Military Monday: On the Flight Line
The photo posted here is my father, LT Arden Packard, USN, with his Corsair aircraft. It was taken at Naval Air Station Miami, FL, about 1942. He had been fascinated by flight at least since high school, if not earlier. At his school, he had been a member of the Aero Club in the 1920s. When he graduated in 1929, he enlisted in the Navy and took basic training at San Diego, where he was enumerated in the 1930 census. He was also enumerated in that census at the family home in Pasadena, nobody having told the enumerator that he was in the Navy and stationed elsewhere.
He qualified to take a competitive exam for an appointment to Annapolis. He passed, and entered the Naval Academy in the summer of 1930, graduating in 1934. He received orders to the aircraft carrier Saratoga, and after that, to the Farragut. In 1936, he was sent to Naval Air Station Pensacola, FL, for flight training. Upon completion, he was ordered to the carrier Yorktown, but this time as a member of a fighter squadron, not as a member of the deck department, as before. From there, he spent time attached to carriers out of Norfolk, VA, and then Coronado, CA.
Dad was medically retired in February of 1941, but was called back to active duty in October of 1941. Perhaps no solid information was circulating about what was about to happen that December, but there was some sort of build-up going on if the Navy was recalling broken-down old pilots.
His next assignment was to Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, as a flight instructor. During that assignment, he was sent to the Empire Central Flying School, a facility of the Royal Air Force in England, to learn the tactics the British were using against the Germans. He brought that knowledge back to NAS Jax to teach his students.
Dad retired from the Navy after World War II was over. He died 25 April 1954.
4 comments:
Such an interesting angle on WWII - your dad must have been good to be called back and become an instructor!
How fantastic that you have that photo! Interseting that he was called back if he retired medically. He must have been very good at what he did to be called back! Why did he retire medically? How did he die so young? Just curious. :)
@ Diane Henriks: He was an excellent pilot; one fitness report put him in the top 5% of Naval aviators. That's "Top Gun" territory. I answered these questions on the Geneabloggers page, but I'm going to repeat that here so any others who may read this blog entry will know:
He had digestive problems all his life. His mother used a particular way of cooking his food in a special pot. My aunt described it as a "water cooker." Anyway, he also "Fletcherized," a way of chewing one's food practically to a fine mush. Mom said he chewed even Jell-O and milk! I do remember him looking at us 3 kids at our dinner table in Tarzana, California, not long before he died, and telling us, "Don't do this." He was medically retired because of a colon resection surgery. That's why there must have been something afoot for him to have been called back to active duty later that same year, 1941. The cause of his death was a pneumonia caused by a Klebsiella species of bacterium, the particular type of pneumonia also known as Friedlander's pneumonia. These days, it's cured with a course of Tetracycline. But there was no Tetracycline in 1954; also, his immune system was weakened by his digestive troubles.
Great photo to have! My Dad was a test pilot during WW II in the Army Air Corps and those were some of his happiest memories ever. Thanks for sharing.
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