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Obit watch: July 23, 2019.

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2019

Christopher Kraft, NASA flight director and legend.

For 25 years, from the dawn of the space age in the 1950s to the threshold of almost routine launchings in the 1980s, Mr. Kraft played crucial roles in the space program. He devised the protocols for exploration beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, orchestrated early orbital missions and spacewalks, and developed projects that put astronauts on the moon and into the first reusable space shuttles.
Aside from the astronauts who made history — including Alan B. Shepard Jr., with his suborbital flight; John Glenn, in orbiting the Earth; and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first to land on the lunar surface — Mr. Kraft was the most familiar face of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s early years, the steady ground commander who often explained missions to a rapt world at news conferences.
In an era of perilous experiments hastened by the Soviet success of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, Mr. Kraft presided over triumphal breakthroughs in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects. He also stood by helplessly when a fire killed three astronauts on a launchpad in 1967, but he helped devise the ingenious plan that saved the Apollo 13 crew after an explosion crippled their spacecraft en route to the moon in 1970.
At a time when there were no rules or procedures for space travel, Mr. Kraft, a brilliant aeronautical engineer, virtually wrote the book for NASA. He originated the concept of mission control, with authority vested in a ground-based flight director, not in a pilot-astronaut soaring through space at 7 miles a second who might be overwhelmed by pressures, especially during launch or re-entry.

NASA. I think this is a great story:

With the advent of the jet age of the 1950s, he was assigned as project engineer on flight tests of the Navy’s high-priority Vought F8U Crusader, which was exhibiting numerous birthing problems in its earliest versions. The problems uncovered by Langley flight tests included unacceptable g-force control behavior during maneuvers, which was determined to result from unintentional pivoting of the unique movable wing used by the configuration. Working with Langley test pilot Jack Reeder, Kraft identified the structural source of the problem, and took on the unpleasant job of telling the Navy that its new first-line aircraft was potentially dangerous. His warnings were heeded by Navy management, resulting in grounding of the F8U fleet, much to the chagrin of many operators of the new aircraft. He then encountered one of the most contentious members of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, who questioned the Langley results and doubted the conclusions drawn by the NACA. That Marine Major was named John Glenn. Following a detailed examination of the Langley study results with Kraft and Reeder, and interviews with Navy pilots who flew the aircraft, Glenn was convinced and became a believer. The F8U was subsequently redesigned, as recommended by Kraft and his associates at Langley, and served the nation as an outstanding fighter during the Vietnam War.

Houston Chronicle.

In an interview in February with the Houston Chronicle, Kraft said he never wanted to be an astronaut.
“I liked my job better than theirs,” he said. “I got to go on every flight, and besides that, I got to tell them what to do.”

Edited to add: I don’t like linking to Ars Technica, but I’m making an exception in this case: Eric Berger, the author of their Chris Kraft obit, was also a personal friend of Mr. Kraft.

Every few months, I would make a pilgrimage to Kraft’s home, and we fell into a routine. We’d be seated upstairs in reclining leather chairs. Kraft would ask what I had been hearing about the space program. Then it was open season: I could ask anything I wanted, from his experiences at Virginia Tech and his early years of NASA, about which astronauts he had liked—and which he hadn’t—to his thoughts on current affairs at NASA. Somewhere along the way, Betty Anne would bring us glasses of Coca-Cola with ice.

Posted in History, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 27, 2019.

Thursday, June 27th, 2019

Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Friend (USAF – ret.), one of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was the wingman for Col. Benjamin Davis Jr., the commanding officer of the 322nd Fighter Group.

He also had a distinguished post-war career, highlighted by running Project Blue Book from 1958 to 1963.

“Do I believe that we have been visited? No, I don’t believe that,” he said. “And the reason I don’t believe it is because I can’t conceive of any of the ways in which we could overcome some of these things: How much food would you have to take with you on a trip for 22 years through space? How much fuel would you need? How much oxygen or other things to sustain life do you have to have?”
But unlike many of his colleagues, he favored further research.
“I, for one, also believe that the probability of there being life elsewhere in this big cosmos is just absolutely out of this world — I think the probability is there,” he said.

