WWII Pilot Flies Again After More Than 70 Years

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At 95, Gene Lemiski of Alberta, Canada, longed for decades to be a pilot again after a short flying career as a World War II airman. He got his chance recently with some left-seat time in a Cessna 172, along with an experienced flight instructor to ride along. Lemiski is a veteran of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, a massive effort among several nations to produce air force pilots and crews during the war. He had trained under the program in Canada, flying Fairchild Cornells, Harvards, Anson twins and Consolidated PBY seaplanes, according to Bruce Ritchie, who was Lemiski’s copilot for the flight. Ritchie, chief flight instructor at Centennial Flight Centre near Edmonton, said Lemiski couldn’t afford to continue flying after 1945, so he set aside airplanes and went on to live his life and raise a family.

More than 70 years later, a friend of Lemiski’s stopped in at Ritchie’s flight school to ask about getting some flight time. “I hadn’t met Gene yet so I gave his friend the spiel about the possible difficulty of getting someone that old in and out of a 172,” Ritchie told AVweb in an email. “The fellow said it shouldn’t be a problem and then when I met Gene I realized it certainly wouldn’t. And I also felt it was an amazing opportunity to do something special for such a nice person.” An Edmonton CTV station interviewed the two and recorded the event. “I wanted to see if I could do it, and I did,” Lemiski said. His passion for flying never left him, he told the station. “I loved it,” he said. “You have to love flying to be – I think – to be a good pilot.” Ritchie said the veteran handled the controls easily and flew a tour around Edmonton without any assistance from him, except for “just a bit” during the landing. “It was very special to give him the opportunity to experience the joy of flying after such a long absence from the cockpit,” he said.

Images: CTV Edmonton

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