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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:

Dr. Lattimer was Lindbergh’s doctor. He has first seen him after Lindbergh’s triumphal flight to Paris but then as a boy at Selfridge Field in Michigan, the home of America’s only pursuit (fighter plane) group in 1927. He watched the newly famous flyer perfect the art of “skip” bombing. He had bomb racks attached to the lower wing of his P6 Curtiss Hawk fighter plane and skipped the bombs like stones across the surface of the water to hit the ships in the side. We used this technique against the Japanese very successfully in World War II. One of Lindbergh’s bombs skipped over the target and went on to sink, in the shallow water beyond it. Since this was the peace-time army, the armorers waited for the next morning to row out and pick up the unexploded bombs which could easily be seen on the bottom. Lattimer and one of his young friends who lived on the base knew that a large cotter pin through the rear end of the bomb kept the weight from sliding down to activate the exploder, rendering the bomb “safe.” The son of one of the armorers knew how to empty out the explosives.
Many years later, Dr. Lattimer was able to show Lindbergh this bomb which he had dropped during those early years. At the end of WWI, Dr. Lattimer had also seen Lindbergh arrive in Paris to start the search of the German airplane and rocket scientists, and was so eminently successful in bringing them to America rather than letting the Russians capture them. Dr. Lattimer got to know the Lindbergh’s well because Mrs. Lindbergh had been born and brought up in the town of Englewood, New Jersey where Dr. Lattimer now lives. Dr. Lattimer became one of Lindbergh’s strongest supporters and champions, in the days when Lindbergh was being unfairly attacked because of his strong views that we were not ready to tackle the German Air Force.
Lindbergh had made seven trips to Germany at the request of our Air Force, to study their airplanes, which they were glad to show him and even permit him to fly. There was no doubt in his mind that we were not ready to oppose these advanced aircraft, in our unprepared state, at the beginning of the war. Dr. Lattimer became one of his most outspoken defenders, with Lindbergh’s full knowledge and cooperation.
At Dr. Lattimer’s house in Englewood, where Mrs. Lindbergh had grown up, they had long pleasant reminiscences of the early days in Englewood. Hardly a month goes by that he is not called upon to reminisce in great detail about Lindbergh’s early career and his tremendous contributions to aviation medicine. He subjected himself to all the stresses, since he was the best judge of when his sensorium was suppressed to the extent that a fighter pilot would be incapacitated. He also perfected an artificial heart for the experiments of Dr. Alexis Carrell at the Rockefeller Institute.