More About Biplanes

This is a bit off the point of Sampson family lore, but I thought it was interesting. My father-in-law, Frank Horn, is an 85-year old retired FAA official. I told him about my astonishment that Gene Sampson would have been flying a bright yellow  biplane with open cockpits to train Navy flyers during WW II. He had this reply:

There were a lot of open cockpit biplanes used for training during WWII.  They were painted yellow so they could be found easier when they didn't come back when they were supposed to.

     Jerry's Uncle Bill had one for a few years after the war.  It was a big gas hog, so he got rid of it.

     One story about them is that one version had a single landing light. Some goofball trainees in Texas, on their night flying exercises, would see a freight train going along.  By coming around on a heading right down the track toward the engine, they would turn on the light at a low elevation and cause the train crew to apply the emergency brakes on the train. That was supposed to have caused quite a few flat spots on freight car wheels.

     Uncle Bill was in charge of the local branch of the Civil Air Patrol.  He and his volunteers went out to look for some of these missing planes.  We got an extra gas allowance for our mother's car for this reason.  I was a junior member of the CAP while in High School, and had a uniform and everything!!  WOW!! We had a big CAP decal on both front doors of my mother's old Willys sedan.

     Western Pennsylvania was a bad place for untrained pilots.  Some of them would follow a railroad track when ceilings were low, and not be able to get clear when the track went in to one of the many tunnels back there,