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Posted on 08/07/2002 10:21:57 PM PDT by Snow Bunny
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Thank you soooooo much.
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Forgive my extreme vanity post. I don't want personal attention. Please. If you need to respond to my post, please direct it towards my father and others who have died for our country. I don't want my father forgotten. The Canteen does a very good job of bringing attention to those who have died for our country so their sacrifices may be remembered on a daily basis. I don't want anyone who gave their life for my beloved country forgotten. 9 years ago today he was shot in the head. I don't believe the official report of his death. I'll never know the truth. Finding closure has been the hardest part of all this. I found out about it on "Good Morning America". There were no good byes and no body to see. Alive one minute and gone the next. I never saw him again.
I believe he was executed....FOR BEING AN AMERICAN and for doing his job...doing his job WELL. My father was extremely intelligent, brave, courageous, and hysterically funny. Gosh, how I miss the way he snorted when he laughed and our long talks about religion, literature, history, poetry, music, drama and politics. I miss his mustache and the way it felt on my forehead when he kissed me. I miss his stupid puns and his silly jokes. He was a Republican (Thank God). It was by doing a search on his name, I found Free Republic. I believe he or God sent me here, then Jen sent me to the Canteen, and on and on we can go.
Life is awfully short isn't it? He was 45 when he was killed, one month shy of his 46th birthday. He helped bring 5 children into this world, me being the oldest. August the 8th is always very hard for me. Actually a day never goes by when it "isn't hard". But after talking to LindaSOG and RadioAstronomer, I think I'll be ok this year. Finally, I'll be ok this year.
Thank you friends for giving me an outlet to talk about him. I always feel as if I can't or shouldn't because of who his employer was. People look at me like I am crazy when I talk about my dad, "Suuuuuuure your dad was in the CIA and was killed. Riiiiight"! So I don't talk about it much. I've opened up a little since I signed up at Free Republic as "Spookbrat" and that name gets a lot of questions via Freepmail. I can't really avoid it can I? LOL I should have known better. Feeling as if I can't talk about him, I've had to grieve alone all these years, with the help of my aunts and grandparents, so I am grateful Snow Bunny gave me the opportunity to share about him with the public and with good friends.
<-----click on the picture and remember
One of his favorite poems:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the
anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the
cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn
pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.
-- Abraham Lincoln, November 1864
Freddie Russel Woodruff
Specialist 5, United States Army
Centeral Intelligence Agency Officer
In 1923, Grover Leoning designed a unique observation amphibian aircraft powered by an inverted Liberty engine. First designated the COA-1, it combined features of both a landplane and seaplane by merging the fuselage and hull into a single structure, eliminating the hanging floats and the elevated engine of a seaplane. Between 1924 and 1928, the Army ordered 45 OA-1s primarily for use in the Hawaiian and Phillippine Islands and regions with numerous lakes and large rivers. Of these, 15 were OA-1As.
The "San Francisco" on display was one of five OA-1As which on Dec. 21, 1926 embarked from San Antonio, Texas on a 22,000-mile Pan American Good Will tour of 25 Central and South American countries which lasted until May 2, 1927. Its pilots were Capt Ira C. Eaker and Lt. Muir S. Fairchild. The MacKay Trophy and Distinguished Flying Cross were awarded to all the fliers who made the flight.
The Loening OA-1A, San Francisco, in the National Air and Space Museum's collection participated in the historic Pan-American Goodwill Flight of 1926 and 1927. The project was proposed by Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick, Chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He suggested a flight through Mexico and Central and South America to improve relations with Latin American countries, to encourage commercial aviation, and to provide valuable training for Air Corps personnel. (Patrick had planned the successful round-the-world flight of the Douglas World Cruisers in 1924.) The idea was enthusiastically endorsed by the Secretary of War, Dwight Davis, and the Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg. Supporters of the flight hoped also that the mission would interest the Latin American nations in U.S. aircraft and engines, emphasize the advantages of aviation for transportation and communications in regions that were without rail or road transport, and to help stimulate the struggling U.S. aircraft industry.
The flight was made by ten pilots in five aircraft. The airplane type selected for the mis-sion was the Loening OA-1A amphib-ian, a design by Grover Loening that had recently been submitted to the Air Corps for evaluation as a new observation aircraft. The hull was constructed of duralumin over a wooden frame, and the fuselage was built on top of the hull. The OA-lA was powered by a 420-horsepower, water-cooled Liberty V-12 engine that was mounted inverted. This orientation of the engine was necessary for the propeller to clear the forward end of the hull. However, mounting the engine upside down created maintenance problems. Unless the piston rings were perfectly fitted, oil leaked past them, fouling the spark plugs. It was nor-mal at each stop to remove the twenty-four plugs and clean and re-place them before starting the next leg of the journey.
