Sharing Our History 6

​The sixth article in this series has been made possible by Steven Taylor, who volunteered the following story of his father, Capt Earl Taylor (USAF). :

I sent for my fathers service records but was informed that his were destroyed in a fire at the federal records center. I am sending them my recollections of his service assignments and hope they can reconstruct the other sources.  I will copy you on any new information I can gather. I do know he was in the 54th Fighter Squadron flying P 38s in the Aleutians during WWII. Then flew P 51s teaching the South Korean pilots in Japan and Korea. It gets a little hazy in my memory until he joined the 84th FIS at Hamilton AFB near San Francisco where he flew F 94s and F 89s becoming an executive officer before being assigned exchange duty with the RAF.  His first RAF posting was at Middleton St George. 

Here are some of my reflections of the 2 years we spent there. Our first assignment was at a. RAF station near York where my dad went through an orientation assignment. I believe we were there for 3 or 4 months. We next move to a station close to Darlington and at that point I believe it was with 141 Sqd. Our next location was a move to RAF Coltishall. Where we remained for the rest of the tour. That is where the Javelins were and I believe the switch to 41 Sqd took place. Prior to that move I believe he was flying Meteors. 

Just prior to our return to the US there was an exercise at RAF Wattisham where the accident occurred in July of 1958. You may have access to the accident report that we have never seen. I don't remember many names unfortunately other than his RO was a Canadian exchange officer whose name was Brian Bedford.

http://www.startribune.com/in-spirit-a-father-rejoins-the-thanksgiving-table/110508944/
Above is a link to the newspaper article written about our trip to explore the history of my Dad's service with the RAF.  
I would be interested to hear from anyone that knew or has heard stories about my father. We did get to meet on our visit to Wattisham: 1 member of the ground crew and 2 members of the emergency rescue team that arrived at the crash site. 

The articles in this series have been made possible through content shared by our members. If you wish to broadcast a picture/article or short story to our membership via this blog then please send it to the secretary email address (41sqn.association.secretary@gmail.com) and I will post it here.
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Please indicate if you wish to include your email for any further contact from those who may know something of the same era.

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