Redbird Airport

[William Kelly]

I know there must be some other threads on this forum re: Redbird Airport, or Wayne January, and other related topics, and I'd appreciate if anybody could locate them and call them up to see what they say.

In any case, Redbird airport has come up a few times in various areas, and I'm interested in all of them, but from what I remember, January said that somebody had approached him about leasing a plane, and Oswald or an Oswald look-a-like was in the car.

Then January told others that a privately owned large MATS cargo plane was sold on the day of the assassination and one of those pilots connected with the sale made a remark about JFK's impending assassination on the morning of the assassination, and then confirming that he had predicted it later on in the day.

I've also heard a story about a small private plane, its engines running, was seized and confiscated by federal authorities on the day of the assassination, then placed under armed guard for a few days. Has anybody heard anything about this incident?

Now we have confirmation that Collins Radio had a private hanger at Redbird, and set up a special radio communications facility there that was in direct radio communications with the airport near Collins Radio HQ at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, aka "Liberty" station.

In addition, Carl Mather's boss at Collins Radio, when asked what Mather and his car would be doing in Oak Cliff on the afternoon of the assassination, mentioned that since Oak Cliff is between Richardson, home of Collins in Texas, and Redbird Airport, where Collins had special facilities, maybe Mather was enroute between the two places.

In any case, I now have a renewed interest in Redbird Airport, and would appreciate any info anybody has on the subject.

Beginning with the question of whether Wayne January is still alive, and are there any photos of the Collins Radio hanger/base station at Redbird.

Thanks,

BK

Blogger: Dashboard

Edited March 27, 2012 by William Kelly

[Zach Robertson]

Hi Bill,

Here is one old thread on Red Bird:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6091

Keep up the good work,

Zach

[Michael Hogan]

Five years ago, Robert Charles Dunne made some perceptive comments about Redbird Airport. Although I've only reproduced part of his post, it is worth reading in its full form.

....The incidents at Redbird airport in Dallas were staged for a purpose. An "Oswald" was sighted there prior to the assassination, as part of a group seeking to charter an airplane for 11/22/63. A plane sat idling for an hour or more on the Redbird tarmac in the early afternoon of 11/22/63, then eventually left. Subsequently, special attention was paid to an incoming small aircraft in Mexico City, and the alleged transfer of a single passenger to a Cubana Airlines flight that had been delayed there, as though waiting only for that passenger. According to an obscure little footnote in Dick Russell's "The Man Who Knew Too Much," after the assassination CIA had discovered luggage at the Mexico City airport for one Lee Oswald.

When Oswald was arrested, I suggest that there was no ID in his wallet containing the name "Hidell." Had there been, one might have expected any of the arresting officers - several of whom were contemporaneously interviewed by the media - or any of the DPD hierarchy to have mentioned that fact. Upstanding citizens don't use an alias, and those who carry false ID are immediately suspect for that fact alone. Despite the received history on this aspect of the case, it wouldn't be for a full 24 hours that the name "Hidell" was first uttered by those who arrested Oswald and purportedly found "Hidell" ID on his person a the time.

In fact, I suggest that all the so-called "Hidell" ID was actually discovered in the wallet located at the Tippit crime scene. This is why the name "Hidell" entered the nomenclature of the crime only after the rifle had been traced back to a mail-order buyer using that name, via Oswald's PO box. It was only when Captain Fritz was confronted by two wallets, both ostensibly belonging to the same suspect, that this became problematic, as we'll soon see.

Taking the foregoing into account, let us assume that shortly after the assassination, the man known as Lee Harvey Oswald simply vanished. What would have been left behind, and what inferences would have been drawn from that residue?

The wallet at the Tippit crime scene would have disclosed that a man named Lee Harvey Oswald, who also used the alias "Hidell," had killed a policeman. In tracking down this man's whereabouts, DPD would have discovered - as they did - incriminating photographs of Oswald posing with weapons. After the rifle had been found in the TSBD, it would have been traced back to Klein's in Chicago, and from there to a buyer named "Hidell" at Oswald's PO box. In short order, Oswald's masquerade as a FPCC radical would have surfaced, along with his criminal arrest in New Orleans, and the subsequent TV and radio appearances in which he advocated strongly on behalf of Castro.

