IAC Dinner, March 12, 2024 - Speaker: David Newell

Our March meeting is on Tuesday, 12 March 2024. The venue is VFW Post 5864. The address: 1842 Veterans Way, Greenwood, IN 46143. It is just east of I-65. As usual, the start time is 6 pm. The post has a well-stocked bar with reasonable prices. The cost is still $25 per member/ $30 per guest.

Our speaker is David Newill. Dave is an Air Force Academy graduate, president of Newill Research Group and a director of the Indiana Aviation Hall of Fame. He is also a long-time IAC member and the director of the Rolls Royce Heritage Foundation and will give us an over-the-world overview of the unique museum near Indianapolis International Airport. 

The FAA will also attend our dinner meeting. Chris House, from said bureau, will attend to officiate distribution of the prestigious Wright Brothers award to two worthy recipients. One of those recipients will also receive the Charles Taylor Master Maintenance Award.

Please RSVP Here.

If you haven't done so:

Please don't forget to Renew your membership:  You can do so HERE.

Donations to our Scholarship Fund can be completed HERE.

Dinner March 8, 2022 - Speaker: Mike Stock

Our March 8 Dinner at Hillcrest Country Club is fast approaching!  You will not want to miss our guest speaker!

Mike Stock has had an extraordinary life!  Spanning a half-century, Mike Stock’s professional flying career has taken him all over the globe and touched almost all aspects of the aviation industry.

He spent the first twenty-years on active duty as a naval aviator including one year flying helicopter gunships in Vietnam and two tours of duty as a Navy test pilot. After retiring from the Navy at the rank of commander, Mike joined the faculty of the Aviation Technology Department at Purdue University where he taught academic courses as well as being an instrument and multi-engine flight instructor. After five years, he left Purdue to take a corporate position in Saudi Arabia flying Boeing 737’s and de Havilland Twin Otters. During the 1991 Gulf War, he survived Scud missile attacks and was nearly shot down by a U.S. Navy warship on patrol in the Persian Gulf. After four years flying in the Arabian desert, Mike returned to academia as the Chief Flight Instructor at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan, where he remained for twelve years. His last hurrah was flying floatplanes as an Alaskan bush pilot. He flew three summers out of Ketchikan and three summers flying from Anchorage. He is the survivor of two helicopter crashes, the in-flight breakup and crash of the world’s largest aircraft, and three engine failures in single engine aircraft. He has over 15,000 flight hours in 102 different aircraft ranging from supersonic jets to airships and gliders. In 2016, Mike was awarded the prestigious Wright Brother’s Master Pilot Award by the FAA. Saudi Arabia. His tales of disaster and other close-calls will leave you hanging onto your seat and marveling at his uncanny good fortune. Mike will be the first to admit that he has indeed lived a very lucky and charmed life as an aviator.

Cocktails - cash bar between 5-6pm
Dinner 6pm

RSVP Here.

Update:  Mike Stock will have books for sale prior to speaking.  So you are prepared, $20. Cash only.  Thanks

If you haven't done so:

Please don't forget to Renew your membership:  You can do so HERE.

Donations to our Scholarship Fund can be completed HERE.

Super Bowl flyover - meet the pilot

 I thought I'd share this.  Interview with Steve Hinton.  The Super Bowl last night was his last Air Force Heritage flight apparently.  Don't worry - he will be doing Navy Heritage flights in the future.  I figured everyone would enjoy the interview .... so here it is ... (click the picture)

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An Evening With Doolittle Raider Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole

An Evening With

Doolittle Raider

Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole

Co-Pilot to General James “Jimmy” Doolittle

on the daring bombing raid on Japan.

Tuesday Oct. 21 at the Knights of Columbus

2100 East 71 St. & Keystone Ave.  Indpls, IN.

$20.00 per person - includes speaker, buffet dinner, silent auction and cash bar.  Social hour 4:00, dinner 5:00 and program to follow.   Advance ticket sales only, reserve seating based on receipt of check.  Ticket with table number will be mailed to you.  Make checks payable to and mail to (include return address & telephone number on check). 

WWII Round Table

Doolittle Raiders

PO Box  36804

Indpls, IN. 46236

Contact Lucy Parker 317-335-2387 for reservation questions.

Contact Don Born 317-823-6917 for complete information.

Sponsored by Indpls. Aero Club & the WW II Round Table

June 10, 2014 Presentation: Where is Amelia Earhart?

Archaeologist, Historian and Museum Professional Gary F. Quigg has done extensive research on Amelia Earhart and her downed plane.  Come hear his findings at the June 10 Meeting.

Gary Quigg balances several fields of expertise.  His extensive archaeological field experience includes survey and excavation work in such extreme locations as the Newfoundland Cape Shore, Alaska's Misty Fjords Wilderness and the Solomons in the South Pacific.

Gary has led the development of numerous one-of-a-kind restorations and uniquely accurate reporductions of long-lost artifacts for museums.

Gary has completed several award-winning historical and environmental documentries for PBS audiences in the Great Lakes Region working as a free-lance writer/producer, receiving an Emmy for his work in 2012.

Gary has logged hundreds of hours as a private pilot, and is presently restoring a 1943 C-47 that served with the 8th Air Force in Europe during World War Two. 

The B-25 Heart

Our picnic on August 10th yielded a number of wonderful stories and experiences.  I invited my friend, Alan, that shares a love for aviation history to the picnic. Alan and I used to work at Thomson together.  He pulled this lovely trinket out of his pocket and proceeded to tell me the story behind it.  I asked him to write up the story in his own words.  Here's the photo I took - and Alan's story:

    Sometime in late 1943 a B-25 Mitchell bomber was severely shot up over Papua New Guinea.  The crew managed to get her back to the airstrip outside Buna but she never flew again. Towed to a spot alongside the runway she became a parts supply to keep the other B-25s flying.

     In early 1944 Theodore (Ted) Francoeur was at a field hospital next to the airstrip near Buna waiting to be evacuated back home. He had spent the year before with the 32nd Infantry Division, along with an Australian division, crossing the Owen Stanley Mountains on foot from Port Moresby to drive the Japanese out of Buna. That effort took the better part of a year and when it was over only 3,700 of the 15,000 men in the 32nd were left standing. Ted was at the field hospital recovering from starvation, malaria, dysentery, and a number of other jungle related ailments.

     To pass the time he did what many of the other men in the hospital did, they made little items to send back home to loved ones.  In Ted’s case he took a small piece of a window from that B-25. Using a pen knife to shape it and a piece of wool to polish it he fashioned a small heart. He sent that heart to his sweetheart Ilene Summers in Michigan. When he returned home in late 1944 they married.

     The picture you see here is that heart made from a tiny piece of that B-25 Mitchell. It’s a little bit of WWII history, a little bit of the B-25’s history, and a little bit of my parent’s history.    

                                           Alan Francoeur

January 2010 - Meeting Announcement

June 2009 - Meeting Announcement