I thought you guys might like to know about a stunt pilot named Chet Derby.
He was one of the best role models i ever had while i was growing up and when i was just 6 months old he took me up in my first plane ride.
I know this because of the old family movies my father made back in the early 1960's. My father would go up with Chet on some flying trips and my dad always brought me along when i was little
and that's how i first caught the flying bug. This went on for years and it really was the best time in my life being in the air.
He was also a great man who would look you straight in the eye and tell you how it is.
One of the biggest things he ever did was be a Barnstormer.
When WWII threatened in 1940 Chet moved to Tulare, California, and worked as a flight instructor at the Rankin Aeronautical Academy, a civilian flight school for the Army Air Corp. During its 54 months of operation, it trained over 10,450 cadets. Graduating cadets were well trained in aerobatics. Twelve became WWII aces.
After the war he went right back to Barnstorming .The aviation world was stunned by the death of Tex Rankin in 1947, and couldn't believe it had happened on a routine business flight.Chet was getting ready to start his own "Skybusters" group with this happened and Tex was going to give a hand during his show...But that never got to happen.
Chet flew the PT-17 Stearman during his airshows and he did the whole works and even had a wing-walker on his planes during the shows.
But his biggest show was yet to come in 1949.
60,000 people show up at the Oakland Airport to see all sorts of aerial stunts. But there is a plane that appears out of place amongst all the modern aircraft. A barnstormer, piloted by Chet Derby.
For the final stunt, Derby is to be followed by 3 B-29 Superfortresses, but the B-29s arrive too early!
Derby does a barrel roll and misses the B-29s by five feet.The moment is captured by Bill Crouch of the Oakland Tribune.
Bill Crouch, won a Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1950 while working for The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, he was off-duty, attending an air show at Oakland International Airport when he snapped the prize-winning picture of the near-miss of an upside-down biplane and a four-engine military aircraft. The Tribune ran his picture, and it was moved around the world by The Associated Press, which entered the shot in the Pulitzer competition that year. Crouch later won a National Press Photographer's award and a number of local awards for that picture.
That was Chet's greatest day as a Barnstormer. During Chet's later years he flew some stunts in movies one of them was Jimmy Stewart's "The Spirit of St Louis in 1957.
Last June 2006 Chet was laid to rest at the age of 91. He was the best family member you could ask for.
This is the picture that won Pulitzer Prize for photograpy in 1950.
