Eagle's Lair
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Ladies & Gentlemen:

He was known by most of his friends as "Fish", a nickname which stuck in his early years as a test pilot. He was a handsome, mustachioed, freewheeling Errol Flynn lookalike, not an engineer but a former barnstormer. He'd flown the Le Vier Special when taking third place at the First Annual Closed-Course GoodYear Tophy Race at the 1947 National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio.

Salmon's test pilot career covered such aircraft as the Lockheed XFV-1 VTOL, named the Salmon after him, and the YF-104A & XF-104A in which he performed "zoom climbs" as part of Edwards AFB's test program in coordination with the soon to be NASA as part of their early space program.

Herman Salmon died in 1980 while flying a Lockheed L-1049G Super Constellation, # N9723C, when it crashed on take off from Bakalar municipal airport in Colombus, Ohio.

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