vikingBerserker
Lieutenant General
Obituaries (10 Viewers)
- Thread starter syscom3
- Start date
-
- Tags
- bud anderson
Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
Vassili Zaitzev
Master Sergeant
RabidAlien
1st Lieutenant
I hate the fact that the first time we hear about many of these individual's exploits and accomplishments, is after they've passed away.
Air Vice-Marshal Mike Hedgeland has died aged 87....
Air Vice-Marshal Mike Hedgeland, who has died aged 87, played a significant part in the development and use of blind navigation and bombing aids for Bomber Command's Pathfinder Force. He subsequently served as the President of the Ordnance Board.
Hedgeland was keen to be a pilot, but the RAF valued his inventive minds more greatly and he was commissioned into the Technical Branch in 1942. In August he was selected to join a team led by Dr Bernard Lovell on the development of the H2S blind-bombing radar system at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Malvern.
There followed a period of intense activity and the first operational set was ready by the end of the year when Hedgeland took a team of engineers to the Pathfinder airfield at Gravely, Bedfordshire, to install the set in the Halifaxes of No 35 Squadron. Hedgeland remained at the base as the first squadron radar officer appointed in Bomber Command
In this post he was also responsible for servicing the GEE navigation aid and the Monica early warning radar, both of which significantly improved the accuracy and effectiveness of the bombers. In 1944 he moved to Wyton, home to more Pathfinder squadrons, where he had the additional responsibility for other bombing and navigation radar aids such as OBOE and Loran. Together with H2S, these devices had a major impact on the accuracy of the Pathfinder aircraft and the main force of bombers that followed them into the target to bomb on the Pathfinder markers.
In early 1945, Hedgeland moved back to TRE, where he met his wife (a physicist there), and where he worked on more advanced versions of H2S radars and on the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) equipment. For his wartime work he was mentioned in despatches.
Philip Michael Sweatman Hedgeland was born in Maidstone on November 24 1922 and educated at the town's grammar school. He saw the Battle of Britain unfold in the skies of Kent and whilst waiting to join the RAF he worked for the BBC.
By the end of the war, Hedgeland was the RAF's most experienced engineer on airborne radars and he spent the next three years at the Central Bomber Establishment where he worked on developing and improving the wartime aids for the next generation of RAF bombers. In September 1948 he was given leave to spend three years at Imperial College London, where he gained an honours degree in Engineering. He served with the University Air Squadron and learned to fly.
On his return from Imperial he completed his training as a pilot and later converted to the Meteor jet fighter. Over the next few years he took every opportunity to fly and he regularly used a Meteor to calibrate ground radars.
In February 1952 Hedgeland returned to Malvern for the third time, where he was responsible for masterminding the introduction into service of the navigation and bombing system (NBS) for the RAF's V-bomber force, which incorporated H2S Mark 9. Five years later he was posted to Headquarters Bomber Command where he commanded the Avionics Development Unit with responsibility for the maintenance of all radio and radar systems for the V-Force.
In 1960 he finally escaped from H2S and after a series of appointments in the technical plans department of the Air Ministry, he attended the Air Warfare Course. In May 1963 he left for the Far East to fill the joint service post of Director of Signals. With British forces heavily involved in Brunei and in the Indonesian Confrontation, where operations in Borneo often occurred in remote and inaccessible locations, great demands were placed on his expertise and organisational abilities.
Hedgeland returned to the UK in December 1965 and took command of the RAF's central communications centre at Stanbridge. After attending the Imperial Defence College in 1970 he was appointed Director of Electronics, Airborne Radar, in the Procurement Executive at the Ministry of Defence. A colleague commented: "Mike Hedgeland did more to further the cause of airborne radar than anyone else and he was greatly respected."
In March 1975 he was appointed to the Ordnance Board, which had responsibility for giving advice on the safety and suitability for service of all weapons and those parts of weapons systems and stores in which explosives are used. After a period as vice-president he was appointed president, the first electrical engineer to hold the appointment.
After retiring from the RAF he acted as a consultant to various companies in the communications field. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and was an active committee member with the Thames Valley Branch of the Institute. He also continued to fly, giving air cadets air experience flights and towing gliders for the RAF Gliding and Soaring Association.
Hedgeland devoted a great deal of his time to the Pathfinder Association. Having witnessed so many young men depart on operations never to return, he had a deep respect for the aircrew who, in turn, held him in high regard.
The veterans elected him to be their president from 1985 to 1987, a unique honour for a ground-based officer who had never flown on operations. He arranged for the main office blocks at RAF Wyton, the wartime headquarters of No 8 Pathfinder Group, to be named after Pathfinder VC holders.
Hedgeland had a lifelong interest in radio, communications and broadcasting, starting with a crystal set under the bedclothes; progressing to amateur "ham" radio operation; and then early experiments with FM broadcasting.
