Aero Vintage Books

Dear Scott, esteemed "Sharktail Posse", members, history buffs, and readers:

This is one of the most dificult things I've had to do.

I hope I can get through this

My father, Bernie Katz, took off on his last flight at an apporpriate time for a 12l-year-old recipient of "Quiet Birdmen" wings from Lindbergh himself at Rockaway Airport; last Friday just before 0500.

Dad had dropped out of high school under age 15 to work at Rockaway Airport as an apprentice mechanic and off-the-books flight student with Dita Beard(?). Every time he goofed up, Harry gordon would chaxse him all over and all around the airport with a big metal pipe!

Some gluteus maximus from someplace upstate managed to somehow get Dad to come up to his home-built airplane, powered with a motorcycle engine with the propellor turned BY BELTS! This area was bounded on all 4 sides by heavy forest. Somehow Dad managed to get it into the air; nose heavy? you betcha!! Now the next problem was getting the bleeping thing down and stopped before ramming the scenery! Dad somehow managed to do it, and was still shaking when the dodo walked up to him, smug as you could believe, bragging or celebrating; whatever, as soon as he was within range, Dad punched him right in the mouth!
Somehow apparently Lindbergh heard about this: one day Harry Gordon called Dad into the hangar, part of which served as the office; Lindbergh was sitting there.
Dad, 6'3" was known as "Shorty"; more about this anon. Anyway, Lindbergh, sitting there, said, "Got something for you, Shorty" and tossed Dad a set of Quiet Birdmen Wings! ( seem to recall Dad one time telling me that Lindy said, "I never knew we had test pilots as young as that" or something similar, but cannot swear to it.

That's just ONE thing that happened to Dad; he was there when a young San Diegan named Douglas Corrigan foew his rickety repaied Curtiss Robin, a Challenger-Robin (powered by a Curtiss Challenger radial engine, competition for the Wright J-6-5 that powered the Spirit of St. Louis) touched down at Roosevelt Field (?) Dad SAW it, and, even in 1939 at age 15, knew the wreck would never make it across the pond.
Here's the mystery: in the film "Flying Irishman", when Corrigan's airplane comes to a stop in New York, a short guy comes over and Corrigan says, "Service and fill her up for me will you, Shorty?" - and one of trhe cast menbers (DAMN these cataracts!!!) is listed as "Shorty somethingorother". I will always wonder if Grandma refused permission for thim to use Dad - unknown to him - or meybe even refused to let them refer to him.....

Dad also helped get the first batch of F6F Hellcats ready for the Pacific, met John W. Finn in gun turret school, saw D-Day from a B-26 Marauder's top turret, was a mechanic for Pan Am postwar and even got an award for simplifying servicing the DC-4's R2000 engines (I saw the letter; I hope we still have it!), worked at Pacific Airmotive Corp. at Lockheed Airport repairing/servicing jet engines, workedl for Convair at Edwards on the Atlas missile,l worked at Ara 51 on the A-11's J-58s for "Trot and Whinney", ( And met Howard Hughes likely during his time at Pacific Airmotive),
and they didn't want to let him go from Eastern Airlines because he knew more ways to salvage and repare a turbine blade than anyo ne else in the company!

THAT was my Dad. I miss him.
One of my wife's best friends is coming tomorrow. I have to help her clean up.
-Dan Katz

Ellen and I send our condolences, Dan. Thanks for sharing the post with us, and Godspeed to your father.

Scott

So very sorry for your lost. Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. It certainly seems like your Dad lived a very interesting and useful life . I'm sure he will have many comrades waiting for him along with St Peter at the Pearly Gates.

Sorry for your loss.

Thank you all so very much!
Dad was sort of an irascible, Archie Bunker, type;NRA life member, and the better he felt, the more sarcastic he'd get!

But what do they say? "Great men have great faults"?

He did ALL those things I've told you about, and more. I've told you the short version; I hope to write his life story along with my Mom's, even if part of an autobiography.

I can still recall being snuck into his quarters up on a ridge somewhere at Edwards AFB when I was only 9 or 10. I was pretty sick at the time, and he and Mom brought me into the room he shared with a man named "John", who gave me a back massage which semed to help.
I can recall going to a movie theater so small it only held about 20 people, and seeing the coming attractions for "The Giant Mantis" - or was it "Beggining or the End"?

Anyway, thank you all again for your kind thoughts - I don't think he'll have that many friends waiting to greet him, but my mother will definitely be there to help him. It's true, by the time he had the heart attack down in Miami, all his frineds had either died or moved away!

May God Bless you all!
Gratefully,
Dan