Saturday, January 13, 2007
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/299632_obit13.html?source=mypi
Harley Beard, 1924-2007: Veteran pilot a part of Boeing, aviation legacy
By
LEVI PULKKINEN
P-I REPORTER
He'd risked his life flying for his country and for The Boeing Co., for
aviation playboy Howard Hughes and for Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
Well into his 82nd year, former test pilot Harley Beard had been working
toward a final aerial milestone -- to build and fly a plane of his own.
"He'd started on it in 1994," said Gary Beard, Harley's son. "When we
asked, it was always going to be done April 1."
Beard spent 40 years piloting aircraft through the sky, first as an Air
Corps flier, then as a commercial test pilot. He was part of the team that
tested the Boeing wide body airplanes that helped make the company a world
leader in aviation.
But Beard's final flight in a plane of his own never got off the ground.
He died suddenly at his Lake Stevens home Jan. 3.
Like so many pilots of his generation, Beard earned his wings with the Air
Corps after enlisting in 1942. During World War II, the Detroit native
piloted B-24 Liberator bombers on combat runs over Europe, Gary Beard
said.
In December 1944, Beard and his flight crew were forced to bail out over
the Adriatic Sea, his son said. While Beard survived to be rescued by an
Italian fishing boat, three other men on board were killed.
Brien Wygle met Beard at the U.S. Air Force test pilot school in 1953.
Wygle would go on to serve as Boeing's vice president of flight
operations. At the time both men were brash, young test pilots.
Nearing the end of their training, Wygle and Beard arranged to meet 15,000
feet over the Mojave Desert for a mock air battle.
Wygle said he decided to cheat a little and climbed his jet to 20,000,
hoping to get the drop on Beard. But Beard was waiting for Wygle at an
even higher altitude.
"He came swooping down on me from out of the blue," Wygle said. "I always
accused him of being a bigger cheat than me."
Beard remained in the military until 1957, when he went to work for
Boeing. At the time, Boeing was developing what would become the first
commercially successful jet airliner -- the 707. And Beard was tapped to
be one of the test pilots for the aircraft.
The plane had caught the attention of Howard Hughes, who owned Trans World
Airlines at the time. Hughes wanted a chance to fly the plane, and Beard
was sent along to chaperone the eccentric millionaire.
Beard served as Wygle's co-pilot when they were called on to spend 10 days
showing Hughes a prototype 707.
Behind the stick of the 707, Wygle said, Hughes gave his test pilot
passengers a rough ride.
"He didn't take instruction very well," Wygle said. "And jet flying was
different than what Howard was used to."
Flying with Hughes proved to be a dangerous assignment.
As Beard told the story, Hughes managed to shear off one of the jet's
flaps during a particularly rough landing. Another time, "the Aviator" ran
out of the cockpit because he suspected -- correctly -- that his wife was
smoking cigarettes at the tail of the plane, said Rand Martin, a friend of
Beard's and fellow member of the Experimental Aircraft Association's
Snohomish chapter.
In May 1980, Beard was serving a 30-day rotation in Libya for Boeing when
he was called on to fly Gadhafi to the funeral of Yugoslavian strongman
Josip Broz Tito.
By the time he retired four years later,
Beard had test-flown eight different wide-body planes for the company.
He'd rolled a 707, circled the globe in a 727 and taught dozens of flight
crews around the world how to pilot Boeing planes.
Beard often shared stories of his exploits with other pilots, helping many
connect with the wilder days of aviation, Martin said.
"The guy had a memory like a steel trap," Martin said. "The guy is part of
a legacy, and it's going to go away."
Gary Beard said his father took pride in the life he'd lived, and had
hoped to finish his own aircraft.
"He was certainly looking forward to flying that airplane," said Gary
Beard, a retired United Airlines pilot.
Beard is scheduled to be buried Tuesday at Tahoma National Cemetery in
Kent.
P-I reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or
levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com.
