“Orville signed my first pilot's license (# 185), years late. But, when they were in Auburn, it seemed like all they talked about was their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio.” Aviation in its infancy came to Auburn, Alabama while young Bob Knapp was not yet in his teens. His family lived three houses away from, and his mother helped, a lady who ran a boarding house, and it was here that Orville and Wilber Wright lived for a few months while trying to perfect their budding airplane invention. The brothers became acquainted with the Knapp family as they conferred quietly and privately with a Professor Fullen of then-Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University) about adapting their airplane to military specifications. Primarily, they needed to figure how to quickly disassemble their airplane to allow it to be transported on a two-horse wagon. The Army would purchase the plane if this could be accomplished.
These two young men were cautious in their conversations. They did not want the people of Auburn to know their visit had anything to do with an “airplane.” They had been the brunt of much rib-poking, eye-rolling, and flippant jokes about their dubious states of mind in trying to develop something huge that they intended to put in the sky. They requested of Professor Fullen and Mrs. Knapp to say that they were bicycle shop owners and were working on a new type of bicycle.
At this very susceptible age, young Bob was afforded rare exposure to alien talk of airplanes and flying. The genesis, the heartbeat, the very birth of what would become an all-consuming passion began here. The seed was planted and continually watered and nurtured over the course of his entire life.
Bob had yet to finish high school when World War I broke out and he, with exuberance, immediately hustled to enlist in the military. Because of his youth he was rejected, but he discovered that the Army Cadets would welcome him. He signed on and then returned home a bit apprehensive about telling his mother of his plans. The surprise was his.
“I thought she would be unhappy about it. In those days people's parents had a lot to say about what they'd do until they were 21 years old.
“I told Mama I'd joined the aviation section of the Signal Corps and was going to learn how to fly airplanes, and she said, ‘I think that is just fine because Orville and Wilbur tell me the airplane has a great future in it and maybe you will get in something good. But always, I want you to just fly low and slow, Robert.’”
During WWI, at age eighteen, Bob enlisted, serving in England. While neither he nor his unit, the 92nd Bombardment Squadron, saw combat because the propellers ordered for his unit's Handley Page 0/400 bombers failed to arrive in time, his ability in, and passion for, flying steadily increased.
While still an enlisted man, he served in a detachment of flying cadets. He described those early planes as being four-cylinder jobs totaling 8 horse-power, water-cooled but with few instruments: a red-line thermometer sitting on top of the radiator, a small compass, an air speed indicator, a tachometer, and an oil pressure gauge. After four hours of instruction you were expected to solo. His flying instructor quickly gave his blessing for Bob to solo before he killed either one or the both of them.
Shortly thereafter Bob learned all about night flying and bombing. “Night bombing was kind of interesting, but not very accurate. Our bomb-sights consisted of a couple of nails on the side of the fuselage. Even with hours of practice, we seldom hit anything, and when we did it was ninety percent luck.”
The war's ending found Bob, in 1919, then flying border patrol against Mexican guerrillas, including the notorious villain/hero general Pancho Villa. In airplanes armed with machine guns, “we kept them south of the border,” he confided with a slight grin. Man and machine, at that time, were each lucky to last the three hours between posts. Emergency landings were standard, either to service the airplane or to allow the pilots to satisfy nature's calls. They took the dependable, grey and white plumed homing pigeon with them. Were they to have an accident or be wounded, the bird was released to fly back to base and spread the alarm.
On one patrol he paired with his flying buddy and friend, Bruce Struthers.
I flew to Douglas, Arizona with Bruce. There we met his father, an engineer with Southern Pacific Railroad. His dad revealed to us that he was about to pilot a train across Texas to San Antonio. This gave Bruce an idea.
“Dad, I'll fly by you and give you a buzz just about the time you get to Alpine.”
The idea pleased his father. “I'll be looking for you, son.”
The next day Bruce took off to catch his dad's train at Alpine.
In that area of Texas the terrain is irregular. The hills rise like cones, almost volcanic in nature. As a pilot, if you were in the least bit careless you could have serious problems.
