Old friends take flight again

Ivan Behel Sr. bolts out of the car and hurriedly walks over to a hangar at Lawrence Municipal Airport. He’s anticipating a reunion with a friend he hasn’t seen in more than a half century. He grins ear to ear when he sees her.

“Looks purty!” he drawls, slowly caressing her while walking around to get a good look.

Cameras are snapping wildly as he stands back to look at the Beechcraft Staggerwing in which he used to fly his former boss around.

The owner of the Staggerwing, Lawrence businessman and aviation preservationist Steve Craig, is smiling. The reunion of plane and former pilot has been years in the making. Behel’s son, Ivan Jr., himself an accomplished pilot retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, grew up around airplanes.

“We had a picture of this airplane in our house when we grew up,” the younger Behel said. “In later years we asked what happened to that airplane, and he (his father) thought it’d been destroyed or crashed or burned or something.”

The son credits the Internet for bringing his dad and the aircraft he once flew together again. A search on the World Wide Web found the Staggerwing Museum in Tullahoma, Tenn., which provided the phone number of the president of a Staggerwing club.

“(From the) picture of the airplane … I knew what the serial number was, and he said, ‘Nope, that airplane is still in existence,’ and he referenced me to Steve Craig,” he said.

Craig was in the midst of restoring the airplane to original condition when he got the call from the younger Behel, who asked Craig to call his father in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Ivan Jr. sent his sister to be with their father before Craig called to make sure he wouldn’t hang up thinking it was a crank call. After a few moments of disbelief, the two talked about the airplane and set up a reunion date.

In plane sight

A pilot and his airplane were reunited last week after more than 50 years apart. Ivan Behel Sr., Colorado Springs, Colo., came to Lawrence Municipal Airport to see the restored Beechcraft Staggerwing airplane he last flew in 1950. The plane was purchased and restored by Lawrence businessman Steve Craig

The years of wondering ended May 24. Behel, now in his mid-80s, walked into the hangar where the Staggerwing was parked and stopped in his tracks. Hands in his pockets, he took in the sight of the red biplane he hadn’t seen since October 1950.

“How does it look?” Behel’s daughter asked as he made his way around the tail.

“Just beautiful!” he replied.

Behel looked like a young boy in a toy store as he reminisced about the rare Beechcraft Staggerwing.

“This airplane was the last one built in Wichita. Walter Beech used it as his personal airplane until Mr. Hartman bought it and I started to fly it.”

The Staggerwing was one of only 20 “G” models and rolled off the assembly line in late 1946. Walter Beech, the founder of Beechcraft, did use it as his personal airplane for about a year before Kansan Willis Hartman, an independent oil and gas producer, bought it from Beech.

Behel, who flew with Britain’s Royal Air Force and later the U.S. Army Air Corps after the United States entered World War II, met Hartman shortly after coming home.

Hartman hired Behel for a starting salary of $475 per month to fly him around in a Lockheed 12 before purchasing the Staggerwing from Beech. Behel flew Hartman all over the region: to his oil fields in central and western Kansas for business, up to Creede, Colo., to a favorite fishing spot, and down to San Antonio, Texas, during the summers to play polo.

In October 1950, Behel’s Air National Guard unit was activated and sent to France. He didn’t see his beloved Staggerwing for the next 53 and a half years.

text 6News video: Reunion gives flight to memories

Back in the sky

After posing with the aircraft for seemingly dozens of pictures for his family, Behel climbed into the front office of the airplane. With Craig in the pilot’s seat and two family members in the back seat, the four took to the air for a short flight around the Lawrence area. Craig handed over control of the airplane to Behel for a few minutes of the flight. After landing and taxiing back to the hangar, Behel climbed down with an even bigger grin than before.

“Well I tell you, things come back in memory once you get in there and get operating in it,” Behel said. “Beautiful airplane, and to be able to keep it in that shape.”

About noon, the plane was rolled back into its hangar; lunch was now the topic of the moment. As the younger generations talked about where to eat, Behel looked like a man who already had finished his dessert.

Ivan Behel Sr. learned to fly in 1937-38 in Alva, Okla., as part of a government program designed to encourage men to become pilots. After getting his private pilot’s license, he bought an airplane using the money he earned from the wheat crop on his family’s farm; it was a particularly good year, he said.”It was a Piper. It was not very powerful,” Behel said of the 40 horsepower airplane. “I built my time up to the point where I was acceptable to the RAF.”Behel was one of a few Americans who joined Britain’s Royal Air Force to fight the Nazis before the United States entered World War II. He was one of even fewer Americans to serve in a mostly British squadron rather than the “Eagle Squadron,” an RAF squadron made up mostly of American pilots.”I was in England in the latter part of the Battle of Britain,” he said.As the German Air Force mounted night attacks on England in the fall of 1940, Behel’s squadron was to disturb and confuse the German Air Force and later to strafe the French coastline.”The first mission we flew, our mission was to go in and strafe the hotels along the beach because they had guns in every window,” he said. His squadron lost seven of 12 airplanes in one mission.Behel also had a close call. “I was hit in the fuel tank, and the only fuel I had was a reserve tank that holds about 25 gallons; enough to get me back to England.”Shortly after the United States entered the war, the Army Air Corps took back American pilots who had joined the British RAF. Behel found himself in North Africa flying the P-39.”It had that great big 37 millimeter gun that shot through the prop dome,” he recalled.Behel and other P-39 pilots used that big gun to disable German tanks.After serving in World War II, Behel flew a Lockheed 12 and a Beechcraft Staggerwing for Kansas oil man, Willis Hartman. Behel also served in the Air National Guard where he flew almost all of the American jets, including the F-100, the first production fighter plane that could sustain supersonic speed in level flight.He later put his knowledge to work with the Federal Aviation Administration in Oklahoma City, where he taught pilots how to fly jet aircraft.Behel finished his career with the FAA in Denver as the operational chief for United Airlines, which included approving the airline’s destinations. Behel gave up flying in the late 1980s. He now lives in Colorado Springs.