I would like to thank Jean Cotton for writing to me and telling me about an error she has discovered in the census records.

bjcotton at comcast.net

Donna,
This I would like to share with you. A young boy from Nebraska went from enlisted ranks to the Officer ranks to be a Commander. He also had a great mind. Congrave Clinton 1835 is my Great-grandfather. His son Joseph is my grandfather. Congrave Clinton 1880 is my grandfather's brother.
Con
 bettecon at cox.net

A LOOK AT THE LIFE OF CONGRAVE C. CALLAWAY III

Congrave Clinton Callaway III was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming October 23, 1907. The town was a division point for the Southern Pacific Railroad which employed Cal’s father. His mother, Elizabeth, was a school teacher.

He came from pioneer stock. Callaways accompanied Daniel Boone from Georgia to Kentucky. They trekked on to Missouri and then to southern Nebraska, where the first Congrave Clinton claimed, homesteads near the town of Fairbury.

Cal’s father died when he was four years old. Elizabeth took him and a younger brother back to Fairbury, Nebraska. His mother later married a brother of her late husband. Cal’s half-sister was born to this union. Cal went to school in Fairbury and graduated from the high school in 1924.

After high school he and a friend bought a World War I Jenny, which they learned to fly at a field in Tarkio, Missouri. They tried some barnstorming ventures until their airplane was damaged beyond repair in a severe hailstorm.

In 1927 Cal enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He went to Boot Camp in San Diego, after which he was assigned to a squadron as a crew member.

From July, 1929 to March, 1930, he attended the Navy Flight School at Pensacola, Florida. He graduated as an enlisted pilot. He was assigned to the USS Concord for a short period; then he went to Coco Solo, Panama, as an established pilot.

From November, 1933 to July, 1934, he attended Navy Advanced Ordnance School at Norfolk, Virginia. In late 1934 he was at the Naval Proving Grounds, Dahlgren, Virginia, studying the operation and maintenance of the Norden Bomb sight. These courses .at Norfolk and Dahlgren constituted a continuous year of intensive study.

He was an instructor in primary seaplanes at Pensacola, Florida in 1935. The following year he went to sea on the USS Saratoga.

In 1939 he attended a four-month’s course at the Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Virginia in the operation and maintenance of Stabilized Bombing Approach Equipment. He was then stationed at Pearl Harbor, but returned to San Diego just prior to the Japanese attack to reenlist. He remained there as Instructor in Fleet Transition Training Squadron until 1944.

In March, 1942 he received a commendation from Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, which reads as follows:

“This commendation of the Secretary of the Navy was delivered at quarters this date March 22, 1942 for voluntary action performed at great danger to him. Four patrol planes from PATRON 43 returned to base with bombs in armed condition due to arming wire carrying away, thereby allowing the tail fuses to completely arm. Callaway together with Lieutenant Commander J.H. Hean devised a method for and successfully removed live armed fuses and rearmed the bombs with safe fuses. Service was performed with the base completely blacked out and there being insufficient time before dawn to permit removing tail vanes from the bombs and disassembling the fuses to render them inoperative."

The following month, April 7, 1942, he was issued an appointment as Lieut. (jg) USN.

Later in the same year, July 3, 1942, he was a member of the crew which launched the first United States airborne rocket. A group from the California Institute of Technology, headed by Dr. William A. Fowler, had developed the rocket. This event is documented in Volume I of the History of the Naval Weapons Center, China Lake, California, entitled Sailors, Scientists and Rockets page 136. Cdr. J. H. Hean had command of the PBY airplane, known as the Catalina.

In 1944 he reported to NAS Banana River, Florida as chief instructor in Bombardier Navigator School. He established and supervised various courses for ground school and flight. His staff, excluding pilots) numbered over fifty. Callaway associated during this period with a group of scientists from the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Techno1ogy including Doctors Hazen, Caldwell, and McNair. Several textbooks and reference manuals were developed during this period as well as a number of special purpose circular slide rule computers.

On October 17, 1944, he was appointed to Lieutenant Commander, USN.

For a brief time in 1945, Callaway was stationed at NAS, Hutchinson, Kansas; then he went to NAS Jacksonville, Florida for approximately nine months for operational training as a plane commander for Privateer Aircraft (The Navy’s version of the B-24).

In the last months of 1945 and during 1936, he served as commanding officer of a Privateer Squadron VP 106 in Samara, the Philippine Islands, where the chief job was flying hurricanes to provide weather data.

In 1947 he became operations officer of an Anti-Submarine Development Squadron in Key West, Florida.

The following year he transferred to the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station (N0TS), China Lake, California as project officer, to test and develop a bombing system which was part of a high priority program to give the Navy an atomic bombing capability. This effort continued until early 1952. While stationed at NOTS he was promoted to the rank of Commander.

