Oral History Program Kenneth Cook Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 28 April 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Kenneth Cook Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman 28 April 2022 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Hill Aerospace Heritage Foundation oral history project is a series of oral histories documenting the life stories and experiences of the board members of the Hill Aerospace Heritage Foundation. Board members recall their time in military service, as well as their memories of starting the foundation in 1983 and opening the Hill Aerospace Museum in 1987. Each interview begins with a brief life sketch of the individual board member, then moves onto their memories of the early days of the Hill Aerospace Museum. They discuss ongoing efforts to make the museum the premier location for preserving Utah’s Aviation and Air Force history and name important figures on the Board of Directors, base command, and museum staff who helped to make the museum an important influence in the community. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Cook, Kenneth, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, 28 April 2025, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Kenneth Cook on April 28, 2022 at the Hill Aerospace Museum with Alyssa Kammerman. Kenneth talks about growing up in Idaho during World War II and the impact that aviation had in his life. He shares his career in engineering, and how his career and love of aviation found a home in volunteering at the museum. AK: Today is April 28, 2022. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and I am at the Hill Aerospace Museum, interviewing Kenneth Cook for the Hill Aerospace Museum Project. So, let’s start with where you were born. KC: Okay. I was born on 23 May 1936 in Los Angeles, California. My dad lost his job just shortly after I was born, so he went back to the family farm in Idaho. It was his dad's farm at that time, and then he got really serious about farming and became quite a successful farmer. I grew up in the vicinity of Ririe, Idaho, that's quite near Idaho Falls. As I said, I grew up on the farm and as I also said, my dad became quite a successful farmer. He was always interested in aviation. During World War II, I would run out of the house when I would hear the aircraft flying overhead. Pocatello was a B-17 training base so B-17 bombers would fly over the house from time to time. I would run outside when I'd hear them and I'd wave my hat at them and imagine that they could see me down there on the ground waving at them and encouraging them on. World War II was a really exciting time for me, and I was old enough to appreciate the seriousness of what was going on because of family members who participated directly in the war and those that participated in production, working in some of the plants and so on. It was an exciting time. I had a cousin 1 who was a bombardier on the B-17 and he was shot down on his very first combat mission. That was something of a bummer for sure, and he was taken captive by the Germans. He did survive the war, however, for which the family was grateful. I had another uncle who was a pilot on the B-17, and he went through the war without taking a single hit. In fact, he did transition to the B-29, but never flew in any kind of action in the B-29 because the war ended, the atomic bomb happened, and that was the end of that. I had another uncle who was a control tower operator, and he was just coming on duty with two other operators, and a B-17 came in. It was battle damaged and they couldn't get the landing gear down. It was on fire and it landed and skidded to a stop, and my uncle and the two other people just coming on duty with him ran out to help get the crew off the airplane. It blew up as they approached it and one of the three would-be rescuers were killed and all of the crew was killed but my uncle was knocked down. Didn't suffer anything more than just some slight burns on his face, and as he described it, it singed his hair pretty well. But that was the extent of what happened to him there. In any case, the people who participated in World War II told me stories of their experiences. This really imbued me with an interest in aviation in general. And again, my dad was very interested in it. My dad got his pilot's license in 1947, and he had extended the size of his farm, and he had space to build a little landing strip for a little airplane comparable to a J-3 Piper Cub, which he did own. But he owned other airplanes, too. The J-3 was his dawn patrol airplane. But for serious cross-country flying, he 2 had other aircraft, culminating in a Beechcraft Debonair, which was a really nice private airplane. Anyway, I was really imbued with aviation. I learned to fly. My first solo was in a Cessna 140, and that was when I was 20 years old, I believe. I went to Ricks College for a year and then served on an LDS mission for a year and then got married. Being married, and not very long after that having a family to support, I just couldn't support a family and aviation at the same time. Eventually, my interest gravitated to vintage cars, and that's where I first became acquainted with Rex Hadley, the "Hadley Gallery" Hadley, and in fact, bought a car from him. A 1934 REO. That stands for Ransom Eli Olds. We did have quite a, I wouldn't say a buddy relationship, but certainly a friendly relationship for a lot of years. And he gave me some specific assignments because of my restoration ability, see. Some assignments on aircraft restoration which included P-47 and the B-17. I did do quite a bit of restoration work on both those aircraft. AK: Ok. And that was once you were a volunteer? KC: As a volunteer, and that was when Rex Hadley was a prominent presence here. AK: Okay. I have a couple of questions if that's alright. Just going off of what you said: So, were your uncles the ones who told you the World War II stories when you were growing up? KC: Yes. AK: Okay. As a kid? Or was it when you were older? 3 KC: It was just as the war was going on. They'd send me postcards and I have a postcard of the uncle who was the pilot of the B-17. He trained in a BT-22, I think. We don't have one here. I wish we did, but we don't. AK: Hopefully someday. He was the one who was a prisoner of war for a while? KC: No, that was the bombardier in the B-17. He was a bombardier and I did not get his story. This is a little side story: I lost track of him. There was quite an age difference. One time here at the museum, this was probably ten years ago now. There were three people standing underneath the nose of our B-17, and I went over to chat with them. As I started talking, the youngest of the three said, "There's something that I would like you to know. This is my mom and my dad. My dad was a B-17 radio operator during the Second World War." Well, there's a time to listen and a time to talk. This was a time to listen. "Tell me about your experiences." He says, "Oh, there's nothing to tell. I was shot down" – and I almost get tearful when I relate this – "I was shot down on my first combat mission." "Well, tell me about that." He says, "Well, we were flying over the Baltic Sea at the time and we got shot down." I've heard this story before. He was a crew member with my cousin. Anyway, he asked me if I knew where my cousin was and I said no. He says, "Well, he's in Salinas, California." My wife has a sister that lives in Salinas, and I had worked there before but never made connection with him while I lived there. It just didn't it didn't occur to me. Anyway, my wife called her sister and says, "Do you know David Ririe?" 4 She said, "Oh, yeah, that's my husband, Ron's, home-teaching companion." [laughs] Anyway, of course, I made connection with David and then he brought me up to date with his life, I brought him up to date with my life. He was in the process of writing his story and he sent me a copy of his war years, which I greatly appreciated. I feel like he felt like there was divine intervention when he got shot down because of the 10 crew members, seven bailed out because the airplane was burning so badly. Two engines were knocked out. They were over the Baltic Sea and only two of the seven that bailed were recovered. The guy that I met here at the museum was one of those two. I felt like that was kind of divine intervention to meet him so that I made connections again. It was easy to make that connection once he said that. But anyway, so as he told the story, I asked him if he remembered who his Bombardier was and he said, "Oh yeah, David Ririe, but you couldn't know him." Well [laughs]. Then he says, "Well, do you know where David is living now?" I said, "No." "Well, He's in Salinas." So anyway, that's the way that went. So, we connected up there and he filled me in. The fella that I met here, he said the pilot and the copilot and the bombardier weren't as threatened by the fire as the rest of the crew was. That's why the rest of the crew bailed and all communications between them was immediately knocked out. Anyway, only to survive the bailout and he felt like it was divine intervention. He could not get out because that little trapdoor that's 5 underneath the nose of the B-17 was battle-damaged and they couldn't get it open. So, the pilot, the copilot and the bombardier could not get out. They were forced to stay in this burning airplane and the airplane did struggle along without blowing. That's the big fear, is that the burning airplane, they tend to blow up. Or if the fire is in the wing, it softens the structure to the point where the wing breaks off or something. So procedurally, you normally bail out if the airplane is on fire. But they couldn't get out, the airplane made it to shore. He doesn't remember anything about the landing because he was knocked out. The pilot and copilot, though, drug him away from the wreckage. Now, that's another thing where he felt divine intervention was that the airplane hit so hard, it was so out of control when they set it down that it broke apart. But if it had not broken apart, they could not have gotten out and the three of them would have burned to death. So that was pretty tight. It's these things that give me the juice to try and be a good volunteer here. As I perhaps mentioned, I've been doing it since 1998, and still going strong, thank goodness. But going back to my notes here, education-wise, I graduated from Ririe High School in '54, went to Rick's college for a year; that's BYU, Idaho now, and I married my wife, Sylvia Ackerman, in '59, and worked in Salt Lake for a year and went to a technical school, a night school then. Then we moved to Salinas and worked for a company that built aircraft ground support equipment, and I worked there for 10 years. 