More detail on this person: TH-55A crashed tail
low in left bank while on local navigation
training mission with 2LT R.F. Pettiford.Both 2LT
Reuben F. Pettiford and 2LT William H. Shackleford
were 69-8 classmates of mine at Ft. Wolters. We
started flight school in August of 1968. There
were many students in each class in those days
but both LT Pettiford and LT Shackleford stood
out in my mind immediately as being well spoken,
fine gentlemen and really good athletes. I
remember Bill Shackleford played quarterback on
our class touch football team and could really
throw the ball. I could run pretty well in those
days and caught quite a few passes from him. This information was last updated 05/18/2016
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Date posted on this site:
03/10/2024
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Most of the students in our class flew TH-55's. I
recall that we were on one of our early cross
country flight's without an IP on the date of the
accident in October 68. LT's Pettiford and
Shackleford were both flying together that day. I
remember some sort of radio call about a missing
aircraft late in the flight period and a little
while later another call came back that the
aircraft had been found in a field and both pilots
were deceased. I did not see the aircraft or crash
site but I remember an IP saying the TH-55 had an
engine failure, they had picked an appropriate
forced landing area but probably did not see the
wires in it until they were quite low and probably
tried to maneuver over them and had insufficient
rotor RPM to cushion the landing.
Most of our IERW class had not been to Vietnam
and had not experienced losing friends so
suddenly. It certainly brought home the fact that
flying could be as dangerous a business as others
had said even far from a combat area.
CH-34's were used for MEDEVAC at Ft. Wolters
when I was there and the sound of those aircraft
were very distinctive, especially to our wives. My
wife heard one launch during that flight period
and she knew I was flying at the time. Needless to
say there were many hugs and tears that night as
she knew both LT Pettiford and LT Shackleford as
well.
From: Bill Blaine, Class 69-8 and 69-10