.
00:58:37
[Seaplane operations, part one]
PW:
And, oh, I used to take seaplane operations on the Lake Union.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Oh yeah. Yeah. [Main?] Seaplane Service and all that. And let’s see. Lana Kurtzer, you
know, that—I used to—old [unintelligible 00:58:52] aircrafts he used to have them. I
didn’t work for him directly, Kurtzer, but I did work [Main?]—for [Main] Seaplane
Service.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And God, that’s another thing. [laughs]
SL:
I love your stories. There’s always something.
PW:
Always, always something. I’m always a busy person.
SL:
Yeah. But still—
PW:
And I’m always a busy person. Anyway, I never had a seaplane or anything at this time.
But—so while I was with [Main]—and I think—what’s his name? He was in Port
Angeles, and he had his operation up there, a seaplane service. Townsend or something
like that maybe?
SL:
I don’t know.
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PW:
But anyway, one time—he always parked his plane there where [unintelligible 00:59:48]
here. So I decided I want to be a floatplane pilot. So I talked to him, and I says, “Check
me out.” He was licensed to teach, you know, to qualify me. And so that was good. And
so one day, he was there and he says, “You want that—you want a seaplane rating?” I
says, “Yeah.” He says, “Well, come on. Jump in.” So we [unintelligible 01:00:14].
Aeroncas that they had there on floats. And so we went in and the first thing—first thing,
we taxied out and everything went fine. I was in control all this time, and taxied out.
[unintelligible 01:00:32] head north again. Or west. But anyway, he says to me, he says,
“I want a one-float takeoff.” And I said, “You do?” “Yep, I want to see how well you
know your airplane.” So—
SL:
I’ve never heard of that.
PW:
So, “Okay.” I rocked up on the one float and took off, and he liked that pretty good. And
he went out, and I made a few turns over the floating bridge [unintelligible 01:01:05],
come back, and I was getting ready to land. He says, “I want to see if you’re still—if you
know how to put a one-float landing.” “Well, we’ll find out.” [laughter]
SL:
Give it a try.
PW:
And so I did. I did a one-float landing. Oh, that was just probably less than a half hour,
and I made a one—so that was my test for seaplane rating: one-float takeoff and one-float
landing.
SL:
[laughs] I’ve never heard of either one of those. That’s impressive.
PW:
Well, he just wanted to see if I knew how to handle an airplane.
SL:
Right.
PW:
And, oh yeah, I had to do a little turn for short-lake takeoffs, too, over in—what is it? Tell
me that name of that lake over there.
SL:
Oh, on the eastern side?
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Sammamish?
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Yes.
PW:
And so that was what everything was on. And, oh, later on, I had one of the guys, the
chief check pilot for Alaska Airlines, he has a 180 on his floats. I shouldn’t get this way
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yet. But anyway, one day we was out flying around. “How long you been flying?” I said,
“A long time on floats.” So he went to Sammamish. He says, “Show me a landing.” And
so I did, and I greased one and [makes sound effect], it was—and so I did that. He says,
“Well, I don’t—[unintelligible 01:02:52]. How long you been since you’ve done seaplane
flying?” “I don’t remember. Twenty years maybe.” And he says, “Well…” He says,
“Nothing wrong with that.” So he just requalified me as a seaplane. [laughter] No, they’re
very easy—they’re easy to fly. If you just use your head about what you want to do, do it.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. You’re a very logical thinker, obviously.
PW:
Yeah. Uh-huh [affirmative].
SL:
You know what you’re doing and what you want.
01:03:22
[Stories about Pete Bowers and other aviation enthusiasts]
PW:
If you want to do it, you’ll do it. And—okay. Then all this time going on, I don’t—maybe
I should knock this off a little bit, but—
SL:
No.
PW:
But anyway, so I’ve been around with Pete Bowers, you know, and all of his homebuilts
and all of that. And old Pete always called me to come take care of his airplane for him,
you know.
SL:
Interesting. I didn’t know that.
PW:
Yeah. And so he—Pete and I were on first-name basis.
SL:
Did you work with him at the Boeing Company?
PW:
At where?
SL:
At Boeing? Did you work with him there?
PW:
No, I didn’t. No, he was in Mahogany Row area.
SL:
[laughs] I take it that’s executive office territory?
PW:
Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, but he—and Harl Brackin was here. Harl, I knew him real well, too.
I got a story with Harl, but I’ll tell you about it later. But anyway, but Pete, I used to take
care of his Fly Babies and all that.
SL:
Okay.
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PW:
And I got to tell you a little story about him right now, Pete Bowers. He was up to
Arlington, and he’d made a biplane out of a Fly Baby one day. And so I was sitting there,
and he says, “You want to sit in the center or what?” And, you know, Pete’s long-legged.
And anyway, that’s part of the story. And so I sat in there to check it out. He says, “Go
fly it.” “Pete, I just now got in it. I can’t even touch the rudder pedal.” [laughter] “Oh,
that’s all right.” So he took a helmet and [unintelligible 01:05:09] it over my head. He
says, “Go fly it.”
SL:
You don’t need the rudder pedals. [laughs]
PW:
Yeah. But it was—I had to go like this to reach it, you know. He’s a long-legged guy.
SL:
Wow.
PW:
One other time, Pete’s son—I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him for a long, long
time. But anyway, his son had his airplane, the Fly Baby, and landed in up at the
Snoqualmie Pass in the parking lot. He couldn’t get back in, you know, so he landed the
airplane on the parking lot at Snoqualmie Pass.
SL:
At Snoqualmie Pass.
PW:
So Pete came to me. “Oh,” he says, “I got to go get my airplane. That kid,” you know.
And I said, “Oh.” I took him to—there was a little emergency strip there right down
below Snoqualmie on the freeway. And anyway, so I took him up there so Pete could
retrieve his airplane. And so he got somebody there at the airport who hauled him up. So
he got the plane off before anybody really—
SL:
Even knew it was there.
PW:
Yeah. No, it was—nobody ever knew it happened. [laughter]
SL:
That’s great.
PW:
Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this kind of stuff.
SL:
No, no worries about that.
PW:
But my life has been full of stuff. I can’t even remember half of it. But anyway, Pete and
I used to—he had the one—the old Namu. You remember him talking about Namu? I
helped him on that. He wanted to make a Corsair out of it. [laughs]
SL:
Oh, did he really?
PW:
Oh yeah. Bent-wing.
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SL:
Yeah. We have lots of photos of it over here in these archives, so—
PW:
Have you? Yeah. I helped him with that. And there was always something going on. And
I was with Pete one time when we were—we went to Oshkosh together. And so you ever
hear of Dick VanGrunsven?
SL:
Yes, the RV Series.
PW:
Okay. Well, Dick, he lived in a tent with me. We was all back there to—Oshkosh
together. And this was when old Dick had just that one single-place airplane. And
anyway, it’s down sitting in the lobby at Oshkosh.
SL:
Oh, at Oshkosh. The RV-3.
PW:
Yeah. And so—but then some of the guys were there and we’re talking, you know. This
one guy was out there performing, so we egged old Dick and said, “Dick, what’s that guy
trying to do out there? Why don’t you go show him how?” So he went—you know, one
thing about Dick, he liked to put wheel pants on everything. And I kept thinking he’d get
mud in there and it would jam them up, but it didn’t. But anyway, we’d egged him on so
he would go out and chase this guy around on his tail all day. [laughter] And I don’t
know who it was now, but that was when he first started out with the RV-3, you know.
And then he—later on, he moved up and up and now, you know—
SL:
He’s got quite the factory now.
PW:
Yeah, he has got a factory. I haven’t been there since. Dick and I haven’t been together
for several years. He probably don’t even know me no more. He’s got a big factory man.
Who knows?
SL:
You’re pretty unforgettable. I’m sure he’d remember you. [laughs]
PW:
But anyway, he lived right—I was back there, and I had—let’s see. Yeah, I had a tent in
this station wagon. And I had another guy with me, too. So we pitched a tent out there at
a parking area by the airplanes. And some of the guys there would string a tarp over the
wing and then—and so that’s all they had at that time. And so it’s roughing it. And the
showers, oh, that’s a garden hose laying on the lawn—or on the grass, wherever the sun
would heat it up. That’s the hot water you’re going to get.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Yeah. But that’s all new now. It’s all so better.
SL:
Have you gone back to Oshkosh since then?
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PW:
About three or four years ago, I went.
SL:
Oh, recently. I’ve never been.
PW:
But not to see anything. But, I mean, just—I happened to be in Wisconsin, and I just—we
were trying to remember. And that’s where I said I’d seen the old RV-3 in the—right in
the lobby there, and I thought, “Oh, my God.” I said, “It’s got wheel pants and all.”
[laughs] But we had fun together. You know, we all talked the same language.
SL:
Yeah, yeah.
PW:
And it was a lot of fun. And he knew Pete—him and Pete, they knew each other, too, real
good. And then I think—oh, we had some more people. There were two that we met.
Remember the—oh, what’s the name of this little car in here in the Museum?
SL:
Yeah, Molt Taylor.
PW:
Molt, yeah. Yeah, Molt had his plane back over there—Aerocar there. And he joined us
sometimes, you know.
SL:
That would have been really an interesting group.
PW:
Oh yeah, it is.
SL:
Fascinating.
PW:
And we were all for one thing and that’s to promote aviation.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
01:10:48
[Organizing a fly-in fundraiser]
PW:
And then in the meantime—well, let’s get back a little bit more and—where—fit in there
someplace. It seems as though—I’m piecing things together in my mind right now. Oh
yeah. Then one day, somebody said something to me about—I happened to see some
airplanes sitting in somebody’s front yard over at McMicken Heights. And I says, “Huh, I
wonder who that is—what they’re going to do with them.” But I found out it was
PNAHF. We didn’t have no place for anything. But this guy had—put these in his front
yard for storage.
SL:
Oh, I didn’t know that.
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PW:
Yeah, yeah, that’s true. And yeah, so he had—this guy had—and then I—then I didn’t
know where they disappeared to, and we had a—I’m trying to figure out—I know we had
one airplane sitting up at the schoolyard in McMicken—White Center, is it?
SL:
Right. Okay, yep.
PW:
Yeah. And, oh, that’s another big story. I spent hours and hours on that. But anyway, we
still had this desire to have a museum. And then in the meantime, there’s all this going
on. We did everything we could to get it all together. And then somewhere in the long
line, then Harl started to get in there as part of it and—regarding the Museum, we were
raising money. We were getting money for this one here. And so I said, “Well, let’s have
a fly-in.” “What do you mean, fly-in?” Well, I says, “Well, Boeing’s got a big parking
lot. Let’s go—” That’s where these—was the 727 flight center. I says, “Let’s manage to
get that, borrow that for a while to have a fly-in.” And we did. Then somebody says on
up in the line, says, “Oh, no. It won’t work. It won’t work. Wrong time of the year and all
this.” I says, “Let me worry about that. We want a fly-in. We’ll have a fly-in.”
So I called my friends from Oregon that’s got—one that had a F-6 and another one had a
T-33 and another guy had another general aviation airplane. So I called them. “Oh yeah.”
But I says, “You’ll have to buy your own gas unless I can get some money for you.”
[laughter] So I didn’t want no—we wanted money for the—
SL:
Yeah, for this.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. And so I made them guys support themselves, but bring your
airplane up and show everybody. And you’d be surprised—and so in the meantime, we’d
accumulated some things here dedicated to the museum, and they sold them there at the
fly-in.
SL:
Oh, really?
PW:
Yeah. And so then we worked—oh, we showed everybody. We had a crowd. Oh, I didn’t
realize it at that time that it was going to be so big, but here it was. So the guys, they flew
their airplanes for me and everything to make noise and—
SL:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Get some attention.
PW:
And then Harl, he got somebody, managed to get some of the goodies out and sell them,
you know.
SL:
That’s very cool.
PW:
So when—so it wasn’t—as far as I know, it didn’t cost us anything for the space.
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SL:
For the space, yeah.
PW:
And so we had a fly-in, and people just came from all over. And I said, “You guys told
me it was impossible. I showed you. I did.” And so we had a—
SL:
That’s a great fundraiser, a fly-in fundraiser.
PW:
Yeah. And people dedicated for wanting to do something, you know.
01:15:17
[Aircraft restoration work]
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you work on—like on the Model 80 and restoring some of
that stuff?
PW:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That was when we had it down—way down at the old sea
hangar on Sand Point.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, I volunteered down there to work—oh, that rust is something else.
God. I told you the thing could be on and on and on. Did you bring your lunch?
SL:
[laughs] Oh, this is wonderful.
PW:
But anyway—no, [unintelligible 01:15:53]. And then the old FM-2 at the same time in
that area, the kids just beat it to death up at this—
SL:
It was in a park, wasn’t it?
PW:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Up at—up in—it was a city—a state—a city park, yeah.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
And anyway, the kids had broke all the glass inside and on the instruments and threw
rocks and dented the fuselages all up. I bet you—I bet a 100 pounds of putty to fill up the
dents.
SL:
Oh, wow.
PW:
You know, it did. But then I was a member of the Naval Reserve at the time, too, active
with that. And so I conned—not conned. I didn’t have to. But I had them—recruited them
to help me.
SL:
Sure. Talked them into it.
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PW:
And we tore that little FM all apart and tried to do things with it, make it presentable. I
got some good pictures. I should have brought them here. But even—I even had the old
Commandant of a Naval District here, the aviation part of it, even had him involved with
it. And I’ve got his picture in front of that old FM and [unintelligible 01:17:16] hangar in
Building 30 at Sand Point. And got a picture with him there shaking my hands and the
whole—[laughs].
SL:
Wow. You’ve got a history with this place.
PW:
Oh, I have. Well, from the very beginning, ever since I seen it in somebody’s front yard
sitting there getting rained on and all that stuff. I said, “No, we don’t want that to
happen.” And then, yeah. What’s another little fighter airplane we had here, the Navy?
SL:
The Corsair?
PW:
No, no, no. The other—it’s over on the other side of the road here. But anyway, we had
that one. It was—The Officer and a Gentleman [An Officer and a Gentleman], the movie.
SL:
Oh yeah. Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
Did you ever see that fighter plane they got there? That’s the one you got over in the
Museum.
SL:
Oh, I didn’t know that.
PW:
Yeah. But they wanted—the movie company wanted an airplane, because that was
supposed to have been a Naval Station.
SL:
Right, right.
PW:
And so, yeah, The Officer and a Gentleman. But anyway, through—not through me
personally, but through a connection, the agreement was, “Okay, you could use the
airplane for your show, but you have to repair—fix it up first.” And that’s how it got
fixed up there, and I think it’s still the same way today.
SL:
I didn’t know that.
PW:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh. [laughs] You dig it up and you’ll find out. But anyway, they
hauled that clear up there, and that’s where they made the movie The Officer and a
Gentleman. But that was your airplane that’s sitting in there over there right now. I told
the guy that the other day, something or other—kicking around. He didn’t know it either.
SL:
Well, these are fascinating histories, so that’s the thing I really enjoy.
PW:
It’s all—to me, I cherish every minute of it.
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SL:
That is so cool.
PW:
Because it’s creative. You know, bringing something back, something that people
shouldn’t forget.
SL:
Right. They shouldn’t forget it.
PW:
They shouldn’t forget it.
SL:
And you’re passing this on.
PW:
This takes a lot of work to do it.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. It does.
01:19:29
[Navy experiences, part three]
PW:
Oh, God. But then I was up at Sand Point, like I say. I was there during the war for part
of the time, too, then—when I wasn’t at Bremerton—I mean—yeah, Bremerton, or out in
the Pacific getting torpedoed. [laughter]
SL:
Yeah, I’d rather not be the torpedoed guy. What was it like on the ship when it was
torpedoed? Was it—there a massive panic? Or what was that like?
PW:
Oh, there wasn’t a real big, loud explosion, so—but the ship just rumbled, you know,
around. You know, like you hit a cork in the water or something, you know, flopping
around. But anyway, during that torpedo—back to that story. That accident with that
torpedo in there, it froze the rudder at 27 degrees and it stayed there.
SL:
So you’re—
PW:
Yeah. And so we were out there in the middle of the ocean with submarines around and
everything, and the airplane—the carrier’s making circles.
SL:
Just going in circles.
PW:
And they—and so the crews down below had to jerry-rig something to get the rudder
back neutral to get us going again.
SL:
Oh, man.
PW:
But, yeah. But that was a feeling that—I often think about that, that here we were—we’re
there damaged, going in circles, and we can’t do nothing about it.
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SL:
No.
PW:
There was no provisions to right it. But they incorporated something different after they
repaired it. There’s write-ups in the paper, in the magazine—not magazine, but history of
the Lexington, where the guys who’d lay on their belly and crawl around on there trying
to get the rudders straightened out.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Oh yeah, down in the—
SL:
Wow.
PW:
And yeah, we lost—let’s see. If I remember details—I know we only had one—there was
four fans back there.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
But we only had one useable. One, we lost one—propelled the whole thing—was gone,
and the other one—another one had the shaft bent on it.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Wow.
PW:
And—well, the other—two others had bent. But anyway, with the seagoing tug we got—
we did manage to get back into Bremerton. In the meantime, associated with this, that we
have—like a lot of times, we have emergency rations here around the ship, you know.
And anyway, when this torpedo hit, it went into one of our food lockers. And so therefore
we was short on food.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
But we had plenty of bologna left, you know. You don’t—[laughter]. So we—oh, we did
all right, but it was always a laughable thing. “Well, we’ll go home on bologna.”
[laughter]
SL:
You’ll make it, yeah.
PW:
So that’s how we worked our way back into Bremerton, by the stores that was stored up,
which was for flight crews, mainly for flight rations.
SL:
Sure. Did the Lexington have catapults on it?
PW:
Oh, yes.
SL:
Okay. I don’t know that much about the ship.
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PW:
When I was on the Yorktown, I got to use them—one of them one time.
SL:
Oh yeah?
PW:
Yeah. That’s another story.
SL:
Well, that’s okay. [laughs] Why were you on the Yorktown?
PW:
Oh, I was on the Yorktown during the Berlin Crisis, you know. Or the—when Cuba sent
missiles over.
SL:
Oh yeah, in ‘62.
PW:
Yeah. They recalled me.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Yeah. And so at that time, I was an ECM radarman.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
I got back into wires again.
SL:
Yeah, the electronic countermeasures. I’m back on the radio.
PW:
And so I was qualified for—and a seaplane rating and an aircrew rating and the whole bit
on electronics there again and—but I had my share of flying, too. [laughter]
SL:
What were you flying in that time?
PW:
S2Fs, twin-engine, you know. Tracker. Oh yeah. Oh, I got stories about that, too. They
were always trying to play games with me. So one time this one pilot was over there. I
was over in the copilot’s side. And I’d seen his arm—and I knew the panel. And so he
was talking to me like that, and he kept flicking this switch. And that was on a rudder
assist thing. And, you know, it has two rudders that they split.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And anyway, he wanted—he tried to foul me. And I kept—I could feel it, and I kept
compensating for it. He says, “Don’t you feel that?” I says, “What? Feel what?”
[laughter] So after a while of that, then I says, “Oh yeah. I know you were trying to play
games with me.”
SL:
And doing a pretty good job.
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PW:
But I didn’t—I could fly the airplane just as good as they could, although they were
designated pilots.
SL:
Yeah. They were technically qualified, but you were just as good.
PW:
One other time—I could tell you something else that’s not really supposed to be notable,
is the fact that during this time of Berlin Crisis over there, the—the Cuban Crisis, I mean.
We landed. We have to go back into Whidbey to debrief. Well, it so happened at this
time, I was in the copilot’s side and the skipper of the group was in the pilot’s side, who I
knew real good, too. And so the guy was [unintelligible 01:26:04] on the copilot’s
[post?]. He went back on my side, the ECM, and sat there and was napping or something.
And so it was time to come back in. Well, we come back in and landed, and the skipper
looked over at me and he said, “Oh.” He says, “Forgot all about you.” [laughter] So he
said, “Hey, you guys, I’m going to turn your airplane [unintelligible 01:26:28] so the
controller—control tower don’t see us, and you guys change back to your seats you’re
supposed to be in.” [laughter] But I think I always thought that was good to have
somebody that, should something happen, that they could be—they could be bailed out,
you know.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah, you’ve got backup.
PW:
Yeah, yeah.
SL:
Levels of—yeah—
PW:
I could land that plane. I could take it off. The whole bit. Matter of fact, this is another
story in a way. But at Sand Point, they have a compass rose, and every so often, you have
to go swing a compass to be sure. And that’s usually a pilot’s responsibility. I was no
pilot, but I had to do that a lot of times.
SL:
Because you’re taking the planes out.
PW:
Go to the compass rose and compensate for the compass. A lot of people had a lot of faith
in me, and I never let them down.
SL:
No, you never did. And so much of this self-taught early on.
PW:
Yeah, that’s right. It’s want to do something. You can do anything you want, you know.
SL:
I love that attitude.
01:27:43
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[Story about Eddie Rickenbacker]
PW:
I didn’t tell you about old John Glenn yet, either.
SL:
Well, there’s another person you mentioned, too, when we—before we started, was Eddie
Rickenbacker.
PW:
Oh, Eddie. Oh yeah. Oh, Eddie—
SL:
Both of those would be—
PW:
He and I were on a demonstration flight for—we were selling Eastern Air Lines some
707s.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
And so we were flying from Chicago coming back out to the coast. And so we landed—
and we had to land in Denver because of the bad weather. And so on the flight from
Chicago, Eddie had a nickel. It was kind of a new nickel, I think. But anyway, he put that
nickel on the tabletop and put it on edge, and we flew, and that nickel didn’t fall off
immediately. You know, it stayed up. But he says, “You can never do that with an old
prop plane.” [laughter]
But he was an Ohio boy just like I was. I mean, we weren’t on first-hand, you know,
buddy-buddy type thing, but just a coincidence and—but that’s my association with
Eddie. I always look in here where I walk in and I see these guys, old dirty, muddy boot
on top of that tire sitting there, you know. “Eddie, if you were here, I’d pound you.”
[laughter] That was in a World War I picture, you know.
SL:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s quite the picture.
01:29:25
[Aircraft restoration and maintenance]
PW:
But I’ll make a comment about that, that—“Eddie, you got your old, dirty foot on top of
that tire.” Oh, that’s another story in its way, you know. And it was interesting. But like I
said, to start all of this was the company, the Boeing Company. They had a lot of faith in
me. They asked me to do a lot of things, and I did it.
SL:
You did do a lot of things.
PW:
Like most all the airplanes, 737 on up to the 727, everything. I was in the proof loading a
lot of that, you know, putting them in and stretching them, bending, twisting, and all that
stuff.
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SL:
Okay. Did you work on the civilian side and the military side at Boeing? What other
planes did you work with?
PW:
No, not—on civilian. Civilian side. Uh-huh [affirmative].
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Yeah, one time we had—one of the KC-97s out here. It was Boeing’s.
SL:
This one?
PW:
I forget the name. What’s the name—
SL:
Stratofortress.
PW:
Huh?
SL:
Or the Stratocruiser, I mean.
PW:
Yeah. Well, oh, that’s another story. [laughter] But anyway, we had one, and somebody
landed it, and they damaged the wing. And we managed to get it back over to Renton,
and there—we changed one wing over in Renton.
SL:
Geez.
PW:
Yeah. See, I feel honored that I was called on to help so much in doing a lot of things.
SL:
And unusual things, it sounds like.
PW:
Yeah, unusual things. You know, but even on the B-52, you—[makes sound effect]. I
saved a lot of money on that. We needed to. But then I was on the 747 program up at
Everett, too, you know. I got a call from them—I was down here at the time. They called
me to come up there to help them. They got ten airplanes sitting on the ramp, and they
can’t be moved. They’re just not ready to deliver yet. And the program was pretty bad.
And so I got a call to come up there, and I did. And one of my first jobs every morning
was to go into the planning room, which is in the middle of the flight line out there where
the plane—and my job was to review all the panels to make sure that everything was in
there—should be in the right position to save time and money.
And one time, I found out there was—they were going to take the flaps off this airplane.
“What’s all that about?” “Well, because they have to go to the factory and be—some
work on them in there, and then they bring them back and reinstall them on the airplane.”
And, to me, that cost money. And so I went out there to survey. “What are you talking
about?” [unintelligible 01:32:29] factory I’d find out what they were doing.
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“[unintelligible 01:32:33]. We could do that right on the line. We don’t have to take the
flaps off.” And they didn’t take any flaps off after that.
SL:
You did. So you saved a bunch of money on that.
PW:
Oh, I did, because you had to reprogram all that stuff, plus the—maybe the handling and
damage that was going on and—Oh yeah. So this one group in there that was in—that
was their job. “I’m sorry, fellas. You don’t have a job anymore.” [laughs]
SL:
Right, right.
PW:
I saved—and then the same way with the fuel. You’re calibrating for fuel in the plane and
all that. I had that, too. Like I say, the company, I feel honored that they had so much
trust in me to do these kind of things.
SL:
They had a lot of trust, but that’s because you earned it.
PW:
Well… But I enjoyed it. I wanted—I didn’t mind it at all. You can—if you use your head,
there’s nothing impossible, you know, if you use your head. It’s just like we started out
talking about our museum here. I put a lot of money here. That old three-engine
[unintelligible 01:33:53] sitting in there, I put a lot of time in on that thing and
volunteered. I never did see the completion of it, only in here and so—but up to this
point. And then the—like the little FM, I did everything I could to get that FM
presentable. But I heard—somebody told me that eventually—there was somebody over
in—oh, excuse me. What’s the name of that—over in the border? Spokane. Yeah, that
there was some kind of arrangement where they would—
SL:
Where they finished it up or something over there?
PW:
Well, they were going to do something, but I’ve never seen it since. They’re trying to tell
me that one in there was it, and I said, “No, that is not the one.”
SL:
I thought it was.
PW:
No, it isn’t.
SL:
Really?
PW:
No, it isn’t. I know. Because I was involved with it from the very beginning when they
put it on the playfield up at White Center.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And I’ve said—and then all the kids wrecked [unintelligible 01:35:10] it down, and I had
it all torn apart with my friends and puttied up everything.
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SL:
Yeah, yeah.
PW:
And so I—no, then they can’t sell me that that’s the same airplane. No. And to—partially
it looks like it because they put a prop dome on this one here. That’s the right one it
should be, but that prop, I didn’t have that prop. I didn’t have that dome—or that—you
know. I went to—what’s-his-name over on the other side of the river there had all kinds
of airplane parts and all that. I conned him out of getting a motor for the prop.
SL:
Oh, for the prop control.
PW:
So I fixed the blades up we could, fixed them up. And I put that on there just for
appearance only, and it wouldn’t—it wasn’t—it won’t fit, wouldn’t—but that isn’t on
there. This was a real motor in—on the blade.
SL:
Interesting. That’s very interesting. Oh, boy.
PW:
Yeah. Oh, I hope—I don’t mean to downgrade anybody, nobody at all.
SL:
No, no. No, no. Uh-uh [negative].
PW:
But everybody was doing their part trying to make things right.
SL:
That’s exactly right.
PW:
But like I say, I’m happy to see that airplane.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
Like that airplane and the F6Fs, which was preceded—or after, I mean, on the carrier
there. One of the interesting things there is—maybe something to listen to—is that one of
my jobs was checking airplanes. When they got out of battle and everything and they
come back, you got bullet holes around there and all in the airplanes.
SL:
Right. Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
Well, rather than taking—trying to take the whole unit off and have it repaired, I took
some dope and made myself some little patches.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
And I started making little patches and putting them on the part of the tail—the
tailfeathers and all of that.
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SL:
Right.
PW:
Anywhere. Yeah, I just patched it up like it was new again. So, I mean, we didn’t have to
[unintelligible 01:37:26] nothing. Patch that baby and go.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. [unintelligible 01:37:30].
PW:
And I did that a lot of times.
SL:
Wow. What plane were you in charge of on the Lexington? What was the—
PW:
SBDs.
SL:
Oh, okay. Okay.
PW:
Yeah, yeah. And so Admiral Weymouth [Ralph Weymouth] was the skipper of that
group, and he was from Annapolis. And he was quite active and noted there, too. Because
I was back there—I’d go to Annapolis when I was in the area. But anyway, Admiral
Weymouth and—but he was just Lieutenant Weymouth when I knew him, when we were
working after—
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Interesting.
PW:
So we’d patch—you know, that was part of it. When the airplane would come back, I’d
go around and look and find bullet holes and patch—put patch on them.
SL:
Quickly patch them up. Yeah.
PW:
And make sure no structure was damaged and send them on. What the heck. One other
time—one time, they got a TBF come in.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Those are big airplanes.
PW:
Well, it was probably a TBM, but [unintelligible 01:38:37] looks the same. But anyway,
the gun got off-sync and shot a hole right through one of the blades and the prop and
was—we needed our planes. We were in a bad shape to fulfill our missions. And so I just
smoothed it up real good as much as I could, and it was a little vibration but not bad.
SL:
But not bad.
PW:
But for what we needed, we needed it. So we flew that until we had time to change the
prop.
SL:
Wow.
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PW:
Well, you know, because—you see, you needed to fix it to make it—so I did. I smoothed
it.
SL:
You did what you had to do.
PW:
I had to do—did what I had to do. And so many people were—but there was always
somebody, somehow—I don’t know what their life was like before they went aboard. But
if you’ve got something—need it, fix it. And that’s what I did. I did—smoothed the prop
up, painted it black again. It whistled a little bit. [laughter]
SL:
That’d scare the guy on the ground—you’re coming after. What the heck?
PW:
Oh, that’s another story. [laughter] Now, I got a true—these are true stories. And anyway,
I’m not making them up. They’re true. Like you were saying something about scaring a
guy. This one guy there in the rear seat, gunner on the SBD, he came back in one day and
he went like this. I said, “What’s going on?” And he says, “Oh,” he says, “I had this Jap
bearing down on us here.” And he says, “I had my gun stowed and they weren’t available
to me.” He says, “The only thing I had—because I had a camera with me for—,” to get
some pictures of what the damage could do and all this. And he says, “I just put my
camera up and pointed it at him.” He says, “He peeled off and left us.” [laughter] Yeah,
that’s a true story.
SL:
That’s cool.
PW:
He says, “The only I could do is point my camera at him and hope that he’s scared.” And
he says, “I did.”
SL:
And it worked.
PW:
He said, “We peeled off and we came home safe.” [laughter]
[production talk]
PW:
No, what I’m saying is truth all the way through. There’s no make up on it at all. But I
enjoy what I did. I did a lot of things. I feel that—like Boeing’s with their refueling
system here. We had one of them on the KC-97 one time and mounted. It was—take the
hinges off the doors back there and put this thing back up there. We made a tanker out of
it. [takes a bottle of water] Oh, thank you. Oh yeah. That’s right. I was going to get a cup
of coffee.
[production talk]
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PW:
No, but I said in the beginning, guys, that I’ve enjoyed life. Life was very interesting to
me. And I feel so confident or—that people who relied on me to help to do things and I’d
do them, that it was—they had a lot of faith in me, and I had faith that I could do it.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
But did you ever hear the old Boeing B-17 has got five engines?
SL:
You worked on the one with—
PW:
Five-engine job.
SL:
With the one in the nose?
PW:
Up in the hangar—Hangar One.
SL:
Yeah.
[production talk]
SL:
Well, yeah, because that was a test bed, right?
PW:
Yeah. That was a test bed for triple-prop engines.
SL:
For trip—okay. And you worked on that?
PW:
Yeah. I built—I put it on there.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Yeah. I was up there. We put the airplane right in what used to be Hanger Two up here.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
Okay. That’s what it was. And—yeah.
SL:
So when you put something like that on, are you then flying in the aircraft as well?
PW:
No, not—no, no, no. But just—this was something the customer wanted. At the same
time—maybe you did know it, maybe you don’t. But you know our Alaskan Airlines
here?
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
I worked on an Alaskan Airline airplane right in Hangar One up there.
SL:
Really?
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PW:
Yeah, and we maintained them there while—they’d bring them back from hauling coal
during the Berlin thing, and they’d have some of their airplanes—as a matter of fact, I
think it might be the ones hanging up in there.
SL:
Really?
PW:
I don’t know that. I have to double check that. You would be in more position. And,
yeah, we used to have—they had two airplanes. They had a DC-4 like that, and the—and
then the C-47—46. 46, I think it was.
SL:
46s they were running?
PW:
Yeah. Huh?
SL:
That’s a little unusual, I think, compared to the 47s.
PW:
No, that was the only one—Alaska Airlines, as far as I know, that’s the only two
airplanes they had.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
And I worked on both up off of Hanger One. Matter of fact, one of the guys that worked
up there with me, Smokey Stover—
SL:
I know that name.
PW:
Yeah. Well, anyway, he was in the crew. So when we—they—Alaska took their planes
back up to—north here.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
The airplanes that are flying off there now. Give me a city—town.
SL:
Everett.
PW:
Well, it’s Everett, but the field.
SL:
Oh, Paine Field.
PW:
Paine Field, yeah. Okay. Well, Alaska, they had a hangar at Paine Field.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
Okay. So they took their planes back to Paine Field. See, Alaska Airlines didn’t have no
money, so we were kind of helping them in a way here at Boeing.
SL:
Oh, that’s cool.
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PW:
Yeah. And so we maintained a lot of their airplanes for them, you know. Those two
airplanes. We didn’t do a lot—big work. We did a little bit to help them. But anyway,
yeah, old Smokey, he was on the crew with us. So when they—they tried to get a bunch
of us to come up to Paine Field with them. And, no, I didn’t want to go do that, so I
stayed here. But Smokey, he went with them up—
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so he was a Boeing employee, but he went up there to help them.
