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This Day in History – June 10, 1969 – The X-15 gets a place in history

10 June 1969: The U.S. Air Force donated the first North American Aviation X-15, serial number 56-6670, to the Smithsonian Institution for display at the National Air and Space Museum. The first of three X-15A hypersonic research rocketplanes built by North American for the Air Force and the National Advisory Committee (NACA, the predecessor of NASA), 56-6670 made the first glide flight and

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McPeak, Merrill A.

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  • McPeak, Merrill A.

Merrill A. McPeak

Preferred Name: Tony
Date of Birth: January 9, 1936
Highest Military Grade: 0-10 – General
Hometown: Grants Pass, OR
Biography
Pilot Information
Album
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From General McPeak’s book Hangar Flying:

Truckers were much admired by Misty. Their side called them “pilots of the ground,” the metaphor causing no offense. We invented a teasing song about them—how lonely it was on the trail; how bad the food was when they got any; how they jacked it up to change tires, slippin’ and slidin’ in the mud; how they picked bugs out of their teeth when Misty poked holes in the windshield. But they did deadly serious work in the most dreadful conditions imaginable. They left their homes in the North and lived on the trail for months, even years, enduring monsoon weather, malaria, animal bites, constant hunger. Mail was collected once a month; an exchange of letters could take a whole season. They got to navigate through this desolate, beat-up countryside, in the dark, without headlights—a job that would be no fun on open turnpike at high noon, nobody shooting at you. And then we dropped two million tons of bombs on Laos—something like our total tonnage during all of World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters—most of it aimed at the trail. We seeded clouds to induce flooding, sprayed Agent Orange, mined the road, installed sensors of the electronic-monitoring McNamara Line. No doubt about it, we extracted a heavy price.

In time, the North would fill 72 military cemeteries with the remains of those who built, manned and moved over the road. But move they did, putting through the cargo—the 122 mm rockets that pounded the Marines around Da Nang, the mines that killed our soldiers near the Parrot’s beak, the heavy equipment that in the end would surround and capture the Saigon of memory. Pumping hard, the truckers provided oxygen sustaining the North’s ability to make war in the South. Their reward for each delivery: go get me some more.

The general view is that war long ago lost its personal dimension, the gory flesh-and-bone smell of face-to-face combat. Starting with spears, the technology for killing strangers has progressed through archery to long-range artillery and the ICBM, the workers now far back up the assembly line from the finished product. Even when armies do go toe-to-toe on a large scale, as in the Civil War or World War I, it has somehow gotten less personal, the sides mashed into fleshy, mindless, single-cell stuff, the fighting bacterial, formless. Mostly, nowadays, it’s more antiseptic—rapid armored thrusts supported by air, the killing invisible, done at a remove.
But for some military elites—and here I’d include fighter pilots—combat retains a certain intimacy. The idea of fighting as just business, nothing personal, will survive the first whiz of bullets that pass close but die with the stilled breath of a good-guy truck driver.

(For more information on this publication, click on the tab “Books by General McPeak”)

General McPeak’s Service
General Merrill A. (“Tony”) McPeak entered the Air Force in 1957 as a Distinguished Graduate of the San Diego State College ROTC program. A career fighter pilot, he spent two years with the Air Force’s elite aerobatic team, the Thunderbirds, performing before millions of people in nearly 200 official air shows in the U.S. and overseas. He flew 269 combat missions in Vietnam. Senior leadership assignments included command of the 20th Fighter Wing in NATO, the Twelfth Air Force (and concurrently U.S. Southern Command Air Forces) and the Pacific Air Forces.

He was Air Force chief during a period of very active US involvement overseas, including Operation Desert Storm. While leading the Air Force, he conceived and executed the most extensive reorganization in its history, creating a service better suited to meet the nation’s defense needs.

In 1992, San Diego State University honored General McPeak with its first ever Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1995, George Washington University gave him its Distinguished Alumni Award, the “George.” He was among the initial seven inductees to the Oregon Aviation Hall of Honor. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York City, and in 2008 was a national co-chairman of Obama for President. In 2010, President Obama appointed General McPeak to the American Battle Monuments Commission. The Commissioners subsequently elected him Chairman. (Source: https://generalmcpeak.com/about-general-merrill-a-mcpeak/)

