Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.
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Harry T. Stewart, Jr., one of the last of the original Tuskegee Airmen and a World War II fighter pilot who achieved three victories in one day, died Feb. 2 at the age of 100.
Former Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee for four years, died July 9 at age 89. He was the 2022 recipient of AFA's highest civilian honor, the Stuart Symington Award.
Astronaut William Anders, who flew around the moon on Apollo 8 and took the iconic “Earthrise” photo, died in a plane crash June 7 at the age of 90. Across his life he was an Air Force pilot and general, an ambassador, head of the ...
Thomas C. Reed, who served as the 11th Secretary of the Air Force and a national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan, died Feb. 11 at age 89.
Robert D. Gaylor, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force from 1977-1979, has died at the age of 92. Gaylor advised two Chiefs of Staff and former Secretary of the Air Force John Stetson on the USAF’s enlisted corps.
Col. Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr., renowned for his extreme parachute records as an Air Force researcher, who was also a Vietnam-era fighter pilot and POW, died Dec. 9 at age 94. Kittinger helped Felix Baumgartner beat some of his records, but his freefall record still ...
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Donald H. Rumsfeld, who made history as the first man to serve as Secretary of Defense for two Presidents and oversaw the beginning of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, died June 30 in Taos, N.M., his family announced on social media. He was 88. ...
Astronaut Al Worden died March 18 at the age of 88. A former USAF fighter pilot, he was the Command Module Pilot for the all-Air Force Apollo 15 mission, during which he made the first "deep space" spacewalk.