During 1952 and 1953 he established and became commanding officer of the Heavy Attack Training Unit (HATU) at Norfolk, Virginia. This organization trained pilots and bombardier-navigators to deliver high-yield atomic weapons for the fleet.

In 1954 and 1955 Cdr. Callaway became head of a branch of the Bureau of Ordnance, Washington, D.C., charged with the responsibility for research and development of bombing equipment. His duties included the supervision of contracts developing inertial platforms and airborne digital computers.

He returned to the Naval Air Facility of the U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station, China Lake, California as executive: officer in 1956 and 1957. His principal duty was to provide aircraft support for projects developed by the scientists and engineers of NOTS. For the last six months of duty here he was acting commanding officer.

In December of 1957 he retired from the service after having accumulated thirty years of active service and over eight thousand flying hours in air craft ranging from four-engine patrol bombers to jet fighters. On May 2, 1958 the bureau of Ordnance Management Council gave him the official designation of Naval Ordnance Engineer.

Since his retirement, Cal has held four positions important to the defense of our country. In each one, he established or rearranged the working organization of an engineering group, with his responsibility being fulfilled when the project was operating smoothly and a person had been trained to take over the position in the line. Establishing adequate communications between individuals and groups became his specialty.

He worked for the Norden Division of the United Aircraft Corporation, Norwalk, Connecticut as project engineer for the Bomb Director AN/ASB-7. He was responsible for the design of an optical-radar bombing system with a doppler navigator and the first U.S. airborne digital computer and the production of the first twenty systems as a pilot production run.

As assistant manager of the Polaris Test Base at Cape Canaveral for the Missiles and Space Division of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, he directly supervised over five hundred engineers, technicians, inspectors and support personnel, in addition to coordinating the efforts of five associate contractors and sub-contractors, whose personnel numbered an added one hundred fifty. This work force assembled, checked and launched Polaris missiles at the rate of about one per week during the eighteen months of his tenure.

He was employed by the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation of Bethpage, New York, as senior group leader of the Electronics Department of the Engineering Division. He was responsible for the flight evaluation and development of the electronic system of the A2F-l Intruder aircraft, which is de signed for low-altitude attack in all weather conditions. It has two radars, a doppler navigator, an inertial platform and a large digital computer. Eight aircraft were assigned to the development effort. The test base is fifty miles from the home office. Cal reported to management early each morning on the past day’s progress and the current day’s plans via a company television link. He wrote a daily newsletter of about one thousand words as a means of communication among the hundreds of persons involved concerning progress, plans and purpose of the work. This instrument was read by the technicians on the hangar floor and by the vice-president in charge of operations.

For United Technology Center Division of the United Aircraft Corporation, Sunnyvale, California, he was the manager of Cape Canaveral operations. The principal tasks were participation in the design of the multi-million dollar Air Force Titan III Standard Space Vehicle Launch Complex and the establishment of the nucleus of the check-out and launch crew for Titan III.

In 1963 after thirty-six uninterrupted years on the payroll of the military or its contractors, he felt an impelling desire for a more elemental way of life. He planned to live on a 320-acre farm near Fairbury, Nebraska and, also manage, by means of custom farming and hired labor, that acreage plus his father’s incorporated 400-acre stock farm. He naively assumed that this operation would be in his spare time. He wanted to become a useful part of the Nebraska rural community, a role he fulfilled by serving as a Commissioner of Jefferson County for three years.

But, first, in order to learn about current farming methods, he enrolled at the University of Nebraska. He received a degree in agricultural economics at the age of 59 after two and one-half years of study. He again demonstrated his ability to deal with varied situations and manage his time well. He graduated in the top 3% of his class and was on every honor list which was posted during his student days. Following graduation he received offers of subsidized graduate study from over fifteen universities.

For twelve years Cal became a farmer, improving the land he managed, in stalling irrigation wells, and building up a quality herd of imported Limousine cattle. During this time he became interested in flying high performance sail-planes. As he grew older the farming chores and winter cold became more onerous.

Also his parents passed away and the land was sold. He decided to seek a more amenable climate.

In 1978 he established a retirement home in the Mojave Desert near Ridge-crest, California and the Navy Weapons Center (formerly NOTS) where he was associated with the Sierra Soaring group. He enjoyed flying his sailplane and becoming associated with the desert community until he became ill in the summer of 1983 with brain cancer. He fought that disease with all the courage he demonstrated all his life.

A few months later his ashes were dropped over this area where he loved to fly.

~ The source for this biography is  Cal's Xmasgrams, by Congrave Clinton Callaway III, edited by Evelyn Grow Callaway, 2003, p. 3-7. This is an excerpt from the introduction to the book and was written by Evelyn. We very much appreciate her granting us permission to re-print it here.