According to the paper of record, there are 11 surviving Tuskegee Airmen. LTC Friend was 99.

Beth Chapman, wife of Dog the Bounty Hunter.

Edited to add: NYT obit for Beth Chapman.

Also, NYT on Etika.

Posted in History, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 21, 2019.

Tuesday, May 21st, 2019

Niki Lauda, one of the greatest racing drivers ever.

In his 17-year career (1969-1985) in the open cockpit of Porsches, Ferraris, McLarens and other high-tech torpedoes on wheels, mostly in Formula One competition, Lauda won 25 Grand Prix races. Points are awarded to the top six finishers in a race, and by amassing the highest point total in 16 authorized races, Lauda won the Formula One world driving championships in 1975, 1977 and 1984.
Since the crowns were first awarded in 1950, only five drivers have surpassed Lauda’s three titles. The record, seven, was set by Michael Schumacher, of Germany, between 1994 and 2004.

I wasn’t an avid follower of Formula 1, but I kind of liked Mr. Lauda. Especially after reading about him in Reader’s Digest. (I want to say it was a “Drama In Real Life”.)

But in his next race, the German Grand Prix at Nürburgring, a 14-mile, 76-curve course, things went drastically wrong for Lauda and his 1,300-pound blood-red Ferrari.
It had rained and he hit a slippery patch at 140 miles per hour. He spun out, broke through a restraining fence that snagged and tore away his helmet, then hit an embankment and bounced back onto the track, where he was hit by several following cars. His ruptured fuel tank burst into flames that engulfed him in the cockpit.
By the time three other drivers pulled him from the wreckage, he had severe burns of the face, head and hands, a concussion, a broken collarbone and other fractures. His right ear was badly burned. Noxious smoke and gases from the car’s burning interior seared his lungs. He was rushed to a hospital in a coma, then to a burn center, seemingly near death.
On Lauda’s third day in intensive care, a Roman Catholic priest gave him the last rites of the church. Lauda was conscious, and the rites only made him angry. “I kept telling myself, if he wants to do that, O.K., but I’m not quitting,” Lauda told Newsday after he began a remarkable recovery.
He had a series of operations and skin grafts that left permanent scarring on his head. He lost part of his right ear, the hair on the right side of his head, his eyebrows and both eyelids. He chose to limit reconstructive surgery to the eyelids, and thereafter wore a red baseball cap to cover the worst disfigurements. But he began talking, walking and making plans for his return to racing.

See how powerful the last rites are? Either the person dies in a state of grace, or they get real angry and tell Death, “Not today, mofo.”

But I digress. Six weeks after the accident, Mr. Lauda finished fourth in the Italian Grand Prix. He finished the 1976 season in second place behind James Hunt, and won the championship in 1977.

For many years, Lauda championed safer racecar and track designs, and urged tighter controls over driving conditions and rules governing race organizers.
“Racing on substandard tracks or in unsafe weather doesn’t test courage,” Lauda told The Boston Globe in 1977. “At present, some of the Grand Prix circuits we drivers are asked to race on do not fulfill the most primitive safety requirements. Also, the decision to call off or stop a race can’t be left entirely to the organizers, who too often put prestige before the safety of the drivers. We need independent experts whose authority should be supreme.”

More:

Lauda, a licensed commercial pilot, founded and for years ran his own airline, Lauda Air, first as a charter, then as a scheduled carrier from Austria to Southeast Asia, Australia and the Americas. He sometimes piloted his airline’s flights. In 1991, a Lauda Air jetliner crashed in Thailand, killing all 223 people on board. Lauda was personally involved in the investigation, which was ruled an accident.

