We regret to inform our readers that Gerald "Gerry" Balzer flew west on June 2, 2024, after a short illness. Gerry was just eight days shy of his 98th birthday. He will be sorely missed by all involved in American aviation history.
Gerry joined AAHS in its first year of operation in 1956, and since then, has promoted aviation history in numerous ways.
Gerry started his aviation interest in the Army Air Corps, and performing flight crew duties for P-51Ds, where he got a little stick time in the P-51 trainers. While working at Northrop Aircraft, Inc, at Hawthorne, Calif., he joined AAHS. He worked on the F-89s, the X-21, the SM-62 Snark missile (design and stress analysis), the T-38/F-5 series, and several special assignments.
In 1963, while at Northrop, Gerry was able to divert a truckload of the company’s negative material that was literally headed to the city dump to his residence, thus acquiring approximately 350 boxes of negatives containing some 200,000 negatives; it took almost a year to survey this material, salvaging some 3,000 negatives of historical interest. Gerry has since digitized these images.
Gerry worked for McDonnell Aircraft Corp. in the mid 1960s, which soon merged with Douglas Aircraft to become McDonnell Douglas Corp., in system integration. He assisted in melding the McDonnell and the Douglas proposals for the Navy VSX program that was eventually awarded to Lockheed as the S-3. Gerry was assigned to the FX (F-15) project proposal working through the loading of the first prototype F-15 into a C-5 for transport to Edwards AFB. After an aerospace layoff, Gerry was hired as a product analyst by ITT Blackburn, and then by TRW on several BLACK projects. Gerry retired from TRW in 1992.
Gerry became AAHS Vice President in the early 1980s. His duties included treasurer, facility leasing, facility maintenance, office support (supplies and utilities) to name a few.
In addition to writing three books, American Secret Pusher Fighters of World War II: XP-54, XP-55, and XP-56, Northrop F-89 Scorpion, and Curtiss Ascender XP-55 (Air Force Legends No. 217) (all available on Amazon), Gerry has spent his career working with authors/collectors worldwide and the AAHS office in support of technical questions and Northrop photograph research.
Gerry continued to share his love of aviation history up until the end. He made sure that his extensive collection had a new home and that the AAHS has access to his photo collection through a gift of high resolution digital photos to the AAHS archives that are available members, authors and researchers.
Gerry’s lifelong support of the AAHS and his dedication to preserving aviation history will be greatly missed by all of us. Thank you, Gerry, for a life well lived and served.
