Arizona Aviation Hall of Fame
Enshrined 1991
Ralph Vaughan was born in Merkel, Texas and spent much of his boyhood in Mexico and Southern California. He enlisted in the Signal Corps in 1917 and won his wings in France where he was an instructor. After the war, he established a flying school in Ontario, California. He pioneered photography from the air and flew in early motion pictures, in one of which he intentionally spun an aircraft into the ground. Moving to Globe, Arizona in 1929, Vaughan set up and operated Apache Airlines, Arizona’s first intra-state carrier service.