Another time-consuming and laborious task was refueling. Gasoline in steel drums was stored along the route. It had to be hand-pumped through a chamois-covered funnel into the fuel tanks. At a normal rate of sixty gallons per hour, it took more than three hours to fill the Loening's full capacity of 200 gallons.
The weight of the each airplane, fully loaded, including all the supplies and baggage carried on the Pan American Flight, was nearly three tons. In spite of the weight, flying character-istics of the OA-1A were very good. An average cruising speed of 85 to 90 mph was maintained during the Goodwill Flight. The utility of the aircraft and their design and construction details were thoroughly tested, and proved to be excellent. The versatile airplanes were able to make forced landings that would have been impossible for other types of aircraft.
To stimulate public interest, each of the five airplanes was named after a major U.S. city. They were the New York, the San Antonio, the San Francisco, the Detroit, and the St. Louis. Crew members on the Goodwill Flight were:
The New York-Major Herbert A. Dargue, pilot and commander of the flight; First Lieutenant Ennis Whitehead, copilot.
The San Antonio-Captain A.B. McDaniel, pilot; First Lieutenant Charles McK. Robinson, copilot.
The San Francisco-Captain Ira C. Eaker, pilot; First Lieutenant Muir S. Fairchild, copilot.
The Detroit-Captain C.F. Woolsey, pilot; First Lieutenant John W. Benton, copilot.
The St. Louis-First Lieutenant Bernard S. Thompson, pilot; First Lieutenant L. D. Weddington, copilot.
Advance officers visited all the planned stops, selected landing areas, arranged the diplomatic schedule, and selected representatives who were contracted to store the advance ship-ments of engines, spare parts, and other supplies. The flight schedule included fifty-six flying days and seventy-seven de-lay days for maintenance and diplomatic meetings and ceremonies-a total of 133 days. As actually exe-cuted, the journey took 59 flying days and 74 delay days, and was thus completed ex-actly on schedule.
The 35,200 km (22,000 mi) flight began on December 21, 1926, from San Antonio, Texas. The course extended through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica; across the Panama Canal to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia; down the west coast of South America to Valdivia, Chile; across the Andes Mountains to Bahia Blanca, Argentina; north to Montevideo, Uruguay; up to Paraguay; back down the Paraná River; along the coasts of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, the Guianas, and Venezuela; thence through the West Indies and up the coast of the United States to Washington, D.C.
Diplomatic functions required that the airplanes remain a day or two at each of twenty-five capital cities on the route. In addition to participating in the ceremonial functions, the pilots also carried out all the maintenance work on the airplanes themselves, as there were no qualified aircraft maintenance technicians along the route. The stops had been carefully selected and spare parts were cached at strategic locations. At many of these places the local residents saw an airplane for the first time. Weather forecasting en route was very unreliable because no advance weather information facilities existed. To add to their difficulties, the pilots could communicate in flight only by hand signals.
One accident marred the tour. As the Detroit and the New York were approaching for a landing at the Argentine Air Service Field at Palomar, Buenos Aires, they collided in mid-air, killing the crew of the Detroit, and destroying both airplanes. The flight concluded at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C., on May 2, 1927. The fliers were greeted by President Calvin Coolidge and other dignitaries. Within three weeks, however, the historic flight was eclipsed in the public eye by the solo trans-Atlantic flight of Charles A. Lindbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis.
The participants in the two historic flights were also linked in another way. After his official welcome in Washington, Lindbergh flew to New York City for ceremonies on June 13, 1927. He landed at Mitchel Field, Long Island. There the Loening amphibian San Francisco awaited him, with Captain Ira C. Eaker as pilot. Utilizing the aircraft's unique ability to take off from land and alight in the water, Lindbergh was flown to a landing in New York harbor where he boarded a ship that took him to lower Manhattan for his triumphal entry into the city.
One of the long-term legacies of the Pan American Goodwill Fight was that it helped pioneer a trail for later commercial air transport operations. When Pan American Airways began South American air service about two years later, the company selected its stations in a pattern closely following the route of the Goodwill Flight.
The San Francisco was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution by the War Department in December 1927. It was restored by the National Air and Space Museum in 1964-1965.
SPECIFICATIONS
Span: 45 ft.
Length: 45 ft. 7 in.
Height: 12 ft. 1 In.
Weight: 5,000 lbs. maximum
Armament: (for standard OA-1A) One forward-firing and two flexible .30-caliber machine guns.
Engine: Liberty V-1650 of 425 hp.
Cost: $21,000
Serial number: 26-431
PERFORMANCE
Maximum speed: 122 mph.
Cruising speed: 90 mph.
Range: 750 miles
Service Ceiling: 13,500 ft.
I really miss him.
I'm tired.
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