In Memoriam - George Day

Posted 28 July 2013

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Photo by John Rossino

Retired Col. George E. “Bud” Day, the most decorated Airman in US Air Force history, passed away in Shalimar, Florida, on 27 July 2013. He was eighty-eight. Day, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam, received close to seventy medals—fifty of them combat-related—during a career that spanned from World War II to 1976. Day logged more than 8,000 flying hours in a dozen fighter types. But when asked at a 2006 POW reunion what his favorite aircraft were, he named a bomber and a transport. He said: “The B-52 because it forced the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table and the C-141 because it brought me home.”

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