SL:
To help them out.
PW:
When they went back to Paine Field.
SL:
Yeah. Yeah, I think the original hangar is still up there.
PW:
Yeah, it is. They’ve got a museum in part of it.
SL:
Okay. That’s what I’m thinking of. It’s—yeah, Paul Allen’s—
PW:
Yeah, yeah. I went up there. I can’t recognize it too much now.
SL:
Probably not, yeah.
PW:
But I went through their museum up there a little bit, too, one time.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. He’s got quite a bit of stuff in that museum that’s very unique
aircraft, I think. That’s a nice area to go.
PW:
They have a—they have a lot of what I call “hardware.” Old vehicles and stuff like that.
SL:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
PW:
Trucks and tankers and something. It’s all historical. But I was in aviation.
SL:
Right.
PW:
To me—just like you do—Ohio National Guard having old biplanes.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. I wonder what those planes were? Any idea?
PW:
Well, there—oh, there was several manufacturers at that time.
SL:
That would have been mid ‘30s.
PW:
They were old dope-and-fabric airplanes, you know. But that’s—[addressing
videographer Peder Nelson] are you still—are you all right yet?
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[production talk]
PW:
But anyway, guys. But like I said, the airplanes up there—or the structure-tested the big
airplanes up there at Everett, you know, where they had one total destruction. Did you see
the one inside under cover? I was the supervisor of that job of running that test. It was old
[Heling?] was the engineer on it. And—yeah.
01:48:31
[Discussion of Boeing career, part one]
SL:
What were some of your favorite things that you worked on at Boeing?
PW:
Oh my, everything was favorite to me.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Yeah. Yeah, everything was favorite. Boy, just like all your flight control assessment. I
used to have to come from Seattle here and go over to Renton to—we had the control
services and operations, you know, the ailerons and elevators and everything like that.
And yeah, we had to proof all that system for the autopilots and everything. And the same
way over here right across the street here. We had one there, and I occasionally had to go
over there with that, too.
But anyway, after Everett, I said the 747 program and all that—and all the things went
on. I finally got Seattle here to get—somehow get me back down here. And so—but
that—that was the interesting—and I knew that thing must cost a lot of money, that thing.
We sensed it, too, you know. And I gave it a lot of time in driving from here to Everett
to—for different things, and wear and tear on your car and whatever you want to do. I
never got compensated for that.
SL:
Right, right.
PW:
But it would just—would add more cost to the operation and a knowing that we needed.
SL:
Well, yeah, you say you could feel it in the company. What was it like to be working
there back in ‘67, ‘68, ‘69, when it was such a difficult time?
PW:
Well, you just—you had to be a part of the company to feel that, you know. What you
can do—if you find nuts and bolts or something on the floor or some part and everything
like that, you got it and put it back into circulation. To me, that was putting money back
in the cash drawer. And that’s the way I felt about things. I always had a—I was in
supervision, and anything to me—I said, “I’m going to save my wages. And I’ll do
everything I could to save the cost.”
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SL:
So you really knew how difficult the times were?
PW:
Oh, I did. Yeah. Oh, you sensed it. You know, if you want—some people could care less.
SL:
Right.
PW:
Because they just worked and went home.
SL:
It was just a job.
PW:
Yeah, just a job. And when I’d get up at 2:00 in the morning to go up and to get
something done up at Everett, that’s a lot of—snow in there. Oh, that highway between
here and Everett was just full of moguls. Snow, you know, and the rough—I still
remember those days. And so—and then again, I was just lucky to find a parking spot.
[laughter]
SL:
Well, I’m sure there was a lot of people working on that.
PW:
Yeah. But—oh man. Well, we’re not deviating too far away from the Museum here.
That’s what we’re working on now to make this world renowned.
SL:
This is a wonderful museum now. Yeah. It really is.
PW:
It is. It is. Now, I stopped in—I stopped back in Dayton and went to old Patterson Field
one time I went back that way. And I stopped there for a little bit, but I thought, “Oh, I
didn’t—I’ll be here for a week.” [laughter]
SL:
Well, and when you were on it in the war time, it had to have been so much different.
PW:
Oh, it was—it was, yeah. And then, like I said, like the old B-19, breaking through the
taxiway.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah.
PW:
[unintelligible 01:52:51]
SL:
Didn’t think it was a problem, and it was.
PW:
Yeah, it was. It was a problem. Well, nobody really gave a lot of thought to weight, and
then when it gets warm or something and the blacktop gets soft and goes right through.
SL:
You bet.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Yeah.
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PW:
And—
01:53:14
[Stories about John Glenn and Jimmy Hoffa]
SL:
Yeah. Well, you mentioned one other famous person from Ohio, too, that you knew.
PW:
What say?
SL:
John Glenn.
PW:
Oh, John Wayne [sic]. Oh yeah.
SL:
Glenn.
PW:
Poor old John. I stop and say hi to him every so often, go by and, “Hi, John.” Well, John
and I were in the same school district in Ohio.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so therefore we were in the same athletic district, too. So one time, I got—we used
to compete. When we’d go over to his place, we’d compete in New Concord at the
Muskingum College. And John was in high school and I was in high school, but we went
there to compete. But John would always beat me in dashes. And so I said, “I’m going to
fix that.” So I beat him in pole vault. So that kind of irritated him, made him mad, so he
joined the aerospace group to get—so he get higher than I could. [laughter]
SL:
Got one up on you.
PW:
But I know—no, he—I didn’t know John real, real close. I just knew him that we
competed in athletics at school.
SL:
Sure.
PW:
And because we were in the same district.
SL:
Same district and the same age. Yeah.
PW:
And the library called—one time, we took a break in a day and went with John to his
grandmother. His grandmother lived there in town, I think. And she had cookies and milk
for us. So I ate his grandma’s cookies and milk. [laughter]
SL:
Ah, that’s great.
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PW:
But I always tell it jokingly now, jokingly, that, “Old John,” I says, “he just—I beat him
in pole vaulting, and then he never got over that. So he would join the Astronaut Corps
just so he could get higher than I could.” But he was a fast little guy, like a little bunny
rabbit, you know.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
But I don’t know all the fine details. I just know this little—we weren’t—
SL:
It’s a good connection.
PW:
Yeah, a good connection.
SL:
It’s a—yeah. It’s a human connection.
PW:
And just like the Rickenbacker thing, the fact that we were on flight together, you know,
and when he was trying to sell Eastern Air Lines airplanes. And I met—oh, I’ve met a lot
of people around the country with flying around with that sales, trying to get—sell them
flight demonstration.
SL:
Well, it’s interesting—yeah, to being on the demonstration team like that had to have
been really interesting.
PW:
Yeah, it was. It was. And, oh, you know—Chicago, where United Wing—Chicago. Well,
that was nothing but a bunch of boards was there. And so we pulled into United Wing—
and that’s what it was going to be, and we parked—and while we [unintelligible
01:56:39] in, they had a viewing area up above the little—and somebody up there told—
says, “Well, you guys, you made your appearance.” But he says, “There’s some people
was up that was trying to encourage all of the people in the viewing areas to hold their
ears and make noise to, you know…” Ah, wait a minute. And so they said, “But you guys
did a good job.” I said, “That’s great.”
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
But you countered what the—people wanted to fight Boeing, you know.
SL:
Right.
PW:
And I thought, “That was a plus.”
SL:
Right:
PW:
That was a plus.
SL:
Wow.
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PW:
One time, I was back in what used to be—Washington, D.C. there. They call it—it’s got
a different name now.
SL:
At Dulles?
PW:
No, no, Dulles is—that’s where your—
SL:
The Dash 80 is at Dulles there, yeah.
PW:
Dash 80 sitting there. [unintelligible 01:57:45] the Enola Gay.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Oh, it is? I didn’t realize that was—they were together.
PW:
Yeah. Yeah, they’re right across the aisle from each other.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
What is the name of that airport? But they call it now Washington—
SL:
Washington National?
PW:
Yeah, yeah.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
But [unintelligible 01:58:10]—we landed there with the Dash 80 one time, you know.
And probably there—we were trying to—we were there on the purpose with the military
side to make sure to give them their tankers, the flying boom, you know.
SL:
Oh, right.
PW:
Because I was on the flying boom program, too, from the very beginning.
SL:
Oh, you were?
PW:
Yeah, I was in that and—right here on the field.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
And [unintelligible 01:58:40] that was going on, we were in the lobby of this hotel that it
was at, and this elevator came down behind us. And when it landed, out come Jimmy
Hoffa and two of the federal people on each arm. And so I looked—I didn’t know all of
this until I started to inquire a little bit while I was looking at. And he says, “Oh, he got
subpoenaed, and they just make sure that he attends.” [laughter] But that’s the last time
I’d seen Jim Hoffa.
SL:
Yeah. A lot of folks haven’t seen him for a while. [laughs]
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PW:
And—oh my.
SL:
I’ll look at my notes here.
01:59:32
[Flying boom program]
PW:
And anyway, then—no, like I was saying about—shut me up here when you get through.
SL:
No, it’s really interesting. It’s really interesting.
PW:
And anyway, we talk about the flying boom thing, you know. I was in on it right on the
very beginning with that. And we had some old B-29s sitting around and so they wanted
to make them into tankers, so I got involved with those over—we did it over in Renton.
SL:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
PW:
Converted them and put tanks in the bellies of the plane and plumbed them up so we
could refuel.
SL:
Well, didn’t they use that B-29 for that for very long?
PW:
Yeah. No, no, we converted them right over here in Renton.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And anyway, that was an interesting job. But we wanted a backup because we had the
KC—you know, we were going to make it a tanker.
SL:
The KC-97.
PW:
But we wanted to use this as a backup with it, also.
SL:
Okay, I see. Because it was the KC-97, I think, was—
PW:
The KC-97. We made a tanker out of it.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative].
SL:
And that was the Stratocruiser?
PW:
Stratocruiser, yeah. Did you know that the crease beam down the side of the fuselage of
the KC—then the Stratocruiser had a crease—
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SL:
Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s an unusual shaped fuselage.
PW:
I’ve been told that for us to have that design, we had to pay a royalty to—what was it?
Curtiss or somebody. Because that was their design.
SL:
The C-46, I think.
PW:
I don’t know which one it was now.
SL:
Or the C-50—C-46 I think had that. You’re right. I didn’t know that. Yeah.
PW:
Okay. But then I didn’t know it at the time, but—
SL:
Sort of makes sense.
PW:
Yeah. Because that was a patented design—
SL:
[unintelligible 02:01:37].
PW:
…on the fuselage, to have that in there, although it wasn’t just exactly the same. But,
yeah, you used the crease beam.
SL:
Yeah, the design behind it.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
I always wondered what that was, why it was built that way.
PW:
Yeah. Well, that’s because we wanted to strengthen up the fore beams and everything.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And I think that’s probably it, you know, and for less weight. If you had to go all the way
out, that takes a lot of weight.
SL:
Oh, certainly it would have. I mean, for the engines of the time. I mean, yeah.
PW:
I don’t know the full—I’m not in the engineering part of that, though. I wanted to be as
much as I dare to be.
SL:
Well, yeah, you were the one that put it into practical use.
PW:
Yeah, practical use. So we did it that way. And, yeah, we perfected that old boom, the
flying boom thing right here on this field, up around the top hangar up here, Hangar One.
And that’s where we had the old wooden derricks up there to house it in, the boom.
SL:
Oh, really?
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PW:
Yeah. And then later on, they made a metal boom—metal derrick to fit it on. But we used
that. We used regular high-octane fuel in it, too.
SL:
Oh yeah. Well, I guess you’d have to for [unintelligible 02:03:05] work?
PW:
Well, no, you can use anything. You could—but we wanted to make it as natural and
everything to sell the Air Force on the flying boom. And we did, as well as—like I said,
there was—over at Renton, we put—how many of them B-29s we converted to flying
booms.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Must have been a lot.
PW:
God, this is digging into my memories so deep. One thing goes—something goes into the
next thing. But it was always busy, always busy.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. That’s good that it is.
PW:
Yeah. I like my work. If I’m challenged, I like it even better.
SL:
Yeah, that—you’re right. That keeps the brain going.
PW:
Oh, yes. Hm-hmm [affirmative].
SL:
Yeah, yeah. Did you work on the boom for the 747 by any chance? Because they made a
couple of tankers out of the 747, but I didn’t know whether that was the same boom or
the same design.
PW:
Oh yeah, we used the same one.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Yeah, we had—yeah, I was there on development, too. We had the nozzles on the boom.
We had the other nozzles that you see today, and we tested them, too.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
That was made by Bendix.
SL:
Oh, really?
PW:
Yeah. Uh-huh [affirmative]. This one here that we—I think maybe still is today was
made by [Vard?].
SL:
I’ve never heard of them before. [laughs]
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PW:
Well, they made it. [laughs] We’re talking, and one things came up behind there—I’d
like to be able to hear myself again. But, yeah, like in the early days of the 707 airplanes,
we always had—the customers were hollering because the leading edge flap—flaps and
the leading edge of the wing would—they’d park a plane, and they’d go out and their
flaps had—they all fell down because of the hydraulic. But there was something to do
with the no-locking mechanism when the flaps retracted, so they relied on black—the
back pressure of the—on the hydraulic line to keep them up.
Well, I was managing on that system—on that, too, right up in Hangar Two. We put—
machine shop. We had a little machine shop back there. And so we went in and tore them
tore them apart and found out how to do it—had the machine, a groove in it, so when
they’d get up they’d stay up.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
And so what we do with that—well, we had to—so as soon as we can, they’d—all right.
When you take the—all the cylinders off of that plane, send them here and we’ll send you
a repaired part back. And that’s how we did—solved that without too much noise, you
know.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah, kind of doing it in the background a little bit.
PW:
It’s all—oh, you know how that would be taken by different people. So as far as
everybody else knows, it’s just like it was from the beginning.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
But they are new actuators. Wasn’t the same actuator, but we modified the locking
device.
SL:
But a slight modification—yeah, a slight modification that you guys came up with.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. And when they—oh, United had a lot of our airplanes, you know.
And so when they—you know, we had—we were busy. And time didn’t matter. It had to
be done. It had to be done. So our flaps didn’t fall down no more.
SL:
Yeah, because that would look pretty strange.
PW:
Yeah. And I was just telling you about the boom you’re talking about there. There are
stories behind there in my head. Oh, lots of them. But it was—we had to prove what
nozzle we wanted to put on the boom, and that’s why we ended up with that one. “Okay,
that’s fine.” And one time when we was modifying for a B-29 tanker, one day they—
somebody says, “This don’t fit.” “What’s that?” “The surge boot.” Somebody made a
mistake somewhere, and we got—they put the surge boot 24 inches too long. And they
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brought it to us to put—“Well, you guys, you can’t…” So somebody misread a drawing
or something.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. And made it two feet too long.
PW:
Two feet too long, and it won’t fit. You can’t—[laughs]. But we caught it real quick, and
so they corrected it.
SL:
It sounds like you brought an awful lot of the practical side of how this needs to be
worked—
PW:
Oh, very practical.
SL:
…from—yeah.
PW:
Don’t bother me with the little tiny, nitpicky details because I’ll give it right back to you.
[laughter]
SL:
No, that’s good. That’s good.
02:08:34
[Discussion of Boeing career, part two]
PW:
But in same light I was talking about before—now, these are generalities. However you
want to do this. I don’t know. But like I say, I was real happy that on the 747 program we
never never—that I felt I saved every bit of money that I was paid.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. That says a lot because a lot of people don’t do that.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. And so to me, it was money out of my pocket if I didn’t, you
know—but sometimes I got reprimanded for what I did, but then later on it come back,
“Well, you did the right choice.” [laughs]
SL:
Well, and obviously, because you had a long career there.
PW:
Oh yeah.
SL:
And you made it through those big downturns like that and stayed employed. That’s not
easy.
PW:
Yeah, all the way—the Stratocruiser. I was here from the beginning of the Stratocruiser.
SL:
Were you?
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PW:
I used to work with Ed [Hill?]. He was the supervisor of the engine shop over there,
building up engines. And anyway, I worked under Ed. At that time, we had to have one
licensed mechanic, which I was, for every 20 employees.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
There was that kind of a ratio.
SL:
So you’re signing off on it, essentially, by—yeah.
PW:
Yeah. So I met the quota, and that’s why I think they leaned on me quite a bit because I
had—
SL:
Well, yeah, you had a qualification that they really needed.
PW:
And—but we had a job to do.
02:10:17
[Seaplane operations, part two]
SL:
Yeah, yeah. And did it well. So when you were doing all of this still at Boeing and
working on all of this at Boeing, were you still flying on the side and working on the side
on—
PW:
Oh yeah. I was talking about seaplane operations.
SL:
Yes.
PW:
I had three guys operating off of Lake Union. They’re dependent on me.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
But I couldn’t do them all. But you ever know of—oh, right here on Boeing, right on the
field here. He had a contract with the University of Washington for flying, teaching
flying.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
I could never forget his name.
SL:
Was it—I’m thinking Gillis, but—
PW:
No. This side of [unintelligible 02:11:09] used to be. Art Bell. Art Bell.
SL:
Oh, okay. Okay.
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PW:
Art Bell. Okay. I was his so-called top man for him to have his business.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Then he started in on a sideline towing targets. And anyway, I helped him all along that
line, too.
SL:
Wow.
PW:
And Art was a good friend. I thought he was a good friend. And, oh, that Art Bell, I tell
you. I had Art—one time, I did this one airplane, and it had to be a test flight on it. So I
says, “Art, will you do me a favor? Go—tell me if this is all right to you, the flight.” So,
“Oh, okay. I’d be glad to.” So I let him fly it, and I says— [unintelligible 02:12:10] that
little devil. [laughs] He was a corker. Anyway, we got out on the runway and we’re
getting ready to take off, or I thought we were going to be taking off. And he’d run the
airplane over, and he’d run the airplane over there on the main runway back and forth.
And then he’d raise it up off of the one wheel, and then he’d raise it up off on the wheel
like that. He says, “I bet I scared those guys in the control tower.” [laughter]
SL:
He was just playing with them.
PW:
And he was. He was just playing with those guys up there. “Art, don’t get me in trouble.”
[laughter] But he did. Art, he had all the [unintelligible 02:12:55] there. This is just a new
rebuilt airplane. I just did it. But that was both a test flight and doing that like that on the
runway. [laughter]
SL:
We’re just making sure.
PW:
But he says, “Ah,” he says, “I woke them up.” [laughter]
SL:
I would say so.
PW:
But, yeah. But Art, he was a nice guy, and I helped him. I helped him. He was—he had
some things to fulfill because he had a contract with the University in a way, you know.
And so I kept his—he had a bunch of Piper Cubs.
SL:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
PW:
And so I maintained them for him. The only thing I was—I worried every time I opened
up the hangar doors, I thought the roof was going to fall in because it needed so much
work on the hangar.
SL:
A rough old hangar. Yeah. Oh, wow.
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PW:
And so I got—he didn’t hold very many of them. Most of them we tied up outside. And,
geez, here you got me wound up here, you know.
SL:
[laughs] The times are fun to talk about. I enjoy it.
02:14:05
[Experiences with the Volksplane, Fly Baby, and other homebuilt aircraft]
PW:
Oh yeah. But you sound like, you know—like experimental thing like that, you know.
SL:
Oh yeah. I do.
PW:
The guy that—Thorp [John Thorp], the T-18s [unintelligible 02:14:15], they’re all—all
those guys were always calling me to come help—
SL:
Really? Yeah.
PW:
…do something—do for them, you know. And hydraulics that they had was very similar,
and—
SL:
Well, those are a very popular plane. I think—
PW:
Oh, it was. They were nice. You got the old shell of one right up above here.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. I think Cecil Hendricks, did he have—
PW:
Cece, yeah. And his dad. His dad had one with four seats.
SL:
Oh, okay. Okay.
PW:
Floyd.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
Yeah. Uh-huh [affirmative]. Yeah, he had one. And then Cecil got one and—well, Cecil
built that one, I think.
SL:
I think he did, yeah. That kind of rings a bell.
PW:
Yeah, I think he did. I think [unintelligible 02:14:58] the one he built. And there was
another guy, too. J.W. It was up Burien area.
SL:
Don’t know him, I don’t think.
PW:
But anyway, he built—and so I used to—they used to call me to come help them out, you
know, and—oh, I did. I was always busy.
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SL:
So that was your second job, helping all of these guys?
PW:
Third job or fourth job.
SL:
[laughs] Yeah, helping.
PW:
I didn’t even count them. But I didn’t get paid for a lot of the times. I did it just to keep
aviation going.
SL:
Just to—and to keep you going on that stuff, yeah.
PW:
To keep me going, too.
SL:
What prompted you to build a Volksplane?
PW:
A picture.
SL:
Really?
PW:
And the fact of Volkswagen engine.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Because it’s a very unusual airplane. A lot of people don’t know
anything about them.
PW:
Yeah, it was. Some of the people, they cut one of them in half, the engine.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. And they made it a two-cylinder instead of a four-cylinder.
PW:
Yeah, that’s right. And no power there to speak of, but—
SL:
No, no.
PW:
But—because they was all four good. [laughter] But, no, it’s—yeah, they had a two
engine there. Then they had the two engines, too. They had the—was it a 1,600, an
1,800?
SL:
That rings a—yeah, the Kahuna engines or something like that?
PW:
I don’t know who it was now.
SL:
Yeah, with the two little—
PW:
I had one of them one time. I had—and it so happened—no, what was it? I bought this
one just for the engine part of it. And I thought—things got weird. What’s that sound?
And I know the guy’s innocent. So I opened it up, and the crankshaft come out in two
pieces.
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SL:
Oh, geez.
PW:
Yeah, right at one of the journals on the—
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
And it had broken in there, and these [unintelligible 02:16:57] were colliding each other.
That’s why it was—
SL:
Oh, man.
PW:
And it wasn’t a smooth 360 rebreak. It was a—it was kind of like a dogged—
SL:
A jagged—yeah.
PW:
Yeah. And, yeah. So I had a guy, he had an auto parts here, American something or
another, auto parts place. And so I told him what happened. He says, “Oh, you got ahold
of one of those Mexican crankshafts.” I says, “What?” He says—and so he told me about
that. He says, “I’ll get you one from Germany.” And he did.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
And so he says, “Now,” he says, “they’ve been noted to do that, all of those that were
made and manufactured in Mexico.” He says, “Been reported breaking.”
SL:
The quality just wasn’t there.
PW:
And so I said, “Hey, that’s great.”
SL:
Oh, man.
PW:
So he—so that’s how I made—I found out about the crankshafts.
SL:
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But you had to have been a big help to a lot of these homebuilders.
PW:
Yeah. Oh, [unintelligible 02:18:08]. A lot of them use the Volkswagen. But they convert
pretty good, pretty easy, and—but some of them, you [unintelligible 02:18:19] cut them
in half, make—[laughs].
SL:
Well, yeah. I used to—I rebuilt Volkswagens from time to time over the years.
PW:
Okay.
SL:
So, yeah, why would you take something that small and make it smaller?
PW:
Yeah. Well, as long as you didn’t hurt the compression ratio—
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SL:
Well, yeah. Yeah. [laughs]
PW:
You just make it run a little faster to get it—take out two cylinders into four.
SL:
Oh, man. Yeah. So what did you end up doing with that airplane and with other
airplanes? I assume you owned other airplanes.
PW:
Oh, oh, the one I had, never had it complete. One of our dear Boeing engineers is a
friend. He watched me build it. And he was being transferred back east, and he said, “I
want to build a Volksplane.” And so I just bundled it all together and sold it to him.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
And then he says, “Now,” he says, “I got—” I didn’t have the wings yet. And so I says, “I
know a guy that’s got some wings. He hasn’t got any fuselage, but he’s got some wings
he built.” And so we went to him, and he made a deal with that guy. So when he went
back east, he had wings and everything. [laughter] But they weren’t—nothing was
covered yet, you know.
SL:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
PW:
But here again, Pete Bowers I was talking about. Pete had an engine. Was it a Franklin?
Forty-horse, something like that? Anyway, Pete had it on the—over at his place, and I’d
seen it there, and I thought, “That’ll work good in my Volksplane.” So I modified my
plane for that engine to fit in it. And Pete sold it—he gave it to me or sold it to me. I
don’t know. I have a—if I can find it, a whole—the book form of the Volksplane plans
and all that.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
I got one that Pete gave me one time. [unintelligible 02:20:31].
SL:
Oh, that’s interesting.
PW:
Yeah. Do we have any need for it here, I wonder?
SL:
Probably. I don’t know, but the Volksplane is unusual enough we probably don’t have
much on that in the archive.
PW:
Well, I’m talking about Fly Baby.
SL:
Oh, the Fly Baby. We have, actually—they have his original Fly Baby up at the
Restoration Center.
PW:
Yeah, okay. But I’d worked on that. I worked on that one.
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SL:
Yeah, and [unintelligible 02:20:51].
PW:
And I even flew it.
SL:
Yeah. Yeah, we have that, and we have the biplane wings up there for it, too.
PW:
Oh, do you? Oh yeah. Okay. That’s the one I told you where Pete had me in the back and,
“Pete, I cannot reach the rudder pedals.” [laughter]
SL:
Exactly. Yes.
PW:
Well, I didn’t know that. Did you—do you have—what’s-his-name had that homebuilt
twin-engine job. Wick—
SL:
Yeah, I—oh, man.
PW:
I know we had it here. He had it hanging in the overhead for a while.
SL:
It’s probably up in Everett at the Restoration Center, would be my guess. But I think I
know which one you mean because I think it’s hanging at one of the hangars up there.
[cellphone rings]
PW:
It’s a homemade, and it’s the only twin-engine we had around here, a homemade for—is
that me or you?
[production talk]
PW:
But I know from the very beginning—I keep talking to the guys. I said, “Do you guys
remember when the road used to—the Airport Way right here used to come around here,
come through and hook up to East Marginal—to Marginal Way?” “No, I never heard of
that.” Well, it did. Yeah, you know, we didn’t have all that stuff up there at all.
SL:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Exactly.
PW:
God.
SL:
Wow.
PW:
As a matter of fact, on that land, or most of it here, used to be an RV park.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
Yeah. And—
SL:
Interesting. Well, I’ve heard stories about a bar that used to be—
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PW:
Oh yeah. There was a—oh, that had a name. I didn’t go there. My mother wouldn’t allow
me. [laughter]
SL:
Well, yeah, the reputation for it was also where a lot of things got done. If you needed
county-level approval, that’s where you got it done.
PW:
Yeah. Did you ever hear of Clair Popejoy?
SL:
Uh-uh [negative].
PW:
Oh, he was a—well, he ended a mayor of Tukwila.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
But he was in flight test with us here.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
And whenever—Clair and I, though, would stop up at [unintelligible 02:24:11] and have
coffee and donuts the night before we’d finish on. Sure, they talked about a little—a few
things and away we’d go. And stop every night. I worked a swing shift then.
SL:
Okay. Yeah.
PW:
And so it’s an unwinding type thing.
SL:
Sure, sure.
PW:
And that guy, I think he’s still in business.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
But he’s relocated at a different place.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
I told you. Don’t get me wound up.
SL:
[laughs] Well, it sounds like your daughter’s waiting for you now, too, I suppose, so—
PW:
Yeah, she’s out here. She’s—no hurry.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
No, no, she—
SL:
No, because that—yeah, we’ll talk as long as you want to talk. [laughs]
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PW:
Don’t you guys have to go home? You didn’t bring—you didn’t—I think your batteries
ought to be wore out by now.
[production talk]
02:25:28
[Involvement with PNAHF and The Museum of Flight]
KELCI HOPP:
So you mentioned a while back in one of your previous stories that you
had a story about Harl Brackin.
PW:
Yeah.
KP:
I was wondering if you could talk about that.
PW:
Oh, with Harl, while we were both together with the PNAHF, started out with, and then
with the Museum part over here, but mostly with the Museum portion of it is where—but
like I said, part of the story was everybody was down on me for having a fly-in to support
the Museum. And I’m saying, “No. It won’t do it.” And they—although they’d fight me,
and they had a beautiful turnout. And then Harl was there, and he acknowledged the fact
that I fooled them. [laughs] But he says, “You pulled it off.” But I wouldn’t have done it
unless I could figure—do something.
SL:
But you—yeah, you knew it would work.
PW:
Yeah. There has to be an end, a good end.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
There has to be a good—the end, yeah. Okay. Now, Harl and I—I just associated with
him only through the Museum. I never—not work or anything.
KP:
Got you. And how did you first become involved with volunteering with the Museum?
PW:
With it here?
KP:
Yeah.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
Because it was—with PNAHF, I was with them from the very—like I said, before we
even had any place to put the airplanes, so in somebody’s front yard.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
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PW:
Over at McMicken Heights, they were parked in—
SL:
Yeah. So you still—yeah, you continued it from day one.
PW:
Day—right. Yeah.
SL:
And then you’ve been a volunteer now—
PW:
Yeah. Yeah, I do it now because my heart is in this.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
You know?
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
I like being—there’s nothing to be—for me to gain by it, you know. I mean, there is
always self-satisfaction, but there’s no—
SL:
Well, and that’s it. There’s kind of thinking about what you—what legacy you want to
leave here and with this Museum, the Museum is part of it, obviously.
PW:
Well, it—yeah, I believed in it from the very beginning, and I want to see it survive. But
I’m a stickler on maintaining it, too. And I’ve been raising a little Cain with—around the
circles, I think it’s happening. I didn’t like to see the burnt-out bulbs on the inside. And I
see today—I see these things, and I—and, aha, there’s somebody heard me. [laughter]
SL:
That’s very, very good.
PW:
Oh, I kid the guys in—what do you call it—the high bay area here, you know, the—with
the big—
SL:
Where the—the Great Gallery.
PW:
Yeah, the Great Gallery. Okay. Those guys are all sitting in the end, and I said, “Now, if
you guys got nothing to do but sit here,” I says, “my airplane’s getting awful dusty out
there.”
SL:
[laughs] I like your thinking. We have issues with all of us docents gathering over there.
PW:
Yeah. And so I says—oh yeah, I says—so it wasn’t too long after that they said, “So we
started to clean up.” Or somehow or other. I don’t know when they did it, but they
contacted somebody because they did start cleaning them. You get up on the top rail and
look down, and I don’t—my planes never looked like that.
SL:
[laughs] You’re right. It can be a little dusty.
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PW:
And if you’ve got—and if somebody’s hired to do that, then let them [unintelligible
02:29:31] because the wages will go right on and on.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
That’s my management side. [laughter] Some of the people at dear old Boeing, they
thought I was kind of hard on them a lot of times, but I didn’t—I just tried to
[unintelligible 02:29:48] more responsible for what they’re supposed to be doing. You’re
being paid to do it, but I haven’t got any money to have you do it over again.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Hm-hmm [affirmative]. No, that’s—yeah, understand.
02:30:02
[Closing thoughts]
KP:
I guess our last question could be about future researchers.
SL:
Yeah, exactly. What would you like to leave—basically, when we’re talking about this is
leave for the students and for the future researchers, kind of what your final thoughts on
what you’d like to leave for them.
PW:
Just keep it alive.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Keep it alive. For the Museum itself or in future—
PW:
Keep—the Museum, yeah.
SL:
And your career.
PW:
I don’t know moneywise whether we want to build a—any more bigger—I think let’s
improve what we’ve got instead of trying to venture out into unknowns.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Makes sense. Would you recommend to students and researchers
a career like you’ve had?
PW:
Well, that would be helpful. Do you mean, you know—
SL:
Yeah. If you’re talking to a 10-year-old, would you say, “Do what I did”?
PW:
Oh, no, I talk to a 10-year-old. No, it’s just like today down there when we had
something—we got one of the engines sitting there that you can turn the crankshaft on.
And I said—so I talked to this one young man there, and I was—I said, “Well, how are
you doing?” [unintelligible 02:31:19]. And I reached over and I turned the [unintelligible
02:31:23], and I said, “Ah, this is broke.” You could hand—you could turn the crankshaft
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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by hand like that. Well, I knew it was over his head, but I tried to say—well, I said,
“Maybe the rods in there are not—something’s wrong inside.” And I said, “But this is
where the propeller fits on there.” I said, “This is not supposed to be like this.” And they
think a little bit about why. But there’s—you’ve got to be—the young minds, I think
we’ve neglected to get them back to Earth, to get them back to the beginning.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Inspiring the curiosity that you had.
PW:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like a lot—some [unintelligible 02:32:11], well, I says, “You
know, that still works on the autocycle.” You know, intake, park, exhaust, and all that
stuff. You know, maybe the kid never heard that before. But just toward the end, let
him—maybe it might soak into his head. He might do some more inquiring as to it.
