America's greatest aviator?

War hero

As a young beagle, Snoopy answered the call of duty to become one of America’s World War I flying aces. Always in dogged pursuit of the evil Red Baron, he was so respected by his foe that the Baron sent him a get-well card when the beagle contracted the flu during the pandemic of 1918.

Brave fighter aces inevitably attract bullets, and Snoopy kept his ground crew busy. In fact, Snoopy was the only pilot put on kitchen duty for “losing too many Sopwith Camels.” After one mission, Snoopy declared how he hated when “the Red Baron shoots holes in my plane. All the root beer leaks out.”

The brave beagle suffered being shot down numerous times, but always managed a landing behind enemy lines. He rarely failed to quaff a root beer with a friendly French lass before escaping across no man’s land. Captured several times and often tortured, he came close to succumbing only once when the Germans tempted him with a marshmallow sundae. An amiable fellow, Snoopy always greeted his ground crew with a hearty “hello chaps,” but he could also be critical of others’ flying skills. While in Eddie Rickenbacker’s squadron, Snoopy predicted, “Ed would not amount to much, those race car drivers know nothing about airplanes.”

After years of dangerous missions, the horrors of war stressed Snoopy’s nerves to the breaking point and he was admitted to the base hospital suffering nightmares, but he was quickly returned to his squadron. At times, he turned to root beer and music for comfort.

With the war over, unemployment of veterans was widespread and pilots could be hired for a bag of chocolate chip cookies. Restless and searching for something to do, Snoopy took up barnstorming, performing death-defying aerobatics at state fairs, including his most dangerous stunt: wing walking.

Aviation challenges

Always eager for a new challenge, Snoopy crossed the “dark waters of the Atlantic” to Paris, becoming the first dog to make the transatlantic flight. On his return he was showered by a “one ticker tape” parade and acclaimed as the “Lone Beagle.”

As civil aviation matured, Snoopy founded and was chief pilot of “Ace Airlines.” One of the airline’s destinations was Hollywood, although a passenger named Sally complained that they never got out of the back yard.

The acme of his aviation career came when he was launched into space to become the first beagle on the moon. On March 14, 1969, during the Apollo 9 mission and beating Apollo 11 by four months, Snoopy walked on the moon’s surface, proclaiming these immortal words: “I beat the Russians...I beat everyone...I even beat that stupid cat who lives next door.”

In the 1980s, Snoopy did short stints as a traffic helicopter pilot and crop duster. He survived one crash caused by getting his rotor blades (ears) entangled. Always the humanitarian, Snoopy flew his helicopter to rescue fleeing refugees and to assist Linus in recovering his security blanket from the cat next door. One day in 1982, Snoopy was spotted flying as a “bush pilot.”

In later years, Snoopy piloted the MetLife blimp over sporting events and took up writing. Every student can recite the first line of his epic novel, “It was a dark and stormy night...” Few know that the plot is drawn from one of Snoopy’s most harrowing night missions.

Many people think of Snoopy as just a dog, lazing on top his doghouse, but pilots continue to be inspired by his bravery in aerial combat, his entrepreneurial spirit, his daring barnstorming years, and as a pioneer in space flight.

The brains behind the beagle

Charles M. Schulz was born in Minneapolis on November 26, 1922, and grew up reading the comics with his father every Sunday. Sometimes he’d draw his dog, Spike, which family photos reveal looked a good bit like Snoopy. At age 14, his first published drawing appeared in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a sketch of Spike who was reported as a “dog that eats pins, tacks, screws, and razor blades.” Snoopy would be more discriminating, preferring turkey dinners and chocolate chip cookies.

Schulz enrolled in cartooning and illustration correspondence courses from Art Instruction, Inc. until 1943 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He rose to the rank of staff sergeant and was deployed to Europe. On his return, he became an employee of Art Instruction, Inc. while also producing art and cartoons for various Minneapolis publications.

Concurrently, Schulz was developing his own comic strip, called Li’l Folks, which appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1947. It was the precursor of Peanuts, even including a character named “Charlie Brown” and a dog that looked like early versions of Snoopy. Li’l Folks was accepted by United Features Syndicate for nationwide publication, although the name was changed to Peanuts because of a conflict with a retired comic strip called Little Folks. Schulz hated the name.

Peanuts was first published on October 2, 1950, and Snoopy appeared two days later on October 4. He was initially portrayed as a rather normal dog, but by late 1952, he was depicted thinking, “There they go, leaving me alone again...I can always sit home and watch television,” as he ambled back to his doghouse, complete with a TV antenna on the roof. Peanuts soon became the most popular comic strip of the twentieth century. At its height, it was published in more than 2,600 papers in 75 countries, and Snoopy seemed to be more recognized worldwide than Charlie Brown.

