You could walk into any club on any Naval or Marine Corps air station from Breezy Point to Cubi and it would be there: that unforgettable image.
If it was your airplane or your ship—wonderful. But no matter. It was somebody’s airplane or somebody’s ship, and just looking at it would make you proud that you were part of something fine. The paintings seemed to affect everyone that way—from the pilot with hundreds of traps to someone who had stood watch on a tin can pulling plane-guard duty.
The paintings bore the signature "R.G. Smith" written in the clear, slanting hand of a mechanical engineer trained to letter his drawings precisely. The airplanes always looked right, in part, because he had helped design so many of them—the Dauntlesses, Skyraiders, Skywarriors, Skyhawks, and Skyrays—but also because, out of his great respect for those involved, he always took care to make sure that the details were right. He dedicated his autobiography to his wife, Betty, and to "the military heroes who wore their uniforms with pride and went into battle . . . so that we might enjoy the freedom and the fruits of this great land."
Now Robert Grant Smith, this soft-spoken, talented, modest man known to all as "R.G.," is gone. He died on 29 May 2001 at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, age 87, after a lengthy fight against Parkinson’s disease. He is survived by his wife, Betty; his daughter, Sharlyn Marsh, and his son, Richard; nine grandchildren, eleven great-grandchildren, hundreds of friends, more than 1,500 paintings of aviation and nautical subjects, and numberless lithographs of military and commercial aircraft—many of which he took the time to sign and inscribe.
Originals hang in the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., which put on a special exhibition of his work in March 2000, "Old Master of the Sky"; the National Museum of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, Florida; the Pentagon; and at Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard installations worldwide. His work appeared in Life magazine. This April, Aviation Week & Space Technology built its "Naval Aviation at 90" issue around R.G.’s art, and used an F4B-3 over the original USS Saratoga (CV-3) on the cover.
R.G. always liked to draw, but he did not begin his career that way. After graduating from college with a degree in engineering, he started work in 1934 as a blueprint trimmer with Northrop Aircraft, then a subsidiary of Douglas Aircraft. His career as the company’s official artist began when he was asked to draw the BT-1, a dive-bomber, for use by the company in a presentation to the Navy. He was always an engineer, but the company increasingly relied on his artistic talents.
Naval aviation was his first love. This comes through loud and clear in his autobiography R. G. Smith: The Man and His Art (Schiffer Military History, 1999), which his friend Commander Rosario "Zip" Rausa, U.S. Navy (Retired), a naval aviator, helped him write. It was a two-sided affair; he is one of the few individuals to be designated Honorary Naval Aviators. His striking paintings of aircraft in action—SBD Dauntlesses at the Battle of Midway, AD Skyraiders from the USS Princeton (CV-37) pulling off after bombing the Hwachon Reservoir Dam in Korea, an F3D Skyknight getting a MiG kill, the Blue Angels over the Statue of Liberty—have become part of aviation history. Although he began by painting Douglas aircraft, he eventually painted aircraft built by many companies and flown by all the services.
He seemed to have a special affection for the little A4 Skyhawk, probably because he played a considerable role in its design. On the other hand, maybe it just looks that way to me because I flew A4s. He painted a division of them roaring down a sandy desert road under a threatening sky that will remind any Scooter pilot of dropping down over old Highway 80 and picking up the run-in line for the "Candid Camera" special weapons target just east of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma. "Operation Wet Wing," which shows an A-3D Skywarrior tanking a shot-up A-4 in an attempt to nurse the little dive-bomber back to its carrier on Yankee Station, takes me back to my flight-school friend Mike Weakley. Mike took a bad hit through the wing while over North Vietnam in October 1965, but his sturdy Skyhawk brought him home to the USS Midway (CVA-41). Pacific Stars and Stripes ran a picture of him standing in the hole with a big grin. Years before, R.G. had been a member of the design team responsible for Mike’s grin that October day.
At the 1991 Tailhook Symposium, I had dinner one evening with R.G. and members of the Proceedings staff. He and I then drifted off to the casino lounge. We drank some Black Russians, talked, and he played a few rounds of Keno, a particularly appropriate frontier game for a native Californian who liked to pan for gold on camping trips with old friends. His legs were bothering him and so I took the elevator with him up to his room to make sure he was okay. Afterward, I went down and joined the crowd outside on the poolside veranda where I ran into several old friends, including Lieutenant Colonel (now Brigadier General) Jon Gallinetti, who was just getting one of the new F/A-18D squadrons. "Goose" and I reminisced, talked about friends, and told some sea stories before turning in. What turned out to be a bad night for naval aviation was for me one of the pleasantest evenings I can remember.
Just about everyone in naval aviation has a favorite R.G. Smith painting, one that encapsulates an experience or an era with which they identify. Mine is one he sent me called "Skyhawks over Chu Lai: The Marine CVA." The focus is on a section of VMA-223 A-4Es coming into the break for Runway 14 at Chu Lai. He drew it on one of his two trips to Vietnam and he caught everything: the windsock indicating wind from 130° at 12 to 15 knots, the straggly pines between the aluminum airstrip and the beach, an A-4 on takeoff with JATO bottles burning, the small tanker offshore in the bay pumping JP-5 ashore, the GP tents baking under the glare of the tropical sun, and the Marines—fixing aircraft, fueling aircraft, arming aircraft. The Bureau Numbers on the aircraft in the break are 152002 and 152051; I flew both of those aircraft from that strip in 1965 and 1966. The Bureau Numbers are in my log book. If you flew A-4s, they may be in yours. I copied the pages from the log and sent them to R.G., who had captured a time and a place for all of us. It was yesterday.
Thanks, R.G.—thanks for everything.
A graduate of West Point, Colonel Greeley flew 20 years with the Marine Corps. After a tour with Aviation Week & Space Technology, Mac was the senior technical editor of Proceedings from 1989 until 2000, when he "retired."
Thanks, R.G.
By Lieutenant Colonel Brendan Greeley, USMC (Ret.)