You’ve got to put a little fertilizer on.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. [laughs]
02:32:38
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
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2013-current
Creator
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Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
Source
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<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
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English
Rights Holder
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The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
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Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
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2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from an item
<a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/assets/Transcripts/OH_Weaver_Paul_P1.pdf">View the transcript</a>
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Weaver, Paul L., 1922-
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Little, Steve
Biographical Text
<p>Paul L. Weaver is a World War II veteran, aircraft mechanic, and pilot who worked for the Boeing Company for almost thirty years. He was born in 1922 in Roseville, Ohio to George and Hazel Weaver. As a young adult, he worked for the Ohio State Patrol as a radioman and at Wright-Patterson Field (Ohio) as a radio electrician for the Douglas B-18 Bolo.</p>
<p>Around 1940, Weaver joined the U.S. Merchant Marine as a radio operator. He soon after transferred to the U.S. Navy and received training at Naval Station Great Lakes (Illinois). Assignments from his service include serving aboard the USS Lexington (CV-16) as a radioman and plane captain and serving in a squadron support unit at Sand Point Naval Air Station and Naval Auxiliary Air Station Quillayute (Washington). He remained in the Navy Reserve after the end of World War II and later served as an ECM radarman aboard the USS Yorktown (CV-10).</p>
<p>After World War II, Weaver attended college under the GI Bill and received his certification as an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic. In 1951, he was hired by the Boeing Company. Over the course of his career, he maintained, modified, and repaired a variety of Boeing aircraft, including the 367-80, 737, and 747. He retired from the company in 1980.</p>
<p>Outside of his professional work with Boeing, Weaver was also heavily involved in other aspects of the Pacific Northwest aviation scene. He built and flew homebuilt aircraft, participated in seaplane operations on Lake Union, and contributed to restoration efforts of vintage aircraft. He also was involved with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation (PNAHF), the predecessor of The Museum of Flight.</p>
<p>As of 2019, Weaver is an active Museum volunteer, participating in the Living History program.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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OH_Weaver_Paul_P1
Title
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Paul Weaver oral history interview (Part 1 of 2)
Language
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English
Bibliographic Citation
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Source
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Creator
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Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Description
An account of the resource
Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Paul L. Weaver and interviewer Steve Little, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, March 11, 2019. Part 1 of 2.
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Date
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2019-03-11
Coverage
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Washington (State)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Aviation mechanics (Persons)
Boeing Company
Bowers (Peter M.) Fly Baby
General Motors (Eastern) FM-2 Wildcat
Lexington (Aircraft carrier : 1943-1991)
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation
United States. Navy
Weaver, Paul L., 1922-
World War, 1939-1945
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Boeing Company--Employees
Extent
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1 recording (2 hr., 32 min., 38 sec.) : digital
Rights
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In copyright
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>In this two-part oral history, Paul L. Weaver is interviewed about his decade-spanning career as an aircraft mechanic and pilot. In part one, he describes his military service with the U.S. Navy; his career with the Boeing Company during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; and his involvement in the Pacific Northwest aviation scene. He also shares stories about other aviation enthusiasts and the early days of the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation (PNAHF), the predecessor of The Museum of Flight. Topics discussed include his World War II service aboard the USS Lexington (CV-16); his flight demonstration and mechanic work at Boeing; and his experiences maintaining, restoring, and building aircraft.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- Joining the U.S. Navy and assignment to the USS Lexington (CV-16) -- Early interest and experiences with aircraft -- Family background -- Navy experiences, part one -- Flying the Boeing 367-80 (Dash 80) and experiences with Howard Hughes -- Navy experiences, part two -- Experiences as an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic -- Seaplane operations, part one -- Stories about Pete Bowers and other aviation enthusiasts -- Organizing a fly-in fundraiser -- Aircraft restoration work -- Navy experiences, part three -- Story about Eddie Rickenbacker -- Aircraft restoration and maintenance -- Discussion of Boeing career, part one -- Stories about John Glenn and Jimmy Hoffa -- Flying boom program -- Discussion of Boeing career, part two -- Seaplane operations, part two -- Experiences with the Volksplane, Fly Baby, and other homebuilt aircraft -- Involvement with PNAHF and The Museum of Flight -- Closing thoughts
-
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/8dece2b0145d340afe1a70e0bdf5b644.mp4
4627c8d86961c5302a1819d042616329
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/100cfdb8425a07426ef131b88b279cc6.pdf
7ff6b79b9e123a4466c3d7456a407667
PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Paul L. Weaver (Part 2 of 2)
Interviewed by: Steve Little
Date: May 24, 2019
Location: Seattle, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2019 © The Museum of Flight
�2
Abstract:
In this two-part oral history, Paul L. Weaver is interviewed about his decade-spanning career as
an aircraft mechanic and pilot. In part two, he continues to discuss his involvement in the Pacific
Northwest aviation scene during the 1950s and beyond. Topics discussed include his aircraft
restoration work; his experiences with homebuilt aircraft and the Experimental Aircraft
Association (EAA); his memories of other aviation enthusiasts and notable events and locations;
and his work with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation (PNAHF) and its
successor, The Museum of Flight.
Biography:
Paul L. Weaver is a World War II veteran, aircraft mechanic, and pilot who worked for the
Boeing Company for almost thirty years. He was born in 1922 in Roseville, Ohio to George and
Hazel Weaver. As a young adult, he worked for the Ohio State Patrol as a radioman and at
Wright-Patterson Field (Ohio) as a radio electrician for the Douglas B-18 Bolo.
Around 1940, Weaver joined the U.S. Merchant Marine as a radio operator. He soon after
transferred to the U.S. Navy and received training at Naval Station Great Lakes (Illinois).
Assignments from his service include serving aboard the USS Lexington (CV-16) as a radioman
and plane captain and serving in a squadron support unit at Sand Point Naval Air Station and
Naval Auxiliary Air Station Quillayute (Washington). He remained in the Navy Reserve after the
end of World War II and later served as an ECM radarman aboard the USS Yorktown (CV-10).
After World War II, Weaver attended college under the GI Bill and received his certification as
an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic. In 1951, he was hired by the Boeing Company.
Over the course of his career, he maintained, modified, and repaired a variety of Boeing aircraft,
including the 367-80, 737, and 747. He retired from the company in 1980.
Outside of his professional work with Boeing, Weaver was also heavily involved in other aspects
of the Pacific Northwest aviation scene. He built and flew homebuilt aircraft, participated in
seaplane operations on Lake Union, and contributed to restoration efforts of vintage aircraft. He
also was involved with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation (PNAHF), the
predecessor of The Museum of Flight.
As of 2019, Weaver is an active Museum volunteer, participating in the Living History program.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
interviewee.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
�3
Interviewer:
Steve Little worked in the finance and statistical analysis field for 38 years and retired from
General Electric Capital. He holds a degree in economics from the University of Colorado at
Boulder and is a licensed pilot. As of 2019, he is a member of The Museum of Flight Docent
Corps and is the Vice Chair of the Docent Leadership Committee. He also volunteers for the
Museum Archives.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by Peder Nelson, TMOF Exhibits Developer.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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Index:
Introduction and involvement with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation .......... 5
Aircraft restoration work, part one.................................................................................................. 9
Fly-in fundraiser for the Museum ................................................................................................. 13
Aircraft restoration work, part two ............................................................................................... 15
The Museum’s Boeing 80A-1 ....................................................................................................... 18
Aircraft mechanic experiences and local aviation stories ............................................................. 19
Remembering Pete Bowers, other aviation enthusiasts, and early PNAHF days ......................... 21
Stories about local airports............................................................................................................ 35
Closing thoughts ........................................................................................................................... 42
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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Paul L. Weaver (Part 2 of 2)
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and involvement with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation]
STEVE LITTLE:
Hello. I’m Steve Little, and we are at The Museum of Flight in Seattle,
Washington. It’s May 24th, 2019, and we’re here to continue an oral history with Mr.
Paul Weaver. Our first interview was conducted on March 11th, 2019. Paul is one of the
original members of the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation, the
predecessor to The Museum of Flight, and remains a volunteer to this day some 50 years
later. In this interview, we’d like to explore Paul’s memories with the history of the
Museum. So what I’m thinking—first interview you talked about early days, restoring
airplanes for PNAHF, and I’d like to hear a little more about that. How you got involved,
where you found them.
PAUL WEAVER:
How did I get involved? Pity. When I saw these poor airplanes sitting
outside, the weather—rain on them and all that sort—and it hurt me to see a Navy
airplane sitting out with no canopy. [laughs] But I saw it in a neighbor’s yard. I was
seeing the aircraft, and that’s where it all started. I thought—now I said, “Well, what are
they going to do with those up here?” And then later on I found out they’re going to start
a museum. Oh, good, then I’ll jump in and see if I can help.
But basically, it was—that was it, seeing the airplanes outside not being maintained, out
in the weather all the time. And so I didn’t like to see that because those airplanes—to
me, it’s going to be maintained and hopefully fly again. But I often wonder where they all
ended up. I know where some of them came—ended up. But the other planes, too. I hear
we got a storage area up at Paine Field?
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
And I have never been there yet.
SL:
Really?
PW:
No, I haven’t. And—
SL:
That’s our restoration facility.
PW:
But I know where there—where they have a little museum. Is that it?
SL:
It’s near there.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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PW:
Near. Okay.
SL:
Yeah, yeah.
PW:
Then I see where the museum up there—that’s a surprising story and not related to the
Museum, really. But one of the fellows working up there on the—in the museum was
telling me about—he had a cousin, I believe it was, that was on an aircraft carrier, too.
“Oh,” I says, “is that true?” “Oh yeah,” he says, “the Liscome Bay.” And I—“What? I’m
sorry to report, but I watched the Liscome Bay burn.”
SL:
Oh.
PW:
It got torpedoed the same night we were under attack. But anyway, this is off track, but
maybe it’s part of it, somebody’d like to hear it, but—
SL:
Certainly.
PW:
But the Liscome Bay was a part of our task force. And so the night was—the night before
this has happened, of the task force—there was a lot of action out there. There was more
burning than I knew for sure, but I did identify that it was Liscome Bay was the one right
behind us burning. And so when I told this fellow that, he was kind of surprised. Well, I
was surprised to hear that he knew about the ship, too. And—
SL:
That’s an unusual one.
PW:
But that was past, you know.
SL:
So he was working on our restoration area up there?
PW:
He was in the—part of the museum—
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
…up at Paine Field.
SL:
Very interesting. Yes.
PW:
But that’s where he was working. I think that’s why—he was working around it, and
when he raised that word up, it struck a bell with me. Oh no. And I told him, I—at the
time, I says, “Well, I’m sorry to report this. You lost your relative there. But I happened
to see the whole thing.” But it was right short thereafter then we got banged. And that’s
when they—that’s this other thing I’m talking about, the torpedo coming into the food
locker. We had bologna sandwiches for a while. [laughter] Oh, but basically, let’s go
back to Museum stuff. But—
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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SL:
So when was this that you saw these aircraft? Was that the early 1960s, mid ‘60s maybe?
PW:
That was in—I think it was probably the late ‘50s. Probably in the late ‘50s.
SL:
You were starting to see some of those.
PW:
Yeah. And I wish I could remember the guy’s yard they were in. That bugs me that I
can’t remember that.
SL:
Well, you—yeah, you mentioned McMicken Heights before—
PW:
McMicken Heights.
SL:
…which is kind of down by SeaTac area?
PW:
Yeah, SeaTac, uh-huh [affirmative]. Yeah, and it was a new—McMicken Heights was a
new development, actually. There were some older homes there, but you buy so low with
the developers and—in that area. And right off of Mill Trail Road, you know.
SL:
Do you remember what airplanes were there?
PW:
Well, the—I think it was the F-80 was one of them and—no, I can’t really identify them
right now. I just see—
SL:
Oh, I understand that. Yeah.
PW:
I see them out there sitting in the rain. But I don’t think they were open to the public to
go in there and mill around because they’re in somebody’s yard.
SL:
So did you just go knock on the door to find out how this was going to start? Or how did
that happen?
PW:
No, no, no. I just kept track of seeing what was going on. I worked—I was working here
at Boeing’s at that time. And then when I found later on that we’re going—they were
going to start a museum, and well, then I’m going to find out more about. And that’s
where—[whistles]—that’s how it all started.
SL:
Okay. Okay.
PW:
I mean, because if we’re going to save something, that’s me. I don’t want to throw
anything away that can be fixed. [laughter] And that same thing had—was all the way
through my aviation career, was don’t throw it away. Repair it. Let’s get it back and
then—get it back in commission.
SL:
Certainly.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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PW:
I—well, let’s get back to the Museum. [laughs]
SL:
Well, yeah.
PW:
But I could tell you all kinds of stories in between related to fixing and keeping it going,
like the old Dash 80, you know, that we had some—out on the road, you know, you
didn’t have everything available to fix with, so you had to use your own innovation and
my—and repair, fix it, or something like that. [laughs] Oh my, oh my.
SL:
Well, were you involved in the Museum before it was at the Seattle Center? Or with it
when it was at the Seattle Center?
PW:
Oh, it was before that.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Yeah, I was—
SL:
Can you talk a little about that?
PW:
Oh yeah, I was way before that. I recall during the Center—when the Center—they had
something there, but I didn’t get involved at that time because I wasn’t in the know on it.
I just knew it was going to be happening somewhere, but I couldn’t find anybody for
quite a while to get a handle on the situation.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And, of course, maybe you—you know Mike [Pavoney?]?
SL:
I don’t.
PW:
Oh, okay.
SL:
The name rings a vague bell, but—
PW:
Well, there was Mike. He was a long—one of the guys in the Plant One of Boeing. He
worked there many—and his name’s on some of the displays here, where he had—
showing his wages and whatever. But Mike—and then Mike had a brother George, too.
And I recruited them to work with the Museum a long, long time ago.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so George—I mean Mike was very conscious about the same thing I was thinking
about. And so when I got up at Boeing here—because I was working elsewhere doing
other things. But he did his share, I think. Yeah.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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00:09:25
[Aircraft restoration work, part one]
SL:
So what aircraft did you get involved in and when on the restorations of these?
PW:
Oh, on the restoration. Well, the biggest thing, whenever anybody needed something I
got involved. And particularly on Dash—the 80 down here, you know, like getting it
when it come off of the garbage dump up in Alaska.
SL:
Well—yeah, the Model 80?
PW:
Yeah, the Model 80 up there. I just said 80, but that’s another one. But yeah, we brought
it down here and we had to put it on the field there. I forget what—was old Hangar One
that used to—at Sand Point.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
We had—
SL:
So it was—some of the restoration was done at Sand Point?
PW:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s where we started. We did a lot of work there starting—scraping
rust. And I worked trying to get it presentable to—for the engine departments especially,
you know. But it was—everything was crude. We didn’t have molds to the tools and
things to work with. And you had—you supplied your own tools, mostly. And also the
money that goes with it. [laughter] And then at that time, the—being a Navy man and the
FM-2 came up, being all damaged and the way it was, I went on to that, too. But mainly I
stayed with the FM-2 the longest then.
SL:
Were they both under restoration at the same time?
PW:
Pretty much so.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
But yeah, I think the FM-2 was probably started—I have to check dates. My memory
is—probably the—the [80?] was being repaired different places, I think. I didn’t—I lost
track of it for a little while.
SL:
I do have a little history on that. It came out of that first restoration around 1973.
PW:
Okay.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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SL:
May of ‘73. So it would have been before that probably that you were working on it, I
would guess.
PW:
Yeah, that—yeah. Probably—yes, I’m sure it was. Because nobody—there was no
evidence that it had been worked on before when I was working on it.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
But the FM-2, the kids wrecked it—or tore it up, beat it up and everything. And that—so
then I jumped on it, and the first thing I do—one, we had Seafair Weekend here. This
is—we had Seafair Weekend here and—when I was working on it. And the Goodyear
people were there. And I looked at the tires on the FM-2. They were old rotted things,
you know. And so I conned one of the guys from the Goodyear, just—well, I need two
new tires for the FM-2. And so he did. He supplied me two new tires for the—to
restoring the FM-2. [laughs]
SL:
That’s good.
PW:
And so that was one of my earlier contributions.
SL:
So what was your connection with Sand Point?
PW:
My—I was there in reserved status.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Yeah, I was in reserve status. And matter of fact, my regular time and reserve time
amounted a little over 30 years.
SL:
Wow. That’s a long time.
PW:
It is. But I enjoyed every bit of it. I was doing something, accomplishing something,
and—
SL:
So the reserve—were the guys that you worked with in the reserve up there, were they
working on the restoration on—at the same time?
PW:
Oh yeah. They got into it. I was behind—helping them. [laughs] No, I recruited them to
come down and help.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And so every time—some of them worked other times, too, on it because they wanted to
restore it back, too. And they took the wings totally off. They took everything—I had to
kind of watch them. They’d tear it all apart. Because they cannot make it back flying, and
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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I think that’s the way they were looking at it. We’re going to make it flying again. And
I—no, we can’t do that. [laughs] So in the restoration there, we had Bondo. Some of them
new, but they’re patching their old cars and everything. So we had a bottle of Bondo, and
we smoothed up everything we can. And the color of the—right now was—that’s a later
version of the color of the—for an FM-2. It’s not the original color of that FM-2. We had
the—it was the white underside and the blue top.
SL:
Oh, sure. Because it was sort of [unintelligible 00:14:50] carrier.
PW:
That’s the way it was originally. But that’s all I—it’s still an FM-2. And the—so after we
were through, we had—somebody I guess had worked on the prop and it wasn’t pretty—
not bad, but there was no spinner on it or anything like that. And I says, “Well, I
remember that this looks like—just like the F4F.” And so anyway, I—Spencer, he
happened to have some props over there—or prop motors. I think they were for another
airplane. But it did look like the electric props that they use on the FM-2. But no, the
F4Fs was the one that had the electric prop. And so I got this—wanting something to put
on the nose there to make it—so I got Spencer to give me a motor to mount on the nose
and the prop shaft. [laughter] Oh, this finagling is what you had to do.
SL:
Sounds like it, yes.
PW:
And even Boeing got into it. And I got chastised for that, too, because I went down to our
surplus yard and I happened to see some metal down there. And I thought, hey, I can use
some of that stuff, the extrusions and everything and bents. And, of course, I got
informed later on that this—I’m not supposed to do that. Boeing doesn’t want that metal
put out like that. There’s a law against it, you know. Rule against it. But I got metal.
[laughter] When I set my sights, I tried my best to fulfill.
SL:
Well, it sounds like you really did. You put a lot in on that FM.
PW:
But I had—but a lot—because so much damage to that old bird, that FM, that all these
Navy guys I recruited to help, they—I had them volunteer to help. [laughter]
SL:
Had them volunteer.
PW:
And they did. They liked it. They—but I also included good training for them, too. I set
up a department for parts and stuff and in—and so the people with that rating involved
with it, things like stores and—they used that for their training purposes, too.
SL:
That’s good.
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PW:
And so that’s when we was up here at Sand Point. And that was a real training because
the active—the squadron there at Sand Point had moved up to Oak Harbor, Whidbey
Island, and so there—we didn’t have no more flight operations off of the field.
SL:
Okay. So because I want to say the Museum—or Sand Point closed around 1970. But
sometime shortly before you guys finished the restoration?
PW:
Oh, Sand Point was closed, I think, at that—well, it was closed, yeah, when we did the
work on restoration.
SL:
Okay. Okay.
PW:
And so anyway, we—somehow or other, the airplane did get into that little hangar up
there near the seaplane hangar, and that’s when I got involved with it.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And I worked and tried to get it—but there was no organization to draw money or
anything, so my pocketbook took a beating for a little bit. [laughter]
SL:
Now, who did you work with at the Museum at that time? Or was this kind of—
PW:
Well, I was just a floater in the Museum, you might say. I was not anybody there—I
know Johnson was—had his book going, you know. He did the magazine section for
what we do and—but he was a B-17 man. [laughs] But anyway, and at the same time as
that restoration, Jack Lenhardt down in Oregon, he had an FM-2. And so I helped him get
his FM-2 back in operation again. And then I have the guy that—Len—oh, he bought the
F6 off a—you always saw it parked at SeaTac in the hangar down at the end of the field.
SL:
Oh yeah, I had heard of that.
PW:
Yeah, it was sitting down there. I mean, that’s where operations were going on with air—
you know, hauling passengers to—but [when?] Alaska Airlines is. And somebody at
Alaska Airlines, whether it was a guy—he owned it. And so he bought this from him, and
it had—[unintelligible 00:20:36] Jack Lenhardt in Oregon. And then he had trouble with
that, that his flaps wouldn’t stay up. And so I took all the actuators off the flaps and went
back to Spencer again, and he had a good supply of O-rings. Not by numbers but by sizes
and what you needed them for. And so for a small fee, he’d get—he’d give me all the Orings I needed. And so I put them all back together, check them out, and it worked.
Because, see, they worked—these were on vacuum operated, and so I finally got that—
what in the world, I got a block there on the F6.
00:21:39
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[Fly-in fundraiser for the Museum]
SL:
Well, yeah, you were talking about the F6 in the last interview a little bit and—
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Was that the one that somehow you got into a fundraiser for the Museum?
PW:
Oh, I had them both up here for a fundraiser.
SL:
How about—talk about that fundraiser a little bit?
PW:
Oh, that fundraiser. Oh yeah. Well, my good buddy Harl, you know. And I was really
close to these guys. And old Pete, he was in there, too. And—
SL:
So Harl Brackin and Pete Bowers, right?
PW:
Yeah, yeah. Pete Bowers, uh-huh [affirmative]. And Pete and I, we were together before
all this. But anyway, so I says—they were talking about funds, needing funds for the
Museum. I said, “Well, let’s have a fly-in.” Most of them thought I was crazy. “What are
you going to have a fly-in? What are you going to do?” I says, “Just let me go and I’ll
show you.”
And so after so much hem-hawing around, I kind of more or less went on my own to get
it going. And Harl made arrangements to use this ramp over here to have the fundraiser
on, the fly-in. And so I contacted my Oregon buddies, and they both flew their airplanes
up here and [unintelligible 00:23:03] surprise. And Harl, he come in Museum magazines
or papers or something like that, and he set up a table to sell them for advertising for the
Museum. And so here we had a fly-in for the Museum, but I seem to have—I think they
had a lot of people who thought—wanted me doom—you know, doomsday on it. I said,
“No, just stand back. Let me do it.” And when I did, it was a—I mean, my little ad in the
paper about we were going to have it down here on the ramp. And that day, we had
oodles of people coming down and—so I don’t know we—big money. But these guys all
donated all their time. Nobody charged for nothing.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. This would have been early on, like maybe 1966?
PW:
Early ‘50s, something like that. Somewhere ’50, early ‘60s, something—
SL:
Yeah, there was a thing called the Aviation Historical Jamboree. That name rings a bell.
That’s why I’m thinking that—
PW:
[unintelligible 00:24:06]. I didn’t know it had a name. I just wanted to make it happen.
[laughs]
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SL:
Well, what airplanes were involved in it?
PW:
Well, those two fighters from Oregon were the main ones and then I had some locals
around here of the homebuilts—not homebuilts, but PT-19s and—around here. And some
of them showed up. Some didn’t. But I had enough there. I had enough to draw a crowd.
And Harl, he sold his books and magazines or whatever, adverting the Museum and, oh,
that, you know—and he—and so I worked the public. [laughter]
SL:
So this was—yeah, this had to have been one of the first fundraisers like that for the
Museum.
PW:
It was. Yeah, I don’t know of any other before that. We didn’t have no money, and so I
tried to help on that part by having the fly-in. And I wish I could remember the little
details. But I can recall right now how people—World War II pilots would come by and
see this here, these planes, and that’s—they all come up, and they all clamored around
these planes, and they wanted to sit in the cockpits and all that. But I’m going—it wasn’t
my airplane, but you might ask Jack. And he let them, some of the guys. “Oh yeah, I used
to fly one of these FMs off a jeep carrier,” you know, that—and so anyway.
Jack could—I procured a World War II flight jacket, leather flight jacket, and so it was
flown by—worn by a guy that flew off a carrier. And so I gave it to Jack and I says, “This
will match your airplane now.” So [unintelligible 00:26:15] around, wear his old leather
Navy flight jacket, you know. So it always looked good. Yeah, yeah.
SL:
That’s pretty cool.
PW:
That’s kind of a story, but it happened. I made it happen. And, you know, we didn’t have
nothing to start with. You can’t lose anything if you don’t have anything to start with.
SL:
Well, that’s true. Well, you talked about being good friends with Harl.
PW:
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Harl—
SL:
Can you talk about that a little bit?
PW:
Oh, Harl was a very nice man and very [unintelligible 00:26:53]. And we became good
friends. And I was—kind of hard to believe when I—word got that Harl had passed
away, you know. Because we hadn’t—we weren’t really close at the time, but
[unintelligible 00:27:17] as far as the Museum goes, but other than that my—but then—I
don’t know how—I just know that he helped me when I needed help. I wanted a backup,
somebody to back up behind me. “I have an idea. Now here’s what I want to do.” And so
he would go through the other way and make me—make it happen with me.
SL:
Okay.
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PW:
But I think that was really—as you said earlier, I think that was our first big fundraiser. It
was an air show. Not an air show. Just a display, you might call it. The show was what
we wanted and what we were trying to do. And we had it—had quite a draw, a lot of cars.
Some of the guys I can’t name by name, they helped park some of the cars, get them a
spot to park and—
SL:
And that was about where we are sitting now at the Museum location?
PW:
Oh yeah, right—
SL:
Pretty close to here?
PW:
Yeah, right here. Well, where your airplanes out here are sitting right now, that was the
old 727 delivery center.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
Yeah, and that—we used that ramp of theirs there. Uh-huh [affirmative].
SL:
Okay. Wow.
PW:
Well, this—a lot of people were involved. I wasn’t the only one. But there had to be
somebody stirring the pot once in a while. [laughter]
SL:
That’s good.
PW:
But it’s all for a good purpose, you know.
SL:
It certainly was, yeah.
PW:
And I believed in it. And I still believe in it today.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, obviously you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, so that’s
good.
PW:
Yeah.
00:29:11
[Aircraft restoration work, part two]
SL:
In ‘73, after you’d restored—the FM-2 and the Model 80 were both well on the way to
restoration, where did they go after they left Sand Point?
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PW:
Oh, that there—that plane, the FM-2, I heard somebody tell me that there was a group in
Sand—or Spokane. They needed it for their museum, this—and they had people there.
They had manpower to work on it. So they loaned it to—
SL:
Okay.
PW:
…they would loan it to Spokane to—for them to work on the [unintelligible 00:29:54].
Well, fine, if you can get them to work on it. Because my guys have been work, work,
work. They’re getting kind of tired of it, you know, because—
SL:
Well—
PW:
And Bondo and sanding and—
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. The photos that you gave us, though, show that it looked pretty
darn good in ‘73, like it was a good display aircraft.
PW:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, the Whidbey Island people could see I was using Sand
Point facility, which is under their—so they—the head man or commanding officer of the
Naval Detachment up there, he was proud as all can be because I got his—set there and
he got his picture in—with the airplane. And, of course, we were sitting there shaking
hands and big old Building 30 on Sand Point and the—was right in the background.
That—he liked it. He was back into things again. [laughter]
SL:
Well, I think the photos you provided are—they really show a lot of the crew working on
it. But you’re not in those pictures. And you showed me one last time with you in the
picture.
PW:
Well, I didn’t—well, that’s all right. I don’t need that kind of stuff. Just get it done.
SL:
Well, we’d like to have that, though. [laughs] For the record, for the—that would be
ideal.
PW:
No, I never—I’m not double-jointed. I don’t go for a pat on the back or anything. I
want—I’m just a guy that wants things done. Sometimes people don’t like it too well,
but—because they think I’m pushing. But I try not to do that. I just try to get them
involved like I’m involved. And that’s how things go ahead. It’s all like Johnson with his
magazine and all that. We’d talk a lot—part of me was saying, but I encouraged him and
everything about—very nice to get that magazine, [PNAHF?].
SL:
Okay, so I’m not sure who this Johnson is that you’re talking about.
PW:
Well, he was the—everybody called him a journalist. He was a guy, published the—
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SL:
He did the newsletter for the early days of PNAHF? Something like that?
PW:
Yeah. The magazine and the whole bit, yeah.
SL:
Okay. Okay.
PW:
Yeah, he had [unintelligible 00:32:25]. But like I say, he liked B-17s a lot. And if you see
a lot of his papers, he’s always B-17s and—but—oh well. The B-17s were quite
something here. Remember—we were going to talk about the Museum, but I’m just
going to tell you about the one in Oregon, how the B-17 up on the pillar under the gas
station.
SL:
In Milwaukie, Oregon. Yeah.
PW:
Oh yes. I’ve been there. I’d go there and I’d watch it and I’d said—and I always made a
comment, but it’s the wrong people I talk to because they were just workers. [laughs] But
about stop the traffic and they’re ruining the airplane. And some of those darn kids went
in there, and they’d break the glasses on the instruments and all that stuff, you know. But
I heard that that’s being restored now.
SL:
Yes, it is.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative].
SL:
His son took it off the pedestal, and they’ve been working on it for a couple of years now.
PW:
Yeah. But I thought—when I heard—maybe from you, but I heard that. But, oh, good.
Somebody has got feelings for it.
SL:
Oh yeah. It’s a very good story. In fact, the Museum had some—our museum had some
surplus parts from the B-17 and we donated them to them.
PW:
I think that’s great, you know. Matter of fact, I just put a shear pin from the B-17
tailwheel—I happened to have a couple, three of them in the—how I got them, I’m not
too sure, really. But anyway, I donated them to the museum down in Mesa, because
there’s a B-17 down there also. And they weren’t no good for me anymore. And so I
donated them there. I said, “You guys are going to be needing these.” They were shear
pins. And they accepted them. And then also, there was a light. It goes to the top turret,
so the sides built in [unintelligible 00:34:50] for it. Anyway, I—this came from another
airplane, you know. I kept it. So I donate that back to the Mesa B-17 and where—you
know, where your top turret [unintelligible 00:35:05] pull that cord and everything. I
donated that to them down there, too, for them to use—put into their airplane. And the
bracketry and everything was there for the—but now they got—now they have a light in
there. [laughs]
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00:35:20
[The Museum’s Boeing 80A-1]
SL:
That’s good. You also mentioned on the Model 80 that we have sitting out there that you
hadn’t seen that for a number of years.
PW:
Oh, no, I haven’t.
SL:
So can you tell us kind of a little about all that?
PW:
That was a—I wasn’t—well, I was in and out. See, I was—I work full-time, so I wasn’t
able to keep on top with these. Whenever I’d hear of a meeting, I’d go to it. But I didn’t
know any more about it than just de-scale and the rust and—but if I was—I was greatly
amazed when I seen how it’s done. Oh, it’s nice. And then when I read more about the
flight operations of the different airlines, how they got started in Alaska, and then this
here is a good tie-in with what I’ve read and—but no, I have not—I didn’t work on it all
that much. Mostly, all I ever was—the engine mounts and stuff like that in the front end.
And where it went, I don’t know. I just—
SL:
It lived in various places.
PW:
Yeah, I—
SL:
It’s something I was going to—
PW:
So it was out of sight. But I had some other stuff to work on. But it was being worked on,
I heard. And I said, “That’s good. As long as it’s work—being worked on.”
SL:
It was. I know there was some work done over at what was called the Tacoma Industrial
Airport, which is the Narrows Airport.
PW:
Oh.
SL:
We had a restoration facility of some sort there, and I was curious if you worked in that at
all.
PW:
Okay.
SL:
But it doesn’t sound like that’s where—
PW:
It wasn’t Nalley Valley Airport? [laughs]
SL:
No, it wasn’t. I was doing some research yesterday to confirm which one it was.
PW:
Oh, I used to fly in and out of there a lot.
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SL:
Oh, did you?
PW:
Old Nalley Valley. Yeah.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. I thought maybe it was Lakewood or something, but no, it was—
PW:
Yeah, it [unintelligible 00:37:29]—I was up there for the dedication and most of that old
Narrows Airport.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
I was one of the first flying in there. [laughs]
00:37:40
[Aircraft mechanic experiences and local aviation stories]
SL:
Well, when you were flying, what were you flying about at that time? What airplane, do
you remember?
PW:
Oh. Always had an airplane. I’d buy something and need to repair it, and I’d fix it and I
flew it. Oh, I had three Aeronca Champs at one time.
SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
And one of them I had in good shape, then the others pretty close to being good shape.
The other needed some work, so I found a guy from—came—approached me from
Alaska. And so he—so after a little talking, he bought those three airplanes and all the
spare parts I got, and he’s going to take them up to Alaska and put floats on them.
[laughter] So I made him some kind of a good deal, you know, because I was getting a
little tired of working for a living and working on airplanes on the side.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, it sounded like you did the full-time job as an A&I—or an
A&P.
PW:
Oh yeah, [unintelligible 00:38:45] full-time job.
SL:
And then you’re doing this on the side and had an awful lot that you had on your plate.
PW:
It was. And at times at home, when I was there I’d buy—I’d buy somebody have
something too big for them. It cost them a lot of money. Since I was licensed and all that,
I’d—you know, that’s where I could save. So I’d take it home, and I’d—like one guy had
a broken spar, cracked and it was a broken spar on his—and I bought it kind of rather
cheap. [laughs] And so I took it home and I spliced a spar in, recovered that area back up
and went down and sold it. And that’s—sold the airplane after I repaired it. I’d do that all
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the time. You know, like I talk to people now about the—oh, first—I live out there now,
south of town here. What’s it—
SL:
Oh, Federal Way.
PW:
Federal Way. Yeah. Federal Way International Airport. You knew where that was?
SL:
Well, I think it’s over kind of near where the playing fields are now.
PW:
Yeah, it is. It’s—I mean, I’d looked there—somewhere around there there’s some UC78s buried.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Yeah. They bought—somebody bought them. And there was some damage, but they
rot—wood rot on the spars where the clamping was on. And the CAA, at that time, put
quite a restriction on how to repair them. And nobody wanted to do it, so—the cost was
prohibitive, so—I know two of them disappeared, and I—later on I found out they were a
big [unintelligible 00:40:44] there. And so it was dismantled in a way, and this airplane
would sit in there. And he covered over it with dirt.
SL:
[laughs] Oh, geez.
PW:
So up around that field, they’ve got some Useless 78s. [laughter]
SL:
Yeah, I guess. Oh, man.
PW:
UC—[unintelligible 00:41:05]. But they have another name for them, too, you know.
