Dick Rutan, co-pilot of historic round-the-world flight, dies at 85

Rutan was also a decorated Vietnam War veteran who had to eject from his plane two separate times while in the Air Forice.Burt Rutan was alarmed to see the plane he had designed was so loaded with fuel that the wing tips started dragging along the ground as it taxied down the runway. He grabbed the radio to warn the pilot, his older brother Dick Rutan. But Dick never heard the message., with Burt and other loved ones by his side. He was 85.

Voyager left from Edwards Air Force Base in California just after 8 a.m. on Dec. 14, 1986. Rutan said with all that fuel, the wings had only inches of clearance. Dick couldn't see when they started dragging on the runway. But at the moment Burt called on the radio, copilot Yeager gave a speed report, drowning out the message.

“We had the freedom to pursue a dream, and that’s important," Dick Rutan said at the ceremony. “And we should never forget, and those that guard our freedoms, that we should hang on to them very tenaciously and be very careful about some do-gooder that thinks that our safety is more important than our freedom. Because freedom is awful difficult to obtain, and it’s even more difficult to regain it once it’s lost.

He survived having to eject twice from planes, once when his F-100 Super Sabre was hit by enemy fire over Vietnam, and a second time when he was stationed in England and the same type of plane had a mechanical failure. He retired from the Air Force with the rank of lieutenant colonel and went on to work as a test pilot.

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