Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Clyde Bennett East - Course 60

In Memory of Clyde Bennett East - Lt/Col. USAF. Ret. July 19, 1921 - July 30, 2014 Clyde East was born a sharecropper's son on Cole's Hill plantation, Sheva, Southside Virginia on July 19, 1921. As a farm boy growing up in Depression-era rural Virginia, young Clyde scraped together the money to go up in a biplane at a carnival. With that flight, his budding interest in aviation flamed into a passion. By the summer of 1941, at 19 years of age, Clyde was hitchhiking up to Canada to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). His goal was to become a military pilot and help fight the war against Hitler. He achieved that goal and became an accomplished fighter and reconnaissance pilot, first with the RCAF (No. 414 Squadron), then with the US Army Air Corps beginning in January, 1944. Staged in England and flying Spitfire and Mustang recon/fighter planes, he flew in and led numerous missions across the English Channel. By war's end in 1945, Captain East had flown approx. 250 missions, and amassed 400 flight hours and 13 aerial victories. He was awarded the Silver Star, two Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Air Medal with 36 Oak Leaf Clusters. His career as a military pilot continued on in the Korean War (1950-1953) where he earned the rank of Major and was awarded three more Flying Crosses and six additional Air Medals. With this achievement Clyde held the record for the highest number of repeat combat medals, an honor which stood unchallenged in the Guinness World Records for 13 years. Clyde's accomplishments in the USAF continued through the 1950's and 60's, first as Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron Commander at Shaw AFB (1951-1954), then with a three-year stint as Training Advisor for the Italian Air Force (1954-1957).
(Photo: Clyde and his Canadian bride Margaret Ann Dilks) Returning to the States with his family, which now included wife Margaret and 6 children, Clyde attended USAF War College at Maxwell AFB, Montgomery, AL then on to TacRecon Squadron Commander at Shaw AFB, Sumter, SC where he flew the McDonnell RF-101 Voodoo. He was subsequently promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1959, then served overseas another 3 years as a Squadron Commander at Laon AFB near Laon, France. Lt/Col East spent his last three years of active military service back at Shaw AFB as a Squadron Commander and Voodoo pilot. Notably, during the fall of 1962, he served as Detachment Commander in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Clyde flew numerous visual and photographic missions over Cuba and was later awarded the fourth cluster to his Distinguished Flying Cross. In 1964 he commanded a Voodoo unit deployed to South Vietnam in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. After a 25-year period of exemplary service spanning three major wars across the globe, Lt/Col Clyde East retired from Air Force life in February, 1965. Clyde's commitment to his country continued an additional 28 years as a military analyst for RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. The family recalls these as good years, where they could finally put down roots in southern California and become a normal family in a regular community.
One of Clyde's greatest accomplishments was the 2013 completion and printing of his detailed autobiography, "The Way It Happened". “I’d watch other veterans come up to Dad and shake his hand with a look of awe in their eyes — like they were touching a piece of walking, talking history,” says Suzy Danner, one of Clyde’s three daughters. They were touching history. It was Clyde who Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower sent ahead in a P-51 Mustang to get reconnaissance photos of German troop concentrations at Normandy only hours before the D-Day invasion. Clyde shot down an enemy aircraft along the way. When Gen. George Patton’s army was making its dash across France, it was Clyde flying up ahead through heavy anti-aircraft fire to let Patton know what to expect — shooting down a dozen more enemy planes in the process.

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