Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
\nJune 17<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> will be the 88<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> anniversary of Wilmer Stultz\u2019s historic flight across the Atlantic in 1928, just one year after Lucky Lindy flew it, which resulted in a ticker-tape parade, meeting the President, lecture tour, book deal, product endorsements, new job, the works. \u00a0Not for him \u2013 for his passenger.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>You don\u2019t remember Stultz?\u00a0 He was the pilot of the airplane that Amelia Earhart rode in.\u00a0 What, you thought she was the pilot, that she flew it solo, as Lindberg did, that she earned these honors on her own?\u00a0 Not according to the scholarly articles cited on Wikipedia<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>\u201cThe project coordinators (including book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam<\/span><\/a>) interviewed Earhart and asked her to accompany pilot Wilmer Stultz<\/span><\/a> and copilot\/mechanic Louis Gordon on the flight, nominally as a passenger, but with the added duty of keeping the flight log. The team departed Trepassey Harbor<\/span><\/a>, Newfoundland<\/span><\/a> in a Fokker F.VIIb<\/span><\/a>\/3m on June 17, 1928, landing at Pwll<\/span><\/a> near Burry Port<\/span><\/a>, South Wales, exactly 20 hours and 40 minutes later. There is a commemorative blue plaque<\/span><\/a> at the site. Since most of the flight was on “instruments” and Earhart had no training for this type of flying, she did not pilot the aircraft. When interviewed after landing, she said, “Stultz did all the flying\u2014had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.” She added, “…maybe someday I’ll try it alone.”<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Earhart actually did become the First Female Pilot to Fly Solo Across the Atlantic but not in 1928, she did it in 1932.\u00a0 The first flight \u2013 the celebrated flight – was merely a feminist publicity stunt, akin to the two women dubbed \u201cArmy Rangers\u201d last Fall and even our own First Affirmative Action President.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Celebrating diversity is fine as entertainment, but it\u2019s only entertainment.\u00a0 Nobody wants their brain surgeon to be the guy who was socially promoted for diversity reasons instead of demonstrated competence. \u00a0Nobody wants their pilot to say \u201cI\u2019m just baggage, like a sack of potatoes, you\u2019ll have to fly the plane on your own.\u201d \u00a0And frankly, nobody wants to elect The First Woman President just so we can meet a quota.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Joe Doakes<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
One can only wonder how much better this nation would be if Colin Powell, Tim Scott or Alan West had been our nation’s first black president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: June 17th will be the 88th anniversary of Wilmer Stultz\u2019s historic flight across the Atlantic in 1928, just one year after Lucky Lindy flew it, which resulted in a ticker-tape parade, meeting the President, lecture tour, book deal, product endorsements, new job, the works. \u00a0Not for him \u2013 for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-16","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59219,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59218\/revisions\/59219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}