Harry Moyer parked next to his 1964 Mooney at the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, stepped out to gaze at his airplane and commented, “There’s our time machine.”
“We save a little time when we go places,” Moyer elaborated this week. “My wife, she thinks it’s barbaric to drive to Los Angeles.”
The San Luis Obispo couple has been shaving hours off travel time for decades.
Moyer bought his ’64 Mooney plane in 1975, but the 95-year-old pilot has been flying far longer than that — since 1942, to be precise, when he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet while studying engineering at the University of Akron in Ohio.
He received his fighter training in the South, learning how to fly the P-40 Warhawk and P-51 Mustang in Baton Rouge, La.; and the P-47 Thunderbolt in Tallahassee, Fla.
“We were kind of apprehensive about the amount of power — 1,200 horsepower,” Moyer said of piloting the P-40 fighter. “It was exhilarating,”
During World War II, Moyer flew in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and China. A photo of Moyer standing next to a P-40 in China in May 1944 now graces bottles of Tribute, a 2013 Red Blend produced by Pianetta Winery in San Miguel as homage to those who have served or are serving in the U.S. military.
With each bottle purchased, the winery will make a donation to Honor Flight Central Coast California, which takes veterans to Washington, D.C., to visit memorials.
Article source: http://www.sacbee.com/news/article69348917.html
