The real pirates of the Caribbean

  • Published
  • By William Polson
  • 6th Air Mobility Wing Historian
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  The 6th Operations Group, currently assigned to the 6th Air Mobility Wing, has a history dating back to the beginning of air travel. The 6th Composite Group, the ancestor of the 6th OG, was based out of the Panama Canal Zone at a small U.S. air field, named France Field.
A little more than 85 years ago, a single-winged plane touched down in the landing field of that air field. Members of the 6th Composite Group greeted their illustrious pilot, Charles Lindbergh, as he arrived for a brief visit.

After he became famous in 1927, Lindbergh flew to help promote the rapid development of U.S. commercial aviation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He made the stop at France Field as part of this promotion.

From mid December 1927 to February 1928, Lindbergh flew across the Western Hemisphere under the banner of his "Good Will Tour," travelling some 7,800 miles across Central America and the Caribbean.

"Lucky Lindy" (Lindberg's nickname) made the first of three stops at France Field on Jan. 12, 1928. The 6th OG had been stationed at France Field since 1922 to protect U.S. interests in the Panama Canal.

In a side note to Lindbergh's first visit to France Field, an anonymous artist painted the emblem of the 6th OG on Lindbergh's plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, in somewhat the same way that a modern traveler might collect tourist decals from visited locations.

If you look very closely at the Spirit of St. Louis in the Smithsonian Institute today, you can still see our emblem on the engine cowling. At that time, it featured the head of a pirate, loosely based on the English privateer Henry Morgan.

Members of the 6th OG most likely chose Morgan for their unit's emblem due to the proximity of their air field to Fort San Lorenzo - approximately a 40-minute drive from Colon, Panama, the site where France Field was located in the late 1920s. Local legends probably abounded of Morgan's exploits in sending a small army of corsairs and buccaneers to attack the fort in 1670, as a stepping stone to the fortune in Spanish silver located in Panama City.

The image of the 6th OG buccaneer was later carried into the Pacific campaign of World War II as nose art for the B-29 "Superfortresses" flown by the 6th Bombardment Group. However, a standardization of wing emblems that came with the organization of the Air Force in 1947 brought an end to the famed pirate that still decorates Lindbergh's famed plane.