Captain Ernest A Clark

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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Captain Ernest A. Clark is the father of Julie E. Clark and was born in 1912 in Nebraska. Learned to fly in 1930 and became the youngest licensed pilot and airplane owner in the state of Nebraska (an old Swallow he rebuilt himself) in 1939 in the state of California (where his children were all born.)
Attempted an endurance flight to break the record days for aloft in an airplane. Although the flight became a reality, his attempt only lasted four days, 1 hour and 30 minutes.
During WWII Ernie Clark flew in the Army Air Corps, mostly flying C47s.
In 1947 he became one of the original pilots for Southwest Airways out of Long Beach, California -- now a part of history of Northwest Airlines. On May 7, 1964 while piloting as captain for the same airline, now renamed Pacific Airlines, he was shot by a deranged passenger on a flight from Reno to San Francisco. None of the 44 occupants of the Fairchild F-27 survived the crash. After finding the revolver in the wreckage and piecing together the cockpit voice recorder, this tragic flight was able to be solved.
Subsequent to this accident, it became FAA law for all commercial airlines in the U.S. to have locked cockpit doors in-flight -- the "Clark Act" named after Captain Ernie Clark.