6 With the exception of the year in Salt Lake, my life has always been related to aviation in some way. This company in Salinas had built food service trucks and trailer trains and warehousing equipment as it applies to aviation and that sort of stuff. Then I moved to Logan in November 1971 and got a job with the Space Science Laboratory, which evolved into Space Dynamics. I was the 11th full-time employee and I kidded about being in the head of the mechanical design group. I was the mechanical design group. At that stage in space where there's now space dynamics, they would build up their payloads, which were rocket launched from a little-known rocket launch site in Poker Flats, Alaska. But we would build up our experiments and launch them. They were NASA and Air Force related, and they would build up their experiments like you would build a doghouse: You'd cut out a piece and you fit it up to a part that's already been built, then you build the next piece. And I've never had experience with doing that because I now had 10 years experience in production design. I would say that I set up a whole new setup for drawing standards and the relationship between production and engineering. When I retired in 1998, we had gone from 11 people to 350 and I had a group of 30. I really did have a—well let me correct that. Later on, it became 30. At that time, it was 17. So, it was a group of 17 when I left, and the lab consisted of 350 people. By the way, the laboratory is fully owned by Utah State University and now it's up over a thousand people. We had a lot to do with the space shuttles; not in design, but the space shuttle was the vehicle that carried some of our experiments aloft. A lot of our experiments had to do with early warning 7 systems against intercontinental ballistics. There were other experiments, and I wouldn't even tell you that if I was still working. But that's old stuff now, so you know, that's okay. AK: I've learned a bit about the Minuteman missile, but I don't know as much about, you said it was the intercontinental ballistic missiles that you were working on? Is that correct? KC: We did not work on the missiles themselves. We worked on the early warning systems against intercontinental ballistic missiles. AK: Oh okay. The early warning systems. Does that mean that if you sense one coming in towards you, there's a warning that goes off? KC: Yeah. Well, to give you an idea—it's probably more than you really want to know. AK: No, I do want to know. [Both laugh] Tell me. KC: We worked on interferometers that could be put in geosynchronous orbit. Do you know what that means? AK: No. KC: Geosynchronous orbit is where you go at a high enough altitude so that the satellite is in orbit and maintains this position above a certain spot on the earth. That's geosynchronous orbit. Some communications satellites are in geosynchronous orbit today. The idea at the time was that we had, through the use of interferometers that are in geosynchronous orbit, you could spectralanalyze the rocket plume; that's the smoke and the stuff that comes off the rocket, and determine what type of a rocket it is. Is this a sounding rocket that's experimental, it just goes up and down? Well what type is it? Because every 8 rocket type has its signature plume. That means if you can examine the smoke from it, you know what it is. That would give at least a few minutes early warning so that politicians could take cover and you can arm your own anti-missile missiles or whatever. We also, during the Reagan years, did quite a lot towards gathering data that contributed to the development of anti-missile missiles. We were very much space-oriented. There were other things too, of course, but that was some of the stuff that we did. In truth, I kid a little about it, I was mechanical. This other stuff was more in the realm of the physicists really understanding the theory. I don't think that I could tell a Russian spy anything he was really interested in, even if I tried. But I was very careful not to talk about what I was doing and just did what I was supposed to do with the security clearance, and that's not talk. My wife used to ask me what I was doing or what I did today. My stock answer was, "Nothing." [laughs] You just don't talk, you know? AK: Yeah. Was that hard for you? That would be hard for me! KC: Sometimes. Sometimes. In fact, we were not even supposed to tell if there was travel planned. She would know a day or two before I had to go someplace, but that was all. I would sometimes try and discourage her, once in a while she'd want to do something that was kind of long-term. I'd say, "Be a little careful here." [laughs] That's about as far as I could go with it. AK: Oh man. That sure would make planning family vacations really hard, I bet. KC: Yeah, yeah sometimes a little bit. AK: What were some of the places that you traveled to? Can you tell me? 9 KC: Well… AK: If you can't, that's okay. KC: Actually, I did not do a lot of traveling compared to some of them, because by the time I got done with what I was doing, the technicians were the ones that would go out to the field and put stuff together and all of that, then I would be off and doing something else. But I traveled once in a while and I had a very unwelcome trip to Mission Control in California one time. It was unwelcome because we had a failure and the space shuttle was going up there, around and around, and there was one of our instruments that we couldn't get to work. There was this big conference there, all these generals around, and I had no idea what the problem was because you do so much pre-testing. It just wasn't working and it was a cover on an instrument that had to open up. It was an island, in effect, and that cover would not open. I had designed the cover, but the problem was in the electronic controls. We knew that later, but not at the time, so they sent me home. I had nothing to offer. [laughs] Mission Control, that was not fun. AK: You were mainly involved in creating the body of these different… KC: Well, for example, doing antenna deployment systems. If it's a satellite and it goes up, you know, the motor goes up, you have to kick the motor off your instrument package because the motors, they smoke and they kick, they sputter and they create a lot of contaminants and if you're in the air and moving forward, the air would sweep those contaminants away. But when you're in space and in orbit, if it kicks off some smoke and some dust and powder and stuff, that dust just moves along with your experiment and it contaminates your experiment. A lot 10 of our experiments were supercooled with liquid nitrogen and helium. Anything that's supercooled acts as a getter. A getter means that if anything touches some of the optics and the mirrors and stuff that is on the instrument, it just sticks there. Pretty soon you have a scummy layer over your optics, and it compromises whatever it is that you're trying to do. AK: So, you would help with troubleshooting that kind of stuff, then? KC: Well, if it had been a mechanical problem, I might have been able to offer something, but it was actually in the electrical control circuitry that was on it. I watched this great big screen and by telemetry, you could see the position of the shuttle over the earth and you could see it going over Africa and over South America. But our experiment was not working. The next time around, I was really frightened that—well, of course, it's such a disappointment. But then you don't know how that's going to affect your next project, because you're only in engineering, you're only as good as your last job. No matter how many successes you may have along the way, that last job, if it's a failure, that's what's on the minds of a lot of people. AK: Did that project have a name? KC: Uh yeah. Cirrus. C-I-R-R-U-S, I think. AK: Were you able to perfect it or did you start a whole new project after that? KC: Oh no, that was Cirrus 1. That was Cirrus and the next one was Cirrus A. That worked just fine because we learned from it. Even when you have failures, you learn from your failures, you know? But still you just, at the time you experience it, that's not fun. 11 AK: No, definitely not. That's interesting, especially where you had to be called in to report at Washington DC. That's gotta be terrifying. KC: Well, it wasn't in DC, it was in California. At mission control station there. AK: What subject did you graduate from college in? Or university? KC: Well, actually, to some extent, I graduated in Pre-Engineering in Salinas while I was living there. Then I went to a technical school, and I never graduated in engineering, I was self-taught. That's almost impossible to pull that off in today's environment, and especially when you're working for a university. But I graduated in sociology and anthropology and, you know, that might have contributed to some, what I feel, successes because I feel like I was really successful in hiring people and I was always very conscious about hiring people who were different than me [laughs]. One of me is enough, but you like to have a convergence of ideas when you're going through these engineering problems, as a fallback. You know, the Wright brothers weren't engineers either, [laughs] but they were quite successful. I'm perhaps bragging a little bit, but to be as successful as I was in the college in engineering, it spoke pretty well for me, I think [laughs]. AK: Yeah, definitely. Talented. KC: Bragging just a little bit. But I've had a good life. I'm 86 next month. AK: Happy Birthday! KC: I'm still going strong, but being here at the museum has been a really important part of my life. Really important. One other thing I wanted to mention is one of the things that shaped me is the year I graduated from high school, I had another cousin who lived in Logan who joined the Air Force, and he was killed in 1954. 12 He went down in an A-26. We have one here. He was a gunner on an A-26, and so his name is on the list of Utahns who gave their all. I'm kind of a sentimental person sometimes. I stop in and into that little alcove that pays tribute to the Utah people that gave their all in the Korean conflict, and visit [emotional chuckle]. My family has contributed. I was in the Army for six years. I started out in the National Guard but ended up in Army Reserve because of moving. The unit that I went to was an Army Reserve unit near Fort Ord, and that's where we met. That's where I trained initially, was at Fort Ord; that base is closed now. AK: Was that Idaho? KC: Yeah. Rigby, Idaho. It was a National Guard unit in Rigby. Now, Rigby, Idaho, that was a combat engineer group. Boy, I'd left that group before Vietnam. Actually, I'm kind of an old guy because I would have been drafted, and this was before Vietnam even became an issue. It was fear of Russia at the time that they were drafting and I elected to enlist rather than be drafted. I joined the National Guard and then I moved right soon after that and went to California and there was an Army Reserve unit that they transferred me to there. But that combat engineer group was one of the first that was activated. Boy, that unit suffered dearly because we did not understand the nature of the war. It was a war of sniping and the combat engineers would go out to prepare a place for helicopter landing areas and there'd be a sniper up in a tree somewhere as it was a suicide mission for them. They would take out as many people as they could before being discovered. It was brutal. But I missed that. 13 In fact, this is beyond the general interest, but sometimes the littlest things in your life can have such profound outcomes. When I was still in high school, I had an elective that needed to be filled. There was a young lady that was taking typing. Now understand that typing, well, that's a girl thing; boys don't learn to type. That's the same as signing up for Home EC or something like that. But anyway, so I took typing. When I finished up with basic training and they were separating the trainees for their various MOS's, Military Occupational Specialties, they asked if there was anybody that could type. Well, I kind of held up my finger, kind of shyly about it and I said, “Well, I had high school typing and I could do about 40 words a minute,” which is fairly difficult. They put me into BOX school, Basic Army Administration, and that means an office worker. I sometimes wonder if it hadn't have been—by the way, that thing with the girl never worked out. You know, it's just one of those little things. But I sometimes wonder what the outcome would have been if I hadn't known how to type. I could have been in combat, or I mean, advanced infantry or artillery or who knows what. But just that little thing may have really had quite a shape on my life, and potentially even preserved my life. I don't know. I feel, whatever I have been asked to do, I would have done faithfully and so on. AK: Yeah, I have a couple of questions with that. So, what year did you enlist in the National Guard? KC: It would have been 1959. AK: 1959. Okay. You said you were in for six years. What rank did you achieve? 14 KC: Okay. Because I moved around a lot, I didn't achieve much rank early on. It was a PFC. I was PFC when I got out and one thing I can brag about the PFC, I can still put on my uniform. I still have my Class A uniform and it still fits pretty good. Just a little bit tighter than it used to be. AK: That is an achievement! KC: But once in a while, I do have the opportunity to wear it, and I wear it proudly. I mean, it was just circumstances that I didn't advance more. But this is something you may know: In order to advance in rank, at least at the time, you had to go overseas into a combat zone. I never did. They kept me right there at Fort Ord. I trained at Fort Ord, they kept me at Fort Ord. Now, I was working at the time, so after actually seven months of basic training—they say six months, but it's really seven. After that it was monthly meetings and two weeks summer camp and oncall perpetually to go overseas. But I do have one claim to fame. I was in my office and Elvis Presley's paperwork came across my desk [laughs quietly]. AK: What?! KC: Well, I have to type out his paperwork to admit him on Fort Ord. Then shortly after that, Ricky Nelson's paperwork came through. Do you know who Ricky Nelson is? AK: Yeah! KC: Okay. Something you may not know is that he was killed on his own private DC3. We do have a DC-3 airplane. Actually, C-47 is the military version here at the Museum. But he was the pilot of the airplane. The airplane caught fire. There was some scuttlebutt about drugs being involved, but that was never proved. But 15 an onboard fire was, and that's pretty serious stuff. It crashed and it took out his whole, I mean, that airplane was his gig mobile. You know, his band. Took out most of his band and himself in that crash. So anyway, any other questions? AK: I do. I just have a couple more. Did you guys have that Snake River patch that you would wear on your uniform? KC: I don't think so. If we did, I didn't recognize it for what it was. I was only there a short time. I don't think they have a unit at Rigby anymore. I think that it's at Pocatello now, but it was at Rigby. That's where I signed up, was at Rigby, Idaho. Do you know Palisades? That was built while I was in high school. That's a big lake now, Palisades Dam. The Ririe Dam, my dad's farm was on the banks of what is now the Ririe Reservoir. Part of his farm. He actually had land in three different locations. He was a real entrepreneur. He bought land out west of Idaho Falls. It was sagebrush and, oh, that was hard work to break up that land! I'd keep snagging lava flows that were just under the surface and bending up the plows and bending up the weeders, and [laughs] oh, that was such a frustration! Then the Snake River aquifer was discovered, so that all became land that could be irrigated. Boy, that became really valuable land out there after that. AK: Did you tell me on the phone that your dad was one of the people who discovered it? Or was he just one of the first to sink a well? KC: He was one of the first people to put in sprinkler irrigation. In fact, he was the second person in Idaho to put in the laterals. That's the hand pipes, and deep wells and all of that. In fact, there was a learning process there. When we first started out, since we had nobody to copy from, we thought it took two people to 16 carry the pipes, one at each end of these 40-foot length pipes because we didn't realize that the pipes could actually be carried from the center and the riser, that's the thing that has the sprinkler on them (they were center riser). The riser could be steadied against your shoulder and you could use the riser for a handle so that you could work the pipe into the next pipe when you're setting the pipes. You didn't have to go over to the end of the pipe to make it coupled. You could do it from 20 feet away, that's central to a 40-foot length of pipe. We had to learn all of those things kind of the hard way. AK: You said that your dad had three locations. Did he grow the same crops in each location? KC: Well, on the dry farm that's south of Riley, he grew mostly wheat and sometimes barley. But when we started irrigating the desert land west of Idaho Falls, you could grow—potatoes was a big crop out there, of course [laughs]. AK: Idaho potatoes. Yeah [laughs]. KC: Potato, it's just wonderful soil for that. Once you found out where these little places of lava flows were where you went out around, otherwise you'd bend up your machinery. The potatoes and seed peas and seed potatoes, you have to have really pristine land for that. Oats and barley and hay and, of course, wheat. But you'd rotate the crops. It's always considered good practice to rotate them because when you rotate them, it replenishes the soil and creates a barrier between for disease. AK: Okay. Interesting. 