The next to the last WASP pilot to die in WWII

WASP Katherine Keeler Dussaq

The day after WASP Hazel Lee Louie died (25 November 1944); 39-year-old Kay Dussaq (Class 44-W-1) was in trouble over Western Ohio. Perhaps it was the freezing rain, the fog, or ice, but at about 8:45 in the evening Kay’s AT-6 was going down near New Carlisle, Ohio. For some reason, Kay was not wearing her safety harness, and when the plane crashed, she struck her head on the control stick and died instantly.

Katherine Applegate was born in Dayton, Washington, March 14, 1905. Hers was an Oregon pioneer family. In 1846, her great uncle,

WASP Katherine Keeler Dussaq

Jesse Applegate, had blazed the Applegate Trail into the Oregon Territory. Her Father, Arthur McClellan Applegate, had risen from laboring in a flourmill to manager of several flour mills in Oregon and Washington. He had married Kay’s mother, Clare Moritz, in November 1898. Kay was their third daughter and grew up in Dayton with her three sisters and two brothers. After graduation from Harrington High School, she

attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, and then the State College of Washington in Pullman. In 1924, she was one of 70 students out of 700 applicants accepted by Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California. She graduated in 1927 with a degree in Psychology.

In 1929, she and one of her friends from Stanford, Leonarde Keeler, went to Chicago and began working at Northwestern University in the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory. Kay and Leonarde married, August 14, 1930.

They divorced in May 1941 and the following December Kay married Rene Dussaq. Dussaq was a popular lecturer. Within days of their marriage, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and in March 1942, Dussaq enlisted. Kay closed her consulting business and went to work for the Piper Aircraft Cooperation in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.

Kay applied to the WASPs and began training at Avenger Field, August 9, 1943. By graduation the following February, she had raised her total flying time to over 400 hours. Her assignment was Sioux Falls Army Base in South Dakota, but soon she transferred to Randolph Field, near San Antonio, Texas.

WASP Katherine Applegate Keeler Dussaq

Because of her flying hours, and the recognition she had attained during her decade of scientific crime fighting, at age 39, Kay moved quickly from staff pilot to Coordinator of WASP activities. Just before her fatal flight, Kay had received another promotion. She moved to Training Command Headquarters in Houston as WASP Executive for all three training commands.

After her crash Kay was returned home for burial in the Dayton, Washington City Cemetery.

WASP Katherine Applegate Keeler Dussaq. Class 44-W-1.

(1905 – 26 November 1944)

A forgotten pioneer

BY  Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune November 26, 2018

One thing every History Snooper quickly learns is if you leave town too soon, history has a tendency to forget you. Even if you marry into a well-known and early arriving pioneer family, what you did and who you were fades like the sun wrapped in a summer haze of smoke.

Dr. Jesse Robinson is one of those men. On April 27, 1854, he married Lavinia Jane Constant, daughter of Isaac and Lucinda Constant. Jesse and Lavinia’s marriage was one of the earliest recorded in Jackson County. Her family settled here in 1852.

Jesse seems to have spent very little time as a doctor and was apparently more interested in politics, mining and investments.

His Robinson House was an early wooden hotel that stood in Jacksonville, right where the U.S. Hotel stands today. It was the site of that January 1854 convention of delegates from Southern Oregon and Northern California who were seeking to form a new state. Jesse was one of the 10 delegates from Jackson County.

Jacksonville, Oregon - 1880s

His business interests included a gristmill that ground wheat and other grains into flour; a packing company, bringing supplies into Jacksonville; and a sawmill. He was also a partner with William Bybee and others in mining claims throughout Southern Oregon and Northern California.

The youngest child of Jesse and Abiah Robinson, Jesse was born Aug. 28, 1825, in New York. He began medical school in Woodstock, Vermont, when he was just 18. He graduated three years later and then moved to Iowa, where he practiced medicine until leaving for California gold in 1849.

He worked as a miner and did a considerable amount of prospecting in Northern California. With the organization of Shasta County, Jesse was elected the county’s first clerk. Soon, he bought a ranch in Scott Valley and began raising cattle. In 1853, he moved to Southern Oregon, married Lavinia, and, three years later, bought Alonzo Skinner’s land claim. The claim was conveniently located right next to his father-in-law’s claim, on the east side of Bear Creek, near today’s Central Point.

