Ted Hine will be 83 years old this week, but he still remembers as clearly as if it were yesterday his Uncle Virgil Hine landing at Hatbox Field with his Army Air Corps squadron in the early 1930s.

“He would hop out of his plane with white scarf, goggles and flight cap and military boots and grab me up and put me in the cockpit of his plane,” Hine said. “I wanted to be just like him.”

Hine will help the Airlift Tanker Association pay tribute to his uncle at its annual meeting this weekend in Nashville.

Virgil Hine is one of four members of the first team to ever refuel airplanes in mid-flight.

Ted Hine, a pilot, is going to the meeting one day early to enjoy the company of fellow aviation enthusiasts, he said. He will make a brief talk about his uncle at a Saturday night banquet.

While he adored his uncle and always wanted to be just like him, Ted Hine said he didn’t always realize the importance of what Virgil Hine and his crew and team members had achieved in 1923 during that refueling.

When he and his family visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum a few years ago, they noticed that just after the Wright Brothers display, there was a small model of two biplanes with a string hanging between them, replicating the in-flight fueling first conducted by Hine’s uncle and his associates.

Even though it was historic, that first in-flight fueling was rather crude, Hine said. Hine’s uncle was the pilot of the upper aircraft and worked to keep the plane steady while the co-pilot seated behind him dangled the fuel hose to the lower plane. There, the pilot was trying to hold that craft steady while the co-pilot grabbed the fuel hose and waited for the fuel to flow from a funnel in the upper aircraft.

“They didn’t realize they were doing something that was going to be done every day,” Hine said.

Hine said the Airlift Tanker group is trying to locate the families of the others involved in the refueling, as all four men will be inducted in the Nashville ceremonies.

Virgil Hine and his family had moved to a small farm on the Arkansas River east of Muskogee when he and his brother, Otto Hine, were very young.

Virgil graduated from Muskogee (Central) High School in 1916. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his having piloting one of the planes in the refueling. He retired in 1935 and purchased a 500-acre farm northeast of Okay, where he died at age 44 in 1939.

He had two sons, Jack and Tom, who were reared by Hine’s parents in Muskogee after their mother died at a very early age.

Jack Hine earned a doctorate in chemistry and taught at the college level before dying from complications of Muscular Dystrophy, Ted Hine said.

Tom Hine followed his father in his military career and died in 1944 during World War II, when his bomber was shot down.

Virgil Hine’s brother, Otto Hine, also served during World War I and received the Distinguished Service Cross for his acts of heroism in Germany.

Ted Hine also joined the service during World War II. He wanted to be like his Uncle Virgil and sign up for the Air Force, but they wouldn’t accept him because he was only 17 years old. Instead, he became a Navy hospital corpsman and worked with a surgical team as an operating room tech, trying to save as many marines as possible during the Iwo Jima, Saipan, Guadalcanal and other campaigns.



Reach Liz McMahan at 684-2926 or lmcmahan@muskogeephoenix.com.