Robert Lee Scott Jr.was born on April 12, 1908,in Waynesboro, Georgia,a small town near the South Carolina border.His sister,Elizabeth, was born in Americus, Georgia,in 1911,and his brother,Roland, in Macon in 1915.
The fathe,Robert Lee Scott found his calling as a traveling salesman for high-end men's clothing.Photographs show him as a big, rawboned,and unsmiling man in a three-piece suit and bow tie.Because he traveled around three states and was away so much,it fell to his wife to take care of their three children and the house he bought at 511 East Napier Avenue.
Ola Burckhalter,like her husband,came out of Aiken,South Carolina,where her family had a farm on the Whiskey Road,she graduated from the South Carolina Coeducational Institute,a school that described itself in a newspaper ad as a"Christian Military Institute"where"teachers take the place of parents"and where,as did most female students,Ola took a course of study that trained her to be a teacher.After graduation she taught school for several years in Aiken.For a woman of her time,Ola was relatively well-educated,enough so that when she settled in Macon she thought that she was a bit better than her neighbors,and that Rob was better than his little Macon friends.
It was in the Burckhalter home near Aiken that Ola and Robert were married, on June 26,1907, and it was on the Burckhalter farm that Rob spent his summers while growing up.He spent little time with the Scott family,and in later years he would dismiss them as"dirt farmers."
At the age of five,he witnessed the fatal aircraft crash of pioneer aviator Eugene Ely.
The dead pilot was twenty-six-year-old Eugene Ely,the first man to fly an airplane off a U.S.Navy ship and the first to land on one,now a barnstormer and one of the most famous aviators in America.A few days earlier,to draw crowds for his performance at the state fair,he flew his Curtiss biplane low over Macon,the first man ever to fly over the city,according to the Macon Telegraph.After Ely's first performance on Saturday,the Telegraph wrote that the"Aviator Catapulted his Cloud-Cleaver into Convolutions"above the crowd with"apparently a most reckless disregard of safety."
The newspaper story,and the fact that Monday was Farmer's Day at the fair,a day that drew a larger than usual crowd for the livestock sales, pulled in several thousand spectators.Ely was scheduled to make three flights that day,and he had promised an even more exciting exhibition than he had flown on Saturday.
The sky was clean and clear and perfect for flying.The park was filled with women in white dresses and men in suits and lots of neatly dressed young people all waiting to see Ely perform his famous"ocean wave"maneuver.When Ely had flown off of the USS Birmingham he had dipped so close to the surface of the water that his propeller blew up a big cloud of spray into which his aircraft almost disappeared.The finale of Ely's barnstorming act sought to replicate that maneuver.He would dive his aircraft toward a declivity or behind a mound of dirt and seemingly disappear only to emerge triumphantly,engine roaring, as he clawed for the sky.
But on this day Ely misjudged time and distance and botched the delicate equation of when he should pull out of his dive.He stalled,crashed, and broke his neck.His death would be a national story.
Scott's mother,Ola Burckhalter Scott,did not believe in shielding her son from the tragedies of life.Other than Sherman's visit,this was the biggest thing ever to happen in Macon,and if Rob wanted to look at Ely's body,if he wanted to watch his neighbors take Ely's gloves and tie and belt and shoes and even pieces of his airplane as souvenirs,then let him watch.In years to come,when the people of Macon talked of the crash and showed the souvenirs they had taken from Ely's corpse,her son,her Rob,could nod and say,"I was there."
Ola looked around at the crowd that had come to see Ely's performance.She looked down at Rob,and in that moment she wanted him to know the fame that Ely had known.She wanted her son to know the adoration of the crowd.She leaned down and whispered in his ear,"You are going to grow up and be an aviator and you will be as famous as he is."She told Rob that he would fly the same sort of airplane that Ely had flown.In coming years she would tell him countless times,"From the moment you saw that crash, I knew you would be a flyer."
Thus, Rob never had a moment of indecision about his life's work,never went through the false starts of many boys regarding their careers.His earliest memory was of wanting to be a fighter pilot.To find glory in the skies was his destiny.His mama had told him so.
All parents say they love their children equally and that they play no favorites. But this is a lie. The parents know it and the children know it. If a parent has a favorite child, that parent usually tries to hide it. But sometimes not. Ola did not.
As did many Southern boys, Scott grew up with two overlapping influences: the Civil War and ancestor worship.
Rob's maternal great-grandfather Jarrett D. Burckhalter enlisted in a South Carolina unit in 1863, but according to his service record he was "never paid" and "never reported" for duty.