Soon thereafter, sources within the US government would have disclosed that Oswald had made approaches to two enemy embassies in Mexico City, and CIA would have revealed - as it did - that one person Oswald met there was in charge of Soviet assassination plotting in the western hemisphere.

At which point, it would have come to the public's attention that a light plane had left Redbird airport shortly after the assassination, that a plane of similar description had landed in Mexico City, and that a single passenger had deplaned and entered a waiting Cubana Airlines flight bound for Havana. Conveniently, that passenger would have been identified as Lee Oswald, based on luggage that had mistakenly been left behind there. [so central to the plot was this airplane story that even after Oswald's capture, the tale was subsequently retro-fitted so that the mystery passenger morphed into several other Cuban actors with purportedly strong Castro allegiances.]

Had Oswald simply disappeared and left behind this breadcrumb trail of evidence, what inescapable conclusions would have been drawn, and what would have been the official US response?

The assassination didn't transpire precisely as had been planned. Yes, it succeeded in killing the President. It failed, however, to deliver the ancillary benefits of placing direct blame upon the Havana despot, as had been hoped.

The single most critical failure in achieving that end was Oswald being arrested with his own wallet in his own pocket....

[Larry Hancock]

Bill, I put a considerable amount of detail about the aircraft involved in the Ray January incident into SWHT, including

its identification numbers, the company's involved etc. However the most recent work is on trying to identify the

Cuban exile pilot who talked with January and the American officer with him. There are a couple of recent posts

and discussion on that on my blog you might want to check out.

http://larryhancock.wordpress.com/

-- Larry

[Zach Robertson]

Here are the links to Larry's blog. There are some great recent comments in there as well. I also posted pictures of Varone, Artime and January on the second page in my above link some time ago.

Red Bird Leads

Red Bird cont.

Red Bird and Oswald

Larry, Great work on the blog; I always look forward to reading new entries.

Zach

[Bernice Moore]

Bill...here's one link...b.....

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7072

[William Kelly]

Here are the links to Larry's blog. There are some great recent comments in there as well. I also posted pictures of Varone, Artime and January on the second page in my above link some time ago.

Red Bird Leads

Red Bird cont.

Red Bird and Oswald

Larry, Great work on the blog; I always look forward to reading new entries.

Zach

Thanks Zach, I had read them previously and went back and found them before I read your links, but thanks anyway, and it may save others the trouble.

And many thanks to Larry Hancock, his books SWHT and MLK and the latest, that I haven't read yet but much anticipate. Larry's books and blogs are the best.

And thanks B. for finding that thread, as I took out a few interesting relevant items.

I also got a note from Darrell, whose from the Hood, and notes that Carl Mather's boss at Collins, Mr. Pickford, is incorrect in his statement that Oak Cliff is between Richardson and Redbird and Mather might have a legitimate company related reason to pass through Oak Cliff to get to the company's Redbird facility.

Darrell: "I read your post at the education forum regarding Redbird Airport.

As someone who was born, raised and lived, and traveled that area

extensively, I thought the following might be helpful for you to know.

Oak Cliff isn't between Redbird Airport and Richardson. Richardson

is the most northern of the three cities. Redbird is directly connected to

Richardson. but the idea that someone's car would be in OakCliff because it

is between the two is just illogical, as Oak Cliff is southwest of the othertwo cities,

and is really quite out of the way. To get to Redbird you'd have to go through Dallas

proper and part of Mesquite, as Redbird is really in Mesquite."

BK

JFKcountercoup

[Kathleen Collins]

I know there must be some other threads on this forum re: Redbird Airport, or Wayne January, and other related topics, and I'd appreciate if anybody could locate them and call them up to see what they say.

In any case, Redbird airport has come up a few times in various areas, and I'm interested in all of them, but from what I remember, January said that somebody had approached him about leasing a plane, and Oswald or an Oswald look-a-like was in the car.

