Dr. Dwight Blackwood smiled nonstop on Thursday afternoon during a flight in a Douglas AC-47 Spooky, a plane owned by the American Flight Museum in Topeka.
“Isn’t this something?” he said.
“This brings back a lot of old memories. Except I’m not wearing a parachute. But I’m not jumping out of this one.”
“Did you ever jump out of a plane?” someone asked.
“Only the ones I couldn’t fly.”
He chuckled, then clarified that he was only joking. Probably.
Blackwood and another veteran, Rodney Thummel, took a flight aboard Spooky from the Allen County Regional Airport to Yates Center and back on Thursday. They weren’t able to attend the May 21 fly-in event at the airport, organized for area Vietnam veterans.
Sgt. Leon Smith, who served with the National Guard’s 891st Battalion and recently returned from a deployment, worked with the American Flight Museum’s Robert Rice and others to arrange for a special flight this week. Spooky is the flight museum’s signature plane.
Thummel, a lance corporal with the Marine Corps, served between 1973 and 1977, during the Vietnam War era.
Blackwood served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and now lives in Chanute as a retired optometrist.
Blackwood said he had top secret military clearance, so he’s not allowed to tell many stories from his service. He was even vague about the years he served, which he said started sometime around 1958.
And the stories he did tell? Well… Some of them may have been made up.
“Now, Dad, quit teasing,” his daughter, Linda Hatch of Yates Center, told him.
She accompanied him on the plane ride, one of six passengers on the flight.
Once Spooky started, its noisy engine made conversation difficult. Rice and his crew warned it would be warm in the back until the flight was underway.
The plane shimmied as it taxied down the runway, but took to the skies with ease as if recognizing its natural habitat.
Spooky flew over Iola before heading west toward Yates Center, flying low overhead and offering breathtaking views of the countryside and cities.
