Oklahoma produced an extraordinary generation of aviators between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second. Some of them are famous. Some of them should be. A few of them are connected to the aircraft in this hangar in ways that still surprise me when I trace the threads. This is their story...
Mustang Field, four miles south of El Reno, Oklahoma. The year is 1943. Young men are learning to fly the Fairchild PT-19 — open cockpit, wood-winged, beautiful and demanding — over the flat prairie of Canadian County.They didn’t just materialize. Somebody had to get them there. And this, it turns out, is one of the most fascinating stories we get to tell here at The Caldwell Collection.
