Airman at Sea

When the Miami wing of the Civil Air Patrol first got a bill for dockage of a 64-ft. yacht, the Mayan, at a Fort Lauderdale marina, Lieut. Colonel Claude F. Lowe, executive officer, just laughed and laughed. Everybody knew the Miami CAP was so poor that its members had to pay their own office phone bills. Then, when a Coral Gables man called to ask if he too could give the CAP a yacht, Lowe began to think that something was fishy.

With the help of other CAP members, he started nosing around the harbors, to his astonishment soon found two yachts with stickers identifying them as CAP property. Then he heard from the Miami Customs Office about six or seven other yachts, worth around $500,000, that in recent months had temporarily been listed as CAP property before getting other owners. The mystery of the yachts soon focused down on Miami Dock Owner Harold E. Manning, who explained that for some time he had been in the business of stocking, chartering and selling yachts that well-heeled Miamians had given to the CAP as a tax dodge. Under prevailing tax rates, an upper-bracket yacht owner can often save more on his income tax by donating a well-depreciated business yacht than by selling it on the market.

But, said Manning, the boats were given to the New York wing of the CAP, and the contact man there was one Lieut. Colonel Hugh M. Pierce, an Eastern Air Lines pilot who flies the Miami-New York run.

"You Ought to Know." Miami's Lowe appealed for help to the national CAP commander in Washington, then to the FBI and the Air Force as well. Eventually, on a flight to Miami, Pierce did look up Lowe to try to calm him down. According to Lowe, Airman Pierce said that he was "official scrounger" for the New York CAP; that by ringing doorbells he had collected enough money to buy the New York pilots the latest radio equipment, buses and other luxuries. And where did the rest of the money come from? As Lowe recalls, Pierce replied: "You've been investigating the Mayan, haven't you? You ought to know."

A few weeks later Lowe got Pierce to appear before the Miami CAP. The hard-pressed Miamians were stunned to hear New Yorker Pierce say that he had netted $118,775 from the sale of five yachts, given some of the money directly to the New York CAP, invested the rest in a Manhattan building-and-loan association and an airplane sale and rental business in Linden, N.J. He still had a string of unsold yachts and $15,500 in cash, which he offered to the Miami CAP as compensation for having solicited gifts in its territory.

"Maintain Security." By last summer the Miami yacht case was burning up the wires between Florida wing CAP headquarters and Washington. Washington appointed the deputy commander of the New York CAP, Colonel A. W. Sutter, to go to Florida to investigate. Sutter messaged ahead: "As you realize, this is a highly confidential and personal matter, and in my opinion the fewer people cognizant the less embarrassing. It is alleged that in the neighborhood of $400,000 is involved." Falling in with Sutter's theme, Washington CAP headquarters ordered the Miami CAP: "Cease all investigation. Maintain security."

Last week, in spite of all, security came unfastened. Fed up with a run-around that apparently was endless, Lieut. Colonel Lowe told all to the Miami Daily News, which played the sizzling story on Page One for two days, printed the Miami CAP auditor's report showing that CAP's Pierce and Yacht Broker Manning probably realized $218,000, failed to account for $33,000. Manning put the take at $172,000, said he had an explanation for it all.

In a last-ditch attempt to hush up trouble, a New York CAP official conceded that Pierce had no authority to accept donations of yachts ("We only take things like radio equipment that we can use"), but insisted the money was all in hand or accounted for.

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