Captain John Young is a 42-year NASA veteran, astronaut, and Moon walker with six space flights spanning the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. Young was born in San Francisco, California in 1930 and graduated from high school in Orlando, Florida. Young...
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....
Mrs. Elizabeth Bridget “Betty Wall” Strohfus audaciously served her nation during WWII as a Women Airforce Service Pilot (W.A.S.P.). She served from 1943 until the W.A.S.P. were disbanded in December 1944. Piloting eight different aircraft including the...
General Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton made many contributions to US aviation history, from flying F-4 Phantoms in Vietnam, to being the first African-American Thunderbird pilot, to commanding the Air Education and Training Command. A native of Ridgeland, South...
Colonel Charles E. McGee is one of three original Tuskegee fighter pilots to have fought during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He completed 409 fighter combat missions, the highest three-war fighter mission total of any aviator in the history of the United States...
Eugene F. “Gene” Kranz is one of America’s great space exploration pioneers. He was born on 17 August 1933 in Toledo, Ohio. As a child he always had a strong fascination with flight and the possibilities of space travel. After studying math, science...
Joe M. Jackson flew for his country in three wars! As a youth in Newnan, Georgia, Jackson was an avid model airplane enthusiast. After graduation from high school, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and, when the United States entered World War II, he became a crew...
Major General James L. Hobson, Jr. commanded Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), Hurlburt Field, Florida. During his command, AFSOC operated one wing, three flying groups and a Special Tactics Group with more than 100 aircraft and 11,900 personnel assigned...
Chief Master Sergeant Wayne L. Fisk was born in Waldport, Oregon, on April 6, 1945, and raised in the mountainous Oregon Coast. In high school, Fisk was a member of the honor society and an award-winning cadet in the Alaska Civil Air Patrol. He selflessly turned down...
Colonel Bruce Crandall flew over 900 combat missions through two tours of duty in Vietnam, earning the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2007 for bravery and heroism during the Battle of Ia Drang Valley. Born in 1933, Crandall grew up in Olympia, Washington. In 1953,...
Colonel Jacksel “Jack” Broughton was born in Utica, New York, in 1925. He graduated from high school in Rochester and received an appointment to attend West Point, where he graduated in 1945 with his pilot’s wings and Army Air Force second lieutenant...
Capitan Augusto Bedacarratz was born in the Argentine Pampas in July 1943 to a wealthy farmer’s family. His father was a descendent of a French family from the Basque country, who arrived in Argentina in 1855. He is one of seven children and the only one who did...
Described as one of the “most moving tales of heroism,” Colonel Regina C. Aune was the lead medical officer for the first mission of Operation BABYLIFT. Born in Lakewood, Ohio on 27 December 1944, Aune attended Saint John College in Cleveland where she...
A highly decorated combat ace of World War II and veteran of the Korean War, Major General John R. Alison was credited with the first night victory in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater. Born in Florida in 1912, Alison graduated from the University of Florida, School...