Then January told others that a privately owned large MATS cargo plane was sold on the day of the assassination and one of those pilots connected with the sale made a remark about JFK's impending assassination on the morning of the assassination, and then confirming that he had predicted it later on in the day.

I've also heard a story about a small private plane, its engines running, was seized and confiscated by federal authorities on the day of the assassination, then placed under armed guard for a few days. Has anybody heard anything about this incident?

Now we have confirmation that Collins Radio had a private hanger at Redbird, and set up a special radio communications facility there that was in direct radio communications with the airport near Collins Radio HQ at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, aka "Liberty" station.

In addition, Carl Mather's boss at Collins Radio, when asked what Mather and his car would be doing in Oak Cliff on the afternoon of the assassination, mentioned that since Oak Cliff is between Richardson, home of Collins in Texas, and Redbird Airport, where Collins had special facilities, maybe Mather was enroute between the two places.

In any case, I now have a renewed interest in Redbird Airport, and would appreciate any info anybody has on the subject.

Beginning with the question of whether Wayne January is still alive, and are there any photos of the Collins Radio hanger/base station at Redbird.

Thanks,

BK

Blogger: Dashboard

You probably have seen this. It's about Redbird Airport and it has a picture of the landing strip:

http://oakcliff.advocatemag.com/2011/03/backstory-04-11/

[William Kelly]

...The incidents at Redbird airport in Dallas were staged for a purpose. An "Oswald" was sighted there prior to the assassination, as part of a group seeking to charter an airplane for 11/22/63. A plane sat idling for an hour or more on the Redbird tarmac in the early afternoon of 11/22/63, then eventually left. Subsequently, special attention was paid to an incoming small aircraft in Mexico City, and the alleged transfer of a single passenger to a Cubana Airlines flight that had been delayed there, as though waiting only for that passenger.According to an obscure little footnote in Dick Russell's "The Man Who Knew Too Much," after the assassination CIA had discovered luggage at the Mexico City airport for one Lee Oswald.

When Oswald was arrested, I suggest that there was no ID in his wallet containing the name "Hidell." Had there been, one might have expected any of the arresting officers - several of whom were contemporaneously interviewed by the media - or any of the DPD hierarchy to have mentioned that fact. Upstanding citizens don't use an alias, and thos ewho carry false ID are immediately suspect for that fact alone. Despite the received history on this aspect of the case, it wouldn't be for a full 24 hours that the name "Hidell" was first uttered by those who arrested Oswald and purportedly found "Hidell" ID on his person a the time.

In fact, I suggest that all the so-called "Hidell" ID was actually discovered in the wallet located at the Tippit crime scene. This is why the name "Hidell" entered the nomenclature of the crime only after the rifle had been traced back to a mail-order buyer using thatname, via Oswald's PO box. It was only when Captain Fritz was confronted by two wallets, both ostensibly belonging to the same suspect, that this became problematic,as we'll soon see.

Taking the foregoing into account, let us assume that shortly after the assassination, the man known as Lee Harvey Oswald simply vanished. What would have been left behind, and what inferences would have been drawn from that residue?

The wallet at the Tippit crime scene would have disclosed that a man named Lee Harvey Oswald, who also used the alias "Hidell," had killed a policeman. In tracking down this man's whereabouts, DPD would have discovered -as they did - incriminating photographs of Oswald posing with weapons. After the rifle had been found in the TSBD, it would have been traced back to Klein's in Chicago, and from there to a buyer named "Hidell" at Oswald's PO box. In short order, Oswald's masquerade as a FPCC radical would have surfaced, along with his criminal arrest in New Orleans, and the subsequent TV and radio appearances in which he advocated strongly on behalf of Castro.

Soon thereafter, sources within the US government would have disclosed that Oswald had made approaches to two enemy embassies in Mexico City, and CIA would have revealed - as it did - that one person Oswald met there was in charge of Soviet assassination plotting in the western hemisphere.

