The Newsletter of the War Eagles ... - War Eagles Air Museum

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Editorial G uy Dority, a good friend, World

War II airman and one of the first Museum volunteers, died in

February. We recently got the following letter from Dr. Richard Crowther, of Ste-vens Point, Wisconsin, remembering the impression Guy made on him.

“Hi, folks, “I am very saddened to learn that

Guy Dority has passed away. I do not use the word ‘treasure’ lightly to describe an individual, but Guy fit that quality.

“The first time I visited War Eagles Air Museum was in the summer of 2007. I had recently gotten my private pilot’s license and was visiting my brother and his wife in Horizon City, so a trip to the Museum was high on our to-do list.

“As we walked in on a Sunday after-noon, Guy was at his desk by the hangar entrance. We smiled at him and went in-side to see the aircraft. It’s an outstanding display. I live near the EAA Museum in Oshkosh, but yours is more impressive. When we came out, Guy said ‘Hi,’ and we could tell he wanted to talk. Unfortu-nately, we kind of ignored him as we bought a few items in the Gift Shop and got on our way. But as soon as we left, I felt awful! ‘How many people get the chance to talk to a man like Guy Dority,’ I thought. I felt guilty that I did not give him the respect he deserved. I vowed to come back again and talk with Guy for as long as he wanted to. When we returned in 2008, he was still there. YAY!! We pulled up chairs and said, ‘Let’s talk!’

Inside This Issue Editorial......................................1 Featured Aircraft ........................1 Geronimo Reminisces ...............5 Historical Perspectives ..............6 New at the Museum...................7 Membership Application ............7 Lois Hailey (1915–2010)............8

The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum

Third Quarter (Jul - Sep) 2010

Volume 23, Number 3

Featured Aircraft (Continued on Page 2)

Featured Aircraft

E verybody knows the Americans and the British do things differ-ently. It’s as though there’s a se-

cret international committee that keeps the two nations from ever doing anything the same. “Okay, Americans, you’ll drive on the right side of the road. Brits, you’ll take the left.” Or “America, your engines will rotate clockwise. Britain, yours will go counter-clockwise.” Or “We need dif-ferent words for the same things, one for Yanks and one for Limeys. Yanks, you say ‘wrench,’ ‘chips’ and ‘line.’ Brits, you say ‘spanner,’ ‘crisps’ and ‘queue.’

We usually run photographs rather than artwork on our cover, but this stunning ren-dering of Canadian Sea Furies by artist Wiek Luijken of Glasgow, Scotland, is so su-perb that we had to use it. Check Mr. Luij-ken’s website at http://www.luijken.com. Im-age used with Mr. Luijken’s permission.

Editorial (Continued on Page 2)


“We spent a great couple of hours talking with him. Other visitors walked in and stood around and listened for a few minutes and then went into the Mu-seum, just as I had done the previous year. I thought, ‘You don’t realize what you’re missing by not taking the time to talk with this wonderful man.’

“On my desk is a War Eagles cap that Guy autographed for me. Whenever I see it, I reflect on that wonderful after-noon we spent with him. The picture of my brother and me with Guy is one of my favorite photos.

“I will visit the Museum again this summer, and it will be very different not seeing Guy at his desk, smiling and eager to talk with anyone who will give him the time. Even though I only knew him for a couple of hours, I thought of him as my friend. He was truly a ‘treasure,’ and all who knew him will surely miss him very much. I know I will.”

