Legendary Joe “Hoser” Satrapa stories and obituary

Post by **John E Davies** » Sat May 18, 2019 2:00 pm

Hoser died a couple of months ago, he was your classic rugged old fart pilot, he flew countless missions in Viet Nam, taught at the Top Gun fighter school and spent his last years fighting forest fires. “it’s like combat but they aren’t shootin at ya.”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6aILfg1KR ... ntinue=112

Then I heard that he blew his thumb off. He had made a special gun out of a 20mm cannon barrel that he was using to test a new round that he was experimenting with. The aim was to extend the range of the 20mm by wrapping the bullets with Teflon tape and loading them up to attain higher velocities and delivering a longer range. His goal was to fill the gap between the maximum effective range of the guns and the minimum effective range of the missiles. He had designed and built the receiver and the trigger group but he always fired it from behind cover with the use of a lanyard to pull the trigger because he knew the action was unsafe. The accident occurred when he was loading it and it accidentally went off blowing up the gun and blowing his thumb clear off.

For most pilots that would have been the end of their flying career but not Hoser. With a miracle of micro surgery by his friend Dr. Harry Buncke, Hoser’s big toe was successfully transplanted on to Hoser’s hand. Before the surgery Hoser had painted a happy face on his toenail. When he woke up the first thing he was saw was that Dr. Buncke had erased the happy face on the toenail and drew a sad face on Hoser’s new thumb nail.

Here is a great retrospective with lots of great stories about him. ...https://fireaviation.com/2019/03/24/joe ... trapa-rip/

BTW My daughter has a new job working for Aero-Flite here in Spokane - they run a fleet of fire bombers all over the US and Canada - so I am trying to keep up with the news in her new line of business....

RIP Hoser.

John Davies
SpoKane WA