Outline: It is desired to trace the aviation biography, including details of flying activities, of an early aviator who began flying in 1915 and was killed in combat in WWII.
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| Consolidated B-24 LiberatorClick on photo to enlarge |
I was a 4-year old child, one of three brothers; one two years older and the other two years younger. After that day in 1943, our lives, with that of our mother, took a distinctly new path. For 15 years, we lived a peripatetic existence, moving from state to state, residing variously with relatives in SC and VA, boarding school, or apartments in DC, SC, VA, MD, etc. Finally, our Mom married a wonderful man in 1957. Dad, as I came to know him for 40 years as my step-father, was a wonderful source of support and happiness for mother and sons, until her death in 1995 and his death 9 months later.
Recently, a niece did a genealogy chart for my mother's family. This prompted in me a curiosity about my father, who I hardly remember, except for an airplane ride at age 3 or 4 in Missouri. My older brother has only vague recollection; my younger brother none at all. So, per Socrates' admonition that, "the unexamined life is not worth living", I mused that it would be interesting to add further value to my father's life, in addition to the fact that he died in service to his country.
We were aware that he had an aviation pioneering history. His name is inscribed on a large bronze plaque at the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, as a member of the 'Early Birds',
a group of several hundred men who flew airplanes before 1916. We have his war medals, old photos, recollections of our half-brother in California, and our mother's brother in Florida, who is a retired Marine Aviator. We also have some newspaper clippings from the war period which alluded to his inaugurating several mail routes to South America while piloting flying boats from Miami, FL for Pan American World Airways in the late 1920's and 1930's. And, during that period he also was a Captain and a pilot in the U. S. Marine Corps Reserve. Additionally, there are letters from the War Department to my mother and a recollection of his reinterment in Arlington Cemetery after the War. Some of the family recollections, as well as a book written in 1948 indicate that he also flew for the USAAC and the Royal Flying Corps in WWI. The book, titled "Wobbly - the Rough-And-Tumble Story of an American Radical, was authored by Ralph Chaplin and published by the University of Chicago Press in 1948. It contains several references to events in his life for which we have no documentation, and which are difficult to reconcile with the known record.
The sum of what we have, with its spotty references, is precious little information about a man's amazingly varied 28-year flying career, reaching from the virtual dawn of aviation pre-WWI, through the inception of commercial air travel and into the age of aerial devastation; as witnessed during WWII.
| 1911 Wright FlyerThis is the actual aircraft
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My recent acquaintance with the cyberspace world known as the Internet has inspired an attempt to trace the details of his exploits. However, the luxury of a consolidated, computer utilized, concise source of information, with easy entrance to detailed, cross-referenced records just doesn't exist. This utopia would itself be a wonderful learning experience in contemporary 'Net activities, but as it turns out, the desired information is much more obscure. The first few journeys to the Internet has revealed the many practical difficulties of researching the archival world of pre-cyberspace.
The electronic computer was barely a notion at the time of Maj. Schultz's death. The tools of the 'records' trade were ink pen, index cards, rotary-dial telephones, Smith-Corona manual typewriters, manila folders, carbon paper, and card-file drawers; hardly accessible by CPU's, ISP's, hard-drives, URL's, cable modems, and object-relational databases.
Being that I'm a product of the pre-baby boomer period (age 62), it was necessary for me to become partially 'Net literate to even discover the disparity between the antiquated record compendium and the cyberspace database. The latter has been extremely helpful, but the earliest attempts have, like peeling away an outer layer of an onion, exposed underneath the many subsequent layers which must be skillfully traversed to reach the center, wherein the pertinent information lays. The deeper layers have proven to be a mixed blessing, revealing the fact that most, in fact the greatest volume, of the information is scattered, with no clearly definable central thread to follow. This is no problem, of course, provided that one possesses the appropriate URL. But, searches have revealed that many seemingly meaningful targets are either not what was expected, or are no longer existent, or provided circuitous paths leading to dead ends, or they required communication with other parties who do not reply to inquiries, for whatever reason, or provided redundant data, or are slow to respond because they are wonderfully considerate and want to research their responses, or they are simply on travel. One target had indicated that the requested data is being worked on and will be available in late August. It's now December and there is still no reply.