Editorial (Continued from page 1)

Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum Third Quarter 2010

Plane Talk Published quarterly by:

War Eagles Air Museum 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008 (575) 589-2000

Author/Executive Editor: Terry Sunday Senior Associate Editor: Frank Harrison Associate Editor: Kathy Sunday

[email protected]

As the Japanese onslaught contin-ued, the British quickly realized they did not have a high-performance, long-range fighter in the inventory capable of match-ing the nimble, lightweight Japanese air-craft. Royal Air Force (RAF) Supermar-ine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes did not have enough range, and the Hawker Tempest, which had not yet even flown at the time, lacked the maneuverability. A new lightweight fighter clearly was need-ed. In mid-1942, the Air Ministry drafted Specification F.6/42 and sent it out to the British aircraft industry. In response, the Boulton Paul, English Electric, Folland, Hawker, Miles and Westland companies submitted proposals. The Ministry chose Hawker’s TLF (Tempest Light Fighter), which was basically a lightened Tempest (itself a derivative of the Typhoon) with the wing center-section removed, on the basis that it was a minimal change to an existing design.

In January 1943, the Air Ministry is-sued Specification F.2/43, specifically tailored to Hawker’s design, which called for the company to build six prototypes of the aircraft later called the Fury (a bi-plane of the 1930s had borne the same distinguished name). Hawker’s chief en-gineer was Sydney Camm, who, like all good aviation managers, always tried to push his design team to find new adapta-tions of the firm’s existing aircraft. Thus, in April 1943, Camm realized that, with a few minor changes, the Fury could also meet the new Royal Navy (RN) Specifi-cation N.7/43 for a carrier-based fighter. In a rare feat of inter-service cooperation, he persuaded the Admiralty to fold its re-quirements into the Air Ministry’s speci-fication. In April 1944, the Admiralty is-

And we certainly can’t spell words the same way. Americans, you’ll use ‘curb,’ ‘jail’ and ‘center.’ Brits, your spellings are ‘kerb,’ ‘gaol’ and ‘centre.’ Are there any questions?” As playwright George Bernard Shaw astutely observed, “Eng-land and America are two countries div-ided by a common language.”

But there’s one area where American and British differences are small. In years past, both nations developed superb high-performance aircraft—designs that still reign today as true aviation classics. In the U.S., for example, the Vought F4U Corsair, Lockheed P-38 Lightning and North American P-51 Mustang enjoy well-deserved reputations as some of the finest combat aircraft ever designed. On the other side of the pond, the Supermar-ine Spitfire and de Havilland Mosquito are just as highly regarded. So, too, is the subject of this issue’s Featured Aircraft article—the Hawker Sea Fury.

The full story of the British Royal Navy’s last piston-engined fighter, the most powerful and fastest ever built, is long and complicated. This article can only hit the high points of the aircraft’s design, development and operational his-tory. With that said, let’s get started...

World War II in the Pacific got off to a bad start for the Allies. Beginning with their December 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese at first en-joyed a seemingly endless string of vic-tories. Just days later, Japanese aircraft sank the British battleships HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales in the South China Sea. By the end of the year, the ar-mies of the Rising Sun seemed irresisti-ble, with Hong Kong, New Guinea and Singapore quickly succumbing. Raids on Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) opened the way for invasions of Burma and India. A Jap-anese attack on Darwin in Northern Aus-tralia on February 19, 1942, forced the Allies to consider the possible loss of that strategic island nation to the Emperor’s forces. With the fall of the Philippines on May 8, 1942, the Allies were effectively banished from the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (as the Japanese called their expanded Pacific empire).

Featured Aircraft (Continued from page 1)

Hawker Sea Fury prototype SR661 is seen in this undated photo.

(l. to r.) Dr. Richard Crowther, the late Guy Dority and Kip Crowther enjoyed a long conversation at the Museum in August 2008.