You probably heard that, too.
SL:
Hm-hmm [negative]. I don’t think so.
PW:
Double-Breasted Cub.
SL:
Okay, yes. Yeah. I know which ones you mean. Yeah.
PW:
Yeah. But anyway, but it was quite a training airplane. Had the old Shakey Jakes in it.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. The old radials, yep. Oh, geez. That’s—yeah, I don’t—Jacobs’s
an engine—you don’t hear about those anymore, the old Jacobs radials.
PW:
I haven’t—I’m not that involved with them anymore, but they were a good engine. But
you had to maintain them. You just can’t fly them without doing some work on them.
And I had one—I get—departing from the Museum here with my other talks. But
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anyway, there—like I say, there were [unintelligible 00:42:07] before—even the hangar
up there is gone now. And that’s it.
SL:
Magnuson Park now, yeah.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Exactly, exactly. Well—
PW:
But like I still remember coming over the power lines—or under. [laughs]
SL:
Under the power lines? [laughs]
PW:
No, not under them because that—there was not too much room, but over. And I
remember—lot of experiences coming through there. But if you just use your head just a
little bit, they didn’t really bother you. They could if you didn’t pay any attention, you
know. But same with everything around here, yeah.
00:42:54
[Remembering Pete Bowers, other aviation enthusiasts, and early PNAHF days]
SL:
Well, a couple other folks that that you’ve mentioned, though, too, is Pete Bowers.
PW:
Oh. [laughs]
SL:
Let’s talk about Pete and—
PW:
Pete is a very good friend of mine. And—anyway. I do—I’d help Pete maintain these
airplanes. You know, it needs things done or anything like that, he says, “Paul, I need
help,” and I says, “I’m right there.” And I was with him in this old EAA Chapter 26 we
had, you know.
SL:
Okay. That chapter is still around.
PW:
Yeah. But anyway, Pete, he had some—I don’t know how many people, whether it’s still
around or not, but he liked the look of a Corsair, so he decided he’s going to get one. And
I think he called it Shamu.
SL:
Namu, yes. N-A-M-U—
PW:
Namu, Shamu. It was related to the hydroplanes out of [unintelligible 00:44:05]. They got
that kind of a name.
SL:
Oh, I didn’t know that.
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PW:
Yeah. You know, and anyway, it’s a spin-off of that. But I helped old Pete on that, and I
thought, oh man, just for—it’s a lot of work. And all the fuel system [unintelligible
00:44:24] and the gas tank area and all that that he’s building up. I helped him a lot in
that. And he liked to work. Pete’s favorite saying is “wood is good.” Yeah, that was his—
when we were coming to airplane. “Wood is good.” That’s what Pete said. And I’ve got
to find that book I told you about his Fly Baby.
SL:
Yeah, you said you had a plan book for us.
PW:
I haven’t had a chance to dig around for it yet, but somewhere, it’s—things are in a little
disarray, this moving around. But he give me one—I think it was the number 18 of the
book. He had a whole batch of them made up, and—people wanting to build his Fly
Baby. And so, okay, that’s good. And at the same time, prior—just prior to his plane, this
other guy down in Oregon had one similar to that, and it’s called the Story.
SL:
Right.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Right.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. And so the—I had a money interest in the first Story of his when
they brought it here.
SL:
Really?
PW:
I used to fly it around, uh-huh [affirmative]. And then the number—the other Story, the
second Story there, that—let’s see. Let me get it straight. Pete had it. Something like that.
And I says, “Let me have it. I’ll finish it up.” But I did—you know, I had my hands full,
but I was still going to do it. And I did some of the work more—I got—but I don’t know
really what happened to it, that second Story, because it was going to get too—well, me
and—we made a flying club out of that first one.
SL:
That’s what I was going to ask.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Because I’d heard about the Story—the “Story Story” is something that Pete wrote about
that club.
PW:
Yeah, it’s the oldest homebuilt airplane in the Northwest. [laughs]
SL:
Huh.
PW:
It’s an antique homebuilt.
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SL:
So you were in that flying club?
PW:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I flew it all around. One time—oh, one time I was flying it and I was
down in—what—Vancouver. I was going down to check on the FM-2 in Oregon. And
one morning I was going—go down to see the [unintelligible 00:47:07] and—because I
was helping Jack get his airplane all together. And it might be of interest to know that—
note that the one that he has is now in Pensacola.
SL:
Oh, that FM-2?
PW:
And that’s the one that I was working on, you know. And matter of fact, I loaned him the
old engine panels off the FM-2, and he even made copies off of it. And so we—you’d
never know the difference. So he used them as patterns to make one for the FM-2.
SL:
For his FM-2, yes.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. And then I had another guy down in Oregon. He had an FM-2,
also. So from the old beat-up one we had, I allowed him to take some measurements and
everything off the spar on the vertical fin. There was some old corrosion in the one he
had. And so he made a new spar from using the—for dimensions. So we helped more
planes back in the air. [laughter]
SL:
That’s pretty good.
PW:
[unintelligible 00:48:41] would ever fly again, but they—we got some more flying.
SL:
Yeah, some other aircraft benefitted from the Museum’s aircraft.
PW:
Yeah. And I really don’t—happened to this other one. That—but that’s the way to do it.
You help each other. And that’s what I—how I worked it. You help each other.
SL:
How did you and Pete meet?
PW:
Oh, my gosh.
SL:
If you even remember. That’s quite a while ago, I’m sure.
PW:
Long time ago. And it’s probably in the early days of the EAA fly-in stuff.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
And the—and when he was home there on [Ambaum?] and the—and all the—I wonder
whatever happened to the old—he had gliders. He liked gliders, too. And he had a sevenday-old—I’m trying to remember what he called them things, the early days there, but the
Bowlus or something like that.
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SL:
Bowlus was an early sailplane, yes.
PW:
Yeah, uh-huh [affirmative]. And—but he went to—oh, just at this point, but I told you
before, but one time Pete come to me and he says, “Paul, I need help.” I says, “Okay,
Pete. What are you going to do now?” He says, “You have to take me to go recover my
airplane.” “Oh,” I says, “which one?” He says, “That kid of mine,” he says, “he was over
east of the mountains coming back or something like that, and the weather—got
weathered in, so he landed up on Snoqualmie Pass in the parking lot of the cars.” I said,
“Oh, God.” He said—I said, “I’m afraid they’re going to impound it on me.” I said,
“Come on. Let’s go.”
So anyway, I took Pete and flew him over. And they had a little emergency strip down
below there on the—near the highway. And so I took him down there, and the guy down
there gave him a ride up to get his airplane up on the ramp. He got the thing, so he flew it
out of there. And, you know, he beat me home. [laughter] Well, I wasn’t in any big hurry
anyway. But we had—I had some other guys with me, too, and we [unintelligible
00:51:00] for him to get his airplane.
But Pete had a lot of the energy. He was always busy, always going on. We talked about
the Shamu/Namu, whatever you want to call it, you know, all of that. And maybe I
mentioned the other day about his bookkeeping. [laughs]
SL:
Yeah, his filing system?
PW:
His filing system.
SL:
Tell me about that a little bit, yeah.
PW:
But he always wrote articles. He liked to write. He liked to write, and that was good. And
he’d go down there—you want to know something, “Pete, what do you know about this?
What do you know about that?” “Well, let’s go see.” He’d go in the house, front room,
there’s a filing cabinet. One big filing cabinet. A stack of books here, a stack of books
there, a stack—he knew what stacks—I don’t know whether he had them alphabetically
or not, but he didn’t have no filing cabinets. Maybe he did. They might be full. But—
SL:
Wow.
PW:
But he had a heart of gold, he really is. And one time we went to Oshkosh together and—
anyway, he went—he got a room at the college there and—so him and his traveling
companion, they stayed in the college. And so me and the other guys who were with me,
we slept in my tent. I had a tent, and I put the tent up. And one night we had a couple of
new guys come in my tent. And so we introduced him. Oh yeah, one of them was RV, the
guy who designed the RV.
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SL:
Yeah, Dick VanGrunsven.
PW:
Yeah. And so he come in, and then another guy with him, too. He had a homebuilt, also.
And I forgot his name now. But anyway, he—Dick knew him real well. But we had a big
time together, you know. [laughs]
SL:
Did you guys fly like one of your planes back for that or—
PW:
No. I drove a car back because I took a tent. We heard that living was kind of sparse, you
know. So I had sleeping bags and tent in my station wagon. We were really sporting it.
[laughs] And boy, one nice thing about that, the hot water. The hot water tank supply was
laying the garden house out on the lawn. Let the sun warm it up. [laughter] That’s the
way we did it and, you know. And some of the guys there, as far as sleeping goes, we all
kind of crowded into the tent and in the back end of the station wagon. And we had—we
said—it happened to be raining and I happened to be in the low spot in the tent, so my
sleeping bag got kind of wet. The other guys, they were dry and in the back end of my
car, and I got wet. [laughter]
SL:
Something wrong with that.
PW:
Oh, it was—laugh about it now, but it was a good time. Those were good times, you
know. Like I say, the hot water was—the water was the sun warm up in the garden hose.
And guys like, oh, Jim Bede and Burt Rutan, and we’re all together chewing the fat all—
and they all moved on. Old Bede was going to do so much. He’s got a nice little
firecracker there, but he couldn’t get the engine for it right. So everybody bought plans,
but I don’t know how many—he designed it to be a jet engine, I think.
SL:
The BD-5, yes.
PW:
Yeah. BD-5, yeah. But a lot of people, they’d buy portions of the plane. And I didn’t hear
too many guys—later on—was it—one of the pop—Pepsi-Cola or something like that.
Didn’t they have—they got five of them together?
SL:
They did. That’s right. I’d forgotten that.
PW:
Yeah. And they had a little flying group here and that kind of…
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. There is a guy in Federal Way that has one of the little jets.
PW:
Oh, is that right?
SL:
And he performs at air shows.
PW:
I’ll be darned.
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SL:
And he stores it in his backyard.
PW:
Oh my, oh my. But—
SL:
So was one of the other guys Molt Taylor, by any chance?
PW:
Molt—no, Molt was down in his car. I don’t—but his flying car and—yeah, Molt was
at—we just moved in from Illinois with the home—you know, the—moved into
Wisconsin for display. And we just relocated, the EAA—
SL:
They came—it went from Rockford to Oshkosh.
PW:
Yeah, Rockford—should be—Rockford—[unintelligible 00:56:58] from Rockford.
[laughter] But yeah, they just recently got there, and then—but it’s right in the very
beginning of this changeover, you know. We had been there too long. But—
SL:
So—
PW:
But getting back to Pete, the—I miss Pete because we did have a good talking
relationship, you know.
SL:
Sure.
PW:
And—
SL:
Well, the Namu was designed to be a two-person airplane. Did you ever get a chance to
fly that one? Or was it—
PW:
Nah. No, no. No, I just had the biplane, which had the old—we had the biplane version of
the Fly Baby.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
But I didn’t—we—I think he had talked about it. We had Cece Hendricks.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. I know, Cecil, yeah. Or knew him, yes.
PW:
Yeah, okay. But Cece was involved there, too. He was a [worker?]. And so—old Pete, he
had a lot of—oh, he had a lot of help. All he had to do was ask. You know, because
everybody would help him and he helped them, whatever they needed, so that kind of—
and—
SL:
So you flew the Fly Baby? Or the Bi-Fly Baby?
PW:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I flew it. And then when he moved, he made a biplane out of the Fly
Baby, but that was another [unintelligible 00:58:36]. It was up to [unintelligible 00:58:38]
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to a fly-in at that time. And I hadn’t flown his—this one yet. And so I was over looking
things over, and he had me go in and—“Sit down,” he says. “Check it out. Sit down and
see how it fits.” And I went in and I says, “Pete, I’m not as long-legged as you are.”
[laughs] But he made—he’d put the rudder pedals in there for his legs, and so I stretched
out. I think I put a seat cushion behind me to help me get forward more.
And so that—he—so somehow or other he wanted to prop the engine and—“Okay.” So
check—go and check the engine out. “Yep, fine, sounds good. Everything looks good.”
And so the next thing I know, I got an old cloth helmet shoved over my ears—or head,
and he says, “Take it out for a spin. Take it—go chase those guys.” [laughter] There’s
more—a lot more Fly Babies around [unintelligible 00:59:47]. And I—“Well, all right.”
But I didn’t catch any of them, but I did get in the air with them, though. [laughs]
SL:
Yeah. What did it fly like?
PW:
Huh?
SL:
How was the control of the airplane?
PW:
Oh, fine. Just—an airplane’s an airplane. [laughter] You got a propeller that lifts you off
the ground.
SL:
Yeah, all true. All true.
PW:
No. No, it was fine. I mean—I can’t—
SL:
Yeah, nothing unusual about it or anything.
PW:
Nothing unusual.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
You know. But, yeah.
SL:
Well, we have that airplane, you know, up at our restoration center in Everett.
PW:
Yeah, that’s what you said. But the one that’s hanging in the Museum, I remember the
guy that—I don’t remember him that well, but I remember he—was he a doctor or
something or a dentist or—
SL:
I don’t recall.
PW:
He had—what his occupation was, but—did you ever see the Volksplane?
SL:
I’ve heard of it. I’ve never seen one.
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PW:
That’s the one with the Volkswagen engine. Well, I built one of them. Not complete. I
got it almost complete, and one of the Boeing engineers, he likes it, too. So, okay, I’ll sell
it to you. But I didn’t have any wings for him. But I told him, I says, “I know a guy that
has a pair of wings for it.” And so we went over and he says, oh, he’ll sell it to him. So
there a guy got him an airplane and two wings. No fabric on it or anything. [laughs]
SL:
Do you know if that ever got finished?
PW:
I don’t know. But he went back east with it.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
Yeah. Oh, they—no reason why he couldn’t go and—remember Jim Wickham?
SL:
I know the name. Didn’t know him.
PW:
He had—he made a homebuilt twin-engine airplane. Used to keep it up at Thun Field.
SL:
Yes, yes.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. I flew that, too, you know.
SL:
Oh, interesting. Because the last I heard that was in restoration.
PW:
Oh, down here?
SL:
No, [unintelligible 01:02:07]—
PW:
Oh, it hanging here in the high bay area here for a while.
SL:
Oh, it was?
PW:
Yeah. Oh yeah, it was hanging back in the corner.
SL:
Oh, interesting.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Last I heard, it was—there was a wing spar for it down at Crest Airpark. And they pulled
it out of the hangar, and a guy had bought it and—bought the whole thing and was trying
to restore it.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative].
SL:
I don’t know what the status is.
PW:
I haven’t heard anything on it for years.
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SL:
Yeah, yeah.
PW:
But Jim, he was a good friend, too. He was an aerodynamicist with Boeing, you know.
SL:
Okay. Okay.
PW:
And he had a brother-in-law, Verne Hudson. And there’s another thing. Verne was a—as
I recall, this wind tunnel you have in the old Red Barn area in there, Verne built that.
SL:
Oh, really?
PW:
Yeah. But it was made from some drawings he got from somewhere else. But he
designed that—he built it.
SL:
That’s good.
PW:
That Verne, he—yeah, we spent—incidentally, just off—I had a little—I have a—usually
have fun with a lot of people that I associate with, and Verne is a—he’s a good—you
know—the plane is—they took—showed us the—what was it—the aerospace engines—
the airplanes up above, and they built a—mounted on top of a 747.
SL:
Oh, the Space Shuttle, yes.
PW:
Yeah, yeah. Went into space. Oh, it’s—well, they—Verne had—he designed that to hold
that airplane and—but anyway, we worked together. But getting back to my story, but—
I’m always joking a little bit to make things go, and I had a big rubber mount and—big
mount. And so I taped it up one day, just hung it up on the—outside the engineering
room, and I said, “Verne Hudson’s crushing tool.” [laughter] He got a kick out of that.
Yeah. God, yeah. God, my mind goes in tangents.
SL:
Well, I understand that, yeah. It really does.
PW:
Because I got too many—I got so many things to say, and I don’t think I have time to say
it.
SL:
Well, and I—the other thing I’m a little bit curious about is Molt Taylor and the Aerocar
and—
PW:
Yeah, but—
SL:
…what do you know about Molt, or your relationship?
PW:
Well, I don’t—I just knew of his—association.
SL:
Okay.
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PW:
I knew this. When we all went back to Oshkosh there in the beginning, he was along for
the—but I don’t think he had his Aerocar there with him. But he was there, and he—I
think he was in the gang [unintelligible 01:05:21] to get there [unintelligible 01:05:23],
shooting the breeze, you know.
SL:
Well, it sounds like it was a pretty small, close-knit group of people here in the
Northwest.
PW:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We were all good. We were all close. We all went—and Bill Lawson,
he had a Thorp T-18 he was building. I used to help him build that up there. Cece
Hendricks’s dad, he said—his was pretty much complete, his T-18. And I helped Cece a
little bit on his, and there were some other people. Then one time one of the guys was
building a—I forget what model it is now that he was building. But there was a guy back
east was selling canopies for the homebuilt, and he wanted quite a bit of money for it. So,
along with Pete, we made a dummy-up, cleaned it up, that matched the profile of the—
and drilled all kinds of holes in there. So we did run the vacuum on it, put the plaque—
plexi—
SL:
Oh, gotcha.
PW:
…back and moved back and formed our own canopy. This is just like the one the guy
wanted to sell for a small fortune. [laughter] But, you know, if you can’t get it, you can’t
afford it, make it.
SL:
You figure out how to make it, yeah.
PW:
Yeah. But later on, there was some other things like that. Make a Mustang—was it a
Mustang? Yeah, fighter. Yeah, we made that—made our own canopies for that, too.
SL:
You were really involved in the early homebuilding days.
PW:
Oh, yes. I enjoyed it. Just like I enjoyed my—all of our stuff that we have now in the
Museum, you know. But—
SL:
Any other folks that you remember from the Museum? You know, like—
PW:
Oh, my.
SL:
…like, oh, the Elliott Merrills, maybe, of the early days. Or Kit Carson, Jack Leffler?
PW:
Yeah. [pauses] If they worked with me, I remember them.
SL:
Oh, well, that makes sense. Yeah.
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PW:
Yeah, but some of the people were—I classify them as administrative people. And me, I
was the working people. [laughs] So I didn’t get out too much, but—
SL:
Well, it sounds like you’re—
PW:
What we needed.
SL:
Well, yeah, Harl was the one of the early ones of those. And then, of course, there’s the
board. So your relationship really was with Harl in this early on.
PW:
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s right. But yeah, we did have—we had a lot of things—
talked about a lot of things, do a lot of things. What—if I remember right, at one time—I
may be getting something mixed up here. At one time, I think, in the beginning, we didn’t
have any place for meetings and things, so I believe that we used the Chamber of
Commerce building out on Renton Field. We used that for office—for meeting places.
SL:
That was one of the first addresses for the PNAHF, was—it was. You’re right, you’re
right.
PW:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s where we—where we had our meetings, you know.
SL:
How many people would show up for something like that?
PW:
Oh, maybe half a dozen to a dozen.
SL:
Really? Wow.
PW:
Yeah. But a lot of them curious about what we’re doing or something like that, or they
wanted something already made up. No, we have to make it. [laughs] You got to restore
it, you know. We involved homebuilding in there, too, along with—and that’s—
SL:
Oh, that makes sense.
PW:
Yeah, so we used that along with homebuilding to keep the stimulus going, you know.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Was Pete there at some of those early meetings?
PW:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
SL:
Kind of assumed he would, but—
PW:
Yep. Yep. Well, he—Pete was a [unintelligible 01:09:58] person and—but most of the
time Pete was really involved in was when we’d have the meetings at his place.
SL:
Oh, you did?
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PW:
Yeah, in his hangar, so to speak. [laughs] But you’d be surprised at the stuff that was in
that place. And they added an attic on it, too, you know. And I keep looking in the
Museum there, looking up at the old wing warpers up there and all that. I wonder how
many of these did Pete have up in his attic, if any of those?
SL:
That’s a good question. I don’t know.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative].
SL:
You know, I—
PW:
But he had a quite a few of them up there, and I’m looking—I’m saying, “Have I looked
at that before,” you know?
SL:
You may well have, yes.
PW:
Probably, uh-huh [affirmative]. Yeah.
SL:
Yeah, he had a lot—
PW:
But Jim Wickham was a good—he was an aerodynamicist, and he was involved with a
lot of that stuff, too, you know, helping. And we were one big happy family, the way I
looked at it.
SL:
It sounds like you really were.
PW:
We all had one purpose in mind: to keep them flying. [laughs]
SL:
Hm-hmm. [affirmative] Well, that’s really good, Paul.
PW:
Yeah. You got to help each other, you know. As I say, Bill Lawson, when he’s building
his T-18, I helped him. Other people I helped there, too. And I helped anybody if I had
time to do it. I did—
SL:
It sounds like you put an awful lot of time in on—
PW:
Oh, I did. I did.
SL:
…volunteer time in the early days.
PW:
Yeah. My family noticed that, too.
SL:
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? [laughs]
PW:
Well, they—“Don’t you ever stay home?” [laughs]
SL:
I have a feeling that probably happened with a lot of guys in the early days.
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PW:
Yeah, and—yeah, because—yeah, that’s true.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Yeah.
PW:
And, yeah, not only did I do that kind of—all that kind of stuff, I got roped into helping
three—two—maybe three once in a while—seaplane operations off of Lake Union. And
old Kurtzer [Lana Kurtzer] down there, you know.
SL:
That name rings a bell, too.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
[Main?] Seaplane Service. And the other guy up there, he operated on a shoestring.
[laughs] But anyway, that—those were fun things.
SL:
Well, it sounds like we kind of picked your brain pretty well on the Museum, I think.
PW:
Oh yeah. Well, everything was—everything we wanted to—wanted the Museum a go.
And I’m really proud. I’m really proud when I go around—I go around every day. I go
around and look at everything.
SL:
That’s really good.
PW:
And nowadays with the younger generations, they go by, they look at all this other stuff.
Well, I’ll tell—John Glenn, you know. I’ve told you about John Glenn. He and I used to
compete in tracks at the high school level, you know. [laughs]
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
We were in the same area in Ohio. And I always tell you that—well, John, he beat me in
track, dashes. But when it come to pole vaulting, I beat him. And then in retaliation of
that, he joined the Astronaut Corps so he could get higher than I did. [laughs]
SL:
Exactly right. Oh, that’s good. That’s good.
PW:
So that’s why he became an astronaut.
SL:
There you go. Yeah. You pushed that. You caused that. Yeah. [laughs]
PW:
No, I [unintelligible 01:14:10] New Concord and—
SL:
Yeah. Yeah.
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PW:
I think I recall, if I got right, that—but we’d have a break in our events. We used to—he
had a grandmother lived right near there, right near the museum—I mean the college
there, and we’d go down there and eat her cookies and drink her milk. [laughter]
SL:
Nothing wrong with that. [unintelligible 01:14:44].
PW:
Yeah. It was just a little small town. But people seemed to get together then, you know.
Do things together.
SL:
Yeah. And that’s one of the things I think we try to do here, is—
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
…get people together and talking about those times and learning history.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
And you’ve been a tremendous help for that.
PW:
Oh, I try. I don’t—
SL:
With this and with people.
PW:
Like I say, I don’t—I’m not double-jointed to pat myself on the back or anything like
that. Long as I can make something happen, that’s what I want.
SL:
Well, we definitely appreciate you here, that’s for sure.
PW:
Yeah. But right now I wondered where—what can I do to—beside going around talking
to people.
SL:
You’re doing it right now.
PW:
Yeah, I know, but—
SL:
You really are. This is something that we appreciate.
PW:
Yeah. But I hope it’s—I hope you really censor all this stuff. [laughter]
SL:
Not particularly, no.
PW:
Well, if I can get some—like some young kid that has an interest and coming in here, I
like to—I talk to him, so I—find out what his level, what the—what he knows and what
he, you know.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
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PW:
First thing I do when [unintelligible 01:16:13] the entry now, you know, you see old
Eddie Rickenbacker, the muddy boot on that tire, you know. Eddie, you’re not supposed
to do that. Now, Eddie and I flew together one time. And so that’s why I laugh—I pass it
on because some of the people don’t realize what I’m talking about.
SL:
No, I’m sure that’s very true.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. But I’m saying—I said, “Now, look at that guy. He’s got his old,
muddy shoe on top of that airplane tire there, and he shouldn’t do that.” [laughs] Maybe it
might lead to something else on that—about that airplane.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. So it’s trying to inspire.
PW:
And maybe something on what they’re doing—they shouldn’t do, you know.
SL:
That makes good sense, Paul. Yeah. Yeah.
PW:
Yeah. It’s all—but—
01:17:08
[Stories about local airports]
SL:
Well, I think we can probably kind of wrap it up for today.
PW:
Oh, fine.
SL:
If you’re good?
PW:
Yeah. Whatever.
SL:
And I want to see if there’s questions from anyone else that you had? Yeah.
KELCI HOPP:
You might have to repeat this. I don’t know. But yeah, we’re all so
interested in local history of all types.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
PW:
Say it—I’m sorry.
SL:
Local history of all types.
KH:
Are we able—maybe you could tell us like a story or two about flying into any of the
local airports [unintelligible 01:17:37]?
PW:
Oh.
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SL:
Yeah.
KH:
Yeah.
PW:
Oh yeah.
KH:
You mentioned Tacoma Narrows, specifically.
PW:
Well, we got one airport we used to have over on Lake Washington there, you know.
There’s a—there was an airport down there where we waterskied from. Did you ever hear
about that? Right down on the—right on the edge of the water.
SL:
No.
PW:
The guy sold Mooneys down there. And the Mooney airplanes he sold, would you
believe it, they had Curtiss—not Curtiss—what’s that airplane engine now? What’s—but
they spun the prop by using prop—belt—fan belts like you use on your car for the water
pump.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
And that’s what you use. What in the world. I had it on the tip of my tongue. Crossley.
SL:
Oh yeah. [unintelligible 01:18:39] the small Crossley cars.
PW:
Crossley engines, yeah. They had a Crossley engine there, and you spun the prop by
using fan belts like you use in your car for turning a generator or something. Oh, that’s
another thing we always did. We’d—you’re talking about modernization. We used to
have the wind generators we’d mounted on the struts, and you were flying along and it
spun the—which charged your battery. [laughs] You didn’t have generators on your
engines. You let the—you spun the prop on the generator in—on the strut to charge the
battery. Oh, okay. Now you have a—oh my God, now you got me talking. But, you
know, the old hog farm out in Maple Valley there.
SL:
I don’t. I’d love to hear about it. Yeah.
PW:
Well, it’s an old gravel pit, actually. And you go to land, you think you’re going to lose
the fabric on your airplane because—but what’s that lake out there? Lake Wilderness, is
it?
SL:
Lake Wilderness.
PW:
Yeah, yeah. Right near there. And it’s a rock gravel, and you go to land in it and your
tires threw rocks and—
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SL:
Oh yeah.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
Well, are there airports around here that you flew into that aren’t here anymore?
PW:
They’re all gone. [laughs] Well, yeah, you got—oh, you got one up north here, this—I
never flew in and out of it. I’ve been by it many times. But it’s up near Whidbey—not
Whidbey, but—
PEDER NELSON:
Vashon?
SL:
Yeah, Vashon or—
PW:
I’m trying to get—Monroe, up in that area, they had one in there and—by the lake. There
was a lake up there. Matter of fact, I have something of—all the old airports that used to
be around here. And I’ve been into a lot of them, like—let me think of some more.
SL:
Well, you mentioned the Federal Way one, down in that area.
PW:
Oh, the Federal Way one and the—now the Lake Washington one—one on Lake
Washington there, around the edge of the water. And, oh, remember one of the—my—
I’m searching my mind real quick here. The town lies south of Kent.
SL:
Um, is it the—
PW:
Don’t get lost now. [laughs]
SL:
The one by where Smith Dairy was? Or was—
PW:
Oh, Smith. Oh yeah. Ben. Oh yeah, that’s a story in itself. [laughs]
SL:
Let’s hear it. [laughs]
PW:
Old Ben, he had—his family was like into flying, you know. And yeah, Ben built that
up—that airport. Or the family did, because they all liked to fly. And anyway, they had
the old wooden hangars across from it, if you can remember or ever seen them. But it was
a decrepit place. I rented one of them and—anyway, let’s get back to the airport. So
where we had the—the point of land/take off, he decided he needed more cattle feed. So
he plowed it up and planted corn in it. And so he said, “If you guys want,” he says, “you
can still keep your hangars and everything, but you have to land and take off on the taxi
strips.” And some of the taxi strips were, oh, probably as much as ten feet wide. [laughs]
SL:
Oh, geez. Pretty narrow. Pretty narrow.
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PW:
No, it—they were very narrow. Very narrow. That was a taxi strip. So you’d land and
take off on the taxi strips. And then those swallows. Oh my God. I had a Stinson, and I’d
have to shoe them out of the wings and everything. And you got your intakes. You know,
they like to come in there, especially if you’re flying to come in, put your airplane, then
your cylinders are nice and warm, and they’d like to build a nest right on top of the
cylinders. And so you got—that’s one of your pre-flights, was wondering did you take
the nests all out. [laughter]
SL:
Oh, geez.
PW:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And that—Auburn is the name of the bridge I skipped over a bit ago.
SL:
That’s what you were thinking of. Okay.
PW:
Okay. But we used to have an airport on top of the hill there. Al [Nichols?] was—him
and—oh, I know that guy pretty good. But they had the airport up at the top of the hill.
And on Indian land.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
Okay.
SL:
I didn’t know about that.
PW:
Then they finally got—the Indians wanted their land back, so they had to go relocate
again. So they went over into Covington.
SL:
Okay.
PW:
That the—Al and his buddy—
SL:
Is that where Crest Airport came from then?
PW:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. And that’s where the—the little mound at one end of the runway,
you know. You’d have to clear it. And [unintelligible 01:24:45] right there, too, by—and
it made a nice place to land and take off, too. [laughter]
SL:
Yeah, it would have been.
PW:
It did. Oh, I’d fly in and out there many times.
SL:
Really?
PW:
Nobody ever—you’re looking around and nothing around. So, okay, go down in this nice
smooth place. I’m going to go down there and shoot a few landings. [laughter] But yeah,
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that’s Crest. And oh God, let me see. But anyway, getting back, that’s—then Al and his
friend, they built the one on Covington now, the airport there. They built—they
developed that, built that up. And they had old school buses, and they used to—all the
stuff they collected were stored in school buses on the airport. And the storage for that.
And then eventually they started building some few little hangars around there and all
that.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. I believe his daughter owns it now.
PW:
Huh?
SL:
I think his daughter owns the airport now.
PW:
But, you know, Al married Ben Smith’s daughter. Yeah. [laughs] And that’s where they
got a lot of footing, you know. I don’t think Al had that kind of money, but he had some.
But he had the desire. So Ben—the family backed him up, and he married Ben Smith’s
daughter. And I’m trying to think—Ben’s son. He had Renton Aviation.
SL:
Oh, okay.
PW:
Down where the Boeing Flying Club is now and all that. Yeah, he owned that down
there. And I flew out there. I got my commercial rating from them guys down there.
[laughs] Oh, that’s another story. But anyway, the—but that was a—but I’m thinking—
I’m drifting on this because Al [unintelligible 01:27:15], this is where he bought the farm.
He took off one day. And I think he had a PT-19, and he crashed it on takeoff, I think.
SL:
Down in Auburn?
PW:
No, at Crest.
SL:
At Crest.
PW:
Yeah. In the beginning. Yeah. And a fellow that he—partner there—I know him. I
can’t—names—my whirly-gig up here needs to reminisce a little bit. But anyway, that’s
Al’s partner up there. He had a beautiful airplane, polished up real good and—but
anyway, I wonder whatever happened to him. But Al crashed and bought the farm there
off the north end of the airport there. And I still remember because that little high-rise of
mountain—or hill coming into the airport, you had to turn to get around it, approach it.
SL:
It’s known as kind of an awkward airport to get into, yes.
PW:
Yeah. But it’s very easy to do. You just keep your head and know what’s going on. You
have to look out. Use the Mark Eight. [adjusts glasses and laughs] You ever hear that
expression?
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SL:
I have heard that before, yeah.
PW:
Yeah. Use the Mark Eight. [adjusts glasses]
SL:
Explain that, if you would.
PW:
Well, it’s your eyeballs. That’s what we used to call them. “Look out. You know, get
your head out of the cockpit, and look where you are, you know.” And then down in—
now Kent developed—when it went on down to Auburn, we built that plane—us people
in Kent Airport at Ben’s place. We were all kind of got back behind the—that
development and—but we had a lot of people help. Now they’ve got a racetrack. [laughs]
SL:
Right. Yeah.
PW:
Right beside it—no, parallel, but—that was something, because a lot of people flying out
of the Boeing Field and general aviation guys, they—sometimes I wonder about them.
Because they’d fly around, they’d be going heading south, they’d tend to fly over our
field there. And one day, one guy got—this is all [unintelligible 01:30:19] you’re just like
here. But anyway, this one guy came in there. He cut me right out of the downwind leg. I
was getting in for landing, and he just cut me out of the pattern.
And so I let him go ahead, moved over, let him do his thing. And I said—so he landed
and I landed right back—right behind him. I didn’t want to lose him. I just landed right
behind him. And I see him taxi over to one of the hangars, getting ready to go out there.
And we—how the conversation went. Oh, okay, well, I followed him in there, and he
looked at me because he thought I was too close to him. I says, “I didn’t want to lose you.
