Delaware National
Guard
Spruance enters
Aviation Hall of FameBy Maj. Len Gratteri, Public Affairs Officer
Brig. Gen. (retired) William W. Spruance, regarded as the founding father of our Delaware Air Guard, was inducted into the Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame in a ceremony held at the duPont Aviation Facility on the New Castle County Airport on October 12th.
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Serving in the aviation community for more than 60 years, Brig. Gen. William W. Spruance was a founding father of the Delaware Air National Guard and recently inducted into the Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame Class of 2002. (Photo courtesy of 166th Airlift Wing Visual Information.) |
Spruance received his military commission in 1939 through Princeton’s ROTC program as an Army Field Artillery forward observer. A year later he was on active duty with the 2nd Armor Division at Fort Benning, Georgia, serving under the command of Gen. George S. Patton. Spruance met Patton at the local airport where they were both learning to fly their own private airplanes. Patton was learning to fly because communications from air to ground on manuevers required commanders, like Patton, to shout from open windows of slow flying planes at uncamoflauged troops below. Wanting to improve on this strategy, Patton tasked Spruance to take the lead in devising better communications.
Piloting rented Piper Cub aircraft or his own Culver Cadet, Spruance helped develop air-ground communications into a more efficient process, using radio communications, aerial photography, smoke flares and artillery bursts.
At the suggestion of Gen. Patton, he transferred to the Army Air Corps in 1942, flew his own plane to flight training school and graduated as "top gun" from his flight training class. He was assigned to the Troop Carrier Command and flew 362 missions into the China-Burma-India Theater, dropping supplies to troops in any kind of weather.
In 1946 he was released from active duty and became one of the original members of the Delaware Air Guard, which was organized that fall. Spruance was a pioneer in the organization, worked his way through the ranks, and in 1956 was named the Delaware Air Guard’s first Assistant Adjutant General, serving in that capacity for 20 years.
In his civilian life, Spruance served as Chief Clerk of the Delaware Legislature, County Executive, and Chairman of the Delaware Aeronautics Commission. He also served on the governing board of the Air Force Association, Aerospace Education Foundation, and National Guard Educational Foundation. For 17 years he was the Board Chairman at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and today serves as its Chairman Emeritus.
In addition to helping found the Delaware Air National Guard, Spruance is well known for surviving a T-33 airplane crash in 1961. He suffered extensive burns in the near-fatal crash, but used that as a motivational event. Today he is a safety expert and has given more than 1,500 presentations to hundreds of thousands of fellow aviators and support personnel. He has recorded training videos promoting flight and crash safety and is a regular lecturer at the International Center for Safety Education and the Air National Guard Training and Education Center (ANGTEC). In his honor, he was the first reserve component officer to receive the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, the Air National Guard has named its annual safety award after him, and ANGTEC recently dedicated a building in his name.
For more information about Brig. Gen. Spruance, log onto his web site -
http://www.angtec.ang.af.mil/Spruance.