Kenneth (Ken) Walter Tyler was born on 21 Oct 1910
In California. He was married to Henderson native, Emma Pentecost (1914 – 2004). Tyler tragically died on 28 Aug 1962 while stunt flying at the Henderson airport. Frank Boyett wrote and shared Tyler’s story better than I ever could:
Daredevil pilot airport’s first fatality by Frank Boyett
It’s not often a local obituary becomes national news. But, then, we’ve never had many residents like Ken W. Tyler.
Tyler was larger than life, the sort of swashbuckler who calls to mind Indiana Jones or Errol Flynn, and while I admit I’m a little skeptical about the entire panoply of his recorded exploits, a good portion of them are demonstrably true. If he exaggerated at times, I guess you could write it off as part of his colorful personality.
A native of Oakland, Calif., he settled here in 1953 when he married Emma Pentecost, and Francele Armstrong eventually convinced him to sit for an interview, which appeared in her Gleaner column published Feb. 14, 1954.
“Ken’s exploits are so varied that I hardly know where to start,” she wrote. “Perhaps I should first summarize by saying he has been a world traveler who has served in all types of combat, including the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when he fought for the Loyalists; the Chinese-Japanese war preceding WWII, when he served under Generalissimo Chiang-Kai Shek; World War II when in its early stages he served in the Royal Air Force, Canadian division, and later in the ferry command shuttling between England and the Continent; (and) the American phase of WWII when he served as a civilian employee of Pan American Airways in mapping a route between Africa and China.”
And that’s not counting all his other travels and adventures.
For instance, at one point he contracted to manufacture and distribute poisoned pellets in Australia “to win the battle of the humans against the fast-multiplying rabbits,” and at another flew supplies to South American oil fields. He was only a teenager when he began flying, and for awhile made a living as a stunt pilot, crashing planes for movies and fairs. He claimed to have crashed 144 planes in films and in fairs.
He also claimed his combat experience racked up 38 kills with the Loyalists, the Flying Tigers and the RAF.
The Ottawa Citizen of Dec. 18, 1940, notes that Tyler had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. It described him as a soldier of fortune who had flown in Spain and China and as a stunt flyer for movies and fairs, as well as an auto stunt driver. “I began flying at 15 ? used to watch planes to get rides,” he said during a stop in Toronto. “I’m pretty well battered up for high flying now.”
But it was mapping out the Africa air routes, which allowed President Franklin Roosevelt to safely attend the wartime conference in Casablanca, that earned him personal congratulations from the president.
Tyler was test pilot for Republic Aviation in 1943 during the president’s visit to Evansville, at which time a photograph was taken of him and the president.
Tyler, by the way, was the first person to fly the Thunderbolt P-47 manufactured in that huge building on U.S. 41-North that more recently was used for building refrigerators.
“The P-47 was built to travel at better than 600 mph and Ken saw to it that the plane was properly tested,” Armstrong wrote, describing his aerobatics in detail.
He also helped train pilots for the Russian Air Force during the war.
After the war Tyler manufactured aircraft in Florida before moving his operations to Evansville and then to Henderson, where he manufactured such things as boats, kitchen utensils and burial vaults out of Fiberglas.
But he retained his love of stunt flying. And that’s what led to his demise Aug. 28, 1962, at the age of 51.
He was doing low-altitude stunts at the Henderson City-County Airport in a borrowed Waco biplane when he was unable to pick up a wing after a roll. The wing tip touched the ground and the plane crashed in a soybean field. He was thrown from the wreckage and died of head injuries about an hour later at Methodist Hospital.
“Don Davis, operator of the local airport, said it was the first accident since the airport started operation in 1957,” The Gleaner reported Aug. 29, also noting “he was the first person to ever fly a plane under the Ohio River bridge here.”
It seems kind of a pedestrian way to die after all the risks the man had taken during his life. But I suppose he died doing what he loved best.
The Sept. 7, 1962, issue of Time magazine carried his obituary, characterizing him as a “test pilot, nerveless Hollywood stuntman and soldier of fortune.”
But the obituary noted that he had “always insisted his most harrowing experience was flying the 347 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles upside down.”
Reference:
Daredevil pilot airport’s first fatality by Frank Boyett
Evansville Courier and Press • Wed, Aug 29, 1962