When the Civil War erupted, Jesse joined as first lieutenant in the Baker Guards, the first Union regiment formed in Southern Oregon. Oregon Gov. Addison Gibbs appointed Jesse as quartermaster of the First Regiment of Cavalry, Oregon Volunteers. The unit patrolled much of the Northwest, including along the Columbia and Snake rivers. Jesse was at Fort Boise and signed the treaty between the U.S. government and the Shoshone tribe of American Indians.

Jesse sold his property and his Jacksonville home in October 1868, but held on to his mining interests. He took his wife and five children to Oakland, California, where another child was born. The town’s residents elected him Oakland Township Assessor, a position he held for six years. Retiring in 1887 to Vacaville, California, north of San Francisco, he grew fruit on his 160 acres of orchards.

There were regular visits back to Oregon for reunions with Lavinia’s family, and a time when Jesse could tour some of his mine properties, but the Robinson family remained in California.

Jesse died of heart trouble in 1899 at age 73 and Lavinia passed in 1931 at age 97.

Maybe they’ve been forgotten; however, there’s an adage that says something like, “you’re never really dead until the last person says your name.”
That’s the sort of thing we do here. Saying names and telling forgotten stories.

WASP Pilot Hazel Lee - A Thanksgiving Heartbreak

It was an unusually warm Thanksgiving afternoon in Great Falls, Montana.

With partly cloudy skies, light winds and temperatures holding in the low 50s, operations at the nearby Army airfield were running with clockwork precision.

 

Alaska-Siberia Air Route

Yes, Nov. 23, 1944, was a holiday, but with a war on, this wasn’t a time for Air Corps pilots to take a break. Here, at the last U.S. stop on the Alaska-Siberia Air Route, rapid, nonstop landings and takeoffs continued well into the evening. Pilots were ferrying brand new aircraft from manufacturers across the country to Montana and then on to Alaska. From there, Soviet pilots, America’s allies, would fly them on to the Soviet Union.

In the early afternoon, the Great Falls tower gave Women Airforce Service Pilot Hazel Ying Lee Louie permission to land. Because her flight from the Bell Aircraft factory in Niagara Falls, New York, had been delayed by a snowstorm in North Dakota, she was anxious to land.

 

WASP Pilot Hazel Ying Lee Louie

What Hazel didn’t know was that Lt. Charles Russell, in a much faster airplane, was attempting an emergency landing from behind without control from the tower. His radio was out and he didn’t see Hazel below him. When the controller saw the impending collision, he ordered both pilots to pull up and abort. Russell never heard the order, but Hazel did, and immediately pulled up and smashed into the belly of Russell’s descending plane. There was a loud explosion and a huge fireball as both aircraft fell to the runway.

Hazel was born and raised in Portland. The 32-year-old’s parents had come from China in 1910 and opened a grocery and variety store.

In September 1931, the Japanese Army invaded Manchuria and began bombing civilians. American-Chinese were outraged and donated money to fund flight training in the United States for pilots who would fly and fight for China. The newly formed Chinese Flying Club of Portland began accepting memberships, and, by May 1932, 36 students, including Hazel Lee and one other woman, were in the air over the Columbia River.

 

WASP Pilot Hazel Ying Lee Louie

Hazel left for Shanghai in March 1933, hoping to fight with the Chinese national air force. She was disappointed to learn that women weren’t allowed to fly combat. Instead, she flew cargo and passengers, and by the spring of 1935 she was a flight instructor who occasionally dropped propaganda leaflets over the countryside. After six years in China, she came home.

She stopped flying and traveled to New York in an attempt to forget the devastation she’d seen. There she worked for the Chinese government, supporting the Chinese war effort by buying necessary war materials. While there, she reunited with Clifford Louie, now a major in the Chinese air force. They had learned to fly together in Portland and had left for China together.

After formation of the WASP in 1942, Hazel joined them as quickly as she could. Two months after graduation, and barely a year before her Thanksgiving collision in Montana, Clifford and Hazel married, but they would never see each other again.

