Jack O. Bennett

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jack Olen Bennett (born December 19, 1914 in Ebensburg , Pennsylvania , † August 26, 2001 in Berlin ) was an American civilian pilot and inventor, who is best known in Germany for his active participation in the Berlin Airlift .

Life

Aviation enthusiast Bennett learned to fly at the age of 14 and later studied aircraft construction at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . In 1937 a Rockefeller scholarship enabled him to study at the Technical University of Berlin for a year ; During this stay he also had the opportunity to fly a Messerschmitt . Through Brunhild , the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi officer, he was introduced to Hermann Göring and in the following years became a well-known figure in the city's social and political circles.

In 1948, Captain Bennett was head of the Frankfurt branch of American Overseas Airlines , which later became part of the PanAm . On June 23, 1948, General Lucius D. Clay ordered him to fly a machine loaded with potatoes from Frankfurt to Berlin. This flight took place on the evening of the same day; Bennett landed the DC 4 at 10:09 p.m. at Berlin-Tempelhof Airport . That was the start of the Berlin Airlift. In total, Bennett completed over 650 flights during the airlift, making him the airlift pilot with the most flights. Bennett received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in 1964 .

Bennett bought a piece of land in Berlin-Grunewald during the Airlift . After the end of the airlift, Bennett flew for the PanAm until his retirement in 1974, mainly between Frankfurt and Berlin, mainly on the Douglas DC-4 and later Boeing 727 aircraft . Until his death in 2001 he lived with his wife in his villa in Grunewald.

The Tagesspiegel wrote in its obituary about the pilot, whose name could not be missing on any guest list of the West Berlin Society [...] : Jack O. Bennett was the first airlift pilot and the only one who stayed in Berlin all his life . For West Berliners, Bennett was a walking monument to their own history.

Tombstone

Jack Olen Bennett is buried in the Grunewald cemetery in Berlin's Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district.

literature

  • Captain Jack O. Bennett: 40,000 hours in the sky: 24,000 flights to Berlin . Publishing house Ullstein GmbH, Berlin, Frankfurt / Main u. Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-548-20565-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b press report The Telegraph
  2. Kirsten Wenzel: Jack O. Bennett, b. 1914 , Der Tagesspiegel, September 6, 2001.
  3. knerger.de: The grave of Jack Olen Bennett