With a career commemorated by Guinness World Records, he started as an apprentice in 1942 and worked on a panoply of propeller-driven and jet aircraft until he retired in 2022.

© Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

He worked throughout the Middle East before joining a secret team that tried to obtain the release of Western hostages in Lebanon in exchange for arms sent to Iran.

One of the longest-serving prisoners in American history, he was sent to death row in 1950 before his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.