In the fall of 2013, after being away from Dhahran since 1985, an email arrived from a Saudi ARAMCO pilot- Court Gunderson. Court was tasked with re-writing the 2008 ARAMCO aviation story along with his regular flying duties. Court saw our Dhahran Diary website and asked if I knew anything about the old days and if I had any photographs of the old airplanes. I had stories and some photographs that my father had taken, so I began to informally help Court with his task.
The first thing that occurred to me was to include Norman Gray. Norm and I had both graduated from the Dhahran Senior Staff School in 1953. We went to ACS Beirut for high school. Norm finished school at ACS and went to the states for college and he learned to fly on the West Coast. After acquiring his FAA ratings, he got a job flying freight in and out of Beirut. He moved on to Saudia after a number of years and finished up his career with Korean Air Lines.
I contacted Norm via email and between us, we gathered and passed on key pieces of information that helped get Court up to speed. Court came to the States, visiting various libraries and museums in his quest for early ARAMCO aviation information. Slowly, he began to find the paper trail of documents and donated personal papers that led to fact finding and stories by the early ARAMCO contractors and employees like Kerr, Gerow, and Rocheville; these three men got the ARAMCO aerial photographic survey off the ground to map the oil concession and the routing of the pipeline from the Eastern Province to Lebanon.
Norm knew a lot about the commercial side of aviation. He found paperwork of airplane transactions. He knew old ARAMCO pilots who contributed information and as a returning student to Dhahran during his high school summers, he worked at the ARAMCO hangers at the Dhahran air field, so his recollections were a big help.
Frankly, this is a big story to research and write because Saudi ARAMCO is no longer the little oil company that sprouted in the 1930s, it has evolved. It is a huge, multi-national petrochemical giant with sprawling digs across the Arabian Peninsula and key offices worldwide. The history of the aviation department is the DNA of early ARAMCO. As exploration teams of geologists and others experts struggled to structure the oil extraction endeavor, the first airplanes, pilots, and mechanics were critically important to timely development and support. Many of these details were hidden in the murk of time. Most of the early employees were dead or scattered in retirement. For Court, the biggest question was, ‘where are the published reports, newsletters, documents of ownership, ARAMCO books, photographs, company periodicals, employment records, and, what happened to the old airplanes?’ These airplanes, some of which made the weekly journey between Dhahran and New York City, were named for the exotic animals of the desert.
This is an unfinished story since Court is still unearthing informative resources. Most of the big questions have been answered; one unanswered question that might pique the interest of a few early ARAMCO dependents is, which airplane rests under layers of sand and soil in the old Reclamation Yard that we used to play on? Court has a strong opinion, but until this remnant is unearthed, we’ll never know for sure. Norm and I and many others are going to enjoy this non-fiction read! Of note is the fact that Court slowly but consistently gathered his feet beneath him, and became the most knowledgable researcher of this pivotal Saudi ARAMCO experience. Imagine the many plane rides, hundreds of telephone conversation and interviews, and thousands of fact finding documents Court had to maneuver to reach his goal for the Company.