craft manufacturers was pretty bleak. The RAF cancelled its Fury order, opting instead to focus on jets (the first British jet, the Gloster E.28/39, had flown in May 1941). The RN retained some interest in piston-engined air-craft, but cut its Sea Fury order in half and dropped Boulton Paul as a production source. Boulton Paul’s proto-type was transferred to Hawker, and first flew on January 31, 1946. The Admiralty deemed the design ready for production. The first one off the Hawker as-sembly line, designat-ed a Sea Fury F Mk. X, flew on September 7, 1946. Landing trials aboard HMS Victori-ous showed the need to strengthen the arrestor hook. After these fixes, the RN approved the aircraft for carrier use in the spring of 1947, and soon equipped five Fleet Air Arm squad-rons. The upgraded Mk. XI fighter-bomber followed, beginning in May 1948, and Hawk-er delivered a total of 615 of them. It was the Fleet Air Arm’s primary single-seat fighter until Hawker Sea Hawk jets re-placed them in 1953. The RN deactivated its last operational Sea Fury squadron in 1955. In the meantime, Hawker had sold export models to Australia, Burma, Cuba, Egypt, Germany, Holland, Iraq and Pak-istan. Ironically, Sea Furies of the Cuban Air Force fought in the battle to repel the ill-fated CIA-sponsored attempt to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.

Although they were too late for World War II, Sea Furies operated exten-sively in the Korean War, flying off of the RN carriers HMS Glory, HMS Ocean

sued Specification N.22/43, which de-fined the details of the shipboard conver-sion, such as folding wings, arrestor hook and catapult hardpoints, and ordered 200 aircraft. The RAF ordered 200 aircraft built to the N.22/43 specification. Hawk-er was to build all of the RAF aircraft and half of the RN order, while Boulton Paul was to produce 100 of the naval ver-sions, later named Sea Fury.

The first prototype Fury, powered by a Centaurus XII engine and registered as SR661, flew on September 1, 1944. The second prototype, SR666, had a Centaur-us XV engine. Both were undergoing car-rier landing tests when the Japanese sur-rendered on August 15, 1945. With the end of World War II, the Allies began to demobilize with reckless abandon, and the future for British and American air-

Third Quarter 2010 Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum

and HMS Theseus, and from Australia’s HMAS Sydney. They usually teamed up with Fairey Fireflies on ground attack missions, at which they excelled. Occasi-onal clashes with enemy fighters kept the pilots’ adrenalin levels high. A story has circulated for years that RN Lieutenant Peter “Hoagy” Carmichael, flying a Sea Fury of 802 Squadron from HMS Ocean, had shot down a Soviet-built North Kor-ean Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 jet fight-er on August 9, 1952, supposedly the only kill by a British pilot flying a British aircraft during the Korean War. We re-

Featured Aircraft (Continued on page 4)

Hawker Sea Fury FB Mk. XI General Characteristics

Powerplant 55-liter, 2,480-hp Bristol Centaurus 18-cylinder, air-cooled, sleeve-valve, twin-row radial

Maximum speed 460 miles per hour

Cruise speed 390 miles per hour

Service Ceiling 35,800 feet

Length 34 feet 8 inches

Wingspan 38 feet 5 inches

Range 700 miles

Weight (empty) 9,240 pounds

Weight (max.) 12,500 pounds

The Sea Fury owed much of its design to Hawker’s earlier Typhoon and Tempest.



black-and-white invasion stripes as worn by aircraft of the HMAS Sydney in the Korean War. Only a sharp eye can tell that it is actually a hybrid—a Fury under the skin that looks like a Sea Fury.

The aircraft first appears in the War Eagles Air Museum archives on June 8, 1984, when a logbook entry documents a major inspection by Darwin General Avi-ation Pty., Ltd, in Winnellie, Northern Territories, Australia. Estimated Total-Time-In-Service (TTIS) at that time was 2,500 hours—how much of this time was accumulated in Iraqi Air Force service is unknown. Two weeks later, on June 21, the Australian government issued a per-mit to fly. VH-HFA logged just over an-other 100 hours in Australian skies until her next inspection on August 15, 1988. In October 1988, the disassembled air-craft was shipped from Darwin to Long Beach, California. There, on March 14, 1989, Museum founder John MacGuire purchased and registered the reassembled aircraft. On May 19, the first flight since arrival in the States took place at Chino, California, and the aircraft later flew in the Chino Air Show. After that, the log-book is blank. But long-time War Eagles volunteers recall that the Fury arrived at Santa Teresa Airport in 1989, piloted by John Mazzala of Chino. After a fly-over for aerial photographs, Magnificent Ob-session landed and joined the Museum’s warbird lineup.

peated this story unquestioningly when we last covered the Sea Fury in the First Quarter 2003 Plane Talk. But new evi-dence casts doubt on the accuracy of this story. The MiG was last seen leaving the area at low speed under control, and there are reasons to think other pilots in Carmi-chael’s flight of four actually scored the damaging hits. We queried the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton, England, about this, and learned it was not unusual in the British military for a leader to get credit for the achievements of his team. The RN also had an obvious “public rela-tions” motivation to perpetuate the story, since it boosted the reputation of naval aviation. We thus tend to believe that this crowd-pleasing tale is apocryphal.

The Sea Fury’s popularity on the open market was an important factor that later led many of them to be preserved. Iraq was one of the best sources, supply-ing many warbird enthusiasts and air ra-cers around the world. Iraq ordered 30 single-seaters and four two-seater trainers on December 4, 1946. The aircraft were “de-navalized” versions that resembled the prototype Fury—they lacked an ar-restor hook, folding wings, catapult fit-tings and other naval equipment. With later orders for 25 more, Iraq acquired a total of 57 of Hawker’s big fighter-bomb-er from 1947 to 1953 (two of the two-

Featured Aircraft (Continued from page 3)

seaters were never de-livered). Not surpris-ingly, they unofficially became known as Baghdad Furies. They served with Nos. 1, 4 and 7 Squadrons of the Iraqi Air Force. It is suspected that despotic Iraqi leader Abdul-Ka-rim Qassim used them against the Kurds in the early days of Iraq’s genocide campaign in the northern part of the country. All of them were withdrawn from service by the early 1960s and replaced by the Hawker Hunter.

About 15 or so of these magnificent aircraft still fly today. You can see many of them each year at the Reno Air Races, highly modified for the unlimited class with reliable Wright Cyclone or Pratt & Whitney Wasp Major radials replacing their temperamental, hard-to-repair Cen-taurus engines. Several fly in their origi-nal military configurations in England, elsewhere in Europe and in Australia.

War Eagles Air Museum’s K-253 Magnificent Obsession is one of the Baghdad Furies. Hawker delivered it to Iraq on November 21, 1949. After being retired from service, it was one of a batch of 24 Furies that a pair of enterprising warbird enthusiasts bought and shipped to Florida dur-ing the 1970s, along with a big load of spare parts. Four of these ex-Iraqi Furies eventually made their way to Aus-tralian warbird collect-or Guido Zuccoli. Iraqi Air Force Fury number 253 later ended up in Queensland, Australia, in the hands of Ted Al-len, a construction con-tractor. He painted it in the colors of a Sea Fu-ry in the Royal Austral-ian Navy, including the

A Royal Navy Sea Fury launches from the carrier HMS Glory in 1951 on a ground-attack mission during the Korean War. Note the open canopy and the 76mm unguided rockets under the wing.

With John Mazzala at the controls, the “new” Sea Fury passes over War Eagles Air Museum on delivery in 1989. The South Han-gar has not been built, and today’s big Blue Feather Aero complex beyond the Museum is nowhere to be seen. How things change!


Geronimo Reminisces by Jim C. Parker

G eronimo and I have been rated aviators for over 50 years. So when we get together, we often

share stories about our flying experien-ces. Whether you learned to fly as a civil-ian or in the military, I’m sure you have memories of your early flying experien-ces—some good and some bad.

The last time we got together, Ger-onimo started off by telling me about an incident that happened during his pri-mary flight training. Then he told me about an aspect of his life that I had not previously known.

Geronimo said, “I remember an inci-dent that happened to one of the other Lieutenants in flight school with me that, years later, I experienced in a similar manner, though in a different context.

