SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Retired Air Force test pilot Gerhard Schriever took a long time to close the loop on an aviation career that began in 1938 at Randolph Field and took him through the sound barrier. But when he finally did, it was in style.
Schriever climbed into the open cockpit of a vintage Boeing PT-17 Stearman on Thursday at Stinson Municipal Airport, where he first flew as a teenager. He wore a cap and goggles, just as he did when he soloed at Randolph in 1939.
“You’re here and you’re 102 years old, and you say, ’Man, this is where I started,’” Schriever told the San Antonio Express-News (https://bit.ly/1IlaWPs).
The flight was a gift for veterans living at Independence Hill and Blue Skies of Texas, two San Antonio retirement communities. Flights for the veterans, one of them a woman pilot from World War II and another a survivor of the WWII battle at Bastogne, began Wednesday and will continue today.
The Ageless Aviation Dreams Foundation, a nonprofit that honors seniors and military veterans living in long-term care facilities, brought the seniors to Stinson, where they hopped aboard the blue-and-yellow biplane for 25-minute flights. The foundation, established in 2011 by Darryl and Carol Fisher, will make 520 flights this year.
Schriever was the oldest of those converging on Stinson, with the others ranging from 78 to 94. Most were retired officers. One of them was Dorothy Ann Lucas, who served with the Women Airforce Service Pilots - the WASPs - flying targets in an AT-6 Texan. It was the first time women flew military planes.
Eduardo Botello was a draftee. He landed on Normandy six days after the invasion and was his infantry squad’s Browning Automatic Rifle gunner in four major battles, including the siege of Bastogne. He earned three Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star with valor and a Presidential Unit Citation by the time he was badly wounded in the spring of 1945.
“It was when I was doing some good shooting, and then the Germans brought up a tank in front of a house where I was shooting from,” said Botello, who bears a shrapnel scar on his neck. “And the only thing I saw was the tank fire from the cannon, and that’s all I remember.”
Like Schriever, Lucas learned to fly in a Stearman and recalls moving into the Texan, a trainer, for an additional 30 hours of instruction. She later flew targets behind the Texan as young air crews trained for battle.
Lucas fell back into an old habit when she flew Thursday: looking into a mirror and checking her lipstick as she landed with pilot Mike Sommars. WASP founder Jacqueline Cochran required it, believing that her pilots should look their best once on the ground.
“Dorothy, your lipstick is perfect,” Sommars wrote on a cap he gave her.
Schriever is something of a miracle.
A career test pilot who broke the sound barrier in a T-38 Talon flown by Chuck Yeager, he served for 29 years and still lives on his own, driving short distances and cooking his own breakfast. Though slowed by age, he’s got many memories, one of a slight lifting motion of the supersonic trainer as it broke Mach 1.
“You got to remember with people who went through flying school, they all fly pretty much the same, but he was a smooth pilot, there was no doubt about that,” Schriever, who commanded Edwards AFB, said of Yeager.
The Stearman, a two-seat biplane made of wood, welded steel and fabric, is an old love because it was the first aircraft he flew on his own. As the cloudy afternoon turned sunny Thursday, memories rushed back.
Schriever took the controls, flying the Stearman with no trouble as Sommars gave directions, perhaps proving wrong the old saying that there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.
“Put me down as an old, bold pilot,” Schriever laughed. “That’s good for my confidence.”
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Information from: San Antonio Express-News, https://www.mysanantonio.com
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