Wilson native Duane Butler, U.S. Air Force, Vietnam era
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Duane Butler
By Missy Klatt
Duane Butler of rural Wilson had a short but interesting career in the military. Duane grew up in the Wilson area and has lived there all his life. He is a 1969 graduate of Spring Valley High School.
Duane enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and he states that he had about a month and a half “vacation” after he graduated before he started his service. He did his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base (AFB) in San Antonio, Texas. He then went to Rantoul, IL (Chanute AFB) for Jet Mechanic training. He then went to Reese AFB in Lubbock, TX.
At Reese he was in flight line maintenance. For most of his service he was at an ATC Base. He jokes that they called it American Toy Company but it actually stood for Air Training Command. He noted that that is where the officers started their training on jets.
Duane enjoyed working on flight line maintenance, “you weren’t inside, you weren’t doing the same thing every day.” When he first got there he said that he worked on engine tear-down where they would have to do routine maintenance on the engine after so many hours of use. This entailed tearing the whole engine down and chemically clean it. Then another crew would put it all back together.
Eventually he worked flight line maintenance on what they called a super sucker, where they would test everything after the engines were rebuilt. Duane explains that they took the aircraft and backed it into a culvert pipe that sat above the ground (all strapped down). The pipe was 100-200 feet long and then it went straight into the air so the exhaust could go up and out. This way they
Duane Butler
could test the engines without being on the tarmac and having somebody by chance walk behind and possibly getting injured or as he says bouncing down the tarmac at 80 miles an hour.
Duane enthuses, “I loved that job.”
For a lot of the testing Duane would sit in the co-pilot’s seat and check dials etc. while the guy in the pilots seat would be revving the engines and letting off and revving them back up again, all while the jet is tethered to the ground with one inch wire cables on each side of the landing gear. Duane reminisce “by God it would stretch those cables, you’re looking at the ground and stretching those cables a foot, foot and a half.” While he was thinking, holy crap! During this testing they also had a guy on the outside of the jet checking that everything is safety wired the way it was supposed to be and checking for any oil leaks, etc.
Duane recalls one time they had a fuel leak and even though they shut it down right away, the guy on the outside get drenched in fuel.
While he was in Lubbock he was supposed to be shipping out to go over seas and a guy came up to Duane and said ‘hey Butler, I see your order has been red lined.’ Duane asked what that meant and he said I don’t know, you got a big red line through your orders on the bulletin board in he CO room. Duane who thought he would be there for another month or two never checked on the board so he went over and checked it out and sure enough there was a red line through his name and six to ten other names out of a couple of hundred that had red lines through their names. A Captain walked past and he asked him what it meant. He said you were supposed to go but you’re not going so Duane asked him where he was supposed to go and the captain said watch the bulletin board. He never did find out why he was red lined.
In the end Duane never made it Vietnam. Due to hardship, his dad having cancer and Duane also hurting his back about the same time, he was honorably discharged in August of 1970.
Duane enjoyed his time in the military because he thoroughly enjoyed his job
Duane Butler in front of the many jet engines that he worked on during his time in the U.S. Air Force.
and working with his hands. He also enjoyed the challenge of figuring out how to repair certain parts of the engines, and he enjoyed being around the various jets and learning how they worked.
However one of the worst things about being there was meeting some of the guys that were coming back from Vietnam. He guessed that about 30 percent of them had a don’t “F” with me kind of attitude. He said most were just glad to be back home in the states. He also remarks that he lost quite a few friends over there.
When he first got out of the service he tried to get a job a Northwest (airline) but at the time they were on strike and he didn’t hear back from them for a long time. By the time he finally did hear back from them about a year and a half later he was already established at Anderson Windows in a job that he really liked so he never worked on jets again.
Duane’s dad, Richard was in the U.S. Army during World War II but once they found out he had asthma he was honorably discharged. Duane’s older brother, Dick was also in the army during the Vietnam era but he was stationed in Germany.
Duane has been a member of Matson-Miller Legion Post 330 in Wilson for 42 years.
Duane has been married to Pat for 49 years. They have two sons, Mark and Kent who each have a girl and a boy.