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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Steven Green

Gerald M. "Jerry" Green was drawing airplanes in class before he was ten years old. Growing up during World War II in Michigan, he built model airplanes from scratch, and he became an Air Scout after the war ended. He graduated from TriState College in Angola, Indiana in 1951 with a degree in aeronautical engineering and immediately drove across the country with his college roommate to start work with North American in Los Angeles. During his years with North American, both in Los Angeles and later in Columbus, Ohio, he was a member of the powerplant development group, working on aircraft such as the A2J, B-45, T-28, F-107, A3J Vigilante and work on aircraft vulnerability analysis. He was particularly involved in fuel systems, being in charge of the design and operation of the fuel system mockup for the A3J and redesigning the T-28 fuel vent valves for carrier operations.

He left North American in 1960, and worked for Aerotech, Inc in Greenwich, Connecticut and then Technical Machine Company in Peekskill, New York. In 1968, he joined the product support staff at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft. During 22 years with Pratt in East Hartford, West Palm Beach and Middletown, he was involved in designing, developing, qualifying, installing and supporting specialized test equipment and other support equipment for the TF30, F100 and F117 engines. This equipment included engine component depot test stands and the F100 depot engine test cell. He also supervised engineers providing the same functions for other support equipment as well as F117 engine assembly and disassembly, inspection and other flight line and depot support equipment.

While in West Palm Beach, he fulfilled a lifelong dream and obtained his private pilot's license, owning a 1958 Cessna 182 for a number of years. A hands-on engineer from his youth, he has overhauled and maintained his own automobiles for over fifty years, built his own house and machine shop, and has always maintained an enormous inventory of anything and everything mechanical if for no other reason than to figure out how it works and then to either fix it or use it to fix something else. He remains a member of that flat-topped, straight and skinny tie generation with the horn rimmed glasses and pocket protectors who took the airplane into the jet age and made it work there, who kept America's sharp edge during the Cold War, and who eventually sent a man to the moon.