Final Flight

by Glenn Daly

One of aviation's quiet heroes passed away on October 7. You won't find his biography in Who's Who in Aviation , if such a thing exists. He didn't set speed, altitude or endurance records, didn't fly around the world, alone, and hadn't piloted an airplane since the early 50's because he was too busy raising his family and tending to his patients. He was one of thousands of pilots who did what they had to in order to defend their country from the tyranny of Hitler and the horrors of Tojo. He was my father-in-law, his name was Rozier Chapman Murphey, and he was the finest man I ever knew.

In early 1941 he joined the Army Air Corps, anticipating by ten months the country's entry into WWII. His primary instruction began at the Ryan School of Aeronautics in Hemet, then Moffett Field in San Jose, and he learned to fly the venerable Stearman, and the not so venerable BT-13 and PT-22. At the advanced training base at Mather Field in Sacramento, he progressed to AT-6's and P-36's, and graduated with class 42-A on January 9, 1942.

He was assigned to the Ferrying Command in Long Beach, and became quickly bored. "Meeting roll call was the only specific duty to perform during those early days of the outfit," he wrote in the diary he kept at the time. On March 10, 1942, he learned that six of his cohorts had been assigned to a "vague" temporary duty by Ferrying Command in D.C. A comrade, Lt. Junius Smith, informed him that he had volunteered to substitute for one of the married selectees, and that he and the group would be departing for the east coast in a few hours. My father-in-law wrote, "Thinking that the one other married officer in the group would not object to staying in Long Beach with his bride of about a week ... I went to operations and asked if another substitution could be made. It was no favor for him or sacrifice on my part - it was simply the idea of the change and what it might bring. I cleared the post in the remaining two hours and with the five others boarded a plane ... and took off for Washington." Four days later, he found himself in Natal, awaiting transport to Accra, on the Gold Coast .

At 5 p.m. on March 19, he and the others, and the leader of their group, a hard-drinking, pistol-wielding captain, boarded their transatlantic transport, a B-24. "We sat in the bomb bay of the ship... quarters that were as cramped as they could be and still be called quarters for passengers. We couldn't lie down and sitting wasn't to be done comfortably," since, that morning, they had received the last of their "... typhoid, cholera and tetanus shots, all at one time, and that ... made our twelve and a half hours of flying time, twelve and a half of the worst hours I have spent on the ground or in the air ... . We flew all through the night, though it could have been day for all we knew, and passed through, over, under and around scattered thunder and rain storms. One minute the cabin heat was close to freezing point and a little later we dropped down to just above the water and into real tropic heat."

They landed safely in Accra and immediately commenced their familiarization with the P-40E's they were to deliver across North Africa, the Middle East, India, and up and over the hump into China, to Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers. (Remember North Africa in 1942? Ever heard of Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps?). "Smitty took off first and made one landing ... . " On his next take off, "Just as he got about 125 feet into the air, his motor failed completely. His flight training came in good stead because he quickly shoved the nose of the ship down, and a few seconds later changed tanks. The motor caught and started up again when he had about fifty feet left. Pretty bad moment for a while and we were all ready to believe what we had heard about the P-40 being a death trap. However, when Smith came in he told us ... it wasn't any fault of the airplane, which he liked very much. (We were all to agree on this and the more emphatically the more we flew them. Still, I have yet to fly an airplane I didn't like, except an old B-18, or a new one.)"

With minimal instruction in the handling techniques of the P-40E, they practiced for a few days before they began their trip. "I was the last to go up and found the 40 just like any other pursuit ship - it flew fine after you got used to the trimming required and after you ... got the feel of it ... ." During the equatorial heat of the day, "The metal sides and levers and knobs in the cockpit would be hot to the touch and the coolant temperature didn't take long to get up to normal... . During our flying we left the canopy open to stay cool when flying low and that was generally all the time. There would always be hundreds of natives along the beach, fishing, swimming and seining. If we 'buzzed' this beach once we buzzed it a thousand times. We'd peel off at about two thousand feet, get about 350 miles an hour and level off to fly about twenty, sometimes ten and fifteen feet, above the sand or the surf. The natives got used to it ... and it was very seldom that they would jump out of their sail boats or run under the trees when we came over."

On March 26, 1942, he wrote, "Well, this was a big day!" The P-40's had been delivered to the flight line and, "They look very business-like with their belly tanks and white washed fuselages and the large number of ground personnel running 'round refueling, checking, re-checking, etc. - gave the appropriate touch of drama and importance to the beginning of what was to be a 10,000 mile flight."

