Colonel Walter Boyne, best-selling author, retired USAF command pilot, past director of the National Air and Space Museum, founder of the Wingspan Television Channel, and former director of the NAA graced our podium on May 26th to share highlights of his most recent history: How The Helicopter Changed Modern Warfare.
Budd Davisson, editor-in-chief of Flight Journal Magazine, calls it "a history that reads like a thriller ... packed with an immense amount of information and sometimes alarming, but illuminating, insights."
Walter was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2007, and awarded the Lifetime Achievement Medal by the Air Force Association in 2010. He lives on a quiet street in suburban Maryland with his lovely wife Terri, a retired artist and designer whom he met when they were both busy creating the National Air and Space Museum on Independence Avenue which opened to the World on July fourth, 1976.
Walter has dedicated his book to the military members of the vertical flight community who have served as "the point of the modern military sword, sometimes bursting into enemy positions with courage and panache, sometimes acting as angels of compassion, rescuing the wounded under fire. There is no way to measure their selfless bravery, and one can only admire what they have done with so demanding an instrument as the helicopter."
Always entertaining and filled with stories, it was a treat to hear what this highly respected man of letters and experiences had to say about the future of military flight.
Watch for news of our upcoming September meeting. - RD
