Richard Kenneth Smith was born on November 2, 1929 in Joliet, Illinois to Raymond Kenneth and Loretta Cunningham Smith. Richard Smith resided in several cities in the United States during his early childhood. His father, who worked as a Service Sales Engineer for the J. S. Coffin Company, relocated the family numerous times prior to 1939 and Richard attended eleven different schools before the age of ten. The Smith family moved to a small railroad town in central Mexico in the spring of 1939, where they remained until December of 1941. His family returned to Joliet as the nation entered the Second World War. His father joined the United States Coast Guard in early 1942 and was commissioned a Lieutenant Commander later the same year. Following the war, the Smith family relocated to New York City where Raymond was hired as Vice President and Chief Engineer for the International Railroad Supply Company.

After graduating high school in 1947, Richard attended Joliet Junior College and later the University of Illinois. During the summer he worked various jobs aboard merchant ships traveling to Europe. With the outbreak of the Korean War, he enlisted in the merchant marines and served as an engineer for various steamship companies. In1955, he was called to active duty for two years in the United States Naval Reserves. From 1957 to 1959, he completed his undergraduate work at the University of Illinois. He applied and was accepted as a graduate student in history at the University of Illinois in the fall of 1959 and completed his Master of Arts degree in 1961. Intermittently from 1961 to 1966 he pursued and completed the requirements for a PhD in History at the University of Chicago. In the meantime, his first book was published in 1965 and was titled The Airships Akron and Macon: Flying Aircraft Carriers of the U. S. Navy.

Unable to find employment directly out of graduate school, Dr. Smith returned to sea as a ship engineer for American Export – Isbrandtsen Lines. After a year tour, he was hired as a historian for the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. He also became the American literary editor for Flying Review International (later Air International) and The Air Enthusiast and Airliners International in 1967, a position he held until his retirement in 1986. In 1971, he accepted a position as a manuscript historian at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University to organize and catalog the papers of Hugh L. Dryden, which he successfully completed in 1973 with the publication of The Papers of Dr. Hugh L. Dryden. That same year he became senior historian for Churchill Press and his third book was published - First Across: The U. S. Navy’s Transatlantic Flight of 1919. From 1974 to 1978 he served as a senior military analyst for Lulejian Associates.

Unable to find a permanent professorship at an academic institution, Dr. Smith founded his own real estate company in Washington, D. C. and Wilmington, North Carolina. To keep active in the field of aviation history he served as a consultant for military “think tanks”, NASA’s history division, and the National Air and Space Division. He also taught part-time at the Embry-Riddle Air University at the University of Maryland. In 1984, he received a year’s appointment as the Alfred V. Verville Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum. By the summer of 1986, he resigned his positions in the Washington area and moved to Wilmington, North Carolina. While in semi-retirement he continued to write and research topics related to aviation history. During the 1990s, he lectured at national conferences and regional colleges close to Wilmington, corresponded with former colleagues and peers, and collected books on aviation. In 1995, he was under contract to write a book on the history of in-flight refueling for the United States Air Force. He died in 2003 before its completion.

Dr. Smith was a member of the American Military Institute, American Aviation Historical Society, Society for the History of Technology, Wingfoot Lighter-Than-Air Society, and the Aerospace Education Foundation. He authored dozens of articles, chapters in monographs, and three books. (see Directory of American Scholars, Seventh Edition)