PAUL ALLEN

An Aviation Philanthropist Extraordinaire

Paul Allen was much more than simply the multibillionaire cofounder of Microsoft. He raised philanthropy, the saving of aviation history, and other projects to higher—and very exciting—art forms. He invested a massive amount of time and resources into almost every phase of aviation. His museum, the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum in Everett, Washington, is a case study in preserving the rarest of airplanes. More than that, rather than restoring them to be dead artifacts in glass cases, he put them back in the air. These include such rarities as his FW 190 and Ilyushin Il-2. His achievements in that area are unbelievable. Not satisfied with removing corrosion and patching the rusted tubing of past history, Allen funded future history by working with Burt Rutan to put SpaceShipOne and test pilot Mike Melvill into the record books as the first privately funded project to make it into space. He kicked open the door for the private space firms that followed. Allen’s deep-sea exploration activities were extensive, even though they were overshadowed by his other endeavors. Few realize that he and his crews on the RV Petrel have located a number of historic shipwrecks. The most spectacular discovery has been the USS Lexington (CV-2) that went down in the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. It rests 10,000 feet down, and the images his unmanned sub brought back shows it to be in remarkably good condition. Paul, yours was a life well lived, and your presence among us will benefit generations far, far into the future.