The B-17 Museum Utzenstorf, Switzerland congratulates you on your 102nd birthday, we wish you all the best, especially good health and only the best in life. We thank you for your service in the US Army Air Force and US Air Force that we can live in a free country today. We wish you many more good and beautiful moments in life.
As 1944 graduate of Texas A&M University, he experienced three wars from the front lines.
WWII, 8th Air Force, 490th Bomb Group, 849 Bomb Squadron, Pilot, 25 Missions with B-17s
Berlin Airlift (Spokane, WA to England to Germany) Pilot
Korean War, Curtis C-46 Commando Pilot, the lucky guy.
He never expected to be drafted to Korea. He went anyway and flew supply missions in a Curtis C-46 Commando. April 1952, "We flew there every other Monday," Seals recalls of his regular flights to a radar base north of the DMZ. His orders were to resupply a radar station in North Korea on a very stormy day. "We flew in at about 400 feet and pushed the stuff out," Seals explains. The crew was supposed to push pallets out the side door. They became airsick. Seals turned the controls over to his co-pilot and went back to help. At that moment, something very bad should have happened. "What happened? The plane crashed and went into a spin," Seals says as he demonstrates with his hands. "I was in midair and it just flew out from under me," Seals says. For a split second, Seals saw the ground beneath him. Then, just as suddenly, he was back in the plane. "I say it was a nano-second. I don't know how long it took, but then the plane came back under me, and I fell to my hands and knees in confusion." Making him one of the only people in aviation history to fall out of an airplane and right back into it. "I shouldn't have been there," he says, still somewhat amazed. "I should have been on the ground. I can't imagine the odds." Ask Fred Seals if he's a lucky man, and he won't necessarily name the one time he needed it most. He'll mention his health at 85, his wife, children and grandchildren, but he'll always answer yes to the question. "That's when I got lucky, more than lucky," Seals says.
Vietnam, pilot, where he flew from Da Nang.
He moved to Norman in 1958 and now edits a newsletter for B-17 veterans called "Bombs Away."
"I am very proud to have served my country in three wars, says the Texas native," Seals. "I'm part of a fourth generation of military men. My father was in the Army, I was in the Air Force, and my son and grandson were in the Army."
Babette Southard Seals interview mit COL. (RET.) Fred C. Seals
Der Glückspilz
