Famed test pilot, retired Brigadier General Robert "Bob" Cardenas, died Thursday, March 10, 2022 in San Diego. He lived to the age of 102.
Born March 10, 1920, in Mérida, Mexico, Died March 10, 2022, in San Diego. From June 1947 to July 1949, Cardenas was a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base and Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and was awarded the Air Medal with two Oak leaf tufts for experimental flight tests at Edwards AFB. During World War II, Brigadier General Robert "Bob" Cardenas served as a B - 24 pilot in the European Theater of Operations with the 8th Airforce, 44th Bomb Group 506th Squadron. He was awarded the Air Medal and two Oak leaf tufts for bombing missions before the B - 24 bomber was shot during the Friedrichshafen (DE) mission on March 18, 1944, although wounded in the head by anti-aircraft fire, he managed to parachute out of the burning B-24 bomber, the B-24 crashed into the forest near Fehraltorf, Switzerland. Undoubtedly, his most notable achievement was the flight of the B-29 launcher that released the experimental X-1 rocket plane, in which then-Captain Charles "Chuck" Yeager became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound in 1947. Cardenas also pioneered jet aircraft development, completing test flights of the P-59 Airacomet and the XB-45 - the Air Force's first jet fighter and bomber. He was also operations officer for the testing of the YB-49 flying wing only aircraft. After the YB-49 crash that killed Captain Glenn Edwards and Major Daniel Forbes in 1948, Cardenas was the investigating officer. Upon his return to the United States in November 1944, Cardenas was assigned as a test pilot at Wright Field, Ohio, where he attended the Experimental Flight Test School. Cardenas' last assignment in the Air Force was as chief of the National Strategic Target List Division, Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. His job was to develop a list of targets to be attacked by U.S. retaliatory forces in a general nuclear war and to develop estimates of enemy defense and offensive capabilities. Cardenas was born in 1920 in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. At age 5, he moved to San Diego and attended San Diego State University. He later graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1955 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering.
It is interesting that he was the only Swiss internees who made it to the rank of general staff officer, and probably one of the few still alive. (Maybe there are more Swiss internees alive but I don't know of any).
