THE BADGES BROKER

Smith replied that was Travis’ responsibility, only to have Travis thunder back, “Do it!”

Smith quietly let the award drop, but not Travis. Shortly after, Smith’s command received a Presidential Unit Citation.

Travis’ sterling combat performance not only earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, the French Croix de Guerre, and the Legion d’honneur, but also a brigadier general’s star in September 1944.

After the war’s end, Travis returned to Hickam Air Force Base as the 7th Air Force chief of staff and then commander. In September 1948, he was appointed commanding general of the Pacific A ir Command.

On June 17, 1949, Travis arrived in Solano County to take command of both the Fairfield-Suisun Air Force Base and Strategic Air Command’s 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, which was activated a month before he arrived.

Tailor Phil Zumpano, who ran a shop at the base altering and repairing uniforms, remembered Travis “as a prince of a guy.”

When the Air Force tried to move Zumpano from his shop in the passenger terminal, Travis stepped in and stopped the move.

“He said since the terminal was built with MATS funds and I did work for MATS, I could stay,” Zu mpano said.

The next year, the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing became the 9th Bombardment Wing. With the start of the Korean War, it undertook increased practice bombing runs to be ready for deployment to Korea.

On the night of Aug. 5, 1950, Travis got on a B-29 Superfortress bomber as an observer to accompany the aircraft on its mission to carry an atomic bomb casing to t he Pacific.

A propeller malfunction after liftoff, combined with the failure of the landing gear to retract, forced the pilot to try to attempt to make a crash landing near the end of the base’s runway. He didn’t make it.

One of those aboard the B-29 at the time was 1st Lt. William Braz, the last known surviving member of the B-29 crew who was interviewed for a 2013 Travis Heritage Center story.

Braz said in the interview that the

B-29 was halfway down the runway when the No. 2 engine propeller started running away. The pilot, Capt. Eugene Steffes, turned the aircraft back toward the base to put it back down. The B-29 lost airspeed and Steffes told the co-pilot to tell everyone to prepare for a crash landing. Braz was almost out of his seat when someone said something was wrong with the No. 3 engine.

“It looked like things were getting difficult,” Braz said in the interview. “I ran toward the back to get into a crash landing position and started to pull down the crash crossbar. Just then, Gen. Travis told me, ‘Get back, get ready. There’s no time for that’.” Travis then pulled Braz down just before the plane hit.

At the base’s bakery, Sgt. Lewis Sequeria and four others heard the aircraft’s agony and looked up to see it pass over, then plow into the ground near the base’s present Main Gate, according to a Solano Republican article.

Sequeria and his men took off after it.

“We saw it coming down, hit and start skidding,” Sequeria said later. “It was skidding and we were actually chasing the plane.”

Sgt. Paul Ramoneda reached the aircraft first, followed by Sequeria and the others. They skirted the rear of the burning B-29 to get to the cockpit. Hearing cries, they helped Steffes out. The co-pilot got stuck, but Braz gave him a push and followed after.

“He (the pilot) told us to get away before the tanks blew. About that time, .50caliber ammo and flares started going off and help started arriving,” Sequeria said.

Travis was still alive when rescuers pulled him from the wreckage, but the general died on the way to the base hospital. Eight of the 18 people on the bomber survived.

Flaming aviation fuel quickly engulfed the aircraft despite the best efforts of base firefighters. Sequeria ordered his men back and all but Ramoneda followed. Ramoneda turned back, yelling that he intended to save more men trapped in the bomber.

“The last time I saw him, he had wrapped his apron around his head and face, and was starting into the airplane,” Sequeria said.

Then the 8,000 gallons of aviation fuel and the explosives in the bomb casing went up “in a blanket of flame,” the Solano Republican ar ticle said.

It engulfed the base’s firefighting equipment, killing Ramoneda and five other airmen, injuring 60 a irmen and local firefighters, and setting fire to the base trailer park. The death toll would have been higher if not for an unknown lieutenant who cleared out the trailers before the explosion.

Ray Hosley, commander of the 9th Bomb Wing, said in a later statement on the crash that the aircraft “made a kind of crackling sound and that’s when she went.”

“We, old Dan (Smith) and I, we hit the ground, and I remember just seeing lights, the fire and seeing this stuff flying,” said Hosley, who escaped without a scratch but was deaf for six weeks from the blast.

The blast dug a 6-foot-deep, 30-footwide crater, damaged almost every building on base, shattered glass windows as far away as downtown Fairfield, and was heard in Vallejo.

It also destroyed the base fire department and the call went out to nearby fire departments to bring in more men and equipment to put out the burning wreckage and stop a blaze that fanned out of control into nearby grasslands.

Robert Dittmer, then the base fire chief, said in a later Daily Republic interview that he was the closest person to the blast to survive. It picked him up and threw him through the air.

“I came to lying in a hole and kept trying to crawl out,” Dittmer said.

Fairfield resident Warren Levy said in a 2000 i nterview that his first warning of the disaster was a flicker in his car’s rear view mirror seconds before, “the concus sion shoved me up against the car and it looked like the entire base had gone up.”

The 19 bodies were taken to the McCune Garden Chapel in Vacaville and Travis was later buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Even as cleanup was underway, the combination of Travis’ local popularity and his sudden death prompted base officers and local commu nity leaders to lobby to rename the base in his honor.

Officials at the Pentagon agreed and on Oct. 20, 1950, an Air Force special order renamed the base. A formal dedication ceremony took place on Apri l 20, 1950.