Welcome to our War Stories page!  On this page we will give you some war stories from our members.
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I remember March 1989.  We were on a routine photo mapping mission to Alaska.  It was also the final deployment of my 20 year career in the Air Force as a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft support troop.  Our base location:  Eielson Air Force Base,  near Fairbanks.

We were supposed to photo map the ranges in the central part of the state during the Red Flag Alaska bombing competition.  The photos taken with my camera systems were to be used by the completion judges to evaluate the participating units’ accuracy and skill.

We had gone through about four days of regular photo runs when disaster struck.  The Exxon Valdez ran aground off the Alaska coast at Prince William Sound.  The result being the worst oil spill in Alaska history.

Word came down quickly that the competition would wait.  We had a real world mission tasking.  Our detachment smoothly re-tasked from bomb competition evaluation to critical monitoring of the oil spill’s first few days.

Those initial overhead pictures of the that the world saw, were the product of the 9^th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing. With our systems, the Air Force photos looked as if taken from space.  Actual satellite imagery would come later.

I am very proud of the time I was able to spend in our 49^th state.

Kevin Woodbury, USAF, Retired
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