B-29 Bomber Pilots visit Camp Evans at Air Force Association meeting

Photo: AF_Asso-1542.jpg, by Pat Venturino, Venture Photos, with the following caption:
Left to right: Art Snyder, B-26, 29 Pilot, Joe Capriglione, 190 Pres., Ryan Misare, 360 Pres., Toby Terranova, NJ Chaplain, Bill Fosina, 195 Pres., Norm Mathews, Former 293 and NJ Pres, Thomas R. ‘Bob’ Vaucher, B-29 Pilot, Howard Leach, NJ AFA President, George Filer, KB-50J Pilot, 310 Pres., Jo Bair, 293 Secretary, Stewart Zitzner, 293 and NJ Treasurer, Ken Angrason, 192, and Anthony Devino,190 VP.

Recently, the NJ Air Force Association held a quarterly meeting at Camp Evans, Wall Township, NJ, with two B-29 Pilots in attendance. The first and speaker was Lt Col Thomas R. ‘Bob’ Vaucher, Bridgewater, NJ, the WWII B-29 Pilot who led the B-29 Show of Force over the Battleship USS Missouri during the Japanese surrender, September 2, 1945. The show of Force consisted of 525 B-29’s which took off in 45 second to one minute intervals from their bases to form up at designated locations. And then, at the time of the surrender, flew over the Battleship Missouri for an extended period of time.

In 1942, 2nd Lt Vaucher was selected to lead aircrews in delivering LB(Liberator British)-30s to Port Darwin, Australia from Wright Paterson. The LB-30 was a B-24A scheduled, before Pearl Harbor, to be delivered to the British. The British working through the US Army Signal Corps Radar Laboratory, renamed Camp Evans in 1942, and contractors MIT and Bell Telephone Laboratories, had developed a new RADAR system and had installed it in the LB-30. Neither he nor any of his crews had ever seen a B-24 and were not experienced in tricycle landing gear. They trained themselves to fly the aircraft, learned about RADAR, and delivered the planes as ordered.

The second, 1st Lt Arthur L. Snyder, Cranford, NJ, graduated from college in 1950 and was about to be drafted, but applied for and received a direct commission in the Air Force and was assigned as Base Salvage Office, Maxwell AFB, AL. The Korean War started in July and wanting to get in to combat, he applied for and was accepted for flight training. He got his wish, with three years in the Orient, flying two B-26 tours in Korea and one in Indochina where he flew B-29 covert missions for the CIA. He returned in the fall of 1954 and was a flight instructor in the B-57 before his discharged in 1955.

The above photo was taken in the lobby of the former Marconi Hotel, dedicated 100 year ago in 1914. According to their web site, Camp Evans was once the 1914 Marconi Belmar Trans-Atlantic Wireless station, the first campus of The King’s College, involved in WWII radar development, and initiated space communications in 1946. It was also a cold war technology, nuclear weapons, and space research site, the birthplace of satellite hurricane tracking, and a black history site.

The Air Force Association educates the public on the critical role of aerospace power in our nation’s defense and supports the United States Air Force and its auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol. For more information visit web sites at: www.afa.org , www.njairforceassoc.org , and https://sites.google.com/site/afa195org/ .

The Shooting Star Chapter, 195, of the Air Force Association meets monthly usually on the last Saturday of each month except during the months of July, August, November, and December at Charlie Brown’s, Chatham Township. For information on the next meeting, contact Bill Fosina at wfosina@verizon.net or 908-803-4949. Everyone is welcome.