Who is Duckworth?

  • Published
  • By Airman John Day
  • 14th Flying Training Wing Public Affairs
Columbus Air Force Base, Miss. --  Many important people have ties to Columbus Air Force Base. These significant individuals are forever immortalized into buildings or streets. One such building is the base operations building named after a man very important to the history of flying.

Col. Joseph "Joe Duck" Duckworth was a man that some called the father of instrument flying.
Duckworth enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1927 and received his wings and reserve commission at Kelly Field, Texas, the next year. After graduation, he flew for Ford Motor Co., Curtiss-Wright Flying Service and Eastern Air Lines.

Duckworth was called to active duty in 1940 as a major and was promoted to lieutenant colonel soon after World War II began. He had more knowledge of instrument flying than any other pilot and he spread his methods everywhere he went.

In 1942, Duckworth was assigned to Columbus, Miss., as an instructor pilot. He lived in one of the homes that are now part of the Columbus Spring Pilgrimage.

It was at Bryan Field, Texas, where he became famous. Bryan Field was the site of the Army Air Corps instrument flying program. A group of experienced British pilots were training in the new field of instrument flying.

A large hurricane approached Bryan Field and caused base leadership to evacuate many of the aircraft to a safer location. The British international pilots were upset that they would have to fly the AT-6 Texan, which they considered inferior. They did not realize the full implications of the impending hurricane and teased the American pilots and their aircraft for fearing the storm.

Duckworth had heard enough from the British pilots and was ready to show them just how 'frail' the AT-6s were. He made a bet with the British saying he could fly directly into the storm and navigate using instrument flying, a feat no other pilot had admitted to doing on purpose.

Duckworth asked Lt. Ralph O'Hair to navigate with him on this risky flight without permission. O'Hair agreed to make this dangerous flight.

O'Hair was on the edge of his seat for the entire flight until the two broke through the storm. They made it to the eye of the hurricane and then headed back to the base.

When they arrived back at Bryan Field, Lt. William Jones-Burdick, the base's weather officer asked to be flown back into the storm to record visual observations.

On that day, Duckworth made history by not only flying into an extremely deadly storm twice in one day, but also showed the British that the U.S. would not be beaten by the weather.

Neither Duckworth nor O'Hair ever repeated their flight into a hurricane, but they proved it could be done, sparking the creation of units devoted to flying into storms.