Air Force Service
He soon began a military career, joining the Air Force Aviation Cadet Program at age 19 and later becoming a lieutenant in the Air Force. Rutan served during the Vietnam War with the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing at Phu Cat Air Base, completing 325 combat missions. 105 came while serving as a "Fast FAC" (Misty 40) with Project Commando Sabre, Detachment 1 of the 416th Tactical Fighter Squadron, the second highest total of sorties flown by the 157 Misty pilots. On August 17, 1967, his Misty tour ended when his F-100F was shot down, although he and his back-seat pilot were both rescued. He ejected a second time when the aircraft he was flying over England experienced engine failure. Through his career, he was awarded the Silver Star, five Distinguished Flying Crosses, 16 Air Medals, and a Purple Heart.
Read more about this topic: Dick Rutan
Famous quotes containing the words air, force and/or service:
“subtle birds
Wheel and go,leaving air in shreds
black beaks shine in gray haze.
Brushed by the hawk’s wing
of vision.”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake in the value he set on the whole, which he symbolized as unity and worshipped as God. To this day, his attitude towards it has never changed, though science can no longer give to force a name.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The more the specific feelings of being under obligation range themselves under a supreme principle of human dependence the clearer and more fertile will be the realization of the concept, indispensable to all true culture, of service; from the service of God down to the simple social relationship as between employer and employee.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)