Word: pilot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...months, urged on by his personal pilot and Air Force aide, Lieut. Colonel Bill Draper, but at first actively opposed by the Secret Service (which had similar objections before Ike began to use two-engined instead of four-engined planes for short hauls), the President has wanted to beat his traffic problem by using a helicopter to take him directly from the White House to the airport-and even as far as his Gettysburg farm. The White House last week announced that Ike had given the green light for helicopter test flights to and from the White House...
Neither the machine nor the President's 'copter pilot has yet been selected; the Air Force is now testing various 'copters for suitability, and Draper, who has flown 'copters himself, is checking out Army and some civilian pilots for possible employment. Hottest Washington bet on the machine that will win out: Bell's plush, 2,350-lb. 47-J, which normally carries four, including pilot and copilot, has a range of 194 miles and a 108-m.p.h. top speed...
Facts poured in fast last week as U.S. authorities dug deep into the suspiciously linked disappearances of Columbia University Lecturer Jesús de Galíndez and a U.S. airplane pilot named Gerald Lester Murphy (TIME, Feb. 11). The evidence indicated that Galíndez had been kidnaped and then flown out of the U.S. to the Dominican Republic in a plane piloted by Gerry Murphy, an airplane-happy youth of 23, who then vanished. In an investigation paralleling the FBI's, LIFE this week unearthed elaborate details of how the deed was done...
Three days later, back in Miami, Pilot Murphy, suddenly in the money, bought a $3,412 Dodge convertible for himself. The next month, he got a co-pilot's job on the Dominican Airlines, through the personal decision of Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Murphy bragged that he could have "anything I want down there." He bought another car, kept up apartments in Miami and Ciudad Trujillo...
Under heavy U.S. pressure, the Dominicans have produced their own explanation for Murphy's disappearance. They say that another airlines pilot, a Dominican named Octavio de la Maza, "committed suicide" last month in a Ciudad Trujillo jail cell after leaving a note confessing he had knocked Murphy off a cliff into shark-infested waters. When the U.S. chargé d'affaires in Ciudad Trujillo implied doubt of their story, by testing the shower pipe from which De la Maza was supposed to have hanged himself, the furious Dominicans complained to Washington...