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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Sponsor

Honored by:
Mr. Stephen Dolan

William Robert MacDougall was born on December 4th, 1922 in Swampscott, Massachusetts. He graduated from Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1942, and was admitted to Dartmouth College. At the end of his freshman year in 1943, he entered the newly-formed Dartmouth Squadron and began flight training at Maxwell Field, Alabama. He began his B-17 (types F and G) pilot training at Rattlesnake Army Base in Peyotte, Texas, and following further training in Grand Island, Nebraska was outfitted with a new B-17 (type F). He ferried the aircraft to England.

He was stationed at Doepham Green in southeast England, and flew as captain 39 missions over Europe before being shot down on January 2nd, 1945 over Trier, Germany. He eluded capture for seven bitter cold days, eventually collapsing at the doors of a hospital, location unknown. He was a prisoner in five German POW camps before being liberated in Musberg, Germany, and released to a recovery hospital outside Paris, and later to a hospital ship out of LeHavre.

Following the war, he began a civilian flying career with American Export Airlines, which was subsequently taken over by American Airlines and eventually Pan American Airlines in 1952. He flew for the airline for 37 years, retiring as senior pilot on December 4th, 1982. While with Pan American he flew the DC-4, DC-6, Constellation, Stratocruiser, 707, 747 and DC-8 aircraft. Bill was pilot-in-command when Charles Lindberg first flew non-stop from Paris to New York (as a passenger), and for the last scheduled flight out of Tehran following the taking of US hostages in 1979.

During and after his flying career he was an avid sailor, notably as friend and first mate of Tom Watson, Jr. of IBM. Together they raced across the Atlantic, cruised the Arctic and Pacific oceans and were the first to sail into and out of Churchill in Hudson Bay, Canada within the same year, a feat for which they were inducted into the Explorers Club in 1986. He also completed a circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean in 1988. He served as a ski patroller at Catamount Mountain in Hillsdale, New York for 50 years.