Bruce Struthers, true to his promise, flew alongside his dad's train, watching his father and waving to him. His dad blew the train whistle a few times and waved proudly at his handsome son.
And then it happened. His father watched in horror as his son, Bruce, flew directly into one of those deceiving Texas hills. To this day I still remember the tragedy of Bruce Struthers.
The Mexican border has always played a significant role in the growth of North America. The Border Patrol is a part of that history. During its first year or two the accident rate of aircraft flying patrol was so great that it became the rule rather than the exception. The reasons were varied but each was major: novice pilots; unsuitable (because it was too thin) Liberty oil; boredom, creating reckless pilots; parachutes not available; extreme heat during the day and debilitating deep-freezing midwinter nights.
When the Border Patrol moved to Nogales, Arizona in 1921, Bob was given command for two years patrolling the Arizona border. He had known that if parachutes had been available, some of the fatalities could have been avoided and he was now in a position to try to correct this.
In his words:
I had sent my supply officer, a fellow named Wolfe, up to Dayton, Ohio to learn how to pack parachutes. He got a supply of them and brought them back to us, so here we were with new parachutes and Wolfe was going to show us how to use them. Of course no one had taught us how to jump with them. Wolfe showed us how to pack them and fix them.
Finally he decided he was going to make a jump. We notified the newspaper and they put in the paper that Wolfe was going to make a parachute jump. People had never seen a jump before, as a matter of fact, until we came, and airplanes were a mighty scarce thing in that area. Everybody that had means of transportation came out to the field to see this parachute jump.
I flew Wolfe for the jump but just before taking off, Capt. Usher said, “Bob, let's take a cat up and drop him in one of those little pilot chutes.” The little pilot chute was on a spring that would snap open and pull out the main chute from your pack, but it wasn't much bigger than a large handkerchief. It was about the right size to let this little kitten down, so we talked it over. It would be a good idea to do something unusual, so we made a harness for the kitten. We tied the parachute onto the kitten and rolled the cord around the spring. We gave it to Wolfe and told him the first time over, let the kitten go. Then we will fly around again to see where the kitten lands so we can tell more about the wind and judge better where you are going to land.
I flew around and told Wolfe to release the kitten. Instead of the boy unwinding the string around the kitten and chute so it could open, I guess he was excited, so he just dumped the whole thing over and the parachute had no way to open up. The poor little old kitten fell down and used up all his nine lives right there. The cat was finished for sure, but the funny part, if you can call it funny, people didn't know about the size of the parachute and they thought it was Wolfe. Women fainted but I didn't know that up in the airplane. I flew around and dropped Wolfe, of course, he came down and made it all right. Everything was OK but a lot of people didn't speak to us for a long time for what we had done to the poor little old cat. The kitten would have been all right but Wolfe got excited and he was a little scared. Nobody had ever seen anyone jump out of an airplane with a parachute before, I never had — none of us ever had, it was the first time. It was just too much for him to think about the kitten — he just tossed it over the side just like it was a brick, it was too bad, but you just couldn't do anything about it.1
With other pilots, Bob barnstormed across the country trying to arouse America's interest in aviation. He happily tried everything he could: air races, parachute jumps, flying airmail routes.
Much of his life from 1927—37 entailed flight training of the Army Air Corps. Bob Knapp said, in fact, that he had trained most of World War II's Air Corps officers.
“Military life came very easy to me. I enjoyed every bit of it.”
His leadership qualities soon became apparent. Robert Knapp was a natural leader, who was highly respected by the men under him. Having been born in 1897, this day-after-Christmas baby was becoming an accomplished pilot before most of the men who served under him had even been born.
Bob tromped confidently through life learning by the seat of his pants, for there was no airplane history to draw on. “When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor I was playing golf with some of the Squadron COs at the Jackson (AFB, Miss.) Country Club. We thought it a wild rumor but called an Officer's meeting anyway. Confirmation was soon received from Washington and the Sunday of Dec. 7, 1942, we were instructed to move and we did.”
Bob entered WWII with his experience and leadership qualities expanding, and he eventually pinned on the coveted Silver Star of a Brigadier General.
