Published July 2005

Test pilot has lifelong
fascination with aviation

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT Now a test pilot for the Me262 reproduction program at Paine Field, former German Air Force officer and airline pilot Wolfgang Czaia is also an expert in handling the F-104 Star-fighter and dozens of other military and civilian aircraft.

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

When the National Warbirds Operators Conference gathered in Seattle earlier this year, more than 100 of the members visited Paine Field for a look at one of the rarest of historic "war-birds" — a German Messerschmitt-262, the world's first jet-powered fighter plane.

Five copies of the Me262 "Stormbird," which saw combat against American B-17s and P-51s in the waning days of World War II over Europe, are being built at the airfield.

The first plane, a twin-seater dubbed White One, will soon complete flight testing and be delivered to a private owner in Phoenix, Ariz. The second, Tango Tango, is a single-seat version being built for Germany's National Messerschmitt Museum.

Three more Me262s will be built when ordered, with sales of the planes — priced at $1.1 million for a static museum aircraft and $2 million-plus for a flying version — being managed by Air Assets of Lafayette, Colo.

But the story of the test pilot who flies the planes is equally intriguing. Wolf Czaia is a former German Air Force fighter pilot and retired airline captain with more than 27,000 hours of flight time in more different planes than most people can name. In total, he has spent more than three years of his life high above the ground.

Since he began flying gliders as a high school youth in Germany, he has progressed through a variety of aircraft, from the L-19, FW-149, T-6, T-37, T-33, T-38 and a Skyfox to a MiG-29, an Iskra Polish jet trainer, a Pilatus PT-9 and — since 1999 — an Me262 jet fighter, among others..

In various roles as a civilian pilot he has flown LearJets; Boeing's 737, 757 and 767; more than two dozen types of single- and multi-engine prop planes; helicopters; and the prototype of an Avtek-400, an all-composite, fan-jet-powered business aircraft. Overall, his logbooks include more than 100 types of aircraft.

Czaia, a resident of Clinton on Whidbey Island, is one of those versatile aviators who not only loves to fly but also loves to fly any kind of aircraft. Of all of the planes he has flown, the F-104 Starfighter stands out as his all-time favorite.

"On November 17, 1964, as a young first lieutenant in the Luftwaffe, I lifted off in an F-104 for the first time from Jever air base in Germany. I knew right away that this was my airplane," he said. "On November 17, 2004, when a CF-104D with the Starfighter Aerial Demonstration Team took off from its home base in St. Petersburg, Florida, I was once again at the controls, 40 years to the day after my first F-104 flight."

During his 11 years in the German air force, from 1959 to 1970, Czaia spent six years flying the F-104 as an instructor before leaving the Luftwaffe to join Lockheed in the United States on its CL-1200 Lancer project, a derivative of the F-104 and a competitor to the F-5. Soon after arriving, however, Lockheed's financial woes forced cancellation of the project.

Working as an airline pilot and flight instructor for years afterward, he came across an opportunity to help a small business in Alabama put a former Norwegian Air Force CF-104D back into service. Flight testing proceeded at Mojave, Calif., and Edwards Air Force Base, until the plane was sold to Thunderbird Aviation in Deer Valley, Calif, with Czaia sticking with the plane until that operation shut down two years later. Later, he flew F-104s at air shows in the United States and Canada as part of the Starfighter Aerial Demonstration Team.

Czaia's fascination with all things that fly goes back to his early childhood years in his hometown of Andernach, on the Rhine River, during the Second World War. When his home was destroyed on Dec. 26, 1944, during a bombing raid by the 8th Air Force, his family was evacuated to the Black Forest. The little town was visited on a regular basis by U.S. fighter planes, swooping through the narrow valley in search of targets.

"I was in awe of these swift and noisy machines, and thought it would be a lot more fun and safer up there than down on the ground," he said.

But those wartime experiences didn't dampen his enthusiasm for flying, which eventually led to a flying career that spanned much of the world. On his journeys, he experienced many surprising coincidences that still amaze him.

"After the initial screening program, the German Air Force sent groups of flight students for jet training to various bases in the United States. I wound up going to Selma, Alabama, stopping in Houston for an aviators convention on the way. As I was talking with an American colonel who had been in the war, he remembered being on bombing runs over my town on Dec. 26, 1944. When I discovered I'd met one of the pilots who had bombed my home that night I jokingly put my hands on his throat," Czaia said, laughing.

As a pilot, he excelled in flying, graduating as the top T-38 student at Randolph Air Force Base in the USAF Instrument Pilot Instructor School and "Top Gun" and "Outstanding Student" at Luke Air Force Base. Later, he became a flight instructor for the German Air Force in F-104s, training German, Dutch, Belgian and Italian NATO pilots at the Luftwaffe's Weapons School at Jever air base.

He also has been a flight instructor and chief pilot for a variety of fixed-base operators at airports across the country; an instructor at the USAF Test Pilot School, Edwards Air Force Base, and the International Test Pilots School in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada; a LearJet chief pilot for National Jet; and a 737 captain for Air California/American Airlines. Later, he became a check pilot for the Federal Aviation Administration on Boeing 757 and 767 airliners and continues to fly a 757 as a contract pilot.

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