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A time to mark milestones at Barksdale

BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. — The sound of jet bombers may be drowned out by the munching of cake and possibly the popping of champagne corks as the Mighty 8th Air Force prepares to mark a milestone year.

“It’s going to be a really exciting year for 8th Air Force, with two significant anniversaries,” said Maj. Richard Komurek, the unit’s spokesman. “One is the 60th anniversary of the B-52, the other is the 70th anniversary of the 8th Air Force. The leadership is excited.”

Formal ceremonies will mark the actual birthday, said Lane Callaway, 8th Air Force historian, adding there will be a bit of pre-birthday celebration as well.

“Historian Gary Joiner, on his Red River Radio show ‘History Matters’ on Jan. 31, will talk about the 8th Air Force,” Callaway said. “On Feb. 1, the anniversary day itself, there will be an all-ranks Reveille ceremony at the Cyber Innovation Center at 7:30 a.m.”

The 8th Air Force now has its headquarters at the CIC, in Bossier City just north of the base and adjacent to Bossier Parish Community College. It relocated there when Air Force Global Strike Command stood up at Barksdale and took over its headquarters. It will remain at the CIC a year or so until renovations to a mirror-image building on the north side of Barksdale are complete and the unit can return to the base.

“That day we will continue at 1 p.m. with an anniversary recognition ceremony at the CIC, on the fourth floor,” Callaway continued. That by-invitation event will include proclamations from the mayors of the Shreveport and Bossier City, as well as Gov. Bobby Jindal, and the official attachment of an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award streamer to the 8th Air Force flag. The unit recently was awarded the prestigious honor.

The ceremony also will see Maj. Gen. Steve “Seve” Wilson, the 8th Air Force commander, and the unit’s youngest member, Airman First Class Amanda Williams, cutting a large cake to mark the occasion.

When 8th Air Force was born as the VIII Bomber Command on Feb. 1, 1942, at the former Langley Field, Va., it was the nucleus of what would become, within just a few short years, the world’s largest bomber force.

Over the next 70 years, its mission changed as it moved from Virginia to Georgia to England, then to the Pacific theater of war, and then to a variety of bases across the world and the country until it came to Barksdale in 1975, where it has remained the longest.

“It has changed and evolved, though it remains the same,” Callaway said. “During World War II, in Europe especially and then in the Pacific, its purpose was to project strategic air power, put bombs on target, take the battle to the enemy. In many ways today it does the same thing, [though] obviously the technology has changed.”

Also unchanged is the sacrifice sometimes asked of its personnel. In World War II, Callaway said the Marine Corps suffered a little over 19,000 combat deaths.

“The 8th Air Force had almost 26,000,” Callaway said.

This anniversary theme will continue through the year, as the unit marks other occasions for which details still are jelling.

In late March, 8th Air Force will hold its Outstanding Airmen of the Year banquet, with the anniversary theme.

On May 24, the 8th Air Force Heritage Banquet, a formal, by-invitation event, will continue the commemorative theme by bringing together, perhaps for the first time, living former 8th Air Force commanders, command chiefs and senior enlisted advisers.

Also to be commemorated this year are anniversaries of the unit’s long-serving strategic weapons system, the venerable B-52 bomber. April 15 will mark the 60th anniversary of the first flight of the bomber, and this fall marks the anniversary of the last Stratofortress rolling off the assembly line and being accepted into Air Force service.

The last B-52 made, an H-model with the tail number 61-0040, left the Boeing factory on Oct. 26, 1962, and still flies out of Minot Air Force Base, N.D.