Harry Benjamin Combs (27 January 1913 – 23 December 2003) was an American aviation pioneer, airplane manufacturer, and author. He was founder of Combs Aviation and president of Gates Learjet Corporation. He was a pioneering soaring pilot who "lived and breathed the Golden and Jet Ages of aviation." He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1996.
Early life Combs was from Denver, Colorado. His father was Albert Henry Combs, a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps in Canada. Combs saw his first airplane in 1917 at the age of four when he traveled with his grandmother from Denver to a Royal Flying Corps training field in Deseronto, Canada where his father was training. Combs' father was shot down twice while in aviation combat in World War I, and was said to have warned his son never to set foot in an airplane. From 1920 to 1926, Combs attended Fessenden School, a preparatory boarding school in Massachusetts. While at school, he read Diary of an Unknown Aviator, World War I chronicle by Elliot White Springs. Combs was inspired by Springs and wanted to fly an airplane, despite his father's warning. While on summer vacation in Denver in 1926, Combs and a friend paid $4 for a ride in a mail plane. In 1927, Combs enrolled in the Taft School in Connecticut for five years. That was the same year, Charles Lindbergh made his historic crossing of the Atlantic. When Combs saw a magazine advertisement for $99 flying lessons taught by Lindbergh's old company, he made his way to St. Louis for three hours of flight instruction. In 1929, after thirty hours of flying, the sixteen–year–old Combs designed and built a sport biplane named Vamp Bat. However, the Vamp Bat was short-lived, and crashed after a flight in Pueblo, Colorado. Combs said, “You didn't have any means of controlling it when the wind was blowing. There were no brakes—just a tailskid. If you sped up, it got away from you and you turned upside down. I was hanging upside down inches from the ground. It busted up. I should have known that when you don't have brakes you have to stay on the grass.” Starting in 1931, he attended Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School, graduating in 1935 with a degree in applied economics. While at Yale, he lettered in track and football and was a member and president of St. Anthony Hall. He was also chairman of Cannon & Castle Military Society and a member of the Torch Honor Society. He then attended reserve officer's training, where he was commissioned as a ROTC second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. However, he did not go on to cadet training because he had fallen in love—and cadets were not allowed to get married.
Career
Aviation In 1935, Combs worked as a ticket agent for Pan American Airways but quit after two years because he wanted to fly. Then, he ran a small flying service in Armonk, New York. Next, he worked in investment banking with Bosworth, Chanute, Loughridge & Co. in Denver. Wanting to return to airplanes, he was enlisted as a second lieutenant pilot officer in the Colorado National Guard 120th Observation Squadron, logging enough flying time to earn an instructor's rating. Now able to teach, he was hired by the Ray Wilson Flight School in Denver as an instructor. In 1938, he co-founded Mountain States Aviation in Denver, a flying school and airplane sales company. In 1939, he started Combs Aircraft Corp. to design and build an experimental aircraft known as the Combscraft; however, the airplane could not pass a spin test and the project was abandoned. During World War II, Mountain States Aviation trained more than 9,000 pilots on bombers, fighter planes, freight planes, and gliders with 45 planes, 45 flight instructors, and 160 employees. In 1944, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces and flew C-54 transport planes across the North Atlantic, Africa, and India. After a year, he was honorably discharged to return to his company. Combs was the state director of Civil Defense for Air from 1951 to 1954. He was also associated with Lockheed Aircraft's Skunk Works, working on the U-2, the F-104, and the SR-71 Blackbird projects. In 1958, Combs Aircraft operated from Stapleton Airport and grew into of the largest network of aircraft sales and service centers in the United States, and the leading Beechcraft distributor in the United States. In 1962, he sold Mountain State Aviation. By 1964, he was the largest Beechcraft distributor in the world. Combs developed and implemented business practices that are now industry standards. President John F. Kennedy appointed Combs to Project Beacon which was tasked with modernizing air traffic control systems in the United States. Combs developed a plan to separate air traffic based on aircraft performance . Many of Combs' suggestions are still used today by the FAA. He was also a consultant to NASA during the early days of the crewed space program and helped create an air-training base in Arizona for CIA Covert Operations. Comb Aircraft was sold to Gates Rubber Company for $1.5 million in December 1966. Renamed Combs Gates Denver Inc., it became a subsidiary of Gates Aviation Corp. Combs decided to retire. In December 1969, stockholders elected Combs to serve as president of the board of directors of Gates Learjet, a new merger of Gates Rubber and Lear Jet Industries. In October 1970, he moved to Wichita, Kansas to oversee Gates Learjet, which manufactured corporate airplanes. His salary was around $50,000 a year, but the company was failing with a $13 million deficit. Combs said, “When I first got down there, I said to the sales manager, ‘What are our hot prospects?' He had about three. We had about 800 employees and half-built bodies of airplanes laying around. There were no sales. I was told it was because the market was bad. I said, ‘No, it's the way we’re running things!’” Under Combs’ leadership, Gates Learjet made a remarkable financial turnaround, with some $15 million in the bank and no debt by June 1972. It became the largest manufactures of business aircraft in the world. In 1975, he relocated the business from Wichita to Tucson, Arizona. The Learjet was the first United States civil aircraft to be FAA-approved for a normal cruise at 51,000 feet. It was also the first plane to incorporate NASA's thrust-enhancing "winglet" technology. He retired in 1982 when the company had $240 million in equity. Combs was also the founder of the national chain of corporate airplane service centers, AMR Combs.
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