Just after 2 o’clock, the flaming airplanes fell to the runway. Lt. Russell managed to get out and run to safety with minor injuries, but Hazel, knocked unconscious and trapped in the burning plane, had to be pulled out and rushed to the base hospital, There, she died a painful death two days later.

 

Hazel's airplane on the Great Fall Army Airfield runway

Officials at Portland’s Riverview Cemetery at first opposed Hazel’s burial because she was Chinese, but they later relented. On Dec. 1, 1944, Hazel Ying Lee Louie’s parents buried their daughter in a vaulted gravesite overlooking the Willamette River.

Hazel's brother, Victor, was killed in action just three days later in Europe.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “To Live and Die a WASP, 38 Women Pilots Who Died in WWII.” Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.

BY  Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune November 19, 2018

 http://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/a-thanksgiving-heartbreak

Eugene Ely and the Birth of Naval Aviation

14 November 1910- Pioneer #Aviator Eugene Ely in the Curtiss built “Hudson Flyer,” took off from the cruiser Birmingham, thus completing the first flight from ship to shore—the birth of Naval aviation.

Aviator Eugene Ely

(An excerpt from Eugene Ely, Daredevil Aviator)

On Monday morning, November 14, Orson Harrington who was still Gene’s head mechanic, arrivedBirmingham steamed out onto the Hampton Roads, Gene eased the tension in his mind by inspecting the motor and poring over every inch of his machine. The original idea was to steam out as far as 50 miles onto Chesapeake Bay, turn the ship into the wind, and then attempt a takeoff and flight up the Elizabeth River back to the Norfolk Navy Yard. But the weather was bad. An observer on the edge of Chesapeake Bay reported fog so thick he couldn’t see further than four miles, and though he should have been able to see the Birmingham by now, he couldn’t. The clouds were dark and swirling and by 1:30 that afternoon, the light mist was turning to intermittent rain squalls speckled with hail. White caps licked at Birmingham’s hull as it sliced through the water. “The thickness of the weather rendered landmarks so obscure,” Chambers said, “that the ship was anchored off Old Point Comfort to await a possible improvement.”

Aviator Eugene Ely on cruiser Birmingham

The rain let up for just a moment, but black clouds were in the distance and another squall was coming on fast. Visibility was already down to less than a half-mile. Gene turned back to see what was happening on the bridge. Nothing! The Navy was too slow. If he didn’t go now, he’d never go. “I was anxious to complete the test without waiting any longer for more auspicious conditions,” he said later. He throttled his engine to full speed and gave Harrington the thumbs up. Harrington hesitated and Gene pushed his thumb even higher into the air and shook his fist. Harrington shouted to the sailors who were helping hold back the machine and all at once they let go. 

Aviator Eugene Ely flies away from the  cruiser USS Birmingham

“He flew off with the greatest ease,” Curtiss said. At 55 miles an hour, Gene roared straight down the centerline painted on the wooden platform, his tail clearing the end of the runway by twenty feet. “Ely just gone,” tapped the Navy wireless operator. “Ely off OK at 3:17:21 p. m.”

After four minutes in the air, uncomfortably cold and wet, Gene was lost. “By the time I had succeeded in drying my goggles, I lost track of the landmarks by which I intended to guide my flight over Norfolk to the navy yard,” he said. “Anyway, it was a very dark day.

He tried to get his bearings. Through the fog and rain, he could barely see a sandy strip of beach known as Willoughby Spit, directly across the water from Old Point Comfort. “I found myself making for a beach and choosing a convenient spot near the Hampton Roads Yacht Club.” He made it sound so simple. “I felt that it would be better to land than to attempt to continue the flight,” he said. It was a smart move. He didn’t know at the time that when he had left the Birmingham and hit the water, the driving edges of his propeller tips had splintered, and one edge looked as if it had been cut off by a saw. He landed in the soft sand and until he saw the damage to his propellers, he thought he might try to takeoff and continue his flight. “I landed with no trouble,” he said. “Had it been necessary I could have started the machine up again and tried to fly back to where I came from.” He said he was not fond of the water, but he was proud that he overcame his fears “long enough to accomplish my purpose.”

Eugene Ely had flown the United States Navy into the air.

Eugene Ely, Daredevil Aviator)