This is my Father’s plane

All –

I know this is an old thread but I thought you would like to know this is my father’s airplane.

I happened across this thread a couple of days ago, and was surprised to see this here.

My father is Capt. C. Seigrist and he was the pilot of this aircraft when they were arrested by the Dutch navy in 1948. My father’s business partner Al Onstott was with him and they spent a year in a squalid local Indonesian prison in the jungle where they were still keeping Japanese POWs. My dad suffered greatly during this period and he is convinced the Japanese never made it out alive. Frankly speaking everyone there was being held for ransom in one form or another. My father swears he went crazy in that prison.

Here is a picture of my dad flying in the P.I. in PI-C220 before the arrest.

https://picasaweb.google.com/100561096835667676348/CaptConnieSeigSeigrist#5367384767783318098

The circumstances around this case are actually much deeper than was ever reported. My father was contracted by British and Dutch colonial farmers to fly US Army surplus Tommy guns from the Philippines to “fight the communists.” In fact it was a double cross by the colonialists because they knew both my Dad and Mr. Onstott were Americans and would make good patsies. Basically Truman and the US government at that time was very anti-colonialist and if FDR had survived he would have insisted that Britain and the Netherlands give up all of their colonial claims in South East Asia.

In the case of Truman, however, he was more “on the fence” and so by the Dutch holding my father and his friends captive, they used it as leverage to keep the colonies a bit longer… and after much negotiation over a year, my dad was released from prison. You could say my father was probably the last American victim of British colonial hegemony!

After my dad got out, he lost Insular Airways (it was derelict for a year while he was in the “pokey”), and moved to Taiwan and spent the next 25 years flying for CAT/Air America.

David Legg actually knows a fair amount of my father’s various exploits.

Alan