REV. RICHARD S. BEIDLER. I was born May 25,1927, in the week when Charles Lindbergh made his solo flight across the Atlantic. The Pitcairn AutoGyro was being tested in the 1930's, near my home in Bucks County, PA.. The planes I ran out to see as a boy, were Taylor Cubs and Stearman Trainers.
I remember hearing radio reports of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping which required repeated parental assurance that the same would not happen to us. I heard, also, the tearful radio announcer who was later fired for becoming overwelmed when the historic arrival of the dirigible, Hindenberg, turned into a blazing tragedy. It happened across the Delaware River in Lakehurst, New Jersey. It was from that same general location that Orson Welles convinced me that I was smelling poison gas as Martians landed during his broadcast of the "War of the Worlds". "Buck Rogers" was the favorite space movie to be seen for a dime. Stan Krout, Roy Snyder and I got our picture in the local paper for building planes in our model airplane club . My first actual flight was in a two-seater yellow Piper Cub .
As the war grew in Europe, we started into Hatboro High School. The Brewster Corporation had built a plane factory and runways near Johnsville, PA, just outside Ivyland, our home town. We watched "Buffalos, Wildcats, and Buccaneer Dive Bombers" come off the assembly lines. They were being put together by growing numbers of "Rosie the Riveters".
Later the factory became the Johnsville Naval Air Development Center and built Hellcats,Corsairs, Helldivers and Avengers. A centrifuge, perhaps the largest yet used, was built there to test the effects of supersonic flight and aerospace travel. Four engine Constellations tested large overhead pods to relay military communication and to monitor weather.
Our 1935 second-hand Buick ran on stamp-rationed gas, 1943 copper pennies were changed to steel, and we all bought War Bonds and tended Victory Gardens as we got into WW 11 in the '40's.
I enlisted in the Army Air Corps (now US Air Force) right out of High School in 1945. It was only months after my sister's husband had been killed in France. I was small enough to have been trained as a turret gunner had the war not ended when it did.
Following Basic Training at Keesler Field, MS, I was on temporary duty at Lowry Field in Denver, CO. I recall hitching a circle flight in a twin Beechcraft which could climb into the lack of oxygen at 14,000 feet. In the closing months of WW II, I was being trained as a clerk typist at Westover Field, Mass. to type discharge papers until I took a chance and volunteered to train at Morrison Field, West Palm Beach, as one of the very first "air traffic clerks" in the Air Transport Command. We were expected to load personnel and equipment (using a slide rule to determine weight balance) on planes bringing them home from the war zones. Most of the overseas flights flew 14 hours over the North or the South Atlantic.
The Air Transport Command operated a Special Missions "Top Hat" Squadron in Washington, DC. Two of us qualified to fly Special Missions out of Washington National Airport (now Reagan). At that time, it was just 3 hangers along the Potomac River, a control tower, some office buildings and a few short runways. There I saw the first military jets called "Shooting Stars" and I'll never forget a fatal fiery crash of a Billy Mitchell B-25 bomber.
As a Pfc, I was assigned and trained with about 7 others for special passenger service to keep VIP passengers comfortable and the crews awake! Here began a lifelong friendship with Cpl Herman C. Ellinghausen, Jr. of Annapolis, MD. We flew in C-47's and C-54's. In fact, MacArthur's"Bataan", FDR's "Columbine" and other forerunners of "Air Force One" were part of our Special Missions 503rd Flight Squadron of the Air Transport Command in Washington, DC. Three of many missions are particularly memorable: One mission carried New York Mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, as Director General of UNRRA, to inspect 15 North African, European, Polish, Russian and Scandinavian capital cities receiving United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation through UNRRA.
The flight touched down on the Azores, in Casablanca and in Cairo and returned by way of Copenhagen, London and Gander, Newfoundland.
In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, a Russian Navigator and a Radioman came onboard . They pointed the way (actually) for our DC 4 Skymaster to fly top speed at low level to avoid any possible anti-aircraft fire on the way to Kiev, Minsk and Moscow ! Everywhere we went, groups of officials expressed appreciation for help from the USA.
A second mission carried Henry Luce, Editor and Publisher of Time and Life Magazines, on an inspection tour of the Pacific war zone. We touched down at Pearl Harbor, Guam, Peking, Nanking, Shanghai and Tokyo. Somewhere near Wake Island we experienced weightlessness as we unexpectedly dropped into a thousand foot air pocket.
Approaching Japan, we flew in over Hiroshima as low as estimated radiation would permit. The visible and recent devastation was an appalling preview of the dawning Atomic Age. This difficult strategy by the Truman administration brought an abrupt end to the Pacific war and changed the nature of war forever.
Toward the end of my 19 month tour of duty, with little more than 600 hours of flight time logged, I was part of a crew which took the personally assigned B-17 Flying Fortress to Major General Jake Devers. He was cross-country from D.C. at an airfield out West where maneuvers and wargames were about to come to an end.
As part of that ferry crew, I could only imagine what it would have been like to have been a gunner shooting bullets instead of pictures out of those turrets. I learned later that the actual combat life of a B-17 turret gunner averaged just 11 seconds !
The A T C evolved into successive units with different names when the Air Corps became the US Air Force in 1947, but I am impressed by the astounding history of the unit to which I was assigned and by my relatively safe adventures in the US Army Air Corps and the Air Transport Command, 1945-1947.
My wife, Martha, our 3 children, our grandchildren and I have watched aviation develop through the National Air and Space Administration and we marvel at the expectations of space exploration. It is with deep respect and pride now, that I add our names to those who commemorate all brave men and women in war and in peace who have "touched the face of God" in a variety of amazing flying machines.
We do this to support the gigantic Smithsonian Air and Space Museum which is to break ground soon at Dulles International Airport in the beginning of the 21st Century. Giant solar panels have just been unfurled on the very first International Space Station, and brave souls everywhere still hope for Peace on Earth and in outer space as well.