Happy 100th Birthday to Captain Jack Race

This commentary is offered by Geoffrey Holland, Former CEO, Project Orbis International.

As a young aviator in WWII, he played a role in a world-changing event.

This Sunday, May 30th, marks the 100th birthday of Captain John T. ‘Jack’ Race, American pilot.

It was Capt. Race who flew Nazi General Alfred Jodl to Rheims, France on 6 May 1945 (despite bad weather and a malfunctioning radar) to surrender the Third Reich and thus end WWII in Europe. Jodl signed the German Instrument of Surrender as the representative of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, successor to Adolf Hitler.

It was an unlikely role for a young American pilot, but Race was following  special orders from General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery.

In 1944 Jack Race was a US Army Air Force pilot with the 326th Ferrying and Transport Squadron, Ninth Air Force, stationed in England, delivering fighters and medium bombers throughout the UK. Then he was assigned to C-47s and found himself delivering US generals to their destinations. When Eisenhower personally gave Montgomery a C-47, he promised him  a pilot too, so Jack joined the British Twenty-first Army Group, “a Pennsylvania Yankee in King George’s service.”

Captain Race flew British top brass back and forth along the front line as they advanced through  France and Belgium. But his most important mission was flying into Germany with Montgomery’s chief of staff, ‘General Freddie’ DeGuingand, to collect Jodl and the German surrender delegation in Luneburg and transport them to Rheims to sign the peace treaty. Upon  arrival in Luneburg, the young pilot watched from the cockpit as DeGuingand approached Jodl and the defeated general extended his hand. “I'm so glad that General Freddie shook his hand," Race said. "He was extending his hand in peace."

When asked about his role in WWII, Race said, “I was glad and proud to serve my country. But war never solves anything. It has been necessary through the ages to set things right, I know, but my hope is that someday differences between people can be settled peacefully, so there will be no more need for war. I know that sounds unrealistic, but it’s my fondest wish.

“War never solves anything …” – Capt. Jack Race

After the war, Jack Race became a flight instructor, crop duster, bush pilot, instructor for Afghanistan’s Ariana Airline, consultant to Jordan’s Alia Airline, around-the-world charter pilot, and Pan Am jet captain. With Pan Am he flew DC-4s and DC-6s, was a training pilot, line training captain and DC-8 instructor. When he retired from Pan Am in 1981, he was a 747 captain and had logged 26,000 hours as an airline pilot.

Inspired to fly at the age of six as Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic solo for the first time, young Jack “hung on every scratchy word coming over our radio” at his home in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. Years later when he captained a Pan Am cargo flight with his hero in the jump seat, Lindbergh complimented Race on making “a very nice landing” in New York. For Jack, hearing that “was like getting the Victoria Cross.”

In “retirement,” Captain Race became Chief Pilot for Project Orbis, a DC-8 jet converted into a state-of-the-art ophthalmic teaching hospital. For five years he flew Western doctors to more than 30 developing countries to teach sight-saving skills to host-country medical personnel. He endorsed Orbis’s goal of sharing knowledge for the good of others to promote peaceful international cooperation and good will. This suited his personal philosophy too, as he had been ordained a Baptist minister in 1981.

Evoking Lindbergh’s plane ‘Spirit of St Louis’, using only a map and compass for navigation, Race recreated Lindy’s epic 1927 US goodwill tour, a journey of 22,350 miles, with 78 stops in 48 states. Jack named his own Waco open-cockpit biplane ‘Spirit of Orbis’ and talked about Orbis and its sight-saving work at stops along his way.

Race’s autobiography, “I'll Fly Away: A World War II Pilot's Lifetime of Adventures from Biplanes to Jumbo Jets,” was published in 2006.

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