From http://www.staugustine.com (St. Augustine FL 21 Dec 2003)

By SUSAN PARKER
Historian

With this past week's centennial celebration of the Wright Brothers'
first flight, the focus on aviation pioneers has been both historical
and personal for me.

My uncle, Charles Eugene Richbourg, a son of St. Augustine, was the
first person to break the sound barrier in a seaplane on Aug. 3, 1954.
Three months later he was killed testing another version of that plane,
the SeaDart. His remains were returned to St. Augustine to be buried in
the National Cemetery.

Uncle Charlie, my father's younger brother, grew up on Milton Street,
near the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. Other boys in the
neighborhood -- Frank and Hamilton Upchurch and Richard Watson, now with
their own distinguished careers -- have recalled for me my uncle's
passion for creating model airplanes in the workshop in the family
garage.

An alumnus of Ketterlinus High School and of MIT, Charles Richbourg
became a test pilot for Convair after four years as a Navy pilot in
World War II. He tested an experimental seaplane that would double as a
high-performance delta-winged jet fighter. In those days test pilots
were very involved in designing the planes in addition to
flight-testing. He knew Chuck Yeager and his name was included in early
discussions of astronaut candidates.
Uncle Charlie came from a flying family.

Over half of its six family members were pilots -- Charles, his father,
his older brother and his older sister. James W. Richbourg, his father
and my grandfather, established St. Augustine Flying Enterprises with
Lucius Rees in 1928, to run an airfield on State Road 16, train pilots
and service aircraft. Would it frustrate and puzzle them to know that I
swallow a tranquilizer before boarding a plane?

To me, Charles Richbourg was, first of all, my tall uncle since I was a
child when he died. It was years later that I realized the larger world
of his achievements. I see him now in a few scattered moments in my
memory. I recall one day when he squatted down to my own short size and
set me on his knee. I was the 3-year-old flower girl in his wedding, but
my memory's image of the event is mostly the flames flickering on the
tall candelabra at the end of the church aisle. He and my father
standing at the end of the aisle are shadows in my memory.

It was happenstance that CBS news cameras were filming what turned out
to be his final flight in early November 1954. [Life magazine also
featured photos].

Although I had already been told of the tragedy, I did not expect to see
Uncle Charlie wave good-by from the cockpit on the evening news. Then I
saw his plane explode, bursting apart in the air.

No one else has ever flown faster than the speed of sound in a seaplane.
---end St. Augustine Record newspaper article---

Chuck



HEAVY ATTACK COMPOSITE (VC-5,6,7,8,9) WEBSITE
http://community.webtv.net/charles379/USNComposite

FAIRECONRON ONE AND TWO (VQ-1/2) CASUALTIES
http://www.anzwers.org/free/navyscpo...r_AirCrew.html