Commentary
Thanks to a shout-out from my wife, I saw a news clip about the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force and its Memorial Day remembrance of the 26,000 members of the Eighth who didn’t return after World War II.
It featured Maj. John “Lucky” Luckadoo, who made it back after numerous missions as a 100th BG pilot of a B-17 over Germany.
It provides me with an opportunity on this Memorial Day, to share my memory of a short period of my Air Force career assigned to Eighth Air Force while assigned at Dow Air Force Base of the Strategic Air Command in Bangor Maine.
While I served in public information as a reporter for the base newspaper and later as editor, in 1959 I was assigned duties as the historian for the 4060th Air Refueling Wing. It’s two squadrons, flying KC-97 tankers at the time, were called upon to refuel B-47 and B-52 bombers, extending their range primarily over the North Atlantic.
As historian, I collected reports and maintained records of the Wing’s missions, putting data in narrative or story format that reflected aerial refueling efficiencies, while noting reasons for aborted missions. There was a unique competitive spirit among SAC’s bomb and refueling wings and that extended to its historians, too.
That was brought to my attention in a letter I received from J. C. Hopkins, the command historian for Eighth Air Force, who, while noting my progress had placed me in the top five in the command in less than a year, said I should be shooting for SAC’s History of the Month Award.
Although I never won the award, I recall being invited to a meeting at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts, headquarters for Eighth Air Force, when I met the other command historians, giving me a real appreciation for the command’s history.
I was reassigned to Sidi Slimane Air Base in Morocco in December 1961, where I edited the newspaper, but I like to think that my experience as one of Eighth’s historians gave me a grounding in research that was extremely useful, not only in my remaining years in the Air Force and in the aerospace industry, but even today as I write this blog.
I will be playing golf today, but those fond memories of my short stint with the Mighty Eighth Air Force’s vigilance and readiness in peacetime, and those of its World War II heroes, will not be forgotten.
May God continue to bless the United States of America and those brave souls who we remember on this Memorial Day.
