An Aviation Original

They don’t make ’em like Warren Bodie anymore. Tough as nails, unfailingly honest, brutally candid yet incredibly generous to those he respected, Bodie was one of the true origi­nals in aviation history circles.

During a 42-year career that began with the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943 and ended with his retirement from Lockheed’s Skunk Works in 1985, he amassed one of the finest collections of historic airplane photographs in the world. Anyone who has flipped through the pages of Aviation History or other magazines devoted to the history of flight has seen photos from his massive collection (two appear in this issue, on pages 9 and 40). But what set Bodie’s efforts apart from those of other similar “hobbyist” photo collectors was not so much the quantity of his images but the quality, and, more important, the knowledge behind them.

Warren lived and breathed aviation history every day of his adult life. He started taking aircraft photos at age 13, and soon became involved with Pete Bowers, William Yeager, Fred Bamberger, Harold Martin, Logan Coombs, William Green and a handful of other aviation photographers/collectors who were responsible for most of the historically significant airplane shots that appear in aviation magazines and books. He considered himself especially fortunate to have worked with Lockheed’s legendary Clarence “Kelly” Johnson and Colonel Benjamin Kelsey, whom he had idolized as a teen. Although partial blindness in his right eye prevented him from pursuing his dreams of becoming a pilot, he flew on many occasions with another childhood hero, air racing great Jimmy Haizlip.

Following his retirement from Lockheed, Warren went on to a successful second career as an aviation writer, founding his own publishing company, Widewing Publications, and authoring six books, including definitive tomes on the P-38 Lightning and P-47 Thunderbolt. After his beloved wife of 46 years, Cath­erine, died in 1989, he poured himself into his work at his North Carolina home, cataloging his photos and writing frequently for aviation publications. As he wrote at one point, “This old crank is as busy as a one-armed paperhanger with the seven-year itch.” Despite persistent pain caused by a bad back, and lengthy battles with various age-related ailments, he kept working on his first love—aviation history—right up to the day he entered a hospital with the illness that finally felled him on March 3.

Warren would often wax philosophic in lengthy e-mails about his rich life and incredible good fortune, which he attributed to a guiding hand. “If there is anyone who is more strong in their belief that God is on their side than I am, I have never encountered them,” he wrote. “So many good things, almost totally unexplainable, have happened to me that it is downright incredible.”

Warren M. Bodie was 85. His legacy will live on in the pages of this magazine.

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