Air museum honors Easton-born Air Force pilot
John Trask learned how to fly before he got his draft letter for the Korean War. He and his brother saved up to buy an airplane, drawn to the fair skies around their hometown of Easton.
In 1951, when Trask was conscripted to the Army at age 18, he reckoned he’d be better off in the Air Force and enlisted himself in that branch.
“I knew I wanted to fly,” said Trask, who spent the next 20 years in the Air Force, working in Alabama, Bangor, Indiana Newfoundland and Puerto Rico, first as a basic airman and later an officer.
Trask left the Air Force as a major in 1971, and went on to lead a successful career in commercial aviation in northern Maine. Now, his experience in the military lives on as part of an exhibit at Northern Maine Regional Airport, where his flight uniform offers visitors a short trip back in time — to a time of transition in American civilian and military life in the years after World War II and a time when pilots used a whiz wheel, the E6B flight calculator.
“John had a great service in the military and as a civilian,” said Nathan Grass, president of the Presque Isle Air Museum, dedicating the new uniform installation.
Sited among photos and relics of the Presque Isle Air Force Base, which was active from 1940 through 1961, Trask’s flight uniform circa 1971 features his flight suit, boots, helmet, oxygen mask, training helmet, earphone and a scarf emblazoned with the Flying Tigers, his 14th Airborne division, as well as the E6B flight calculator used on B-52’s.
During his Air Force service, Trask spent two years at the PIAFB, from 1955-57, before becoming an officer and taking flight training school. While Trask never served at the Loring Air Force Base, northern Maine’s largest station until it closed in 1994, he did fly B-52’s there from Puerto Rico as part of hurricane evacuations between 1965-69.
“It’s a real honor to have the uniform here,” Trask said.
After leaving the Air Force in 1971, Trask was able to pursue his love of flying in other ways, piloting commercial airplanes between Boston and Presque Isle through the 1990s, under various owners. From 1984-91 he was chief pilot of what would become Northeast Airlink, and worked as a Federal Aviation Administration pilot examiner until he retired in 2012.
“I heard if you took one check ride with John, it was as good as 30 days training anywhere else,” said Grass. “John has a way explaining things and telling you how to fly that really was great.”
