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Interview with Col John A. Adams '71 Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis. Cold War Oral History Project Interview with Col. Ross Schmoll by Eric Osborne, February 2004 ©Adams Center, Virginia Military Institute About the Interviewer: Dr. Eric W. Osborne is an adjunct professor at Virginia Military Institute who teaches courses in modern European history, British history, and World History. His research focuses on topics in European and military history. Osborne: Today is February 13, 2004 – Friday the 13th, 2004 – and I’m Eric Osborne and I’m sitting here today with Col. Ross Schmoll, Retired U.S. Air Force. We’re going to be talking about his experience in the Cold War. Thank you very much, Col. Schmoll, for being with us today. This is invaluable for us, particularly since you are our first Air Force interviewee. Schmoll: It’s Army here. Osborne: Yes, lots of Army. For the digital oral record, would you briefly recount your military service in terms of dates, promotions and the like. Schmoll: Sure. I came in the Air Force on July 11, 1959. I had graduated from Cornell University that year and after attending summer camp I went on active duty at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. I went through pre-flight, which could be considered just a general orientation for new officers. I was then assigned to James Conley Air Force Base in Waco, Texas where I completed, in June of 1960, undergraduate navigator training. I graduated from there. The students were allowed to select their follow-on training assignment based on class standing and I chose to go to RBN, which is Radar Bombing Navigation training in Sacramento, California. My wife and I went there and about a year later, 1961— early spring, I graduated from bomb training and also from nuclear weapons training. I was still a second lieutenant. 2 I went through B-47 crew training at both Wichita, Kansas and at Little Rock, Arkansas. When that was completed it was the fall of 1961 and I reported to my first operation assignment in the 509th bomb wing, the 393rd bomb squadron at Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire. I was assigned as a crew member. We had three kinds of crews in those days – Ready, which was the lowest level of so-called expertise, then there was a Select – I forget what the middle one was. At any rate, I went through combat orientation. I got my first look at an emergency war order plan that I and my crew would be responsible for when we were on alert. And I served in various capacities there at Pease until 1965. I ended up, just before I left there, as an instructor radar navigator. I was selected, I felt fortunately, to go to the B-58 supersonic bomber training. It’s the only supersonic bomber the Air Force has ever had and it’s the only supersonic bomber, I think, in the world. I went through training for that. While I was at Pease I was promoted to first lieutenant after about eighteen months and promoted to captain while there after four years so that would have been 1964, I think. So I left Pease to go to B-58 training. It was a rather long course. It was also at Sacramento, California. I completed the ground school training there and I went to Little Rock once again to go through flight training. I completed part of the training there and then there was a change of plans. My final base of assignment was to be the 305th bomb wing at, what was then called, Bunker Hill Air Force Base, Indiana. It was later known as Grissom Air Force Base, which was named after Gus Grissom, the astronaut who was killed in the fire on the Apollo. Osborne: It was the Apollo mission. Schmoll: At any rate, I went up to Indiana, completed my training, served as a crew member there, became an instructor at the combat crew training school at Bunker Hill/Grissom and in October, 1969 the Air Force made a decision to do away with all of the B-58s. There weren’t that many – only two wings: the Little Rock wing and the Grissom wing – about 120 initially. So I, once again, feel very fortunate. 3 I was able to get an assignment to the F-111 and Tactical Air Command so for the first time I was not in Strategic Air Command but I was in Tactical Air Command and I was going to be assigned at Clovis, New Mexico. Nobody in their right mind would ever go to Clovis, New Mexico unless they were ordered to go there. In any case, I was going to go through crew training at Nellis Air Force Base. That was the main training base for F-111. Up until that time all of the right-seaters in F-111s had been pilots so there were two pilots in each aircraft. The Air Force Tactical Air Command decided that they wanted to do away with the pilots in the right seat. Those officers were a very discontented bunch. They really didn’t want to be weapons systems officers. They wanted to be pilots and so the Air Force decided to change that crew requirement to radar navigator bombardiers (RNB) like I was. TAC asked the Strategic Air Command (SAC) if they would assign – I think it was 45 – radar navigator bombadiers from closing down B-58 units and so Strategic Air Command compromised and sent two, me and one other guy. We were quite fortunate, the first two right-seaters to actually go into the training and check out as crew members. During the time I was going through training the F-111 had one of its more serious problems. A wing fell off and the fleet was grounded for almost nine months. During that time I was cooling my heels in New Mexico, waiting to get back to Nellis. While I was away TDY [temporary duty] Indonesia, my wife volunteered me to go to England. So when I came back we left for England and I was one of the members of the first ten F-111 crews at RF Upper Hayford in the United Kingdom. We had to go back to Nellis when the airplane was ungrounded and completed training, came back, stayed at Upper Hayford from 1970 until 1974. During that time we had a tactical nuclear equipment as well as a conventional one and we actually had people sitting on nuclear alert at Upper Hayford and another wing at Lakenheath. Then I left there and went to Vietnam – went to Thailand in F-111s and spent a year at Takli and Korat. The war was essentially over by the time I got there. An incident occurred while I was there and the bombing of Phnom [Penh] was going on in Cambodia, the Prince [Norodom Sihanouk] was still in charge 4 and the F-111s took part in that. And then, when the war finally ended, we took the two squadrons of the F-111 wing and went back to Nellis where they were originally from and I transferred there also. I got my first chance to be a staff officer while I was still flying as a crew member in an F-111. I was selected to be an operations officer in the 429th TAC Fighter Squadron and I think, at that time, I was the first navigator to be selected for a command position of a fighter squadron. Not that there hadn’t been command navigators in the past, but not in TAC. I spent a year doing that. My turn came to be squadron commander and they weren’t ready to have a navigator be a squadron commander yet so I became a squadron commander in a maintenance squadron…component repair squadron. I did about two and a half years at that, was fortunate enough to be promoted from lieutenant colonel to colonel. I had been promoted to lieutenant colonel while I was in Thailand and so I was selected for promotion in the following assignment to colonel. Once I was promoted they had to find a place for me and I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My first chance to go someplace south and nice and a place that I selected instead of the Air Force, and, of course, you can tell that TAC wasn’t allowed because less than a year later I was transferred to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina where I was made deputy commander for maintenance. We had four squadrons of F-4Es – about 114 of them total with about 4,800 officers and COs and enlisted people in the maintenance complex. I was the DCM there until ’83, at which time I was due to go back overseas when I was selected to be the director of maintenance at the United States Air Force’s Europe. We were responsible for maintenance for all of the aircraft through USAFE, not directly, but oversight for the command. I served – the title was LGM; that was the abbreviation. I was the LGM there for three years and then I became the assistant director of logistics and worked for General Norm Campbell as his deputy and did that for a year and a half, came back to the U.S. and went to the Defense Logistics Agency. I spent a year there and discovered it was an agency that had 50,000 civilians doing the job that 5,000 G.I.s could do so I decided I’d had enough and would retire.
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