World War II Naval Ace Gets Back In The Sky

A random search for a World War II Navy aircraft paint scheme led to a touching relationship and an inspiring flight, just last week. Evan Fagen, chief pilot at Fagen Fighters WWII Museum in Granite Falls, Minnesota, was tasked with picking the livery for the Grumman F6F Hellcat the museum was restoring to flying condition.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/world-war-ii-ace-naval-aviator-flies-again-at-age-102

A great story and a magnificent airplane. Too bad that Fagen’s money comes from government requirements for us to use ethanol in our cars, the vast acreage of corn it requires should be used for food and feed. He builds ethanol plants.

That’s about as passive aggressive as it gets! I swear to God, Kent, one of these days you are going to go after an oil executive for using up all the dinosaurs! The entire planet benefits from alternate fuel (for DECADES), somebody grows the corn and gets paid for it, which is an entire industry. TOO BAD you can’t come up with a relevant comment on any topic.

Sorry, the truth looks different. Read up on EISA 2007, Chuck Grassley, and all who profit from food being used for fuel. Without the quotas, aka government coercion, ethanol would not be ruining our fuel and our food/feed supply. Fagen is just one of many businesses profiting greatly from government intervention in what should be a free market. He also has great influence over EAA leadership and is one of the reasons they refuse to promote mogas as an inexpensive, lead-free alternative to expensive boutique aviation fuels. Avgas producers are the others who oppose lowering the cost of flying through mogas. Ironically, the first STCs for mogas were for radial engines that power many warbirds. I know this subject well as a former writer for Sport Aviation, former author of the aero fuels columns at GAN, president of a large EAA chapter, and 40+ years in the aerospace industry.

I have not done the research that Kent has suggested, so cannot comment on most of those issues, but what I can say is that the ethanol plant pays about $.80 more per bushel of corn than the grain elevators. Doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider corn is at about $4.20 at the plant, it is a significant difference for farms. I don’t know the source or reason for the higher amount, just that it is. And always has been.

The demand is driven by a government requirement to have ethanol in our fuel. Otherwise, it’s doubtful if fuel producers would put it in.

“There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so as to corner the market.”

  • Jane Smiley

I’m a retired senior executive with a major oil company who then founded my own very successful exploration and production company. I grew up in Iowa with corn farming being a large part of my youth and I still have close family members who are corn farmers. My home town, where my parents still live, has two large ethanol production plants. I have one foot solidly in both worlds. I think I have a greater understanding of both sides of the ethanol industry, and how it came to be what it is, than the average person, (including being close friends with an attorney/lobbyist who wrote the main bill). I have strong, well educated views on this topic and none of them are relevant to this story or this forum. A reasonable person would have stopped at your first sentence.

I think I’m in the same camp as Douglas having worked as a chemical engineer both in defense aerospace and as an entrepreneur developing processes for sustainable fuels and as a wheat farmer. In particular regarding the food supply, corn ethanol doesn’t hurt food security, rather it strengthens the full supply chain from farmers to their suppliers and equipment manufacturers. Otherwise the food overproduction would drive prices well below cost of production. Farming is only marginally break even in many areas anyway and there are many great (sad but true) farm jokes that confirm that fact.

“In a recent article for the Huffington Post, Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley questions the wisdom and integrity of economists–as well as the value of economics. Unfortunately, she misunderstands what economics is and what economists do.” I am not so sure I would trust much of anything written by an obscure novelist on this topic. Have a look at any list of currently manufactured aircraft. It is very long - we have choices. Or look at any aisle in any grocery store and count your choices. Free markets exist once government gets out of the way. In this case, government’s attempt to dictate the fuels we choose to use disrupts what used to be a free market. This always leads to less choice and higher costs. Ethanol in fact was tried over century ago in piston engines and found to have the same problems it has today. See also Germany, where many consumers flatly refused to put the stuff in their cars, and government mandates were quickly relaxed.

Isaac Orr, Heartland Institute, May 2016.

“It’s hard for anyone to argue that the renewable fuel standard (RFS) has been a good policy, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to increase the amount of ethanol in the nation’s fuel supply means this train wreck of a policy will continue for at least another year.

“Owners of small engines like lawn mowers, snow blowers, and boats are hurt by ethanol mandates because ethanol is hard on these engines. Environmentalists don’t like the ethanol mandate because farmers have sought to take advantage of high grain prices by clearing more land for farming.

“Even the farmers who once benefitted from skyrocketing corn prices because nearly 40 percent of the nation’s corn crop was diverted to fuel are now hurting because corn production increased to meet demand. Today, corn prices are below the cost of production in many areas of the country. High crop prices caused the prices of land, machinery, seeds, and fertilizer to increase as well – and many farmers took on large amounts of debt during the ‘ethanol boom’ only to be faced with dim prospects to repay it.

“Maybe the RFS made more sense in 2006 when it seemed the United States was running out of oil and natural gas, but now that hydraulic fracturing has made the U.S. the largest producer of natural gas in the world and nearly doubled oil production since 2008, mandating we use more ethanol than is necessary to make gasoline burn cleaner (anywhere from 4 to 8 percent ethanol by volume acts as an oxygenate for more complete combustion) doesn’t make any sense.”

Yes, well, there are two sides to every story. When the EAA assigned me the task to report on aviation engines and fuels for the then-new Light Sport Aircraft category, I quickly learned that most of their engines came from Europe and were designed to operate best on ethanol-free mogas, aka automotive fuel of AKI 91 or higher. (See Rotax, for instance) From my own experience flying light aircraft in Germany since the early 80s, mogas is readily available on airfields there, but not in the US. During AirVenture I met the head of aviation fuels for Conoco Phillips, which had just displaced Shell as the sponsor of the main central exhibition, formerly known as Aeroshell Square. Anyway, when I asked the gentlemen from Conoco why he did not supply mogas to airports as his competitors in Europe do, he stated with confidence that “mogas is not an approved aviation fuel”. I was dumbfounded that a person of his supposed importance would be totally ignorant on the topic, especially since the EAA had won approval for the first mogas STC 40 years or more prior to our meeting. Just goes to show you, some leaders in the industry don’t know what they are talking about. As far as using corn to make fuel is concerned, this was a result of the EISA (Energy Independence and Security Act) of 2007, signed into law by President George W. Bush. It did not make the U.S. energy independent, but it did lower fuel economy (ethanol has less energy per gallon than gasoline) and it messed up a lot of engines and fuel systems. Thanks to Harold Hamm, pilot, founder of Continental Resources, and a pioneer in fracking, the U.S. did become energy independent during President Trump’s first term. End the RPS quotas on ethanol and it will disappear quickly, I predict. If you need government support to survive as ethanol (and SAF) do, you are on very shaky ground. Kudos to people who restore and fly these amazing aircraft from decades ago, all politics and cronyism aside.

Another fine aviation story co-opted by someone who missed basic social potty training. Time for AvWeb to close an account permanently.

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Well, the name-calling here originated not from me, but from those who did not share my opinions, which are based on facts from my own experience writing on aviation engines and aviation fuel for the EAA and GAN. Rent-seeking needs to be called out as this leads to lost opportunity costs for all. I repeat however my admiration for all who restore these magnificent aircraft.

Wow all the talk about ethanol, I love the HELLCAT, awesome plane and my the father of friend as a child was a Hellcat pilot off the USS Hornet. Got to hear many great Hellcat stories, he loved the plane…having started out in Wildcats.

The article is about a 102 year old WWII ace and his plane. Where is he mentioned in your replay/comments?

Again, the article is about a 102 year old WWII ace. Did I miss something?

No mention of the WWII ace the article is actually about?

Kent, please stay on the topic. You know a lot about aviation but the political tinge on all comments is old. Stop it, please.