Heller shrugged and yanked Knapp's chain as equally as he had done for everyone else with his creation of the factious General Dreedle.
General Dreedle drank a great deal. His moods were arbitrary and unpredictable. “War is hell,” he declared frequently, drunk or sober, and he really meant it, although that did not prevent him from making a good living out of it or from taking his son-in-law into the business with him, even though the two bickered constantly. (p. 212) [Gen. Knapp's son was his Aide de Camp.]
Being on the ground floor of the flight experience, coupled with longevity, afforded Bob Knapp a wealth of unique tales to tell. Story after interesting story piled up in his wake.
On two occasions he crossed paths with the famous ski-nosed entertainer and comedian Bob Hope and his USO Show. For several hours the fighting troops were distracted and entertained by much-needed and appreciated jokes, singing, skits, and laughter. Hope was always a favorite; he unfailingly brought with him talented, and often beautiful, stars for these highly anticipated diversions.
The first encounter happened in Tunis in early April 1943. Hope and cast visited the 321st. It was an early Sunday morning. Abruptly the Squadron Mess Officer burst into the cook shack with news that Colonel Robert D. Knapp had selected the 445th to feed Bob Hope and his USO troupe at lunchtime. The cook shack was a Quonset hut with nothing but a dirt floor.
The mess crew worked all morning preparing a thousand meatballs and barrels of spaghetti for Bob Hope's team and the men of the 445th. Lunchtime came, but Bob Hope didn't. Since the men had to be fed, luncheon was served. Not unexpectedly, the 445th found the food just too good to be wasted, so they consumed everything!
About 1:15 P.M. the Mess Officer returned with word that Colonel Knapp and the Bob Hope troupe were on the way. Out came cans of boned chicken and boxes of rice. All this was mixed together in a ten-gallon roasting pan. Soon it was piping hot and ready to be served, and then it happened. The two men carrying the roasting pan across the room dropped everything on that dirt floor. There was, of course, only one thing to do. The two men scraped up the chicken and rice and quite a bit of dirt, and served it all, attractively, on the best china available.
An hour later Bob Hope dropped into the cook shack to visit the mess staff.
“Men, that was the best feed I have had on the tour so far! Thanks very much.”2
Months later, on Corsica, Knapp again welcomed Bob Hope, the lovely Frances Langford, and Jerry Colonna, Hope's zany sidekick, when they were invited to put on their show for the troops there. Afterwards, they were escorted around the area. Upon cresting a sand dune to view the splendor of the Mediterranean, they were treated to the glory of a beach filled with our totally naked American soldiers who were, in seal-like manner, swimming and sunning themselves. Frances let out a yelp, did a 180, and all returned to the mess tent.
While Bob Knapp's stories were abundant, informative, and often humorous, some had to include a darker side. These usually involved uncommon acts of bravery. From what he personally witnessed in battle as well as acts that were brought to his attention as being extraordinary, he was inclined to agree with William Manchester who stated in his book Goodbye, Darkness, “As men, I know, do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps, or glory, or any other abstraction — they fight for one another.”
“I really believe that most acts of personal bravery on a battlefield occur because the man is really thinking about those buddies of his and that he is helping them,” agrees Bob Knapp.3
The following story of a bombardier epitomizes this. This particular plane got into severe trouble with punishing flak over the target and the crew was having to abandon ship. The bombardier had left his parachute in the crawlway, as was common, so he could more easily inch his way into the airplane's nose where he would have more room to maneuver without it. When the pilot gave the order to abandon the dying ship, the bombardier retreated back to midship, pushing his parachute ahead of him. It fell onto the floor—the floor that was no longer there because the engineer had released the escape hatch. His parachute, his lifeline, dropped out.
The pilot ordered, “The rest of you chaps abandon the ship now. I'll stay and bring this airplane to a landing of some sort.”
The bombardier said, “No, you can't do that — this thing is too badly shot up.”
