Ace fighter pilot’s daughter and biographer lives here now, can’t wait for the big air show
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 | Posted by Chris Smith | 8 responses
By Chris Smith/The Press Democrat
The late Brig. General Robin Olds
If the name Robin Olds means something to you, perhaps you’ve read up on the boldy mustachioed triple-ace fighter pilot who flew 107 combat missions in World War II and, 20 years later, fired up and mentored younger pilots while leading 152 missions in Vietnam.
The name certainly means something to brand new Sonoma County resident Christina Olds, the late war hero and general’s daughter.
She’s still settling into a rented house southwest of Santa Rosa but she’ll take a break this weekend to appear both days at the Wings Over Wine Country air show to talk about the book she promised her father she’d write.
The brigadier general had compiled a vast collection of personal notes and recollections, stories, reports, photos and such from his decades as one of his country’s greatest fighter pilots. But he never made a real start at organizing the heaps of material and writing the memoirs that many fellow pilots, students of military history and others pleaded with him to write.
The 1943 West Point graduate and jet-fighter pioneer was nearly 85 and
Christina Olds speaks at the funeral at the U.S. Air Force Academy for her late father, the combat ace. (U.S. Air Force photo/Dennis Rogers)
fading from congestive heart failure in Colorado in 2007 when he told Christina, “I’m so mad at myself for not getting that book done.”
Christina, now 58, recalls telling him, “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll write it for you. I’ve always known I’d do it for you.”
Her father died a week later. The obituary in The New York Times declared that though he distinguished himself as a daring young P-38 and P-51 pilot in WWII, his “greatest moment came on Jan. 2, 1967, when, as a colonel, he created an aerial trap for enemy MIGs (in Vietnam). Called Operation Bolo, the trap entailed use of radar-jamming devices and other tactics to make faster, more maneuverable F-4s appear to be the F-105s used for bombing missions. When the MIGs responded by attacking what seemed to be F-105s, the F-4s downed seven of them.
“The MIGs reacted as we had hoped,” Colonel Olds, who had led the mission himself, told a news conference in Saigon shortly afterward. “To make a wonderfully long story short, they lost.”
Upon his death, daughter Christina kept her promise and spent three years organizing Gen. Olds’ vast collection of papers and logs and photos, interviewing fellow WWII and Vietnam pilots and other of her father’s contempories, researching official war records and writing his book.
“Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds,” was released by St. Martin’s Press. It’s been enthusiastically received.
“The book has over 90 five-star reviews on Amazon,” Christina said. Having lived in the past in England, the District of Columbia, Southern California, several cities in Marin and in Colorado, where she cared for her father, she’s now intent on living in Sonoma County, which she loves, and writing more books.
One will be on her father’s leadership style, another on her father’s father, late World War I Army officer and proponent of an independent Air Force, Maj. Gen. Robert Olds.
But this coming weekend (Aug. 20 and 21) , Christina will bring her dad’s book to the Pacific Coast Air Museum air show(pacificcoastairmuseum.org) at the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport. She’ll sign books and answer questions — maybe even ones about her late movie-star mother.
Her dad, the flying ace and Vietnam War legend, married late Hollywood actress and pin-up Ella Raines in 1947. Christina was 24 and her sister, Susan, was 23 when their parents divorced in 1977.
As Christina prepares for the weekend air show, she said she wrote “Fighter Pilot” as a gift to her father, but she’s getting far more out of it than she put in. She said she’s loved becoming close to people who knew or who honor her father — including the rare breed of pilots who performs at air shows.
“They’re gung-ho and they’re passionate and really active,” the new author and Santa Rosan said.
Thanks to her father, she said, “I’ve been able to jump into a world that not many women are able to jump into. His community is now my community, and it’s tremendous fun.”
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http://santarosa.towns.pressdemocrat.co ... -air-show/
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