I have information for you.” And, “What’s that?” I says, “Do you know where you just
came in from?” “Yeah.” And I says, “Do you know what you just did?” “Yeah.” And I
says, “Well…” So somehow or other, there’s an opening. He says, “Well, I radioed that I
was coming in for a landing.” I says, “Yeah. What if a guy don’t have a radio to hear
you?” I said, “Use your head.” And I followed him right in there. So I—in the
conversation, I says, “Well, you radioed that you were coming in, but I think you’d be
safer if you take that radio out of your airplane, throw it over in the field somewhere, and
start using your eyeball.” [laughter] I said, “You’re going to live longer.” And I think I
made a point with him.
SL:
Good. Yeah. Yeah.
PW:
But that was kind of a raceway there. They’d come out of Boeing Field or north end
and—we had another airport up above Juanita or Kenmore up in the hillside there. Yeah,
we had another airport up there. And what—that’s a per—the guy, the—Renton Airport
there had general aviation repair shop. Ed—I can’t remember what his name is. Well,
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anyway, he was the maintenance guy up there. I used to fly up there and take people in
there and get them to come up and use the field. But they soon developed into houses.
They took the airport out and they made houses out of them. And Ed—Port Orchard
Airport, what a difference that was and what it used to be. [laughs] And, oh, I’d have to
sit down and think long to tell you the number of airports we had there. But they
weren’t—
SL:
Speaking of a few—
PW:
The ones I’m talking about, they weren’t really developed into anything big because of
the—of all the modernization going on.
SL:
Most of them became houses, probably. Yeah.
PW:
Yeah. Then they had—then they come out with all kinds of electronics and all of this
now, and so everybody flies by pushing a button now. And they—
SL:
That’s quite true.
PW:
We got a good example of that right now on our 737. And I—this is something else, but I
recall—when I heard it, that they had blamed something with autopilot. But you got a
[unintelligible 01:34:23] angle-of-attack indicator out here. You can [unintelligible
01:34:26] know what it’s for and what it—but the—it affects the autopilot in a way. I
flew a—this Dash 80 you see around here. I flew that from California clear up to
Portland, Oregon, and my autopilot was out. And that’s why I was flying. And I didn’t
see nothing wrong to flying—I flew the airplane. I just flew the airplane. And Lew
Wallick [S. L. “Lew” Wallick], he gave me a real about two-minute check-out. [laughter]
Yeah, he knew I flew.
SL:
Sure.
PW:
And so we knew the autopilot was bad, and we had a little—we didn’t do something right
to begin with. It’s all right, but we filed inflight or—and so while the other guy, the
copilot, whoever it was that day, was doing the inflight. Then I was nominated to go up
there and take us home. That [unintelligible 01:35:38]. [laughter] So anyway, that—I—
my mind was taking off on a tangent there. But when I heard this going on now, how
could that happen? You—a person has to feel something. My—why is all of this going
on? Why did—you know, it’s hard for me to understand.
SL:
It is. Yes, I agree.
PW:
Because you’re—first you’re a pilot. You’re not going—you’re not on a Sunday drive
somewhere. You’re drive—you’ve got people with you and all that. You’re responsible,
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so know your airplane. And so what, something didn’t work properly. Well, correct for it.
Disengage it. Dismantle it. So like I say, came all the way from California clear into
Portland, Oregon. My autopilot was out all the way. And I found that the trim wheel was
very nice.
SL:
It worked just fine, yeah?
PW:
Yeah. Real easy. Now, maybe a trim wheel went out, too. I don’t know. Did they sheer
the shaft on it or something? [laughs]
SL:
Yeah, I don’t know.
PW:
No, I don’t know the whole story. But I shouldn’t even talk about this because it’s—I
don’t know the whole story. Because the smart—the push-button flying nowadays. Yeah.
SL:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. We’ll find out the story on that, but you’re right. There’s so
much of flying is automated now, yes.
PW:
Yeah, it’s—but you don’t—how could they enjoy flying?
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
How can they enjoy it? Enjoying is you’re in control of something that’s going to where
you want it to go. And your car, if your car was going down the road and you—and your
engine dropped out on the ground or something, what do you do? [laughter]
01:37:54
[Closing thoughts]
KH:
I think [unintelligible 01:37:55] good to wrap up on the question like we had ended with
last time.
PW:
I’m sorry. I got off on a tangent.
KH:
[unintelligible 01:38:00]. Now that we’ve talked about modernization and the Museum
and all that good stuff, maybe we could chat a little—or at least have you chat a little bit
about what you’d like to leave someone with after having viewed your oral history again,
now that we’ve done the second session.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
I would just like to—my—like my position in there in the Museum, I’ve wanted
[unintelligible 01:38:27] this is the real world. This is how it was. This is how—this
going at—how we’re doing it and be conscious of what’s going on around you.
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Nothing—it’s not push button. Get rid of the—if you got one, throw it in the seat behind
somewhere. But use your head. That’s—know what you’re going to do. Don’t just say
it’s another piece of equipment, fancy stuff to play games on, like Pac-Man or something.
This is not Pac-Man. This is flying. [laughs] That’s what—know—God gave us that, you
know. Let us do what we’re doing. Let’s don’t play games with it.
But, of course, modernization, I mean, we have people, but we’re all standing around
letting somebody do something for us. Do something for yourself. And he gave you—
gave you the air. He gave you the airplane. Now fly it. [laughter] Don’t depend on
somebody else to do it totally. First of all, if you’re up to that high [unintelligible
01:39:56] you’re, in a commercial sense, a pilot, you’re in charge of something. Be aware
of what you got a hold of and keep on. Don’t just say, “Oh, I think it will.” Make it do it.
Oh, maybe I shouldn’t even talk that way, but—because I don’t know everything. But I
know a little bit about a lot of things, though. Safety is one thing, and that’s number one
if you’re off the ground.
But anyway, I have a question as far as the Museum goes. This FM-2 we have down
there, I’ve heard all kinds of things. People says that’s the one that was up on the field.
That—I don’t—I doubt that. But—because I look it over, and it’s not the same way. I
know that spinner on the prop was not the one I put on there, but—and I don’t see—I
can’t see my Bondo patches all over the place there.
SL:
Nope, those are gone.
PW:
But what happened?
SL:
Well, it—the first restoration you did—and you’re right, it went to Spokane after that.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
After that, it went to Long Island, New York to the Cradle of Aviation, and then some
restoration was done there.
PW:
Oh, okay. I didn’t know that part.
SL:
And then it came back here, and it was completely re-done starting in 2002. The places
where the Bondo was, they took the skin off. They replaced the skin.
PW:
Oh, that’s a lot.
SL:
So they replaced virtually everything on that aircraft.
PW:
That’s right. You had to buy a whole new fuselage.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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SL:
Yeah. They re-built it.
PW:
Yeah. Oh—
SL:
There were two different men in charge of it. Tom Cathcart, who was our Restorations
Manager, was the one overall in charge of it. So I guess—we have some fabulous
pictures of it.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. Okay. But I mean, I didn’t—I couldn’t put my—
SL:
Oh, it’s definitely different than what you remember.
PW:
Yeah. Because I seen it when it was new.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
And then I seen it when it was damaged, beat up. And I tried to get it back as near new as
I could.
SL:
Oh yeah. Given the time, you did a wonderful job.
PW:
Yeah.
SL:
No doubt about it. You bet.
PW:
But—and then my old billfold was pretty skinny, too. [laughter] Because we had no
means. We had no budget. We had no monies.
SL:
Oh, I understand that, Paul, for sure.
PW:
But anyway that’s—but we got it. We got—
SL:
That’s right.
PW:
We may not have the original, but it got close to it, though.
SL:
You bet.
PW:
We got an FM-2.
SL:
That’s right. That’s right.
PW:
Uh-huh [affirmative]. But the trying to make it look like an F4F now, that’s something
else. But I—now, this is just between us, but an 1820 engine, electric prop on it, that
makes it—and then motor on the front end, they—it somehow or other—it’s hard for me
to—but we’ve said something, but they’re making it look like an F4F instead of an FM.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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SL:
That, I wouldn’t know. I don’t have that expertise. [laughs]
PW:
Oh, yes. No, but all the FMs that I have ever been in contact were with hydromatic props,
not electric props. But the F4Fs, we had electric props, all of them.
SL:
Okay. Yeah, that’s something I wouldn’t—
PW:
But when the FMs were [unintelligible 01:44:18], they got—we changed the engine,
1820s, then put on. Then we had the hydromatic props in there and—but somehow or
other, I can’t find a key to find out—it’s nice for museum. I don’t think many people will
know about that except me.
SL:
That’s probably right. [laughs]
PW:
But that is not the airplane that I worked on. But it’s nice. And the paint job is definitely
not the airplane that I worked on.
SL:
No. Mm-mmm [negative].
PW:
But that’s all right because that is a later version. That paint job come out many years
after—all of them. They—that was out several years after this, you know, before that
color—that [paint job?] was done, that—what’d they call—they called that gray—blackgray? Gray-black or—[laughs].
SL:
Yeah, I don’t know. That’s—yeah.
PW:
Oh, okay. No, no, don’t—I’m not—
SL:
Yep.
PW:
Now, I’ve got to be quiet. I’m not degrading anything.
SL:
No.
PW:
I’m just—the transition. The—you know. But I got pictures showing the color and
everything on it.
SL:
Yeah.
PW:
And the only reason I put that—because I couldn’t get a hydromatic prop dome to put on
there. That’s why that’s on there. That was my fault. [laughter] I didn’t want to a bare
prop—bare shaft out. But the splines are the same. Both the engines. Everything’s the
same as far as—so it would work. But it never flew that way.
SL:
It didn’t fly that way, no. I understand what you’re saying, Paul.
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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PW:
But it—don’t make a big thing out of it.
SL:
No, no.
PW:
Let’s get an F6 in now.
SL:
[laughs] I’d love to.
PW:
I—Bill Compton. Bill Compton is the guy who bought the F6.
SL:
That’s the name—oh, okay.
PW:
And I forget who in Alaska Airlines—one of the guys that fly—one of the top guys in
Alaska Airlines owned this. And Bill bought it from him. But he cracked it up down in
Oregon, and I don’t know where it went after that, you know, how bad it was and all that,
how torn up it was. But Jack Lenhardt, he’s got a big crop-dusting operation down there
in the valley in Willamette. And—
PEDER NELSON: Well, I think this is a good spot that we should just call it [unintelligible
01:47:26].
SL:
Yeah, I think we’re—
PW:
Hey. Hey, you guys, it’s time to go home.
SL:
It’s 2:00. Yeah, it’s time. [laughs]
PW:
No, I told you last time. Don’t get me started. I can’t—you can’t—
PN:
Well, thank you. Thank you, Paul.
KH:
Thanks, Paul.
SL:
Thank you very much, Paul.
PW:
Okay, well—
01:47:40
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2019 © The Museum of Flight
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
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2013-current
Creator
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Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights Holder
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The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
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Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
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2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from an item
<a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/assets/Transcripts/OH_Weaver_Paul_P2.pdf">View the transcript</a>
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Weaver, Paul L., 1922-
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Little, Steve
Biographical Text
<p>Paul L. Weaver is a World War II veteran, aircraft mechanic, and pilot who worked for the Boeing Company for almost thirty years. He was born in 1922 in Roseville, Ohio to George and Hazel Weaver. As a young adult, he worked for the Ohio State Patrol as a radioman and at Wright-Patterson Field (Ohio) as a radio electrician for the Douglas B-18 Bolo.</p>
<p>Around 1940, Weaver joined the U.S. Merchant Marine as a radio operator. He soon after transferred to the U.S. Navy and received training at Naval Station Great Lakes (Illinois). Assignments from his service include serving aboard the USS Lexington (CV-16) as a radioman and plane captain and serving in a squadron support unit at Sand Point Naval Air Station and Naval Auxiliary Air Station Quillayute (Washington). He remained in the Navy Reserve after the end of World War II and later served as an ECM radarman aboard the USS Yorktown (CV-10).</p>
<p>After World War II, Weaver attended college under the GI Bill and received his certification as an A&P (Airframe and Powerplant) mechanic. In 1951, he was hired by the Boeing Company. Over the course of his career, he maintained, modified, and repaired a variety of Boeing aircraft, including the 367-80, 737, and 747. He retired from the company in 1980.</p>
<p>Outside of his professional work with Boeing, Weaver was also heavily involved in other aspects of the Pacific Northwest aviation scene. He built and flew homebuilt aircraft, participated in seaplane operations on Lake Union, and contributed to restoration efforts of vintage aircraft. He also was involved with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation (PNAHF), the predecessor of The Museum of Flight.</p>
<p>As of 2019, Weaver is an active Museum volunteer, participating in the Living History program.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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OH_Weaver_Paul_P2
Title
A name given to the resource
Paul Weaver oral history interview (Part 2 of 2)
Language
A language of the resource
English
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Description
An account of the resource
Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Paul L. Weaver and interviewer Steve Little, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, May 24, 2019. Part 2 of 2.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-05-24
Coverage
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Washington (State)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Aviation mechanics (Persons)
Boeing Company
Boeing Model 80A-1
Bowers (Peter M.) Fly Baby
Experimental Aircraft Association
General Motors (Eastern) FM-2 Wildcat
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation
United States. Navy
Weaver, Paul L., 1922-
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Boeing Company--Employees
Extent
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1 recording (1 hr., 47 min., 40 sec.) : digital
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>In this two-part oral history, Paul L. Weaver is interviewed about his decade-spanning career as an aircraft mechanic and pilot. In part two, he continues to discuss his involvement in the Pacific Northwest aviation scene during the 1950s and beyond. Topics discussed include his aircraft restoration work; his experiences with homebuilt aircraft and the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA); his memories of other aviation enthusiasts and notable events and locations; and his work with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation (PNAHF) and its successor, The Museum of Flight.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and involvement with the Pacific Northwest Aviation Historical Foundation -- Aircraft restoration work, part one -- Fly-in fundraiser for the Museum -- Aircraft restoration work, part two -- The Museum’s Boeing 80A-1 -- Aircraft mechanic experiences and local aviation stories -- Remembering Pete Bowers, other aviation enthusiasts, and early PNAHF days -- Stories about local airports -- Closing thoughts
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https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/369bcc03be04e7fa19c1387cdf42a3bc.mp4
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https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/a3adaec30149d9215523462e028cbcf9.pdf
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PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Sydney Baker
Interviewed by: John Barth
Date: August 29, 2019
Location: Seattle, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
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Abstract:
Engineer Sydney Baker is interviewed about his life and his decade-spanning career in the
aviation industry. He discusses his work at Vickers-Armstrongs in the 1940s and 1950s and his
subsequent engineering jobs with Canadair and the Boeing Company. Projects discussed include
the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) program, the AOA (Airborne Optical
Adjunct) program, and guided missile development. He also shares his experiences as a Museum
of Flight docent and his restoration work on the Museum’s B-29 Superfortress. Other topics
discussed include his school years in England during World War II, his service in the Parachute
Regiment, and his restoration of vintage sports cars.
Biography:
Sydney J. Baker was an aviation engineer who worked for Vickers-Armstrongs, Canadair, and
the Boeing Company.
Sydney James Baker was born in London, England on January 26, 1930 to Sydney Baker (a
bunting factory owner) and Esme Perrett (a shopkeeper’s assistant). When he was young, his
family moved to Surrey, England. Nearby was a Vickers-Armstrongs airdrome as well as a
racetrack, which inspired an interest in aviation and cars. During World War II, his father
volunteered for the Royal Observer Corps. Baker would help his father and the other men
identify aircraft carrying out bombing missions against England. At about age seven, he left
home to attend Sevenoaks grammar school, a boarding school in Kent, England. At the age of
12, he received his glider’s license. He became an instructor at age 14, helping to teach injured
fighter pilots how to fly again.
After graduating from Sevenoaks, Baker returned to Surrey. Wanting a hands-on job, he joined
Vickers-Armstrongs as an apprentice, where he specialized in making wind tunnel models. He
attended the local college at the same time. Once he finished his college coursework, he was
drafted into the British Army and served with the Parachute Regiment. Once he had completed
his military service, he returned to Vickers-Armstrongs as a flight test engineer but now located
in Adelaide, Australia. His projects included the Supermarine Scimitar and developing guided
missiles for the Weapons Research Establishment in Australia.
When his projects in Australia had concluded, he returned to England, but did not want to stay
there permanently. Wanting to relocate to Canada, Baker accepted a position with Canadair,
where he worked on the Sparrow missile. When the program was canceled in 1959, he accepted
a job offer with the Boeing Company and moved to Seattle, Washington. Among the projects he
worked on during his career at Boeing were the CIM-10 Bomarc missile, the Minuteman missile,
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the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) program, and the AOA (Airborne Optical
Adjunct) program.
Following his retirement from Boeing in 1996, Baker became a docent for The Museum of
Flight. He later joined the Museum’s aircraft restoration team and was instrumental in helping to
restore the tail section of T-Square 54, the Museum’s B-29 Superfortress. His love of cars also
continued throughout his life; he was an amateur car racer and restored old Porsches.
Baker married his wife Janet Keast, a nurse, in 1953 and they had two children, Mary and John.
Baker died in September 2022.
Biographical sketch derived from interview, information provided by interviewee, and obituary.
Interviewer:
John Barth is a member of The Museum of Flight Docent Corps, which he joined in 2016. He
has over 30 years of experience in the aerospace industry, including manufacturing, supervision
and management, and research and development.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by Peder Nelson, TMOF Exhibits Developer.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
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Index:
Introduction and personal background............................................................................................ 5
Adolescent years in England during World War II and early flight experiences ........................... 7
Apprenticeship at Vickers-Armstrongs and service with the British Army ................................. 11
Guided missile testing in Australia ............................................................................................... 14
Career with Canadair .................................................................................................................... 16
Career with Boeing and work on AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) and AOA
(Airborne Optical Adjunct) ........................................................................................................... 17
Involvement with The Museum of Flight and aircraft restoration work ...................................... 23
Achievements and notable moments from his career ................................................................... 28
Advice for young people ............................................................................................................... 29
Car restoration and sports racing .................................................................................................. 30
Legacy of restoration work ........................................................................................................... 31
Stories from Army service ............................................................................................................ 32
Side projects at Boeing ................................................................................................................. 33
Final questions .............................................................................................................................. 34
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Sydney Baker
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
JOHN BARTH:
My name is John Barth, and it’s 10:50 a.m. on August 29th, 2019, and I
am here—we are at The Museum of Flight in Tukwila, Washington, and we’re here to
interview Syd Baker. Thank you for taking the time to participate in the Museum’s Oral
History Program. Sydney, can I get you to state your full name and spell it?
SYDNEY BAKER:
K-E-R.
Yes, it’s Sydney. That’s S-Y-D-N-E-Y, James, J-A-M-E-S, Baker, B-A-
JB:
Can you give us some background about your family, your grandparents, your parents,
what their occupations were?
SB:
Yes. My grand—my maternal side came from Somerset in England, and they were
seafaring people. My uncle, for example, served three years before the mast, which
sounds very glamorous and was damned hard, I guess. My father’s side, he came from a
fairly poor family in—from London, center of London, and he was adopted when he was
about 20, or less than that, by a very rich family. Maybe because—he always said in jest,
I think—because they used to go cruising on the Thames with their motorboat and they
got him to take the weeds off the propeller. So he used to dive overboard and untangle the
propeller for them. I’m sure he was joking.
So anyway, he—as a profession, he then joined the Army very early—that’s during
World War I—as a private and went through the trenches, went through all the horrible
battles. And just, as usual, stuff—he wouldn’t talk about it much. But he earned the Croix
de Guerre and came out a major. And he—well, very—I’m very proud of him. He was a
very fine gentleman. And after the war, he set up a small business to earn his own money
and—as a machine shop. That’s a—people who made bunting and flags. So it wasn’t a
mechanical machine shop. It was a sewing machine shop.
At that time, he built a house in a place called Surrey, which is about 20 miles south of
London. And by that time, my mother had had myself, me, and I was born in London in a
place called Herne Hill, which makes me a genuine Cockney because I was born within
the sound of Bow Bells, which makes me a genuine Cockney.
So we moved to Guildford in—I mean Surrey, south of London, into a place called East
Horsley, into a beautiful house. This was in 1932. And this—Weybridge was close by
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and near this town called East Horsley. East Horsley was a very small village, and it was
eight miles from Weybridge. And at Weybridge was some very interesting activities. In
1920, they built a racetrack, which was three and a half miles around. So it was the first
purpose-built racetrack in the world for building—for testing cars, automobiles, of
course. It was a banked circuit. And in the middle of that, they had an airdrome, as they
called it, and in that—on that airdrome was Vickers-Armstrongs. And VickersArmstrongs, of course, built ships—that is, battleships, cruise liners. So they were a
heavy engineering company. And as a side issue, they built Spitfires and Wellingtons. So
that’s where I eventually joined up as an apprentice, but that’s a story later.
After a very happy childhood where I got to play with all kinds of interesting animals, big
dogs and things like that, I got into the usual trouble that kids get into of—I loved
working with the laborers who were building houses, and I used to climb up on the roof
and drink tea with them and have lots of social activities with these laborers, who I found
very entertaining. And my mother didn’t mind, other—in spite of the fact they climbed
up on these roofs, along all the scaffolding and stuff. But nobody seemed to care in those
days. They just let the kids run around.
Oh, in fact, one day I had a visit from the police, and the police said that I was—I had
broken into a house and written graffiti on the wall and would my mother get me down
here, and he wanted to chew me out right away. And he—my mother said, “Well, he’s in
bed.” And he—the doctor—the policeman said, “Well, is he sick?” And she said, “No.
He’s only four years old.” So the police just, “Oh. Sorry about that.”
So at this time, of course, my father was doing quite well with his machine shop business,
and I used to go up and visit him and with—and talk to the girls who were the machinists
and so on. So I loved talking to people who worked with their hands. It was just a natural
thing for me to do. As I got older, of course, I went with my father to Brooklands and
watched the motor racing, what they called club racing. And my—the person next door,
who was a commercial butcher, had an M3—M. G. Magnette, and he used to take me
around the circuit. It was extremely bumpy and very, very frightening but a very
wonderful experience. So we used to go around the track and used to reach speeds up
over 130 miles an hour on this bumpy circuit. So it was very exciting.
So that got me hooked on automobiles, and we watched—as I got to be seven, I was sent
away to boarding school to a place called East Grinstead, which was a stately home,
typical of an English boarding school. We had a very strict disciplinarian who was a
German, ironically. This was in 1938. But I had a great time after I got over the shock of
being wrenched away from my parents. The reason I was, of course, because my father
being a major, was determined my mother wasn’t going to spoil me at home, so—she did
anyway, but—but I, of course, enjoyed coming home for holidays.
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00:07:29
[Adolescent years in England during World War II and early flight experiences]
SB:
And when it came to the war effort, 1939 when war is declared, the German headmaster
became sort of under suspicion because—just because he was a German. It really wasn’t
very fair, but that’s the way it was, I’m afraid. So I left that school—it was time for me to
leave anyway—and went back to Surrey. And by then, of course, the war had been
declared. And I went to a school down in Somerset away from the bombs, so—of course
this was during the Phoney War where there was no bombs, but we were evacuated to
Somerset anyway.
And again, I got entangled with aviation because I was right beside the—a naval training
school and they were doing dive-bombing practice. So I used to go for walks with the—I
had to walk the headmaster’s dog. I didn’t have to, but this was a way of getting out of
doing other, more difficult tasks, so… I always had an angle to get off things I didn’t
want to do. So anyway, we were walking these dogs one day, and three of these divebombers dived right into the ground where we were. And we ran over, and it was a
horrible site watching these people burn to death. So that was my first experience with
death. Not at all pleasant, but it made me realize that life wasn’t all fun.
But on the other hand, of course, we found a barn with some beautiful smells coming out
of it, so we got into this barn and found barrels on racks on the walls. And we got a stone
and we pushed one of the plugs in these barrels, and out poured this gorgeous-smelling
stuff. We got a cup that was nearby and started drinking this stuff. It turns out it was hard
cider. So pretty soon we were so drunk we couldn’t walk. The dog was drunk, too.
[laughs] So after about four hours, they—the police found us pretty well unconscious on
the floor. And, of course, we all got hell for that. So that was sort of the things I used to
do, which wasn’t—not very good.
By then, of course, the war—this is 1939, 1940. And in 1940 my father volunteered to
join the Observer Corps. And you got to remember, of course, that the radar only looked
out over the coast. And the later radars were actually able to see out over the French coast
and see the German formations forming and watched them come across. And they got a
pretty good idea where the targets were going to be because they could tell what part of
England they were heading for. But once they crossed the coast, the radar coverage
ceased to exist. So the only way they tracked those formations was with the people in
these Observer Corps posts. An Observer Corps post was a ring of sandbags, and in the
center of the ring there was a theodolite and on the—mounted on a map of the local area.
So the mission of the Observers was to look at these airplanes with—through this
telescope and count the number of airplanes and report in what angle they were from
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your position. Now, of course, there were enough of the Observers that they were able to
establish a track and also the altitude of the airplanes. And my job was to tell these old
guys, who couldn’t see very well, what kind of airplanes they were, which was very
rewarding. So I can claim that I was in the Battle of Britain. So that was my participation
in the Battle of Britain.
Of course, when I went to boarding school in—grammar school, rather—I went to a place
called Sevenoaks in Kent. Ironically, the place—the reason my parents chose that was
because they had very good air raid shelters, even though it was on the main route
between France where the enemy aircraft flew over on their way to bomb London. So it
was more a procession of enemy airplanes flying over the school, mainly during the night
during the Blitz. And, of course, randomly they’d drop bombs around the school. Not
because they were aiming at the school. Because they were under attack by fighters or
whatever. And unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the—World War II to me as a young
boy—and I was so fortunate not to lose any of my loved ones—was one big party. I had
an absolutely wonderful time. And I know that’s terrible to say, but being in London
during the war was a wonderful time to be in London—I mean, in England. Everybody
was pulling in the same direction, there was no strikes, and everybody had a common
purpose and pulled in the same direction. It was absolutely fantastic.
Anyway, back to Sevenoaks, where I was in school. Like I said, we watched the bombers
go over at night. I was on the fifth floor up on the top, looking out over the Kent
countryside, so we were quite elevated from the surrounding country. They had a really
good view of the airplanes coming. And very occasionally, we used to get a large bomb
dropped nearby. And the most exciting one was that they dropped a land mine, which
was a parachute mine that landed about five miles away. And these were designed for
blast, so it blew out all the windows in the school and so I had glass all over my bed and
that stuff. So that was the only thing that I experienced any sort of battle damage, if you
want to call it that.
Well, later on, of course, the Germans got more sophisticated and we started getting V-1s
coming over, the cruise missiles. And they had, of course, a very distinctive noise. They
sounded like a motorcycle. And, of course, if you go on the gallery by the—on the
Museum outside here, you can see a V-1 cruise missile hanging from the—overhead.
And below that, there is an actual V-1 engine and some very good diagrams that show
you how this pulsejet works. Basically just takes ram air in from the front through a
series of louvers and mixes it with gasoline that’s sprayed into the chamber, and inside
the chamber there’s a sparkplug that sparks all the time. And when the fuel-air ratio
reaches a stoichiometric ratio of 15-to-1, the fuel burns. Some people say it explodes. It
doesn’t really explode; it burns rapidly. And a pulse goes out the tailpipe. And it has to
go out the tailpipe because the pressure rise causes the shutters at the front to shut, so the
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only place that air can go is out the tailpipe. And that causes the thrust. And as the thrust
goes out the tail, it sucks more air in from the front as the shutters open, and the cycle
starts over again.
So the cycle, as I said, sounds like a motorcycle, about—[makes sound effect]—like that.
Now, the secret was, of course, they fired 3,800 of these things over England, over
Southern England, so we got our fair share of these things that were going over most of
the day and night. But we carried on with our schoolwork, and we just ignored them until
one of the engines stopped. And then as soon as the engine stopped, we’d dive under our
desks, because you knew once the engine stopped the missile was programmed to go into
a dive and explode. And this thing had a ton of war—ton of TNT in the nose. It made a
pretty good bang.
So having survived that, then later on we were subject to V-1 anti—ballistic missiles,
which were a whole different kettle of fish. I should back up a little and say the cruising
speed of the V-1s was 450 miles an hour and the top speed of a Spitfire was about 400
miles an hour. So the only way any of our airplanes could catch these things was in a
dive. So what the British did was have what they call layered defense. So from the
Channel to London, they had an altered balloon barrage, fighters, balloon barrage,
fighters, and eventually, of course, the missiles, the ones that got through got to London.
So we were in the zone where there were fighters, not balloons. So it was very exciting to
see these fighters diving because that’s the only way they could catch these missiles and
strafe them in the air and try and bring them down that way. Very occasionally you’d see
one tip a wing over, but that was not very common. So again, if—it was a most exciting
time, of course. It was like a cricket match. Everybody cheered when one went down and
so on.
Back to the V-1s. These, of course, were supersonic, and nobody, literally, had seen or
heard anything that was supersonic. So it was very mysterious because the bomb went off
with a huge explosion, and then a few seconds later you could hear the missile coming
with a large boom. And, of course, this was a supersonic boom. We couldn’t really figure
out what that second noise was. Most people thought it was an echo or something. But we
had some very smart kids in our class, and we determined that it was the—the missile
went up to 75 miles, and when it reentered, it actually caused a pressure wave in the air
and the pressure wave was what we were hearing.
So we also had kids that were smart enough to—and, of course, the general subject was,
well, of course, these missiles eventually will be used to go in—to the Moon and outer
space because they didn’t need atmosphere. I remember distinctly one of our kids, who
was much brighter than I was, started talking about ion propulsion. Nobody could
understand what he was talking about. And, of course, we couldn’t conceive that
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electrons coming out of the back of a missile would generate enough thrust for
[unintelligible] to propel it through the atmosphere, not realize—remembering, of course,
there was no air or no resistance. So we had some pretty good kids in our school.
JB:
How old were you at that age?
SB:
I was 14.
JB:
Uh-huh [affirmative].
SB:
In parallel with this, of course, this school was focused on providing aircrew for the RAF.
So it was an RAF school. Each school—each college had a goal to provide service people
for the war. So we used to get visited by war heroes, primarily RAF fighter pilots, who
came and told us what it was like and so on. In exchange, we used to go to the RAF bases
as a member of the Air Training Corps. And at the air bases, we were taught to fly gliders
because the gliders was a primary way of teaching a pilot the initial way to fly an
airplane. So I got my glider’s license when I was 12 and became an instructor when I was
14.
As the war progressed, we got very severely injured pilots because the Spitfire had an
unfortunate characteristic—[clears throat]—excuse me—of having the fuel tank over the
legs of the pilot. So almost all the pilots were very severely burned when they bailed out.
So the ones that were—and by another strange coincidence, the school at East Grinstead
became the burn center, where I was—I was at school. So that became the first of the
burn treatment centers for these badly burned pilots. So as I said, a lot of them came back
to their air bases and wanted to continue flying, and many of them only had one eye
because they were—they had lost their eye when they were burned. And so I had the
pleasure of teaching these people how to judge distances when they landed these gliders.
They found it extremely difficult to judge the height. So I found that extremely
rewarding, of course, as a 14-year-old teaching these 23-year-olds how to fly airplanes
again. So that was one of my more rewarding things I did when I was 14 and 15.
JB:
When was your first flight?
SB:
My first—
JB:
You had a license at 12 and you were an instructor at 14.
SB:
Yeah. My first flight was when I was 11 or 12, my first solo flight in a glider. This was—
I found it instinctive. It wasn’t at all difficult. They taught you to fly by putting you on
top of a hill and balancing the airplane against the wind on the ground. That’s how you
learned to control the airplane. And afterwards, after that, they got a bungee cord, and
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they catapulted you down the hill, and you did a glide down the hill if you could control
the airplane.
Then they hooked you to a barrage balloon winch. And they had a long runway, and they
towed you up on a winch, and you got up to about 3,000 feet. After a while, they—if it
was windy, they’d play you like a kite. The airplane would just go up like flying a kite.
So we got up to about 3,000 feet and cast off and we found thermals and we’d stay out
for a couple of hours. And we were fortunate enough to fly at a place called Dunstall—
[clears throat]—excuse me—where they had—the wind used to come across the ridge, so
we did ridge soaring. And you could virtually stay up forever just by going up and down
on the ridge like birds did. But eventually you had to come down and land and give
somebody else a turn. So that was my initial gliding experience or flying experience.
00:23:03
[Apprenticeship at Vickers-Armstrongs and service with the British Army]
SB:
But, of course, by then I was still at grammar school in Sevenoaks. I graduated from
grammar school and went back to my home in Surrey and had to decide what I was going
to do with my life. I decided I didn’t want to go to college. I was more of a hands-on
person. And besides, I was dumb as a rock anyway. So I told my father I wanted to
become an aviation apprentice at Vickers-Armstrongs, which, as I say, was just eight
miles down the road. So there it was ideal for me because it was a four-year graduation—
graduate program, where you spent two days going through the factory learning
engineering skills and three days a week—because it was a five-day week—going to
college, the local college. So I went to college some of the time and went through the
factory the rest of the time.
And, of course, you had to specialize as an apprentice in a particular skill. So I chose to
be—because I enjoyed making model aircraft, I signed up for the wind tunnel
department. So I graduated from wind tunnel—building wind tunnel models into
designing the models and instrumenting them. So I became an instrumentation specialist
in wind tunnel models. And that was extremely interesting because Vickers, as I say, was
a heavy-industry company, so not only did we test out wind tunnel models of airplanes
but also their cruise liners that they were building—by then it was after the war—and
they found that the smoke plumes from the funnels of the ships were going down over the
decks and upsetting the passengers. So we actually did plume tests of smoke going down
over the decks of ships.
