OCEAN CITY — Frank Rapp has interesting tales to tell from when he flew seaplanes in the Pacific Theater during World War II. More than 75 years later, the Philadelphia native was still flying his own twin-engine plane out of the Ocean City Municipal Airport.
Rapp, who turned 100 on Dec. 11, only gave up flying when he was 98 years old. He still passed his flight physicals but trouble with his legs made it difficult for him to get out of the cockpit. That’s when he decided, “That’s it. Cased closed.”
His love for flying and planes hasn’t diminished. Two models of the planes he flew during the war — the PBY and PBM — sit on his shelves, above photos of him and his bride in 1947 and other pictures of family, including one of him as a little boy during the Great Depression.
He lives only about a dozen blocks from the airport and his admiration for the expansive views he got while flying are now mostly served when he can look out of a window while cooking and see the beautiful sunsets over the island.
The gentleman who spent his World War II service in the U.S. Naval Reserve in service to his country looks back happily on the past century, from his time growing up in the Depression, to his WWII years, a long marriage and the ability to fly from the time he was young until, well, until he was “the last of the Mohicans.”
Growing up during the Great Depression
Rapp grew up in the Tacony neighborhood of Philadelphia.
His family was poor, but his mother “always had a pot of soup cooking” to help people who were trying to eke out a living during the Great Depression.
“The men would come knocking on the door. They were always dressed up. They wanted to sell a packet of needles. That’s what they had,” Rapp said. “My mother said, ‘I can’t buy any needles, I have plenty of them, but would you like a bowl of soup?’ They would say ‘yes.’ I would have to get the bowl of soup and a piece of bread and take it out on the porch and give it to them.”
“It was tight, but I was lucky. My father had a little truck farm up the street. It was all open ground where I lived. I had an aunt and uncle down in Atco who had a farm. We would go down there and get vegetables and kill a chicken or whatever. I was lucky.”
As he got a little older, he would go to the Boulevard Airport nearby, a grass strip where he talked to the pilots who would let him sit in the cockpit, hand them tools and they would show him how things worked.
As a young man he worked for Henry Disston Saws, which had a factory in his neighborhood. The company was famous for its saws (still famous, check eBay). “They made the best saws in the country,” Rapp said, along with other items.
Before the United States entered World War II, the company, which had its own steel department, was making quarter-inch armor plate for scout cars. Rapp started at the company making saw handles but moved to the steel department when there was an opening. After the company put in a new furnace to make the 2-inch slabs of steel for Sherman tanks, he transferred over to that. By then, he had a military deferment because he was working for the war effort.
“It was a good job. I enjoyed it. I was lucky,” he said. “I had an eye for it. I could see the imperfections … if (the steel) was curved from the heat treatment. I could put it on the big press and straighten it out. I could do it no sweat.”
World War II calls
Rapp said a strange thing happened when a buddy of his was about to be drafted. He convinced him to go down together to apply to be pilots for the Naval Reserves. At the time, he said, the requirement to be a naval aviator was four years of college, but they weren’t getting enough people so they dropped it to two years of college. They still weren’t getting enough people so they dropped it again to being a high school graduate, as long as applicants could pass the written and physical tests.
Only one of them did.
“I was brought up on the waters,” Rapp said. “I knew all about boats and currents and winds and all that garbage. He wasn’t. And he didn’t pass the test. I passed the test.”
He was sworn into the Naval Reserve in May 1942.
When he was checked out to see his skills flying Piper Clubs at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., it was a fit.
“I had a natural touch. I could feel the airplane,” he said.
He went into training and earned his wings. He said he wanted to fly observation planes from a battleship or cruiser but was assigned to seaplanes because of his background on the water.
He first went to an operational squadron in Jacksonville, Fla., flying the PBY Catalina (PB stands for Patrol Bomber) along the East Coast looking for German submarines.
“The next thing you know,” he said, he got orders to learn the PBM Mariner. His colleagues had gone to school to learn to fly the PBM but he picked it up by going down to maintenance and hopping onto flights to get acquainted with their operation.
