GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN - USAFA Class of 1962 (RTBs)
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN - USAFA Class of 1962 (RTBs)
...........NAME............Mo/Day/Yr ..HOW........... Combat and/or Location
Toffel, George... Feb-6 64 B-47 Crash US-Mtn Home AFB, ID
A Few De-Briefings:
The First to Leave Us...
A few years ago I was calling on a prospective Hawker buyer in Boise. The
chief pilot had a picture of a B-47 in his office. I asked him if he had
flown a B-47. He said he had been a young crew chief on a B-47, that
particular one, at Mt. Home AFB in Idaho. He said he kept the picture because
he was almost killed in that plane when it crashed. He was scheduled to get a
reward ride in the plane. At the very last minute, they bumped him for a new
brown bar who needed an orientation ride. The experienced AC over rotated and
wiped out on take-off. The new second lieutenant was George Toeffel. My
experience with George was as a summer roommate. He was all the uncouth
things you guys remember, but he had a great smile and a heart as big as
Alabama. Since someone had to go first, I think we can all be proud to follow
George back to the One... who put RTB's on this planet... to make it better.
Stub (Bob Staib)
Johnny Brucher. I was at Da Nang when he was shot down and still
remember the intel brief that next day. As I remember it, he was
shot down late in the day and they could not mount a rescue effort
until the next day. His flight talked to him after he was on the
ground. He was high on a mountain ridge and had broken his leg on
landing but otherwise was OK. I think it was the Mu Gia pass area on
the Laos side. He said he would stay under cover and look for rescue
the next morning. The group that went after him could not raise him
on the radio the next day, nor the following few days they went back
to that area. I have gone to the US Military MIA web site but it did
not contain any information.
I remember thinking that if shot down over North Viet Nam, he might
be a POW, but there were no reported POWs from Laos. Did anyone ever
hear any thing else.
Al Jackson (Note: People lost in Laos simply disappeared. We lost a Special Forces team near
the DMZ in Laos, Dec 2, 1966. We know they were taken prisoner by the NVA
(325C Div) - two of our Vietnamese team members got away - and the NVA
unequivocably deny any knowledge, even though the MIA's ID card turned up in a
DIA file. The NVA party line "Talk to the Laotians". Johnny Brucher was
apparently one of those tragedies. May God have mercy on him - the NVA were
not nice people. John Flanagan)
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