During the initial days of OperationENDURING FREEDOM, Chief Warrant Officer 5 Donald Tabron led a pair of U.S. Army 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) helicopters in a daring rescue mission to locate a missing Navy SEAL on the peak of a mountain named...
Colonel (ret) Merryl Tengesdal, served a distinguished Air Force career as a U-2 “Dragon Lady” high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft command pilot, with over 3,400 flight hours and 330 combat hours. She was the first and only African American woman to fly the...
PILOT – USAF – “FATHER OF THE GUNSHIP” Colonel Ronald W. Terry is described in official Air Force archives as a “subtle blending of tact and tenacity, self-confidence and openness, intelligence and common sense, and most significantly…an uncommonly convincing...
Lt Col Russell E. Tharp was born 8 February 1946, in the small town of Yale, Oklahoma. He went to Oklahoma State University. It wasn’t until he was in college that a friend asked if he would like to go flying. After this first flight in a Cessna 172, he decided that...
On 18 April 1942, David J. Thatcher and seventy-nine other Doolittle Raiders successfully accomplished the first air raid on Japan. Thatcher served as the engineer and gunner for crew number seven. His crew successfully struck the Nippon Steel Factory in Tokyo....
Leo K. Thorsness flew 92 Republic F-105F “Wild Weasel” missions and was awarded America’s highest military decoration before he was shot down and taken prisoner in North Vietnam. Born in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in 1932, he enlisted in the Air Force in January...
After World War II, Gerhard Thyben, one of the Luftwaffe’s most successful young Aces, immigrated to South America to find “new horizons” in aviation. Thyben was born in Kiel, Germany in 1922 and like many boys developed a great desire to fly. He...
Paul W. Tibbets is a World War II bomber pilot of unparalleled fame. Born in 1915 in Quincy, Illinois, he had his first bombing experience at age 12 by dropping candy bars by parachute out of the back seat of a Waco 9 biplane over the Hialeah racetrack. He joined the...
A pioneer pilot in the finest sense of the term, Nancy Hopkins Tier not only witnessed aviation’s coming of age; she helped mold it. Born in 1909 in Washington, D.C., into an illustrious family, her relatives included Dr. Johns Hopkins of university fame and...
Reade Tilley is an American ace with seven victories, all of which were scored while flying with the Royal Air Force (RAF). Tilley was born in Clearwater, Florida, where he completed public education. He later attended both the University of St. Petersburg and the...
Mark W. Tillman is the epitome of the Air Force’s service before self core value. He was born on 27 December 1957 in Ft Lauderdale, Florida. In his formative years, his fascination with rocketry and aircraft led him to a bachelor of science degree in chemical...
Robert F. Titus flew over 500 combat missions in two wars. Born in New Jersey in 1926, Titus attended high school and college in Virginia, and in 1945 joined the U.S. Army. As a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, he was a squad leader and attained the rank of...
Colonel Raymond F. Toliver, test pilot and military historian, has flown over 225 types of aircraft and accumulated over 9,000 hours during 28 years of service to his country. Born in Fort Collins, Colorado, he attended Colorado State University before joining the US...
Bud Traynor Bud Traynor answered President Ford’s call when he lead a crew of 24 in the evacuation of orphans from South Vietnam during Operation BABYLIFT’s first official mission. On that fateful day in April 1975, an aircraft malfunction rendered...
Nineteen year old Second Lieutenant Konstantin Michailovich Treshchov was one of the first Soviet pilots to gain an aerial victory against the Luftwaffe. Born in Tula, Russia, Treshchov developed an early interest in aviation and built model aircraft as a boy. At 15,...
From the moment she saw her first airplane in flight, “Bobbi” Trout confessed to being “spellbound on becoming a pilot.” This desire to fly led her to become the fifth woman in the United States to receive a transport pilot’s license and...
Sean D. Tucker was the first person ever to win the two most prestigious airshow industry honors in the same year, the Art Scholl Memorial Showmanship Award and the Bill Barber Award for Airshow Showmanship. Born in Riverside, California, in 1952, Tucker graduated...
Peter Twiss was a rebel from the day he was born in 1921! He confesses to being “quite a handful” and credits the Boy Scouts with turning him to the good side. As a child, he had a passion for nature and bird watching, and eventually progressed to bird...
