Harold E. Thompson

Having spent two years at Purdue University, Thompson was called up into the United States Army Air Forces in 1943, a week after he had married his childhood sweetheart, Carolyn Kramer.

As Sikorsky's chief test pilot Jimmy Viner pointed out, "Any of 10 things can go wrong--all fatal, be sure you know what you're doing."

Thompson did—erratically at first, then perfectly—10 loops in all, as a 8 mm movie camera recorded the flight at Bridgeport, Connecticut[3] on May 9, 1949, for history.

[4] That year, he went to the Cleveland air races with the S-52, where he set the first of three international speed records that he was to achieve in the helicopters: 129.616 miles per hour (208.597 km/h) over 3 kilometres (1.9 mi).

His students included Admiral Arthur W. Radford; Pat Handy, first woman to fly solo in a helicopter; and Rodman Wanamaker, Eastern department store tycoon.

His career came to an abrupt halt on a spring day in 1950, when he took an admiral aloft at the Navy's Lakehurst, New Jersey, base.

Currently he is honored at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., outside the entrance to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.