The Flying Peace Corps Operates Out Of Dayton

Dayton, Ohio, home of the Wright brothers and the first airplane, has yet another distinction to add to its aviation honors. It is the home of nine very special, single-engine planes called “The Flying Peace Corps.”

The May issue of “The Wonderful World of Ohio” magazine tells the story of “The Flying Peace Corps” – the pilots and volunteer workers who travel the skyways over Africa to carry food, medicine, and patients to and from isolated desert and jungle outposts.

The Corps or United Mission Air Training and Transport (UMATT) is headquartered at 300 College Park Ave. in Dayton. It is a group of volunteer workers founded four years ago by Mike Stimac, once a high school mathematics and science teacher in Cleveland and Puerto Rico.

Since UMATT’s founding, more than 3,000 persons have been flown more than 500,000 miles across East Africa. The group’s aerologues tell of some of the missions the volunteers have flown. A quick trip to a hospital with a tribal chief dying of post-operative complications, supply runs with cargoes such as badly needed hospital supplies, food for children with bloated stomachs.