“In August 1957,” he went on, “82 Lieutenants in the U. S. Army reported for primary flight trainin’ at Camp Gary, in San Marcos, Texas. A civilian contrac-tor, Bill Graham, operated the Army’s primary flight school there. Graham used ex-Air Force pilots as instructors, and the Army provided the check pilots. The


school operated Cessna L-19 Birddogs in all phases of primary flight trainin’.

“Our class was divided into two flights, with 41 students in each flight. Each instructor pilot took care of three to four students, called a ‘stick.’ The two flights alternated between flyin’ in the mornin’s and attendin’ ground school in the afternoons one week, then reversin’ that schedule the next week. This sched-ule gave the students in both flights the opportunity to experience the summer Texas thermals and wild wind gusts com-in’ from afternoon cumulus build-ups.

“Well, there was somethin’ very pe-culiar about this program, but it did not dawn on us exactly what it was ’til much later in the program.

“From the git-go, I was made to feel like I wasn’t good enough to be a pilot for the Army. My instructor was a good guy generally, except in the air. Up there he was on me with continuous negative critique, like: ‘Lieutenant, you’re fifty feet off your altitude, what’re you gonna to do about that? Now, look at your com-pass, you’re five degrees off already. My God, can’t you fly straight and level even for a minute?’ This went on for the entire hour of dual instruction. Through all my maneuvers—stalls, spins, forced landin’s, whatever—he rode my butt unmercifully. My stress level was way up there, but so was that of all the students. Stress levels ramped up even more when our periodic check-rides came up—flunk one of those, boys, and you were washed out.

“One mornin’ I was out flyin’ when a conversation that another instructor was havin’ with his student came over the ra-dio loud and clear. One of them had ne-glected to turn his radio switch to ‘inter-com’—he’d left it on ‘broadcast.’ The air turned blue with curse words. That in-structor was cursin’ his student with ev-ery word in the profane dictionary. He went up one page and down the other, just one curse word after another, totally demeanin’ the student’s flyin’ ability.

“Personally, I felt a sudden rush of confidence in my flyin’ skills.

“When those of us who were in the air when this happened got back on the ground, we converged on this Lieutenant and explained to him that as an officer

and a gentleman, he didn’t have to toler-ate such verbal abuse. We advised him to get another instructor immediately.

“He looked a little puzzled, then sort of confused, and finally he blurted out, ‘But aren’t they all like that?’

“The Army didn’t need aviators in 1957. In fact, the Army didn’t even like aviators, havin’ recently gone through a nasty divorce with the Air Force. What was peculiar about that trainin’ program was that the school used a trainin’ meth-odology designed to put maximum men-tal stress on the students at all times. The successful students, those who made it through the program, would be less likely to have mental breakdowns when they faced the pressures and stresses of com-bat—or so the methodology rationalized.

“Of the 82 Lieutenants startin’ flight trainin’ in Class 58-3, only 40 of us made it into the tactical phase and later got our wings at Fort Rucker in early 1958.

“Now you know, that young Lieu-tenant should have known better than to let his instructor curse him—and should have done somethin’ about it quick time.

“Then again, we all have blinders on to one degree or another. Like, as I said, years later, I blurted out that same line, ‘But aren’t they all like that?’ in response to a marriage counselor tellin’ me ‘The woods are full of trees’—prior to gettin’ a divorce from my first wife, who was schizophrenic.”

Where’s Parker?

R egular Plane Talk columnist and author of two books, Jim C. Parker now lives in scenic

Horseshoe Bay on the shores of Lake LBJ in the Texas Hill Country, with his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren all within hailing dis-tance. “It feels good,” he says.

Geronimo, Jim’s alter-ego, still enjoys flying, but worries that he’ll get too old for it one of these days. So he is developing rules for his “Old Pi-lots Aero Club,” perhaps in anticipa-tion of buying a Light Sport Aircraft and flying under those regulations.



