Lieutenant Colonel Steve Brown

LTC Steve Brown served in the Air Force from 1968 to 1991, twenty-three years as a pilot. Steve had a very distinguished career in the Air Force. As a new pilot, he paid his dues flying a Caribou carrying everything from ammunition, supplies, troops, to livestock in Vietnam. He graduated to the B-52’s flying bombing missions during Operation Linebacker II. Negotiations for peace talks had bogged down, so President Nixon ordered the bombing of Hanoi. Operation Linebacker II was important because it forced the communists back into serious peace negotiations. After Vietnam, as the Cold War intensified, Steve sat on the tarmac on alert in the cockpit of his B-52 armed with nuclear weapons. From the B-52s, Steve joined a very elite group of pilots flying the U-2 reconnaissance plane. Dressed in an astronaut suit, armed only with a camera, Steve would fly over Cold War hotspots, secretly capturing images.