Eyesight

When the Wright Brothers were experimenting with their flying contraption at College Park, Md., 25 years ago, they were pestered by a young Army corporal named William C. Ocker who wanted to take lessons. When they made their first successful test flight for the Army at Ft. Meyer, Va., Bill Ocker was there as an armed guard. From a greasemonkey and bamboo polisher at Curtiss Flying School, Corporal Ocker rose to be a pilot, then an inventor. Flying upside down in the clouds made him dizzy so he helped devise an instrument to prevent vertigo. When flying by instruments alone was scoffed at, he built a little black box full of indicators which not only made blind flying simple but two years ago led the Army to require it of every flyer in the service. Congress appropriated $1,000 to buy up his patent. But last week at Ft. Sam Houston, Major Ocker, oldest pilot in the Army in point of service, was summoned to appear before a court-martial. Charge: insubordination--by using improper language to a superior officer (96th Article of War). Major Clyde C. Johnston had examined Pilot Ocker at Kelly Field, after he recovered from a broken vertebra, and grounded him for weak eyesight. Pilot Ocker, no friend of Kelly Field's hard-boiled com mander, Lieut.-Colonel Henry B. Clagett, took his re-examination at another field, managed to pass the eye test. Back he went to Major Johnston and, according to the court-martial charges, said: "If other pilots on this field, namely such as Clagett, were given more than a cursory examination they too would be off flying status. There was collusion between you and the Commanding Officer of this field relative to my examination!"

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