“It is a little emotional when I think about it,” the decorated West Salem veteran said before his flight Saturday in a Beech Staggerwing D17S. “It’s a 70-year-old plane, and I’ve been married to the same wife for 70 years,” since April 29, 1944.
Wife Marion chose not to go up in the four-passenger plane for an experience that Koepcke clearly enjoyed from takeoff at Colgan Air Services at the La Crosse Regional Airport to the gentle touchdown 20 minutes later.
The excursion came courtesy of corporate pilot Gary Lewis, a member of the Faith United Church of Christ that the couple’s son, the Rev. Robert Koepcke, pastors in Muscatine, Iowa.
As Lewis banked the 450-horsepower single engine over Brice Prairie at 3,500 feet at a clip of about 140 mph, Koepcke said, “It brings back a lot of memories. I did a lot of maneuvers over Brice Prairie because there were plenty of flat fields.”
Koepke, who will be 92 on Thursday, recalled the days after his service as a navigator/bombardier/gunner during World War II, when he became night tower operator and a flight instructor for veterans at the La Crosse airport.
“Back in those days, we knew we had to have one clear field to the next in case we had to land for safety,” he said.
“Learning how to fly is one thing; learning how to get from one place to another is another,” he said, beaming.
During Saturday’s flight, Lewis had Koepcke and two passengers take off their headphones to experience the noise sans protection, saying, “Before earphones, it was very loud. That’s why a lot of old veterans lost their hearing.”
Koepcke confirmed that, noting his hearing aids and saying, “I lost some of my hearing from sitting between two 2,800-horspower engines. We weren’t as smart as they are now to cover their ears.”
Retaining his instructor instinct, as Lewis approached for landing, Koepcke said, “Do you have your wheels down?”
Giving a Marion a pass for passing up the birthday flight, Koepcke recalled the first time he took his bride up in a plane, a Piper Cub.
“I started down the runway, and she tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Don’t fly too high,’” he recalled with a laugh.
“The next time, when it was time to turn, she said, ‘Don’t tilt.’”
Koepcke said he had flown in the same model of Beechcraft during gunnery training in the Air Force’s 319th Bomb Group of the 440th Squadron.
“We ran splash missions and shot into the water to show us what pattern a .30-caliber gun looked like,” he said.
“It was quite a popular plane for the Navy and the Army Air Force, but it wouldn’t meet standards for World War II,” Koepcke said. “It was adaptable — the Beechcraft also could have pontoons.”
Koepcke, who has written a memoir about his WWII experiences and been active in Honor Flights for veterans to Washington, D.C., was aboard a Douglas A26 during attack missions in the Pacific.
The A26 usually flew at about 250 mph but could be accelerated for short bursts by injecting water that turned to steam, he said.
“We did 460 miles per hour, which was the fastest a twin engine ever did at that time,” he said. “If you could push a plane to 400 mph, an attack plane couldn’t make a pursuit pass.
“They could make one pass at you, but they weren’t fast enough to turn and come after you,” he said. “It was a safety measure.”
Koepcke said his crew happened to be in the air, at a considerable distance, when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
“I’m one of the few men that witnessed most of the mushroom clouds from the air,” he said.
The atomic bombs “were a tough decision for Harry Truman, but the right one,” he said. “A million American troops would have gotten killed without them.”
Koepke, who retired from the Air Force Reserve as a captain in about 1955, worked in the circulation department of the Des Moines (Iowa) Register until 1985 and led a camping dealer association before retiring there and taking up writing.
Amid all of his adventures, he said, the flight Saturday amounted to one of his best days ever.
Lewis, a corporate pilot for the Heart of America Group restaurant and hotel chain, described the Staggerwing as “the first Learjet of its time. It was the fastest airplane that could be bought at the time,” at a cost of about $16,000.
Lewis has access to the plane because he used to be a pilot for owner Roy Carver Jr., president of Carver Aero Inc., which has fixed-base operations at airports in Muscatine and Davenport, Iowa, and head of several other Carver family industries.
Carver bought the former Navy plane for $90,000 in 1996 and spent $350,000 to refurbish it from prop to tail, inside and out, Lewis said.
At the time, Lewis said the plane wouldn’t be the best choice for corporate trips, especially with its tight quarters.
Although it can carry four passengers in addition to the pilot, the three-person back seat is a squeeze. “They’ve gotta be small people or really friendly,” he said.
“If you want a practical plane, I told him to walk away,” Lewis said. “Roy said his dad had owned a couple, so he might as well, too.”
Lewis tried to dissuade Carver from the paint color. “I said, ‘Roy, you don’t paint Staggerwings gray — you paint them yellow or red.’ He said, ‘It’s my plane and I’ll paint it the color I want.’ Good point.”
Carver himself never has flown the plane, but it needs to be exercised to stay in shape, a privilege that falls to Lewis.
“Roy said, 'Go fly it once in awhile,'" Lewis said.
The plane, propelled with a Pratt and Whitney engine, can hit 200 mph, Lewis said.
“For a biplane in 1944, that was fast,” he said.
Used as an executive transport for the Navy, the plane “carried a lot of admirals” and now is for sale for $325,000, Lewis said.
On Saturday, it carried a thrilled retired captain who gazed toward Earth and said, “You can’t beat this country for beauty.”
Story and photo gallery: http://lacrossetribune.com
Robert Koecpke Jr., of Muscatine, Iowa, right, arranged to have his dad, Robert Koepcke of West Salem, fly in a vintage restored Beech Staggerwing D17S for his 92nd birthday.
