H.F. "Doc" Manget

News Obituary Article

ATLANTA: H.F. 'Doc' Manget, WWII bomber pilot

By J.E. GESHWILER

Doc Manget lived his life as if he had been born with wings.

As an 8-year-old, he was thrilled when his father let him go up as a passenger in an ancient biplane. At age 18, he bought the girl he would later wed a $3.50 spin in a plane because that was his idea of showing her a good time.

During World War II he piloted a Navy torpedo bomber in some of the fiercest battles of the South Pacific. Once he had to leap into the sea when his aircraft carrier sustained a mortal hit. He remained a carrier pilot during the Korean War, flying ground-support missions and bombing North Korean and Chinese supply lines. After Korea, he was a test pilot for a new generation of warplanes, and he stayed in the Naval Reserve, retiring years later as a captain.

After a stint as an assistant airport director in El Paso, Texas, he was named director of a new field, DeKalb-Peachtree Airport. For 32 years, he presided over its growth, and every chance he got, he flew general aviation planes of all types before and after his retirement in 1990.

The funeral for H.F. "Doc" Manget, 82, is at 4 p.m. today at A.S. Turner & Sons. He died Thursday at Odyssey Hospice of pancreatic cancer.

Born and reared in Atlanta, he acquired the nickname "Doc" from his brothers when he was a pre-med student at Emory University before he entered the Navy. It stuck even after aviation became his calling.

"Dad earned three Distinguished Flying Crosses," said his son, Fred Manget of Potomac Falls, Va. "The most notable one was the result of a rescue mission during World War II. He and his wingman spotted two downed U.S. airmen in the Pacific and kept doing figure-eights above their position while radioing for a U.S. destroyer to come pick them up. He and the other pilot had barely enough fuel to get back to their carrier to land."

In 1959, he took on a hardly less challenging task at the very field on which he trained as a fledgling Navy pilot in 1942.

"Doc took charge of what was an abandoned naval air station and built DeKalb-Peachtree Airport from scratch into the second-busiest airport in Georgia and, what I think is the greatest thing, a self-sustaining business benefiting the citizens of DeKalb County," said Lee Remmel, the current director of DeKalb-Peachtree.

During Mr. Manget's watch, the airport got new hangars, runways, landing systems and a control tower that in 1985 was rated the best in its class in the Southeast. It also earned DeKalb County hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in taxes and fees.

"I've been a tenant at DeKalb-Peachtree for a long time," said Pat Epps of Atlanta, owner of Epps Aviation Inc. "As landlord, Doc drove a hard bargain, but he did it in the service of DeKalb County and its citizens. I never met a man of more integrity."

Mr. Remmel said a park will be completed soon in the center of the airport. "It will carry Doc's name to honor him," he said.

Mr. Manget was awarded The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Extra Community Service Award in 1985 and was inducted into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame in 1998.

Survivors include his wife, Toy Manget; two other sons, Tom Manget and John Manget, both of Conyers; a brother, Victor Manget of Decatur, and nine grandchildren.

© 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution