Code One Magazine: The Wings of Daedalus

The Wings of Daedalus photo "You should begin with Daedalus," suggested Gen. Dimitrios Afentakis as he paged through back issues of Code One. "Yes, Daedalus," he continued. "He was the first man to fly, and he was Greek. Your readers will like that." The general's recommendation would become difficult to ignore. "You should begin with Daedalus" would be repeated over the next several days by a variety of officers and personnel of the Hellenic Air Force. And it would be emphasized time and again by the many paintings of winged Daedaluses that adorn air force offices, aviation museum collections, academy hallways, and squadron cantinas. The story of Daedalus holds a special place in the HAF. It is a good place to begin.

Daedalus, according to Greek myth, was the architect of the escape-proof Labyrinth built for King Minos of Crete. The Labyrinth, in Knossos, was a complex maze of high walls topped with thorns. Not even its designer, it was said, could escape from it. At its center, the Labyrinth contained the Minotaur — the half-bull half-man illegitimate flesh-eating offspring of the king's wife, Parsiphanea. Every year, dreadful King Minos fed the monster with fourteen youths taken from one of the provinces under his control.

The annual ritual came to an end when Theseus, the strong and fearless son of the king of Athens, volunteered to be one of the fourteen entrees. Theseus slayed the monster with one of its horns. He escaped the confusing passageways of the Labyrinth by retracing his route with string he had unwound on his way in. With the monster dead and Greek society safe from its appetite, Theseus set sail from Crete with his fellow Athenians. He also took Minos' daughter, Ariadne, who had told him how to kill the Minotaur and how to escape the Labyrinth.

King Minos, infuriated by the escape, correctly surmised that the Labyrinth's architect was involved. As punishment, he imprisoned Daedalus and Daedalus' son, Icarus, in the center of the maze. With guards posted at the Labyrinth's exits, the cunning designer knew the only possibility for escape was through the air. So he downed a couple of eagles with a bow and arrows he fashioned from items he found in the Labyrinth. He then plucked the birds and attached their feathers with strong wax to a leather framework to build two sets of wings. In a mythical triumph of ingenuity over adversity, Daedalus and his son sailed over the Labyrinth in the early morning air and out to sea on their man-made wings.

"Never underestimate the power of myth," counseled Afentakis, commander of Anhialos Air Base. As the general spoke, sporadic roars erupted outside from modern Daedalians blasting down the runway and floating over the blue Aegean (a sea named for Theseus' father, King Aegeus of Athens). The base, on the coast of central Greece, is home of the 111th Wing of the HAF. The 111th includes Greece's two F-16 squadrons — the 330th and the 346th.

"We don't call them 'Fighting Falcons,'" explained Col. Ioannis Rammos later that afternoon. "Falcons are fighters by nature. When an airplane is a falcon, it must be a fighter." Rammos commands the 330th Squadron. At the time of Code One's visit, the 330th had been operational for about one year and had just faced a visiting Dutch squadron in a friendly air-to-air competition. Rammos would not divulge the results, but he could not suppress a smile when asked about how his squadron performed. "We performed well," Rammos attested. "That's all I can say."

The Greeks, with their more modern F-16C and F-16D aircraft, may have had a decisive edge over the Dutch F-16A and F-16B models. But to take advantage of that edge after only one year of operational flying deserves, at the very least, a smile. "We have a good relationship with the Dutch air force," said Rammos almost apologetically. "They have very good pilots. But we have the better planes with better radar." While the colonel's smile boasted, his words were modest and tempered by a sense of honor best described by the Greek word filotimo.

"The word is difficult to translate into English," explained Rammos after thumbing through a couple of Greek-English dictionaries. "It contains a sense of honor, obligation, self-respect, and teamwork. Literally, it means love of honor. To defend your country is the highest achievement for any Greek citizen. Actions of selflessness for the defense of one's country are the essence of filotimo."

