Earl Swinhart was born on May 2, 1936 at Los Angeles, California. He resided in California until enlisting in the US Air Force in 1953 at the illegal age of 16 years (with a little help from his friends).
During his nearly 7 years in the USAF, he was stationed at such exotic places (read: "deserts") as Luke Air Force Base at Phoenix, Arizona, Wheelus Field at Tripoli, Libya and Cannon Air Force Base at Clovis, New Mexico.
But, life was not all sand and rattlesnakes. Being on flying status for the last 5½ of his enlistment he managed to tour such places as Marianne, Marseille and Paris, France; Athens, Greece; Tachikawa and Tokyo Japan; Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt and others.
Some of his first memories of aircraft (his Dad worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica), was being lifted on the shoulders of his Dad so he could touch the bottom of the wing of a Douglas B-19. While in the USAF, he flew in such military craft as the C-47 "Gooney Bird", C-54 "Skymaster", C-124 "Globemaster", F-100 "Super-Sabre" and something called the "SA-16 Rescue Boat". In addition, there were several types of helicopters. Earl obtained his private ticket in gliders in 1975. Shortly afterward, he began flying single engine aircraft.
The fact that Earl flies at all is a genuine paradox: Earl has acrophobia so severe he is unable to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge!
Earl has written numerous aircraft articles for local newspapers and other publishers such as "Contra-Costa Review", "CSRecord", "Beneath The Surface" and "Bay Area Consumer". He has also researched aircraft articles for other authors.
In addition to his interests in aircraft, Earl has written many articles about western ghost towns for publishers such as "Gold Prospector", "Felton’s Past", and "Western Traveler".
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