B-58 pilots honored at Grissom Air Museum ceremony

[Boats]

B-58 pilots honored at Grissom Air Museum ceremony
By CARA BALL | Kokomo Tribune, Ind. | Published: May 21, 2017
RE: https://www.stripes.com/news/us/b-58...5#.WSLuQlTyuM8

BUNKER HILL (Tribune News Service) — The Convair B-58 Hustler was the first United States Air Force bomber to fly at supersonic speeds, setting numerous records.

Its mission was to perform retaliatory atomic strikes against Russia if provoked.

Only a select group of men were chosen to pilot the aircrafts. Those men are now known as The Hustler Generation, a group of highly skilled and trained servicemen who once called the Grissom Air Reserve Base home.

“It was a remarkable airplane,” said Tom Kelley, volunteer at the Grissom Air Museum. “They did a remarkable job… and we try to celebrate that. To have them back here, it was an honor.”

On Saturday, the museum held a ceremony honoring the commitment and sacrifice of these Air Force men, both living and dead.

Around 50 of the remaining pilots and crewmembers, along with their families and members of the community, gathered outside of the museum to recognize a generation that gave so much of themselves during heightened wartimes in the 1960s.

Names of deceased members of the B-58 Hustler group were called off in remembrance during Saturday’s ceremony.

Near the front of the crowd stood Rob Blakeslee of Orlando, Florida, the son of Major Richard F. Blakeslee, a Hustler Air Force pilot whose name was included in remembrance of Hustler pilots who have died.

“This all, just for me emotionally, knits it all back together,” Blakeslee said following the ceremony.

He was just a junior in high school when his father was killed in a B-58 plane crash on Dec. 12, 1966, while performing a low-level bombing practice mission in Kentucky.

Blakeslee’s father was just 42 years old.

Coming back to the base where his family once lived and where he spent six years of his life brought back many memories of what it was like gorowing up an army brat and bonding with other military families.

“In the course of one stroke you lose your father, but you also lose your community and your friends,” Blakeslee said. “You have to leave this life. And so, this kind of a ceremony brings it all back; it pieces it back together for you.”

Blakeslee was joined by his life long friend Judy Worland who also grew up on the reserve base. Although her father was not a member of the B-58 crew, she recalled nights the military kids would gather to see the planes take off down the runway in a magnificent glow.

“You really appreciate what their service meant to them,” Worland said.

As members of the Hustler group mingled and talked about their service in the Air Force, Earl Barlow of Spokane, Washington made a point to introduce himself to Rob Blakeslee during the reunion.

Barlow served from 1951 to 1980 and was an aircraft commander like Blakeslee’s father. They both trained at the Combat Crew Training School on the Grissom Air Reserve Base. Though in different squadron’s, Barlow remembers Blakeslee’s father as a good man, he said.

“I spoke to your dad the night he took off before he died,” Barlow said to Blakeslee.

These conversations echoed with many other remaining members of the Hustler group as they interacted with the families of their service brothers who’ve passed away.

For Blakeslee, who has attended at least three memorials at Grissom, these conversations about his dad are essential to his memory and the memory of all members of the Hustler generation.

“I thought it was important because it just keeps the memory of him alive,” he said.