Newsletter

July 2011

NATIONAL AIR FORCE ASSOCIATION (AFA) CONVENTION

The National AFA convention will be held at the Gaylord National Hotel, National Harbor, MD, 19-21 September 2011. “Special AFA room rates” have been negotiated with the Gaylord National Hotel for the convention. Besides normal AFA business that will be conducted this will a fun convention with special events and tours for all. On Friday there will be a three hour moonlight guided bus tour to all the monuments of Washington DC. Saturday they will have a spouse’s breakfast and a visit to Old Town Alexandria. Another option is a no host lunch/Feng Shui presentation and a visit to Capital Teas at National Harbor. Saturday evening there will be a special evening AFA Celebration Dinner cruise. On Sunday there will be a AFA Memorial service and wreath laying at the Air Force Memorial. There is a Mt Vernon Cruise tour as well as an option for a Godiva Chocolate presentation and special wine tasting event. Come represent your chapter as a delegate to the National AFA convention. To sign up you can go to www.afa.org and register on line. Hope to see you all there.

June 29, 2011

Lance Bleakley presented the AFA Academic Achievement Award to TSgt Noah J. Branscom, at the PACAF NCO, Airman Leadership School, Class 11-C, Academy Graduation Banquet.

May 30, 2011

AFA Hawaii Representatives Col Sam Barrett, CMSgt Craig Recker, and Nora Ruebrook participated in the Mayor's Memorial Day Ceremony at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS......

May 30, 2011

AFA Hawaii Representatives Jack DeTour and Nora Ruebrook participated in the State of Hawaii, Governor's Memorial Day Ceremony at the Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery, Kaneohe.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS.....

May 14, 2011

Jack Murphy attending the Kaiser High School AFJROTC Awards Banquet and presented an AFA award to Cadet Wooho Song.

May, 2011

Mr. Ronald Kennedy presented MSgt Kelly Randolph with the PACAF Quarterly Unsung Hero Volunteering Award.  The award is provided by AFA Hawaii.

April, 2011

A plaque in honor of the 64th Fighter Interceptor Squadron was installed at Heritage Pathway at Atterbury Memorial Park. 
Letter of Appreciation...

Wonderful! The plaque looks great and the position on the wall is just what I wanted. Our organization will put out a newsletter shortly with your pictures and some words about the plaque.

There was a sister squadron to the 64th FIS, the 509th FIS, also assigned to Clark AB, but that squadron was flying combat escort missions for the B-52s primarily out of Udorn RTAB, Thailand. They too covered multiple Asian bases as well. The 64th FIS was unique in Vietnam in that we were the only fighter squadron to be deployed from what was then Air Defense Command directly into SEA combat. The 64th was deployed from Paine Field, Washington in 1966 to Clark AB and then assigned alert/escort duties from Bien Hoa AB, Vietnam; DaNang AB, Vietnam, Udorn RTAB, Thailand, and Bangkok IAP, Thailand. And ultimately the 64th FIS also covered bases in Korea in support of the Pueblo Crisis of 1968. We also shared an alert commitment for the Republic of the Philippines with the 509th FIS. The 64th FIS was pulled out of its last Vietnam base, DaNang AB, in November 1969. Its last base in SEA was at Bangkok IAP and it stayed there until the late summer of
1970 when the State Department finally got approval from the King of Thailand to release our commitment to Thailand to provide Air Defense protection for the City of Bangkok and the surround area. However, since the beginning of hostilities in Vietnam, the four F-102s out of Bangkok IAP had been used primarily to fly escort for B-52 sorties originating out of U-Tapao RTAB. "On 10 April 1967, three B-52 bombers landed at U-Tapao following a bombing mission over Vietnam. The very next day, B-52 operations were initiated at U-Tapao. Under the operational nickname "Arc Light", wing bombers flew over 35,000 strikes against the communist enemy from 1967 to 1970." Many of those Air Light missions were escorted by the 64th FIS out of Bangkok IAP. Until the deactivations of the F-102s, all B-52 missions that were flow north of 16o 30'North were escorted by F-102s. To the best of my knowledge, we never missed a mission, and no B-52s were lost due to enemy aircraft action during the F-102 escort program. During the most active period of these escort missions, F-102s from the Udorn RTAB, DaNang AB, and Bangkok IAP were "fragged" to provided escort for the B-52s from Anderson AFB, Guam and U-Tapao RTAB.

Those of us who flew those missions and our outstanding maintenance support personnel who provide the quality aircraft that took us into combat and brought us home are honored to have a plaque permanently installed at PACAF Headquarters. I shall try to coordinate a similar plaque for the 509th FIS, although they do not appear to have an active association.

You might be interested to know that under a program called Palace Alert, our USAF F-102 pilots were augmented by pilots from the Air National Guard units who were also flying F-102s. There are ten of those pilots who were from the Hawaii ANG. At least nine of those pilots still live in Hawaii.  About half of those were attached to the 64th FIS and the other half were attached to the 509th FIS. I'll be back in Hawaii next March and I will attempt to gather as many of those pilots as I can so that we can have a delayed ceremony for the acknowledgement of the 64th FIS plaque at Atterbury Circle.

Many thanks for your efforts in getting this plaque made and installed for us.

Sincerely,
George H. Sewell, Jr.
Lt. Colonel, USAF, Ret.
64th FIS Association

March 13, 2011

AFA Members were invited to tour the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72).