The stairway to Rammos' second-floor office is lined with historical photos of men and machines depicting the history of the HAF. The collection follows a chronological order beginning, of course, with a large painting of Daedalus on the first floor and ending with a color glossy of an F-16 on the second floor. The photos — mostly in black and white — hint of a colorful history.

One step up from the Daedalus drawing is an old photograph of another Daedalus, the name given to Greece's first military aircraft. The 50-hp Farman two-seater Daedalus was brought to Greece from France by Lt. Demitrios Kamberos of the Greek army in 1912. That summer, Kamberos flew the aircraft in extensive military maneuvers in preparation for what would become the Balkan War. Emanuel Argyropoulos, a civilian who made the first flight in Greece in February 1912, joined in the maneuvers with his privately owned 50-hp Nieuport two-seater. Soon after the exercises, Kamberos reconfigured the Farman as a seaplane and set a world record by flying from Athens to the Greek island of Hydra and back, averaging 110 kilometers per hour. Early in aviation history, the Greeks were flying far and fast and investigating ways to use planes for military advantage.

With the onset of the Balkan War that October, the Greek army, perhaps inspired by military necessity as much as by ancient Greek myth, made immediate use of their aircraft for tactical reconnaissance. Soon after the war began, French-trained Greek pilots formed Greece's first aircraft squadron in Larissa. Kamberos, who commanded the modest collection of two planes and four pilots, flew Greece's first active military air mission over Thessalia, in northern Greece, on the first day of the war. During the mission, he noted positions and movements of enemy troops and dropped several bombs improvised from hand grenades. Kamberos returned from his mission with vital information on enemy positions. He also returned with more than twenty bullet holes in his Fighting Farman.

During the war, Greece gained the distinction of the first country to use aircraft for naval reconnaissance missions when Lt. Michael Moutousis as pilot and Ens. Aristeidis Moraitinis as observer flew their French Astra floatplane, the Nautilus, over a Turkish fleet in the Dardanelles. They dropped bombs on a navy yard in Nagara and returned with important reconnaissance information.

Planes of the two F-16 squadrons at Anhialos are dispersed around the base in grayish brown, semicircular, NATO shelters. To accommodate their recent transition to the F-16, the base has devoted several buildings to F-16 engine and airframe maintenance. The base has also begun producing its own F-16 pilots. In a new training facility, instructor pilots of the "Alexanders" (of Alexander the Great) work with tomorrow's F-16 pilots.

Across the base from Rammos' 330th Squadron is the 346th Squadron, which is under the command of Lt. Col. Theologos Simeonidis. Like Rammos, Simeonidis has an interest in history. And like others, he began his discussion with Daedalus. "When Greeks look at their past, they are not certain where to begin," he explained. "There are too many dates, too many names and events. Our history spans millennia. The story of Daedalus lays a good foundation for our aviation history. But the myth shouldn't overshadow feats of real Greek pilots, pilots like Marinos Mitralexis."

Mitralexis is famous in Greece for protecting his country with the nerve of Theseus. Mitralexis flew his P-24 to defend northern Greece from aerial attacks in the early stages of World War II. On 2 November 1940, twenty-seven Italian Cant Z.1007 bombers with Fiat CR42 fighter escorts crossed into Greece intending to ravage Thessaloniki. The P-24s of the 32 Mira, Mitralexis' squadron, responded quickly and destroyed three of the bombers. The remaining bombers turned to flee after jettisoning their deadly payloads with no effect.

Mitralexis, who had already shot down one bomber, gave chase. Out of ammunition, he used his plane's propeller as a weapon and severed the tail of a retreating bomber. The Cant Z.1007 went down, and so did Mitralexis. After a dead-stick landing near the crashed Italian plane, the Greek pilot grabbed his sidearm, jumped from his plane, and captured the entire crew of the Italian bomber. Filotimo poli!

After relating the Mitralexis story, Simeonidis opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a yellowed piece of paper with a quotation from a magazine article by Ernest Hemingway. "Please make a copy of this to take with you," he said. "Maybe you can use it. The quotation is the best thing I've ever read about how fighter pilots feel about their planes."

