Word: stearman
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While a formation of three old Stearman biplanes droned over San Mateo, Calif., the Hamilton Air Force Base band burst into Anchors Aweigh. The flyers of the U.S. Air Force -and Navy, along with half a dozen civilian aviation groups decided it was high time to pay tribute to Snoopy, pilot par excellence and fearless scourge of the Red Baron. As the peerless pup's creator, Cartoonist Charles Schulz, stood at attention, they gave him a pair of gold wings and a picture of Snoopy in fighter-pilot gear. It was too bad that Snoopy could not be there...
...antique aircraft (pre-Pearl Harbor). At the Merced Municipal Airport in central California, 1,500 aircraft turned up for Merced's sixth annual Antique Fly-In. "That's the kind of plane we should get next," said a woman to her husband, indicating a blue, open-cockpit Stearman PT-17 trainer some 20-odd years old. "Everything these days has two engines, five radios and windshield wipers," complained Pete Bowers, 45, an engineer for Boeing. "That's fine for traveling, but not for flying." Then he climbed into his 1912 Bullock-Curtis tri-wing pusher, bounced...
...wrote in his diary: "I rode with Lieut. Colonel Eisenhower 50 minutes this morning while he flew a Stearman PT. His flying was fairly good, but not as smooth as it could be." May 15, 1937: "Lieut. Colonel Eisenhower was out and flew for 15 minutes, making three good landings." May 19: "I flew with Lieut. Colonel Eisenhower for 20 minutes and then let him solo. This is the first solo flight he ever made, and he was very happy." During the war, in North Africa and Europe, General Eisenhower occasionally flew a small liaison plane...
Tough-minded Walter Hershel Beech, 48, looks like an oversized Bing Crosby. He never got through the seventh grade but has an amazing knack for machinery and aerodynamics. After five years in the Army Air Corps (1917-21), he joined Lloyd Stearman and Clyde Cessna (both of whom later formed their own companies), started Wichita's Travel Air Co. to make small planes. Travel Air boomed with the air craze of the Twenties...
...assembly line of the Stearman aircraft factory at Wichita are now coming planes built only for the purpose of being destroyed. Radio-controlled, they are flown without pilots, to give antiaircraft gunners maneuverable targets...