His short time at the BBC started an interest in programme production and whilst serving as a group captain in the Far East he involved himself in the Forces Broadcasting Service as the disc jockey Mike Philips.
In retirement Hedgeland, a man of great charm, was able to indulge in his love of his garden and of travel, making several round-the-world trips meeting old Pathfinder comrades in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
source: Telegraph
Air Vice-Marshal Mike Hedgeland, who has died aged 87, played a significant part in the development and use of blind navigation and bombing aids for Bomber Command's Pathfinder Force. He subsequently served as the President of the Ordnance Board.
Hedgeland was keen to be a pilot, but the RAF valued his inventive minds more greatly and he was commissioned into the Technical Branch in 1942. In August he was selected to join a team led by Dr Bernard Lovell on the development of the H2S blind-bombing radar system at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Malvern.
There followed a period of intense activity and the first operational set was ready by the end of the year when Hedgeland took a team of engineers to the Pathfinder airfield at Gravely, Bedfordshire, to install the set in the Halifaxes of No 35 Squadron. Hedgeland remained at the base as the first squadron radar officer appointed in Bomber Command
In this post he was also responsible for servicing the GEE navigation aid and the Monica early warning radar, both of which significantly improved the accuracy and effectiveness of the bombers. In 1944 he moved to Wyton, home to more Pathfinder squadrons, where he had the additional responsibility for other bombing and navigation radar aids such as OBOE and Loran. Together with H2S, these devices had a major impact on the accuracy of the Pathfinder aircraft and the main force of bombers that followed them into the target to bomb on the Pathfinder markers.
In early 1945, Hedgeland moved back to TRE, where he met his wife (a physicist there), and where he worked on more advanced versions of H2S radars and on the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) equipment. For his wartime work he was mentioned in despatches.
Philip Michael Sweatman Hedgeland was born in Maidstone on November 24 1922 and educated at the town's grammar school. He saw the Battle of Britain unfold in the skies of Kent and whilst waiting to join the RAF he worked for the BBC.
By the end of the war, Hedgeland was the RAF's most experienced engineer on airborne radars and he spent the next three years at the Central Bomber Establishment where he worked on developing and improving the wartime aids for the next generation of RAF bombers. In September 1948 he was given leave to spend three years at Imperial College London, where he gained an honours degree in Engineering. He served with the University Air Squadron and learned to fly.
On his return from Imperial he completed his training as a pilot and later converted to the Meteor jet fighter. Over the next few years he took every opportunity to fly and he regularly used a Meteor to calibrate ground radars.
In February 1952 Hedgeland returned to Malvern for the third time, where he was responsible for masterminding the introduction into service of the navigation and bombing system (NBS) for the RAF's V-bomber force, which incorporated H2S Mark 9. Five years later he was posted to Headquarters Bomber Command where he commanded the Avionics Development Unit with responsibility for the maintenance of all radio and radar systems for the V-Force.
In 1960 he finally escaped from H2S and after a series of appointments in the technical plans department of the Air Ministry, he attended the Air Warfare Course. In May 1963 he left for the Far East to fill the joint service post of Director of Signals. With British forces heavily involved in Brunei and in the Indonesian Confrontation, where operations in Borneo often occurred in remote and inaccessible locations, great demands were placed on his expertise and organisational abilities.
Hedgeland returned to the UK in December 1965 and took command of the RAF's central communications centre at Stanbridge. After attending the Imperial Defence College in 1970 he was appointed Director of Electronics, Airborne Radar, in the Procurement Executive at the Ministry of Defence. A colleague commented: "Mike Hedgeland did more to further the cause of airborne radar than anyone else and he was greatly respected."
In March 1975 he was appointed to the Ordnance Board, which had responsibility for giving advice on the safety and suitability for service of all weapons and those parts of weapons systems and stores in which explosives are used. After a period as vice-president he was appointed president, the first electrical engineer to hold the appointment.
After retiring from the RAF he acted as a consultant to various companies in the communications field. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and was an active committee member with the Thames Valley Branch of the Institute. He also continued to fly, giving air cadets air experience flights and towing gliders for the RAF Gliding and Soaring Association.
Hedgeland devoted a great deal of his time to the Pathfinder Association. Having witnessed so many young men depart on operations never to return, he had a deep respect for the aircrew who, in turn, held him in high regard.
The veterans elected him to be their president from 1985 to 1987, a unique honour for a ground-based officer who had never flown on operations. He arranged for the main office blocks at RAF Wyton, the wartime headquarters of No 8 Pathfinder Group, to be named after Pathfinder VC holders.
Hedgeland had a lifelong interest in radio, communications and broadcasting, starting with a crystal set under the bedclothes; progressing to amateur "ham" radio operation; and then early experiments with FM broadcasting.