Knowing that the pilot was not going to leave him, this man, this bombardier, without a parachute, then jumped out of the airplane.4
While his formal education was never completed, still Bob Knapp continued to advance. As his flying ability and leadership skills were recognized he rubbed elbows with some of that era's military elite. General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, General William “Billy” Michell, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, General Carl A. Spaatz, General Claire Chennault, General Ira Eaker, General James “Jimmy” Doolittle, fighter ace Captain Edward “Eddie” Rickenbacker were a few of his working acquaintances. It was, in fact, Bob Knapp who had trained the crews that flew, for the first time ever, their B-25s off the deck of the carrier Hornet in the historic and celebrated “Jimmy Doolittle Raid” over Toyko.
He had no taste for sham, tact or pretension, and his credo as a professional soldier was unified and concise: he believed that the young men who took orders from him should be willing to give up their lives for the ideals, aspirations and idiosyncrasies of the old men he took orders from. (p. 214)
Bob Knapp flew 50 missions and retired with 14,000 hours of flying time, more than any other service man at that point. While he was never shot down in combat, Bob did admit to several crashes. “Crashing is no big deal,” he said in 1991. “It's the getting up that's the hard part. I've totaled a lot of them in my day. I don't know how I walked away from some. But I'd like to do it all over again.”
“I did what I wanted to do. I just loved to fly, I really did. I'd go anywhere. I always felt like I was big enough to do what I wanted to do.”
The years passed, and on the cusp of his 90th birthday, Bob visited Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, for a dedication ceremony of a B-25 Memorial for the 57 th Bomb Wing and a reunion of members of his unit. Lt. James Nylund, Special Activities Officer for the AF Institute of Technology, was assigned as his escort officer. With his first glimpse of Gen. Knapp, as he was disembarking, Nylund immediately realized that this was, indeed, an uncommon individual. Here was not a cobweb-chewing, aging man drifting into his twilight years. This man was expressing his thanks to the crew for the flight with a gleam in his eye that said “flying is everything in the world.” Ignoring protocol, Bob, with his walking stick, settled in the front seat with Lt. Nylund so that they could talk more easily as they headed for the Visiting Officers Quarters.
The flight had been delayed and it was the deep-dark hour before mid-night when their yellow-white headlights swept through the black and across the very quiet hotel's facade. Bob asked if the lieutenant could do him a favor after he got checked into his room. Members from his old unit were staying there and he'd like to see “his boys” before he turned in for the night.
Nylund did not think, at that late hour, that many of “his boys” would be around, but, to his surprise, there were at least 40 of “his boys” eagerly awaiting his arrival.
“General Bob, we were hoping you'd make it in tonight.”
“General Bob, it's really great to see you.”
“Sir, you look great; glad you could make it.”
He greeted each by their first name as they shook hands. Admiration beamed from the men of the 57th Bomb Wing. Pride beamed from the General for the men that had served in his unit.
“Many of them thanked me for bringing him and asked that I take good care of their leader — if I could keep up with him.”5
After the war, Bob became Chief of the USAF Mission to Argentina. In 1953, after a 36-year career in the USAF, he retired to his farm in Auburn, Alabama. He became a founding member of the Order of the Daedalians (a fraternal organization of military pilots) and remained extremely active with reunions of the B-25 units he once led.
He had been awarded The Silver Star in 1943:
For gallantry in action. On March 31, 1943, Colonel Knapp took off on a sea search mission leading fourteen B-25 airplanes. The weather was bad with rainsqualls and poor visibility to a point about twenty miles out to sea. The fighter escort and six of the B-25 bombers became separated in the bad weather and returned to base. Colonel Knapp gallantly continued the search with the remaining eight bombers. At 12:55 a convoy of six ships, two of them large with fighter and marine escort, was sighted. Colonel Knapp's formation was attacked by fourteen enemy fighter aircraft, and although the tail of Colonel Knapp's lead aircraft was damaged by two explosive shells and machine gun bullets, he gallantly and skillfully led the formation in destroying one enemy aircraft, damaging four, and losing the others in the clouds. Colonel Knapp then gallantly led the formation back to the convoy, climbed to forty-five hundred feet, and made the bomb run, sinking one large ship and seriously damaged another. By his gallantry and devotion to duty on this occasion, Colonel Knapp has upheld the highest traditions of the Army Air Forces.