T he first part of this article appear-ed in the First Quarter 2010 issue of Plane Talk. It illustrated how

France’s horrendous losses in the First World War were still fresh in Gallic memory 20 years later as World War II loomed, and were a big factor in French responses to the resurgence of Germany in the 1930s. “The War to End All Wars” cost France much of an entire generation of young men, worsening a population decline that had started in the 19th cen-tury. This, along with the Great Depres-sion, created high anxiety among French-men, who, having once convinced them-selves that the sacrifices of the Great War had “saved” the country, now wondered if France had been worth saving at all. This led to radical ideas for ways to “fix” things and restore France to her rightful place on the world stage. In the last days of the Third Republic (1870–1940), some of these ideas became Government poli-cies, which were often implemented by one leader and then immediately rescind-ed by the next in the “revolving door” of pre-War French politics. Vast swings be-tween leftists and rightists, punctuated by periods of coalition rule, ensured that the only growing segments of the French population were ex-politicians and unem-ployed Government ministers.

This disunity partially explains why France could not stop Germany’s inva-sion in May 1940. The French Army was hamstrung, as senior officers prepared for the next war based on the outdated tactics and weapons of the last one. Most mili-tary leaders, except for a few mavericks such as Colonel Charles DeGaulle, failed to grasp the new concept of highly mo-bile warfare. They reacted to the German invasion as though it were 1914 all over again. The German blitzkrieg (Lightning War) simply overwhelmed the hidebound

and ineffective French Army. France also got only tepid “support” from her major ally, Great Britain. Neville Chamberlain did send over an expeditionary force, but it was a to-ken gesture. The Brit-ish were fighting the

Germans in Norway at the same time, and could not spare the troops to forestall the fall of France on June 23, 1940, when soon-to-be-infamous Marshal Philippe Pétain agreed to an armistice that allowed France to remain independent under par-tial German occupation.

Why did the U.S. not step forward to defend our oldest ally? Why did we not immediately send troops to France, who had helped us gain our independence and had supported us staunchly ever since? The Statue of Liberty symbolizes this re-lationship to this day. Yet the U.S. stood by and watched Germany invade France for the second time in 30 years! What lit-tle support we did provide, by selling arms and equipment to the French mili-tary, was too little and too late—most of the arms ended up in England instead.

Lest some readers become upset and question my patriotism for making these statements (as has happened before), let me state that I love America and thank God I was born in this country. But, as a historian, I realize that most Americans have a short, selective memory. This is not good when history repeats itself, as it did in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. France was reluctant to sup-port us without proof of the justification for the invasion, and many Americans, including top Government officials, in-sulted and scorned France, calling her an “unreliable ally.” Even after we invaded Iraq, France did not let the insults and slander affect her participation in the War on Terror in Afghanistan. Of course, our similar failure to aid France in 1940 was also a case of an “unreliable ally.”

The U.S. took some actions before D-Day that many Frenchmen still resent. To understand that, we must learn what happened in France from June 1940 to June 1944. The French government was

“officially” still in control after the Armi-stice, but the German Army’s authority was absolute in occupied north and west-ern France, including Paris. The French government, under Marshall Pétain, had moved to Vichy, a resort town in south-central France, from where it attempted to pass laws and decrees. Vichy also con-trolled the remnants of the military, in-cluding the largely intact French Navy. The British, fearing Germany might take over the French fleet, sent the Royal Na-vy to destroy it in pre-emptive attacks. Vichy broke off relations with England in response, and many Frenchmen distrust-ed the British for the rest of the war.

In 1940, Germany seemed certain to win and become the dominant power in a new Europe. Vichy politicians prepared for that eventuality. Many non-Axis na-tions, including the U.S., recognized the Vichy Government, which enraged De-Gaulle, who had refused to accept the ar-mistice and was organizing an alternative government-in-exile in London to contin-ue fighting the Germans. The U.S. and British so distrusted DeGaulle and his Free French Forces that they withheld in-formation and strategic plans from him, even when it directly affected French interests. For example, the Allies did not tell DeGaulle of their plans to invade French North Africa. Thus Vichy French forces fought the invasion, and Germany responded by occupying virtually the en-tire country. DeGaulle never forgot nor forgave these slights, and for the rest of his life he viscerally distrusted the British and the Americans. This did not help re-lations between the countries when De-Gaulle later became President of France.

