Giving Back grant helps transport cranes
“When you use ultralight aircraft to guide birds on their first migration, everything depends on the weather,” reports Operation Migration CEO Joe Duff. Operation Migration is one of the 2014 recipients of an AOPA Foundation Giving Back grant. The organization—made famous in the movie Fly Away Home—helps the once-nearly-extinct whooping crane find its way to warmer weather in the winter. “The Midwest suffered early cold temperatures and almost constant winds in October and November. That kept us on the ground,” Duff says. “Unable to fly for days at a time, the young whooping cranes were losing their attachment to the pilots and the aircraft.”
Instead of making the flight from Wisconsin, the birds were transported to a halfway point in their migration in a specially equipped van. In Carroll County, Tennessee, the birds and their aircraft took flight and flew the remaining 600 miles to St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida. However, Duff says, their return migration this spring is a concern. “Without the knowledge of the first half of their migration route, it will be a challenge for them to make it back to White River Marsh State Wildlife Area in Wisconsin,” he said. “We will be watching them closely and will be ready to step in if they get off course. We all have our fingers crossed.”
Email [email protected]
Web: www.operationmigration.org
AOPA Foundation Giving Back grants spotlight the positive work being done through general aviation. For more information, visit the website.
Remembering Doolittle Raider Edward Saylor
Edward J. Saylor, an engineer with the Doolittle Raiders whose successful attack on Japan’s mainland boosted American morale during World War II in the Pacific, died January 28 at the age of 94.
Saylor was born in Brusett, Montana, on March 15, 1920, and enlisted in the military in December 1939. He volunteered for what was dubbed a secret mission under then Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle. (See “Secret Mission” in the October 2012 AOPA Pilot.) “We were trained to do a job, and when we found out what it was, we did it,” Saylor said. You “do what you have to do and stick with it.”
The mission was to fly North American B–25 Mitchells from the USS Hornet to bomb the Japanese mainland. On April 18, 1942, “we just got in our airplanes and got on the job,” he said. The B–25 to which Saylor was assigned, No. 15, bombed an aircraft factory near Tokyo. Low on fuel, the crew ditched near a small Chinese island.
Some 72 years after the Doolittle Raiders’ heroic efforts, the group, comprised of 80 men, was honored in May 2014 with a Congressional Gold Medal. Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole, Doolittle’s co-pilot, was the only Raider able to travel to Washington, D.C., for the honor.
In addition to Cole, two other Raiders are still living: Staff Sgt. David G. Thatcher and Lt. Col. Robert L. Hite.
—Alyssa J. Miller
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