Retired Air Force Major General, Apollo 8 Astronaut and former Textron executive Bill Anders is one of the first three humans to view the dark side of the moon. Anders described his experiences and his famous photograph, “Earthrise,” which he took on Christmas Eve, 1968. Along with the first pictures taken of the earth from […]
Captain John J. Coonan, Jr., USN (1944-2009) was born in Pawtucket to a Navy family. His father, who also retired as a Navy Captain, was deployed in the SW Pacific flying the PB4Y (Navy version of B-24) and did not see his son until he was 13 months old. His father was stationed at NAS […]
Otto Hermann (c. 1870-1930): Otto Hermann was an auto stuntman who held a 1907 patent for a double loop-the-loop automobile-stunt ramp. He moved to Providence from Atlantic City, and started building his own biplane in the summer of 1909, described in a Journal article as “the first one to be tried out on testing grounds […]
CAPT John A. Romano, USN (Ret) is a retired Navy Captain and long-time East Greenwich resident. John Romano’s role in RI aviation history is broader than his service and accomplishments as a Naval Aviator. With war clouds on the horizon in the late 1930s, the Navy appropriated the Romano family’s 400-acre Davisville farm, vineyards and […]
George Sullivan was born in 1934, raised in Newport and graduated from Rogers High School in 1952. In 1954 he was drafted and assigned to the Army’s rotary aircraft maintenance school at Fort Rucker, AL. His ensuing duty tour took him to Korea where he serviced the Sikorsky H-19 and the Bell H-13 “Sioux.” He […]
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 […]