For completeness, there is the added category of data which is not in electronic form, requiring remote manual labor in scanning, or actual physical travel to make it available. I made a trip to Miami, FL to scrutinize the physical records of Pan American World Airways at the University of Miami in Coral Gables.
| A Pan Am Clipper (Sikorsky S-42), |
These records are only coarsely catalogued, consisting of 670 boxes the size of file cabinet drawers. A half a day there made me realize that I should come back another time, with plenty of time on hand, say, a week.
My older brother made a trip to Maryville, MO to interview people who remember my father when he conducted a flying school program for Northwest Missouri State University for two years, in anticipation of and just before the U.S.A. became involved in WWII. This project produced upwards of 250 pilots who were pre-trained and ready to join the U. S. armed services when the U.S. finally declared war.
My younger brother and his daughter and sons have accumulated numerous hours through various media researches. The youngest (Matt) is a law student at University of Florida in Tallahassee. He has repeatedly come up with interesting Internet links and other data.
So now we're dealing essentially with wasted time; a lot of wasted time. In any event, it points up the obscure nature of information from the early years and the necessity of being precisely informed, initially, of the data requested, in order to reduce wasted time.
The Internet has characteristics similar to humans; it needs for the inquiry to be simple, short, and specific. Beyond this, the Internet, for archives of an obscure nature, requires the assistance of human memory; i.e., people. I had to discover the fact that when it comes to the historical nature of human beings, there has to be an eventual interaction with people and their memories. Now I have a more subjective understanding of the value of mailing lists; the opportunity to reach out and ask someone for assistance, at the point where mere keystrokes have reached a state of diminishing returns. Someone 'out there' may have a clue as to who to ask the next question and where to make the best inquiry next, when the magic of the Internet has no specific record of certain details of interest.
I arrive at a research project which describes a situation of inquiry and a method of solution which I am following. This documentation is intended to record the path I traverse and to share the obstacles and the results, in the hope that I will eventually assemble a cogent, quasi-complete, satisfying narrative of our father's history. I also expect that the possibility exists that someone else may be able to take advantage of what we discover along the way. After all, helping others is the highest form of activity.
The starting point of the project at hand is the assemblage of references noted in paragraph 3 above, specifically the Chaplin book. Because several family members recalled Maj. Schultz's friendship with Chaplin in the late 30's, we figured his book may provide some valuable clues about the Major's aviation life prior to WWII. This necessitated a search of the Library of Congress database, www.loc.gov, revealing 4 copies of the book resident. A trip to Capitol Hill in downtown DC was scheduled.
Reviewing the book brought many surprises; information previously unsuspected about Maj. Schultz. The first shock came when I saw a picture in the book which was an exact duplicate of one possessed by our family. This was meaningful, since there is no reference in the book to my father by full name, only as "Captain Eddy". This photo left no doubt that "Captain Eddy" was my father, with the 'Captain' springing from the photo of my father wearing the uniform of a Captain(Res.) in the U.S. Marines. However, the photo was taken in 1935, which opened another can of mystery. Even greater shock arose from the realization that the author, Chaplin, and "Captain Eddy" met in Leavenworth prison, probably sometime in 1918 or 1919. Chaplin was a proponent of the I.W.W. (International Workers of the World), a socialist organization which was known by the nickname "Wobbly's". He was apparently in prison for some sort of seditious activity during the war. A brief segment of the book simultaneously illuminates my amazement and describes the furthering of my desire to know more. From page 270,
"As the war (WWI) reached its peak, military prisoners began to arrive in ever increasing numbers. One day, while a large contingent of court-martial victims from overseas were lined up awaiting admission to the prison, somebody hung a sheet from a front-wall window on which had been daubed in black letters: "Welcome Home, Soldier'. There was a big to-do about that incident, but nothing was ever done about it.
Occasionally, I would help out in the photographic department during the noon hour. One morning, while marching in line to the office, I had seen a young aviator being led in under special guard. He was heavily manacled. Handcuffs, anklets, and an iron band around the neck had been riveted on, and all three were connected with a dangling chain. He still wore a uniform of the U.S. Army and was carrying his rather unusual irons with a deprecating grin. Everybody, including "Bull" Leonard, remarked about the young man's pluck. An hour or two later in the record clerk's office, I was helping Wehde to fingerprint and photograph the new arrival. Tanner, in the blacksmith shop, had, we all hoped, painlessly, hammered off the irons. Even in prison dungarees, "Captain Eddy" looked more like a soldier than a convict. We became acquainted at once. With both of us it was the kind of friendship that lasts. Captain Eddy explained that he had been an air corps instructor and that his sentence was life imprisonment plus ten years. I was anxious to learn more about him."
...and so am I, and so this quest for the written record of an enigmatic personality, to elucidate the historical track of how a man could, in the context of aviation and the military, proceed from an 'Early Bird', to the USAAC and the Royal Flying Corps in WWI, through an eight-year prison tenure, to become a pioneering aviator for Pan Am, through being commissioned an officer and pilot in the USMC, and ending by flying and dying in combat as a pilot and Operations officer for a USAAF B-24 Bomber squadron in China in WWII. He left his grieving 'second' family with a Purple Heart, the Silver Star, and the Air Medal, as he was reinterred in Arlington National Cemetery in 1946, his body having been retrieved from China after the war was over.
The search for Maj. Schultz's official record begins with the Internet browser 'search engine'. It proceeds by referencing agencies, organizations, and individuals with possible information on his activities, in the hope that online sources emerge.
Step one is a review of the names of organizations mentioned so far:
The first pass through several search engines, using these key words produced many hundreds of sources, as might be imagined. A cursory visual scan of the resultant site names was applied to reduce the list to a manageable sixty or so, which by name seemed to be relevant to the particular agencies and/or dates of interest. Perusing these sites brought many more links, plus a growing awareness that the particulars of which I seek are not anywhere near the top layer of my peeling onion.
Step two is a survey of the second level site selections, which naturally evolved when doing much reading, with side sojourns to follow possible interesting clues. These clues usually arose in the form of another site or agency, or some individual who, when queried, either offered further sites to visit, or returned data pertinent to the details of Maj. Schultz's WWII units, or were helpful inpointing me to suggested locations for further records pertaining to an organization of interest, or a person who might have some knowledge of my needs. At the present, I term this collection the 'Results', even though they are at best intermediate locations. These 'Results' are fewer, seemingly more pertinent sites.
| A Pan Am Clipper in flight.click on image to enlarge |
In sum to date, I seek to find the repositories and ultimately the detailed records of Maj. Schultz's flying logs, or references to the dates, locations, origins and destinations, and types of aircraft flown, which could be military records, or civilian, or organizational, or archival, or whatever. This is the quest. So far, only the flight of his death, the Chaplin book references, the 'Early Birds' plaque, some records recovered from the flying school in Missouri, some newspaper clippings, and a photo of a 1931 Pan Am World Airways internal newsletter referring to a small child as the son of Capt. and Mrs. Schultz have been assembled as proof positive of his aviation existence. There is much to yet recover.
The most poignant result of the Internet search was discovery of a site managed by a person, Midge Meaney, who was present at my father's death. He was the tail-gunner of the fatal aircraft, named 'the Flamingo'.
A visit to the site reveals a detailed narrative of the event and photographs of the airplane, actually taken at the crash site; a moving moment, to say the least.
