However, what Master Tech. Sgt. Durkin did that evening of July 7, 1947 was truly heroic, and high-profile: for saving the life of, perhaps, the most enigmatic personality to have walked the face of the earth – Howard Hughes – was no small feat.

For the first time ever, the personal mementos, photos and even a portion of the control yoke – said to be held by Hughes as he plunged to earth – will be on public exhibit at Swann Galleries in New York on Saturday, Sept. 12, and then again Sept. 14-17. The items then will go up for auction on Sept. 17.

The archives of the Hughes crash comes from the estate of the U.S. Marine Corps career soldier, who died in 2006 just days shy of his 90 birthday.

One of the letters on display contains a typed “Account of the Crash of XF-11 July 7, 1946 in Beverly Hills,” apparently prepared as Durkin’s official statement to the authorities. It contains, according to Swann officials, “great, unpublished details” of the rescue, which has since been immortalized in the Martin Scorsese film, The Aviator.

Durkin, who was visiting in a nearby home at the time of the Hughes crash, was the first person on the scene. After giving up on finding survivors and concerned about his own safety, Durkin wrote: “I heard a sound inside the cockpit like someone knocking or pounding. The very next moment I saw a hand move through the fire and smoke not more than four feet in front of me. At the same time I heard a scream of agony, and I knew a man was burning to death.”

After Durkin pulled him from the wreckage, Hughes was rushed to a nearby hospital with a crushed collar bone, six broken ribs, severe lung damage and third-degree burns on his hands.

As he rested under an oxygen tent for several days, he was visited by a virtual “Who’s Who” of Hollywood fame and fortune. Newspapers of the day recorded his daily progress of recovery.

After a long recovery, Hughes was never to forget the man who saved his life. Part of the archives include a letter from Hughes to Durkin on a Hughes Aircraft Co. letterhead, expressing his gratitude and offering both employment assistance and cash as an expression of his gratitude.

The letter indicates that Hughes enclosed a check for $200, to be followed by a similar stipend each month for an undetermined amount of time.

But, as in nearly everything touched by Hughes, there is a mystery behind Hughes’ proffered reward.

“The family didn’t know if he ever received any checks, or ever cashed any checks,” says Rick Stattler, director of printed and manuscript Americana for Swann Auction Galleries. “He was very quiet about it all … he never boasted about what he did, he was certainly proud of it, but he was not one who was eager to talk about what he did unless he was really questioned.”

There is one other possible clue that Durkin had accepted money, contained within a lawsuit Hughes filed against the manufacturer of the propeller, which was blamed for causing the crash. Within that lawsuit, Stattler says, Hughes listed among his financial damages a $200 monthly stipend he paid to his rescuer.

Although the XF-11 was, much to Hughes’ dismay, never picked up by the government, its clean low-drag profile is said to have inspired a similar design a decade later by Lockheed.

Hughes carried the physical consequences of that evening in July until his death in April 1976 on a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to a Houston hospital. The liberal doses of morphine prescribed after the crash are often credited as the source of his lifelong addiction to codeine and other opiates. And, his later trademark moustache covered up a scar he acquired in the accident.

Contact: (212) 254-4710

www.swanngalleries.com

Eric C. Rodenberg