Dick Grace

Serial, but no Movie

Stunt Flier Dick Grace Helps bomb Reich in His Second War

AN EIGHTH AIR FORCE BOMBER STATION, Nov. 24-One of Hollywood's high-priced stunt fliers-he smashed planes in "Wings" and "Hell's Angels"-CAPT Dick Grace, 46, who bombed Germany in World War I, today is doing the very same thing.

Flying side by side with airmen who weren't born when he flew in a World War I Spad to drop a load of three 100 pound fragmentation bombs on Heligoland, Grace recently re-lived his past by helping bomb the island fortress again.

Explaining yesterday why he turned down a desk job to become a flying operations officer in the 486th Bomb Group of the Third Bombardment Division, Grace said: "The kind of life I've lived makes me more suited to combat flying than anything else, psychologically and in every other way. All the experience of my flying career would be lost if I could not use it where it would be of most value."

Typical of those early combat fliers, Grace, upon getting his discharge at the end of World War I, couldn't get the air out of his system. Taking a "flier" in commercial aviation, he established one of the first passenger airlines in the States.

One day he met Tom Mix. Needing a stunt flier to stage a plane crash in his Western movie, "Eyes of the Forest," Mix offered Grace the job. That led to more than 20 years of Grace taking his life into his hands by performing such feats as changing from plane to plane in mid-air, wing-walking and climbing from speeding ground vehicles to aircraft.

Once, Grace related, he nearly go it. He jumped 125 feet from a plane into a sailboat. He hit the boat, but broke 81 bones in the process.

Grace resumed active service in January, 1943, when he rejected an offer of a direct AAF commission, preferring to take the regular aviation cadet training with special permission.

His main ambition today, Grace says, as it was more than a quarter of a century ago, is to help bomb Berlin.

(reprinted from the O&W N/L Spring '91)

CAPT Dick Grace 1944. (Bob Cross)

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