His short time at the BBC started an interest in programme production and whilst serving as a group captain in the Far East he involved himself in the Forces Broadcasting Service as the disc jockey Mike Philips.
In retirement Hedgeland, a man of great charm, was able to indulge in his love of his garden and of travel, making several round-the-world trips meeting old Pathfinder comrades in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
source: Telegraph
RabidAlien
1st Lieutenant
ToughOmbre
Senior Master Sergeant
RIP
TO
TO
Aaron Brooks Wolters
Brigadier General
- Thread starter
- #572
syscom3
Pacific Historian
By MICHAEL POLLAK
Published: March 14, 2010
Peter Graves, 'Mission - Impossible' Star, Dies at 83 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com
Mr. Graves in a Geico commercial, spoofing his own image.
He died of a heart attack at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., said Fred Barman, his business manager.
It was a testament to Mr. Graves's earnest, unhammy ability to make fun of himself that after decades of playing square he-men and straitlaced authority figures, he was perhaps best known to younger audiences for a deadpan line in "Airplane!" ("Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?") and one from a memorable Geico car insurance commercial ("I was one lucky woman").
Born Peter Aurness in Minneapolis, the blond, 6-foot-2 Mr. Graves served in the Army Air Forces in 1944 and '45, studied drama at the University of Minnesota under the G.I. Bill of Rights and played the clarinet in local bands before following his older brother, James Arness, to Hollywood.
His first credited film appearance was in "Rogue River" (1950), with Rory Calhoun. Mr. Graves's getting a Hollywood contract for the picture persuaded his fiancée's family to let her marry him. He changed his name for that movie to Graves, his maternal grandfather's name, to avoid confusion with his older brother.
He soon found himself in classics like Billy Wilder's "Stalag 17" (1953), where he played a security officer with a secret; Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" (1955); Otto Preminger's "Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell" (1955); and John Ford's "Long Gray Line" (1955).
Mr. Graves became known for taking all his roles seriously, injecting a certain believability into even the campiest plot. He appeared in westerns like "The Yellow Tomahawk" (1954) and "Wichita" (1955); a Civil War adventure, "The Raid" (1954); and gangster movies ("Black Tuesday," 1954, and "The Naked Street," 1955). He played earnest scientists in science fiction/horror films: "Killers From Space" (1954), "It Conquered the World" (1956) and "Beginning of the End" (1957, about giant grasshoppers in Chicago). There was also cold war science fiction anti-Communism: "Red Planet Mars" (1952).
Other movies included "East of Sumatra" (1953), "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef" (1953), "A Rage to Live" (1965), "Texas Across the River" (1966), "Sergeant Ryker" (1968 ), "The Ballad of Josie" (1968 ), "The Five-Man Army" (1969), "The Clonus Horror" (1979), "The Guns and the Fury" (1981), "Savannah Smiles" (1982), "Number One With a Bullet" (1986), "Addams Family Values" (1993), "The House on Haunted Hill" (1999) and "Men in Black II" (2002).
In 1955 Mr. Graves began his career as a television series regular as the star of "Fury," a western family adventure series about a rancher named Jim Newton, his orphaned ward and the boy's black stallion. It ran until 1959 on NBC, helped pioneer television adventure series and solidified Mr. Graves's TV credentials.
Some of his hundreds of television credits include "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Whiplash" (1961), "The Dean Martin Show" (1970), the Herman Wouk mini-series "The Winds of War" (1983) and "War and Remembrance" (1988 ), "Fantasy Island" (1978-83) and "7th Heaven" (1999-2005). He served as the host or narrator for numerous television specials and performed in television movies of the week like "The President's Plane Is Missing" (1973), "Where Have All the People Gone" (1974) and "Death Car on the Freeway" (1979).
Mr. Graves played his most famous television character from 1967 to 1973 in "Mission: Impossible," reprising it from 1988 to 1990. He was Jim Phelps, the leader of the Impossible Missions Force, a super-secret government organization that conducted dangerous undercover assignments (which he always chose to accept). After the tape summarizing the objective self-destructed, the team would use not violence, but elaborate con games to trap the villains. In his role, Mr. Graves was a model of cool, deadpan efficiency.
But he was appalled when his agent sent him the script for the role of a pedophile pilot in "Airplane!" (1980). "I tore my hair and ranted and raved and said, 'This is insane,' he recalled on "Biography" in 1997. Some of the role's lines ("Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?") looked at first as if they could get him thrown in jail, never mind ruining his career. He told his agent to tell David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, the director-producers, to find themselves a comedian. He relented when the Zucker brothers explained that the secret of their spoof would be the deadpan behavior of the cast; they didn't want a comedian, they wanted the Peter Graves of "Fury" and "Mission: Impossible."
Mr. Graves used his familiar earnest, all-American demeanor in service of some of the comic movie's most outrageous moments. He reprised the role of Captain Oveur in "Airplane II" in 1982.
