AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - December 2018 - 30

PILOT BRIEFING
JUST FOR FUN |

Dubious honor
Aviation clubs you might not want to join
B Y J U L I E S U M M E R S WA L K E R

EMBLEMS FOR The Goldfish

Club (top), Caterpillar Club
(center), and Sea Squatters
Club (above). Recipients
wore them on their uniforms.

30 | AOPA PILOT December 2018

IT SOUNDS INNOCENT ENOUGH: The Goldfish Club. So does the Caterpillar Club. The
Ejection Tie Club is curious, the Sea Squatters odd, and the Lucky Bastard Club is just
plain ominous. As we remember the 77 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and
America's involvement in the Second World War, it is fitting to also remember the spirit,
the joie de vivre of those young men and women who risked their lives for their country-
and who always seemed to have a light-hearted way of dealing with war's tragedy.
A man named P.B. Cow (some things you just can't make up) was an inventor of all things
rubber-the hot-water bottle a specialty (ask your grandmother; the bottle wasn't really a bottle). In 1938, his protégé and eventual owner of the company that came to make the rubber for
life vests and life-saving inflatable rafts called dinghies, C.A. Roberston (known as "Robbie"),
was so touched by airmen who thanked the company for saving
their lives when their aircraft were forced to ditch, that he created the Goldfish Club for those who had ditched in an airplane.
U.S. Navy aviators wore the club's patch on their Mae Wests (life
vests named for the remarkable chest of the famous actress), and
the Royal Air Force wore them under their battle dress. The patch
depicted a white-winged goldfish over a sea of blue waves-gold
for the value of life, fish to symbolize the sea. Robertson funded
the "club" and its patches with his own money. The first "Lady
Goldfish" was Gloria Pullen, who ditched in a Bleriot monoplane.
Inventor Leslie Leroy Irvin made the first premeditated
free-fall parachute jump, and went on to develop his own line
of parachutes. He, too, was touched when airmen thanked
his company-the Irving Air Chute Co.-for saving their lives
when they were forced to bail out of a disabled aircraft. The
Caterpillar Club's motto-"Life depends on a silken thread"-pays homage to the caterpillar that creates the silk used in the material for parachutes. It awards a small gold pin
shaped like a caterpillar to a pilot who has bailed out and survived. The gemstone eyes of
the caterpillar pin also have meaning; ruby eyes are for the survivor of a midair collision.
Walter Kidde is a name you may remember each fall when you go to buy a replacement
smoke detector. He started his company in 1917 with early versions of fire extinguishers, but
Kidde also made rubber life rafts used during World War II. A member of the Sea Squatters
Club is a navy aviator whose aircraft crashed at sea and who survived for more than 24
hours in one of Kidde's life rafts. Members received gold pins in the shape of a duck-the
club also was referred to as the "sitting duck club."
Similarly, the U.S. Army Air Forces had the Order of the Winged Boot for airmen who
were shot down behind enemy lines and walked back to their base.
Sir James Martin and his close friend Capt. Valentine Baker started Martin's Aircraft
Works in England. When Baker was killed in an aircraft accident, Martin devoted himself

AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - December 2018

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