Their first stop was Lagos after skirting "Vichy French territory about 10 miles out to sea", then on to Kano. After departing Kano the next morning, one of the group, Werbke, got lost. "We were flying in a dense haze - the harmatan was just nearing the end of its season ... . Visibility was good if it was 50 yards. Werbke ... explained that, while he had been singing 'Carry me Back to Old Virginny' to me, he had run out of gas on one tank and before he could change to another his motor had quit and he lost 2000 feet, thus losing the convoy in the haze. I gave him as much information as I could ... ," but his radio wasn't receiving very well. "He did, however, hear me say we were following a highway on a heading of 90 degrees, and he luckily found the highway. He landed 10 minutes after we did after having been lost over this jungle and desert country for over an hour."

When it was time to leave, the engine of "The Beetle" (the nickname he had given his P-40) refused to catch and, since he was the last in the line, the group departed without him. "We walked back to the camp - had supper, and at this time, about 8:30 G.M.T., I wish I had a frosted coke or two." At this point, the diary ends.

My father-in-law caught up with the group and they continued on their trip, arriving in China in April. One of them didn't survive, perhaps due to hypoxia - his aircraft left the flight and spiraled into the ground. In the scrapbook that my mother-in-law compiled was an account in the Long Beach Press Telegram of June 28, 1942, months after the mission: "Lieutenant Murphey, 26, of Shreveport, La., and a graduate of the University of Texas ... told the following amusing experience. 'We were all standing on a flying field with the United States Ambassador to China, the British counselor to China, Lieutenant Sam Mack and others when the air raid siren blew and we could see a formation of bombers heading for the field. Ambassadors and all ran like heck for protection, diving into ditches and everything else we could do. One of the boys was running so fast and looking at the bombers that he ran himself into a stone wall and knocked himself out. The bombers came over the field and not a bomb dropped. Looking up in surprise as they circled the field and came in for a landing we discovered that they were Russian bombers'."

In August 1943, he piloted a P-47 across the North Atlantic to Fortress England, and one of his wingmates was the future senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater. An account in the Shreveport Times states: "Lieut. Rozier C. "Bub" Murphey, 28, of Shreveport, yesterday was disclosed by the army to have been a member of the first contingent of ferrying division pilots to fly single-engine P-47 (Thunderbolts) pursuit planes across the dangerous North Atlantic route of the air transport command. Murphey ... was awarded the Air Medal ... for his part in this flight - which, according to a dispatch from the base, marked the first attempt in the history of aviation to fly single-engine planes from this country to England. A citation accompanying Lieutenant Murphey's award said that he, 'volunteered with the full realization that engine failure on this route would result in almost certain death in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic'. ... The epochal P-47 flight ... took place ... when Lieutenant Murphey and nine other pursuit pilots, escorted by two B-24's, flew their planes direct from their New York factory to Labrador on the first lap of the risky North Atlantic hop. One plane was damaged in Greenland when it ground-looped as the result of a faulty landing gear mechanism, but the other nine continued on and were delivered at Prestwick, Scotland, on Aug. 11, 1943." In this day of nearly failure-proof engines, it's hard to remember what fickle and failure-prone devices were the engines of 1943.

In March of 1944, he completed the "Advanced Course of Four Engine Airline Training" that qualified him as "First Pilot" on C-54 and C-87 type aircraft. Promotions followed: First Lieutenant in January '45, Captain in October '45 and Major in August '46. He ended his career as a pilot on C-54's, flying casualties back from Europe, and, after VE day, back from the South Pacific. On one of his transatlantic crossings, his C-54 lost two engines just past the point of no-return. On another, low on fuel and with alternates socked in, he flew through icing so severe that one of the crew members had to lean through a side window to chip away a small hole in the ice-covered windshield, so that they could see to fly the approach into New Castle, Delaware.

An Associated Press report, dateline, Okinawa, August 22, 1945, gave this account of the buildup for one of his later missions: "The greatest fleet of giant four-engined C-54 (Skymaster) transport planes ever assembled on one field spread over a two-square mile area on Okinawa's Kadena Airdrome today as the Army Transport Command concentrated airliners from all over the world here to execute an unannounced mission. [The great concentration presumably is ready to carry Allied occupation troops into Japan. General MacArthur said they would start landing Sunday.] ... They had been called to this mighty island airbase from Cairo to Brisbane and from London to Honolulu and Manila." My father-in-law described the endless stream of aircraft that departed Okinawa at 30 second intervals, and he was one of the first to arrive in Japan, relating the uncertainty of his reception as he dropped his C-54 onto a Tokyo airfield surrounded by armed Japanese troops. MacArthur's decision to exhibit this mighty force over and into the heart of Japan no doubt kept any unfortunate incidents from occurring.

My father-in-law had hankered for combat, but he was a soldier, first, and his country asked him to take on the less glorious tasks, which he did without complaint. He piloted virtually every aircraft the Army Air Corps possessed. Along with those already mentioned, he flew Vultees, P38's, 39's, 43's, 47's, 51's and 61's, B-17's, 24's, 25's and 26's, C-46's and 47's. After his military commitment ended, he flew Piper Cubs for a while, but dental school, then his practice and family demands, conspired to keep him from the sky.

We talked often about his war-time duty after he learned of my own love of flying. I toured the San Diego Aerospace Museum with him, once, and listened, delighted, as he described the flight characteristics of the P-40, then explained the working environment in the DC-3 cockpit. He flew before VOR's, DME's and way before GPS. Dead reckoning was the accepted method of navigation and oftentimes the punch line of morbid jokes. I marveled at his tales of instrument flight before ILS - the fabled, 'Cone of Silence'.

Last year, he and my mother-in-law retired to Warner Springs, and he surprised me at that town's airport prior to my sailplane 'acro' experience. He was too polite to chuckle at my green-gilled return, and he listened (with stifled mirth) as I described the loop and spins and their unsettling effect on my system. Fifty years earlier he had flown his share of 'acro' and was still disappointed that he had never completed an outside loop.

When I related my experience with Tailspin Tommy in his 1929 Travel Air, he recalled fondly his training experiences in the Steerman. For this past Father's Day, we gave him a gift certificate for a ride in the Travel Air and he seemed excited at the prospect, but a sleeping disorder occupied him and he didn't want to fly in an open cockpit not feeling his best. He was nearly ready to fly when the stroke hit - a relatively minor one, causing a slurring of his speech and a small facial paralysis. His doctor was certain he'd regain control of all his faculties and he was beginning to improve, when, later that day, he suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He died that night, with his family at his side.

The family thought that it fitting that his ashes rest near those of his oldest son, Richard, who had died of cancer ten years earlier. So, on October 15, my brother-in-law and mother-in-law boarded the 1929 Travel Air to take my father-in-law for his last airplane ride, distributing his ashes in the ocean offshore of Pt. Loma.

Our very last conversation had occurred in September. My father-in-law had asked about my novel (which I had spent a month in the desert rewriting). I took a breath and said that all my efforts had been inadequate - that my writing friends had complained that the rewrite still lacked sufficient action to sell. I confessed that I was disheartened, that I was about to actively search for gainful employment (free-lance writing being exactly the opposite of that), and that I needed a 'real' job so that his daughter and I could afford a house. He paused a moment, smiled at me, then said that while my intentions were, of course, admirable, I shouldn't quit writing fiction. He said that he understood my frustration, but that I had the talent to succeed, and that he would be very disappointed if I gave up on the novel for the sake of a house. I'm not sure how many fathers-in-law would have responded that way - the fact that mine did was one more reason why I liked and respected him so.

Do I miss him? As I write this, tears streak my cheeks. My in-laws were married nearly fifty-four years and raised four children, yet they were still so in love that whenever my mother-in-law would leave a room, his eyes would follow her - and he would be just a little less attentive to whomever was his companion until she returned. He was the kind of man who, when you spoke with him, made you feel as though you were the most important person on earth. He was fascinated by everyone and everything - and suffered bores so politely that they never knew. He could express his displeasure so gently that you were five minutes past the lecture before you realized that you had just had the tongue lashing of your career. My only regrets come from not having spent enough time with him - not having asked him to record his wartime experiences for me - for all of us.

If I've babbled on too long about him, I apologize. My feeble words fail me when I try to relate just how fine and gentle a man he was. At the memorial service we held to celebrate his life, I was asked to read his favorite poem. He kept a copy of it in his shirt pocket and another, tightly folded and tucked into his wallet, lest he forget the words - words that he recited to us often, and well. If you're a pilot, you know the poem - if you're not a pilot, you might understand us a little better if you recite it aloud, now. I won't be able to join you, though - my eyes have filled again.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughtered silver wings.
Sunward I have climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless hills of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

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copyright 1996 Stephen Glenn Daly All Rights Reserved

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