I also at that time realized that some of the bridges were becoming subject to
aerodynamic loads, which caused them to sway. And, of course, that’s what happened to
the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. So we put bridges in the wind tunnel and determined how
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you could modify them to stop them swaying in a wind. All these things where
fascinating, you know, and different than just airplanes.
One of the jobs I had to do was to minimize the drag on an Aston Martin sports racing
car, which was going to go and compete at Le Mans, which, of course, was right up my
street. So I got the [unintelligible] of reducing the drag on this Le Mans race car. It
fortunately won its class in Le Mans, so as an award, I was sent down to Goodwood, and
I got to drive this Le Mans-winning car, which again, of course, was right up my street.
So I was very lucky in my life to get all these little perks.
So on graduation, I was—having graduated after four years of this college and education,
went to the British—I was drafted in the National Service of the Army. Because of my
glider experience, I volunteered to go in the Glider Regiment in the Army. I wanted to
fly, but the Air Force, you had to sign up for five years. I didn’t want to sign up in the
military for five years, so I chose the lesser and just signed up for the Army for two years
in the Glider Regiment.
Well, the week I had just signed up for the Glider Regiment, it was disbanded and
everybody was automatically transferred from the gliders to the Parachute Regiment. So I
thought, oh, darn, I didn’t really mean to sign up for the Parachute Regiment. But that’s
how I found myself as a parachutist. So I went through parachute training and—pretty
hard training at Aldershot, where we had to jump through ditches and climb over
boulders and all that stuff. And finally got my—I jumped out of balloons, parachuted
with a static line straight down onto balloons, and that worked okay.
Going on my ninth jump out of a Handley Page Hastings, I broke both my legs in a
high—very high wind, which was a bit of luck because I didn’t have to do any
parachuting anymore. So I was transferred to a regiment that developed experimental
parachutes and experimental parachute loads. We dropped heavy loads out of airplanes,
which was a lot more fun than jumping out yourself. So we pushed things like Land
Rovers and jeeps full of classified radar equipment and things like this to see if they
survived the shock.
One monumental occasion, we actually wanted to—the Army wanted to go for the
heaviest drop in the world, so we persuaded the Americans to loan us a C-119, which was
a Flying Boxcar, a twin-engine, twin-boom machine that had a removable tail on it. So
we got—the heaviest load the Army could think of was a D4 Cat bulldozer, which
weighed 20,000 pounds. So I thought, that should do it. So we mounted this bulldozer on
a pallet. All the loads were mounted on pallets. And on the top of the bulldozer, they put
boxes full of parachutes. We had sixteen 60-foot parachutes. And we put it into this C119. And the crew had to get permission from the Pentagon to do this because it was over
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the most—max gross weight of the airplane. So they said, “Okay, just have the pilot and
copilot, and if one of the engines even splutters, we’re going to bail out.” Because that’s
what the Pentagon told them to do.
Well, so we went down over Salisbury Plain in our Land Rovers, and this airplane came
staggering along at about 10,000 feet. At the appropriate time, the drag chute came out of
this thing, was pulled out the back of the airplane. And we—“Well, that’s good. That
worked at least, and the airplane didn’t crash.” And then horror, parachute came off—
out, and it immediately plucked off like a petal of a flower because one parachute was
trying to take 20,000 pounds of load through one shackle. Then another parachute came
out and it broke off. So it came down like this, and all 16 parachutes were floating around
in the air like this, and the bulldozer went zonk, into the ground. And, of course,
completely demolished. Naturally, of course, being in the Army, they chose a bulldozer
that had just been through refurbishment.
So that was one of the funs I had in the Army. After that, we did parachute drops over the
Russian border. And for that, we had to fly below radar altitude across the North Sea and
then pop up and drop parachutes along the Russian front. This was just to find out how
soon they saw us coming. So it was just to tweak the Russians a little bit, that’s all. And
to do that, we used the—I flew with the Americans, so I got really used to the American
Army and had a wonderful time with them. But that’s a whole ‘nother series of stories. I
think I need a rest. [laughs]
JB:
So what do you think about your military service? Was it a positive experience?
SB:
Absolutely. Everybody should do it.
JB:
Everyone.
SB:
Everybody. They need the discipline. And I met the most wonderful people. I was—I
didn’t graduate as an officer or anything. I was with a bunch of—well, coalminers. And
they were tough buggers. I mean, really tough. I mean, I was just a wimp. And I
remember distinctly one of the really tough guys was sitting on his bed darning his socks,
and he dropped his needle and bent—knelt down to pick it up. And we had coco-mats on
the floor. And the needle stuck up [unintelligible], and it went right into his knee. I mean,
right into his knee. So he was in agony, and, of course, everybody else was running
around trying to get the medics and so on. So I knelt down and threaded the needle and
pulled it out. It was sort of like a mouse and a bear—and a lion, you know. So from there
on, this great big—great big guy followed me around like a puppy dog. It was—[laughs]
I was his mascot.
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So yeah, I enjoyed the military service. I made a habit of enjoying everywhere I lived and
everywhere I worked. There’s no point in not enjoying it.
00:32:45
[Guided missile testing in Australia]
SB:
So after being discharged from the Army, I went back to Vickers-Armstrongs because
they guarantee you a job, and got a job as a flight test engineer. And before I went into
the Army, I told Vickers I wanted to emigrate to Canada. So I told—when I went back to
Vickers as a flight test engineer, I worked on the Scimitar, a Navy attack fighter, and got
to go out on the Mediterranean on flights for the Scimitar. I watched them landing over
the deck and so on. That was a lot of fun.
I told them, “I still want to emigrate to Canada.” And they said, “Well, we’re setting up a
community in Australia because we’ve got a contract to do some guided missile testing
in—at Woomera in Australia.” Did I—was I interested in going to Australia instead of
Woomera—I mean, instead of Canada? So by a strange coincidence, I had just married an
Australian, my wife, in 1953, who was a qualified—a nurse, qualified nurse, an RN, and
also a secretary, qualified secretary for a law firm.
So I said, “Well, yes, I would be delighted to go to Australia. My wife happens to be a
company secretary and a qualified nurse, so…” “Oh, well,” they said, “We’ll employ her
as well.” So my wife became the company CEO’s secretary, and I became one of the
junior engineers. We flew out to Australia within three weeks of us being married on a
Handley Page Hastings full of guided missiles. And because it was an air—a military
airplane, we flew—it took us seven days to get to Australia. We flew to Egypt. They
wouldn’t let us fly over India, so we had to fly all around India. And we had to
experience—it was like the guy who left the cockpit window open and the monsoon rain
came through and flooded the autopilot. So we were stuck in Ceylon for two days, that
sort of stuff.
So we finally made it to Australia to Adelaide, where I joined the Weapons Research
Establishment at—in Adelaide. And flew up to—got a nice house in Adelaide and flew
up to Woomera every week on Monday and back every Friday for three years, doing
various kind of missile drops and firing different kinds of missiles, one of which, of
course, was launched out of a B-29, which was a cruise missile. It was dropped out of the
aft bomb bay of the B-29, and we tracked it and see how it performed. And it was a onethird-scale model of a cruise missile.
And there were other missiles that were launched off Canberra bombers and so on. And I
was on the ground looking through this Canberra missile launch through a Scandi, a
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Swiss photo-optic telescope taking pictures of this thing. And lo and behold, behind this
airplane was a UFO. And I thought like, you know, I don’t believe what I’m seeing. So
this thing was—maneuvered behind the airplane back and forward, and it was very hard
to tell how high it was because I had no idea how big it was. So I thought, that’s really
weird. So after thinking about it a long time, in the mess that evening, I sat down and
started to tell my buddy across the table what I had seen, and one of the base security
officers said, “Please don’t say anymore. Just come and see me in the morning, would
you?” So I said, “Sure.”
So I went to his office in the morning and said—he said, “Would you please tell me
exactly what you saw and tell me what it did?” So I said, “Sure.” So I described the
maneuvers this thing went through. And he said, “Well, how big was it?” I said, “I have
no idea because I couldn’t really judge the size of it. It was—it appeared to be about the
same size as a Canberra, but it didn’t really change radically in size when it went up and
down, so it was hard to tell.” He said, “Well, I should tell you that your description of the
track of this thing is exactly the same as our radar followed it.” So I thought, well, that’s
really weird. But he said, “I would ask you not to speak to anybody about it.” And he
made me sign an Official Secrets Act. And that was that. And I never really have talked
about it because when I do everybody thinks I’m a bit of a nut. [laughs] So that was a
peculiar phenomenon.
Anyway, so having had a wonderful time in Australia, the contract finally finished after
going through four different kinds of missile testing, and I wanted desperately to stay in
Australia because I liked it so much. But I was unable to find a job, so we were sent back
to England on a cruise ship as an award for being—having stayed behind to close up the
company.
JB:
What was your life like in Australia? What was so attractive about it?
SB:
The freedom of speech, the freedom of choice, of dress, and everybody was very relaxed.
You know, nothing bothered anybody. It was, “Good on you, mate,” that sort of attitude.
They were just great people. And they still are.
I think they’ve got the right priorities in life. They’ve got—they live outdoor a lot
because they’re outdoor people. They like hiking and swimming and fishing and those
things. They’ve got the most wonderful healthcare system. We went back afterwards and
lived there for quite a while after I retired. In fact, we still own a condominium there on
Sydney Harbour. So we spent a lot of time in Australia. Up until this year, we went back
every year for two months when the weather was bad here. So we joined the National
Health System and so on, and it’s absolutely magnificent. And it’s very inexpensive, and
it covers everybody for everything. My wife fell over and broke her shoulder, and they
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covered everything for nothing. So I’m very impressed with the Australians, the
Australian way of life.
JB:
Are you a citizen there?
SB:
Yes, I am. I’m a dual citizen. I only recently became a citizen, though. Every time I went
back through the customs, they used to say, “Why the hell aren’t you a citizen? You
belong here.” So I used to say, “I just haven’t got around to it.” Because the—I didn’t
qualify for—I had to—you had to be a resident there for three years, and all I ever did
was visit. So after going backwards and forwards so long, they finally said, “Oh, to hell
with it. You’ve become a citizen anyway.” So they’ve got that sort of attitude, you know.
They’re quite prepared to bend the so-called laws.
So I really love—and then when they come here, they’re outstanding in the way they
behave and ask questions. They’re very, very curious people. They want to learn all the
time. That’s why I like them. Anyway, so…
00:40:41
[Career with Canadair]
JB:
So you went back to Vickers.
SB:
Yes, I went back to Vickers. And then after that, I told them, “Well, I still want to
emigrate because I can’t stand living in England. It’s too constrained and too narrowminded and, you know, so…” By then, of course, I had bought a house and had a young
baby, a daughter, and I was all set to stay there. My parents were, of course, delighted
that I would come back to England to stay there. And they were horrified when I decided
I was going to go to—emigrate to Canada. Because I saw a job in Canada, Canadair in
Montreal. So I immigrated to Montreal and worked on the Arrow—the Sparrow missile
for the Avro Arrow fighter, interceptor/fighter.
So after about six months—my wife stayed behind in England, sold the house, and came
over and joined me with the young daughter. And we rented a house in a local area. My
wife wanted to join the natives and didn’t want to live in Montreal, where everybody
spoke English. So we moved out to a French-speaking community, which was typical of
my wife, you know. It was really a ridiculous thing to do because they hated English
people. Because in those days, de Gaulle was going through Montreal stirring up all kinds
of hatreds about how the bloody English had screwed them and wouldn’t let them speak
English—I mean, wouldn’t let them speak French. And he was just stirring up
nationalism. And they wanted Canada to break—I mean, Quebec to—excuse me—
Quebec to break away from the rest of Canada and become an independent country,
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which was really stupid. So there was a separatist unit. And they did all kinds of things
like bombing mailboxes and all kinds of terrorist activities, and it got really, really bad.
00:42:43
[Career with Boeing and work on AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) and AOA
(Airborne Optical Adjunct)]
SB:
So after coming down to America for—to buy instrumentation for the—we instrumented
a Sparrow missile and hung it on a CF-100, which was a twin-engine large
[unintelligible] fighter, and put all the instruments in tanks in the wingtips. So I came
down to America a lot to buy instruments from Ampex, Ampex tape recorders and things
like that, and went to Point Mugu and watched them launching Sparrow missiles and
became quite familiar with the American way of doing things. And after a while,
Diefenbaker, who was the Prime Minister of Canada, decided to cancel the program
because the Americans made him an offer to put Bomarc missiles in Canada instead of
the Avro Arrow. So Boeing made us an offer, “Come to Boeing and work on the Bomarc
instead of the Avro—the Arrow.”
So the Avro program was canceled, and most of the engineers from Canadair went to
Boeing. We all went on a train across Canada, 185 engineers and all their families on one
train going to Seattle via Vancouver. So that’s how I got to the United States. So I came
down here in 1959, and I wasn’t a citizen because Canadair wouldn’t release me. And I
joined the Bomarc program and worked on base installations and was sent by Boeing to
Cape Cod and worked on Cape Cod on and off for three years installing Bomarcs in their
shelters.
I went back to Seattle and was sent to Duluth, Minnesota to do the same things. I worked
on the same thing in Duluth, Minnesota, which was very interesting. It was very cold and
all the rest of it. But it was also another interesting experience. By this time, I—we had a
son. So my son was born in Montreal. And so I’ve got a wonderful son and a wonderful
daughter, of which of whom I’m extremely proud and they’re doing very well in life.
And so we all emigrated to America and used Seattle’s headquarters, of course, because
that’s where Boeing was. But because I was young, had a young family and they weren’t
in school, I volunteered to go and work on the—these Bomarc programs. And after that, I
came back and went for a short time on Minuteman and then came back to Seattle for—
more or less permanently and worked on AWACS. Worked on the AWACS proposal,
which was an extraordinarily interesting experience because I—by then I was a
supervisor in Boeing Manufacturing, and so I became the Manufacturing representative
on the AWACS proposal. So we figured out how we were going to make this thing. So
what we decided to do was we were going to buy a 707 from Commercial cousins, put
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big struts on the tail, and mount a 13-foot-diameter rotodome on top. So the aero—I was
in Aerospace, and we bought the airplane from Commercial. So they modified the
airplane to the extent of putting struts on it in Renton, and the airplane was flown over to
Seattle. We mounted the rotodome on it. And the rotodome was made in Auburn.
And now I was responsible for building the rotodome. And the major component of the
rotodome was the radomes. So the radomes were very large and ovoid in shape. And as I
said, the rotodome complete weighed 13,000 pounds, so it was a very large device that
rotated on a six-foot-diameter ball bearing round on top of these struts. So one of the
things we had to do with the radome was to customize the shape of it. It was built out of
fiberglass and one-and-a-half-inch-thick foam—excuse me, honeycomb core. So the
ladies in Auburn had to lay up this honeycomb with layers of fiberglass on it.
So the actual radome is a lens. And not many people know this, but what happens is the
bullnose of the radome is much thinner than the top. Because what happens is when the
radar entity comes through the radome and the beams are parallel, the sender beams go
straight through. But if you didn’t make the radome into a lens, what would happen is
the—because there’s more resistance of the beams going through at an angle, the beams
tend to be tipped up because the—like it acts as a lens and tips the—so the beam, instead
of being nice and parallel, goes like this. [demonstrates]
So the range was horrible on the initial AWACS until we figured out, if we put layers of
fiberglass starting thin and then making it thicker so there was much as much resistance
going through the core—the bullnose as there is through the top. So then the beams came
out parallel, and it virtually doubled the range of the beam. So this is all transparent, of
course. You can never see this. So this is one of the more interesting things. As a sort of
side adjunct, learning how to make that radome enabled me to make the radome for the
B-29 when I worked on the radome some 60 years later.
Anyway, so back to the AWACS program. So we built 31 AWACS airplanes for the U.S.
Air Force, and then the NATO countries decided they wanted AWACS as well. So being
a Manufacturing manager by then, I—one of the conditions under which NATO countries
would buy the airplane was under what they called offset. And offset was they had to
spend as much money in the host country as Boeing spent on the airplane. So we had to
give them as much money to spend in Europe, and the—for that money, they built the
electronics and then they took the electronics and installed it in the airplane and checked
it out and delivered it to the NATO countries.
So to select which companies were able to do this work, I was part of a team that went to
England, France, and Germany to select the countries to do the work for us. We ended up
selecting Dornier in Munich to do the integration and checkout. We selected [Siemens?]
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to build the various parts, and all over the—Germany, they were building various parts
for the airplane. However, the radar, of course, was still built by Westinghouse in
America. So as a result of this, I spent many flights going across the Atlantic working
with Dornier, getting them checked out on how to do this checkout of the electronics and
flight-test the airplane and check it out.
So during these trips, I—being a sports car enthusiast, I made a point of going to a
Porsche factory and buying up parts for a sports racing car that I built. So there were only
20 of these cars built by the factories. The factory was very excited to provide me with all
these non-obtainable parts, which I then flew back with me on the airplane back to
Seattle. And it became so obvious after about 15 of these trips, the customs people said,
“We’ve finally got you figured out. You’re bringing a car back piece by piece, aren’t
you?” I said, “Yeah, you caught me. Yes, I am.” [laughs] So they just laughed about it,
you know. This was the good old days. And incidentally, I took a windshield the other
way, back to Germany, and they could not figure out what my devious plan was to take a
cracked windshield back to Germany. So, you know, these are the fun days going through
customs, where the guys were reasonable and they had a joke about stuff.
JB:
Yeah.
SB:
Quite different now. So anyways, after the AWACS contract was satisfactorily completed
and I had to go to the Hague and talk to the native countries and went through the
instantaneous translation and things like that—it was very stressful, although somewhat
fun, to describe to us—to them how we were doing on the program and represented
Boeing management. That was educational, to put it mildly.
So I went back to Seattle after the end of that contract, and by then the Air Force came to
us and said, “The Japanese have approached us. They want to put—they want to buy
some AWACS, but they want to put it on a more modern airframe.” So we designed an
airplane which was—I’m sorry. I missed a whole thing. The Saudis came and wanted
AWACS, too. But they wanted different engines on the airplane, so we put CFM56
engines on the airplane to make it more fuel efficient. So I got to negotiate the contract
with the Saudis, and that was quite a different experience, trying to teach the Saudis. And
you can’t teach the Saudis anything. They know it all. So that was interesting.
Also, negotiating with the Saudis on why it cost so much to put different engines on the
airframe. So we experienced the thing like we’d have these Saudis lined up at the table
like this and Boeing—the Air Force would be on the other side because we weren’t
allowed to talk to the Saudis. We had to do it through the Air Force. But behind every
Saudi was an Englishman. So the Saudis would ask them—the Air Force a question, and
the Air Force would turn around to ask for the answer. We’d tell them the answer, they’d
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turn around to the Saudis, and then the Saudis would have to turn around to the English
people and say, “What did the guy mean?” So this was the negotiation for the AWACS
airplane for the Saudis.
The main bone of contention was why it cost so much money to change the engines from
TF33s to CFM56s. And they found out that, during the proposal I worked on, the original
AWACS airplane had eight engines. It was going to take off on eight and then cruise on
four for efficiency. Because it was a maintenance nightmare—it was a ridiculous idea—
so the Air Force made us, on paper, change the engines from TF33 eight engines to TF33
four engines. And somehow the Saudis found out about how much that cost. So they
asked the Air Force, “If it only costs that much, why does it cost this much?” And the Air
Force’s answer was, “Well, I’m sorry, but all the records have been destroyed and we
don’t know how much it cost originally.”
So this answer was transmitted back to the British. And the Saudis’ answer to the Air
Force—our Air Force was, “It sounds like you’re running a corner grocery store,” which
was a typical English expression. [laughs] And the Americans said, “What do you
mean?” So we had to tell them what “running a corner grocery store” meant. This is—
you know, this was a negotiation for a multimillion dollar contract. It was insane.
[laughs]
Anyway, so we finally convinced the Saudis, and they came to America, of course, to
watch how we were building the airplane. And we showed them the people building the
707 in Renton, and, of course, there were a lot of women building the airplane. And they
came to me and said, “We can’t have that. We can’t have women working on the
airplane.” I said, “That’s what you bought. Too bad. If you don’t like it, you know, go
somewhere else.” And so this sort of attitude was just totally incredible. I found, anyway.
JB:
What an experience, though.
SB:
Yes.
JB:
Yeah.
SB:
Well, finally we got this contract to build the Japanese AWACS. And that was a twinengine airplane, and all we did was build it and deliver it. I had nothing to do—negotiate
with the Japanese, really.
And finally I—after the end of the AWACS program, I went on to AOA, which was a
very interesting program. And that turned out to be a—we took the prototype 767, which
was a twin engine, put a large cupola on top, and in that cupola, which was a box, we had
a window on the side which opened up. And the trick to seeing out through an open
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cavity like that—because what happens, the airflow across the cavity is very turbulent,
and turbulent air acts as a lens. It completely upsets the viewing through the air as it
passes over this open cavity.
So we developed in our wind tunnel a system called an aero-optical window. So what did
is we took air in through the front of the cupola, and by carefully diverting it into a slot
upstream of the window, we produced a laminar flow of air across the window and
recaptured it on the downstream side, so the telescope looked out through a completely
clear laminar flow of air. And that technique is still being used today on some airplanes
that are looking at the stars through telescopes. So that technique was very innovative.
So we developed that, which made the telescope, which was the—and this is still highly
classified. Not what I’m going to tell you, but a lot of the processing stuff. It was made
by Hughes in El Segundo, California. They developed the sensor, which was an infrared
sensor, which was able to sense three different infrared spectrums. The telescope itself
was made by an optical country—company. It’s a name I—I always botch it up because it
sounds like Ikea. I think it’s some—it’s an optical telescope company, anyway. And
watched them grounding—ground these perfect mirrors for—that went inside this
telescope. It was all taken back to Hughes and assembled in this device, which was
probably about, oh, five feet in diameter. It was fairly heavy, and it was mounted on a
gimbal system so it could track like this. [demonstrates]
And it was tested in one of the labs in Hughes, and I was responsible for moving this
thing from Hughes up to Seattle on a truck. This thing was worth $26 million. So because
I was the Manufacturing manager and I had the transportation people under me, we had
to design a way of moving this thing, as I said. So we designed a package. It was
mounted on a lowboy truck with air ride suspension. The Army insisted we put brandnew tires on this thing, so we put brand-new tires on it. We backed it into this secret
facility at Hughes, and to get this thing in there, we had to open the roof and—to get this
thing out. And lo and behold, we had to wait until the Russian satellite had gone over,
because every time they moved anything like that, they had to wait for the Russian spy
satellites to get out of the way. So that was something I didn’t know.
Anyway, so we finally got this thing on the truck. And we went through the whole plan
over and over and over again on exactly how we were going to move it, what route we
were going, who were the drivers, what sort of an escort we wanted. And they wanted to
put the FBI with an armored car in front and a series of armored FBI vans of Special—
not FBI, but Special Forces people. I said, “No. For goodness sake, you might as well put
a marching band in front of this thing with a banner saying, ‘Here’s a secret payload
going down the highway.’”
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So we did away with all that stuff and just had a truck with a box over it, which was
bulletproof, because we found that when we were moving Minuteman missiles to the
bases, the kids used to shoot at these missiles—or shoot at the trailers. And they put the
star—the Air Force star right over the payload where the expensive guidance system was,
and these kids used to shoot at the star and hit the navigation system.
Anyway, so we had this plain box, which was lined with Kevlar inside in case somebody
shot at this thing. And I learned, the reason they went through all those things, there were
actually people up in the mountains in Oregon that were right-wing radicals, I guess
you’d call them, that came down periodically and did these sort of things. I had
absolutely no idea this was going on. So we drove up the highway, and we had a wideload car in front, just like any other truck, with a relief driver in it. And I was riding in the
truck with the other driver. And so I learned to ride in an 18-wheeler all the way up from
[Seattle?]. That was another great experience.
So we finally arrived in Seattle and everything was fine. We unloaded and everybody
said, “Oh, thank goodness for that.” So we put it—lift it up on the airplane and put it into
the cupola and did some checkout on it. Everything checked all right. So we had a huge
contingent from Hughes working with us all the time because they operated the sensor.
We had whole displays inside the airplane.
So after some preliminary checkout, we flew it to Kwajalein in the South Pacific and flew
it 45—47,000 feet, which is way above what the normal 767 could fly, and we did that by
over-boosting the engines by 18 percent. So we were flying at 48—47,000 feet. And this
is “coffin corridor” because the airplane doesn’t want to really fly at that altitude, so we
got the most experienced Boeing test pilot to fly this airplane at that altitude. And we
popped the window open, and they launched a Minuteman from Vandenberg. And this
[unintelligible] came over the horizon, and we saw it come over the horizon. We saw it
deploy its decoys and three warheads, and watched the warheads go in different
directions and watched the decoys go away. And I won’t tell you how we did it, but we
actually could in fact establish tracks on the warheads, although we “didn’t do that” [air
quotations] because it was a violation of the treaty with the Russians.
So it was one of the more exciting projects I was involved with. And that was another
extremely successful program. And it was a lot of fun flying out of Kwajalein. And, of
course, the crew was—always said, “Well, we can’t possibly make it back to Seattle. We
have to land in Hawaii.” Of course, that wasn’t true, but we did. We established a base in
Hawaii with a—we took over the penthouse suite on top of one of the hotels and used
that as a command center, as a radio relay station. So my wife joined me in Hawaii, and
she spent some time up in the penthouse suite with me. So it was—you know, I told you,
I have great fun wherever I go. So… [laughter]
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JB:
You certainly do.
01:04:44
[Involvement with The Museum of Flight and aircraft restoration work]
SB:
So after that, I—they asked me to come to South Korea because South Korea wanted to
buy AWACS. So I went up to my buddies in Everett and said, “You guys have just sold a
helicopter to South Korea. How was it?” They said, “Don’t have anything to do with it.”
The whole thing is preordained. You go there and select the companies and then they just
turn around and put them wherever they want to, because the government tell where the
work’s going to be done. So it was an absolute catastrophe. They were doing highquality, cleanroom-environment hydraulics in a dirt shack. So they said, “Don’t have
anything to do with it.”
So I decided to retire. It was time for me to retire anyway. I retired from Boeing and
finished building my—one of my sports racing cars. When that was finished, I decided I
would join The Museum of Flight. So I joined The Museum of Flight in about 19—2004
or something like that and went through docent training class, became a docent, and
really enjoyed that for two or three years.
And decided I—I was still working on my sports cars, so I decided I’d like to do some
more hands-on work. So after selling my last car, I went up to Everett and talked to Tom
Cathcart [Director of Aircraft Collections and Restoration at The Museum of Flight] and
said, “I would like to work on something.” So he said, “Well, how about the Comet?
You’re English.” And so I said, “That sounds good.” But I said, “I don’t really want to
drive from Bellevue up to Everett every day. Don’t you have anything nearer?” So he
said, “Well, as a matter of fact, we do. We have a whole tail of the B-29 is sitting in
Renton waiting for somebody to restore it. And we have—also, that’s where the B-17 is.”
I said, “Well, that sounds just up my street.” He said, “Well, why don’t you go down to
Renton and take a look at it and talk to Herb Phelan, who’s the project manager down
there?”
I talked to Herb, and lo and behold, I met Herb, who I used to work with on AWACS all
those years before. So I’ve known Herb for like 50 or 60 years. I worked with him on
AWACS as—I was the Manufacturing manager, and he was one of the Engineering
managers installing electronics. So it was like Old Home Week. So he said, “Well, hell,
you know what to do. You just—so you become the project manager on the tail of the B29.” I spent three years at Renton completely restoring the tail of the B-29. And it was
completely gutted because after the—this particular B-29, T-Square, left the Air Force
infantry—didn’t leave it. It was assigned to be modified as a tanker. So it was modified
as an aerial tanker with a boom out the back. So to do that, they took the whole oxygen
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supply of the tail gunner out, they took the lower aft tail turret out, they took all the
ammunition storage for the tail turret out, all of the pressure bulkheads out, the armor
plating, all of the windows. They completely gutted the tail. And my job was to restore
all that back to what it used to look like before it was converted into a tanker.
So it was a monumental job. And I had some absolutely fabulous help, obviously. I got
people to build me bulletproof windows, and I got somebody—a friend of mine who was
a—ran a very upgrade car restoration company, we actually took the tail turret down
there, and he [unintelligible] wheel and rolled a complete dome for the back where the
guns penetrate through, so it enabled the guns to penetrate through and vertically move
and swivel side to side. It was just a—just absolute fantastic craftsmanship.
And as a help, I got the Wind Tunnel Department to build all the rack and pinion gears
for—that operated the guns up and down and moved them side to side. So another friend
of mine—became a friend of mine, Don—Dale Thompson, who you interviewed the
other day, completely designed the control system, the computers that controlled all this
stuff. So now we have the only B-29 in the world where the guns can actually be elevated
and traversed all from the central fire control system. So that’s what I was doing early on
on the restoration of the B-29.
JB:
You’ve got about 16,000 hours in here as a volunteer?
SB:
Yes. Yes.
JB:
How rewarding do you find the Museum?
SB:
Well… [laughs]. I started, of course, coming down here from Bellevue, and then I went
to a retirement community down in Lacey, near Olympia, so that’s 60 miles away. So I
cut down my visits quite substantially because I have a—I happen to have a completely—
a fully equipped workshop in my garage, which I had in Bellevue. I’ve got a lathe and a
mill and virtually all the things I need to do all my own machining. So I did all that in
Bellevue, but then I decided I could just as well do that in Olympia.
So all the machine work I did—and I did a lot of it—I was able to do without coming to
the Museum at all. And when I finished something, I’d take it up to the Museum and
install it. Like I built all the bomb racks, and that was all built in my shop in Olympia
with a friend of mine’s help. And I got some of the heavy-duty work done in the—by
Machinists Incorporated in Seattle. They bent up all the very heavy girders that carried
the load of these bombs, and we reassembled them in my shop and did all the—installed
all the hundreds of rivets, installed all the shackles and releases and all the devices that go
along with releasing the bombs, and brought them one at a time back up to the shop here.
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And Dale Thompson wired all of the bomb releases up, and so that’s that job. We finally
installed them in the airplane.
At that time, the B-29 was wrapped in—as a cocoon with a complete—so we couldn’t
open the bomb bay doors. So everybody said, “How the hell—you can’t install the bomb
racks if you can’t open the doors.” I said, “The hell we can’t.” So we threaded them up
through the access hatch in the front, along through the pilot’s compartment, down
through the pressurized door in the forward bomb bay, and down in through the—into the
bomb bay through that way. And all the guys were standing inside the bomb bay with the
doors closed. Then we installed them in there with the doors closed. Then we finally
installed all four of them in there.
And afterwards, I said, “Well, I’ll build the bombs for them.” So a friend of mine—
became a friend of mine—had built 10 bombs for the B-17. So I took all over his
tooling—he happened to be another English guy—I took over his tooling and went to the
same supplier he did to get the casings for the bombs, which where a supplier of the
Alaska Pipeline material down in Seattle. And he happened to have a load of pipeline
material that fell off a truck and was dented. So he gave me these casings for the bombs
and cut them all to length. So the really hard part of building the bombs were done by this
factory, and he then donated all this—all these people donated all this stuff to us. So we
got another shop to help us build the fins and built all the fins and made all the tail fuses.
And that took hours and hours and hours because tail fuses and nose fuses consist of
hundreds of parts. And I got a friend to make the molds for the nose fairing of the bomb
and the tail fairing of the bomb. That was done at a five-axis machine shop down in
Auburn. And this guy, Steve Kidd, in the end did so much work for us, he must have
donated at least $100,000 of his labor, just an incredible help to the Museum and can’t
say enough good things about him.
And he finally came day before yesterday and videotaped the installation—the final
installation of these bombs on these bomb racks. So finally we closed the loop and
actually installed the bombs the day before yesterday, which was quite an event, believe
me. In the meantime, of course, I got to build several other things the—of the airplane.
All of the exhaust pipes. The radial engines have two exhaust pipes: one inboard, one
outboard. And these things are about this big around, and they come around like this.
[demonstrates] And they were all missing. So I got Steve Kidd to make the molds on his
five-axis machines for this shape, both on an inboard and outboard. So I built nine
exhaust pipes for the—one of which became an exhibit on the ground. It was just cutaway and shows how the turbocharger works. So it’s a portable exhibit, which was the
ninth exhaust pipe.
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So I built exhaust pipes. Then I took on a really tricky job of building radome for the
airplane because Dale Thompson had refurbished the radar antenna for the airplane, so
we knew this airplane needs to have a radar antenna, which was a—look straight down,
and it was assisting in bomb dropping, blind bomb dropping. So you had to make a
radome for this thing since it was missing. It was missing because, in the past, they had
taken all this stuff out and they had just put a crude patch over where this radome was.
So I got a sheet of Mylar and I marked off where the holes were where the original
radome attached. So I then was able to produce the plan view of what the radome looked
like. And a friend a mine went and took pictures, digital pictures of a B-29 with a bombdropping radar on it with a radome. He took a side view of the radome, so I got the side
profile. Then he took a head-on view of the radome, so I got a nose front-on profile. And
I took them downstairs in this building and projected onto the wall of the classroom until
it was the full-size picture, and then I traced the picture on the wall and made a side
profile of the radome. And I did it the other way and did the head-on profile of the
radome. And then I got a large sheet of plywood, and I cut the plan profile out, and I cut
the side profile out this way and made bulkheads this way. [demonstrates] And then I got
my old tooling—lofting experience and I blended all the lines in between the front and
the back and the top and the bottom and made this bathtub shape of the tool to build this
radome in. And I made it in two halves so I could separate it.