“I loved it. It was fantastic,” he said.
After some minor patrols along the coast, he got his orders for the Pacific.
In the Pacific Theater under Gen. MacArthur
Rapp took part in the second part of the invasion of Saipan, flying night patrols. He went to the Philippines under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
“I flew all the islands in the Philippines, every one of them,” he said, “taking guerrillas, transporting them here and there. Picking up wounded. We picked up a pilot who was shot down off the coast of Leyte.”
If MacArthur needed supplies, such as 75mm artillery shells, he would load them up on his plane and deliver them.
He also did patrols up to Lingayen Gulf “flying up to the South China Sea all the way over to Vietnam up the coast to Hong Kong and then come back. That was our night patrols.”
When B29 bombers were flying out of Saipan, Rapp would fly rescue for them all the way to 20 or 30 miles off the coast of Iwo Jima.
“We would be circling around, waiting for the B29s to come back from their bombing runs,” he said.
He explained when the bombers would lose an engine coming back from a run they would have to ditch in the ocean.
“We never had to pick anybody up, but we would be circling out there just in case,” he said.
Rapp recalled one time when a different mission intersected with his big brother.
“I was dealing with this one major. He said, ‘I’ve got one for you. We have four enlisted men on the island of Sambu. They’re wounded real bad and there are no facilities. I want you to go over and pick them up and bring them back and we’ll ship them to the hospital.’”
He knew his brother, an Army sniper, was on Sambu because the two corresponded (carefully, in code, because mail was censored). “I knew he was on the island but didn’t know where.”
“We landed, pulled up and took the wounded in and took off. My brother was on the beach there. He said, ‘That’s my brother’s plane. See that Box 14 (insignia)? He’s coming to visit me.’”
But Rapp couldn’t stop. He had to take off with the wounded.
“We were as close (to shore) as we could get; they came out with a small boat. These fellows were in really bad shape.”
His brother didn’t understand at first. He later told him, ‘That son of a gun. I’m going to shoot him down.’ It’s the honest to God truth,” Rapp said. “He wrote me a letter. I went to the major and said, ‘Would you get to him and explain what happened? We couldn’t go into the beach.’”
That older brother, Bill, had gone into the Army in 1937 and became a sharpshooter because of his time hunting and shooting with their father. Bill influenced his decision on which area of the service to join.
“His advice was, don’t join the Army, join the Navy. They have clean sheets,” Rapp recalled, smiling.
The skipper of his squadron was a former Pan American Clipper pilot. Pan American used to fly from San Diego to China.
“He knew all the waters in the Pacific. He knew the seaplanes and he taught us everything. He was different. Anything would come up, he would say, ‘You can do it.’
“One day we had a delivery of four guerrillas to Mindanao in the Leyte Gulf,” Rapp said. The skipper decided to join him. “He said, ‘I’m going with you Rapp to see what you’re doing.’”
“We landed, dumped the guerrillas out in a small boat. He said, ‘Give me your binoculars.’ He opened up the hatch and stood on the seat, watching them. He said, ‘OK, they’re close enough (to shore), let’s get the hell out of here.’
“After we’re flying back, I said, ‘Skipper, where are the binoculars? I want to put them back in the case.’ He said, ‘Oh boy, I left them on the top.’ He said, ‘You’ll take care of it.’”
A couple of weeks later another crew was flying in their plane delivering guerrilla fighters, “but when they were taking off, there were big waves and both engines got knocked off. They lost the airplane. Now I had to write down what was lost. I took it into the skipper and he said, ‘Good job, Rapp, I know where the binoculars went. Down with that airplane. Very good.’”
When he finished his tour, he went to Pensacola, Fla., as a flight instructor in PBYs. And then he heard they needed an instructor for twin-engine, land-based planes and did that for two years. In July 1947, he retired from the Naval Reserves at the full rank of lieutenant.
One funny story he wanted to relate was when he was flying his big seaplane and a group of four Marine fighter pilots in their F4U Corsairs was flying alongside and they were jawing at each other.