One of Scott's memories of the summers in South Carolina was how his grandfather always wore a Confederate hat that he said had belonged to his father. Scott grew up thinking that his great-grandfather Burckhalter was a hero, when in fact he was a deserter.
For Scott, the "home place," that mythical taproot into the past so treasured by Southerners, was not Macon, but was instead the Burckhalter farm on the Whiskey Road in the rural countryside south of Aiken.
Perhaps it was the rural origin, the closeness with the outdoors, and the independence that is part of a rural heritage that caused Ola to give Rob a long leash at an early age. For a mother who was so possessive, so ambitious for her son, she gave him extraordinary freedom. He was a city boy with the freedom and independence of a country boy.
The first of many such examples was in 1919, when Rob was an eleven-year-old paperboy delivering the Macon Telegraph. One morning he read on the front page that famed Army aviator Billy Mitchell would be leading a flight of nine fighter planes from Canada to Miami and that the pilots would stop in Macon,one of Rob heroes was Billy Mitchell, the flamboyant commander of American air forces in Europe during World War I and now he was coming to Macon.
Rob rode his bicycle across town to the airport to see the sleek little fighter planes land and to look upon the goggled faces of Mitchell and his pilots.After the pilots drove away to lunch, Scott considered stowing away in the baggage compartment of one of the aircraft. But the compartment was too small, and instead he waited until Mitchell and the pilots returned, and when they fired up their engines and taxied for takeoff, he ignored the shouted warnings from city fathers and ran along behind the aircraft, oblivious to the dust and dirt being thrown into his face by the prop blast, and as the aircraft took off down the grass strip he ran behind them, arms outstretched, chasing the airplanes that he knew would one day take him away from Macon. Rob watched the aircraft form up and he kept his eyes upon them until they were tiny specks far to the south and he could no longer hear the deep rumble of their engines. They would be in Miami before sundown. Canada to Miami in a single day. If airplanes could do that, Rob thought, they could take him around the world.
The next year Rob joined Boy Scout Troop 23 and, pushed by his mama, he set about to earn twenty-one merit badges and become an Eagle Scout. One of the first badges he sought was in aviation, which called for him to build a model airplane and fly it. But a model was not ambitious enough for Rob, and so he built a glider, almost full-sized, and covered it with canvas cut from the tent of a traveling evangelist preacher. With the help of several friends Rob hoisted the glider to the roof of the tallest house in the neighborhood. There he strapped himself in, had his friends release a restraining rope, and plummeted down the steep roof. As the glider cleared the roof, the main spar broke and Rob plummeted into the top of a rosebush, uninjured and unabashed. That was his first, albeit brief, flight. Later he would say it was the only time he ever crashed an airplane.
In practicing for a merit badge in archery, Rob found he was a natural at leading a moving target, that is, shooting not where the target was, but where it would be when the arrow reached it. He became a master of the snap shot, the quick reflex shot, and the intuitive shot taken without apparent aim. When his mother complained that feral cats were getting inside the chicken coop and eating her baby chicks, Rob switched to steel-tipped hunting arrows, sat on the back steps, and began shooting cats. He timed his shots to pin the running cat to a wooden fence post. That soon eliminated the feline threat.
The Ocmulgee River flowed along the eastern edge of town, and most Macon mothers forbade their children to go anywhere near its swirling brown waters. But in warm weather, which was most of the year, Rob would go alone to the river's edge, disrobe, hold his clothes above his head, and backstroke his way out to a small island. There he darkened his face with the juice of berries and adopted his self-bestowed Indian name, "Eagleheart." Rob built a lean-to and hunted on the island. He caught fish, cooked hush puppies over a small fire, and slept on a sandbar.
When Scott was fourteen he took all the money he had saved from being a paperboy and from cutting lawns, the grand total of seventy-five dollars, which in 1922 was a small fortune for a boy his age,and attended an auction where disassembled and boxed surplus Army aircraft,the Curtiss JN-4, the famous "Jenny" of early aviation,were being sold. As the auctioneer moved to each box, Scott shouted, "Seventy-five dollars." But each aircraft was bought by a man who was acquiring them as training planes for an airline. The buyer grew weary of Scott's importunate shouts, and told him he could buy the next aircraft and then to get out.
It was okay with his mama that Rob had bought an airplane and stored it in the garage. It seemed half of Macon knew of the boxed aircraft and talked of it. But Ola ignored the talk. The box stayed in the garage for months, and then a streetcar driver came to the door and identified himself as a former World War I pilot. He offered to help Rob assemble the aircraft and then teach him how to fly if, in turn, Rob would let him use the aircraft on weekends to perform at air shows around the state. And that was how Rob learned to fly. His lessons took place at Central City Park, the same place where Ely had crashed and died.
