Bob Gast - NX6RG
My introduction to the U.S. Air Force was through AFROTC Det. 645, The Ohio State University. I have fond memories of my days as a cadet in the largest AFROTC detachment in the country. I finished as the Commander, Cadet Wing I. We had two Wings with about 1000 cadets in each. We were well outnumbered by the Army cadets, who numbered 7,000, but had a good lead over NROTC which numbered just a little over 900.
The biggest formation I’ve ever been in was the annual Pass-In-Review held each spring, with 10,000 of us in uniform. It worked great for the first two years but, things changed in 1967, became really testy in 1968, and was cancelled in 1969.
Along the way I got some seat time in a C-47 while flying to Randolph AFB from Lockbourne AFB, made some good friends in Arnold Air Society, had a great experience at summer encampment at Bunker Hill AFB, watched a B-58 being refueled from a KC-135, and most importantly was tendered my commission as a 2nd Lt. at graduation.
I completed Undergraduate Pilot Training at Moody AFB, GA and following two survival schools and Instructor Pilot upgrade training at Tyndall AFB, FL, I was assigned as a T-38 IP at Moody. I loved flying the T-38 and managed to stay in one piece, though one student tried pretty hard to kill us both, and nearly succeeded!
Toward the end of my T-38 IP assignment, I transferred to the 165th Mil Airlift Group, Ga ANG, after MPC told me I had to take a non-flying job as an electrical engineer due to a critical personnel shortage. After UPT, MPC had indicated I would get an F-4 as my second assignment if I took a T-38 as my first. I was a bit shortsighted in making this jump from active duty, but loved flying the old C-124C and then upgrading to C-130E as aircraft commander in Savannah, GA.
I accepted a civil service job as an electrical engineer with the 4950th Test Wing at Wright-Patterson AFB, OH while attending a month-long course at AFIT. Guess what, if I had stayed on active duty, this would likely have been my assignment. I spent 4 years flying on EC-135N’s as a telemetry engineer doing the technical mission planning and then flying the mission in the OIC position for the back-end technical crew. We flew to Tahiti, Hawaii, Midway, Guam, Australia, South America, Ascension Island, Africa, Mediterranean, and Europe supporting NASA and DoD missile launch operations. I operated with my old call sign as K8VIO/KH2/KH4/KH6/6W8, FO0VIO and ZD8RG. Wonderful locations for creating pileups! I worked all 50 states in 37 minutes one night on Ascension Island. The jeep in the picture was left-over from WWII and was my transportation. This location overlooked Wide Awake Airfield on Ascension. The antenna in the nose of the EC-135 is a 7 foot diameter fully steerable dish covering P, L, and S band telemetry. I spent several weeks on Ascension Island during the launch operations for both the Voyager I and Voyager II spacecraft that gave us those incredible first close-up pictures of Jupiter and Saturn in 1977 and have now exited our solar system. I also flew many missions capturing telemetry from re-entry vehicles … a scary sight to see first hand.
I flew as a copilot on C-123K and UC-123K’s for a short time with the 355th TAW at Rickenbacker AFB while flying on EC-135N’s as a civilian, but the two flying schedules were conflicted and I had to give up the reserve slot. After 4 years of EC-135N’s I was assigned to the Directorate for Flight Simulators and developed full-field-of-view visual systems at a time before you could buy a MAC Plus. After that I became a test and integration engineer with the U-2 program office at Wright-Patt and worked on the Precision Location Strike System which was an inverted GPS system (ground based) under development at the time. Later I became manager of the U-2 ground processing and comm station. Finally, I was assigned as the System Program Director for the entire U-2 program. I was given a great honor by the USAF and was allowed to fly in the last U-2RT on its delivery flight from the Skunk Works - the highlight of my career.
I retired in 1998 as a Lt. Col. after spending the final 14 years of my career assigned to Electronic Security Command and then the Air Intelligence Agency.