Retired Col. George E. “Bud” Day, the most decorated Airman in US Air Force history, passed away in Shalimar, Florida, on 27 July 2013. He was eighty-eight. Day, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam, received close to seventy medals—fifty of them combat-related—during a career that spanned from World War II to 1976. Day logged more than 8,000 flying hours in a dozen fighter types. But when asked at a 2006 POW reunion what his favorite aircraft were, he named a bomber and a transport. He said: “The B-52 because it forced the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table and the C-141 because it brought me home.”
