From: Wolfgang Samuel <wolfsamuel@msn.com>
To: webguy@55srwa.org
Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 4:05:45 PM

I note with sadness the passing of a true gentleman and a great pilot, Howard 'Rusty' Rust.  I spent three years at Forbes (62 to 65) as a Raven 2 flying the RB-47H with Rusty at the controls.  He was one heck of a pilot, and I would have flown with him anywhere in the world no matter what.  When some crazy Navy jock made a run on us one night during the Cuban Missile crisis, thinking we were a Russian Badger, it was Rusty's cool that kept Joe Racine, our copilot, from blowing him away.  Nerves were frayed in those days - we all thought we were close to Armageddon.  How can I forget that night landing at Brize in early 63 with the place totally fogged in - but we were out of fuel, coming back from a long mission up north, and had to land or die doing so.  Of course at times like that the GCA never worked, and Howie, our trusty navigator - better known as zig-zag 'take five degrees left Rusty; four degrees right; must stay on track' - brought us down over the landing threshold - but we were pretty high up when Joe pulled the brake chute.  I think Howie avoided his radar scope with difficulty as it came flying out of its mount - the three of us in the aisle, Harry Tull, Chuck Meyer and I, didn't know if we should laugh or cry.  We laughed, opened the bar and flew another day.  Rusty never touched a drink, he was always ready to go and loved flying that B-47.  It was his flying skill that actually made me believe that the beast we flew around the world was actually a benign and trusty steed - well, we never lost an engine, but everything else that could go wrong Rusty mastered with quiet aplomb.  I remember a Baltic mission when that stupid HF antenna detached from the vertical and whipped our trusty steed nearly to death until we managed to get back to Brize.  In back it felt like sitting inside a drum, helmet or not helmet.  And then there was Alaska in the depth of Winter.  The King Crab was the greatest, and that darn earthquake nearly made Chuck Meyer and me spill our drinks at the bar.  One of our guys was just landing when the shockwave hit - he couldn't figure out why he made such a lousy landing until we clewed him in - he felt better after that.  Then there was Clark in the early days of the Vietnam War; the Gulf of Tonkin, and many more runways in strange places than I care to remember.  We were a real team and Rusty always made sure that that's the way things stayed.  I salute you my friend, you did well and I'll never forget.  See ya.  Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, Colonel, USAF (Ret.) - Rusty's Raven 2.