Harry Benjamin Combs (27 January 1913 – 23 December 2003), America aviation pioneer, airplane manufacturer, and author. He was founder of Combs Aviation and president of Gates Learjet Corporation. He was a pioneering soaring pilot who "lived and breathed the Golden and Jet Ages of aviation." He was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1996. Early life Combs was from Denver, Colorado. His father was Albert Henry Combs, a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps in Canada. Combs saw his first airplane in 1917 at the age of four when he traveled with his grandmother from Denver to a Royal Flying Corps training field in Deseronto, Canada where his father was training. Combs' father was shot down twice while in aviation combat in World War I, and was said to have warned his son never to set foot in an airplane. From 1920 to 1926, Combs attended Fessenden School, a preparatory boarding school in Massachusetts. While at school, he read Diary of an Unknown Aviator, World War I chronicle by Elliot White Springs. Combs was inspired by Springs and wanted to fly an airplane, despite his father's warning. While on summer vacation in Denver in 1926, Combs and a friend paid $4 for a ride in a mail plane. In 1927, Combs enrolled in the Taft School in Connecticut for five years. That was the same year, Charles Lindbergh made his historic crossing of the Atlantic. When Combs saw a magazine advertisement for $99 flying lessons taught by Lindbergh's old company, he made his way to St. Louis for three hours of flight instruction. In 1929, after thirty hours of flying, the sixteen–year–old Combs designed and built a sport biplane named Vamp Bat. However, the Vamp Bat was short-lived, and crashed after a flight in Pueblo, Colorado. Combs said, “You didn’t have any means of controlling it when the wind was blowing. There were no brakes—just a tailskid. If you sped up, it got away from you and you turned upside down. I was hanging upside down inches from the ground. It busted up. I should have known that when you don’t have brakes you have to stay on the grass.” Starting in 1931, he attended Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School, graduating in 1935 with a degree in applied economics. While at Yale, he lettered in track and football and was a member and president of St.