Lauda Air 004 crash from Wikipedia. This is one of those crashes that’s always fascinated and scared me: it seems unclear (the flight data recorder was badly damaged), but the apparent cause of the crash was that the thrust reverser on one engine deployed in flight causing the pilots to lose control, and the aircraft to break up.

“Personally involved” seems like a bit of an understatement. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Lauda was basically in Boeing’s face:

Lauda attempted the flight in the simulator 15 times, and in every instance he was unable to recover. He asked Boeing to issue a statement, but the legal department said it could not be issued because it would take three months to adjust the wording. Lauda asked for a press conference the following day, and told Boeing that if it was possible to recover, he would be willing to fly on a 767 with two pilots and have the thrust reverser deploy in air. Boeing told Lauda that it was not possible, so he asked Boeing to issue a statement saying that it would not be survivable, and Boeing issued it.

He established Lauda Air as a charter service in 1979, and in 1987 began scheduled flights. He sold Lauda Air in 1999. In 2003 he started a new budget airline, Niki, and often piloted its flights twice a week. It merged with Air Berlin in 2011. In 2016, he took over another charter airline, calling it Lauda Motion.

I would have liked to have met Mr. Lauda. He seems like another one of those kind of men they just don’t make these days.

Posted in Obits, Planes, Religion, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 20, 2019.

Saturday, April 20th, 2019

NYT obit for Gene Wolfe.

Warren Adler, novelist. He is perhaps most famous as the author of The War of the Roses, which was adapted into the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner film.

James W. McCord Jr., leader of the Watergate burglars.

On June 17, 1972, four expatriate Cubans and Mr. McCord, chief of security for the Nixon re-election campaign and a leader of the White House “plumbers” unit assigned to plug information leaks, broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington to fix problematic listening devices that they had planted weeks earlier.
But a night watchman alerted the police, and they were caught, odd burglars in business suits carrying cameras and walkie-talkies. E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent, and G. Gordon Liddy, the re-election committee’s general counsel, who ran the break-in from a nearby hotel room, fled but were soon arrested. Mr. McCord revealed at an arraignment that he had once worked for the C.I.A., and the unraveling began.

Interesting thing about this obit: Mr. McCord apparently passed away in June of 2017, but his death was not widely reported until recently.

Lorraine Warren, “psychic” fraud.

This was noted elsewhere earlier in the week, but for the historical record: Geraldyn M. “Jerri” Cobb, noted pilot and an early recruit for the astronaut program.

Posted in Books, History, Law, Movies, Nixon, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Own goal.

Wednesday, April 10th, 2019

When I was a small child, I had a book.

Well, actually, I had more than one book. But this one was about planes: I don’t remember the title, or if it was about planes in general, or just military aircraft.

But I do remember a casual mention in that book of a plane shooting itself down by running into its own cannon fire.

What brings this to mind?

The F-16, which suffered considerable damage in January during an exercise above Vlieland, appears to have been hit by its own ammunition. At least one fired cartridge caused damage to the cladding of the device. Parts of the ammunition also ended up in the engine.

(Translation by Google Translate. Original is in Dutch.)

More from Military Times, which is in English, and actually mentions the incident I think I remember.

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Obit watch part 2: April 9, 2019.

Tuesday, April 9th, 2019

Lt. Colonel Richard E. Cole (United States Air Force – Ret.)

He was 103.

Lieutenant (at the time) Cole was Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot on the Tokyo raid. He was the last survivor of Doolittle’s Raiders.

As Mr. Cole remembered it: “The tune ‘Wabash Cannonball’ kept running through my mind. One time I was singing and stomping my foot with such gusto that the boss looked at me in a very questioning manner, like he thought I was going batty.”