Units Assigned

  • 12/1959-8/1961 F-104C fighter pilot, 436th Tactical Fighter Squadron, George Air Force Base, CA (F-104C)
  • 8/196-5/1964 F-100D fighter pilot, 79th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Royal Air Force Station Woodbridge, England (F-100D)
  • 5/1964-8/1965, fighter staff officer, tactical evaluation division, Headquarters 3rd Air Force, South Ruislip Air Station, England
  • 9/1965-12/1966 F-104G instructor pilot, 4443rd Combat Crew Training Squadron; later,  weapons officer, 4510th Combat Crew Training Wing, Luke Air Force Base, AZ (F-104G)
  • 12/1966-12/1968 Demonstration pilot, U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, the Thunderbirds, Nellis Air Force Base, NV
  • 12/1968-1/1969 F-100D fighter pilot, 612th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Phu Cat Air Base, Republic of Vietnam (F-100D)
  • 1/1969-8/1969 Ooperations officer, later commander, Operation Commando Sabre (Misty Fast FACs), Phu Cat Air Base, Republic of Vietnam (99 Misty Missions, 269 Total Combat Missions)
  • 8/1969-12/1969 Chief, standardization and evaluation division, 31st Tactical Fighter Wing, Tuy Hoa Air Base, Republic of Vietnam
  • 1/1970-7/1970 Student, Armed Forces Staff College, Norfolk, VA
  • 8/1970-8/1973 Air operations staff officer, Mideast Division, directorate of plans and policy, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C.
  • 8/1973-6/1974 Student, National War College, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C.
  • 6/197-4/1975 Assistant deputy commander for operations, 1st Tactical Fighter Wing, MacDill Air Force Base, FL
  • 4/1975-6/1975 Student, French language training (en route for duty as air attache to Republic of Cambodia), Foreign Service Institute, Washington, D.C.
  • 7/1976-7/1977 Commander, 513th Combat Support Group, Royal Air Force Station Mildenhall, England
  • 7/1977-7/1978 Vice commander, 406th Tactical Fighter Training Wing, Zaragoza Air Base, Spain
  • 7/1978-2/1980 Assistant chief of staff, current operations, Allied Air Forces Central Europe, Boerfink, West Germany
  • 2/1980-6/1981 Commander, 20th Tactical Fighter Wing, Royal Air Force Station Upper Heyford, England
  • 6/1981-10/1982 Chief of staff, Headquarters U.S. Air Forces in Europe, Ramstein Air Base, West Germany
  • 10/1982-5/1985 Deputy chief of staff, plans, Headquarters Tactical Air Command, Langley Air Force Base, VA
  • 5/1985-6/1987 Deputy chief of staff, programs and resources, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C.
  • 6/1987-7/1988, commander, 12th Air Force and commander, U.S. Southern Command Air Forces, Bergstrom Air Force Base, TX
  • 7/1988-10/1990, commander in chief, Pacific Air Forces, Hickam Air Force Base, HI
  • 10/1990-10/1994, chief of staff, U.S. Air Force, Washington, DC

Awards & Decorations

Distinguished Service Medal
Air Force Distinguished Service Medal
Silver Star
Silver Star
Legion Of Merit
Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster
Meritorious Service Award
Meritorious Service Medal
Air Medal
Air Medal with 13 Oak Leaf Clusters
Air Force Commendation Medal
AF Commendation Medal
AF Outstanding Unit Award
AF Outstanding Unit Award
Air Force Organizational Excellence Award
Air Force Organizational Excellence Award
Combat Readiness Medal
Combat Readiness Medal
National Defense Service Medal
National Defense Service Medal with Service Star
Vietnam Service Medal
Vietnam Service Medal with 4 Service Stars
Air Force Overseas Ribbon Short Tour
Air Force Overseas Service Ribbon Short Tour
Air Force Overseas Ribbon Long Tour
Air Force Overseas Service Ribbon Long Tour
Air Force Longevity Service Award (AFLSA)
Air Force Longevity Service Award with 1 Silver, 1 Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster
Small Arms Marksmanship Ribbon (SAEMR)
Air Force Expert Marksmanship Ribbon
Vietnam Cross Of Gallantry
Vietnam Gallantry Cross
Vietnam Campaign Medal
Vietnam Campaign Medal

Flight Info

F-4
F-4E
F-1
F-16
F-100D
F-104C
F-104G
F- 111

Rating: Command pilot, parachutist
Flight hours: More than 6,000

Pilot wings from: Germany, Spain, Mexico, Thailand, Yugoslavia France, Israel, Russia, Bulgaria, Venezuela and Poland

Military & Civilian Education

Military Education:

  • 1957-1958 Officer Preflight Training, Lackland Air Force Base, TX
  • 1958-1959 pilot training, Hondo Air Base, Texas, and Vance Air Force Base, OK
  • 1959 F-100 combat crew training, Luke Air Force Base, Ariz., and Nellis Air Force Base, NV
  • 1970 Armed Forces Staff College
  • 1974 National War College

Civilian Education:

  • 1957 BA/Economics, San Diego State College
  • 1974 MS/International Relations, George Washington University
  • 1979 The Executive Development Program, University of Michigan Graduate School of Business

Merrill Mcpeak Now
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