remembers the End of the Cold War
Here's a bit of history. September 27, 1991, I
was the Wing Commander of the 319th Bomb Wing at Grand Forks AFB, ND. That
evening I received a call while I was at the Officer's Club telling me I needed
to be in our Command Post at 0600 the following morning (Saturday) because the
Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC) wanted to talk to all
his commanders. The next morning the message that you probably can't read (below)
came to all the Wing Commanders in SAC telling us to take all our bombers and
tankers off alert, the Cold War was over!! What an exciting weekend we had
downloading all the nuclear weapons off the bombers safely and getting all our
alert aircraft off the alert pad. We were all done downloading by sunset
Saturday and we taxied all the aircraft off the pad Sunday morning. A lot of
folks can't put a hard date on exactly when the Cold War ended, but we could in
SAC. That was 30 years ago, and a lot has happened since then. The world is not
necessarily a safer place!
Joseph Kinego is a retired USAF Colonel who was not only the
Commander of the 319 Bomb Wing, he has piloted the RF-4, B-1, and the SR-71
during the Cold War. Col Kinego was recently inducted into the Florida Aviation Hall of Fame
