American aviators

¡Herman Alfred Schmid (3 August 1910 – 12 April 1985) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force. He served in World War II and the Korean War.

Gordon Baxter (December 25, 1923 – June 11, 2005), nicknamed Bax, was a well-known Texas radio personality, an author of books and a columnist for newspapers and magazines. He was a lifelong resident of Southeast Texas, having grown up in Port Arthur where he was born.
He lived near Beaumont during most of his professional years and was probably best known locally as a radio heartland humorist in the Jean Shepherd tradition. He was also known nationally to several generations of pilots who read his columns on the joys of flying in the aviation magazine, Flying.
Baxter was entranced by aviation from childhood. At the age of ten, he paid "a 1933 fortune" of five dollars for his first airplane ride in a Curtiss Condor and was hooked on flying. Despite a slow start in the cockpit and as a writer, by the end of his writing career he had spent more than 25 years with Flying, written 13 books and contributed to a Microsoft CD-ROM title, World of Flight.
During World War II, Baxter joined the Army Air Corps, hoping to be a pilot. Baxter himself noted that his ruination as a military pilot was predicted in high school by a math teacher who told Gordon that he spent too much time dreaming and drawing airplanes and not enough time studying. In the Army Air Corps, he trained in a Stearman. He entered the Merchant Marine as an officer, but after his ship was sunk in the South Pacific, he became a turret gunner in B-17s. Once there, he became a sharpshooter in every turret position. It was only after World War II that he succeeded in soloing in a Luscombe, eventually becoming an active pilot in the late 1950s.

Mary Rawlinson Creason (November 20, 1924 – March 26, 2021) was an American aviator. She was the first woman pilot to work for the Government of Michigan. She was recognized by the federal government for her aviation curriculum for school and for her work as an aviator. Well into her 90s, she continued to fly, despite having a pacemaker.

Mario Héctor Gottfried Gutiérrez (September 7, 1919 – November 2, 1999,) was a businessman in the Mexican electric industry, and captain of the Air Force of the United States. Founder of a group of Mexican companies, such as Reliance de Mexico, S.A. de C.V., and Potencia Industrial, S.A.

Joseph Frederick Cotton (January 21, 1922 – May 5, 2016) was an American military test pilot.

Charles Clifford Ogle (January 21, 1923 – c. August 12, 1964?) was a businessman and developer in San Francisco and Oakland, California, at the time of his disappearance.

Charles Frederick Rogers (December 30, 1921 – disappeared June 23, 1965) was an American seismologist, pilot, and murder suspect who disappeared in June 1965 after police discovered the dismembered bodies of his elderly parents in the refrigerator of the Houston home all three shared, in what the media later dubbed "The Icebox Murders". Rogers has never been found and was declared dead in absentia in July 1975. He remains the only suspect in the murders, which are still considered unsolved.

Gervais Raoul Victor Lufbery (March 14, 1885 – May 19, 1918) was a French and American fighter pilot and flying ace in World War I. Because he served in both the French Air Force, and later the United States Army Air Service in World War I, he is sometimes listed alternately as a French ace or as an American ace. Officially, all but one of his 17 combat victories came while flying in French units.

Zachary Smith Reynolds (November 5, 1911 – July 6, 1932)
was an American amateur aviator and youngest son of American businessman and millionaire R. J. Reynolds. The son of one of the richest men in the United States at the time, Reynolds was to fully inherit $20 million, valued at over $300 million today, when he turned 28, as established in his father's will.In the early morning of July 6, 1932, Reynolds died, under mysterious circumstances, of a gunshot wound to the head, following a party on the family estate of the Reynolda House. A series of investigations revealed inconsistent testimony from the party-goers and signs of tampering with the crime scene. The death gained sensational national media coverage after Reynolds' wife of a few months, Broadway singer and actress Libby Holman, along with Reynolds' friend Albert "Ab" Walker, were indicted of first-degree murder charges by a grand jury. The case was eventually dropped, due to lack of evidence and at the request of the Reynolds family. It remains unsolved. Based on the evidence and testimonies, it is unknown if it was a murder or suicide. Multiple films were inspired by the case, including the melodrama film Written on the Wind (1956).Reynolds' siblings donated their shares of his estate to form the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation for the benefit of social causes in North Carolina.

Douglas Corrigan (born Clyde Groce Corrigan; January 22, 1907 – December 9, 1995) was an American aviator, nicknamed "Wrong Way" in 1938. After a transcontinental flight in July from Long Beach, California, to New York City, he then flew from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to Ireland, although his flight plan was filed to return to Long Beach.Corrigan claimed his unauthorized transatlantic flight was due to a navigational error, caused by heavy cloud cover that obscured landmarks and low-light conditions, causing him to misread his compass. However, he was a skilled aircraft mechanic (he helped construct Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis) and had made several modifications to his own plane, preparing it for his transatlantic flight. He had been denied permission to make a nonstop flight from New York to Ireland, and his "navigational error" was seen as deliberate. Nevertheless, he never publicly admitted to having flown to Ireland intentionally.