So after I lathed up the radome—as I said, I lathed it up just like the AWACS radome,
using half-inch honeycomb core instead of one-and-a-half inch. I formed it inside the
radome, lathed up fiberglass, and all around the top I cut out little segments and put solid
core in, so there were solid blocks all the way around the outside. This is where the attach
points were to bolt it to the airplane. So we popped it out of the mold, separated it, came
out, went up to Everett to be painted. And I shaped it. I made another model of the—what
the bottom of the airplane looked like out of steel. And I popped this thing on this steel
model, and I carved it away until it fitted perfectly on this curved bottom of the airplanes.
So this odd shape fitted around the bottom of the airplane, so when we put it up against
the bottom, it fitted perfectly. So I was very pleased about that.
JB:
You did all of that without prints.
SB:
Without drawings. No idea—[crosstalk].
JB:
Without any kind of drawings. What about the tail section and your APU exhaust and all
that?
SB:
Nothing, nothing. You know, it was—we had no drawings of any of that stuff. There
were a few things we did have drawings of. The bomb racks, we had drawings for. So we
knew how to—I knew how to make the big fittings that bolted to the airplanes. I had
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drawings of all that stuff. And I had copies—Herb Phelan lent me the hooks out of the B17, and I took them down because I had to build 70 of those things out of three-eighths
steel. I wasn’t about to hacksaw this stuff out.
So my friend Steve Kidd found a company he knew in Kent. They would waterjet-cut
these things for me. So they did all this for me for nothing because Steve Kidd asked
them to. So all that sort of things he did for me that would have been horrible—a horrible
job to make 70 of these things by hand. So I got them all perfect for nothing. Again, up in
Everett, they did all the plating for me for nothing. So companies are wonderful in the
way they support the Museum. The Museum has such a great reputation of being
something worthwhile to do work for, so it’s very—it makes you very proud and pleased
to work at a place like this. And also such a privilege to work on these airplanes that
become part of the American heritage. You know, it’s beyond description of how—when
somebody comes and says—when you’re a docent, you know, you worked on this
airplane and they say, “Well, thank you so much for saving a national treasure like that,”
it really gets to you. It makes it all worthwhile. I don’t want to get emotional or anything
like that. [laughs]
JB:
What are you working on now?
SB:
I’m working—
JB:
You got your bombs done.
SB:
Well, I’ve got the bombs done and installed, but I’m working on, with Dale, an electronic
warfare system. So this is a—believe it or not, in World War II, they actually monitored
the frequency of the radars that were shooting antiaircraft fire at the airplane. And all
these guns were radar controlled. So they’d get the frequency with an antenna of these—
of the fire control radars, and once—they had frequency scanning, so once they
determined—and Dale’s making all this stuff, and I’m making all the antennas and the
installation of this stuff. So we’re actually putting the antiaircraft anti-system on the
airplane. So that’s what I’m working now on, the anti-electronic warfare system.
So, you know, it will never, never stop. It’ll never end. [laughter] People say, “When will
it be finished?” I say, “Not in my lifetime.” We’ll always keep doing it, and when we get
through, we’ll go back and do things better. So it’s a—you know, a career for somebody.
And that’s part of the difficulty, to find young people who want to step up and start doing
this stuff. So it’s nice to find younger people who are interested. And we are slowly doing
that.
01:22:18
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[Achievements and notable moments from his career]
JB:
Over the years in your careers, tell us about the awards you’ve received.
SB:
Oh. [laughs] Well, I got awards for things like moving the AOA sensor from—because
the Army was so worried about it. I got a commendation and a big wooden plaque for it.
And I was AWACS Employee of the Year several of the years and things like that. Just
normal stuff. And I got—when I worked at the Museum, of course, I got just an award for
living long, I guess, the 10,000-hour award, for spending two—10,000 hours, which is
sort of a lifetime, on working on the airplanes and being a docent. That was some years
ago, so I’m way above 10,000 hours now. I’m more like 12,000 or 14,000 hours. But
it’s—every one has been fun, so I’ve enjoyed it.
JB:
What about special events or memories in all your travel? Been all over the world, seen a
lot of stuff. You must have some memories that really stand out.
SB:
Yes, I do. Very much so. It’s hard to know where to start. I think probably one of the
things that stood out was flying on demonstration flights with AWACS over Germany to
demonstrate the capability of AWACS—over Germany and France. Ironically, just
before we arrived in France, it was either Lockheed or North American, I can’t remember
which, had taken their Navy AWACS airplane over to France. And it also was a
shipborne AWACS with a rotating radome on top. And when they fired it out—up, it shut
down the entire French television system. So the French said, “Hey, no way. We don’t
want that thing here.”
So we followed them with our AWACS airplane, and the French provided fighters as
targets that came through the Alps at low level and then popped up. And we were—our
mission was to see how soon we could see these fighters coming through the Alps, which
was very exciting, both for them and for us. And we were able to see the fighters long
before they thought we could. With our filtering systems, we’d actually see them coming
through the Alps at low altitude. So that was one thing.
The other thing, though, that really sort of amused me and—our program manager
would—Mark [unintelligible] was on the airplane. He was a very good salesman and a
very nice guy, and I was his right-hand man. And I remember this Luftwaffe general
looking at this scope, and it showed the Autobahn, and it showed high-speed traffic going
down the Autobahn. And this German general said, “Well, is that a Porsche or a
Mercedes?” And Mark said, “Well, we haven’t got that far. We haven’t figured that out
yet.” So he said, “Well, how do you know the traffic?” And he said, “Well, we have a
filter on the airplane so that we don’t normally track anything that’s going below—I
mean, below 100 miles an hour. Only things that are going above 100 miles an hour do
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we track. Otherwise, we’d be completely caught up with all the cars going every which
way.” So he said, “We’ve done this so we can track helicopters at low altitude.”
So the Luftwaffe guy said, “Well, we’re just crossing over this intersection, so how do I
know that’s where we really are?” So Mark said, “Well, just look out of the window.” So
they looked out of the window, and sure enough, there were two Autobahns crossing. He
said, “Okay. I’m sold.” [laughs] That sort of thing, which is—I found very amusing. And
I’m sure I could think of some others, but…
01:26:38
[Advice for young people]
JB:
What advice would you give to a young person today?
SB:
Oh, that’s a good question. It’s very difficult because you can’t really advise old
people—young people with being an old 90-year-old. But I—and my wife, ever since we
were married, is—I’m very outspoken and say things I regret later. And my wife always
has to go around and sweep up after me. I remember going to a dinner where a very good
nurse friend of my wife’s was having a dinner party. And her daughter was there with her
boyfriend, and they were sitting at the table. And they sort of said the same thing, you
know, “What advice…?”
I asked them, “Well, what are you doing in college?” And this woman said, “I’m
studying software programming,” or something, and this guy said, “Well, I’m doing
something in the other…” Technologist like this. And I said, “For crying out loud,
doesn’t anybody get a real job anymore?” And they said, “What do you mean?” I said,
“You know, something that contributes to the national—gross national product. I mean,
how does shuffling paperwork between you two do anything for the economy?” I said,
“You ought to do something that’s—that contributes.” And they said, “Hell, you’re just
an old guy who just don’t understand.”
So sort of that stopped me from giving advice to young people. It’s very hard to
communicate to people who’ve got such a different base in what their world is like. But I
do enjoy—I did enjoy talking to people in—as a docent, young people and answering
questions that they had, because they had some very—so I guess my advice would be try
anything, just keep trying things. Don’t settle for one—don’t get into a rut. And be happy
with one thing you’re doing. When you get a career, make sure you know that’s really
what you want to do for the rest of your life. And I know that’s easy to say and not so
easy to do.
01:28:57
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[Car restoration and sports racing]
JB:
Any subjects we’ve missed? Any topics we should be talking about that—
SB:
Well, only sports cars, of course. [laughs]
JB:
Sports cars.
SB:
I have a whole different parallel life. [laughter] My first work with restoration, of course,
was with cars. And I started in—back in Australia when I first visited there with helping
my friend restore an old Riley, and that sort of got me the bug. But when I came back to
America, I finally got the chance of having a bit of money and buying cars that I thought
were worth restoring, only from a satisfactory point of view, not from a monetary point
of view.
So I became president of the Porsche Club and—[bumps microphone] Sorry about that. I
bought a sports rally car from Italy, which is a 1973 RS Carrera, and spent a lot of time
restoring it and a lot of fun restoring it. When it was finished, I entered into sports racing
down in California and bought a transporter for it and did sports racing all up and down
the coast. And I found out later that this became a sort of an icon car, became the 911 to
own. Out of all the Porches in all the surveys they’ve done, this is number two of any
Porsche that all the Porsche enthusiasts want to own. By sheer coincidence. I had no idea
this car was going to be worth quite a bit of money. I didn’t buy it for that reason. So I
eventually sold it for $500,000 and then decided I would buy some other car.
So I was pitting it with my friend who owned a 1926 Bugatti down in Laguna Seca. And
the radio said that he—they wanted to sell an engine from a car that he was driving
because he blew up his engine. So the guy went to see this man, and the guy said, “Well,
I’ve got this engine, but it’s in this car and I want to sell the whole thing.” So I said,
“Well, you buy the engine. I’ll buy the car.” Well, it turned out to be a very, very rare
Porsche 904 sports racing car. So I bought this sports racing car, and he bought the
engine. And I paid $13,000 for this car.
And as I said, when I worked for Boeing, I was constantly going back to Germany, so I
finally bought enough parts to rebuild the engine. And the engine itself now is worth
$50,000. So I got my friend to build this engine for me for nothing, just because he’d
never built one of those engines before and he wanted to put it in his résumé that he had
built one of these engines, which is very exotic, the twin overhead cam, two-liter, fourcylinder engine, if that means anything to anybody, which put out about 250 horsepower,
which is a lot of horsepower for a two-liter engine. And it was also a mid-engine, so I
also raced this car up and down the coast. And finally a buyer from Japan came and said
he wanted to buy it for a museum in Japan, so they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
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So it went to Japan and was in a museum there for quite some time, until I—and they
gave me all the BS about it was a national treasure, it would never leave Japan. I thought,
[makes sound effect]. So sure enough, four years ago, it was sold to Germany, went to
Germany. Then I found out a very rich couple in Connecticut went over to Germany and
bought this car for $1.6 million. So this is the car I sold for $100,000 to Japan, was sold
for $1.6 million, which made me feel fine.
So I then, as a retirement project, bought a Porsche, a 1957 Porsche Speedster, which was
a—sort of the ultimate cult car, which was because it was cute. I didn’t buy it because it
was cute. I bought it because I like them. And it was one of those ironies. It became a cult
car because it did look cute. It was—all the women liked it, so—it was made by Porsche
as the least expensive car to compete with the British cars. So it was sold in America for
$3,000. I bought this car for $3,000, which was a wreck. It was rusty and so on. So I
spent my first three years of my retirement building that car and competing with it and
winning awards for it with the Porsche Cup. So that was my sort of side career, which
was going on in parallel with my work career, to answer your question.
01:34:17
[Legacy of restoration work]
JB:
So in 50 years, if someone is researching, what would you like to leave them with?
They’re researching and they watch yours—your oral history.
SB:
I think I’d like to almost repeat what I’ve said before, that—as I said during the 10,000hour award ceremony, it’s—the Museum spent all this time thanking us volunteers for all
the work we do on the airplane, but we really should be thanking the Museum for
allowing us to work on these airplanes. Because, like I said, it—I personally feel like it’s
hopefully building something that’s going to last—forever’s a long time, but a long time.
Hopefully at least 50 years, and will be valued by people in 50 years’ time and
appreciated by them. And I hope that they will wonder who did this work and be able to
reflect on that I contributed in some way to that.
And just as a sort of side issue on that, one of my projects, when I was doing—working
on the landing gear doors, I ended up with a nice little box, which was a simulated
transducer that told the pilot whether the doors were open or closed or not. So in that box,
with permission from everybody, I made a time capsule. So I put some CD-ROMs in
there and some sticks and some paperwork—I didn’t know what technology would be
available when they finally open this thing up—on all the work that all the guys had done
on the airplane, who they were and what their backgrounds were. And so hopefully in 50
years, somebody stumbles across the thing and opens it up, and maybe they can decipher
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what these funny old memory sticks are. So that’s something I left for the future. So
that’s—I hope that answered your question.
JB:
Yeah. That’s very good. Any questions?
01:36:42
[Stories from Army service]
KELCI HOPP:
I have one question. My question jumps back a little bit. I just wanted to
follow up. When you were talking about working with the Americans dropping
parachutes on the Russian front, you said that there are a lot of stories that go along with
that. And I didn’t know if maybe you could tell us one.
SB:
Well, sure. These payloads were considered by the British Army as sort of classified.
They weren’t secret, but the technology in providing the shock-absorbing equipment and
so on was restricted. So we had to take these payloads to an American Army—Air Force
base and put them in these C-119 troop carriers. So we had to stay in the barracks where
the Americans were with them.
So one night we were in the barracks, and we were sleeping, and all of a sudden there
was a burst of machine-gun fire. We thought, what the hell is this? This is in England.
[laughs] This wasn’t in some foreign country. And so the next morning we went down to
breakfast, and there was a GI MP that people were standing around and giving him all
kinds of razz. And we said, “What’s going on?” So they said, well, this burst of machinegun fire, this guy, he was on—patrolling at midnight around the base and stuck his head
around the corner of the hangar and seen somebody around the other side, so he called
out, “Halt, who goes there?” And no response. And he said, “If you don’t come out, I’ll
fire.” And, of course, all the guards on the base had live ammunition because of the
payloads and stuff. So still no response. So he was like, “I jumped out around the corner
of the hangar and let fire into the side of the base commander’s car.” Because he had seen
his own reflection in the moonlight in this side of this guy’s car. So he riddled the
commander’s car from one end to the other. So we all thought that was pretty typically
American, pretty crazy. [laughter]
So that was the sort of thing I was talking about. But anyway, we got on famously with
the Americans. One of the things we did, being in the Parachute Regiment, when we were
stationed near the American base, we were told that we wanted—they wanted us to go
and attack the base, see if we could get onto the base. And we said, “Okay. We’ll give it a
try.” We used to go downtown and have fights with the Americans in the local bars, these
tough Welshmen I was telling you about. So we decided, now how are we doing to do
this? We never—we’ll never be able to do a frontal attack. So we went down to the local
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fire station, and we commandeered a local fire engine. So we drove through the gates
with the fire bell and the lights on the firetruck and the bell ringing, and they just opened
the gates and let us through. So we drove to the control tower and said, “Here we are. We
won.” And they said, “What—you can’t do that. That’s not fair.” So we had a good laugh
at their expense. And they said, “Ah, well, I guess you’re right. You can’t play fair
always.” So that sort of thing was what I was talking about. Does that answer your
question?
KH:
Yeah, absolutely. I only had the one.
01:40:12
[Side projects at Boeing]
PEDER NELSON: I guess I have just one question. As we’ve been doing the additions to the
Destination Moon exhibit, we’ve—and the additions to the Apollo exhibit coming up,
we’ve been learning a lot about the Lunar Orbiter program that was based out of the same
building that the Bomarc program was.
SB:
Right.
PN:
Did you have any experience in that building and did those who worked in that building,
did they understand the history of that building as well, as a part of Seattle history?
SB:
I can’t answer your question directly because, no, that was happening long after I was
working on other programs with Boeing. But while I was there, Boeing did operate and
develop the hydrofoil boat. They developed first with a little boat they called the Little
Squirt, and then they built a full-size boat for the Navy, which flew on hydrofoils and had
a rapid-firing gun on the front. And that’s another whole side story, but I was assigned
while I was on AWACS to go down to Litton in California to work with their Advanced
Marine Technology Division to get, quote, “close to the Navy.”
So my boss at that time was an ex-World War II submarine commander. He was a—had
a fleet of submarines he was responsible for that put coast watches on the islands in the
Pacific to watch for Japanese traffic. So he was a really experienced Navy guy who
worked for Boeing. So we went down to El Segundo and helped Litton design the basic
point defense system for their destroyer, this new DD-963 destroyer. So I got to work
with the Navy on installing an anti-missile system on a destroyer. And to do that, we
went down to Pascagoula, Mississippi and watched them building ships. So that was
another little side trip I took, which was interesting.
And, of course, I had lots of interesting experiences with the Navy guys. This old sea
captain was very smart because he realized that the way to get the Navy’s attention was
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to hire the most gorgeous secretary he could come up with. So our joint secretary we
shared used to wear yellow plastic miniskirts, and she was built like a brick outhouse. So
all the time the Navy guys were coming down to talk to my boss, theoretically, of course,
they were—to look at this young lady. So that’s the sort of characters I worked with.
And there’s another side issue. It was sort of a tragedy, was this guy had his—a wife in
Seattle who—they had collectively a daughter who was an award-winning journalist for
The Seattle Times. Bobbi McCallum, her name was. And she was a—won a Pulitzer
Prize. And for the awards ceremony, she went to a local dermatologist to have her skin
planed. And on the way to this procedure, she was involved in a very minor traffic
accident. And when they sat her on the chair to do this sanding of her face, they gave her
a local anesthetic. And the guy went out of the room to—while this anesthetic—and she
went into cardiac arrest in the chair and died.
And, of course, his wife, who was legally blind, was in Seattle, and he was an absolute
basket case. And I had to take him back to Seattle. It was a shocking experience. It was
so unexpected and shocking. So this poor guy, I had to take him back to Seattle. I
personally had to lead him by the hand through the airport. He was so distraught. That
was a very emotional experience. Nothing to do with airplanes, obviously. So those sort
of things happened. Anything else? That doesn’t answer your question at all.
But working at that place, incidentally, they also produced windmills there. And that was
the largest windmill the government experimented in, went down in Long Beach—no,
not Long Beach. Anyway, I can’t remember the name of the place. We also built the
unmanned trains for the University of—I can’t remember now. So we built unmanned
trains down there, too. So we built a lot of odd things in that building.
PN:
So that was all the Boeing—all those different side Boeing projects?
SB:
Yeah, right. So the oddball things were done there. Then we finally turned the Boeing
back—the building back to the government. It was never to belong to Boeing. It was
always on loan. So I wasn’t aware of anything that you were talking about. Afraid it
doesn’t answer your question.
PN:
Oh, no. [unintelligible] that’s even better. I was—[laughs].
SB:
Anything else?
01:45:45
[Final questions]
KP:
Do you recall the year you first came to the Seattle area?
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SB:
Well, certainly, yes. Like I said, most of the time I spent away from Seattle on bases on—
and again, my wife is an incredible person. Everywhere we went, she volunteered to be a
librarian or work at a kindergarten school or—we became part of the community. And it
was going to these holiday places like Massachusetts, which is a well-known holiday
resort, Cape Cod—and to be there in the winter is totally different because you were
thought of as part of the residents, not part of a visit—before, otherwise, you were just a
visitor. And they treated you completely differently. People from Massachusetts are
different, if you don’t know that. [laughs]
So I met the most extraordinary people there, including people who were terribly bigoted.
They were—I employed a black guy, and he could not believe that I was treating him just
like I treated anybody else. The locals just couldn’t really stand it very well. And he
wanted me to recommend him for a job back in Seattle. That was my first exposure to
this problem. So I learned that lesson there and really couldn’t believe it. And he couldn’t
believe that I was completely unbiased and would treat him just like anybody else and
wrote him a glowing recommendation for a job back at Seattle.
Those sort of experiences were very memorable. Nothing to do with what you asked me.
But when I came back to Seattle, of course, I—we rented all kinds of interesting houses
in low-district areas like Magnolia and places, and all kinds of interesting—we’d never
rented before and stayed in all kinds of weird places. So it was sort of interesting to
become acclimatized to the American way of doing things.
KP:
I’d be curious if you had any experience with the Museum when it was downtown or—
SB:
No. No, I know that—I remember when they moved the Red Barn over here and brought
it up by—on the barge and so on and bringing it across and placing it here and launching
it down to where it is now. And I wasn’t involved in any way with anything like that
then. I remember it going on, but I don’t remember being involved. Anything else?
KH:
Those are all my questions.
JB:
Well, I want to thank you for participating in the oral history and all your service. It’s
been good, very good.
SB:
Well, in case you couldn’t tell, it’s been fun from my end, too. [laughter] Thank you very
much, John.
JB:
Thank you.
01:48:58
[END OF INTERVIEW]
© 2019 The Museum of Flight
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
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2013-current
Creator
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Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
Source
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<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
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English
Rights Holder
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The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
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Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
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The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
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2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Baker, Sydney J.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Barth, John
Biographical Text
<p>Sydney J. Baker was an aviation engineer who worked for Vickers-Armstrongs, Canadair, and the Boeing Company.</p>
<p>Sydney James Baker was born in London, England on January 26, 1930 to Sydney Baker (a bunting factory owner) and Esme Perrett (a shopkeeper’s assistant). When he was young, his family moved to Surrey, England. Nearby was a Vickers-Armstrongs airdrome as well as a racetrack, which inspired an interest in aviation and cars. During World War II, his father volunteered for the Royal Observer Corps. Baker would help his father and the other men identify aircraft carrying out bombing missions against England. At about age seven, he left home to attend Sevenoaks grammar school, a boarding school in Kent, England. At the age of 12, he received his glider’s license. He became an instructor at age 14, helping to teach injured fighter pilots how to fly again.</p>
<p>After graduating from Sevenoaks, Baker returned to Surrey. Wanting a hands-on job, he joined Vickers-Armstrongs as an apprentice, where he specialized in making wind tunnel models. He attended the local college at the same time. Once he finished his college coursework, he was drafted into the British Army and served with the Parachute Regiment. Once he had completed his military service, he returned to Vickers-Armstrongs as a flight test engineer but now located in Adelaide, Australia. His projects included the Supermarine Scimitar and developing guided missiles for the Weapons Research Establishment in Australia.</p>
<p>When his projects in Australia had concluded, he returned to England, but did not want to stay there permanently. Wanting to relocate to Canada, Baker accepted a position with Canadair, where he worked on the Sparrow missile. When the program was canceled in 1959, he accepted a job offer with the Boeing Company and moved to Seattle, Washington. Among the projects he worked on during his career at Boeing were the CIM-10 Bomarc missile, the Minuteman missile, the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) program, and the AOA (Airborne Optical Adjunct) program.</p>
<p>Following his retirement from Boeing in 1996, Baker became a docent for The Museum of Flight. He later joined the Museum’s aircraft restoration team and was instrumental in helping to restore the tail section of T-Square 54, the Museum’s B-29 Superfortress. His love of cars also continued throughout his life; he was an amateur car racer and restored old Porsches.</p>
<p>Baker married his wife Janet Keast, a nurse, in 1953 and they had two children, Mary and John. Baker died in September 2022.</p>
<p>Biographical sketch derived from interview, information provided by interviewee, and obituary.</p>
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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OH_Baker_Sydney
OH_Baker_Sydney_transcription
Title
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Sydney Baker oral history interview
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Description
An account of the resource
Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Sydney Baker and interviewer John Barth, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, August 29, 2019.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>Engineer Sydney Baker is interviewed about his life and his decade-spanning career in the aviation industry. He discusses his work at Vickers-Armstrongs in the 1940s and 1950s and his subsequent engineering jobs with Canadair and the Boeing Company. Projects discussed include the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) program, the AOA (Airborne Optical Adjunct) program, and guided missile development. He also shares his experiences as a Museum of Flight docent and his restoration work on the Museum’s B-29 Superfortress. Other topics discussed include his school years in England during World War II, his service in the Parachute Regiment, and his restoration of vintage sports cars.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
<p>Introduction and personal background -- Adolescent years in England during World War II and early flight experiences -- Apprenticeship at Vickers-Armstrongs and service with the British Army -- Guided missile testing in Australia -- Career with Canadair -- Career with Boeing and work on AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) and AOA (Airborne Optical Adjunct) -- Involvement with The Museum of Flight and aircraft restoration work -- Achievements and notable moments from his career -- Advice for young people -- Car restoration and sports racing -- Legacy of restoration work -- Stories from Army service -- Side projects at Boeing -- Final questions</p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-08-29
Subject
The topic of the resource
Airborne optical adjunct
Airborne warning and control systems
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Baker, Sydney J.
Boeing B-29 Superfortress Family (Model 345)
Boeing Company
Boeing Company--Employees
Canadair Limited
Engineers
Great Britain. Army. Parachute Regiment
Guided missiles
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Test pilots
Weapons Research Establishment (Australia)
World War, 1939-1945
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Australia
Canada
England
Germany
Saudi Arabia
Washington (State)
Extent
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1 recording (1 hr., 48 min., 59 sec.) : digital
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
-
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/a6ca84c8c6423e66cc6a35c09ace9650.mp4
2238b0b31818d1b41c12501bb77d2553
https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/files/original/081f6a40e8941624e2d8b6c13ef78e4e.pdf
35f6b2dc68bea2614b37e0cd5f5bfdb7
PDF Text
Text
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
The Museum of Flight
Seattle, Washington
Jim Jackson
Interviewed by: Dan Hagedorn
Date: September 23, 2014
Location: Everett, Washington
This interview was made possible with generous support from
Mary Kay and Michael Hallman
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�2
Abstract:
Aviation mechanic James “Jim” Hawthorne Jackson is interviewed about his life and military
service. Particular focus is given to Jackson’s time with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World
War II, when he worked as a B-29 mechanic in the United States and Guam. Afterwards,
Jackson discusses his involvement with The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center and his
work restoring various aircraft, including the Museum’s B-29 Superfortress and Lockheed YO3A Quiet Star.
Biography:
James “Jim” Hawthorne Jackson was a B-29 mechanic during World War II. Later, he
volunteered at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center, assisting with the restoration of the
Museum’s B-29 and YO-3A.
Jackson was born in Seattle, Washington on May 31, 1915 to Herbert Robinson and Margaret
(Metzgar) Jackson. He grew up in the Kirkland and Bellevue, Washington area. His father was a
friend of Bill Boeing Sr. and worked as the first foreman for the Boeing Company’s woodshop in
the Red Barn. Jackson graduated from Bellevue High School in 1933, in the midst of the Great
Depression, and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) shortly thereafter. In this role, he
ran telephone lines across the Cascade Mountains. He worked for the CCC for a little over a year
and continued to work in residential construction before losing sight in one eye from an accident.
Afterwards, he worked as a security guard on docked ships in Lake Union.
At the beginning of World War II, Jackson was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Forces. He
attended Arrow Industries Technical Institute in Glendale, California for training as a sheet metal
worker. Following the completion of that training, he was sent to Oklahoma City Air Service
Command and then was transferred to Pratt Army Airfield in Kansas, where he encountered his
first B-29 Superfortress. Despite being blind in one eye, Jackson was sent on overseas duties to
help construct what would become Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. He also serviced B-29s
returning from missions over Japan, working with the 29th Bombardment Group of the 314th
Wing.
Jackson was discharged from military service in January 1946 and returned to Seattle. He
worked at Wilson Machine Works in West Seattle until his retirement in 1974. Following the
death of his wife, Cynthia, he joined the restoration team at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration
Center. He worked on the Museum’s B-29, YO-3A, and other aircraft.
Jackson died on July 13, 2016 and is buried in Anderson Cemetery in Snohomish County,
Washington, alongside his wife.
Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�3
interviewee.
Interviewer:
Dan Hagedorn served as Senior Curator and Director of Collections at The Museum of Flight
from 2008 until his retirement in 2016. Prior to his tenure at TMOF, he was Adjunct Curator and
Research Team Leader at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Hagedorn is
a graduate of Villa Maria College, the State University of New York, and the Command and
General Staff College, and served in the U.S. Armed Forces for almost three decades. He has
written numerous books and articles about aviation history in general and Latin American
aviation in particular. For his work in documenting Latin American aviation history, he received
the Orden Merito Santos-Dumont from the Brazilian Government in 2006. Since his retirement
in 2016, Hagedorn has served as a Curator Emeritus at the Museum.
Restrictions:
Permission to publish material from The Museum of Flight Oral History Program must be
obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Videography:
Videography by TMOF volunteers and staff.
Transcript:
Transcribed by Pioneer Transcription Services. Reviewed by TMOF volunteers and staff.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�4
Index:
Introduction and personal background............................................................................................ 5
Early aviation memories ................................................................................................................. 7
Civilian Conservation Corps and other employment ...................................................................... 8
Service during World War II and experience maintaining Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft ... 10
Overseas service in Guam ............................................................................................................. 14
Postwar life and involvement with The Museum of Flight Restoration Center ........................... 18
Concluding thoughts ..................................................................................................................... 21
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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Jim Jackson
[START OF INTERVIEW]
00:00:00
[Introduction and personal background]
DAN HAGEDORN: I’m Dan Hagedorn, the curator at The Museum of Flight. We’re here this
morning at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration and Reserve Collection with Mr. Jim
Jackson. It’s the 23rd of September, Tuesday, 2014, and we’re so glad that you could join
us here today, Jim. We’re just really looking forward to talking to you. Now, what I’d
like you to do for me is to say your full name, including your middle name, and then spell
it out for me, if you would. Go ahead.
JIM JACKSON: Okay. I am James Hawthorne Jackson. And James is the usual spelling.
Hawthorne, H-A-W-T-H-O-R-N-E. That’s an old family name on my mother’s side.
DH:
I’m glad to know that.
JJ:
And Jackson, of course, is on my dad’s side.
DH:
Now I’m going to ask you the magic question. What’s your birthday?
JJ:
May 31st, 1915.
DH:
And where were you born, Jim?
JJ:
I was born in Seattle at the Swedish Hospital.
DH:
Okay. Now, can you tell us your mother and your father’s names?
JJ:
My dad was Herbert Robinson Jackson. He was born in LaGrange, Michigan in 1879. He
was 21 at the turn of the century.
DH:
And your mother’s name?
JJ:
Margaret Metzgar. She was born 1880 in Fayette, Iowa.
DH:
Okay. Now, I gather that you must have grown up in the Seattle area. Where was your
home when you were young?
JJ:
The family was living in Ballard when I was born. My first recollection is Kirkland.
JJ:
About eight, nine blocks south of downtown.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Hm-hmm [affirmative]. What did your dad do?
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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JJ:
My dad was [unintelligible] and was in the lumber industry.
JJ:
I don’t know just what the deal was down in Hoquiam. My dad left Michigan when he
was 21. That’s kind of what his family [unintelligible]. The older brother takes over the
plant, and my dad didn’t like the idea of working for his older brother, so he came West.
DH:
Go West, young man, huh?
JJ:
And they roomed at a boardinghouse, [Waymire’s?] boardinghouse in Hoquiam,
Washington. And a group of them had a cabin at Pacific Beach.
JJ:
They would take the train out to—oh, across Copalis Crossing, then go by wagon out to
the cabin at Pacific Beach and come back. And of that group, one of the guys who came
in after two or three years was Bill Boeing. My dad got to know Boeing real well then.
DH:
So they were staying at the same boardinghouse?
JJ:
Yeah. And later on, about 1909—yeah, 1909, they—a bunch of them moved to Seattle.
And my mother was teaching school in Hoquiam, and she moved to Seattle. My mother
and dad got married in Seattle in 1910, and one of the guys in the wedding party was Bill
Boeing.
DH:
Did he stand up with him as his best man or—
JJ:
I don’t know. And they were—you know, kind of associated over the years. And when
my youngest brother was born a year ahead of me, Bill Boeing came to the hospital and
they handed him my brother, and my mother said, “Oh, he’s going to drop him! He’s
going to drop him!” [laughter]
DH:
So did you ever meet Mr. Boeing yourself?
JJ:
No. This is something maybe I shouldn’t say, but my mother and the lady that Bill
Boeing married were not compatible, didn’t get along. So that stopped the association.
DH:
[laughs] I see. Okay. Where did you go to school when you were young? What was the
school that you went to?
JJ:
My first six grades were in the Central School in Kirkland. My seventh grade was in the
Phantom Lake Elementary School. The Phantom Lake Elementary School covered six
and a half acres. That is basically Lake Hills at Eastgate now. And we had 19 student in
seven grades—eight grades.
DH:
You had a lot of room in that school then. [laughs]
JJ:
Yeah. I have a picture that I could—
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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DH:
Very good. We’ll look at that later on then. So—
JJ:
Then from there, I’d been the only guy in eighth grade, so we rode the high school bus
for eighth grade in Bellevue. And I graduated from Bellevue High School in 1933. There
were only 33 in our class.
DH:
So you went right through the Depression while you were in school.
JJ:
Just the start of it.
DH:
I see.
JJ:
And just really beginning to feel it, you know. We’d used up all our reserves and
everything else, you now.
00:06:28
[Early aviation memories]
DH:
Well, let’s back up just a minute now. I want to ask you about the very earliest memory
that you have of airplanes or aviation.
JJ:
Well, of course, I remember my dad talking about the plant and that. But the first time I
really remembered them, really interested, around-the-world flight—
DH:
1924.
JJ:
—back to Sand Point. We stood on the beach in Kirkland and watched them come over
the lake and land at the end of that. It was in the paper that they were going to come back.
So we—all of us kids were down there watching those planes come back.
DH:
That must have been thrilling. Very, very good. Did you get to meet any of the aroundthe-world flyers yourself, by any chance?
JJ:
Louis Marsh, Boeing. My dad put him to work in the woodshop after he graduated from
the University of Washington as an engineer, and he worked in the woodshop until there
was an opening in engineering. And at the end of the war, he retired as the longest
continuous employee there. Head of Material Testing and that. I have an article on that
here.
