Musings: ‘Hot Engines John’

She wanted to surprise her husband, Mark, with a gift certificate for a B–25 second-in-command (SIC) type rating as a Christmas present. Her son, Peter, a pilot, had seen an article in AOPA Pilot about the museum’s B–25 Flight Training Program Fifth Anniversary Celebration in which a free SIC type rating course was to be given away through a drawing. Peter and Marcy entered Mark in the contest but decided to hedge their bets and purchased the B–25 SIC course, just in case. This was to be a chance of a lifetime for Mark Osterkamp and heartwarming story for all.

John Osterkamp was born in 1922, the son of Dutch immigrants who settled in Santa Ana, California, on a dairy farm. From an early age, John was fascinated with airplanes, stopping his work on the farm to look up when an airplane would fly nearby. When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, John left California Polytechnic State University and signed up with the U.S. Army Air Corps to join the fight. This would be the start of his lifelong love affair with aviation that would continue for the next two generations in the Osterkamp family.

John returned from World War II after flying 72 missions in a North American B–25 Mitchell bomber while serving in India. After arriving stateside, John’s focus became a flying career as an airline pilot. Unfortunately, his grandfather had purchased land in Southern California to grow alfalfa and John was needed on the farm, not in the airlines.

He longed for the opportunity to experience firsthand the Mitchell's flight characteristics, which his father had talked about.When John’s son, Mark, was two years old, John bought their first airplane, a Beechcraft Bonanza B35. From that moment forward, it was destined that Mark would inherit his father’s love of aviation. John would share his wartime logbook entries with Mark; reliving and retelling his experiences. John shared his stories of soloing in a Ryan PT–22, training in a Vultee BT–13A Valiant, and progressing onto multiengine training in the Cessna AT–17 Bobcat. Eventually, with a total time of 220 hours, John began training in the historic North American B–25 Mitchell bomber.

Over the years, John owned several Beechcraft aircraft, using them to check production over the family farm from the air and for family trips. John flew so much, it was almost as if the engines on his aircraft never had a chance to cool down. This led to his friends and family nicknaming him “Hot Engines John.”

As the years passed, Mark identified with his father’s war experiences in the B–25 and looked for an opportunity to not only fly in one but to give his father an opportunity to get back into a B–25. In 1983, that opportunity surfaced when Mark arranged to have his father fly with Steve Hinton at Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California. Steve put John in the right seat of the B–25 while Mark watched his father fly a B–25 for the last time.

Mark thought that was to be his last exposure to the B–25. However, he longed for the opportunity to experience firsthand the Mitchell’s flight characteristics, which his father had talked about, and the history of the aircraft that took his father into combat during World War II.

On Christmas Day 2019, Mark’s wife, Marcy, and his son Peter gave him the gift of a lifetime—a gift certificate for a B–25 SIC type rating course.

On July 11, 2020, Mark earned his SIC type rating in the B–25 Panchito and joined his father in the exclusive club of B–25 pilots.

Both of Mark’s sons, Peter and Philip, are pilots. Peter owns a Beechcraft Bonanza A36 and Philip is an aerospace engineer. In 2000, John pinned wings on another grandson, U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and future F–16 pilot, 2nd Lt. Matt Glynn—three generations of pilots in the Osterkamp family.

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Calvin Peacock is a B-25 flight instructor for the Delaware Aviation Museum Foundation in Georgetown, Delaware.