Nicholas  Andrew Vlassie, born on May 23, 1918, was the son of Andrew Constantine Vlassie from Corinth, Greece, and Photoula Vlassie (Nicholaides). Nick was the oldest followed by Emanuel (aka Manoli) who also served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, stationed at No. 3 Wireless School, Tuxedo during the Second World War, then Constantine and 14 years later his sister Katina was born.  Andrew came over in the early 1900s, landed in Rochester, New York and later went to LA. While he was in California he was contacted by a cousin in Winnipeg, who worked at the Royal Alexandra Hotel on Higgins, and told him to come to Winnipeg because it was a booming town and there was lots of work. It was called the "Chicago of the North". Andrew packed up and went to Canada, where he also started working at the hotel. Photoula came over in 1914 when she was 16 years old (born in 1898). Andrew wrote to her father to ask him for her hand in marriage and accepted only after he gave her daughter the choice. It is most probable that they knew each other as their families were both from Corinth. After the war, Andrew and his two sons Manoli and Constantine (Gus) purchased The Chocolate Shop, one of the oldest restaurants on Portage Avenue. This family business, a Winnipeg institution, was renowned for gorgeous pastries baked on the second floor and was a regular hangout for many. Manoli and Gus worked The Chocolate Shop for several decades and probably Nicholas would have joined them had he survived the war. Nicholas attended Gladstone and Kelvin Schools and was manager of the College Inn, Portage Avenue before enlistment. He was eager to join the war effort and it is certain that the Greek resistance against the Italian and German invaders motivated him. Actually, he did participate in actions of the Greek Canadian Winnipeg community to aid the war-harassed people of Greece, specifically two dances in which he was dressed in evzone, dancing with Greek folklore music. Nicholas honored Greek customs and according to his file he also spoke Greek fluently. He joined RCAF on September 14, 1942. Later he was posted to...

 

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William Stanley Manos was born in Portland, Oregon on January 21, 1923. His father Basilios Manolis was from a village named Roeino, in Arcadia District and came to the United States in 1918, where he shortened his changed his name to William Bill Manos. He married his sweetheart and had two children, Doris and William. Bill always think of Greece and he used to tell stories to his children about his days in his village. William finished his school studies and worked at the family restaurant as well as a Clark driver in Iron Fireman MFG. When WW2 broke out he applied for the USAAF and he was accepted, reporting to Santa Anna, California in February 1943. Completing his training the young 2nd Lt was posted to the 497th Fighter Squadron in order to proceed to his operational training on P-47 Thunderbolts. Having logged 300 flying hours (90 in fighters) he was transferred to the 9th Air Force and posted to the 406th FG and specifically in the 513th Fighter Squadron. William flew his first missions some days before the operation Overlord and took part in 4 missions during the D-Day and the days following the invasion. Except for the ground support missions for the invading allied armies he also...

 

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Nikolai was born on 29 July 1889 in Lipetsk of the once-Russian Empire. His father, Stavrion Elevterievich Sakov (1846-1921), born to a Greek family in the town of Unya of the Ottoman Empire, arrived in Russia probably during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, where he finished school and received Russian citizenship. In addition to his studies in Oriental languages, his father also graduated from medical school and took part in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 as a military doctor. After the war, he continued to practice medicine and occasionally taught at the Oriental Languages Institute where he had originally attended. At the same time, he served as Honorary Consul of Greece in Moscow (until 1914). In 1888, in Moscow, he married Anna Nikolaevna Fedtsova from Lipetsk and they had Nikolai and later Alexander (also the future owner of an aviator's diploma). In 1908 the family moved permanently to Lipetsk. Nikolai, in 1911, went to France (Betheni) to learn to fly at the school of Armand Deperdussin, a SPAD designer, and on September 25 of the same year, he obtained his diploma, which listed him as Nicolas de Sacoff. After obtaining his diploma, he returned to Russia with a SPAD monoplane (probably Type A or Deperdussin Racer), which he also demonstrated in flights at Khodynka Park in Moscow. In the Kozlovskaya Gazeta newspaper dated 6 May 1912, it is reported that...