DH:
Very good. We’ll take a look at that.
JJ:
And I was visiting him at his house in Kirkland, and I think Erik Nelson—one of the
pilots—was visiting Boeing. He came and visited Louis Marsh. I met him. That’s the
only one I met.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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00:08:14
[Civilian Conservation Corps and other employment]
DH:
Very good, very good. So let’s see. You finished high school in 1933. I think I heard that
you went into the Civilian Conservation Corps at some point. Was that right after high
school?
JJ:
In November, I went into the Civilian Conservation Corps and went up to Camp Cherry
Valley, which is just south of the town of Carnation. And we were reworking the old
logging railroads for fire roads. We had to take the old ties out, and where the bridges
were over the deep gullies, we’d make a road up around the hillside to get it. And those
roads are still there as fire roads.
DH:
That must have been valuable training.
JJ:
And then in May, I moved over—we moved over to Camp Naches, and I was on the
telephone crew. And as luck would have it, I had got the Forest Service foreman
[unintelligible] telephone crew, and he kind of took me under his wing, and I got to
install the telephones and lightening protection.
DH:
So you learned how to skinny [shimmy] up and down the poles pretty good then.
JJ:
I did the pole work and that. And an interesting thing was, several years ago, we were on
Timberwolf Mountain, where the lookout was. This side is wilderness area. This is
National Forest. And I was telling the grandsons, we ran the telephone line up this ridge.
And supposedly they’d taken all the insulators out, all the wires out and that, so let’s walk
down the ridge. We walked down here, and up here in a tree, a very rugged tree hanging
over the edge, was an insulator. My oldest grandson says, “How in the world did you
ever get up to hang that up there?” [laughter]
DH:
When you’re young, you can do anything, right?
JJ:
Well, we weren’t scared.
DH:
So how long were you in the CCC?
JJ:
About 13 months. When I first went in, they only allowed two enlistments. Later, they
allowed people to stay for several years.
DH:
Do you look back on it as valuable experience?
JJ:
Two things: it was Army and Army routine. You know, for cooking and living and that.
Then I never got telephone work, but having had acreage [unintelligible] land and that,
having the ax and the saws, it was not too much.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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DH:
So what happened after the Civilian Conservation Corps? What did you do next?
JJ:
Anything I could find. There were truck farms in the area, but they—that was only
seasonal. They raised lettuce and cauliflower and peas and strawberries and stuff like
that.
DH:
Did you ever see yourself getting into a career in aviation in any way, shape, or form?
JJ:
There was no chance of it at that time. That was in the height of the Depression, ‘34, ‘35.
I worked any job I could find. And there were some people building lots on the lake and
building summer homes, and I got work helping building them. And then after they were
built, I built little docks for them and a little boathouse to keep people from stealing their
rowboats.
DH:
Yeah. Well, I’ve seen the pictures. You were a pretty handsome young fellow. Must have
been a girlfriend or something along the way through there, wasn’t there?
JJ:
I never got too involved with gals.
DH:
Okay.
JJ:
I had a lot of friends but never got real serious.
DH:
Okay, good. So what was the big—the next big event in your life after that?
JJ:
Well, in ’38, the family had moved in from Chicago, and the guy had built a log house
for them. And us being neighbors, I stopped by and I made some comment that the guy
did a lousy job. Well, a couple years later, they decided to put an addition on. So I spent
the whole summer of ‘38 with the owner’s son, and we put an addition on that log house.
DH:
How many rooms was it?
JJ:
What?
DH:
How many rooms was the addition?
JJ:
Well, two bedrooms and a big room and a loft.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. So you put to use a lot of the skills that you learned in the CCC
and working with your dad?
JJ:
Yeah.
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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DH:
Very good.
JJ:
And that winter I stopped by to see a friend, and he was working on rocks for his wife’s
rock garden. And he used a sledgehammer on a rock, and a rock chip hit my eye. I was
blinded in one eye.
DH:
Oh, I didn’t know that.
JJ:
So that was in ‘39. Well, when you’re blind in one eye, you start missing things. You
can’t adjust to where things are. So I took a job for Alaska Steamship Company. They
had six ships moored in the middle of Lake Washington. And two of us split the time on
that. The insurance and Coast Guard required that somebody be on board at all times. So
two of us could split that. So I’d spent most of the time in the middle of the week there,
and then the other guy would spend Saturday and Sundays.
DH:
Did you ever actually go to sea with the ships?
JJ:
No, I never went to sea with Alaska Steam.
00:15:08
[Service during World War II and experience maintaining Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft]
DH:
Okay. So then World War II came along.
JJ:
I was working on the ships that had moved out. The [Victoria?] was converted into a
freighter and the Northwestern went—a floating hotel in Dutch Harbor. And they still had
two ships. They were moored just inside the locks.
DH:
I see.
JJ:
And one morning, all heck broke loose across the deal, the Coast Guard’s deal. And the
Coast Guard came out and swarmed the locks and that. And what’s going—I went in and
turned the radio on, and the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor.
DH:
That’s when you heard it the first time?
JJ:
That’s the first time.
DH:
What did—what was your first reaction?
JJ:
Well, I’d known a lot of Japanese going to high school and that, and I didn’t know how
that relationship would be. But it turned out that we got along fine. And I think the people
were very, very cruel in the way they treated them. And I remember one of the buddies
coming in to the Civilian Defense office. I volunteered there. And they were required to
turn in all cameras and all guns. And [George Namura?] came in, and they challenged
2014 © The Museum of Flight
�11
him. He was quite a photo nut. “Where are your cameras?” He pulled out a bill of sale for
them. He had sold them all.
But they were just going to—then another one of the fellows came in the very early part
of the deal. It was a family. I knew several of them. [Joe Matsuzawa?]. He was a couple
years older. He came in, and he just came from the draft board. And they were very cruel
to him about being a Jap and this and that, and he didn’t have no [unintelligible]. And we
talked. I said, “Well, Joe, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’ll all come out okay
in the long run.”
Well, that’s the last I saw him for several years. Several years later, I was bowling. I had
two [unintelligible] in high school with me on the bowling team. And all of a sudden, I
heard this familiar voice. Joe had a very peculiar voice. I looked around. Well, there’s
Joe. And here he’s in a staff sergeant Army uniform, just back from Japan with a
Japanese wife. And he went over and spent years as an interpreter for the military.
DH:
I see.
JJ:
I said, “Joe, everything worked out alright.” He said, “Yes, it did.”
DH:
So you must have been thinking about joining the service after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor yourself.
JJ:
Well, when the war started, I figured sooner or later they’d get me. And I had no wife, no
kids, and Dad was working and that, so I tried to join. And every service turned me down
cold on account of my blind eye. Called up the draft board, got turned down. Then
several months later, I called up and they said, “We’ll send you down to Fort Lewis. We
don’t think they’ll keep you.” But they did. [laughter] I went in [unintelligible] the
service.
DH:
Did you do your basic training at Fort Lewis?
JJ:
I went into Fort Lewis, and we got on a train, rode over the Cascades. We had a horrible
train wreck, ended up in Shepherd’s View, Texas, took my basic. From my basic, I went
out to Arrow Industries Technical Institute in Glendale, California for training as a sheet
metal worker. And from there, went back to Oklahoma City to the replacement pool.
Oklahoma City Air Service Command.
DH:
So you knew you were going into the Air Corps after you finished basic training at
Shepherd?
JJ:
Yeah. The basic training in Shepherd’s View was Air Force. Well, there, they decided
that they had to reclassify. So everybody with limited service reclassified. They kept you
as limited service or they upgraded you to regular duty or they kicked you out. Well, they
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kept me. And I kind of killed time in the replacement pool there. And I was working in
the kitchen, so I didn’t have to go out and rake rocks in the hot summer. And I made a
couple complaints to a new officer that came in in charge. He checked all the guys in the
mess hall, the crew, and here I was in whites. And he said, “How come?” I said, “I’m just
here filling in.” And I made some comment.
And I got a call to come over to see the commanding officer. What am I bitching about? I
said, “Well, I’m a mechanic. I don’t belong in the kitchen.” And he said, “Well.” He
called for my service record, and the guy opened it up. Inducted in Kirkland, Washington.
“Did you know Jim Reese?” I said, “Jim Reese was a veteran of the First World War, and
he had an insurance office half a block north of [Ferry Dock?]. He said, “Well, I was the
district supervisor for an insurance company, and he was one of our top men.” So that
broke the ice and that. So he told me that the reason I wasn’t moving was all of these
outfits were being organized. They were being organized to be trained to go overseas.
And he said, “We’ll have to wait until we find a place where there will be a permanent
base. You know, where there’ll be a permanent training base.”
So about a month later, I found out I was shipping out with about 18 guys. Got on a train
and went up to Wichita, then out to Pratt, Kansas. Who in the heck ever heard of Pratt,
Kansas? Well, it was a new base. We got off the train, and the trucks picked us up. We
went up to the barracks and looked in between the barracks, and what in the hell is that?
Here was a tail of something we never saw. That was my first experience with B-29s. I
got to Pratt, Kansas a week after the first planes got to Pratt.
DH:
So this must have been 19—
JJ:
In the first week of October of 1942, there were four bases in Kansas: Pratt, Salina,
Walker, and Great Bend. Each got two YB-29s and three B-29s. That was the Corps.
DH:
So you were there at the very beginning of the B-29 [unintelligible].
JJ:
So I got there a week after the first ones were there.
DH:
Those must have been camouflaged airplanes.
JJ:
Yes, they were camouflage.
DH:
Yeah, those were the few B-29s that were actually camouflaged.
JJ:
Yeah.
DH:
Yeah. So what did you think when you saw that airplane?
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JJ:
I didn’t know what to think. We had been trained to repair airplanes, but who in the heck
had ever heard of a pressurized cabin? [laughter] You know, it was just altogether
different.
DH:
So you were at the Pratt Army Airfield and did you go to work on the airplanes right
away?
JJ:
We started in the shop, and first I was going out on the line with the other guys. Pretty
soon they found out I was handy with machinery, so I was held in the shops doing the
shop work and doing [unintelligible]. Some of the guys hadn’t worked with metal, you
know, and they were very green at it. And for example, aluminum tubing for gas lines.
They were starting to put in—figure out bomb bay tanks. Well, they had to put a little
bead at the end of the deal there. Well, the guys go in there and they’d try to run it out in
a hurry and then they’d break it out. So I got to the point, you know, where I was doing
that. And I was doing that stuff because I had the feel to the—work on it.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. So you had a natural-born talent for that from the very
beginning?
JJ:
Yeah. And they had—one of the craziest things, we had the upper dome over the turrets.
They would set them on there, and then the wind would come and [unintelligible], and
they could not hit and they’d come back. And they had eight holes in it to go over pins,
and it would be on a round. They’d come in, and, oh, they can’t fix them. [unintelligible]
tried to. So I came up with the idea, if they came down and had this side bent this way, so
that if I could make them bounce this way, so I picked them up and bounced them off a
rubber mat, and they came back to where they would fit.
DH:
Those early B-29s had a lot of technical problems, didn’t they?
JJ:
And they had an awful lot of trouble. The heat shield over the supercharger cracked out.
Early blisters cracked out, and it was just that.
Then in the spring of ‘43, they started what they called the Battle of Kansas. All the
planes that were going overseas weren’t ready, and they brought in guys from plants all
over the country. We went on a 12-hour shift, seven days a week, getting those planes
ready to go to the first trip over into China-Burma-India. It turned out that they didn’t
have any planes in the bases in Africa and India on the way to China-Burma-India. No
spare engines. Well, if an airplane gets over there and loses an engine, they’re grounded.
So we modified the cargo platform, and they made a rig, and we hung an engine in the
front bomb rack of the bomb—put four lines out from the propeller. Two to the back, the
bomb rack, and two up to the front bulkhead to keep that thing from rocking on the—
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative].
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00:28:26
[Overseas service in Guam]
DH:
So how long were you at Pratt Army Airfield?
JJ:
Well, I was stuck there, supposedly. And after about a year, one night we come in and the
day shift is there, the night shift’s there, and the day shift foreman and the night shift’s
foreman, both civilians, were there. And here is this full colonel there. Full colonel, full
uniform. Get as far away as you can. Any time the colonel comes into the shop, that
means trouble. [laughter] All of a sudden, I hear my name called. I come over. The
colonel was the head of the hospital. They’d damaged an autoclave. They had surgery
scheduled in the morning. Could I fix that? Yeah, it’d probably be ready, oh, about 10:30,
11:00.
So about a little after 10:00, this colonel comes in. He’s standing opposite me on the
bench, watching me work. “What happened to your eye?” “Oh, I got a rock chip in it.”
“How in the hell did you get in the Army?” I said, “Well, I don’t know. I’m here.”
[laughter]
Well, as the routine, every few months you have to take a physical. So I go up to the
hospital and take a physical and take an eye examination. And the guy says, “Well, you
have to go talk to the colonel. He’ll sign you off.” Well, here is this colonel. He says,
“Well, hi.” He says, “That thing worked out fine.” And he said, “We’re down to that last
question. Qualified for overseas duty or not qualified for overseas duty.” I said, “Well, I
can fix an airplane anyplace in the world. They’re all the same work. Climate’s a little
different.” He said, “Well, I know you can do the work. I am going to put you down
qualified for overseas duty. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t work out.”
A month later, I get a transfer to the bomb squadron. Well, I go up to the hospital to
check out the—sergeant [unintelligible], hell, you’re not going anywhere.” Here’s this
colonel again. I thought he—“I’m willing to try it.” He says, “Okay.” He says, “I can put
you down qualified.” So I take my papers and go over to check into the bomb squadron.
Well, I catch the bomb—the squadron medics just leaving for dinner in the late afternoon.
“Oh, you took a physical today at the hospital? No use taking another one. Can we
[unintelligible] transcript of records?” They took a transcript of records, and apparently
all they read was the last line.
So a year later, this outfit was ready to go, and the guys that were in the sheet metal shop
had all been training in the base. Less than a month later, I’m going overseas with them.
The guys were feeling sorry for me. I got in there after they were through with all their
training. Well, they didn’t tell me how to pack my gear in that. But the guys were feeling
sorry for me because I had no training. But I kind of laughed it off, and we got on the
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train, came up to Seattle POE, and I got a couple passes home before we went overseas.
A month later on Guam, we follow—we landed on the—what was the taxiway, just
bulldozed out of the jungle. We followed the bulldozers into the jungle. They rigged up
the debris [unintelligible] and set up tents.
DH:
So you were a private first class or a corporal by this time?
JJ:
I was a corporal.
DH:
Okay.
JJ:
So we were cleaning up stuff, and the engineers came in with a great big pile of lumber.
And the supervisor then is—the guy comes over from the engineers and talks to the guys
before we have our morning roll call assignments of jobs. “Any of you guys know
anything about carpenter work?” “Oh, a little.” “Okay, get over and help the engineers.”
Next morning, the guy comes over to get some more guys. He says, “I want that guy.” I
was told to get about a dozen men, and I’d be lead. I was building a mess hall. Well, I
took the sheet metal men—crew and one welder, made our group of twelve, and I was
lead man building the mess hall.
DH:
You want to stop and get a drink of water, Jim?
[production talk]
DH:
So the mess hall was one of the most important facilities on any base, that’s for sure. So
you built one of the first mess halls on Guam then?
JJ:
Yeah, I got a picture of it here.
DH:
Okay.
JJ:
Well, anyway, I had the mess hall built, and one afternoon [unintelligible] call for KP. I
was on it. Ten minutes later, “Corporal Jackson removed from KP. So-and-so added.”
The guy said, “What the hell’s going on?” One of my buddies’ taking my place. So I
walk over to the—call the first sergeant. “What’s going on?” He said, “Well, we have
four units of prefab barracks coming in, and we want you to be a lead man on that.”
Okay. He said, “By the way, sergeants don’t pull KP.”
Well, two or three days later, it was posted. Well, as I said, I joined the outfit late and
that, and they had a staff sergeant in charge of the unit. And he stayed and flew over with
the group. And he came in [unintelligible], and he looked up at the—there, and he said—
that, and he looked over at that the first sergeant, and he says, “That’s not the man I had
picked for being sergeant.” And the first sergeant said, “You didn’t have a goddamn thing
to say about that.”
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DH:
[laughs] Now, what squadron were you assigned to at that time?
JJ:
I was the 6th Bomb Squadron, 29th Bomb Group, 314th Wing on North Field, Guam.
DH:
Very good. Okay. Okay.
JJ:
There were four groups eventually, two originally and two came in later there, which
would make a total of—a squadron had 16 planes, and there are three squadrons to a
plane. So that’s 48. So that’s around about 190 planes for the field.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, after you got those prefabricated barracks built, what
happened next?
JJ:
Well, they started flying. They hadn’t flown a mission at that time. And as soon as they
started flying, I went down on the line. And we had a tent between the two hardstands,
and we took a cargo rack out of a B-29, set it on bomb crates. That was our workbench.
And we had a little power plant to run the drills. We could run two drills at a time off of
that.
DH:
So how did they handle the maintenance in the squadron then, Jim? Were you assigned
an individual aircraft or did you just service what aircraft needed to be serviced?
JJ:
Each aircraft had a crew chief and a crew, and each department had a crew. Now, there
were 11 of us on the sheet metal, and we worked all the planes. The guy that took care of
the machine guns, the same way. The guy that loaded the bombs, the same way. The
propeller man worked the whole thing. But as I say, each plane had enough crew to be
able to do the maintenance and change engines and that. They had a propeller man that
came in, pulled the propellers. It took a special hoist and that.
DH:
So when did you—I’m sure you must have gotten to fly on a B-29 at some point, didn’t
you?
JJ:
During the war, I got one short flight. We were there and I had to finish up something
while they were getting ready for a test hop for a new engine. And I was in the cockpit
and the pilot was coming in and I said, “Hey, can I go along?” He said, “Why, sure.” So
we went up for a four-hour test flight. Well, they’d put in a repaired bomb rack, so they
had bombs in that bomb rack. We went up, and halfway between Guam and Saipan was
the island of Rota. Well, this was a new crew and that, so they got their experience
coming up and making a bomb run over water to this island and dropped that one island.
So I had about a four-and-a-half-hour flight.
DH:
Very good. Very good.
JJ:
Then came up VJ Day, and they said that all you guys that worked on the plane get
priority for riding passengers for the Surrender Day. Well, as luck would have it, all the
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brass down in the island and the Navy brass all pulled strings, and only one of my
buddies made it on that flight on VJ Day. And he was there [unintelligible], and one of
the guys that was assigned didn’t show up, so he got to go.
DH:
So you were on Guam from sometime in 1944 clear through VJ Day?
JJ:
Yeah. And after VJ Day—well, let’s back up a minute. On the 9th of August, I was
working up at the building [unintelligible] bomb squadron service squadron. And a guy
came out and said, “Come in, listen to this.” And we went in, and the word was the
Japanese have offered to keep their emperor—surrender if they could keep their emperor.
Well, everybody stopped work. The island lit up like a Christmas tree. The guys went out
to the plane and got the flares and shot them off. Mess hall opened and stayed open all
night.
Well, that was the 9th. And we waited and waited. On the 15th, they sent out another
mission, last mission [unintelligible], and about half those planes were back when it came
in that Japanese had accepted the surrender. Well, the next thing was, they marked all the
prisoner-of-war camps, and we figured everything we could to load that could drop on
the prisoner-of-war camps. And it was drums with boards nailed over the ends and this,
that, and the other thing. And they went in and bombed the prisoner-of-war camps
because of all this food. The guys came back—this bothers me. [tearing up] It’s sad.
DH:
I see. Take it easy. You’re okay.
JJ:
Those guys were crawling—
DH:
I know.
JJ:
—on their hands and knees to get that.
DH:
Yeah, yeah. I know. Well, the war was finally over. When did you come home?
JJ:
The war was over. After the war, they had show-of-force missions. They were afraid
there were going to be resistant groups here or there [unintelligible]. So I joined a flight
of 12. I was riding bombardier on one of the planes. And we came in, made formation off
the coast of Japan, came in hot, low, and sweet right up over Tokyo Bay, so close we
could look down and see the American flags on the ship guards down there and see the
guards there. And there were ships in the harbor.
Then we came over, burned out Tokyo, and you wouldn’t believe the desolation. I just—
absolutely terrible. Well, then we broke up, and we had instructions to circle around and
see what we could see, but do not fly over the Emperor’s palace. So we came in and the
guy put that B-29 at a 45-degree bank and circled the Emperor’s palace. We looked down
there and there was the moat and there was the palace. Burned out right up to the moat
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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here, right up to the moat over here, and we couldn’t see a scar on the Emperor’s palace.
That is a little bit surprising, you know, with that heavy bombing at night that they didn’t
do any damage.
DH:
That’s right. That’s right.
JJ:
Then we zigzagged down the coast to Nagoya, and we spent about an hour and a half,
maybe two hours, flying back and forth over. Then we took off for home, started
transferring fuel from the center section, the outboard section. The outboard tanks took
quite a bit less gas than the inboard tanks. So they had to take about 350 gallons from the
center section and put it in each outboard to get back to Guam.
Well, I smelled gasoline. We opened the bomb bay, and boy, the guys back there smelled
gasoline. You could see gasoline running off the panel, just from the bomb bay—the rear
bomb bay doors. The fuel transfer pump had failed. So as we approached Iwo, the
navigator, the engineer, the pilot, and the copilot all compared notes. I was sitting there in
the bombardier seat listening to them. They came up we would run out of gas either five
minutes before or five minutes after we got to Guam. So Iwo, here we come. So I got to
land at Iwo.
DH:
Iwo Jima?
JJ:
That, as I say, Iwo was a dirty, stinking hole. But to the B-29 crews, it was beautiful.
DH:
I’ll bet. Yeah. I’ll bet. So was that your last flight in a B-29?
JJ:
That was my last flight in a B-29.
DH:
So when did you come home?
JJ:
In December. We got points. One point for every month stateside, two points for every
overseas, five points for every battle star, and points for if you got a medal or anything
like that, any special award. So as on points, I got to come home in December. When
points were awarded, one of the planes came in and one of the tail gunners had served
duty in 17th in Europe. And one of the guys says, “Hey, [unintelligible] points if you had
so many points.” He said, “I’ve got 20 more than that. Good-bye.” [laughter]
00:49:13
[Postwar life and involvement with The Museum of Flight Restoration Center]
DH:
Well, after the war you came back to Seattle, I assume.
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JJ:
We came back to San Pedro, went to a separation center in Camp Anza out at Riverside.
There, they broke us up into groups to come home. Then we came in a group up to Fort
Lewis, and I discharged out of Fort Lewis.
DH:
And you were a sergeant or a staff sergeant then?
JJ:
I was a sergeant.
DH:
Okay. So you did your part for the war effort, that’s for sure.
JJ:
Yeah.
DH:
So what did you do after the war?
JJ:
Well, we had a family that had a summer home next to us, and the owner had had a
machine shop. And he had a son a year or two older than I was and a daughter a year
younger. And I had worked for the owner for a few weeks before the war, and they
owned the [unintelligible] foundry, and I worked there for several months.
So I came home, I walked into Wilson Machine Works, and said, “Hi in there.” And all
of a sudden, “Hey, how about helping us out for a few days? We’ve got behind the time.”
I’ve got a picture of the—they were making [unintelligible] at that time. Several shops
were working on that, and Wilson Machine was making the final assembly. I started
[unintelligible] assembled that.
DH:
So how long did that few days last?
JJ:
Twenty-eight years.
DH:
I think that’s a pretty good career. Now, I need to ask you this, and this is an important
question. You’ve been working here at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center for a
long time. When did you first start?
JJ:
Here?
DH:
Yes.
JJ:
When I was 91, about eight years ago.
DH:
Oh my gosh. And what brought you to the Museum’s Restoration Center?
JJ:
Well, my wife died, and I had a lot of time on my hands. And I was driving by and I
heard about the Restoration Center, so I parked at the outside door there and walked in.
Lo and behold, four B-29 cowlings. And I said, “Oh, B-29s.” He goes, “What do you
know about them?” I said, “They were one of our biggest headaches during the war.” He
says, “Well, we’ve never seen one. We’ve never worked on a B-29. Can you come in and
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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give us a few pointers on what you have to do?” So there I was, telling him what we did
to repair them and that.
DH:
Now you mentioned your wife a minute ago. We haven’t talked about that. What was her
name, and when did you get married?
JJ:
Well, Cynthia was living on Main Street in Bellevue. She and her husband who broke up
[unintelligible], and she was living in a little house by herself. Well, one of my wartime
buddy’s younger brothers was dating her daughter, and I got to know her daughter, and
then I got to know her and—casually. She worked for a friend of mine for a while, and
she had the little lunch stand in the bowling alley for a while. And I saw her around,
didn’t think too much about it.
Then come up time for the Gold Cup. And the boss invited me [unintelligible], and I was
looking for a friend to go. I came into this restaurant and sat at the counter, and over
here—so I walked over and spoke to her. I said, “Hey, how about that?” So my first date,
we took her out on the boss’s yacht to watch the Gold Cup race.
DH:
That’s not a bad first date. [laughs]
JJ:
And we didn’t think much about it. But I’d see her there, and then [unintelligible] she
was working at the hospital in Renton. And I was working late, and I would come into
Bellevue and get a snack. And I’d call the hospital, and we’d go up and have a late cup of
coffee when she’d get home. And it just snowballed.
DH:
That’s the way they do, isn’t it?
JJ:
So when I got married, I got a readymade family. Three married daughters and five
grandchildren.
DH:
That’s the easy way to do it. [laughs] Okay, well, back to the Restoration Center now.
You walked in and you saw those B-29 cowlings. You’ve worked on a lot of airplanes
during the time that you’ve been at the Restoration Center. What airplanes have you been
involved with?
JJ:
Well, I did the YO-3A and—I’m trying to think what other planes that—
DH:
I know you’ve worked on the Comet.
JJ:
Well, I started the Comet. Bob Hall had something. He came in and he said, “Hey, can
you make this part?” Yeah. And It turned out that every time they need something on the
milling machine or the lathe, they’d call me and I make up the various parts.
DH:
I think you also—you’re working now on the Antonov An-2, aren’t you?
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JJ:
Yeah. I’m assigned the An-2 now.
DH:
Hm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, of all the airplanes you’ve worked on here, what’s your
favorite one?
JJ:
Well, I think the most interesting was the YO-3A because it was one of 11 built and it
had such a very different mission than any other plane and that, having to be silent, had
specifications that you don’t see on any other airplane. You don’t see a muffler on any of
these other planes. You don’t see belt drive instead of a reduction gear in the engines.
Belt drives are quiet. Gears make noise.
00:57:10
[Concluding thoughts]
DH:
That’s right. I’m going to ask you a question I ask everybody that we interview. What’s
your favorite aviation memory? What’s the thing that is the most memorable to you
involving aviation?
JJ:
Well, I think what I remember most is that show-of-force mission over Japan. It was on
planes I had worked on, and it was—showed the result. Tokyo and Nagoya burned out. It
showed what we’d done. It showed that all that work wasn’t in vain, that we’d
accomplished something.
DH:
That’s right. And the last question. I also always ask this of all of our narrators: if you
have to leave a message for future generations that are going to be watching this down
the road, what would you tell them about a life well lived?
JJ:
Just a lifelong…?
DH:
A life long—well lived.
JJ:
Well, two things. You grow up with the family you have. [unintelligible] You do what is
required. We had a war, we went to war, finished the war, we came home.
And the thing is, as you grow up, you have to build roads, you’ve got to build airplanes,
get into something where you’re building something that is permanent, something out
there. There’s no fun writing things. Make something. That makes it interesting. You
have to stop and think. If you don’t have something to stop and think about, you go stale.
I have, at home, a woodshop and a metal shop. I have basically a complete sheet metal
shop at home. And I have a joiner, a saw, band saw, sander, jigsaw, plus all the hand
tools. I have an eight-foot brake, four-foot shearer, and I bought an antique lathe. When
the weather’s good, I’m out and have a garden. That’s part of why I live so well. If you
have the garden, it keeps you busy and you eat a heck of a lot better.
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DH:
[laughs] That’s great. Okay. Jim, that’s it. We got what we need.
01:00:30
[END OF INTERVIEW]
2014 © The Museum of Flight
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Museum of Flight Oral History Collection
Description
An account of the resource
<p>The <strong>Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</strong> chronicles the personal stories of individuals in the fields of aviation and aerospace, from pilots and engineers to executives. This collection, which dates from 2013 to present, consists of digital video recordings and transcripts, which illustrate these individuals’ experiences, relationship with aviation, and advice for those interested in the field. By the end of 2019, approximately 76 interviews will have had been conducted. The interviews range in length from approximately 20 minutes to 4 hours and 45 minutes. Most interviews are completed in one session, but some participants were interviewed over multiple occasions.</p>
<p>The personal stories in this collection span much of the modern history of flight, from the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1930s, to the evolution of jet aircraft in the mid-twentieth century, to the ongoing developments of the Space Age. The selected interviewees represent a wide range of career paths and a diverse cross-section of professionals, each of whom made significant contributions to their field. Among the many interviewees are Calvin Kam, a United States Army veteran who served as a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War; Robert “Bob” Alexander, a mechanical engineer who helped design the Hubble Telescope; and Betty Riley Stockard, a flight attendant during the 1940s who once acted as a secret parcel carrier during World War II.</p>
<p>The production of the videos was funded by Mary Kay and Michael Hallman. Processing and cataloging of the videos was made possible by a 4Culture "Heritage Projects" grant.</p>
<p>Please note that materials on TMOF: Digital Collections are presented as historical objects and are unaltered and uncensored. See our <a href="https://digitalcollections.museumofflight.org/disclaimers-policies">Disclaimers and Policies</a> page for more information.</p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-current
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
oral histories (literary works)
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://archives.museumofflight.org/repositories/2/resources/6">Guide to the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
The Museum of Flight Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Permission to publish material from the Museum of Flight Oral History Collection must be obtained from The Museum of Flight Archives.
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2019-00-00.100
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Jackson, Jim, 1915-2016
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Hagedorn, Dan
Biographical Text
<p>James “Jim” Hawthorne Jackson was a B-29 mechanic during World War II. Later, he volunteered at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center, assisting with the restoration of the Museum’s B-29 and YO-3A.</p>
<p>Jackson was born in Seattle, Washington on May 31, 1915 to Herbert Robinson and Margaret (Metzgar) Jackson. He grew up in the Kirkland and Bellevue, Washington area. His father was a friend of Bill Boeing Sr. and worked as the first foreman for the Boeing Company’s woodshop in the Red Barn. Jackson graduated from Bellevue High School in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) shortly thereafter. In this role, he ran telephone lines across the Cascade Mountains. He worked for the CCC for a little over a year and continued to work in residential construction before losing sight in one eye from an accident. Afterwards, he worked as a security guard on docked ships in Lake Union.</p>
<p>At the beginning of World War II, Jackson was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Forces. He attended Arrow Industries Technical Institute in Glendale, California for training as a sheet metal worker. Following the completion of that training, he was sent to Oklahoma City Air Service Command and then was transferred to Pratt Army Airfield in Kansas, where he encountered his first B-29 Superfortress. Despite being blind in one eye, Jackson was sent on overseas duties to help construct what would become Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. He also serviced B-29s returning from missions over Japan, working with the 29th Bombardment Group of the 314th Wing.</p>
<p>Jackson was discharged from military service in January 1946 and returned to Seattle. He worked at Wilson Machine Works in West Seattle until his retirement in 1974. Following the death of his wife, Cynthia, he joined the restoration team at The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center. He worked on the Museum’s B-29, YO-3A, and other aircraft.</p>
<p>Jackson died on July 13, 2016 and is buried in Anderson Cemetery in Snohomish County, Washington, alongside his wife.</p>
<p>Biographical information derived from interview and additional information provided by interviewee.</p>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jim Jackson oral history interview
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Born-digital video recording of an oral history with Jim Jackson and interviewer Dan Hagedorn, recorded as part of The Museum of Flight Oral History Program, September 23, 2014</p>
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
<p>Aviation mechanic James “Jim” Hawthorne Jackson is interviewed about his life and military service. Particular focus is given to Jackson’s time with the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, when he worked as a B-29 mechanic in the United States and Guam. Afterwards, Jackson discusses his involvement with The Museum of Flight’s Restoration Center and his work restoring various aircraft, including the Museum’s B-29 Superfortress and Lockheed YO-3A Quiet Star.</p>
Table Of Contents
A list of subunits of the resource.
Introduction and personal background -- Early aviation memories -- Civilian Conservation Corps and other employment -- Service during World War II and experience maintaining Boeing B-29 Superfortress aircraft -- Overseas service in Guam -- Postwar life and involvement with The Museum of Flight Restoration Center -- Concluding thoughts
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2014-09-23
Subject
The topic of the resource
Airplanes--Conservation and restoration
Aviation mechanics (Persons)
Boeing B-29 Superfortress Family (Model 345)
Boeing, William Edward, 1881-1956
Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.)
Jackson, Jim, 1915-2016
Lockheed YO-3A
Museum of Flight Restoration Center
United States. Army Air Forces
United States. Army Air Forces. Bombardment Group, 29th
World War, 1939-1945
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Guam
Japan
Kansas
Pratt (Kan.)
Seattle (Wash.)
United States
Washington (State)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Museum of Flight (Seattle, Wash.)
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
1 recording (1 hr., 30 sec.) : digital
Format
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oral histories (literary works)
born digital
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection (2019-00-00-100), Digital Recordings
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Bibliographic Citation
A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible.
The Museum of Flight Oral History Collection/The Museum of Flight
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OH_Jackson_Jim
OH_Jackson_Jim_transcription