535th Tactical Airlift Squadron

 

The 535th Troop Carrier Squadron was formed from the former Army 57th Aviation Company at Vung Tau on 1 January 1967.  The squadron was initially based at Vung Tau.  The Army Commander of the 57th was Major Maynard A. Austin.

The 535th was reactivated as of 18 April 2005!  See this front page article published in the Hickam Kukini newspaper on 21 November 2003.  I received a copy from Steve Diamond of the 15th Airlift Wing History Office.  Note that the photo they chose is from our home page!

Here is a link to the pages covering the ceremony at Hickam on 18 April 2005: 535th Ceremony

Now that the Squadron has been reactivated, the folks at Hickam have been able to get an accurate Lineage and History of the Squadron from official sources.

 

Squadron Patches, Old and New
Vietnam Patch (1967 - 1972) New Patch (2005)

 

Commanders:

1966 (Operation Red Leaf, before activation) — Jan 1967 — Lt Col Leo Ehman

4 Jan 1967 — Lt Col Edwin B. Owens

15 Dec 1967 — Lt Col Joseph Faulkner

21 Jun 1968 — Lt Col Harry F. Hunter

12 Apr 1969 — Lt Col Richard D. Kimball

1 Nov 1969 — Lt Col Clem B. Myers

13 Nov 1969 — Lt Col John J. Hanley

18 Jul 1970 — Lt Col John D. Pennekamp

3 Oct 1970 — Lt Col Thomas D. Moyle

31 Dec 1970 — Lt Col Rupert S. Richardson

12 Sep 1971 — Lt Col Dean S. Downing

8 Dec 1971-24 Jan 1972 — Lt Col James S. Knox

 

Old Newsletters

Jay Baker dug out some old 535th newsletters.  Called the Tiger Rag, it was hand-produced on a typewriter.  Jay sent along two of them and I have scanned and converted both to Adobe PDF format.  I have left in place all the spelling and grammar mistakes, so let's not get too critical!  I have done the best I can to reproduce to original as closely as practical, but it is impossible to find a type face that exactly matches the old typewriter used for the original.  This was about 20 man-hours of work and requires above-average expertise with Microsoft Word, so don't expect to see more quickly!  As of 15 May 2005, these have been proofread and corrected a second time and are in much better shape.

Note - you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or later for this document.  If you can't open it, just go to www.adobe.com and download the latest free reader.

 

 

Revised:
13 Jan 2009 03:17 PM