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Richard Glenn Rutan was born in Loma Linda, California. He joined the U.S. Air Force as a teenager and flew more than 300 combat missions during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was part of an elite group that would loiter over enemy antiaircraft positions for hours at a time. The missions had the call sign \u201cMisty,\u201d and Dick was known as \u201cMisty Four-Zero.\u201d Among the many awards Dick received were the Silver Star and the Purple Heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Burt Rutan said his brother was always having adventures, like the time he got stranded at the North Pole for a couple of days when the Russian biplane he was in landed and then sank through the ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dick Rutan set another record in 2005 when he flew about 10 miles in a rocket-powered plane launched from the ground in Mojave, California. It was also the first time U.S. mail had been carried by such a plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greg Morris, the president of Scaled Composites, a company founded by Burt Rutan, said he first met Dick was when he was about seven and over the years always found him generous and welcoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBigger than life, in every sense of the word,\u201d Morris said, listing off Rutan\u2019s legacy in the Vietnam War, testing planes and on the Voyager flight. \u201cAny one of those contributions would make a legend in aviation. All of them together, in one person, is just inconceivable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whittle said Rutan had been courageous in his final hours at the hospital \u2014 sharp as a tack, calm and joking with them about what might come next after death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe\u2019s the greatest pilot that\u2019s ever lived,\u201d Whittle said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dick Rutan is survived by his wife of 25 years Kris Rutan; daughters Holly Hogan and Jill Hoffman; and grandchildren Jack, Sean, Noelle and Haley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A decorated Vietnam War pilot, Dick Rutan, along with co-pilot Jeana Yeager, completed the first round-the-world flight with no stops or refueling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":72308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":11,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[11,31,58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[408],"class_list":["post-24314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fedlife","category-home","category-lifestyle"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"CPB7F3IJKRFXZDJWVTYNDVVY2E","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-air-force\/2024\/05\/05\/dick-rutan-vietnam-war-pilot-and-record-breaking-aviator-dies-at-85\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n