He was in the 7th Photographic Group (Reconnaissance) in World War II, but Ed Hazzlerigg didn’t take pictures.

“I had nothing to do with photography,” he said.

What he did was help keep the planes flying over much of occupied Europe so photographers could take pictures of proposed targets and of the damage the Allied planes had inflicted.

Keeping engines running was something he began learning when he was 10, working for his father at Hazzelrigg’s Garage on North Washington Street near Ryan’s Coal Yard. That was more than 80 years ago, for Ed — some friends still call him Junior — will be 91 on Dec. 19.

He was 21, and there were war clouds on the horizon — and since he was draft age, “I knew I was going in. There were no two ways about it.” He wanted to get into the Army Air Corps — that was before the Air Force was organized as a separate branch of the service — and he tried to talk a friend into joining with him. At the time, before Pearl Harbor, a draftee had to serve only 18 months — and his friend said no, he’d be out in 18 months. Ed knew better.

Ed got into the air force and took his training at Keesler in Biloxi. He had a good mechanical background, so he aced the tests. He read the 100-page manual in a day or two, would then sleep through class, go out at night and then take a test on the 10-day course and score in the upper 90s.

“The instructor charged me with cheating,” he said, “and brought me up before the major.” Ed told him he wasn’t cheating, and he could prove it. The major had the instructor make up a test for Ed to take. That should settle the score.

“I made a 99 on it,” he said, “and I kept on sleeping through class.”

From Keesler, he was sent to Peterson Field in Colorado, “a little asphalt landing strip for Piper Cubs, and we had P-38s” — not enough room to land them.

The food was good, the quarters were nice, but in some respects life was dull. So Ed went down to the motor pool and hung around a bit. One day the sergeant said he had a problem. He had a new truck with a transmission noise that he couldn’t figure out. Ed listened to it, knew immediately what the problem was, told the sergeant what it would take to fix it and had it repaired in a couple of hours.

The problem was a bearing, which Ed installed, and everything worked fine. The sergeant was amazed that it was so simple a solution — and it wasn’t long before Ed was also amazed when he was promoted to corporal — and everyone else was still a private.

Ed’s job, maintaining aircraft, called for some innovations on his part, for “they didn’t change the oil in aircraft — they ran it until the engine wore out, changing the oil and the engine at the same time.” The average life of an engine was 25 hours. There were no filters, just strainers. Ed decided to change the oil, which he did, and nothing was said about it. It came time to change it again, which he did, ending with 100 hours on the engine — something very rare.

When it came time to go overseas, and the planes were checked out at Wright Field, Ed’s was the only one in good enough shape to fly to England.

That’s when the FBI came calling, wanting to know what he had done to the airplane, and he told them, “I had serviced and maintained it properly. They decided that would be the thing to do from then on.” Later, a machine was invented to refilter the oil, thus saving it.

During the war, Ed was stationed in England at Mount Farm, which had been a satellite base for the Royal Air Force Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. The Americans began use of the facility in February 1943, and the 7th Recon Group was transferred to RAF Chalgrove in March 1945.

They had a combination of P-38s, P-51s and Spitfire IX aircraft, each equipped with five cameras that would cover a wide piece of the earth. In addition to photos, they provided a mapping service for air and ground units, observed and reported on enemy transportation, installations and positions, and obtained data on weather conditions.

They took photos of all of occupied Europe, the film on rolls 150 feet long, which was developed on a spool in a rotary machine.

“Gen. Patton would not move without pictures,” Ed said. “He wanted them taken in the afternoon, developed, printed and dropped to him (by parachute) before daylight.”

The 7th Recon Group filmed every major event in the European Theatre — the Normandy Invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, the Berlin raid and all the rest. In the 4,251 sorties they flew, they took more than 3 million photographs.

Ed had earned enough points that he could have come home before the war was over, “but I wouldn’t think of it. I stayed with my unit as long as I could.” He was at a British base in Liverpool when Hiroshima was bombed, “and I knew it was over. They didn’t have to tell us.”

Back in Vicksburg, he went immediately into the auto repair business and tried to work with his dad, “but he was too hardheaded, unreasonable, just too old-fashioned” and still “worked with a hammer and chisel.” Ed had learned the use of modern equipment, and he opened his own garage. Mechanical talent ran in the family, he said, and there were several Hazzlerigg companies owned by his brothers.

He remembered using a celescope, an English invention for checking a car’s electrical system, when he was in the service, only he used it to fix an airplane, which simply needed a set of new spark-plug wires.

Ed had been told by the captain to change the engine, but when the commanding officer got in the plane, took off, and came back, it flew fine. The captain came running out, shouting, “What’s that plane doing flying? I told you to change the engine.” The commander looked at him and then at Ed, and said, “I don’t know, but it’s flying good. Put it on flying status.”

“The captain didn’t like it worth a damn,” Ed said, and he held up a promotion for him for about four months. When the commanding officer found out, he chewed out the captain royally, and “I got the promotion anyway.” Ed came home with the rank of master sergeant.

While stationed in England, he married Hazel Stone, their first meeting occurring because a friend who had a date with her, couldn’t make it and asked Ed to please take her to the movies. “And so I did — and she liked me better than she liked him.” To the couple were born three children — Tina, Shirley Anne and Ed III. In later years, Ed married Fay Rusche and has two stepsons, Philip and Paul Rusche.

Ed has lived in Vicksburg about 85 years He was born in Itta Bena in 1919, and the family moved here in 1924. He went to school at Culkin, then to Clay Street school, then Carr Central where he quit just as he was starting the 11th grade. It was the worst of the Great Depression, and he dropped out of school to help provide for the family (he had eight siblings). To get to work at his father’s garage he had to walk several miles — from Indiana Avenue to North Washington Street. Though they worked on cars, at the time they couldn’t afford to own one.

When he wasn’t working, Ed loved to hunt and fish. He has two well-stocked ponds on his farm on Flowers Hill Road. He has many a tale of hunting and fishing — and of a gar rodeo — but his health keeps him from getting out these days.

He retired in 1985 because of arthritis, and though he could overhaul a four-barrel carburetor, put it back and it would work just fine, “The next day I could hardly move.”

“I enjoyed my retirement until 2006,” he said. That’s when he developed heart problems and had two strokes. Before then, he did “just about anything I wanted to do.” That included volunteering at the VA hospital for a number of years. He is a life member of the VFW and joined the American Legion and became commander in 1988. Under his leadership, a number of improvements were made at the facility.

The trade he started learning at age 10 has served Ed well — both in the military and as a civilian. The life of a car is much greater than it used to be, he said, because of improved lubricants and metals.

The biggest change in the industry, he feels, is “you don’t work on ’em anymore — you replace them, which sounds much the same as the airplane engines he worked on in the early days of World War II.

In reflecting about some of the innovations he made, using common sense and his mechanical knowledge and skills, he said that in his almost 91 years, “I’ve been a bit of a rebel.”

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Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.