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[[image No. 49 - black & white photograph of Bill Diehl with biplane]]

[[image No. 50 - black & white photograph of Bill Diehl in front of his sign advertising airplane rides]]

[[caption]] Bill Diehl, test pilot for New Standard Airplane Company, ready for flight with 180 horsepower, Hispano Suiza engine (49), Teterboro, N.J., 1929. At Springfield Gardens, Long Island, Bill stands in front of his 1919 sign, proclaiming services, omitting time-up and money-down (50). [[/caption]]

William Carl Diehl

"I charged $15.00 for 12 minutes. You could name your own altitude," Bill says with a wide grin.  "Not bad for 1919." Bill Diehl ran one of the nation's first air taxi services and helped pioneer aerial sightseeing. It was something to do after the armistice.

Before the armistice, Diehl was one of that select, but historically forgotten coterie responsible for the flight training of thousands of young pilots. The civilian instructors of World War I performed legion service, and experienced considerable financial hardships for their patriotic efforts. Bill was the first civilian instructor at Chanute Field, Illinois, where he had been ordered from Gerstner Field, Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Instruction, for the most part, has been his lifetime work, and while he has never kept an accurate count, it can be suggested that Bill has taught about 5,000 students in over a half century of work, on everything from home-built craft to Ford Tri-Motors.

He flew Pearl White for her "Perils of Pauline," and Irene Castle in her drama, "Fraud"; he has had his problems with wing-walking stuntmen and pleasures as a test pilot for Wright Aeronautical Corporation, and the Standard Airplane Company.  But there has been a special satisfaction in introducing one youngster to the forms of flight:  Bill gave Astronaut Walter M. Schirra, Jr., his first plane ride in 1927.

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]

William Carl Diehl: born North Bergen, N.J., November 3, 1891.

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