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Pacific Aviation Museum honors daredevil

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The Pacific Aviation Pioneers exhibit opened Saturday at the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor with the induction of daredevil pilot Tom Gunn.

Thirty members of the Gunn family attended the event.

Gunn, a Chinese-American aviator best known for introducing passenger flight to Hawaii, was born in California in 1890 and grew up in the Bay Area.

In June 1913 he demonstrated his air stunts in Hono­lulu, flying a 75-horsepower biplane at about 70 mph. 

Gunn made more than 800 flights and carried more than 300 passengers in the Pacific, including Hawaii, where he also demonstrated the first flying boat seen in the islands.

Gunn inaugurated air mail service to the neighbor islands and the Philippines before settling in China to fly for leader Sun Yat-sen. He died in a rickshaw accident in 1925.

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