 

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Technical Sergeant Thomas Efstathiou USMC was born on May 22, 1918, in Bronx New York. He was the son of the Greek immigrant couple, John and Mary Efstathiou who also had one more son, George. Thomas was raised within the Greek community and according to his military file, he spoke Greek very well. After school, he worked in Steel Construction as a Power Shearer. He enlisted as a private in the USMC recruiting station in New York on June 20, 1938, to serve for a 4-year period. Until 1941 when he extends his enlistment for three more years he served as a metalsmith in various USMC Squadrons including VMF-1 and VMS-1 and was promoted first a Corporal (10/06/1940) and then as a Sergeant (03/06/1941). He applied for naval aviator training and after successfully passing a written examination to determine his education status on June 9, 1941, he joined NAS Pensacola on November 22, 1941, entering the 11B-41P Class. He was designated as a Naval Aviation Pilot of the USMC, on May 7, 1942, specializing in ...

 

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Jim Harbilas was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts to Nicholas and Angelika Harbilas. He and his siblings, William, Julie, John, and Sophie were the first generation to be born in the United States after their parents immigrated from Kouteli, Kalavryta, Greece. After graduating from Holyoke High School, Jim joined the US Navy as an Apprentice Seaman on May 28, 1940, and was selected to receive pilot training at Pensacola in 1942, joining the ranks of enlisted aviators known as Mustangs in a program entitled Silver Eagles which was an experimental pilot training program to train enlisted sailors as pilots, due to extreme war needs.  He was designated as Naval Aviation Pilot on May 18, 1942, and although most of the enlisted pilots either left the Navy or were rated as Warrant Officers, Jim became a Commissioned Officer and was named a Naval Aviator on December 23, 1943. He was assigned to VPB-34 Squadron while operating under Fleet Air Wing Eleven, based at Guantanamo Bay from October 1942 to June 1943. The core of the squadron's operations was training in a low-altitude bombing at night...

 

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Alexander Armatas is the son of the late Telemahos "Telly" Armatas, of Syracuse, NY, (passed away on December 10, 2013). Telemahos was born in Fterno, Lefkada, Greece to Spiro and Evangelia Armatas (Sklavenitis) on March 17, 1954. He moved to Syracuse from Athens, Greece at the age of 16 and, faced with the difficulties of young adulthood, he learned English and graduated from Nottingham High School. He went on to a number of jobs but ultimately landed at FedEx, where he worked as a courier for 27 years. He married Kathy Burke and the couple was blessed with four children, Alexander, Gabriel, Christopher, and Evangelia. Alexander’s passion for aviation was inherited from his father.

"He took me to the Syracuse airport when I was really young, probably six or seven years old. I remember seeing the airplanes and being fascinated. As I learned about aviation and developed my passion for aviation, I started to lean toward the military just because of the opportunities. I wanted to do the hardest thing there was to do in aviation and really challenge myself. At the time, and probably even now, you could argue the hardest thing to do in aviation is to land a high-performance aircraft on an aircraft carrier. There’s only one place you can do that."

Alexander Armatas went to school in Jordan-Elbridge and finished his last two years of high school in Skaneateles. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2002 with a Bachelor of Science in aerospace engineering. Alexander was designated a Naval Aviator at Naval Air Station (NAS) Meridian, Mississippi, in June 2005, and received order to...

