Pages

Monday, February 9, 2015

Military Monday: Dad and Milt in Honolulu, September 1952

Here are photos from some other pages from my dad Fred Pape's military scrapbook, about the mission ferrying a B-26 from California to Japan.  Their first stop after leaving McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento was Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, Hawaii.  They had some time to explore the city, so they went to the Royal Hawaiian (the famous pink hotel that opened in 1927 on Waikiki Beach) and to Honolulu's Chinatown.  Below is a picture of Dad (on the right) with his pilot, Milt Royles, on the Waikiki Beach side of the Royal Hawaiian:





Here's some more information about Milt, Dad's pilot:

Milton "Milt" Clarence Royles was born February 24, 1920, in Pennsylvania, probably in Philadelphia, where he was baptized April 11 of that year at Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church.  His father was Leonard Royles, his mother was named Elizabeth, and he had an older brother (by four years) named Joseph.  Leonard was a Philadelphia police officer, and the family lived at 5036 Torresdale Avenue in Philadelphia on the 1930 Census, and were also living there in April 1942.

When Milt enlisted in the Army Air Corps on November 21, 1941, he was a high school graduate working as a bookkeeping machine operator.  By July 11, 1952, when my dad was assigned as Milt's navigator in Night Intruder Crew #12, Milt was a first lieutenant pilot in the Air Force.

As the Korean War wound down, when Dad was reassigned to be a navigator instructor at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston in March 1953, Milt was reassigned to the 1738th Ferrying Squadron based out of Long Beach Municipal Airport in California.  Milt married Vivian J. Woods on March 6, 1953, in San Francisco.  Milt was still with the Air Force in 1956, and they were living in Orlando, Florida.  They later divorced, and on May 12, 1962, as an Air Force Major, he married Cornelia "Corrie" de Vos Burchart of Curacao in Bernalillo County, New Mexico.  After he retired in 1964, they moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where Milt passed away on March 1, 1996.  His ashes are in Columbarium Section 15 of Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth.


© Amanda Pape - 2015 - click here to e-mail me.

No comments:

Post a Comment