40th/469th Tactical Fighter Squadrons Reunions

By Don Drinnon

In September 1992, while working for Northrop, I was in Newbury Park, California, doing something relating to the BQM-74 drone program, when I ran into one of the World’s Finest who was with us at Eglin and Korat named Don Madonna. Madonna had joined the 40th Squadron near the end of our time at Eglin, pretty much just in time to deploy with us. Madonna was an AF Academy classmate of Jon Gallo and Mike Carns and was then working for Northrop in the business development office in Newbury Park. He and I got to talking and reminiscing about our time at Korat and he suggested that we needed to have a reunion. The squadron had held a reunion in Germany in 1972 with a good turn-out since so many of the guys were assigned to Europe when they left Korat. A good number of guys from the U.S. also were able to attend. I agreed with Madonna and the plan and took on the task of locating all the guys and trying to organize a reunion. Unfortunately, shortly after our meeting, Don left Northrop and went to work at the Burbank Airport Aviation Museum and he was subsequently killed in an aircraft accident while ferrying a World War II British airplane from Louisiana to the museum in California. I was now the sole guy working the reunion effort. I had a good list of all the guys since I had copies of our orders from Eglin to Korat. That list had 57 guys but there were several others who joined the Squadron during our time at Korat including those from the 34th TFS who had joined us when the second Squadron of Es arrived in June 1969. Over time we added several of the guys who had been with us in the 40th but had not deployed to Korat. I knew where about four of the guys were and was able to contact them to get started.

I had ‘borrowed’ a copy of the Air Force Register in 1974 from some desk when I was stationed at Fuchu Air Station in Japan. The Register contained the names, SSAN, birthdates, ranks plus some other data for every officer who was in the Air Force in 1974. This gave me more information about all those whom I was trying to locate. Note: I still have the Register and use it frequently. One of my colleagues at work had a set of four or five CDs that contained the phone directories for the entire United States. This was a great help for those with somewhat unusual names, like Conrad Boryzch, but of no help for Arthur Jones or John Fisher. After a couple months of calling and sending postcards, I used another source for addresses. Another colleague who worked with me was in the AF Reserves at March AFB in Riverside. He said he would see if he could sweet talk someone in the Base Personnel shop to search the master retiree records in their computer system. He succeeded in getting me the information for 22 names. Yeah!

There is a funny story regarding my search for Ray Miller. I found a name match in Ohio on one of the CDs that kind of matched where I remembered Ray was from. I called the number and told the lady who answered the phone who I was and what I wanted. I had included that I was looking for the Ray Miller who had flown F-4s in Thailand in 1968-1969. She told me he had died. I marked Ray deceased and continued down the list. A month or so later, I got a note from Truman Whiting, asking why his front seater, Ray Miller, was not on the list. He gave me the real Ray’s address in South Carolina. I never did find out who died in Ohio.

I found the last guy 11 months after I started my search and then started planning for our first reunion for the fall of 1994. Six of the guys were deceased, all in aircraft accidents. By this time my wife, Kathy, and I had completed seven cruises with six of them being in the Caribbean and felt a cruise might be a fun way for us all to connect.

The picture above shows Jean and Mina holding a copy of The “World’s Finest”, a book created by Steve Stephen, which documents our year at Korat. I’ve included a scan of the book’s cover and a couple of the pages.

The 40th/469th Tactical Fighter Squadron has held 20 Reunions, including the ones in Europe in 1972 and the Caribbean cruise in 1994. We’ve selected a couple of the reunions from which we will present some of the happenings and pictures. The 1996 reunion, held in Colorado Springs, was especially significant in that 36 of the original 57 deploying members of the squadron attended and we were able to get many group pictures and renew many friendships. Several pages from the album prepared in 1996 are presented. Jon and Jacquie Gallo hosted the reunion and set the bar for all future reunions.

Another very significant reunion was held at the National Museum of the US Air Force, located at Wright-Patterson AFB, six miles northeast of Dayton, Ohio, in October 2011. At that reunion, the Squadron presented the 40th/469th Tactical Fighter Squadron Memorial Plaque to the National Museum of the US Air Force. The Plaque is on display in the United States Air Force Museum Memorial Park. Carl and Peggy Smith hosted the reunion with amazing support from the Museum Staff that included our Saturday evening dinner in the Museum’s Southeast Asia War Gallery.