Brian Dunaway is not the only Confederate flier to dislike the “Commemorative” name. Ronald Khol of “Machine Design” is another of those dissidents, saying, “Political correctness has run amok.”
According to the certificate I found deep in the bowels of a rusty old steamer trunk that has crossed the Pacific at least twice, I was made a colonel in the Confederate Air Corps on July 5, 1959.
The hallowed and yellowed document was signed by the honorable secretary of the Corps, Thadeus somebody. The last name was not legible after half a century in my trunk.
I immediately wanted to have the document framed to hang on my study wall.
There being nothing in my diary for July 5,1959, I had no way of finding out just how this honor came my way.
I was living in Taiwan’s southernmost city, Pingtung, and had a number of Chinese Air Force officers and American military adviser friends. It was probably a joint allied decision to make me a colonel. (Until then I was only a second lieutenant in the Air Force Reserve.)
After all these years without a record of a discharge from the Confederate Air Corps I felt it my duty to check-in with them.
That is where the Internet came in handy.
On the Brian Dunaway Archive Web pages I found a thumbnail history of the outfit. (I suppose he is a CAF officer. His website of 2004 says he is a chemical engineer and a native Texan.)
According to Dunaway, back in 1951 Lloyd Nolen (spelled with an “e” and so not the famous actor Lloyd Nolan) purchased a surplus Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. Nolen was a World War II Army Air Corps flight instructor.
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