…

Doolittle, Lieutenant Cole and the other three crewmen of their plane bailed out in rain and fog soon after their bomber crossed the Chinese coast as darkness arrived. Lieutenant Cole landed in a pine tree atop a mountain and was unhurt except for a black eye. He made a hammock from his parachute and went to sleep. At dawn, he began walking, and late that day he made contact with Chinese guerrillas.
He was soon reunited with Doolittle, who had come down in a rice paddy, and their three fellow crewmen. The five joined up with other stranded airmen who had been rescued. The Chinese took them all on an arduous journey, much of it by riverboat, to an air strip, where they were picked up by a United States military transport plane and flown to Chungking, the headquarters for the Nationalist Chinese.

For the record:

Three of the 80 Doolittle raiders were killed in crash landings or while parachuting. Eight others were captured by the Japanese. Three of them were executed, another died of disease and starvation in captivity, and four survived more than three years of solitary confinement and brutality.

Lt. Cole went on to fly transport planes over the Hump. He also served with the 1st Air Commando Group.

Lt. Cole’s page on doolittleraider.com which contains some great photos. Obit from MySanAntonio.com. I had no idea the gentleman lived in Comfort (about 90 minutes up the road from me). Cool story from the Express News in 2018.

Dick Cole’s War: Doolittle Raider, Hump Pilot, Air Commando sounds like a fascinating book.

Rest in peace, soldier.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 7, 2019.

Sunday, April 7th, 2019

Vonda N. McIntyre, noted SF writer, passed away on Monday, but I did not know about this until Lawrence mentioned it last night. The NYT obit is datelined Friday, but I’m thinking it must have been posted late in the day.

Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, for the historical record.

Ly Tong. He was a pilot with the South Vietnamese Air Force.

A man who never accepted defeat, Mr. Ly Tong considered it his personal mission to take back his country from the Communists, who have ruled it since winning the Vietnam War in 1975.

So, in 1992, he…

…hijacked a commercial airliner after takeoff from Bangkok, ordered the pilot to fly low over Ho Chi Minh City — known as Saigon, South Vietnam’s capital, before the Communist victory — and dumped thousands of leaflets calling for a popular uprising.
He then strapped on a parachute and followed the leaflets down to certain capture. He was released six years later in an amnesty and returned to the United States, where he had become a citizen after the war.

That takes us to 1998. In 2000…

…Mr. Ly Tong burnished his anti-Communist credentials with a flight over Havana in a rented plane, scattering leaflets as he had in Vietnam. He was commended on his return by Cuban-Americans in Florida, who gave him a victory parade.

Later that year…

…Mr. Ly Tong made a second trip over Ho Chi Minh City, sending down a new cascade of leaflets, which he had signed “Global Alliance for the Total Uprising Against Communists.”

He spent another six years in a Thai prison for that. The paper of record states he was unarmed and nobody was hurt during either of his hijackings, which makes me wonder about the definition of “hijacking”. But I digress.

In his final and most bizarre act of defiance, in 2010 in California, Mr. Ly Tong assaulted a Vietnamese singer whom he deemed sympathetic to the government of Vietnam. Disguised as a woman, he walked to the edge of the stage, reached up as if to hand the singer a bouquet and squirted a liquid, which may have been pepper spray, in her face. He was sentenced on multiple charges to six months in jail and three years’ probation. He appeared at his trial in drag.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 30, 2019.

Saturday, March 30th, 2019

I’m no military aviation expert, but I’ve read a fair amount on the subject. Much to my chagrin, I had not heard of Commander Joe “Hoser” Satrapa (USN – ret.) until McThag linked to his obit.

What a guy. He was one of the leading advocates of fighters carrying guns, instead of relying on missiles. He was also famous as something of a “swashbuckling, authority-challenging maverick”. This obit is full of great stories and quotes:

While flying and fighting in his F-8E Crusader over North Vietnam, CDR. Satrapa was famous for the personal arsenal that he wore on his flying kit in the event he was shot down. According to anecdotes shared in social media by fellow squadron members, Satrapa reportedly carried “Two Mark 33 hand grenades, a Colt Python .357 revolver with 60 rounds of ammunition, a Smith & Wesson 9mm with non-NATO hollow-point ammunition and 3 spare magazines, a custom Randall survival knife and an additional throwing knife over his left shoulder.”

