Missionary Airplane To Fly Over Ocean?

Veteran pilot Mike Stimac, who has some 2,000 hours flying the African bush, soon may be flying across thousands of miles of ocean instead of African desert.

He will decide in a week or 10 days whether to fly a single-engine Cessna 182 across the Atlantic or to ship it by freighter to East Africa.

Stimac arrived in Dayton Monday with the latest airplane being added to the UMATT – Wings for Peace fleet in Africa.

Stimac began flying in Africa in 1962 and organized UMATT – United Missions Air Training and Transport, Inc. – and is now president of the “Flying Peace Corps” which has headquarters here.

The new four-place Cessna 182 flown here from the factory in Wichita, Kan., is the result of an $18,000 grant from the Raskob Foundation of Wilmington, De.

Stimac flew it here to have radio equipment installed at Aviation Sales, Inc., at Cox Municipal airport.

The plane is scheduled for use in the Turkana desert of North Kenya, bordering Ethiopia. Stimac said it will carry doctors, nurses, medicine and patients among five hospitals and three dispensaries scattered in a territory almost 100,000 square miles in size. Peace Corps projects, irrigation schemes, and schools also will be served, he said.

UMATT already is operating six planes in a 2,000-mile stretch of East Africa, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia.