Wins Harmon Trophy

Col. David C. Schilling '39 who was awarded the 1951 Harmon International Aviation Trophy for being the world's outstanding aviator for 1950, enhances, with this new honor, a record that is one of the best in the Air Force. At present commanding officer of the 31st Fighter Escort Wing at Manston, England, he was rated as a top USAF ace at the conclusion of World War II, with the record of 341/2 enemy planes destroyed.

Colonel Schilling was selected winner of the Harmon Trophy, however, specifically for achieving the first non-stop jet flight between Great Britain and the United States on September 22, 1950. At that time he flew a single-engined F-84-E Thunder jet across the ocean in ten hours and one minute, refueling three times during the flight. In 1948 he led the first group of American jet fighters across the Atlantic, making experimental studies of jets over water. His non-stop flight was his sixth crossing of the Atlantic in jet fighters.

The Harmon Trophy was founded in 1925 by the late Clifford B. Harmon as a means of promoting good will and world peace. In an editorial in the NewYork Times of July 7, in which Colonel Schilling was commended as the recipient of the Harmon Trophy, it was said of him: "He has enhanced Anglo-American goodwill. There will be more congratulations, for the accomplishments of the Colonel are not finished."