ARMY AIR CORPS Tedford Blaisdell If Tedford Blaisdell ever takes you on a trip down memory lane, be sure to pack a lunch.  His 28 years as a pilot and flight operations director for the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force spanned three wars: World War II, Korea and Vietnam.  Now 86, long-retired and living in West Gouldsboro, Lt. Col. Blaisdell flew 62 different types of aircraft before, during and after those three conflicts. “I got to fly everything from Beavers on floats and skis to F-4 fighter jets and the Boeing 707s used as tankers.”   His military missions took Blaisdell almost everywhere, except Australia and Antarctica.  “I was headed to Antarctica once,” he said, “but I only made it as far as New Zealand before my plane broke down. I just left it there.” Officially, Blaisdell was never in harm’s way. Officially, he never flew over the beaches of Normandy during the D-Day invasion. Officially, he never airlifted dead and wounded American GIs out of hotspot combat zones in Vietnam. Officially, he didn’t fly the occasional covert mission for the CIA.   Having come to the military in 1942 directly from his job as a commercial pilot for PanAmerican World Airways, Blaisdell was a “special” pilot who lacked the formal military training required to fly combat missions. “About the time I was posted in London, we were approaching D-Day,” he said. “Of course I  didn’t know it at the time, but when it happened I got the job of flying a C-47 up and down the Normandy beaches, so that the press and the generals could observe.” On passes when he turned the controls over to his co-pilot, Blaisdell watched through binoculars as the surf turned crimson with the blood of American GIs who didn’t survive the dash from their landing crafts to the beachhead battlefield.  “What I saw was not good,” he says today. “And, when we landed, that plane had 32 bullet holes in it.  “There were close calls over the years,” he said. “You can’t fly that much in three wars without there being close calls.” Born in Franklin in 1918, Blaisdell’s love affair with aviation began even before age 12, when he paid an Augusta barnstormer $5 for the chance to go up in his open-cockpit biplane. His first job after earning his wings and an engineering degree at the University of Maine was with Wiggins Airways in Boston, where he taught flying and flew charter flights. From there, he went to PanAm, ferrying aircraft from his base in Miami to South America, Africa and the Middle East  “I came back from a trip to India and was met at the airport at Miami by a brigadier general. He knew I had taken ROTC at the University of Maine, which I had, because it was mandatory. He gave me two choices: I could be a sergeant in the First Artillery or a First Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. There was no real choice.”            Three days later — “hardly enough time to buy a new uniform” — Blaisdell was flying to Egypt.  “At that time, the Air Force had no long-haul pilots, and I was qualified in celestial navigation and radio operations, courtesy of PanAm,” he said.  Blaisdell contracted malaria on a mission to China. Nonetheless, he stayed busy ferrying B-24 and B-17 bombers to the theaters of war where they were needed most. The nearly four years he spent in Europe during World War II began in Scotland, where planes arriving from the States dropped off passengers and cargo headed for London.  It was in Scotland he first met comedian Bob Hope, one of many VIPs he would encounter during the war. “I was supposed to fly him to London, but the weather wasn’t good, so they wound up getting him a berth on the ‘Flying Scotsman,’ which was a very nice train. He invited me and my crew along, and we wound up playing poker with him pretty much all night.”  Blaisdell can’t remember who won. “There was quite a lot of Scotch (whiskey) going around that night,” he said.  While overseeing flight operations at the Orly Airfield near Paris, Blaisdell had frequent encounters with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and other top brass. A mission that required him to ferry Massachusetts Congresswoman Edith Norse Rogers to the front lines in France involved lunch in the field with Gen. George S. Patton.  “He was spit and polish and had a nice table set up outside his tent, with a white table cloth and napkins,” he said. “Throughout lunch he kept looking at his watch. At one point he said: ‘Now listen.’ Just then we could hear the artillery shells come over our heads and explode about a half-mile away with a satisfying bang, like the Fourth of July.” After the Germans ended their occupation of Norway, Blaisdell received a call, asking if he could take a ton of cargo to Oslo. That cargo wound up being “bubbly” and a “babe” -- hundreds of bottles of champagne, accompanied by Sonja Henie, a Norwegian-born figure skater who parlayed her good looks and Olympic gold medal into silver screen success as a Hollywood actress.  The king of Norway was among those who met the plane.  “She told me they were having a party and invited me to stay,” he said. “I did.”  The party lasted three days. Those good times, Blaisdell said, helped to balance the front-line horrors.  “We hauled some sad cases, but the one thing I will never forget is in Vietnam, hauling a man into my airplane with both his legs shot off just above his knees,” he said. “I went up front to fly the plane, but I don’t think he made it.”  After leaving the Air Force in 1970, Blaisdell returned to Hancock County to enjoy life in the same West Gouldsboro home in which his wife, Margaret, was born. She passed on in September 2001 at age 85. “I was qualified to fly commercial airliners as a captain,” he said. “But I decided, what the hell, and I played a lot of golf instead.” — By Tom Walsh