17 KC: Because if you plant the same crop year after year after year, it may get a disease in it that you pass along from year to year. But if you rotate the crop, it tends to diminish the possibility of crop disease, which is, of course, beyond what you're here for. AK: Yeah, but it's good information because it's part of your life, so it's good to know. KC: Yeah. AK: I did have another question. Last one, sorry, and then you can tell me what else you have written down there. You mentioned how your family's contributions through World War II really inspired you. I wanted to know how that inspired you to get into aviation in particular. KC: Well, it was, first of all, I think because of my dad's interest in aviation. He became a private pilot in 1947. He was quite successful. You have to be somewhat successful in order to own your own airplane, or airplanes, in his case. He had his own little airfield, a little airstrip out on the farm that he had out on the west of Idaho Falls. In fact, the crop dusters used his field, and the arrangement was, when he said he wanted his crop dusted, they came out and dusted his crop. Now, they didn't put him on a waiting list because when the insects start attacking, they attack everybody's fields at the same time, and that's usually a first come, first serve. But he was on the top of the list and so [laughs] they could use his field. I guess it was probably free of charge. I don't really know. My dad was so involved with aviation, he owned a big hangar. He actually leased the land and owned the hangar at Idaho Falls Airport. Later on, he sold the hangar to the city, but he was always really involved and so with that kind of 18 a history, plus the World War II and the family members that were in the Air Force, Air Corps. That would have been the uncle who was a pilot, a cousin that was a bombardier, and an uncle that worked in the control tower, in flight control, you know, and then another cousin who was killed in an A-26 during the Korean conflict. But there were family members, too. This is not something that belongs in this, but you're such a good listener [laughs]. Kind of my introduction to World War II, a couple of things happened: One was Pearl Harbor and my grandfather and his family, and my grandfather had a younger son who was probably 12. I was six at the time. We went out into the yard and he explained to me that we were at war, and that if the Japs—of course it was Japs, not Japanese. If the Japs win, your dad'll probably lose his farm, and if you live, you'll probably have to learn to talk Japanese. Well, that's pretty serious stuff, you know, to a six-year-old and it kind of got my attention. I talked that over with my mother a little later on, then she says, “Oh, the Japanese, I don't think they're going to win.” That was kind of comforting. But then a little later, my mother told me that this was pretty serious stuff to me, that Byron had been killed. Now, Byron was a tractor driver for my dad and farmhand. My dad hired him through most of his high school years to drive a tractor. I really liked Byron and, well, Byron's family and my dad's family were friends. I had known Byron all my life so he felt like family to me. I followed him around, I guess like a puppy dog when I was a little kid, and he had set me up on a tractor when he was driving the tractor. We were just really good friends, and like I said, he felt like 19 family. Well, Byron joined the Navy fresh out of high school and he went down on the Arizona. My mother explained to me that he went down on this big ship. Of course, he joined the Navy and went down on the Arizona. Well, it's probably 10 or 15 years ago, I vacationed and went out to the Arizona, see his name there. Well, I cried when Byron went down, and I got pretty teary-eyed again when I see his name on the monument there. Of course, I know intellectually that we would have gone our separate ways through time, but still, I remembered him as I knew him when he was a kid. All of those things, though, they have an accumulated effect, and the effect is a really deep appreciation for the military. I want you to write that in as I have a really deep appreciation for the military in general and the Air Force in particular. Because even though I was in the Army, most of my life has had to do with the Air Force because of working. I was close, you know, working with pretty high up people in the Air Force, including astronauts. The mission specialists, not the pilots, but the mission specialists. We had what I would define as on-the-job communications, you know. AK: Yeah. Kind of a work friendship, in a way? KC: Yeah. Yeah. They're smart people. Boy, they are smart people. They catch on really quick, and you don't have to go over the same old thing very many times to be where I was satisfied that they really understood what it is that they need to do with the stuff that we were flying. AK: That's pretty cool. Remind me, in 1959 when you enlisted, was the Air Force still the Army Air Corps, or had that switched by then? 20 KC: No, it's 1947 that that took place, and just for your information, the reason that they split was during World War II; it became evident that they really should be two separate services. One of the problems was that during the war is that it's recognized that their missions could be quite different. The Air Force mission is strategic and that means that you use launch missiles in current times, more current, or at that time you flew bombers. You do that today, too, of course, but the principal mission of the Air Force is strategic, and that means to destroy the enemy's ability to wage a war by getting at their manufacturing. If you can't build an airplane, you know that's better than having to pick it off one by one. Getting at their manufacturing, getting at their transportation and getting at their communications. If you can get at those things, like a prime target during World War II was the Schweinfurt Ball Bearing factories, because every machine has ball bearings in it, and if you can stop those bearings from being built, that's a good thing. AK: Yeah. It stops machine production. KC: Yeah, and another one was the Romanian oil fields. That’s because Romania was supplying Germany with oil during the Second World War, and if you can stop that oil from ever being turned into gasoline by bombing the refineries, which we did do at great cost. I mean, armies move on petroleum; that's just a fact, and so if you can get at it, that's a good thing. But the Air Force can be tactical, too. Now tactical is army against army; artillery lobbing shells at each other, ground maneuvers. But there can be a joint operation where you have Air Force air 21 cover over tactical operations on the ground. One thing the Air Force cannot do, and that's occupy territory. It cannot do that. Now, the Army comes in place, see, so the Army has to come in and it has to occupy. Its mission is to destroy the enemy assets on the ground, the tanks and the things that escape the Air Force, you know, and to occupy. That's the Army's role. Of course, the Navy is to destroy enemy shipping and coastal bombardment. That's the Navy's role, and to escort like marine supply ships to the places where they're needed. Now we have another force, the Marines. The Marines as a shock force to clear up an area for an Army landing, generally. That's a Marines’ role. Now we have a new force that's still being defined, and that's the Space Force that was created by Trump. As I understand it, if it goes into orbit, that's the province of Space Force. But if it's an intercontinental ballistic missile, that's still Air Force because it doesn't orbit normally. AK: That is so interesting. KC: But the Space Force, I think they're still trying to sort this out, but the primary mission of the Air Force is strategic. Destroy the enemy's ability to wage war, period. Army is occupation, and of course, destroy assets that escape. I mean, after they're manufactured and, in the field, then it's more army stuff. But the Air Force can still participate in that, too, because of Joint Operations. They can be Army, Air Force and Navy can sometimes do joint operations along coastal areas. 22 AK: Interesting. I'm curious, with how much you love the Air Force, did you have the option to enlist in the Air Force when you were younger? KC: No, it was a matter of convenience that I joined the Rigby National Guard. AK: Yeah, that makes sense. KC: It was just convenience. Now Jake Garn, you know who he is I suppose? He's actually Navy. But when he retired and came back to Utah, there wasn't a Navy unit that he could serve out. He wanted to stay in the reserves, and he is carrierqualified Navy, but he wanted to stay in the Reserves in Utah. They had the services accommodate each other and there's an Air Force base near here, an Air Force Reserve unit here at Hill, so he joined that unit and he flew transports. No more carrier flying for him. Maybe I've mentioned Jake Garn—this is too much name-dropping to be included there, but my dad's middle name is Garn because his mother was a Garn and his mother's dad was the father of Jake. There's a family relationship through there. My sister goes to the Jake Garn reunions. I never could. I never did. I thought that was a little bit too far removed. But she liked joining. We have Jake Garn's personal airplane here in the museum. AK: Oh no kidding! I'm curious, going back a little bit, where did your dad first learn to fly? KC: At Idaho Falls. AK: Okay. Were there classes out there? KC: Oh, yeah, and I flew there, too. I learned to fly out of Idaho Falls. AK: The airport out there? 