Brigadier General Frederick Castle, the B-17 he stayed in to save his crew, and the SAC base that bore his name
On Christmas Eve 1944, Brigadier General Frederick Walker Castle was leading 2,000 American bombers — the largest single mission of the European war — when seven German Messerschmitts attacked his B-17 Flying Fortress over Liege, Belgium. The aircraft caught fire. Castle ordered his crew to bail out, refusing to release the bomb load over friendly Belgian territory below. He stayed at the controls until the last man cleared the airplane. Then the bomber exploded, killing Castle and his copilot. Castle was 36, posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor — the highest-ranking American officer to earn one in air combat. Two years later, on January 17, 1946, the Army Air Forces renamed the basic flying school at Atwater, California in his honor. Castle Air Force Base flew B-29s, B-47s, and most famously B-52s for the Strategic Air Command from 1946 until BRAC closed it on September 30, 1995. Today the Castle Air Museum sits on the former base — a Convair B-36 Peacemaker (one of only four left), an SR-71A Blackbird, a U-2 Dragon Lady, a B-58 Hustler, and the B-17 painted in Castle's personal markings. The aircraft sit on the same ramp where SAC alert crews waited for a call that, thankfully, never came.