At which point, it would have come to the public's attention that a light plane had left Redbird airport shortly after the assassination, that a plane of similar description had landed in Mexico City, and that a single passenger had deplaned and entered a waiting Cubana Airlines flight bound for Havana. Conveniently, that passenger would have been identified as Lee Oswald, based on luggage thathad mistakenly been left behind there. [so central to the plot was thisairplane story that even after Oswald's capture, the tale was subsequentlyretro-fitted so that the mystery passenger morphed into several other Cubanactors with purportedly strong Castro allegiances.]

Had Oswald simply disappeared and left behind this breadcrumb trail ofevidence, what inescapable conclusions would have been drawn, and what would have been the official US response?

The assassination didn't transpire precisely as had been planned. Yes, it succeeded in killing the President. It failed, however, to deliver the ancillary benefits of placing direct blame upon the Havana despot, as had been hoped.

The single most critical failure in achieving that end was Oswald being arrested with his own wallet in his own pocket....

Some of the more significant leads relating to the events of November 22, 1963 comefrom Red Bird airport, south of Dallas. I cover them in some detail in Someone Would Have Talked but they don't get much discussion these days and I suspect a lot of folks are not even aware of them – so I'm going to devote a few posts to the subject.

Perhaps the most critical of them all has to do with the purchase of a C-53 transport (WWII troop carrier version of the legendary DC-3) which was being transferred from ownership by two companies at Red Bird to the Houston Air Center. It was the last of a series of such airplanes sold during 1963 and one of the Dallas owners, Ray January, was handling the hand off of the aircraft. January is a key source for several of the incidents involving Red Bird and he actually tried to take some of them to the FBI immediately after the assassination – but after determining that the only thing the FBI was interested in was if he had ever personally known Jack ruby or visited his clubs, January seems to have concluded that he was wasting his time and it would be best to hold his own council on such things. It would only be due to the work of English author and researcher Matthew Smith, that the following story would become known (after many years of his friendship and contact with January) – and even then January required Smith to keep his true name confidential, and made that contingent upon his wife's approval after his death.

According to January, the week of the President's assassination, two men had come to Dallasto do an acceptance check and take possession of the aircraft. The men were not directly connected with Houston Air Center but appeared to be representing the actual new operators of the plane. One, the pilot, was a Cuban exile, very proficiant with the aircraft and very involved with the checks and acceptance. The other, presenting himself as an American military officer but not in uniform spent little time at the airport and left the work to the Cuban pilot. During the week January became good friends with the Cubanbecause of their common love of aircraft and of course they discussed affairspertaining to the pilots homeland. At one point, the pilot told January it was too bad that President Kennedy was going to have to die when he came to Dallas– but that it would be revenge for his actions in pulling air support at the Bay of Pigs and dooming the exile brigade. January simply could not believe such a thing and expressed his doubt – the Cuban simply said "You will see", and as it turned out, flew the aircraft out of Dallas the afternoon of November 22. January only saw him briefly at that time,a time when the first vague reports about something happening in the motorcade in Dallas were hitting the news –the Cuban said good by and only remarked "It's all going to happen like I told you."

Of course this is a pretty dramatic story, but the thing is,as more information became available over the years, its basics have been corroborated – based on an the registration number of the aircraft, which Smith was only allowed to disclose after January's death (and with extensive help from an FAA employee who prefers not to be named), we managed to confirm the sale of the aircraft, exactly as described by Ray January. In doing so, folks at the Houston Air Center who know the history of the Center and its activities were also quite helpful – right up to the point whereI gave them the aircraft registration number and they realized where I was going. After that – nothing (not a new experience in JFK research). However, subsequent research makes it pretty clear that Houston Air Center was involved with logistics support for certain CIA operational activities in the secret war against Castro and also suggests that the aircraft in question was being purchased to support the new Artime/AMWORLD effort being moved offshore. An effort which was supposed to be totally deniable and allowed Artime's group a large degree of autonomy in itsanticipated military activities (funded to the extent of an estimated six million dollars over a period of three years beginning in 1963).

