For many years, starting in 1961, my major hobby was "spotting" aircraft,
photographing them and
collecting negatives and - unfortunately too late in the sixties
- making slides of military aircraft,
mostly USAF.
I started visiting Soesterberg AB in the Summer of 1961. A schoolmate (thank
you Wico) took me there
the first time. If not for it's flights over my hometown Utrecht, than
for the many visits to the base, my
passion soon was formed arround what I saw "each" day : the Convair
F-102 Delta Dagger.
The 32nd FIS flew the "Deuce" from here during the period Dec
1960 - July 1969.
My interest in the F-102 became stronger
and over the two
following decades many
information,
pictures, negatives and slides were collected about the service-history
of the Delta Dagger .
Writing a review about it' s service history here in Europe appeared to
be possible, based on what I had
collected, completed by the many documents gained from official
USAF files
(the AF Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB, AL - in those days the
Albert F. Simpson Historical
Research Center). As a member of the AAHS (American Aviation
Historical Society ; 1968-1991)
I was stimulated to publish articles for their Journal . The Fall
1984 Journal contained my first publication
about this fine aircraft, titled " The F-102 in USAF European Service"
.
This encouraged me to set my goal to publication of a book with the
same subject. After a call for help
in "Air Force Magazine" several former members of the units that flew the
F-102 in Europe, sent their
personal photographs and lent me AF-photos for publication in my intended
book. A manuscript was
offered to "Squadron/Signal Publications Inc., Carrollton, TX in 1987.
This finally resulted in a book
called "F-102 Delta Dagger in Europe", which was published in the
Summer of 1991.
During all these years my special interest for a number of other USAF aircraft
was of course still present
and gradually I decided to start another research project with publication
as a final goal.
The service history of the Kaman HH-43 Huskie , a helicopter which was
arround European bases
together with my "favourite" F-102 .
For the HH-43 I however did not have official documentation at the time
(the early nineties).
This changed greatly as a result of my first visit to the USAF archives
at Maxwell AFB, AL , the AFHRA
(Air Force Historical Research Agency) during October 1996.
Here I spent 6 days of research into the USAF
documents.
I started to collect documents with the idea to cover the whole service
history of the Kaman HH-43
Huskie worldwide over the period 1959 - 1975
During this visit to the USA I also have spent two days at
the Still Picture Branch of the
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at College Park, MD
(close to Washington, DC) .
Here one can find the many thousands of photographs that the USAF
has taken.
In May 2001 I returned to the NARA Archives at College Park, MD :
5 days of hard labour to
make digital copies of as many HH-43 photos as possible.
Followed by a two week visit to the AFHRA at Maxwell AFB, AL
This research resulted in many more copies of USAF documents, but
it remains a problem to
compile a review on the basis of gained information. Many files remain
closed for research due to
restrictions by US law.
At first I have to research all the copies of documents which I brought
with me in 2001 and the 150plus
photographs which I managed to copy.
Then I will put these together and maybe this work will turn out to be
interesting enough , but far
from complete, to be published.
Johan Ragay, November 2001
updated
07/02/2007
