28 May Roswell Remembers Memorial Day 2015
Each year in my hometown of Roswell, GA, the Rotary Club and the City work together to organize what is reportedly the largest Memorial Day ceremony in the southeast. I’ve written about our Memorial Days before and how hard we work to honor all veterans and the sacrifices they made to protect our freedom.
Robert and Robin Olds … both legends in aviation history
This year’s featured speaker was Christina Olds. She wrote a book about her father, Robin Olds. Her father! I perked up right away. Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds. During the final years of his life, Christina’s Dad worked with her and with fellow fighter pilot/author Ed Rasimus to chronicle these memories, so important to the history of the Air Force.
Much of her family’s story relates specifically to what I’ve been studying in order to write about my own father’s war experiences…
The story begins with Christina’s grandfather. a pursuit pilot (what they called fighter pilots) during WWI. In the 1930s Lieutenant Colonel Robert Olds was commander of the 2nd Bombardment Group at Langley Field when the first dozen B-17s were delivered. The mission of his group was to develop a system of training for this new airplane, destined to become a strategic weapon. Robert Olds led B-17 flights around the world, demonstrating its performance as a record-breaking airplane.
If you google the term “Bomber Mafia,” you will also find that Robert Olds was a charter member of this group of military theorists, thought by some to be deranged fanatics, who believed that heavy bombers would be a critical force in an upcoming war and that there needed to be an independent Air Force. They were the politically incorrect visionaries of their time.
Grandfather Olds taught his son Robin how to name the planes landing and taking off by the sounds of their engines. Visitors to their home included the likes of Billy Mitchell, Hap Arnold, Tooey Spaatz, Ira Eaker, Beirne Lay, Eddie Rickenbacker … All would make their marks in aviation history.
Even before the U.S. was in the war, Hap Arnold gave Robert Olds the job of creating a new organization to ferry airplane from the factories to the bases. This became the Air Transport Command. Olds was supportive of the idea of giving women pilots the job of ferrying these planes, a concept which soon became a reality.
Son Robin graduated from West Point, Class of ’43, in three years, his studies condensed due to the outbreak of World War II. After graduation and training, he flew P-38 Lightnings and P-51 Mustangs with the 479th and 434th Fighter Squadrons. He never forgot his three missions over the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, watching helplessly as the Germans fired down on our boys from the tops of the cliffs. His orders were not to fire at anything on the ground, and with a heavy heart he obeyed his orders.
Robin Olds ended WWII as a double ace. He was 23 years old, and his career had only begun. On the back cover of Fighter Pilot, one author describes him as “the greatest aerial warrior America ever produced.” By the time he had been to Vietnam, to the Air Force Academy … by the time he had grown his signature handlebar mustache, Robin Olds had indeed become a legend.
You can read the story of the remarkable life of Robin Olds in Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds … Christina’s next project is the biography of her grandfather, Major General Robert Olds. Can’t wait to read it!
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