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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Friend

Honored by:
Mr. Joel S. Mc Innis

Dad joining the Army Air Corp in July of 1943 at the age of 27 (the maximum age for acceptance into pilot training) with a wife (Ethel) and a son (Richard Edward) was the “grandfather” of his cadet class. Many did not expect him to make it through the rigorous pilot training, but while many younger men “washed out” he persevered and received his wings in December 1944 at Lubbock Army Air Field, Lubbock, Texas.
He received his preflight training in mathematics, physics, navigation and code in San Antonio, Texas. Then he received 8 months of training in Aircraft and engines, mathematics, navigation, meteorology and code at air bases in Ballinger, Goodfellow and Lubbock, Texas. At the time dad was receiving his pilot training, Allied forces in England were experiencing a high incidence of bombers being ditched into the English Channel on their return from missions over Germany. The reason the planes were “ditched” was due to the inexperience of rapidly trained pilots flying at night. Rather than risking a crash landing, the crews would bailout before they reached the English coast and let their planes crash into the channel. As a result, Mac, as he was called by his classmates, received additional nighttime and instrument flight training.
Cadet formation flying was done with planes closely tucked together resulting in many returning to the field with broken wingtip lights. Other times getting the required number of hours in the air resulted in interesting incidents. One evening mother (she moved to Texas while he was stationed at Lubbock) told dad that she had watched “some idiot” that afternoon chasing a balloon with their T-6 trainer. The plane made several turns and attack runs at the free-floating balloon. Each time the balloon managed to escape the diving assault of the plane. Mother said the balloon battle continued for a good length of time. With a sheepish grin, dad admitted he was that “idiot.”
After getting his wings, Flight Officer McInnis, became part of the Training Command. To some extent during World War II the Training Command was used as a pool of trained pilots to fill in the needs of combat groups in Europe and the Pacific. Mac missed call-ups for B-17s, helicopters and other combat missions because he was either in town (“I didn’t like sitting around the field on weeks ends with nothing to do”) or on leave when his number came up. As a result, he fought the battle of Texas, becoming a flight and navigation instructor in the Training Command. Officially, according to dad’s separation papers, he was assigned to Sq H 2536th AAF BU at San Marcos Air Field, San Marcos, Texas. The only embarrassment to this assignment was in the Officers Club. Other Officers, returning from combat assignments sported chests filled with combat ribbons, dad only had Good Conduct ribbons as his decorations.
However, even training pilots had its adventures. On one flight, with a group of advanced student pilots in a twin Beech, dad went to the back of the plane to relax while the student flew their triangulated course. Sometime later after checking his watch, dad figured that they should be close to coming in for a landing at the field they took off from. Going forward and looking out the cabin window, there was not view of the airfield, or familiar landscape. The students admitted that they did not know where they were. With fuel running low, dad took over the pilot’s seat, opened a sectional map on his lap, dropped down to the deck and began trying to match map symbols to the terrain they were flying over. After several long minutes of searching, a couple of roads and a railroad track gave dad the information needed to get them safely back to the air field.
During the war dad spent most of his 573 hours of flying time at the controls of an AT-7 twin Beech. The twin Beech with two 450-hp Pratt & Whitney radial engines was used for advanced navigation instruction. To increase the planes range, it had an added fuel tank in the nose, that when full made take-offs tricky. According to dad tapping the brakes too hard could tip the tail dragger on its nose.
While he was still in the service, dad got a commercial pilot rating. His Commercial Airman Certificate dated July 11, 1945 lists his rating as: Commercial Pilot – Airplane Single & Multi-Engine Land.
At the end of the war, dad was separated from the service at the Davis-Mothan Field, Tucson, Arizona in November 1945. He returned to the job he had before the war as a machinist for the Santa Fe railroad in San Bernardino, California. Dad and mother had two more children, Joel and Christy. He worked for Santa Fe for 39 years before retiring. Ethel, his wife of more than 62 years passed away in April 2003.
Although he never flew after he left the service, he still retained his passion for flying. Whenever a plane would pass overhead, he would go outside to see what it was. Even today, at nearly 87 years old, he can tell the difference between many aircraft, including the many commercial jets in the sky today.