It would be very nice to know more detail about the air activities of Artime's effort (and yes documents show the CIA was assisting him in the lease of similar transport aircraft through third party companies). We do have the name of one of his favorite pilots andthe name of an American military officer connected to the effort but much more work could be done; it seems a very fruitful area for research – and so far there is really nothing to suggest that January should not be considered a reliable source.

Edited March 28, 2012 by William Kelly

[Steven Gaal]

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Etiology of the Red Bird Getaway Plane Story

====
Researched and written
by Linda Minor

http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.com/2015_04_01_archive.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D.H. Byrd's CAP outfit flew from Red Bird.

=
This post is a sidenote to research I've been doing previously, but it relates only tangentially to the DC-3 plane which Wayne January was selling at the time he was told in advance about the assassination of President Kennedy. January himself had no knowledge of or connection to the group planning the assassination, but the story he revealed to author Matthew Smith sheds light on one small piece in the puzzle as a whole. Possibly the reason so many of us "conspiracy buffs" spend so many years of our lives digging into the 1963 Kennedy assassination is that we can dedicate years of study to it and never solve the puzzle to anyone's satisfaction. It is my opinion that we may be trying to solve the wrong puzzle. We have to broaden our context.

The FAA Report to FBI--1967

I began delving into a simple question asked me by a reader about the Wayne January incident, not remembering that Daniel Hopsicker had dealt with one aspect of that question in his book Barry & 'the Boys', originally published in 2001. Daniel has also mentioned what has been referred to as the "getaway plane" at Red Bird Airport at his website, The MadCowNews, under the subheading, "Three men in suits at Redbird Airport," dated November 20, 2013. Keep in mind, however, he was not talking about N-17888, but a different aircraft from the one we have been investigating. Nevertheless, the "getaway plane" was also part of what had been of interest to Matthew Smith in describing events that took place at Red Bird Airport in 1963.

Ferrie's mugshot
Garrison's New Orleans investigation had zeroed in on David Ferrie, and he sent an employee to Dallas with Ferrie's photograph (possibly his mugshot) to inquire whether anyone at Red Bird Airport had seen him there in November 1963. Louis Gaudin had not seen Ferrie, but he did disclose a separate suspicious incident he witnessed the afternoon of the assassination. Three men in suits boarded a "Comanche-type aircraft" just over an hour after President Kennedy had been gunned down. Gaudin had not called the FBI at the time because by then Lee Harvey Oswald was in custody, with officials claiming he was the "lone" assassin. Why did Gaudin and Bowles wait to contact the FBI until two weeks after Ferrie's dead body had been found on February 22?

Daniel Hopsicker tracked down Gaudin, 37 years after the FBI report (dated March 10, 1967), and recounted in his book what the FAA air traffic controller told him:

“The FAA had its general aviation headquarters there, said Gaudin. “Howard Hughes had a huge old WWII hanger there, with heavy security. People from Wackenhut all over the place. And there were the Porter planes from General Harry Byrd’s outfit.”
General D. Harry Byrd’s links to the Kennedy assassination begin with the fact that he owned the building, the Texas School Book Depository, from which Kennedy was supposedly gunned down.

Then, too, he founded an aircraft company that became one of the largest U.S. defense contractors during the Vietnam War, Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), which also—and perhaps not coincidentally?—tested missiles at the Venice Airport in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

“What had happened was this,” he continued. “I was an air traffic controller working in the tower at Redbird [sic] that day. When I came on shift at 2 PM, we received a bulletin to report any suspicious activity immediately to an FAA Security number. And we kept calling that number all afternoon, but got nothing but a busy signal. And then, after we heard they had caught the ‘lone gunman,’ I guess they called it, we stopped calling, and let the matter drop.”
From his perch atop the control tower, Mr. Gaudin, between handling twenty or thirty flights into and out of the airport an hour, had noticed something suspicious about three well-dressed men in business suits standing, along with several suitcase, beside a Comanche painted green-and-white.

So suspicious was he, Mr. Gaudin related, that when the plane took off on runway 17, he asked the pilot if he needed any assistance. The pilot said no. Gaudin asked which way the plane was heading. The pilot stated south.