This article can only briefly summar-ize the many reasons for friction and mis-trust between France and the U.S. during World War II. For more information, read France: The Dark Years 1940-1944, by Julian Jackson. This fascinating book fills in parts of the story that Americans tend to overlook in our narrow viewpoint of “how we won World War II.” Even those who realize World War II had been raging for years before Pearl Harbor tend to think it started with France’s surren-

Perspectives (Continued on page 8)

Historical Perspectives by Robert Haynes



Membership Application War Eagles Air Museum

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To become a Member of the War Eagles Air Museum, please fill in the information requested below and note the category of mem-bership you desire. Mail this form, along with a check payable to “War Eagles Air Museum” for the annual fee shown, to:

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New at the Museum

T he Museum has acquired several new items recently. You learned about our four nuclear weapons

in the First Quarter 2010 Plane Talk. We are still in the process of restoring them, a task that will take us months. But some of our other new items are on display now. If you wander through the Automo-bile Annex, you’ll see eight historic gas-oline pumps dating from the 1920s to the 1960s, donated by Calvin and Cathy Bishop and the employees of D&H Pump Service in El Paso. We have no signage for them yet, but they look great on dis-play among our 46 classic cars. We also recently received a donation of two beau-tifully restored classic vehicles from Dr. John White of El Paso. The dark blue 1918 Oldsmobile Touring Car and the pale yellow 1929 Ford Roadster are cur-rently on display in the Hangar near our two P-51 Mustangs while we try to make room for them in our automobile lineup. It’ll take some rearranging...

“Fill ’er up? Check the oil?” Do you re-member when service station attendants used to pump your gas and check your oil, water and tires? Bill Swartout, with one of our “new” classic gas pumps, recalls those days.

Two “new” classic cars have joined our collection—a 1919 Oldsmobile Touring Car (above) and a 1929 Ford Roadster, complete with “rumble seat” (below). Both are fully operational, but driving them requires a lot more skill than it does to run today’s push-button “rolling highway computers.”


War Eagles Air Museum Doña Ana County Airport at Santa Teresa 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008 (575) 589-2000

From the Director

O nce again, I write about a good friend who is no longer with us. Lois Brooks Hailey died at the

age of 95 on April 24. Lois earned her pi-lot’s license in April 1940. As a pilot in the WASPs (Women’s Army Service Pi-lots), she was stationed in El Paso during World War II. She became a flight in-structor after the War, and was the first chair of the El Paso Chapter of The Nine-ty-Nines, the organization of women pi-lots founded in 1929 by Amelia Earhart. As one of six original “lady volunteers” at the Museum, she was instrumental in setting up our display of “Women in Avi-ation.” She came out on Wednesdays for years with the other “ladies” to frame pictures, make signs, organize and cata-log documents and photos, etc. Her hon-ors and awards are too numerous to men-tion, but include a Congressional Gold Medal. We will miss her very much.

Skip Trammell

der, after which the French waited pas-sively for the U.S. to save them. Many American soldiers’ memories of the War include triumphantly entering Paris be-hind DeGaulle, swilling wine, tossing out candy and cigarettes, and making out with mademoiselles in the City of Lights.

I hope my “Historical Perspectives” columns help correct the oversimplified, revisionist views of World War II that have become common in the U.S. in the last 20 years. I think this is important be-cause, as we’ve seen, World War II still affects the world today. France, and other nations with which we need good rela-tions in order to meet our foreign-policy goals, has a deeper, different and stronger memory of the War than America does. Another way to improve your historical knowledge is to visit and support muse-ums that preserve the past as a key to un-derstanding the present. War Eagles Air Museum is a great place to find good, ac-curate historical information.

Perspectives (Continued from page 6)

Lois Brooks Hailey January 18, 1915—April 24, 2010

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