The records from WWI are, as one might imagine, more obscure. Visiting
put me in personal contact with Willis "Sam" Cole, curator of a military museum in Washington state. Several emails to and from this gentleman brought forth a most satisfying personal interaction, a marvelous change from the perfunctory replies of most responders. He has provided a record of the 373rd Bombardment Squadron, activated on January 28, 1942, with its training itinerary through its arrival in Yangkai, China on March 20, 1943. He also provided some specific official records channels which were not immediately evident in looking through the National Archives site
Understanding the bureaucracy of government records was helped by perusing
wherein a reference to the Bureau of Prisons provided a telephone number which led to an individual who had some knowledge of prison records for Ft. Leavenworth, KS. This person made us aware that Leavenworth was a military prison and a civilian prison, with possible sources for information on inmates both through the military and the civilian authorities.
You might have noticed that Internet responses have been entirely for the period of WWII and just prior. You might have also guessed that the pursuit of Maj. Schultz's military record has hit a time delay snag, waiting for the bureaucracy. Several sites state matter of factly that responses take a considerable time. Also, there has been doubt cast as to the existence of some important records due to a major fire at the National Public Records Center, in St. Louis in 1973.
Some 16 - 18 million files, about 80% of the total, were destroyed.
Further inquiries into the papers of Ralph Chaplin have returned a list of his belongings which contain some clues to indicate that searching these may bring up more details that were left out of his book. He has demonstrated by the manner of producing his book that he had a historian's discipline of accumulating and cataloguing material. The downside of this is that these materials rest in non-digital form at the Washington State Historical Society, in Tacoma. An email inquiry at researchcenter@wshs.wa.gov has essentially tantalized us into pondering the value of travel by one of the brothers to that location, along with a return to the University of Miami by another. A serendipitous possibility lies in the fact that "Sam" Cole resides in Kirkland, WA, about 35 miles from Tacoma. Maybe I'll have to see just how helpful he can be.
Currently the plan is to wait for responses from the agencies mentioned at
in addition to those mentioned above.
Also, it is planned to peer further into several sites which appear to have possible clues as to the whereabouts of information; for example:
and to establish a dialogue with several mailing lists, joining any that may have potential. A drawback is that a couple that seem fruitful at first glance require a subscription, which if pursued with any intensity create a potential revenue sink. If multiple sources make the same recommendation, it may justify the exenditures. One example, requiring a $37 payment is
Additional leads which need to be further researched relate to federal prison records, Federal Pardons, since Maj. Schultz was apparently received a pardon sometime in the mid-twenties, and the Chicago Tribune archives, since several articles on Maj. Schultz's Pan Am exploits were apparently authored by a columnist there in the 30's. Also, some barely legible clippings from the Kansas City Star newspaper contain some unverified, sometimes contradictory information. So it is with newspapers.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of potential sites to be visited, but it's clear that a time factor must be considered, allowing for the awareness that this will be a continuing journey.
This Webpage, Major Schultz's Aviation History, has been established and will be used to codify the pertinent information received. The webpage architecture will be such as to allow persons who receive our broadcasts to acquaint themselves with our hunt and perhaps to respond to my email address with any assistance possible. Connections with a few more people like Sam Cole and Midge Meaney may just lead us to a satisfying conclusion. Certainly the diversity of organizations and data source ubiquity make it necessary for founding this webpage as a central repository.
The final objective is to assemble a cogent, chronological record of verified facts which will allow the compilation of a reasonably precise narrative of Maj. Schultz's long and unusual aviation career. Our curiosity is the driving force.
| A Pan Am Clipper taxiing for takeoff.click on image to enlarge |
One fact stands out. That fact is: there is no possible way that this quest can be performed in any meaningful time frame, including the time of life that I hope I have left, without the miracle of the Internet; as well as the contributions from interested persons doing the most fascinating aspect of life, taking an interest in the other members of the human race.
The links to other sites mentioned in the text above are available in the Good Links page.
Edward G. Schultz |
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1898 - 1943 |