Gaudin watched as the plane flew south for two miles, then made a hard left, and then flew north to Love Field.

The pilot had lied.

Suspicions aroused, Gaudin went over to the control tower’s receiver and listened as the plane made an approach and landed at Love Field, eight miles north of Redbird.

An hour later, the plane was back at Redbird. This time only two people were aboard. The third passenger—let’s call him the shooter–had been left at Love Field.

And that’s where the matter rested until Garrison’s investigator’s came calling.

Then, after Gaudin became alarmed at the death of a man whose picture he had just recently been shown, he called the FBI, and filed the report which, he said, became something of a burden to him for the rest of his life.

“There was no Freedom of Information Act back then,” he says today. “That’s what’s created some problems for me.”

This would be just a ‘suspicious sighting’ except for something that happened later, which clearly indicated to Gaudin that he was a witness to something he had no business seeing.

From the control tower, he says, he was too far away to be able to identify anyone who boarded the plane. But there was one person who could: Merrit Goble, who ran the fixed-wing operation, TexAir, at Redbird Field.

“Merrit and I were friends,” Gaudin relates. “So one day, after filing the FBI report, I went down to see if the FBI had been by to visit him as well. They hadn’t, he told me. So I asked him if he had anything, any gas receipts, any record of the fueling of the plane in question. And Merit acted very strangely. He told me, in effect, that it was none of my business. He said, ‘I will only answer questions from a bonafide law enforcement authority.’”

“I always thought that was strange: ‘I will only answer questions from a bonafide law enforcement authority.’ Because like I said, we were friends.”

Merrit Goble died last year, taking any secrets he possessed about the suspicious plane to his grave.

Bowles worked with LBJ's bro-in-law.
It is not clear to me from reading Hopsicker's work whether it was Gaudin who told him about Byrd's use of Red Bird for Civil Air Patrol planes, or whether he gleaned that information from another source. "Harry Byrd" usually refers to the Virginia Senator of that name, the brother of Admiral Richard Byrd, Jr., whom D. Harold Byrd claimed as his cousins.

I also have to ask whether, before calling the FBI, Bowles may first have contacted his own superior at the FAA, who, by 1967 was the President's brother-in-law, Birge D. Alexander, husband of Lucia Huffman Johnson since 1933. Birge rose to the position of Area Manager for the Southwest Region of the F.A.A. not long after brother-in-law Lyndon was himself "promoted". Bowles and Alexander had been officials together at C.A.A., later F.A.A., for many years.

Birge, Lucia and Rebekah (Libby Willis)
Birge and his siblings were reared in Sabinal, a tiny town in Uvalde County from 1908 until leaving for college in Austin. Before 1908, home had been at Manchaca Springs, in south Travis County, where Birge's grandfather is buried.

Robert Carogoes into more detail.
Alexander played center for the Sabinal football squad and was named all-district center in 1929. A few years later Birge was off to the University of Texas to study engineering. Graduating in 1939, he immediately went to work for the Lower Colorado River Authority, a job for which he unquestionably had his brother-in-law, the newly elected Congressman Johnson from the district, to thank.

Within a short time, however, Birge transferred to a different government job at the Civil Aeronautics Administration, in charge of building and inspecting airport runways. He would no doubt have come into contact with Bowles, who was in charge of air traffic control--both men with offices in the same building in Fort Worth.

Sabinal, coincidentally, where Birge grew up and where his father's siblings all lived, was where John Nance Garner's wife, Mariette "Ettie" Rheiner, was born in 1869. According to Ettie, she was taking a secretarial course in San Antonio when she met Garner on a train. They married as soon as she finished the course in 1895. His story was, with a big wink, that she was running for county judge, opposing him, so he married her to win the election.

Was Cactus Jack, as Garner was nicknamed, as prickly as his name implies? Was he just an innocent curmudgeon? Only more research will tell. We do know he had power, but all we ever saw of it was just the tip of an iceberg. What lay beneath that icy peak?

-------------------------=================----------------------

also see

http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.com/2015_02_01_archive.html

and

http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html

Edited May 3, 2015 by Steven Gaal