“One of the Marine pilots said, ‘Look at you sitting in there,’” referencing the relative space and comfort compared to the fighter plane. He replied, “Is that right?” He asked a crewman to bring him a cup of coffee. “I said, ‘Can you drink coffee?’ The pilot said, ‘Let me get my cigar out. Can you smoke a cigar?’ They were so mad. It was perfect.”
A Naval Aviator
Rapp is proud that he wasn’t just a pilot but a “naval aviator” because it connoted his multiple skills — pilot, navigator and bombardier.
“I could navigate on board a ship, how to shoot the stars, plot a course, read the compass. We had a Norden bombsight on there. I could operate the bombsight. That’s flying, navigation and bombing. The Army had pilots just to fly the airplanes, they had navigators to navigate and they had bombardiers, but we were naval aviators, the distinction because we had to do all three,” he said. Rapp noted they flew so low most of the time, “we never got high enough to use the Norden bombsight.”
After the military
Rapp and Mary got married in 1947, they had “six terrific children” and he worked for 35 years for the Philadelphia Gas Works.
He kept on flying as a hobby, helping form a club. Later he and his wife moved to Ocean City and he kept up his flying hobby. She died in 1993 after more than 45 years of marriage and Rapp found himself spending more time at the Ocean City Municipal Airport, where he knew all his fellow pilots and would often fly with them. He eventually bought his own airplane, a four-seater Cherokee 140, and hangar at the airport.
“When you’re single, it’s tough,” he said. “The airplane kept me occupied. Cleaning it, polishing it up. Being with the mechanics over in Woodbine.” Rapp loved spending time at the Ocean City Airport and at the Woodbine Municipal Airport where he formed friendships with the mechanics and other pilots.
“After my wife passed away, this young gal (Julie Baumgardner) wanted to fly and I said, ‘I’ll take you up.’ She said, ‘On one condition — one of us will pay for the gas and one of us will pay for lunch.’ I said, ‘All right by me.’”
So, within 100 miles of Ocean City they would go to different fields, get a bite to eat and chat with people. “It was fun. We did that up until a couple of years ago.”
Rapp was honored for his service at the Atlantic City Veterans Day service and has a folded American flag that was presented to him in a case. He said he also enjoyed two celebrations for his 100th birthday at the Anchorage Tavern and Fitzpatrick’s Deli and Steakhouse in Somers Point, when he got to be with all of his friends “who are still alive,” his flying buddies and the mechanics.
“I’m lucky,” Rapp said. “I didn’t realize all the friends I did have. You don’t see them that often. I’m not hanging at the airport any more. When weather is nice, a friend from the airport comes over and we get our chairs and sit in the sun.”
Rapp loved flying because he enjoyed being up in the air, being able to see the patterns on the ground and in the clouds. When he goes outside now, he still enjoys looking up at the clouds. And when he’s making meals for himself over in the corner of his house, there’s a window. “I can look out and see the sunset. And it’s fantastic.”
He said once when he was with a 93-year-old friend, flying together in his friend’s airplane — (“I go with anybody when they’re flying”) — they were saying the same thing, “Why are we living so damn long?”
His response? “I think it is the water and the clear air. And because I’m lucky. And so is my friend. We agree.”
Flying comes to an end … at 98
Two years ago, he stopped flying. He sold his airplane and the hangar at the Ocean City Airport and gave away his tools.
“I still passed my flight physicals, that was no problem. But my legs, I can get into the airplane, but I couldn’t get out. My legs couldn’t bend to get over the edge of where the door was. A couple times my foot got caught and I almost fell. I said, ‘That’s it. Cased closed.’”
He remains fond of the group he gathered with at the airport.
“It was a good bunch over there. We had the Airport Association, roughly 50 of us. Since then it broke up, but we would have different parties and money we would collect would have a scholarship at the high school for a student interested in aviation,” he said.
He did lament having no more peers his age.
“I’m the last of the Mohicans. All of my friends are gone. It’s a shame. We had a nice group.”
Rapp did not lament the century he has spent on the Earth so far.
“I’m very lucky. I have no complaints. I had a wonderful life.”
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff