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PHOTOCOPIED October 2, 2002;  NASM PRESERVATION COPY

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ACCIDENT RATE HIGH

The accident rate on the F-100's, the fastest jet plane now flown by USAFE, is high, partly because of young inexperienced pilots, partly because the best flying weather in Germany is usually poorer than the worst place in the United States.

Recently when two F-100s crashed, killing both pilots as well as three German civilians during a blinding snow storm, USAFE was criticized by the Germans for allowing planes to fly in bad weather.

Everest explained that his crews have to be kept ready and proficient around the clock, despite the weather.

Brig. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the first Negro general in the Air Force, who is director of operations for USAFE, believes that NATO has a much stronger fighting force today than it did a year ago. He says that the strike capability is better with the addition of the F-100 and the subsonic B - 66. "We have gained considerably more experience and operational techniques for a better missile program."

But he agrees that operations "suffer from the common ills of the Air Force's general lack of skilled personnel in maintenance and supply, low re-enlistment rates in the technical 

[[image - black & white portrait photograph of Brigadier General Davis]]
[[caption]] BRIG. GEN. DAVIS  USAFE operations director. [[/caption]]

grades and a shortage of funds in some areas."

Davis is convinced that the Colorado taxpayer, like the taxpayer throughout the United States, can help the needs of USAFE by making "available incentives necessary to keep alert, highly trained personnel interested in the Air Force as a career." He lists the incentives as "pay, prestige and personal satisfaction," along with the newest, most advanced equipment American science and industrial capability can produce.

CARRY H-BOMBS

USAFE has nothing to say on whether its planes fly loaded with nuclear weapons, but the British parliament was told by the prime minister that American planes in the United Kingdom carry H-bombs. And a German government official agreed that the same thing was true in his country.

In addition to its combat mission, USAFE maintains its own air evacuation system which flies Air Force personnel, their dependents and occasionally civilians, to a huge hospital in Weisbaden, where hand picked doctors and nurses provide top medical care.

It supervises housing for 90,000 
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Air Force dependents, an easier task in France and Germany than in Algeria, Libya, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia where there is a 44 pct. shortage of housing facilities.

USAFE operates 67 schools and 1,260 teachers brought from the United States for 24,600 students. And it supervises community activities designed to improve American-European relations.

RELATIONS GOOD

M/Sgt. Ralph L. Hay, 33, son of Mrs. Alice P. Hay of Colorado Springs, who has a bachelor of science degree from the University of Utah, believes that German-American relations are good. Stationed in Weisbaden, Hay sees evidence of the damage created by bombs his plane dropped during World War II.

But he thinks there is no bitterness in the hearts of the Germans.

Rudolph Engst, a retired German soldier who now makes his living driving an Air Force car, agrees with Hay. But another driver, Hans Engel, a former S.S. trooper is resentful. He thinks that America is keeping East Germany from being reunited with West Germany.

And many Germans agree with an over-all European feeling of antipathy toward Americans. Part of it is caused by envy of the apparent wealth and comforts which every American, tourist or military, seems to enjoy in European eyes.

And another frequent complaint is that most Americans do not know a single European citizen. The Air Force and their families live in their own settlements, shop at the commissaries and post exchanges, and eat and play in their own clubs.

A minority of the Americans are studying the languages of Europe and making a serious and successful effort to know Europeans better. These point with disapproval to the "American ghettos" in which most U.S. families live.

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