- (Newspaper Article published in the Sand Springs Oklahoma Ledger Wednesday January 7 1987)
Winging it: Fred Holladay lived his dreams by flying the world’s skies.
Fred Holladay of Sand Springs has had a love affair with flying since seeing his first pane at age 5. When he retired last year after 30 years as a corporate pilot, Holladay had logged more than 11,000 hours and about 4 million miles as a pilot. In his time as an aviator, Holladay went from a single engine two-seater to multi-million dollar jets. “you really have to be alert when you’re flying a jet and always be thinking ahead. When you first start flying them you get this feeling that the plane is always ahead of you because it is going so fast.”
Now he’s traded jets for a typewriter to write the aviation history of the Tulsa area. He’s done interviews with many Tulsa aviation pioneers and has amassed photos and written accounts to supplement the oral history.
Friends have donated numerous historic photos to his project. Holladay has a photo of Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis on its visit to Tulsa, aerial views of various Tulsa airports no longer in existance, and a photo of the space shuttle riding piggy back on a 747 at Tulsa International Airport.
Holladay considers himself very lucky because he made a career of doing what he loves - flying. By working for companies, he was able to travel extensively and have wonderful experiences, he said.
He has flown throughout the United States (except Hawaii) and has piloted planes as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as Bolivia.
His passengers have included movie stars (Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett, for example) and the president of Bolivia. Holladay’s career has taken him to the Kentucky Derby, Rose Bowl and many other football games, as well as to Yankee Stadium and the Indianapolis 500. he proudly shows off a picture or Mario Andretti with his car taken at the famous race.
Of the five jets he flew for companies, Holladay favors the Lear Jet but admits “I liked all of them.” “The Lear Jet is a high performance plane. It has a surplus of power. It’s like the difference between a sports car and a family car. When I was flying it, I really felt like I was part of the airplane.” Holladay said.
Holladay said the highlight of his flying career was seeing Astronaut John Glenn’s capsule take off while he was piloting a jet. The Sand Springs man was flying in the Grumman Gulfstream enroute from Washington D.C. to Houston, and actually saw the capsule climb into space and orbit twice before he landed the plane in Houston.
Aviation had always been his dream, Holladay said. He was fascinated with flight from the time he saw an autogyro, the forerunner of the helicopter, in Collinsville in 1929. His fascination grew as he watched airplanes take off and land in his neighborhood at Tulsa Commercial Airport, then located sat 51st and Sheridan, just north of where the Farm Shopping Center is now, he said.
In 1942, he graduated fro Union High School and went to work for the Tulsa Commercial Airport, then located at 61st and Yale just north of the current site of St. Francis Hospital. “I went to work in the office and polished planes at night to get flying time,” said Holladay, who managed to log 35 hours in the air using this method. Holladay started flying solo after 7 1/2 hours flight time.
In December 1942, he enlisted in the U. S. Army Air Corps. he trained as a flight engineer and gunner, and was a crewman on 50 bombing missions in 1944 in Germany, France, the Balkans States and other European targets. On his sixth mission in southwestern France, the crew miraculously lived through enemy gunfire that riddled the B-24 with 400 holes, including one large hole right through the left inboard fuel tank made by an 88mm shell that failed to explode.
Holladay said the plane would have immediately blown up had the shell exploded. The crew threw everything off the plane possible to lighten the aircraft so it could make it to Spain, a neutral country. The plane was rapidly losing fuel but managed to make it across the Pyrenees Mountains.
After bailing out, the crew was still in danger as Spanish troops on the ground began shooting and the plane circled back toward them, Holladay said.According to Holladay, the plane then struck the roof of a house, tearing it from the structure. The surprise visit apparently shocked a female occupant so much that she immediately delivered her baby. The aircraft then hit and killed a dog, before skidding to rest in a rocky and stumpy field.
Holladay said the bomber amazingly did not blow up. He and the other crew members were taken into custodian detained at a posh Spanish resort hotel for three months. “We were lucky because we were the first crew to fly across the Pyrenees and bail out. Many crews had to walk out of France and over the mountains with German soldiers and dogs right after them,” Holladay said.
He was stationed first with then Eighth Air Force in England and then with the 15th Air Force in Italy. By his honorable discharge, he had achieved the rank of technical Sargent.
Upon returning to the U.S. after his last bombing mission in 1944, Holladay went to work as an aircraft mechanic at the Tulsa Commercial Airport under the administration of his idol, the late John Armstrong.
Holladay frequently took to the skies after work for a “test-hop”.” “It didn’t matter if I had ever flown that kind of plane before, I would just get in it and fly it,” Holladay said. He and a friend purchased a two-seater Tylorcraft plane in 1947. HOlladay flew the plane back and forth to work for a while. They built a private runway for it in a cow pasture, he added.
Later, Holladay said they purchased a four-seater Cessna. He added “it was much less expensive at the time to own a plane, but the cost is prohibitive for many people now because of insurance costs, airport tie-down fees and other expenses. Even a good, used plane cost much more today,” Holladay Said.
For a long time, Holladay worked as an aircraft mechanic. In fact, he was still working as a mechanic when he took his first co-pilot’s job with Shell Oil Co. in 1956. He was one of the first pilots hired by the Williams Brothers and became a corporate captain for the company in 1967. He retired from the Williams Companies in1986. Besides writing Tulsa’s aviation history Holladay is now filling his days planning a reunion for the seven of ten original B-24 crew members that he flew with while stationed in England.
He also is active in the Eighth and 15th Air Force Historical Society and is helping plan reunion for them as well. Holladay said anyone who flew with these groups in Europe or interested in his Tulsa aviation history project can contact him at 245-8907 for more information.
“I’m enjoying retirements,” Holladay said, “I really did everything I could do in aviation short of becoming an astronaut.”
Fred was shown in picture both in his WWII flight gear and with the Falcon jet he flew for the Williams Companies and the 1950 bullet-nosed Studebaker convertible he restored. The Studebaker won Best in Car Show during the National Studebaker Convention in South Bend, Ind. in1978. Hoaalday’s love of working on car engines was fostered by his father. His love of flying and career as an aircraft mechanic eventually led to his work as a corporate pilot.
Additional photo’s captioned: Holladay was a gunner on the Yoo Hoo ’28’ B-24 bomber, shown, while stationed with the 15th Air Force in Italy in 1944. Also shown the Lear Jet he flew for the Williams Companies parked at the Arctic Circle after he landed it there.
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Holladay/Barbour/Martin/Collier
1924 - 2001 (77 years)
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