From today's AFA Daily Report:
Bud Day Flies Again in Super Sabre: Medal of Honor recipient retired Col. Bud Day took to the skies in an F-100F Super Sabre this week for the first time in 43 years. Day rode in the back seat of the newly restored F-100 during Tuesday's commemorative flight from Ellington Field in Houston. The Collings Foundation sponsored the event. It restored the F-100 and painted it in the scheme of Day's aircraft from the Vietnam War to honor him. The last time Day flew in a Super Sabre, he was shot down over North Vietnam and began a harrowing ordeal of nearly six years, including captivity in the Hanoi Hilton, that earned him the nation's highest military honor. The foundation will now fly the F-100 as part of its Vietnam Memorial Flight, which also features an F-4D Phantom II, TA-4J Skyhawk, and UH-1E Huey. The foundation operates these aircraft to honor America's Vietnam War veterans and help educate younger generations about US history. (Collings Foundation website) (For more, read The Strength of Bud Day from Air Force Magazine's archives.)
Congrats to Colonel Day... I'll bet getting back in the cockpit after all this time felt pretty danged good. And congrats to the Collings Foundation for making the flight possible and for all the other fine warbird restorations they've sponsored. Read the linked piece on Col. Day if you have a minute or three, Gentle Reader. The man is a true American hero.
Wow, a full afterburner take off, that will set you back in the seat.
ReplyDeleteMake me feel old too as the F 100 was just becoming operational when I was in jr. high school.
Nice write up on Col. Day.
Thanks for sharing.
Off topic, but did you hear about the plane that crashed in Germany?
ReplyDeleteCol. Day certainly looks quite pleased to be there. Good on him.
It leaves me wondering what the younger generations will be like when they are pilots of drones rather than being the crafts themselves. Can't imagine that it give quite the same thrill.
OK, that almost made me choke up a little.
ReplyDeleteI read every POW book written, after I went to POW school. They were all excellent, and I did not even know that "The Great Escape" really did happen. Some of the parts of the movie were used as training examples even in the late 70's.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I seem to recall that Col Day took charge at the Hilton. It was a leadership fiasco, and it was a military outfit when he got done.
I'm not going to say it all worked out swell, but he set the tone, and the others tried or succeeded in meeting his credo.
I'm just glad I never got shot down or captured. Training was enough fun for me.
That is very cool.
ReplyDeleteEd: Needless to say, F-100s were front line fighters back in my day. For a while, anyway.
ReplyDeleteAnon: No, I didn't hear of a plane crash in Germany... what?
Inno: Me too, for a couple o' reasons.
F-100s Don't: I never had the "pleasure" of goin' thru SERE, seein' as how I was never aircrew. But I HAVE heard stories. NOT fun. I think you're right about Col. Day.
Lou: Yes. Most definitely.
Huzzah for we Fighting Fossils!
ReplyDeleteBTW Buck, my 1st cousin, Lt. Gen C.M. Talbott, won the Bendix Air Race in 1955 in an F-100C (in old FW-777) as a 32 yr-old O-6 Wing Commander whose fighter wing was the VERY FIRST Air Force wing to take delivery of operational F-100s. Bud Day served under him when the wing (actually designated a "Fighter Day Group" in those days) was based at old now defunct Foster AFB, Victoria, TX. The F-100C--first of the USAFs "Century Series" fighters--was the first operational fighter capable of exceeding the speed of sound in level flight.