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EIGHT MAKE AVIATION HALL OF FAME
Rickenbacker First Flew With Umbrella

By LADD NEUMANN
Daily News Staff Writer 

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(L.-R.)Capt. Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Jimmy Stewart

  More than 65 years ago at the age of 10. Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker took a colored umbrella and leaped off a barn roof, trying to fly. 
  He fell into a pile of straw. Eventually, Rickenbacker flew. 
  LAST NIGHT, the Aviation Hall of Fame recognized his accomplishment and inducted him into the hall, along with seven other aviation greats. 
  He was not honored for landing in a pile of straw.
  Rickenbacker's life is one of amazing perseverance, imagination and good fortune.
  He is perhaps most remembered for another landing, in the rough seas of the Pacific during World War II. 
  FOR THREE weeks, he and his crew tossed about like tiny rubber corks in life rafts under a blazing Pacific sun. The incredible tale of the seagull that landed on his head and was quickly eaten raw has been passed from father to son in years since. 
  In World War I, he was an ace five times over, shooting down 22 enemy aircraft and four balloons. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his action against seven enemy aircraft on Sept. 25, 1918.
  Presented his plaque last night by movie star James Stewart, who is also a brigadier general in the Air Force reserve. Rickenbacker said, "I'm very grateful. This is an aviation town. I'm among friends."
  AT AN afternoon press conference, Rickenbacker was very critical of the United States in Vietnam.
  "We need to bomb power stations, dams, and especially the port of Hai Phong," he said, "where by the way, our so-called allies have been shipping weapons in" 
  Rickenbacker said the British, German, Italians, Spaniards, and French are among those shipping arms. 
  He said he sees no need yet for the use of nuclear weaponry. 
   "Conventional bombing can knock out an industry, a bridge, a dam," he said. "If we'll only use It."
 RICKENBACKER admonished a generation which permits draft-card burnings and draft dodgers. "This generation is a problem child that has not earned the blessings it enjoys," he said.
 Looking to the future, he described the war with China as one that "is bound to come."
 "When President Truman stopped MacArthur in Korea, he started the trouble we have now," Rickenbacker said. "He had it won, but the President listened to England and the United Nations."
 ANOTHER living entrant to the Hall of Fame could not be there last night. 
 Albert Cushing Read, the first Naval aviator, who also made the first transatlantic flight, was too ill to come.
 The other six inducted are all deceased. They are Charles Edward Taylor, the mechanic for the Wright Brothers and the man who built the first airplane engine; Alexander Graham Bell, better known for his telephone, but who also flew kites and airplanes; Thomes Etholen Selfridge, who studied under Bell and flew his aircraft, and became the first air fatality when he crashed while riding with Orville Wright in 1908; A. Roy Knabenshue, who did most of the work on American dirigibles; Eugene Burton Ely, who was the first man to land an airplane on a ship; an Alfred Austell Cunningham, the first Marine aviator.

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DAYTON DAILY camera NEWS
page 30
Friday, December 17, 1965

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Col. Glenn Presents Award to Col. Sims
The enshrinement ceremonies brought to 20 the number of men in the Hall, and marked the 62nd anniversary of the Wright brothers' first flight, Dec. 17, 1903.

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