Coming to Colorado: A Young Immigrantâ??s Journey to Become an American Flyer

CHAPTER 21. RAF Station Sculthorpe, England

RAF Station Sculthorpe, England CHAPTER 21 { 244 } RAF STATION SCULTHORPE, ENGLAND Brigadier General Joseph R. Holzapple commanded the 47th Bomb Wing at RAF Sculthorpe in 1955. Fourteen years later, in 1969, after attaining four-star rank, General Holzapple served as Commander-in-Chief, United States Air Forces Europe, USAFE, with his headquarters in the lovely spa town of Wiesbaden, Germany. I met the general briefly upon my assignment to his headquarters on completion of a combat tour with the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing, at Takhli Royal Thai Air Base, north of Bangkok. From Takhli our fighter-bombers and electronic warfare aircraft flew combat missions against North Vietnam, a war very different from the one I experienced in Germany in the 1940s. The vice commander of the 47th Bomb Wing in 1955 was Colonel John Glover, holder of the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor. He and I were destined to meet again as well, in 1962, when Colonel Glover commanded the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka, Kansas. My first operational assignment out of flying school was to the 55th wing, flying RB-47H sixjet reconnaissance aircraft into the teeth of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The 47th Bomb Wing had three bombardment squadrons, the 84th, the 85th, and the 86th, and one tactical reconnaissance squadron, the 19th. All four squadrons were equipped with B/RB-45 aircraft, the first American all-jet bomber. The 420th Air Refueling Squadron, equipped with KB-29 aerial refueling tankers, was there to support the B-45 bombers . It was a powerful armada of aircraft, positioned to deter the looming threat of the Soviet military colossus on the other side of the inner German border. As a lowly airman third class I was not aware when I arrived at RAF Sculthorpe that only five weeks earlier the 19th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron had flown three of its RB-45Cs deep into the Soviet Union, far beyond Moscow, on a daring night reconnaissance mission . That foray was very, very secret then, and something my British driver didn’t know anything about, or he surely would have told me. RAF Sculthorpe had a temporary look about it, made up mostly of flimsy barracks-like structures with corrugated metal roofs and Quonset huts. Major Mengel’s chapel was a Quonset hut, the large cross above { 245 } RAF STATION SCULTHORPE, ENGLAND the door the only identifying feature of its purpose and function. The shopping center, including the base exchange and numerous vendor shops carrying everything from Harris Tweed to fine English bone china and crystal, was a sorry-looking assemblage of concrete buildings with V-shaped, corrugated metal roofs. The wing headquarters building and officers’ and noncommissioned officers’ clubs were not much more than barracks, differentiated from each other only by the signs over their doors. If any money was spent on this barren air base, it was on the concrete of its runways and ramps and on the aircraft hangars, certainly not on the facilities which served the men and their families. I arrived on a weekend. The base was quiet. No jets running up their engines, no trucks blasting down the concrete paved roads. Except for an occasional passing car, the electronic church chimes playing on Sunday morning, and the raspy blare of the Star Spangled Banner played over the base speaker system while the flag was being lowered at five o’clock in the afternoon, there was nothing to be heard. At the mess hall that evening I was one of only a few customers. Dinner, wouldn’t you know it, was dried beef on toast. After dinner I walked around the base. It was a soft, gentle evening. The wind coming off the cold North Sea, only a few miles to the east, had died down. That night I awoke with my screams echoing in my ears, frantically clutching my mattress, half hanging out of my bunk. Another nightmare. I looked around to see if anyone heard. I was alone in the open bay barracks where I stayed for the night. I lay down again, trying to go back to sleep, hoping not to meet up with my past. On Monday morning I quickly completed my in-processing at the personnel section and was assigned a very small room in the airmen’s barracks , a room which I shared...