 

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Пётр Иванович Хара was born on May 15, 1908, in the Staromlinovka Staro-Kermechensky (now Velikonovosilkovsky) village in the Donetsk region, the son of a peasant Greek family. We do not know so far the family history or the actual Greek surname. However, a short story about Greek presence is vital to understand Пётр life. Greeks came to the Crimea — a dramatically mountainous peninsula that juts into the Black Sea — in the 5th century B.C., or maybe even the 7th, or just possibly, based on some archaeological digs there, the 9th. The Greeks arrived in present-day Ukraine before the Tatars, before the Russians, before the Jews, and possibly even before the Ukrainians themselves. In fact, maybe Ukraine’s oldest existing ethnic group. What’s indisputable, though, is that when they got to the region around today’s Donetsk, in easternmost Ukraine they were most definitely the first settlers. The Crimean Greeks lived for about 300 years under the rule of the Muslim Khanate, and when imperial Russia made a move to conquer the Crimea they asked Catherine the Great to offer them her protection. She ordered them to leave the area they lived in for the past two millenniums and set up in a new land just acquired in her Empire, far to the east. She practically moved the entire Greek population there. She awarded lands to the Greeks and...

 

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Петр Иванович ХАРА

What is most exciting about writing and researching about Greek and Greek parentage pilots in service with other Air Forces is when I meet one of these remarkable men who are willing to tell their story by themselves. The following is written by one extraordinary man and pilot who had a great career as an aviator which only recently came to its end. But as they say, "once an aviator, always an aviator". I'm very enthusiastic to present to the Greeks worldwide and also to any aviation enthusiast all over the world, John Politis, a member of the famous Canadian Aerobatic Team, the Snowbirds. In his own words:

"I was born in Athens in 1956. I immigrated to Canada as a two-year-old in 1958. My father was from Thouria, Kalamata and my Mother was from Athens. I can remember wanting to grow up and be a pilot since I was five years old. Flying lessons were expensive. My hard-working parents, who had only immigrated to Canada 14 years earlier, did not have the means to finance my training. So every night after school I worked full time, delivering food for a restaurant owned by my uncle, to earn the money required. I was 16 years old, the legal age to fly solo. Over the next 12 months, I flew as often as possible; at 17 years of age, I received my Private Pilots License. The following year, just after turning 18, I was accepted into the Canadian Air Force. I boarded a train (it was 1974) and waved a tearful goodbye to my parents and my Papou. I received my pilot’s wings

 

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Second Lieutenant George J. Pappas was born in Caldwell, Texas in 1916, to Greek immigrant parents who arrived in the United States via Ellis Island, New York, seeking a better life and refuge from the oppression of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire both in Greece and in Asia Minor. His father John G. Pappas and his mother Georgia Pappas were from Moutsounitsa in the Fokida district in Greece. Georgia's family was from Halkidiki, then under Turkey's occupation, and end up in Thessaloniki. Pappas family eventually settled in Houston with his father John, who engaged in the restaurant business, where usually Greeks excelled. He was the oldest of 4 boys (Nick, Victor, and Thames), and the family was fiercely proud of its new homeland and citizenship. George loved to fly, and his patriotism and desire to serve the country that welcomed his parents and brothers never waned throughout his life. His beloved wife, Ella (“Pug”), had a similar Greek immigrant story and her father ran a confectionery candy store both in Houston. He attended Texas A&M and the University of Houston, before deciding to join the Army a year before Pearl Harbor. On November 25, 1940, he entered active duty and initially served briefly in the cavalry at Brownsville, Texas, before receiving his commission at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He later …

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George Haniotis was born in 1920, the son of Konstantin Haniotis and Maria Peristeri in Okmulgee Oklahoma. Konstantin was from Smyrna in Asia Minor and first came to the United States in 1906. Speaking fluently Greek, English, French, and Italian he was immediately employed in the theater business and a few years later he opened his own, the Yale Theater in Okmulgee. He went back to Smyrna and married Maria in 1914 and after a honeymoon trip in Venice, the couple traveled to the United States. They were blessed with five children, two girls, and three sons, unfortunately, the first daughter passed away very early. World War 2 found all three brothers serving in the armed forces.  George entered the Army Air Force and trained as a fighter pilot. He told his parents that he enlisted in order to fight for a good cause, God, and his country. He was a great character and obsessed with fitness. He was so passionate about his physical status that later, during his service in New Guinea, his fellow pilots called him "fitness freak". Just before he completed his flight training he...

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