My Grandfather Got His Private Pilot License August 18, 1945
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 08:21PM 
My grandfather Paul Clupper's Airman Certificate (Private Pilot) dated August 18, 1945
My dad Robert Clupper was born in 1929, and passed away in 2009... his dad Paul Clupper (my grandfather) was born in 1904 and passed away in 1985. I was going thru an old box of things of my dad's recently when I stumbled onto my granddad's certificate for his Private Pilot rating dated in 1945, along with his one and only logbook. Wow, what cool stuff to find, especially since it's all in really good condition.
I found it interesting to see what a Private Pilot certificate looked like from way back in the day. It's actually two pieces of paper. The one above is the primary Airman Certificate, and the one below is the Airman Rating Record showing his Private Pilot rating. Even more interesting to me was the date: August 18, 1945. I'm not a very good student of detailed WWII history, but I did notice that this date seemed to be pretty close to what was the end of the war. After a quick google/wiki check I realized that my granddad got his Private just 3 days after Japan agreed to surrender, thus bringing all of the war to an end.
The Airman Rating sheet showing the Private Pilot rating - August 18, 1945
After looking thru his logbook I found that his first lesson took place in Marion Indiana on May 29, 1944. The airplane was an Aeronca, tho I'm not sure which model. He soloed on July 13, 1944 after 9 hours of dual instruction. There's nothing all that special in those details, except it's really cool for me to see the record of my granddad learning to fly... along with the fact that he did this while the war was in progress. On September 23, 1944 I see the first entry for the Aeronca Defender NC36505, which at some point after this he became the owner of that Defender. It's the airplane in the picture below, and became the airplane that my dad would learned to fly in, sometime in either 1944 or 1945. My dad soloed it when he was 16 which became the start of a really long life's adventure that included 35 years at United Airlines.
Aeronca Defender owned by my granddad in very rural Indiana circa 1945
My granddad would have been right around 40 years old when he learned to fly. He also was probably pretty tired a lot back in those days... it wasn't all that long since he and my grandmother had struggled thru the depression era raising my dad and his older brother (who passed away young), and they lived on a farm which required a lot of hard work. By the early 40's they were also raising two daughters. He worked in town in addition to the farm, and I remember a story about him working at a factory that built some parts for the F8 Bearcat landing gear. Life was pretty tough for a lot of people back in those days, and knowing that my granddad had the opportunity, and the joy, of learning to fly and owning a simple Aeronca Defender is really neat to me.
Airman ID card for my grandfather Paul Clupper in 1945, with fingerprints!
So I thought this was an interesting little history lesson... probably much more for me than for you. But it's pretty cool for everyone to see these documents of old, and to hear a few details from a story of a hardworking American learning to fly and owning a humble little airplane as World War II was coming to an end. Lastly, it looks like my granddad got about 140 hours total time in... at least that's where this log book ended with only half of the pages used.
Now I need to find the box with my dad's first logbook so I can put together another little history lesson : )
