Col. Robert Thacker (USAF – ret.) passed away a few weeks ago, though his death was not confirmed until recently. He was 102.
You may remember Lieutenant (at the time) Thacker from this story, which took place on December 7, 1941:
His plane was among a flight of newly built B-17s arriving from California en route to the Philippines. As he began his descent to the Army Air Corps’ Hickam Field, at first unaware of anything amiss, he was astonished to see bombers and fighters roaming the skies and black smoke rising from the American base and adjoining military installations.
One of the fighters shot out the front landing gear of his Flying Fortress as he approached the runway. But he careened to a landing and led his crew to a swamp alongside the runway to escape the inferno.
You might also remember him for this:
…
Early in the Cold War, the P-82 was viewed by the Pentagon as a potential escort in the event bombers like the B-29 were called upon to attack the Soviet Union. The pioneering test flight by Colonel Thacker and his co-pilot, Lt. John Ard, provided evidence that the fighter could carry out such a mission.
During the 14½-hour flight from Hickam, a mechanical glitch prevented the plane from jettisoning three empty fuel tanks, and the P-82 fought drag from the unwanted weight and strong headwinds. By the time it touched down, it had only enough fuel left for another 30 minutes of flight.
…
He flew World War II bombing missions out of New Guinea, Italy and England. He later joined the nation’s leading test pilots in experimental flights over California’s high desert at Muroc Army Air Field in California, later renamed Edwards Air Force Base.
In addition to flying B-17 Flying Fortresses in World War II, Colonel Thacker piloted Superfortresses in the Korean War and high-altitude missions in the Vietnam War.
…
George Blake is burning in Hell.
Like the Cambridge-educated moles Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, Mr. Blake became a dedicated Marxist, disillusioned with the West, and a high British intelligence officer while secretly working for the Soviets. His clandestine life had lasted less than a decade, but cost the lives of many agents and destroyed vital British and American operations in Europe.
Unlike the Cambridge clique, who defected when the authorities closed in, Mr. Blake was caught in 1961, tried secretly and sentenced to 42 years in prison. Five years later, with inside and outside help, he escaped from the Wormwood Scrubs prison in London and fled to Moscow. He left behind a wife, three children and an uproar over his getaway, the tatters of a case that encapsulated the intrigues of a perilous nuclear age, with flash points in Korea and Germany, where Blake served.
…
In 1955, he was sent to Berlin to recruit Soviet officers as double agents. Instead he began passing British and American secrets to the Soviets, including the identities of some 400 spies and details of many Western espionage operations, among them two of the most productive intelligence sources of the Cold War: tunnels in Berlin and Vienna that were used to tap K.G.B. and Soviet military telephones.
Mr. Blake’s double life was exposed in 1961 by a Polish intelligence defector, Michael Goleniewski. Tried in closed court, he was given three consecutive 14-year terms. But in 1966, with outside help from three men he had met in prison, he escaped with a rope ladder thrown over the wall. A waiting car sped him to a hide-out, and he was smuggled out of the country and fled to Moscow.