23 KC: Yes. AK: How old were you when you first started learning how to fly? KC: I think I was 20, but I never got into it to the extent my dad did. One reason was, early on I couldn't afford it. I just simply, you know, I started a family pretty quick, but I've always really been interested in flying. There is another dirty little secret [laughs]: When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be an airline pilot or be a commercial flier. I found out that when I got in rough air, I was not fit for it because I get airsick. I thought to myself, “Boy, would I want to be on an airliner with an airsick pilot? Probably not.” But my interest in aviation has never dwindled and I fly commercial just fine because when you're in a—have you ever flown in a light airplane? AK: No, just commercial. KC: Okay. Well, when you're down, the closer to the ground you are, the more susceptible you are to air currents, convection currents. It can be pretty darn rough at times, and once in a while, when I was really little, I used to get carsick. When I got bigger, I got over that, but I never quite got totally over getting airsick in really turbulent air. Sometimes even on an airliner, it can get pretty turbulent; it bounced around pretty bad. Sometimes it can be so bad that if you aren't strapped in, you find yourself against the ceiling of the airplane. That has happened at times, when you hit a really hard wind shear, and the airplane just "pew" down, down, it flies downward, actually. AK: That's terrifying, and you have to pull up to keep yourself from plummeting? 24 KC: Well, when you hit the apex of that downdraft, then you drop, you just fall, just boom, bam, and people get injured when that happens. But it doesn't happen often. That's just really super freaky. When that happens, you are grateful. I've never had it happen to me in a commercial airliner. Well, in a private plane, for that matter. AK: Yeah, thank goodness. KC: But when you're low, close to the ground, especially on a hot day, you get bounced around a lot. AK: Interesting. Did you say that you had owned a Cessna 140? KC: My dad did. AK: Okay, and that's what you trained on as well? KC: No, that's what I soloed on. Then he sold that airplane and he bought a J3 Piper Cub. Now, just by way of information, the J3 Piper Cub is an L-4 Reconnaissance airplane. We have an L-4 here. Now, the main difference between the two airplanes, there's no difference in the way they fly or how they're powered, there's only two differences. One is the color of the paint, and the other is that the windowed area extends beyond the back of the wing so that you have better all-around visibility. Because if you are flying over enemy airspace, situational awareness is really important, so it gives you a little bit of better situational awareness if you have more glass behind the wing. That's the only differences. In fact, another dirty little secret is our L-4 is actually a made-over J-3 for the museum. They couldn't get an L-4 so they got a J-3 [laughs]. They're so near alike that they, I mean, they had to cut into it a little 25 bit to extend the glass, you know. In my tours, I, by way of bragging just a little bit and holding interest and giving credibility, I say, "There is one airplane here I could fly," and then I'll talk about the P-51. Now the P-50, do you know what a P50 is? AK: No. KC: Okay, that's the, I believe, the best World War II fighter, propeller fighter airplane. It's just a grand airplane. It is absolutely the Lamborghini of collectible aircraft today. I'll talk about the P-51 then I'll say "and the airplane I could fly is not the P51. Only in my dreams [laughs]. But I could fly the L-4." Sometimes we will go over and talk about the L-4 a little bit, so. You know, it's just these little lines that are kind of fun to hold interest, I think, and to deliver. AK: I feel like I hear a lot more about the bombers from World War II veterans than like the P-51, for instance. Was the P-51 less common to fly than like a B-17, for instance? KC: No, there were about 15,000 P-51 built—about the same number of P-47. There were actually a few more P-47 built, but the P-51 came along a little later in the war and actually it came about as a design request from the British. The United States thought that with our P-38 and our P-47, there wasn't much else of a place to go. Then the British ordered up a fighter airplane. What they really wanted, a little history here, what they really wanted was North American to build the Curtiss P-40 War Hawk for them. They were flying the war hawk. We have a War Hawk here. AK: Yeah, I've seen that one. 26 KC: Yeah. That's the one with the smiling face. AK: Yes, hard to forget. KC: North American and Curtis couldn't fit it in. They were so busy with filling production orders already in place. North American said, "Let us build the airplane for you. But we can do better than the war hawk," so they came out with the P-51 for the British. But there's something really special about the P-51, and that is it has a new type of wing on it that's called laminar airflow. That was a milestone in aviation. North American put this theory to the test with this new type of wing on the P-51, and what this enabled the P-51 to do was to fly further on a given amount of fuel than any other fighter airplane of the day. This was really important because what was happening was the bombers, they fly to these deep penetration missions and their escort fighters run low on fuel and they have to go home and they leave the bombers exposed. This is where the carnage really started. This is why the British wouldn't even fly daylight missions, because they couldn't afford the losses. They just couldn't afford it. The loss rate was so high that early on, the bomber crews only had to fly 25 missions and if they were still alive or not captured, they were done with combat forever. Now, when the P-51 came along, that changed because the P-51 could go all the way to the target. It was such an effective escort airplane that could keep the enemy fighters at bay that the loss rate became much less with the bombers, so then the rules changed [laughs]. "Ok you bomber guys, it's safer to be on a bomber. We want you to fly 30 missions. How about 35 missions? How about for the duration of the war?" That's why the P-51 became so important. It's not 27 because it was so much faster. It was a little faster than other fighters, and it perhaps was a little bit more aerobatic, but the big thing was that it could stay with the bombers all the way to the target and back and was a very effective fighter. AK: That's amazing. KC: That's the P-51. AK: Yeah, I had never learned about that before. That's really cool. Thank you. KC: Another little historical flame that you might like since you're such a good listener: The bombardier was trained to operate the forward-firing guns on the B-17, and the reason was the bombardier doesn't have a lot to do until you get into the vicinity of some of the targets that you're going to bomb. Now, when he gets to the IP point, that stands for Initial Aiming Point. It's just IP, "Initial Point" for aiming. The Initial Point for a bomber group is something that you can spot easily from an altitude of perhaps four miles, 20,000 feet or 25,000 feet, maybe. That's typical bombing altitudes for World War II. It could be a very tall smokestack, or it could be a bridge across a river, but it has to be something that you can easily spot. It's the pilot's job to get the group—by the way, they will always put the best crew in the lead, the best bomber crew, the best pilot, the best navigator, the best bombardiers. They concentrate them in the lead crew and the lead airplanes. That way, you're more certain you're going to have success. Okay, so the pilot gets the bomber group to the IP point, then he will take up a compass heading that takes him over the target. The target will be less conspicuous, but you have to know exactly where you are before you approach 28 the target. That's why you pick up on this thing, whatever it is, a bridge or high smokestacks. They will have pictures of it so that you can say, "Aha! Yep, we're there," and then they will take up the compass heading and you're usually about 10 minutes away from the target. Then the bombardier goes into play and he calibrates the Norden bombsight, which is entirely mechanical. It's not a computer, as we understand computers today. He sets up for windage, for altitude, for ordnance being dropped, for airspeed. All of these things he puts into the bomb site during that burst. So now he's occupied. He cannot defend the airplane with the gunner. When you go over the target, you don't have enemy fighters coming at you. The reason you don't is because the enemy fighters don't want to be over the target area that is being defended by their own anti-aircraft fire, so the enemy fighters drop back. In some cases, they will re-arm and they will refuel. Then they will re-intercept the bomber groups on the return trip. Anyway, that’s just a little thing that some people don't realize is when you're going over the target, you don't get fire incoming from enemy fighters. They drop back. You're getting anti-aircraft now. If you're 20,000 feet high, I mean, if you're shooting at the ground, you're wasting ammunition at that altitude. The bombardier, and I'm sensitive about Bombardier's, of course, because I had one in the family. He passed away about four years ago of natural causes, but he changed his roles from Gunner to Bombardier. By the way, he is a commissioned officer. The commissioned officers on a bomber: pilot, copilot and bombardier. All the rest are enlisted people. 