After a lifetime spent piloting a wide range of aircraft, a presentation given by retired Air Force Col. Reed Craig would understandably be packed with interesting anecdotes and fascinating facts about those planes.

Members and guests at the Association of Naval Aviation, Whidbey Island Squadron 40 meeting at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island’s Officers’ club on Jan. 10 learned a little something about the people in Craig’s life as well.

For starters, the ANA’s speaker for next month is none other than Craig’s son, Navy Cmdr. Jeff Craig, Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 129’s commanding officer.

“There’s nothing in the genes that causes us to choose to be a pilot,” said Col. Craig, “so there’s no tie there.”

Nevertheless, there is some common ground borne of shared experiences.

“We (my son and I) talk about flying missions all the time, as you might expect,” he said.

Although Cmdr. Craig was not able to attend the meeting due to an interview at the Pentagon that day, Col. Craig said that he looked forward to hearing his son at the ANA luncheon next month.

A LONG CAREER

Following an introduction by ANA president Scott Hornung, Craig began his presentation by reviewing the numerous variety of aircraft he had flown during his career. As an Air Force pilot, these included models T-34, T-37, T-33, EB-47, RF-101 and 102, B-52H, and B-52D.

While in the Air Force Reserves, he spent a couple of years in civil aviation flying Lear jets and earned his airline transport pilot rating before being recalled back to active duty around 1966.

As a B-52 pilot, Craig said most of his missions were concentrated on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, during Arc Light missions. (Arc Light was the general term for using the B-52 as a close air support platform to support tactical ground operations.) He described the B-52 as a daunting weapon system.

“The B-52’s released bombs at very high altitudes. Generally, they could not be seen or heard from the ground,” Craig said.

One of the other remarkable attributes of the B-52, according to Craig, was the high degree of flexibility built into the wings.

“Each mission took 108 500-pound bombs, not to mention fuel weight. The generous amount of flex engineered into the design kept those wings, with their 185-foot span, from snapping off.”

In a follow-up interview from his home in Anacortes, Craig spoke about how flying various types of aircraft brought him into contact with people from many different walks of life.

“In the corporate world, you meet executives who value the opportunity that a private jet offers them of sitting quietly, and using their time to have a business discussion,” said Craig.

“You also encounter celebrities, people in the music industry, who value their privacy,” he continued. “These folks place a premium on, for example, the chance to practice their music while in flight — that’s something you can’t do on a commercial airliner, but it’s something musicians are willing to pay for in a private jet.”

MILITARY MISSION

Military aviation had a very different mission, of course. Craig said some of the most courageous individuals he knew were the ground personnel who helped guide the B-52’s to their targets in Vietnam. He considers them unsung heroes.

“In Operation Skyspot, helicopters ferried these individuals to mountaintop locations where they could vector the B-52 missions to their targets,”  said Craig. “It was very hazardous duty, but one they accomplished with great accuracy.”

Craig said all his flying experiences, both the inherent dangers of flying B-52’s in Vietnam and the general risks and lessons of civil aviation were valuable opportunities for him, not to mention interesting ones. Just as fascinating, from his perspective, are the technological advances he’s seen in aviation over the course of a lifetime.

“The innovation is just amazing. It’s like going from the early radios, with their vacuum tubes, to our flat-panel TV’s,” said Craig. He called the improvement from the EA-6B Prowler aircraft to the EA-18G Growler alone  “phenomenal.”

And today’s electronic warfare differs greatly from what he experienced.

“Frankly, it’s a lot more computerized than in my day,” he said. “What that means is that one person nowadays can do as much as two or three could do back when we flew the B-52.”

The next meeting of the Association of Naval Aviation will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday,  Feb. 14 at the Officers’ Club on Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.