Starting in the mid-1980s Mr. Graves was the host of a number of television science specials on "Discover." In 1987, he became the host of the Arts and Entertainment Network's long-running "Biography" series, narrating the lives of figures like Prince Andrew, Muhammad Ali, pioneers of the space program, Churchill, Ernie Kovacs, Edward G. Robinson, Sophia Loren, Jackie Robinson, Howard Hughes, Steven Spielberg and Jonathan Winters.
In 1997, Mr. Graves was the subject of his own "Biography" presentation, "Peter Graves: Mission Accomplished." In 2002, Mr. Graves was interviewed for a special about the documentary series, "Biography: 15 Years and Counting."
Mr. Graves won a Golden Globe Award in 1971 for his performance in "Mission: Impossible" and in 1997, he and "Biography" won an Emmy Award for outstanding informational series.
In 1998, he joined his wife, Joan, in an effort to get Los Angeles to ban gasoline-powered leaf blowers from residential areas, testifying before the City Council, "'We're all victims of these machines."
He is survived by his wife, Joan Graves, and three daughters, Amanda Lee Graves, Claudia King Graves and Kelly Jean Graves.
Derrick Henry contributed reporting.
Last edited:
RabidAlien
1st Lieutenant
Great actor,yes....anybody know what he did in the AAF during the War?
Njaco
The Pop-Tart Whisperer
wheelsup_cavu
1st Sergeant
I never knew that James Arness was his brother.
Rest in Peace.
Wheels
Rest in Peace.
Wheels
ToughOmbre
Senior Master Sergeant
"Mission: Impossible" was one of the hottest shows on TV back in my college days.
RIP
TO
RIP
TO
- Thread starter
- #578
syscom3
Pacific Historian
I saw this this morning. He made ace decades after the war.
WALKER, JACK G. Colonel Jack G. Walker, World War II ace fighter pilot and distinguished veteran of the 97th fighter squadron, 82nd fighter group, flew west on Monday, March 8, 2010, in Riverside, CA. He was born on July 7, 1920, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. He grew up in West Hollywood, CA. While attending Pasadena Junior College, he learned how to fly through a program initiated by President Roosevelt called the "Civilian Pilot Training Program." He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and received his training in the Cessna AT-17 Bobcat, also known as the "Bamboo Bomber," at Stockton Training Field, CA. During World War II, he was assigned to the 82nd Fighter Group and flew 51 combat missions over North Africa and Italy in his P-38 named "Elaine III." He is credited with five air-to-air victories and survived a crash landing of his P-38 in Wales. He received numerous medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross Air Medal with twelve oak leaf clusters, and the French Croix de Guerre. It was almost 50 years after the war that he was awarded "Ace" status. A group doing research on pilots who had four victories and a probable, located his wingman who confirmed this mission. After the war, Jack flew P-51s with the California Air National Guard and spent 31 years in the Air Force Reserves, retiring as a Colonel. He had a 30 year career as a teacher and coach. After moving to San Diego, he became a frequent attendee and a popular guest at air shows. He is survived by his daughter Jalaine and husband Dan Trainor, and his son Brian and wife Sandy Walker. His smile and wit will be greatly missed. Services were at the Riverside National Cemetery March 12, 2010, with an honor guard and a three gun salute, which he would have been so proud of.
WALKER, JACK G. Colonel Jack G. Walker, World War II ace fighter pilot and distinguished veteran of the 97th fighter squadron, 82nd fighter group, flew west on Monday, March 8, 2010, in Riverside, CA. He was born on July 7, 1920, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. He grew up in West Hollywood, CA. While attending Pasadena Junior College, he learned how to fly through a program initiated by President Roosevelt called the "Civilian Pilot Training Program." He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and received his training in the Cessna AT-17 Bobcat, also known as the "Bamboo Bomber," at Stockton Training Field, CA. During World War II, he was assigned to the 82nd Fighter Group and flew 51 combat missions over North Africa and Italy in his P-38 named "Elaine III." He is credited with five air-to-air victories and survived a crash landing of his P-38 in Wales. He received numerous medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross Air Medal with twelve oak leaf clusters, and the French Croix de Guerre. It was almost 50 years after the war that he was awarded "Ace" status. A group doing research on pilots who had four victories and a probable, located his wingman who confirmed this mission. After the war, Jack flew P-51s with the California Air National Guard and spent 31 years in the Air Force Reserves, retiring as a Colonel. He had a 30 year career as a teacher and coach. After moving to San Diego, he became a frequent attendee and a popular guest at air shows. He is survived by his daughter Jalaine and husband Dan Trainor, and his son Brian and wife Sandy Walker. His smile and wit will be greatly missed. Services were at the Riverside National Cemetery March 12, 2010, with an honor guard and a three gun salute, which he would have been so proud of.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"