Harold Evans Dahl
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| Harold Evans Dahl | |
|---|---|
| June 29, 1909 - February 14, 1956 | |
| Nickname | "Whitey" |
| Place of birth | Champaign, Illinois |
| Place of death | Canada |
| Service/branch | U.S. Army Air Corps Canadian Air Force |
| Years of service | 1933-1936, World War II |
| Battles/wars | Spanish Civil War World War II |
Harold Evans Dahl (29 June 1909 – 14 February 1956) was a mercenary American pilot who fought in the Spanish Civil War. He was a member of the "American Patrol" of the Andres Garcia La Calle group. He was nicknamed "Whitey" due to his very blond hair.
Born in Champaign, Illinois, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1933, as a Second Lieutenant. His commission ended in 1936 due to gambling and subsequent court convictions. He then became a commercial pilot but again gambling forced him to escape to Mexico. He was flying charter and cargo flights carrying material for the Second Spanish Republic, as Mexico was one of the very few distant countries to support the Spanish government. He was told about the good salary paid for mercenary pilots and so he joined Spain under the name of Hernando Diaz Evans. He reported nine kills in this unit, though only five were ever confirmed.
During the reorganization of the Fighter Squadrons in May 1936, Dahl was posted to a squadron with a large variety of nationalities. Frank Glasgow Tinker said that this made it very hard for a pilot to coordinate his place in the group during fighting. It seems that this was the case on June 13 of that year, where he was surprised by enemy planes and was shot down and taken prisoner.
Initially sentenced to death, there were some diplomatic movements to free him. His first wife Edith Rogers, a known singer of impressive beauty, was said to have visited Francisco Franco himself to plead for his life. This story later became the basis of the 1940 movie Arise, My Love. He stayed in prison until 1940 and then returned to the U.S. After he and Edith Rogers divorced, he accepted another mercenary job, this time with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and served during World War II where he trained RCAF pilots for combat in Europe at an airfield near Belleville, Ontario. It was here that he met his second wife Eleanor Bowne, the daughter of the richest man in Belleville. After the war he was accused of stealing equipment from the air force and had been decommissioned.
Around 1951 he joined Swissair and stayed in Switzerland but in 1953 he was caught smuggling gold with his girlfriend and was expelled from the country, an event that compelled his second wife to divorce him. Back in Canada he became a cargo pilot flying DC-3s when on 14 February 1956 he was killed during a crash in bad weather.
Harold Evans Dahl was survived by his three children by his second wife Eleanor:
- Jim Dahl
- Stevie Cameron
- Chris Dahl