29 AK: Going back to your history with the museum, you had mentioned that since aviation is such an expensive hobby, you decided to take up restoring historic cars and such. I kind of want to learn a little bit more about that. Did you have a friend that introduced you to it, or were you just kind of thinking that it would be a good idea? KC: The way that came about was, my wife and I were out at a Christmas tree farm— again, these little things, you know -- and there was a guy at the Christmas tree farm, that's where you select your own tree and cut it down. He had this old Model T for sale. I told my dad about this Model T and he says, "Oh, find out what it would cost. I might be interested. That's what I learned to drive on, was a Model T." I went back out there and asked the guy what he wanted for it. The guy gave me a price. Then I called up the local antique car club there in Salinas, and he says, "Oh! If you're interested enough to find out about this for your dad, you really should join our club," so I went to a few of their club meetings. Another thing he says, this little car was a coupe, and he says, "And with your family, you don't want a little car like that. You want a nice big touring car." [laughs] A touring car is one where the top folds down. AK: Oh, okay. KC: Anyway, I found an old 1922 Dodge that was unrestored. I couldn't afford to just go out and buy one. I bought this whole. It was really a wreck, too, for when I went and trailered that old 1922 Dodge Touring car in [laughing]. My wife looked at it, she about had a heart attack, you know. [laughs] It was so, so ratty looking. 30 But I had certain skills, you know, because I'm kind of mechanically inclined. I restored it myself and I took a class in body and fender work that was offered by the junior college and did a lot of the work in the classroom there. I'd haul in a fender, you know, and so I pretty much had her restored before I moved to Logan, but I never drove it in Logan, though. I had to have it trailered because the restoration wasn't quite done. I finished it in Logan and then actually started a car club in Logan, which is still doing quite well today. We had about 15 or 20 families, I guess, at last count. AK: No kidding! KC: But anyway, my dad decided he wasn't interested in the Model T, so that's how I got interested in it; just the fellow he was so enthusiastic and he was the president of the club in Salinas, and he drove me around and showed me restoration projects that were in progress. Another hobby I was really serious about was Radio Control. In fact, I made a fairly sizable donation to our radio club so that we could buy land. We used to fly off of an unused runway at the Logan Municipal. That had been a Navy training base. That sounds kind of strange, but it was a Navy training base during the Second World War and it went beyond the needs of Logan City. So, there was an unused base, but then when 9/11 happened, they closed the airport and made access to the airport a lot more difficult. We were forced to buy land, and so now we have a 75-foot-wide paved runway for model aircraft that's 150-feet-long, which is big enough for so on. I helped get that going. AK: So, were you flying? 31 KC: Flying radio control models. AK: Oh, okay. I see what you're saying now. KC: Yeah. A radio-controlled model airplane is a real airplane, it's just radiocontrolled. You have to control it from the ground. But you don't break any of the rules that apply to full scale airplanes. AK: How large is it? KC: Well, my biggest one is six foot, and it's gasoline-powered. I wish I had brought a picture of it. I show that airplane to some people and I tell 'em I own this airplane, and when you see the picture of it without anything to scale it by, it looks like the real thing. It's a 1933 WACO biplane, open cockpit WACO, six-foot scale. It flies on a gasoline engine. Not a glow-plug engine, it's a real gasoline engine. But then I show the following picture: I have it standing on a wing alongside me. It's just slightly taller than I am standing. AK: That's really cool. KC: Yeah, it's a nice airplane. But I fly smaller ones too. AK: That's so interesting. What was the name of your car club in Logan that you started? KC: Well, it's the Cash Valley Chapter of the Vintage Car Club of America. First of all, we were an independent club, then when we got our strength up, then we joined the National Club. We go on joint tours, and that's where I met Rex Hadley, on one of these joint tours. AK: Oh, interesting. He wasn't in Cash County, so was he in Ogden at that time? 32 KC: Yeah, he was in Ogden, but we would be on these joint tours. I met Rex and because of my interest in military and I realized he was a general I told him I appreciated his service and bragged about being a PFC —I'm kidding, I'm not bragging about it, you know. But I liked him, and at least when we were on our meets together, we would touch bases and chat. Then when they started building the Hadley Gallery, well, I don't know if you knew it or not, but we had a little museum out here in the 1919 building. It’s one of the old World War II tin buildings, straight out here. AK: Is that the one by the Maser Chapel? KC: Yeah, right out there. I knew I wanted to be part of that when I retired. Before I retired, though, I was reading the Logan newspaper, The Herald Journal, about this planned museum, and they kept quoting Rex Hadley. I thought, "Well, I know Rex Hadley. I wonder if it's the same Rex Hadley." Well, as I read along, I became convinced that it was the Rex Hadley, and so then we started, of course, touching bases here after the gallery was built. Now, that gallery, that was the first part. Then the next gallery over was half built and used, and then they doubled the length of it. They took out the end and then doubled the length. I was here for all of that. Anyway, Rex Hadley, he's the one that made some restoration assignments to me because he knew that I did have some car restoration ability. He sent me home. In fact, he asked me to restore the P-47 instrument panel. It was a mess. Half the instruments were gone and the glass was broken in them. He asked me if I wouldn't restore it, and I said, "Well, yeah, I might," but I said, "I 33 would really like to restore it in my own shop." I have quite a nice shop, "but I know that I can't take anything off base." He says, [loudly] "Oh! Don't you worry about that." That's just the way he reacted. He says, "You back your pick-up around here and I'll help you load it." [laughs] He was okay with me loading that and then I've restored a whole bunch of boxes and a bunch of stuff that goes inside the B-17. Same deal, you know, load it on the pick-up and take it home with yeah. AK: Were you living in Ogden at that time? KC: No, I live in Logan. I've lived in Logan ever since '71 when I moved from California. I make one trip a week here, and today's my day. Anyway, that's my life story, and probably more than you ever wanted to know. AK: No, it's great. Thank you. I have a few more questions about your experience with the museum if that's okay. KC: Yeah, Okay. AK: You said when you first got out here, there was only the building 1919, right? Not this one we're in now? KC: That's when I first became acquainted with Rex Hadley. I never was a tour guide out there, but I knew of its existence. When I thought about being a tour guide at the museum, I always imagined it would be out in 1919. I had no idea what was going to happen, not in my wildest dreams, you know? Even the Hadley Gallery was just way beyond what I thought would ever happen. I think that I've forgotten when they built the Hadley Gallery, but I started in 1998. The same month I retired, I came out here and volunteered just as a, what do they call it? Just 34 somebody to kind of make sure people don't steal things or do things they shouldn't. Just sort of a guard. AK: Just like security, kind of? KC: Security. That's the word I was hunting for. But I realized pretty quickly that I was okay with touring because I knew enough right off to initiate touring then, and there were no rules actually, except tell the truth. Since then, it's becoming more structured, but still, I manage to work in things that are important to me. AK: With Building 1919, would you describe to me kind of what was it like? Because it's obviously not big enough to hold an airplane. What was inside of it? KC: Well, they did have a couple of airplanes. They had the PT-17. That's the little blue and yellow biplane hanging from the ceiling. That was there, and I believe it was indoors. This was a long time ago. I don't remember much about the details other than I knew I wanted to be part of it. But they had that. I think they had a model of a P-40 that had been used on a movie set. I don't remember what else. AK: Okay. Were there a lot of written exhibits? KC: Yeah, there was some written stuff. It wasn't much of a museum. AK: Yeah. Just starting out. KC: And the outdoor museum, too. But I don't even remember. I only went there once and just knew that I wanted to be a part of it when I retired. Of course, it wasn't practical before retirement because my job was pretty all-encompassing at times. There was once in a while travel, and a lot of weekends. AK: Yeah, it sounds like it. So, after Building 1919, was the Hadley Gallery built first? KC: Yeah, so it was Hadley Gallery. 