SLO County veteran flew 188 missions in Vietnam. He’ll be in the air again on Memorial Day
Look in the skies above San Luis Obispo County on Memorial Day, and you may see three vintage military airplanes flying in formation to honor fallen military heroes.
Estrella Warbirds Museum’s Freedom Flight group will perform flyovers at six locations between 11 a.m. and noon on Monday.
At each spot, one plane will peel off to climb into the sky in a poignant flight path known as the “missing man” maneuver.
George Marrett, 85, of Atascadero, will pilot the missing man plane this year. His 1945 Stinson L-5E Sentinel, a former military air ambulance, is slated to “pull up and to the right, crossing each service,” according to a Thursday morning Freedom Flight e-briefing.
Freedom Flight military aircraft flyovers in SLO County
A vintage plane from Paso Robles was originally scheduled to fly alongside a North American B-25 Executive Suite bomber out of Camarillo.
Marrett was supposed to be aboard the B-25, sitting in the nose of the plane.
“It’s fun to sit up there in the B-25,” Marrett said, “even if that big, old engine does make quite a racket.”
But on Thursday, Marrett and others learned that engine troubles had taken that wingman plane, a North American T-28 Trojan, out of commission and off the flight plan.
It was the only available plane that could maintain the same speed as the B-25, so the bomber’s trip up here was canceled.
Monday’s Memorial Day flyovers will feature three other planes.
Bob Kelly will be in the lead position in an Aeronca L-16, and Wayne Rice will take the left wing in a Piper J-5 Cub Cruiser, meaning the formation will be manned by experienced pilots in smaller planes that can easily keep pace with each other.
The revised three-plane formation will fly over Memorial Day ceremonies and other places where people are gathering for holiday tributes.
Their route is tentatively scheduled to take them over Paso Robles District Cemetery at 11 a.m., Templeton District Cemetery at 11:04, Santa Margarita Cemetery at 11:12 a.m., Central Coast Veterans Memorial Museum in San Luis Obispo at 11:22 a.m. and Los Osos Valley Memorial Park at 11:30 a.m.
The planes are also slated to fly over Faces of Freedom Veterans Memorial in Atascadero at noon, at the start of a tribute to military heroes.
Memorial Day flights have special meaning for SLO County pilot
Marrett, a retired U.S. Air Force captain, has been participating in military aircraft flyovers to honor servicemen and women, especially those wounded and killed in combat, for more than a quarter century.
That’s when he and Obbie Atkinson of Paso Robles started doing the commemorative flights. The first year, they flew their own planes over just one Memorial Day service, for Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion posts in Paso Robles.
Now the route encompasses most of San Luis Obispo County.
The Memorial Day flyovers have special meaning for Marrett, who served as a rescue pilot during the Vietnam War. He’s been flying for 63 years.
Marrett told The Tribune in 2010 that he graduated with a degree in chemistry from Iowa State College in 1957 before joining the Air Force. He took advanced pilot training at Webb Air Force Base in Texas and spent four years at the now inactive Hamilton Army Airfield in Marin County flying the F-101 Voodoo.
Marrett then attended what’s now called Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in Kern County, and spent three years testing the latest jet aircraft at the Lancaster installation.
In Vietnam, Marrett was assigned to pilot the slow-moving but maneuverable Douglas A-1 Skyrider plane as part of an elite group of flyboys who operated under the code name Sandy.
Their mission? To rescue pilots who had been shot down while carrying out dangerous, secret bombings in Laos and Cambodia.
“There is a code among warriors that they always bring out their casualties, living or dead. ‘If you’re down, we’ll get you out,’ we told the jet fighter pilots,” Marrett writes in his book “Cheating Death: Combat Air Rescues in Vietnam and Laos,” one of five books he has written about aviation. “ ‘And if you’re dead, we’ll bring you out anyway. At least you’ll be dead among friends.’ ”
“I flew 188 combat missions between 1968 and 1969 in Vietnam,” Marrett recalled.
During that time, 12 pilots in his unit were killed, two more were burned badly in aircraft fires and “one guy was shot down and was a POW for five years,” he said.
According to Marrett, one of those pilots was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor “for a rescue in which he was very badly burned and shot up. There was a cockpit fire (and) the plane lost its canopy, radio and part of its controls.”
But the pilot still managed to bring the aircraft back to base, Marrett said. The man eventually recovered from his injuries, but died later in a civilian aircraft crash on the East Coast.
“I always dedicate my flights on Memorial Day to those 12 guys who didn’t have a chance to come back,” he said, and others like them.
