Ira Clarence Eaker: Aviation Pioneer and Air Force General (1896–1987)

Ira Clarence Eaker, aviation pioneer, United States Air Force general, journalist, and corporate executive, was born on April 13, 1896, at Field Creek, in northwestern Llano County, Texas. He was the eldest of five boys born to Yancey Young and Ladonia (Graham) Eaker. Eaker’s father was a tenant farmer. In 1906 the family moved to Concho County, where they spent three years in the rural community of Hills before moving to a farm, McCall Ranch, a mile outside of Eden. In 1912 they moved to southeastern Oklahoma near the community of Durant, where his father worked as a carpenter. They returned to Eden ten years later. Eaker attended public school at Hills, in Eden, and in Kenefic, Oklahoma. He graduated from Southeastern State Teachers College (now Southeastern Oklahoma State University) at Durant, Oklahoma, and entered the United States Army in 1917 as a student citizen, serving in the Sixth Company, Twelfth Regiment, at the Citizens’ Training Camp at Fort Logan H. Roots, Arkansas.

Eaker was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Infantry Section, Officers Reserve Corps, on August 15, 1917, and assigned to the Sixty-fourth Infantry at Fort Bliss, Texas. He received a similar commission in the regular army on October 26, 1917. His aviation experience began in March 1918, when he was directed to attend ground school at the University of Texas in Austin and flight training at Kelly Field at San Antonio. He received his pilot rating and a promotion to first lieutenant on July 17, 1918. After training, he was sent to Rockwell Field, California, where he met Col. H. H. "Hap" Arnold and Maj. Carl A. "Tooey" Spaatz, two men with whom he had a close military relationship for the rest of his life. In July 1919 he was appointed commander of the Second Aero Squadron and sent to the Philippines for a two-year tour. On July 1, 1920, he was reassigned as commander of the Third Aero Squadron and promoted to captain. Upon returning to the United States in 1921, he was assigned in January 1922 to Mitchel Field, New York, on Long Island, where he commanded the Fifth Aero Squadron and was later post adjutant. There, he attended Columbia Law School in New York City. He subsequently spent three years with the staff of Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick, chief of air service. In June 1924 Eaker became executive assistant in the Office of Air Service in Washington, D.C. In September 1926 he was named operations and line maintenance officer at Bolling Field (now Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling).

From December 1926 to May 1927 Captain Eaker was one of ten pilots chosen to fly one of the Loening OA-1 float planes on the Pan American Goodwill Flight in 1926. During the flight, both members of one crew died in a crash. Eaker and his copilot were the only team to complete the entire 23,000-mile itinerary around South America, which included stops in twenty-three countries. The flight left San Antonio on December 21. It ended at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., where President Calvin Coolidge presented the pilots with the Distinguished Flying Cross, a new award authorized by Congress just a few months earlier. Eaker subsequently was named the executive officer in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War at Washington, D.C. In 1929 Eaker, with Tooey Spaatz and Elwood R. Quesada (both of whom were later generals), flew a Fokker tri-motor named the Question Mark for 150 hours, 40 minutes, and 15 seconds, shuttling between Los Angeles and San Diego, refueling with a hose lowered from a Douglas C-1. They set an endurance record that endured for many years. In 1930 Eaker flew the first transcontinental flight that depended solely on aerial refueling.

In October 1934 he was assigned to March Field, California, where he headed the Thirty-fourth Pursuit Squadron and later the Seventeenth Pursuit Squadron. While there, Eaker also returned to college and attended the University of Southern California, where he earned a degree in journalism. During the summer of 1935 he was on detached duty with the U.S. Navy and served on the aircraft carrier USS Lexington during maneuvers in Hawaii and Guam. He entered the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, Alabama, in August 1935. Eaker was promoted to major later in 1935. Beginning on June 2, 1936, he flew blind under a hood from Mitchel Field, New York, to March Field, Riverside, California, and completed the first blind (instrument-only) transcontinental flight. Maj. William E. Kepner (who also became a general) flew alongside in this experiment in instrument flight as a safety observer. He stated that Eaker "was under the hood and flying blind" the entire time except for eight take-offs and landings. In the fall of 1936 Eaker attended the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; he graduated in June 1937 and became assistant chief of the Information Division in the Office of Chief of Air Corps (OCAC) in Washington, D.C.

