AVIATOR

“Adventure is my guidon,” declared L. Ron Hubbard, thus it is no surprise to see him etching that statement across the skies as a first-class motorless aircraft pilot and barnstorming aviator throughout the early 1930s.

It all began one mid-April morning in 1931, not long after his return from the Pacific. Having entered a pedestrian George Washington University (or so it must have seemed after Peking), he joined Engineering Department Dean, Arthur F. Johnson and a few “air minded youths” for gliding lessons at Washington’s Congressional Airfield. The craft was a decidedly dangerous Franklin utility glider, and facilities were primitive: a ramshackle tower above patches of knee-high grass and ankle-deep mud, a corrugated shed for the hanger. Nevertheless, as Ron was soon asking: “What sort of mesmerism does a glider exercise that it makes a man eat, sleep, talk and fly until he is on the verge of a breakdown?” Thereafter, and when not breaking sustained powerless flight records, Ron “Flash” Hubbard, as journalists of the day soon dubbed him, could be regularly seen “thumbing his nose at the undertakers who used to come out to the field and titter.”

As an aviator in these largely experimental years of early flight, L. Ron Hubbard set a national soaring record for sustained flight over the same field, helped run the university flying club, took up powered flight, barnstorming throughout the Midwest, and otherwise quickly became recognized as one of the country’s most outstanding pilots.

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