Among other highpoints:

  • He was drummed out of the Navy for “administrative deficiencies” in the early 1980’s, only to be reinstated by SecNav John Lehman and President Ronald Reagan in 1981…and retroactively promoted to commander.
  • Whereupon he was assigned as an instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School: “As a part of his training syllabus, some sources recounted that Joe “Hoser” Satrapa delivered his initial lecture as an adaptation of General George Patton’s famous flag speech.”
  • His call sign later changed from “Hoser” to “Toser”. I won’t spoil the story, but I will give a hint: “a pilot without a right thumb cannot fly a jet fighter”.
  • During one training flight, he “shot down” two Air Force F-15s…in one Navy F-14…twice…with his gun.
  • He nearly caused Japan to cancel their F-15 order.
  • After he left the Navy, he went on to fly fire suppression drops in California. One day, an aircraft above him dropped fire retardant on top of him, completely covering his windscreen. What did he do? Read the obit.

How have I never heard of this guy before? And thanks, McThag, for the heads-up.

Also among the dead:

Agnès Varda, French film maker. I’ve never seen anything of hers, though I think I have the Criterion “Cléo from 5 to 7” somewhere, and I remember Roger Ebert extravagantly praising “The Gleaners and I”.

Victoria Ruvolo. Her story is kind of interesting: she was driving home one night with a friend, from her niece’s recital, when a 18-year old man threw a frozen turkey through the windshield of her car:

The turkey crashed through Ms. Ruvolo’s windshield, crushing the bones in her cheeks and jaw, fracturing the socket of her left eye, causing her esophagus to cave in and leaving her with brain trauma.

…

Ms. Ruvolo required extensive reconstructive surgery to her face and months of physical and cognitive rehabilitation before she could return to work as a collection agency manager nine months later.

In spite of this, she forgave the young man, and lobbied for him to receive a light sentence. The prosecution wanted him to serve 25 years: thanks to Ms. Ruvolo’s advocacy, he served six months in prison and five years of probation.

After Ms. Ruvolo’s recovery, she spoke about empathy and forgiveness at schools and programs like Taste (Thinking Errors, Anger Management, Social Skills and Talking Empathy), which holds criminals accountable for their actions.
As part of his rehabilitation, [the turkey thrower – DB] also spoke to Taste, Robert Goldman, its founder, said by phone.
“[The turkey thrower – DB] has a job and is a productive member of society,” said Mr. Goldman, who collaborated with Ms. Ruvolo and Lisa Pulitzer on a book, “No Room for Vengeance …” (2011). “He did everything Victoria challenged him to do and spoke to kids about the mistakes he made.
“That’s her legacy: She’s an example of forgiveness in a vengeful world.”

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 29, 2019.

Friday, March 29th, 2019

I think this is a swell NYT obit for Michel Bacos. (Previously.)

His death was announced by Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, where Mr. Bacos lived.
“Michel bravely refused to surrender to anti-Semitism and barbarism and brought honor to France,” Mayor Estrosi said. “Michel was a hero.”

…

“There was no way we were going to leave — we were staying with the passengers to the end,” Mr. Bacos (pronounced bah-COSE) told the Israeli website Ynetnews.com in 2016. “This was a matter of conscience, professionalism and morality. As a former officer in the Free French Forces, I couldn’t imagine leaving behind not even a single passenger.”
As he recounted to the BBC that year, “I told my crew that we must stay until the end, because that was our tradition, so we cannot accept being freed. All my crew agreed without exception.”

…

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu tweeted this week that Mr. Bacos had “stayed with the hostages through all their hardships, until I.D.F. soldiers — led by my brother Yoni — freed him in a daring operation.”
“I bow my head in his memory,” he added, “and salute Michel’s bravery.”