In 1940 he became commander of the Twentieth Pursuit Group at Hamilton Field, California. He was promoted to full colonel in December 1941 and to brigadier general in January 1942, when he was assigned to England to form and command the Eighth Bomber Command. He was instrumental in the development and application of daylight precision bombing in the European Theater—a tactic the British considered too risky. Eaker’s argument that daylight bombing by the Americans, while the British continued their night raids, could ultimately limit Germany’s war capabilities while minimizing civilian casualties proved to be sound, and the strategy was a major factor in the defeat of the Germans. He personally took part in the first U.S. B-17 bomber attack against German occupied forces in France and bombed strategic targets in the city of Rouen on August 17, 1942. In December 1942 Eaker became commander of the Eighth Air Force in England. Much of his initial staff was composed of former civilians, including corporate executives, attorneys, and journalists, rather than career military officers, and the group became known as “Eaker’s amateurs.”

On September 13, 1943, he received promotion to lieutenant general, and on October 15, 1943, he assumed overall command of both American air forces in the United Kingdom, the Eighth and the Ninth. He took over as commander of the joint Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (MAAF) on January 15, 1944. With 321,429 officers and men and 12,598 aircraft, MAAF was the world's largest air force. On March 22, 1945, Eaker was transferred back to Washington to become deputy chief of the  Army Air Forces under Gen. H. H. Arnold. In that position, representing the air force, he transmitted the command from President Harry Truman to General Spaatz, who was then commanding the Pacific Air Forces, to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. In April 1945 Eaker was appointed deputy commander of the Army Air Forces and chief of the air staff in Washington, D.C. He announced his plans to retire from the army in mid-June 1947, saying that he felt he could do more to provide security for the United States out of uniform. He retired on August 31, 1947, after thirty years of continuous service in the U.S. Army, U.S. Army Air Corps, and U.S. Army Air Forces. He had accumulated 12,000 flying hours as a pilot. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell to Eaker stated, “…your going will leave a gap that will never be completely filled.”

After retirement, he was associated with Hughes Aircraft from 1947 to 1957 and served as vice president of Hughes Tool Company and Hughes Aircraft. On June 29, 1948, he was promoted to lieutenant general in the newly-formed United States Air Force on the retired list. In 1957 he became a corporate director of Douglas Aircraft Company, a post he held until 1961, when he returned to Hughes as a consultant, with the freedom to pursue a long-desired goal of being a journalist. He had already coauthored three books with H. H. Arnold: This Flying Game (1936), Winged Warfare (1941), and Army Fliers (1942). In 1964 he began a newspaper column in the San Angelo Standard-Times that continued for eighteen years and was syndicated by Copley News Services in 700 newspapers. In 1974 he transferred to the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. He wrote from the point of view of a military man on security matters. Between 1957 and 1981, 329 of his articles appeared in military periodicals and in 180 newspapers. In 1970 Eaker was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, and in 1972 he became the founding president of the United States Strategic Institute. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1978 for "contributing immeasurably to the development of aviation and to the security of his country.” In 1981 he was inducted into the International Air and Space Hall of Fame.

Nearly four decades after his retirement, with the prompting of Senator Barry Goldwater and support of President Ronald Reagan, Congress enacted special legislation granting Eaker four-star rank in the United States Air Force. On April 26, 1985, he officially received his fourth star. Barry Goldwater stated that Eaker was “one of our nation's most important military spokesmen.” In 1986 James Parton, Eaker’s aide in England from 1942 to 1943, published Eaker’s biography, Air Force Spoken Here. Among Eaker’s more than fifty decorations were the Congressional Gold Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Order of the Partisan Star (First Class), the Silver Star, the Legion of Merit, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the Wright Trophy, and numerous foreign service medals; he was also made a Knight of the British Empire.

Eaker married Leah Chase on January 2, 1923, at Mitchel Field; the couple had no children, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1930. On November 23, 1931, he married Ruth Huff Apperson. Gen. Ira C. Eaker died on August 6, 1987, at the Malcom Grow Medical Center at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. He was survived by his wife. Blytheville Air Force Base in Arkansas was renamed Eaker Air Force Base in his honor on May 26, 1988. In 1998 the Civil Air Patrol named its General Ira C. Eaker Award for cadets who complete the final phase of the cadet program, recognizing their achievement. Eden, Texas, unveiled a Texas Historical Marker in his honor on the town square in 2003.