"You love a lot of things if you live around them, but there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, not any before, nor any after, that is as lovely as an airplane. And men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others. A man has only one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely plane he loses it to, there his heart will ever be."

"After reading that, you can understand why some planes create their own myths," continues Simeonidis. "I think the Spitfire was such a plane. And today, it's the F-16. When people learn that I fly the F-16, they immediately begin asking me a lot of questions about it. And pilots from other squadrons are just as curious and just as fascinated. Whenever we host a visiting squadron, every pilot wants a ride in the back seat of one of our D models. On weekends, we always have people coming to Anhialos to see our Falcons fly. Many come all the way from Athens."

In early November, Anhialos Air Base and other air bases around the country open their gates to the public. The annual three-day open house is dedicated to Saint Michael — the archangel and protector of the Hellenic Air Force. "It is a major air force holiday," Simeonidis explained. "We have aerial and static displays. Thousands of people come from all over the country. It is our chance to show the public what we are all about."

The public is drawn to the annual event by a sense of curiosity, fascination, and pride. And Greeks have much to be proud about. There is, of course, Mitralexis, whose World War II heroics represent the best qualities of the HAF. Greek forces managed to repel numerous Italian attempts at a decisive air victory in the early stages of World War II. Eventually overtaken by the overwhelming power of Germany's war machine, the HAF continued the fight with its allies from bases in the Middle East and in North Africa.

On one such mission to attack German positions on Crete, Sgt. Athanassakis lost his external fuel tanks on takeoff. He flew on, knowing that he had only enough fuel to make it to his target — not back. After expending his ammunition on enemy positions, he met his death in his homeland.

During the Korean conflict, C-47s of the HAF's 13th Transport Squadron were some of the first allied air forces on the scene. Upon their arrival in December 1950, the Greek crews immediately began evacuating hundreds of wounded troops from a US Marine division that was cut off by enemy forces. The missions required Greek aircraft to fly through snowstorms and over enemy territory and land on a narrow airstrip to pick up patients under enemy fire. The Greek pilots who participated in the evacuation received the American Air Medal. From 1950 to 1955, the HAF flew 3,000 sorties in Korea, airlifting over 70,000 passengers, over 8,000 wounded, and 11 million pounds of equipment.

During this same period, the HAF entered the jet age, first flying Canadian T-33-AN Silver Stars in 1951. The initiation was soon followed by F-84 Thunderjets, Thunderflashes, and Thunderstreaks; F-86 Sabres; T-37s; and T-38s. In 1964, the HAF began flying the formidable F-104 Starfighter (a plane still flown by the HAF today as an interceptor). The Starfighter was followed by F-5s, F-4E Phantoms, Mirage 1-Cs, and A-7s. In the late 1980s, the HAF formed new squadrons with French Mirage 2000s and F-16 Fighting Falcons.

Greek aviation accomplishments are not limited to military aircraft. In 1988, Greek pilot Kanellos Kanellopoulos revived the Daedalus myth when he slipped into a new set of man-made wings and soared away from the Knossos ruins in Crete over the Aegean in the early morning air. Kanellopoulos (a long-distance cyclist by training) toppled the distance record for human-powered flight in the sixty-eight-pound MIT-designed Daedalus S8. He flew from Crete to the island of Santorin, seventy-two miles away. (The former record of twenty-three miles was set by Bryan Allen over the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross.)

Back in Afentakis' office, the general reviewed the most important qualities of successful recruits. Knowing that his words were being recorded, he spoke with care and exactness. "They must be dedicated," he explained. "They must also have enthusiasm for their work and trust the people they work with." The general then hesitated a moment before continuing. "The Greek word is agapi, and it conveys another important quality. It has many meanings in Greek. One is love. But it also means to be willing and to have a positive attitude — important qualities for our people. You can't turn myths into reality without it."