Schulz had always been fascinated by “outer space,” and as early as 1953 he drew Lucy leading a crew to Mars, albeit in her “sleepers.” Following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, the Peanuts gang looked up into a starry sky for the Russian satellite, and in 1958, Schulz depicted Snoopy tossing Linus into the air, making him the first dog to launch a human into space. This was a parody of Sputnik 2’s launch of Laika (a dog) into space that year.

Schulz credited his son’s hobby of building model airplanes as the inspiration for Snoopy’s aviator persona and once described drawing a flying helmet on Snoopy after seeing his son’s World War I aircraft models. Events of the 1960s commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of World War I reminded the public about the bravery of the air aces. Schulz recognized the possibilities for endless adventures with Snoopy as a flying ace, saying, “I knew I had one of the best things I’d thought of in a long time.”

Snoopy’s first appearance as a flying ace came in the Sunday newspaper of October 10, 1965. On that day, he donned a flying helmet, goggles, and silk scarf and climbed aboard his biplane (i.e., doghouse). Unfortunately, Snoopy’s dream of an aerial victory over the Red Baron ended abruptly when Linus imitated a machine gun’s “rat-a-tat-tat,” causing Snoopy to crash to the ground.

Schulz always strove for authenticity when depicting Snoopy’s flying exploits. He equipped Snoopy with an authentic British World War I aircraft known as a Sopwith Camel, remarking, “Can you think of a funnier name for an airplane?” His description of the right-hand torque produced by the Le Rhône rotary engine and the names of the French villages and battlefields Snoopy flew above were accurate. Perhaps only the availability of root beer in wartime French cafes could be questioned.

Schulz retired after drawing our favorite flying ace for 35 years and the Peanuts gang for nearly 50. The last cartoon strip depicting Snoopy as a flying ace appeared on November 28, 1999.

From 1950 to 2000, Schulz produced 17,897 strips, while merchandise and product endorsements earned him an estimated $30 million to $40 million a year. On February 12, 2000, Schulz died at his home in Santa Rosa, California, age 77. He’d announced his retirement the previous year, and the final Peanuts strip was published the day after his death. Even still, Snoopy and the entire Peanuts gang live on.

NASA and Snoopy

After the tragedy of the Apollo I fire, NASA wanted to promote greater safety awareness. A NASA official explained, “We thought Snoopy as an astronaut would be perfect. He happened to be the only dog with flight experience and was thus eligible to be a mascot for the astronauts.” Schulz agreed to let NASA use Snoopy for the program’s mascot and drew the image for the Silver Snoopy Award, presented to NASA employees or contractors “for outstanding achievements related to human flight safety or mission success.”

In 1969, the Apollo 10 crew chose Snoopy and Charlie Brown as the names for their spacecraft. Mission commander Thomas Stafford called Schulz and told him the news. “It was a great thrill, especially for an old Buck Rogers fan, to know your characters would be the first to really go to outer space,” said Schulz. As further evidence of Snoopy’s influence on space flight, the communication cap worn by Apollo astronauts under their helmets was known as the “snoopy cap,” because of its white and black design.

When Artemis I flew around the moon in November 2022, Snoopy was onboard as a zero-G indicator, protected by a custom-fit spacesuit. It’s not yet known if Snoopy will return to the moon on the Artemis II mission.

Media star

Snoopy’s World War I flying career was immortalized in the TV special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, first aired in 1966. Under the guise of a Halloween special, the show is actually an homage to the flying ace. Stories of heroism were out of favor at that time with the Vietnam War weary public.

Snoopy featured prominently in the musical, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which opened off Broadway in 1967 and on Broadway in 1971, and the flying ace’s adventures have even been regaled in song. Snoopy vs. the Red Baron, performed by The Royal Guardsman, reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966.

Honors

Snoopy’s flying career was honored by a U.S. postal stamp issued on May 17, 2001, which sold out overnight. He appears almost every year as a balloon during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and he's on the logo of Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS) in California, not far from the artist’s home and the SNUPY navigational waypoint. Notably, Charles Schulz’s son Craig is a pilot (see “Pilots: Craig Schulz,” September 2013 AOPA Pilot).

Buy the books

The publisher Fantagraphics compiled The Complete Peanuts, which includes every strip of the series, and the Peanuts Every Sunday series features only the Sunday color strips. Fantagraphics also published Snoopy vs. the Red Baron, a book of Snoopy’s World War I adventures.

For further reading, Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography is a 2007 biography of Schulz by David Michaelis which gives deeper insight into the man who created the greatest canine aviator in history.

Dennis K. Johnson is a freelance author and private pilot.

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