(For those unfamiliar with the Entebbe raid: Yonatan Netanyahu was the leader of the assault force, and was killed during the attack.)

Returning to Israel in their military transport plane, the commandos fetched Mr. Bacos from the cabin. “Your place is not here,” he recalled a soldier telling him, “but in the cockpit.”

…

Michel joined the Free French Forces as a teenager during World War II and was stationed in Morocco as a naval aviation officer.
“I fought the Nazis,” he said. “I knew precisely what fascism was all about. The genocide is a horror that none of us had forgotten.”

…

Mr. Bacos allowed himself a two-weak break after the hijacking. But once back from vacation, he requested a specific destination for his first flight: Tel Aviv.

Awful lot of dust in the air this morning.

Edited to add 3/30:

Posted in Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 27, 2019.

Wednesday, March 27th, 2019

Larry Cohen, noted film director and writer.

I actually rented “Q” at one point when I was younger, and wouldn’t mind watching it again. As I recall, it was kind of silly, but I like Quetzalcoatls and Michael Moriarty.

I haven’t been able to find a reliable source for this, but Mike the Musicologist forwarded me a Wikipedia link: Michel Bacos apparently passed away yesterday. Mr. Bacos was the pilot of Air France 139 when it was hijacked on June 27, 1976. As you know, Bob, the plane eventually ended up in Uganda at the Entebbe Airport, and things proceeded from there.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 2, 2019.

Saturday, February 2nd, 2019

NYT obit for Dick Miller.

This one goes out to Mike the Musicologist: Sanford Sylvan, noted baritone. He did a lot of work with John Adams: among other roles, he was the first Chou En-lai in “Nixon in China” and Leon Klinghoffer in “The Death of Klinghoffer”.

His recordings, many with Mr. Breitman, include programs of Schubert, Fauré, Jorge Martin and Virgil Thomson, as well as a luminous, delicate 1991 release, “Beloved That Pilgrimage,” which includes Theodore Chanler’s “Eight Epitaphs,” Barber’s “Hermit Songs” and Copland’s “Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson.” Mr. Sylvan took part in the New York premiere of Mr. Adams’s opera “A Flowering Tree” in 2009, and also performed contemporary works by composers like Peter Maxwell Davies, Philip Glass, John Harbison and Charles Fussell.

Finally, Captain Rosemary Mariner, United States Navy (ret.). She was one of the first six women to go through naval flight training, the first to fly an attack jet, and the first woman to command a naval aviation squadron. She also had a leading role in removing the restrictions on women flying combat missions.

When she retired from the Navy in 1997, Captain Mariner “had become one of the nation’s leading advocates for equal opportunity in the military,” Deborah G. Douglas wrote in “American Women and Flight since 1940” (2005).
Captain Mariner logged 17 landings on aircraft carriers and more than 3,500 flight hours in 15 different aircraft.

Posted in 1970s, History, Mannix, Movies, Music, Obits, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 23, 2019.

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019

Russell Baker, Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the NYT.

Kaye Ballard, noted actress.

I apologize for giving these short shrift, but Ms. Ballard was before my time.

I also want to call out this one, not out of any malice or ill will, but because when you read the details in the obit, it’s kind of disturbing: Brandon Truaxe, “the founder of the disruptive Canadian cosmetics company Deciem”.

If you need help, please don’t be ashamed to ask for it. Anyone who would shame you for needing help…well, their opinions don’t matter.

Posted in Media, Planes, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 4, 2019.

Friday, January 4th, 2019

Herb Kelleher, legendary co-founder of Southwest Airlines. NYT. Dallas Morning News.

As much as I complain about Southwest (“your cattle car in the sky”), I have to admit: they aren’t any worse than any other airline (“United Breaks Guitars”) and are frequently cheaper.

And:

By paying his employees well, avoiding layoffs and instilling a spirit of fun in the company’s culture, Mr. Kelleher also set a tone for Southwest that translated into customer loyalty.
“You have to treat your employees like customers,” he told Fortune magazine in 2001. “When you treat them right, then they will treat your outside customers right. That has been a powerful competitive weapon for us.”
What sounded like a business cliché translated into tremendous cost savings for Southwest. Its employee productivity levels were far higher than those of the competition, and even as salaries rose, the company managed to keep fares low and profits high. The company was a perennial choice for Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” list.

…

A hard drinker with an ever-present Kool cigarette in his mouth, he liked to dress like Elvis Presley or other characters at company meetings and maintain a level of fun in the workplace.

There’s another story I (kind of) remember about Southwest testing a new route near Thanksgiving. When passengers got off the plane, they were offered either a frozen turkey…or a bottle of Wild Turkey.

They don’t make them like that any more.

Posted in Leadership, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 12, 2018.

Wednesday, December 12th, 2018

Helen Klaben Kahn passed away on December 2nd. She was 79.

I know, I know, but I’m a sucker for a good survival story.

Ms. Klaben (at the time) was a young woman and had been kicking around Alaska for a few months. She wanted to visit Asia, so she hopped on board a single engine aircraft piloted by Ralph Flores. (She was planning to make her was to San Francisco, and to Asia from there.) On February 4, 1963, they took off from Whitehorse heading for Fort Saint John.

Unfortunately, the weather was bad, and Mr. Flores was not an instrument rated pilot. They ended up crashing into the side of a mountain near the border between the Yukon and British Columbia. But: they survived the crash.

Ms. Klaben and Mr. Flores crashed in terrain that was waist-deep in snow, with temperatures as numbing as 48 degrees below zero. Without wilderness survival training, Mr. Flores adapted nonetheless. He wrapped Ms. Klaben’s injured foot in her sweaters, covered the openings of the cabin with tarpaulins and tried, without success, to fix their radio to send out a distress signal and build rabbit traps.
What little food Ms. Klaben and Mr. Flores had brought on board — a few cans of sardines, tuna fish, fruit salad and a box of Saltine crackers — was rationed and gone within 10 days. They drank water, some of it filtered through shreds of one of her dresses and boiled in an empty oil can. They ate bits of toothpaste that they squeezed from a half-filled tube — and virtually nothing else, they said.

They survived for 49 days before finally being rescued.

When she returned to New York City less than a week after being rescued, the toes of her frostbitten right foot were amputated. She soon began writing her book (with Beth Day), and shortly after its publication told her story on an episode of the game show “To Tell the Truth.”

…

The appetite for adventure that she nourished as a child did not leave after the crash. Mrs. Kahn, as she became known, had no fear of flying and no nightmares and traveled widely with her family to Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.
“We’d travel with her from one European city to the next, meeting kids from other countries,” her son, Dr. Kahn, said in a telephone interview. “She was a global citizen, whether we were in fancy places or campsites.”
She also taught survival skills to the Girl Scouts, schools and other groups.

Posted in Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 1, 2018.

Wednesday, August 1st, 2018

Captain Lawrence E. Dickson passed away on December 23, 1944.

On Dec. 23, 1944, Captain Dickson got into a P-51 Mustang fighter plane at Ramitelli Air Base in Italy for a reconnaissance mission. Later, as he piloted the plane during the return flight, it experienced engine failure, the agency said.
Ms. Andrews said she learned from a wingman who flew alongside her father that two other planes flew alongside Captain Dickson’s plane as it descended until it disappeared.
Some witnesses told officials that they saw the plane crash and roll over, the canopy jettisoned.
Officials from D.P.A.A. said Captain Dickson was not seen ejecting from the plane.

(Note: as far as I am aware, the P-51 in 1944 did not have ejection seats.)

Captain Dickson was one of the Tuskegee Airmen. The crash site was not found until 2012, remains were not recovered from the site until 2017, and DNA analysis was not completed until last Friday.

Captain Dickson is the first of 27 members of the Tuskegee Airmen who were declared missing to be identified.

Posted in History, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

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