The lessons did not last long, because the World War I pilot crashed the Jenny. He was uninjured, but the fragile little aircraft was destroyed.
Rob entered Lanier High School, one of the most prestigious public schools in Georgia.Around Macon, Lanier students were recognized by their short hair, no-nonsense demeanor, and courtesy toward their elders. "Lanier Men" were ambitious and motivated, and it was a given that they would serve with distinction in the military and in business. They were afforded a respect and deference rarely granted to high school students.
Lanier was sited atop the crest of a long slope that dipped down toward Macon and the river. Wednesday was parade day at Lanier, and around midmorning people in Macon would begin looking at their watches, staring up the hill, and waiting. At precisely 11:30 there would be a thunderous clash of drums followed by the martial thrust of horns, and the studens would begin marching, all keeping the Army standard pace of 105 steps to the minute, feet hitting the ground with every boom of the drum. And as the parade began, many people in Macon did an unconscious shuffle to get in step with the drum, in step with the Lanier Men, until the city was marching with the Poets, and school and city were one.
Hard-bitten career Army sergeants served as ROTC instructors at Lanier and taught cadets how officers should conduct themselves, including the finer points of etiquette upon visiting brothels: "Determine the price, conduct your business, pay for services rendered, and depart as gentlemen," the sergeants taught. "This is a business transaction. Do not fall in love."
Rob never had the self-discipline and sense of mission to fit in at Lanier. He played only intramural sports and never distinguished himself academically.
After lanier he received endorsement to attend West Point in wich he would graduate in 1932,Scott completed pilot training at Kelly Field,Texas,his flight education being mainly self-learning and some lessons from a veteran of the first, his resulting piloting was... irregular, he was the only pilot in the academy with whom the instructor thought it was necessary to systematically wear a parachute during practical flight lessons,an fun anecdot of his training is that during a lesson he believed that the instructor on the ground was making the hand gesture which said to go around the runway again, the instructor continued to make the gesture and Robert simply thought that there was a problem with his approach to the runway and continued on and on and on, I almost ran out of gas and decided to land anyway, it turned out that it wasn't a normal communication gesture but the instructor shaking his fist and shouting "stop blown that fucking sand cloud at me",indeed the base was in a desert and the aproach of robert was creating a small sandstorm around the instructor,as a punishment the instructor reversed the role,him making the sandstorm and robert on the ground in the middle of it.
In October 1933,he was assigned to the miltary air force base of Mitchel Field,New York.Scott flew air mail in 1934,commanded a pursuit squadron in Panama,and helped instruct other pilots at bases in Texas and California for 8 years,he liked his job as a pilote and did joined the army as he wanted to but his dream of becoming an fighter pilote wasn't possible be realized dur to a lack of war.
Then pearl Harbor happened in 1941,he imediately voluntered as a fighter pilot but was reject due to his age of 33 that was judged "too old for fighter pilot" and the present need for instructor,but then a task force was formed,theTask Force Aquila who's official job would be to fly a group of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers to the China Burma India Theater,initially as a scheme to bomb Japan.
Anxious to join the mission (since he wasn't concidered too old for a bomber),which was to bomb Japan from China,he professed to be an experienced B-17 pilot with over a eleven hundreds flight hours in it and in February 1942 was incorporated into the new Task force.
He learned to fly the plane en route to Africa,thanks to his co-pilot that was surprised to discover that Robert never even touched the controls of this type of aircraft.Upon arrival in India,he found the mission had been cancelled,so he became stuck in India.
Within a month since he constently wanted to be on the frontline in flying combat and as a punishment for having lied about his experience,he was assigned as executive and operations officer of the Assam-Burma-China (Ferry) Command.This was the forerunner of the famous Air Transport Command,which flew"The Hump"from India to China to supply the Kuomintang government When the commanding officer left for China on 17 June,Scott was assigned command of the operation for several days.
Still anxious to get into combat and wishing to learn the Flying Tigers' tactics,he as he is using his aerodrome in china as a resupply point ask the Colonel Chennault who commands the"flying tigers" to be allowed to join his unit,the general refuses, declaring that Robert is a transport pilot, not a fighter pilot, a little later a squadron of Japanese fighters is spotted heading towards the airfield, it is the alarm, all the pilots go to their fighter, but Robert sees a fighter plane on the side and in which no pilot goes, he says to himself that this is his chance, gets in and takes off but... no ammunition, fortunately it was a false alarm.
Once landed, Colonel sees the general arriving and preparing to get yelled at, the general cuts off Robert's attempts to explain and asks him how he managed to get the plane off the ground,Robert replies that he just took off and asks what the problem is, the plane was supposedly broken down and was being used for spare parts.
After that the general said that robert may have what it take for a fighter pilot and Robert obtained the use of a Republic P-43 Lancer,assigned to the Flying Tigers by Claire Chennault.He flew at least one high–altitude mission over Mount Everest,as he described in the opening pages of his 1943 memoir God Is My Co-Pilot.Scott began flying missions with the Flying Tigers,piloting a P-40 as a single ship escort for the transports and on ground attack missions.
During this period,he thought of a trick to scare the japanese and mess with their tactical planning,hefrequently repainted the plane in different colors and changed the number on it to create the illusion of a much larger fighter force in the area than a single aircraft, becoming in effect a "one-man air force.",the Japanese ended up estimating the presence of around 500 planes when in fact there are only 34.
One day he even succeeded in machine-gunning a group of Japanese generals in their Hong Kong hotel, he even went for a short stay at the hotel a little while later to check the precision of his shots, in fact the hotel café still had all the bullet holes, he was satisfied with his shots
One day when he faced the despised by everyone General Bissel in charge of amognste other thing the "flying tigers" who was unhappy with his antics, in particular the last one where Robert had told a Chinese driver who did not speak English that he had to be greeted by saying "I'm pissing on Bissel", Robert tried diplomacy to calm the general, "you know my general, I would have dreamed of having you as squadron leader", the touched general softens and asks if it is true, Robert replied "yes because if you had been my squadron leader, you would have flown in front of me and I could have shot you down."
In July 1942,at the request of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek,Scott was named commander of the 23rd Fighter Group,newly formed by General Chennault when the Flying Tigers were incorporated into the United States Army Air Forces.Popular accounts said that Scott inherited command of the Flying Tigers,but that group had disbanded at the conclusion of the pilots'contracts on 30 June.The 23rd Fighter Group later became part of the 14th Air Force.
Colonel Scott flew 388 combat missions in 925 hours from July 1942 to October 1943,shooting down 13 Japanese aircraft,and is noted as one of America's earliest flying aces of the war,all this without ever having been shot down.
Scott was ordered back to the U.S.in October 1943 to become deputy for operations at the Army Air Force School of Applied Tactics at Orlando Army Air Base,Florida.He had completed his memoir about his combat experience in the Far East,and his book,God Is My Co-Pilot,was published in 1943.The book was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 1945.
He returned to China in 1944 to fly fighter aircraft equipped with experimental rockets directed against Japanese supply locomotives in eastern China.He was transferred to Okinawa to direct the same type of strikes against enemy shipping as the war ended.Besides his book God Is My Co-Pilot,he also published Damned to Glory in 1944,a collection of World War II yarns.One story was that of a pilot named Corn Sherrill who, after the fall of the Philippines in 1941,escaped to the island of Mindanao where he flew a rebuilt P-40 aircraft against the Japanese until he was shot down over China by members of the Flying Tigers.This particular tale was reprinted in Reader's Digest in January 1945 as"Ghost Ship." However,Scott himself admitted he and another pilot had made up the tale as a joke;despite this,it still occasionally turns up as a true story.
Scott returned to the U.S.for staff duty in Washington,D.C.and other stations until 1947,when he was given command of the Jet Fighter School at Williams Air Force Base,Arizona.In 1951,he was reassigned to West Germany as commander of the 36th Fighter-Bomber Wing at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base.
Scott graduated from the National War College in 1954 and was assigned as Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans at Headquarters U.S.Air Force,and then to the position of Director of Information under the Secretary of the Air Force. In October 1956,he was assigned to Luke Air Force Base, Arizona,as base commander.
Scott retired from the United States Air Force as a brigadier general on 30 September 1957,and remained in Arizona until the 1980s.He lived in Warner Robins,Georgia since.In total,General Scott wrote about a dozen books including God Is My Co-Pilot and The Day I Owned the Sky.
Scott continued to be active well into his retirement. In 1980,he gained national attention by hiking the length of the Great Wall of China.He had seen portions of the Wall during his 1944 flights near Peking.By 1980 he obtained Chinese government permission to make the 1,900-mile (3050 km) trek over that wall that facined him so much as a young boy,it took 94 days.
In 1984,after passing a flight physical at Luke Air Force Base,Scott was taken up in a General Dynamics F-16C Fighting Falcon from the 310th TFTS.The F-16C was piloted by Col. Richard P. High(Squadron Commander of the 310th TFTS).Scott also flew a McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle.
