Lieutenant Robert Thorpe, US Army Air Corps, a Providence native and Cranston High School grad, was captured and beheaded by the Japanese in 1944. His remains have never been recovered, even though evidence suggests that US authorities have known where he was buried since 1947. “We are honoring the memory of Lt. Thorpe on behalf […]
WWI pursuit pilot and escaped POW Theose Tillinghast was one of the few Allied flying officers to escape from enemy hands during World War I. A Providence native, he attended Providence Technical High School before graduating from RI State College with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Tillinghast joined Pratt and Whitney Aircraft when he resigned from […]
Dewey Turilli (1923- ) On February 23, 2023, former Army Air Forces radio operator Turilli celebrated his 100th birthday. He was on Iwo Jima in 1945 with the 457th Fighter Squadron. A talented woodcarver, he took over the family furniture business, and has been very involved with the Providence Vet Center Art Program in recent […]
Military aviation has been a major part of Rhode Island’s history, starting with James and Ezra Allen, who flew observation balloons for the Union Army during the Civil War. Fixed wing involvement started when Gerald Hanley joined the Rhode Island National Guard in 1915. As a lieutenant in Battery A of the Coast Artillery, he […]
Richmond Viall (1896-1973) was born in Providence on June 26, 1896; his father was second-in-command at Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company when it was a global force in the machine tools business. He attended Williams College, but left in 1917 to join the British forces in Canada. He joined the Royal Canadian Flying Corps as […]
Chester Wachowicz (1923-2014) was born in Central Falls, RI. He left Cumberland High School in his junior year to help support his family. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, and when the war started he wanted to volunteer. After getting his father’s permission, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and graduated from Aircraft Electrical […]
The Rhode Island Aviation Hall of Fame honored the four Rhode Island women who flew as WASP during World War II. These women are Phyllis Marsden Johnson Paradis, Bea St. Claire Smith Thurston, Ann Kenyon Morse, and Eunice Oates. The WASP program grew out of efforts led by noted aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran to integrate women […]
Born in 1942, Wakefield native Rick Wilson earned the Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross, two Single Mission Air Medals, a Navy Commendation Medal and 46 mission Air Medals in Vietnam. He flew more than 900 missions in his 13 months of flying in-country, consisting primarily of recon insertions/extractions as well as medevac. He was 2nd […]
LTCOL Herbert “Herb” Woodcock, USAF (Ret.) (1928-2023) joined the Air Force and was commissioned as a navigator. He deployed to Okinawa during the Korean War; his units supported B-29 bombing missions. In January 1954 he survived a jet crash into the South China Sea. In Vietnam he was assigned to the 12th Air Commando Squadron, […]
In September 1943, Jean Teresino Yarnall (1923-2013) was living in Hartford, CT and working for an insurance company. She decided to join the new Navy unit called “Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service”, or WAVES.
Robert (Bob) J. Yarnall Sr., USN, Ret. (1924-2015) graduated from boot camp at Norfolk Naval Station in 1941 and was an aerial gunner in WWII and an aviation machinist at Quonset.
Edward Yatsko was a native of New Jersey who settled in Warwick after WWII. When CWO4 Yatsko was retired (forcibly due to age) from the RI Army National Guard at age 62 in 1986 he was believed to be the last World War II combat aviator on active duty flight status and the oldest combat […]
Retired Air Force Colonel Joseph Zinno designed, built and flew America’s first human-powered aircraft, and is a flying veteran of three wars (WWII, Korea and Vietnam).