35 AK: Okay. Is that that gallery over there that had the…? KC: It's the one with the B-17. It's the big gallery. AK: Oh, okay. So, the hangar, kind of? KC: Yeah, it's the big hangar, and then you go through the breezeway to the other gallery and half of the other gallery was built as a second stage. That gallery's the one to the north, that was doubled in length. Now they're gonna double the floorspace again, starting this summer. I guess you knew that. AK: I heard something about that. I didn't know if they were building a whole new gallery or just extending it out. KC: I don't know how that's gonna work. I'll talk to Rob. He knows all our plans. AK: Okay. You were saying that one of the things that you helped with was restoring some of the airplanes and such; two of which you mentioned already. KC: Yeah, I did some work on the first B-17, but I worked mostly at home and I would say most of the administrators don't even know about that. The same with the P47, but I worked on the instrument panel, and I worked on the P-47 out of the Ogden Airport also. AK: Okay. Interesting. KC: I did some work out there on it, mostly on the tail section, and that involved some at-home work, too, because there was a lot of the internal structure that was so bad that it had to be replaced. I built those structural members at home using auto-body techniques, you know? I built some hardwood formers, and then you form the metal over the formers, and then I helped with re-skinning it. Well, I'm a mechanical designer, so I knew the technique. I did woodwork on the B-17 along 36 with restoring a lot of the radio boxes and stuff that goes on the inside. But woodworking is a hobby of mine, and again, I just took it home and did it at home and brought it back. It would be more difficult today. It's a lot more controls in place. AK: Yeah, that makes sense. KC: But I did talk a little about that. I guess it's possible that there's a little paperwork involved now if you take something home. But not Rex out there, saying, "Oh! Back your pick-up around and I'll help you load it up." [laughs] AK: Were there any other big projects that you were particularly a part of? KC: I did some work on the B-24 bomber, but the work, again, it was kind of indirect. There was a whole bunch of machining that needed to be done on the Bombay doors because our B-24 is actually a composite of two wrecks. The B-24, when it wrecked it just absolutely scrambled the Bombay doors because it hit hard on its belly, and there were a whole lot of parts that went in the door that were broken. Originally, they were cast. Do you know what cast means? AK: No, I don’t. KC: Well, it means the molten metal is poured into a mold, and that's called casting. AK: So, would each airplane have unique, custom-made parts then? KC: Oh no, they could cast thousands and thousands of parts. But if you went that direction, then you have to make the molds to do it. I redesigned those parts so that they lent themselves to automatic machining, and made up the drawings. In fact, I still have those drawings. I was wondering if anybody was interested in them; put them in the file of the B-24 maybe. I don't know. But anyway, I still have 37 them. But I was retired now and, well, the engineering platforms have changed so much, I couldn't do it on the computer. I drew them up by hand, the parts that I needed, and dimensioned them, you know, so they're not meant to sell to automatic machining. Then I passed it on to one of the guys still working at the lab that I hired [laughs], so they owed me a little here, see, and he converted my drawings over so that they could be put on the machine tools. He passed that on to a machinist that I worked with an awful lot. I still had my connections and I still do have connections, as a matter of fact. I was just over at the lab a few days ago and visited and told them, "I don't have anything in mind right now, but if I did, are you still open to a little moonlight work here," freebies, of course, "on behalf of the museum?" They said, "Bring it on in." I'm sure there would be limits to that, but I guess I still have connections. AK: That's always nice to have. Were there any other fun anecdotes or important memories that you wanted to share from your time at the museum? KC: Well, other than it put me in personal contact with some fun people like the candy bomber, Gail Halverson, and I did have a one-on-one contact with him several times. Just wonderful people. I just love them, you know, and loved chatting with them. A little story about Chase Nielson: I had just finished reading the book, The Doolittle Raid, and Chase showed up here and I managed to corner him. He usually had quite an entourage, but he was alone. I walked over and started up a conversation with him and wanted to show him I knew a little bit about the raid 38 and I says, “You know, that must have been kind of a difficult take off with the seas like it was.” He says, “Oh, no. Easy take off.” He says, “You got to remember that we would have turned the carrier into the wind, and so we had about 35 knots, 40 miles an hour wind. In addition to that, the carrier speed itself was about 20 or 25 knots against the wind. So, in effect, you have about 60 miles an hour blowing over the wings before the wheels even start to turn. You really don't have to pick up much speed in order to become airborne.” You understand that? It's the speed of the air over the wings, not how fast the wheels are turning. AK: That's interesting. Okay. KC: Yeah. So, you need to understand that. They've got 60 miles an hour; they take off at about 95, so you didn't have to pick up very much speed. He went on to explain the person that really had a lot of responsibility was the Navy man that waved us off because he had to get the rhythm of the pitch of the deck. He had to hear through just listening when that airplane was really, really the engines were peaked out to maximum power, and then he would wave us off. But the reason that the rhythm was so important is because you wanted the airplane to just be lifting off the deck as the bow was dropping away. AK: Oh, wow. KC: Every pitch was like [shows with hands] like that. You did not want to have just lifted off and have the bow come up and bump you because you're at a very low speed and control is still somewhat marginal at low airspeed. I just, I mean as an 39 engineer, why didn't I think of that? Yeah, that's true! But hearing it from him and then hearing Gail Halverson tell about being the candy bomber… Another time that was fun was I started to tell about the candy bomber as a tour. Pretty big group of adults, and it's one of my favorite stories. There was a lady in that group and she got really excited and she says, “I want to tell that story! I want to tell that story!” Well, she was really adamant, so of course, I stand to the side and let her tell the story. She says, “I was a little child in Germany when he was doing the candy bombing,” and then she told it from her perspective, how the kids would gather together; “The bigger kids could snatch those little parachutes out of the air, but they were pretty good about sharing with us that were down here somewhere that couldn't reach up and grab the parachutes out of the air.” She went on with a little extra story. She says, “You Americans, you were just so nice to us.” I thought, “Nice to you? We flattened your cities practically. How can we be seen that way?” She went on to explain, and I wish I'd asked her, but I don't know if it was just for the East Berliners, or how widespread it was, but she said all of the German families got at Christmastime, got a little box, and in that box were some simple little toys and dolls and candy and stuff. She says, “But what I selected was this big tube of stuff, and it was about that long and just a big tube.” She says, “And I opened it up and tasted it. Ah that just tasted so good! I managed to make that tube last for about three months, just one little dab at a time. Then I found out that it was peppermint-flavored toothpaste!” She says, “We never had 40 toothpaste during the war. The only thing I ever had was my private little dish with salt and baking,” I think she said baking soda. You wet your finger and you dip in there and then you scrub your teeth. Anyway, you have these kind of fun little things that occur from time to time. There was an incident with Russians. We’re not on very good terms with Russians right now, but there were some Russian engineers that came through, and sometimes you just do what seems like what you ought to do. I started talking, I had just read about some of their war heroes. Russia was the only country that had women aviators in World War II. They had women combat fliers, I mean. Now we had the WASPS, but they were not combat fliers. There was a lady, I can't remember her last name now, but she was, I suppose, Americanized to “Lily,” the name. But she was a combat flier. I told them about Lily. They'd never heard of her. But they whipped out their cell phones, and I told them about the Night Witches, which were another group of women, Russian fliers. They flew airplanes a lot like our little PT-17 and they would fly out over the German encampments in the wintertime and throw hand grenades. That's all; they were just harassment to keep the Germans awake and on their toes. They didn't really do all that much damage, but they became known as the Night Witches. I talked to them about airplanes that they have here a little bit and just talked, you know, kind of centered on Russia, and they were busy looking at their cell phones as I would talk along. They'd never even heard about the Night Witches and so I think the thing they took from the museum was some stuff about their own history. I hope that when they talk about it with their friends, 41 they’ll say [in a Russian accent], “We had to go to America to learn about them!” You know? [laughs] AK: [laughs] That’s a good point. KC: Yeah. But you get these little high points from time to time, and it's fun to talk. Even though we're not supposed to, you can't resist telling occupational horror stories, you know? A lot like the lid that wouldn’t open that I ended up at Command Central on that. That was a horror story. [chuckles] Yep. AK: Yeah! If there are any more occupational horror stories you want to include in here, you can totally write them in when you read over this interview. How do you feel that Hill Aerospace Museum has made a difference