FLIGHT OF THE "TURKEY BIRD"

Governor Reagan once declared to a group of visitors in his Capitol office, when Merv Amerine dropped by.

During WWII Mervin Amerine flew B-29 Superfortress bombers. He and his fellow airmen of the 3 Photo-Reconnaissance Squadron took some of the original photos before and after the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

Twenty-some years later, during Ronald Reagan's 1966 Campaign for Governor of California, Amerine with his wife, Nancy as stewardess, flew the actor who had refused to fly — Ron Reagan — to previously unreachable campaign stops in as many out-of-the-way towns and hamlets in the boonies of the huge state as possible — with Reagan seated in the co-pilot's seat at the controls, in what has been described as Donald Douglas's greatest aeronautical achievement — a lumbering DC-3 — # N-63440! A refinement of the DC-2 — the DC-3 was originally designed and built in 1935, and was the first commercial airliner to fly passengers and make a profit. The Reagan 1966 Campaign transport plane, N-63440 was not built in the 1950's as an airliner as we were originally told, but was constructed, as our research later proved, at Douglas Aircraft Co. in Long Beach, California in 1943 for the U.S. Army Air Corps as a C-47, for troop and cargo transport, and was easily interchangeable.

This tail-dragging, shiny classic with the huge, twin, radial engines, however, had one more unique feature: Normally, it was used to haul up to forty-eight thousand live baby turkeys at a time, all over the country.

These pioneers in the breeding, raising and mass-delivery of turkeys in North America decided, 'out of the blue', cold-turkey, that they wanted to help this uncommon man whom they had never met, Ronald Reagan, run for Governor of California. Merv had been watching RR for some time as he grew into a dynamic speaker.

"We had just come back from the midwest after delivering another load of baby turkeys." Merv then mused, I thought, 'What am I going to do to help Mr. Reagan get elected governor?' "This was the Winter of 1965 / '66." "I had heard parts of a speech or two that he had made. I was a life-long Republican and I was tired of Democrats." "I thought, I'll take one of these three DC-3's of mine. I had all of these seats, twenty-eight, put away in a hangar at our little airport in Oakdale (CA Central Valley) and we'll fly Mr. Reagan wherever he needs to go for his campaign." " So I told Nancy about it when I got back." And she said, 'Yeah, and you're going to go to the moon, huh?'

Then Nancy chimed in to confirm she had also said, 'Oh, you are, huh?'

Merv said he didn't know anybody connected with the campaign — anybody!

"I just took my Airline Pilot's credentials and license, went up to San Francisco to the Reagan for Governor Campaign Committee headquarters" (at that time it may have been the Northern CA offices of Spencer-Roberts & Associates, frequented by Northern CA Chairman Tom Reed who would have thought this was a most fortuitous gift from the heavens). The words: 'Airline Transport Pilot DC-3' were written across the license.' Merv said, "I presented these, told the staff about my airplanes down at Oakdale, California, and told them I'd like to help them out flying Mr. Reagan, wherever he needed to go." Nita Wentner Ashcraft, former Vice Chairman of Finance for the Northern California Campaign, confirmed this in 2006. "Now Ronald Reagan didn't like to fly. He refused to fly — until this campaign started!" "Then he realized he had to fly (due to the size and shape of California) with San Francisco up here so far from Los Angeles." "Amerine not only presented his credentials but also mentioned his county Reagan chairman where he had come from and he knew a number of people who were easily checked out and who knew Reagan people. We accepted him right after his visit," Wentner said. "I remember the jokes about how Merv would have to clean out the turkey poop to get ready for the next campaign flight."

Wentner spent many hours with Reagan driving him around northern California. "We decided to go up the coast one time, and I had a 1964 Lincoln Town Car and Ron loved it. This was before he announced as a candidate for governor. We'd go to little towns and GOP Central Committee meetings — when he said that he wanted to make a tour of the state to see whether people would accept an actor. That was his big problem! He was putting his 'toe-in-the-water.'

I asked Nita how he was received.

"Oh!" "Curtis!" "Like a movie star — with the aura." "People knew him — he had name recognition. It was immediate; with everyone. His days in television helped."

I probed deeper: Without trying to think of the exact words which you and he used, how did he treat you — how did he respond to you?

"He was an absolute gentleman with a great sense of humor! Never as a boss to an employee. No, no, no! Just a genuinely nice person. He had an heroic aura about him! Therefore, when Mervin Amerine came into the office and presented his "Turkey Bird" — We accepted!"

"It wasn't just Amerine and his airplane who were in awe of RR, Paul Haerle, an attorney, Marin County Reagan Chairman and later to become Appointments Secretary, following Tom Reed, and still later, an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeals, came to his first meeting, along with other business people, with a check in his hand to help give the fledgling campaign a 'jump-start,'" Nita said. (See Paul's chapter in Vol.2.)

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The "Turkey-Bird" takes off: filled with press, media crews, advance- staff and candidate Reagan; sometimes at the controls.

"Well, I can remember the first place that I picked candidate Reagan up was in a little town called Calistoga up in the heart of the Napa Valley. We met — walked around the airplane, talked about the airplane, where we were goin' that day, got in, cranked her up and away we went! I knew that the runway at Calistoga was short (about 1,000 feet long / modern jet airliners need eight to ten thousand feet of runway) gravel and asphalt and used mainly by people who were flying gliders and sail-planes. And to this day they still hook their little gliders to 'tug' planes and tow them into the air to catch the thermals coming up from the ridges ringing the manicured, verdant vineyards of the Napa Valley."

I asked Merv how he got permission to land and...