Pages From The Past

Pages from a scrapbook, the owner unknown, but I suspect it is one of the women seen in these shots. It’s the late 1940s, the war is over, and planes are cheap and plentiful. Lots of classic birds seen: Mooney Mite, Navion, Piper, B-36 & B-50, DC-3, etc. Locations are Idlewild Airport, Flushing Airport, Sunny South Airport, and Teterboro. The last was home to the depicted Marjorie Gray’s Aero Service – an FBO run by “Marj”, one of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (W.A.S.P.) of World War II.

William Tell, 1958

“William Tell”, the US Air Force’s great air-to-air competition, has been held since the 1950s at sunny Tyndall AFB, Florida. Our F-86 pilots depicted above have traveled to said base for the 1958 meet and are obviously looking forward to the various aerial events which will unfold in the coming days. Their home base is Ramstein, Germany; they are members of the 526th Fighter Interceptor Squadron and represent the United States Air Forces in Europe. Note the custom ballcaps and snazzy flight suits made for the competition.

Thunderjets, Taegu Air Base, 1952

Flightline at Taegu Air Base in 1952. The F-84G, 51-10368, belongs to the 8th Fighter Bomber Squadron, 49th Fighter Bomber Wing.
F-84s of the 474th Fighter Bomber Wing, also at Taegu Air Base.
The happy day arrives for three pilots of the 8th Fighter Bomber Squadron: They have flown their 100th mission, and will soon be heading home. A slight curiosity: the rearmost plane reads “456” on the fuselage, but the tail says “51-1135”. Wonder what that story is.
Special 100 Mission bomb is readied at the Taegu bomb dump. Besides the Hillbilly paint job, the bomb also reads “A Little Remembrance of West ‘By God’ Virginia”.

John B. Brooks, Aerial Pioneer

Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, Army Air Service, Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces.

One of the unsung trailblazers of flight, Major General John Bernard Brooks initially served in the U.S. Cavalry (the kind with horses) along the Mexican border hunting banditos way back in 1915. He went off to pilot training, then returned to the border in 1916 with the Punitive Expedition chasing Pancho Villa & co.

He went on to serve in Hawaii, where he was among the first aviators in the islands, as well as the commander of Luke Field on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. He also spent time in the Philippines and Alaska. In fact, “Johnny” Brooks wore just about every title one could back in the early years of American military aviation. His is a story worth studying.

There’s Always A Story To Tell

43-48414, a C-47B that looks like any other post-war Goony Bird going about its duties in the US Air Force, is actually a plane with a past. A combat veteran, this C-47 flew multiple missions with the 316th Troop Carrier Group during World War II, most notably in the skies over the Netherlands, dropping paratroopers and towing gliders during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. 

A-37 Dragonfly In Vietnam

 Bombed up and loaded with 20mm ammo, an early A-37 awaits its next mission.

Size does not always matter. Take, for instance, the Cessna T-37 “Tweet”. Standing only waist-high and with an empty weight akin to that of a large SUV of today, it was nonetheless transformed into a highly lethal warplane, as seen here. The likely location of this photo is Nha Trang Air Base, South Vietnam. This bird began life as a regular Cessna T-37B (56-3465), but after a major overhaul, it emerged as 67-14519, an A-37A Dragonfly. 

America’s Healthiest Girl and Miss America Finally Meet

UPDATE! *

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I do not know the identity of the lovely “Healthiest Girl in America”*, but I do know that “Miss America” was a young beauty named Margaret Ekdahl. It should be mentioned that the quotation marks bracketing her title are not solely for the purpose of appellation: Miss Ekdahl was not the Miss America but rather Miss Florida. However, when this photo was taken in 1930, the Miss America Pageant had been dormant for several years. This lapse provided an opportunity for the City of Miami to create its own contest of the same name. After conveniently disqualifying all out-of-state frontrunners, such as Miss Texas and Miss California, Florida girl Margaret Ekdahl took the prize.

 

The be-goggled fellow on the left is indeed the pilot, Mr. Jerome Waterhouse (He was also president of Maas Bros. Department Stores). His aircraft of choice looks to be a Brunner-Winkle Bird with a Kinner B5 engine.

 

Pity the poor sash-less woman next to Mr. Waterhouse – she is the only female in the photo who does not wear a title.

*Update! “Miss Healthiest Girl in America” has been identified by a distinguished visitor to this site, and an impeccable source: Her own proud granddaughter.  Grandma’s name: Miss Florence Irene Smock of Eustis, Florida.

At the time she was awarded the “Healthiest Girl” title, she was still a high school student. Young she may have been, but she had already figured out what was good and bad for one’s body. This is evidenced by a New York Times article dated July 23, 1930,  where it was declared that “Physicians, nerve specialists and experts in mental and social poise” had proclaimed Miss Smock’s health to be “98.7 per cent perfect.”

Florence Smock lived to be nearly 100 years old.