A memorial service for Captain Bob Maguire, who was known as the “Irish Moses” for his work on Operation Magic Carpet, will be held at 3 p.m. this afternoon at Santa Monica Airport, 3100 Donald Douglas Loop North, off 31st Street and Ocean Park Boulevard.
Maguire died from natural causes at his home in Northridge on June 10, 2005.
Robert Maguire, Jr. was the chief pilot on the covert mission Operation Magic Carpet, which saved nearly 50,000 Yemenite Jews from persecution and the threat of death after World War II by airlifting them out of Yemen to Israel.
Maguire’s father, Robert Francis Maguire Sr., was a judge at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in Germany in the late 1940s.
At the service, the Spirit of Freedom, the DC-4 that Maguire flew on his missions, will perform a flyby, and World War II P-51s will fly in the missing man formation,
The Spirit of Freedom, now a flying museum, is returning to Santa Monica, where it was built in 1945, after an absence of over 25 years.
Speakers at the service will include Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Lynn Lehrman Weiner, a journalist who flew on the missions.Maguire was honored with the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Medal of Valor in 2004.