in the community? KC: Well, you know, I'm not really part of the community all that much. This is a thing that I had to adjust to is they want to give that more of a part. But in a way, I'm an outsider and I don't show up in Ogden and I don't go to movies and I hardly know my way around. In fact, my closest stay as a community was an unwanted stay at a hospital here for a little while. But yeah, it's important and of course, I see that. It hires a lot of people and the spirit is there, and the history; the heritage is certainly there with Ogden starting out as being an Army Ordnance Depot right after World War One. I never appreciated that until relatively recently because I'm kind of an outsider really. When I was sitting in here on some of the training meetings for docents that they've been having and they talk about things I know nothing about because a lot of them are people who have worked at the base, which I never did do. I've had no connection occupationally with the base. That 42 has not really been my strength. I'm trying to make it a strength through learning of the history, but it hasn't been so primary as it has been with others. AK: That makes sense. Maybe a better question is, how do you feel like the museum affects the people who come here? Or how do you want it to affect people who come and visit? What do you want people to learn and to come away with? KC: Well, this is a little bit secret. But the emphasis has been on Utah history and the history of the base. I go into that, but I also want to leave people with the importance of the base to the security of the nation, because we don't talk just to Utah people. In fact, I've lived in Utah, of course, most of my life, but I've been exposed to other things, too. What I want them to understand, and it should be written up so that it doesn't seem as a challenge. But I want them to be sure that they understand that the Hill Air Force Base is one of the major bases for preparing and adding to the Air Force's ability to fly, to fight, and to win. To me, this is the reason for the existence of the base, is to fulfill that mission. Which, by the way, is the motto of the Air Force: to fly, to fight, and to win air power any time, any place. That to me has to figure into every tour that I give, and appreciation for the people who have been in the military or are careeroriented in the military. I do have an extremely deep appreciation for the people who have served or who are currently serving and those who have made a career out of it. I mean, it is deep and I love the country, for all its warts. [laughs] I love the country and that's the way I feel about it. AK: That's perfect. 43 KC: Perhaps as a little add-on, I feel like sometimes the warts give too much attention rather than the successes, and I feel bad about that. AK: Yeah. I think so too. How have you seen COVID-19 affect the museum as you've been volunteering here? Has that had a big effect at all on how you…? KC: Yeah, well, philosophically, I thought that the mask-wearing went a little bit too far, but that's just me. I think maintaining distance was probably a good thing, and certainly, if you have symptoms of any kind, stay home. But I believe that our people coming to the museum dropped quite a bit I think. I wasn't tracking that daily. AK: Have there been any lasting changes that you're still seeing because of COVID19? KC: No. AK: Oh, good. KC: I don’t see it. We're not wearing masks anymore, and… AK: Good. Okay. I was just curious if it had changed any way that the museum’s been run. KC: No, we had to wear masks and maintain distance, one jet engine apart. What’s hard for me was, because I like to get people up close so they can hear me, and so I can get eye contact. It's the little things you do to ask rhetorical questions and then answer them that, you know, to try to keep interest with like kids, especially. It's hard to hold their interest sometimes. But I like being here and I like history. 44 I subscribe to a magazine that gives, well, it's Aviation History is the name of the magazine. Sometimes I can draft little stories out of there, about people. You know, I'll tell you something. What I have found, people like people stories. You can talk about the equipment, but overall, they like the little inspirational people stories. I really believe that's a truism at the very least. In talking with kids, I like talking with the little school groups most of the time. Once in a while, you get kids that are a distraction, but most of the time I like talking to them. Or families! I love doing family tours, too. But if you talk to the kids and explain things to them and hold their interest, the adults just follow in place. They do! If you praise the little darlings, the parents, they're right there with you, you know? It's a thing that I was not taught is something that I kind of learned, and I like doing it. But the big thing is I want people, I've said it before, to have an appreciation for their military. This is a line I use sometimes. Without the military, in all probability, you would be talking a different language. Not because you want to, but because it's in your heritage that you had to. Your life would be very different than what you experience, and if you had anything to compare with, you probably wouldn't like what has happened. I want people to understand that. Even though I didn't make a career out of it, sometimes I feel a little bit of a failure in that respect. But I worked with the military almost all of my life, and pretty close too. Pretty close. AK: Yeah, definitely. I don't think you have to feel ashamed either about what you did, you know? You’ve done quite a lot. 45 KC: I had a cousin who stayed in the reserves and became a commissioned officer in the reserves, and I really admired him for that. I had the opportunity, that's where the little wiggly thing comes. I worked in the office, since they, on my weekend, or monthly meetings, there was a colonel, a bird colonel and I worked in his office. Remember, I'm a typist for him. He went through my Army records of aptitude and things that you can do, you know, and he tried to convince me that I ought to go in the reserves. At the time there was a part of it you could, I think it was six months as a commissioned officer. There was a six-month correspondence course that I could have taken, and then I would have had to go to Fort Leonard Wood for another six months for field training, and then I would have been a commissioned officer. That's the little thing that if I had my life to live over again, but I don't know that I would have done anything different, you know, because at the time I was so involved in trying to advance my own career and I had to travel once in a while and make myself available. But my employer was in California, was good about my summer camps and so on that I could go. So, why did I move? The reason I moved is because the company was bought out by another company and then things changed there. I just thought, “Well, if I'm going to make a change, now's the time because I'm unhappy with the new management.” That's when I moved to Logan. That's a lot that I could have gone to San Mateo on the coattails of one of my bosses. He liked me too, so [laughs]. But I didn't. I thought, “Well, I'm closer to family if I go back to 46 Logan,” because I grew up in the Idaho Falls area. So, that's where family was. That was probably the strongest draw. AK: Yeah. That does make sense. Okay. Well, very last question, and then I'll let you go. Of all the things that you've been involved in during your time at the museum, what are you the most proud of? KC: I have never thought of it in that way. I think maybe it's because early on I decided that I wanted to learn how to talk to little kids, whereas the other tour guides tended to not like that because they couldn't hold their attention. It was then that these scavenger hunts started to take the load off so that you didn't have to deal with the kids in any kind of a tour. I always feel myself, this is something you don't have to write, but in a little bit of competition with the scavenger hunt, because I like to give a few kids away and hold their interest for a few minutes and teach them something. I guess as a matter of pride is just learning how to deliver the message to different varieties of groups of people. Also, there's pride in service. I think there's pride in accentuating the military as a whole and the Air Force in particular, as vital to your way of life. The air and the military does things other than just fight wars, it also discourages people from wanting to pick a fight if you remain strong. It does other things that are less evident, like it's the guardian of our trade routes. People don't ever think about that, but if you have a really superior country, they can dictate to you who you trade with. Of course, that's a historical truth. Look at England, for example, or the Dutch, and so on. They all had trade routes, but they're Navy-defended. 47 AK: Interesting. I hadn't thought of that. That's a good point. Well, thank you so much KC: You're welcome. You’re a delight to chat with. AK: Oh, you’re a delight to chat with! I really enjoyed it. KC: Actually, I did all the chatting. I try and make it interactional. AK: Oh no, honestly, this is what I do for a living. I just love hearing people tell stories, so don't feel bad. KC: Yeah, well you’re a good listener. AK: Thank you. KC: But there has been some real big influences. World War II, and the reaction of family. After World War II, that presence was still there because I still had relatives and family that would tell of their experiences and so on. AK: Yeah, absolutely. 48