This was an organization that began in the Air Force during the Second World War in the Pacific. It had such members as Barry Goldwater and Jimmy Doolittle, who led the famous first air raid on Japan in 1942. They kept it going after the war and added people from the air industry.
I knew the founder, James E. Crane, and he made me a member. It was called the International Order of Characters and everybody was given a character name. I was called Specks.
We even had two Japanese members who were surviving WWII Kamikaze pilots, each sporting irreverent Character nicknames of their own.
We used to have a spring meeting in Stamford and then a fall meeting at some great vacation spot. I mentioned before about our trip to the Air Force Academy. The reason for our invitation was because Senator Goldwater had been instrumental in locating the Air Force Academy in Colorado.
One of my first meetings in Stamford was when we relived the Battle of Britain. We had Adolf Galland, who was in command of the German Messerschmitts, and Peter Townsend, who was in charge of the British fighter force. They had wonderful pictures, gun movies and great personal stories.
They were on their way to do the same thing at the Air and Space Museum in D.C. I got to know Adolf and we became friends. I saw him again when we were with the IOC on the Greek Isle trip.
One of the early members was a man by the name of Joe Grant. We called him Jose. Before the Second World War, he was a pilot for TWA. The USA was just getting interested in the oil in Saudi Arabia. King Saud wanted a private plane. President Franklin Roosevelt accommodated him and assigned Jose to be the king's pilot.
While he was there, he heard about the puzzle rings. These were rings with multle rings that were difficult to take off without all the rings not coming back together. They are used as wedding rings in that part of the world.
When Jose came back to the USA, he had a coronary and could not fly for TWA. He went into the ring business and created dozens of designs. He used his pilot friends as his salesmen. Over the years, he became a very fancy jeweler. As of July 2017, he was still alive.
Enola Gay
One of the other trips was to D.C. We took over the Air and Space Museum for our party. That was a lot of fun. One of our tours was out in Maryland, where they had lots of famous planes that someday would be restored. One of them was the B-29 Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Another one was a DC-3.
One of my friends, Vince O’Toole, was Chief Pilot for American Airlines. He mentioned to the group that he recognized that plane. Everyone chided him by saying that it was a DC-3. He said he knew this plane and walked around to the side where there was the name. It was the Caroline. It was Joe Kennedy’s private plane. He said when old man Kennedy bought it from American, he went over to be the pilot for a few months. He said that old man Kennedy, accompanied by three women, would make him do a flight to nowhere.
The man who was giving us the tour was not impressed by our group and did not know whom he was talking to in the air industry. Then we got to the helicopters. He explained this one in particular was designated as H-99. One of our members said he knew why it had that number. It was because 98 did not fly. Everyone laughed loudly.
The tour guide asked our member why he knew that and what was his name. He said he was Siege Sirkorsky. His father, Igor, had invented the helicopter. Igor lived in Paris, but he came to the USA once and we got to hear him speak. Siege lived in Connecticut and worked for the company.
Barry Goldwater
In 1983, the IOC had a trip to Greece followed by a boat trip to see the Greek Isles. Senator Goldwater was with us. He was head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. We were about to leave the dock, and a limousine came and took him away. The boat had to wait particularly since the owner was with us on the boat and he was one of our drinking buddies.
It seems the U.S. had just invaded Granada that morning and the Embassy was informing him.Sally became very friendly with Senator Goldwater during the trip and ended having a bet with him over the Super Bowl. During that trip, we became friendly again with Galland and had a marvelous time hearing his stories. Despite his age, he was 71 at the time, he had a great looking woman with him in her 20s. We went to Crete, Malta, Ephesus, Istanbul, Santorini and Mykanos. He sent me an autographed copy of his book.
Galland's post-war history is also interesting. At the end of the war, many Germans were making themselves unknown and going to South America and living quietly. He went to Argentina and became head of Juan Peron’s Air Force. When that show folded, he went back to Germany and became executive VP of Lutfthansa. Then when Germany was allowed to develop an Air Force again, he was the middleman who bought its Air Force from the USA.
Test Pilot
At one of the meetings, one of our members, I don't remember his name, gave a lecture on the new plane in which he was the test pilot. He was just retiring.
Most of his life, he held all the speed records until recently when the Russians beat him. He asked the Air Force if he could push this new plane so he could end his career with the record again. They said yes, but don’t push it to the max. He said the plane was so fast that when he left Vandenburg Air Force base he had to start his turn at San Francisco or he would be in Mexico.
They then decided to do the trials going from Vandenburg to Florida. The problem was that the electronic guidance system was not up to the speed of the plane. They could not follow the electronic homing beams across the country. At that point, he was using a Boy Scout compass.