I had the great honor to have a, traditional Dutch pannekoeken, diner with Col. Bob Henderson in May of 2018. Bob used to fly F-102’s at Soesterberg AB with the Wolfhounds from 1963 till 1966. He lived in a town called the Bilt and after 52 years wanted to visit Holland again. We corresponded for a couple of years. Bob has helped me in the past, I was finally able to return the favour and help him on his Dutch tour setting up various trips and offer a Dutch dinner with cold Heineken’s. To my surprise Bob had found a couple of items from his Soesterberg days, and a story I hadn’t heard before. During his first year at Soesterberg, Bob got into some real bad weather, came in on a GCA approach, hadn’t done many of these before in Texas. And go low and struck a couple of trees before successfully ejecting, he was lucky to walk away form this crash. He still had the ejection ring and the original Dutch news clipping of the crash. He further more donated is personal F-102 Beerstein from the Wolfhounds, a true treasure and his helmet bag that he used at Soesterberg and Webb AFB. I am very honored to receive all these items to my collection, but most rewarding where the stories from the F-102 days at Soesterberg, I hope Bob get’s the chance to write a book about them someday. What a great guy and fantastic day together.
