Salute to Veterans: Serving and flying was Merced vet’s cup of tea

After 21 years in the military, Tech. Sgt. Bill Dacus is still flying planes and serving his country.

The 70-year-old Merced resident served five years in the Navy before making the leap to the Air Force, where assignments took him all over the world and gave him the chance do what he loved most – fly.

While stationed on an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam, his crew saved dozens of pilots from downed aircraft. He continues to fly planes for the Civil Air Patrol, a unit overseen by the Air Force that volunteers during natural disasters and helps find downed planes.

“I’m a sucker for a uniform and for an airplane,” he said.

Born and raised in Memphis, Tenn., Dacus joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1962, and moved into the service full time the next year. He first picked the Navy because he wanted to see the world, he said while laughing, but spent much of his time in San Diego.

Eventually, he saw action off the coast of Vietnam. As a member of a Sikorsky SH-3 helicopter crew, he helped search for downed pilots. Dacus said the most memorable rescue was of a Marine who had to ride hanging 60 feet from the chopper because the hoist stopped working.

When his run with the Navy ended in 1968, he said, the Vietnam War was still in the news. So when he started talking about going back in, his wife, Ruth, the daughter of a Navy veteran, wasn’t keen on an enlistment that would keep him away from home so much.

“The military is one of those positions, you’ll find, (that) are really hard on families because you’re gone a lot,” he said. “You’ve got to have a really understanding wife.”

Instead, an enlistment in the Air Force would allow him to keep his current rank and pick where he would be stationed. It was an easy choice to make.

After a few years in the Air Force, he came out to Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, where he trained to be a boom operator on the KC-135, which was used to refuel B-52 bombers and other large aircraft while in flight.

He took that training back to his station in Minot, N.D, where, ironically, he came closer to crashing than he ever did in Vietnam. Dacus was riding in the fourth aircraft in a series of planes leaving the runway. The timing was off, so his KC-135 hit the wake left by the earlier planes – it pitched down and came within about 25 feet of hitting the ground.

“Everybody on the ground was waiting for the fireball that didn’t happen, fortunately,” he said. “That’s probably the scariest it ever got on an airplane. I think the handrail will never get my fingerprints out of it.”

Ultimately, Dacus got his wish to see other places in the world, including duty in Guam, South Korea, England and Saudi Arabia.

Toward the end of his career in the Air Force, he was charged with talking to the enlisted men and women who were looking to leave when their commitment was up. Dacus said he often advised them that there weren’t many opportunities for them outside the military in the late 1970s, a time when private sector jobs were scarce.

“They go out looking for jobs, there’s just not that many available and they got a lot of competition,” he said. “It was pretty easy to keep them in – they got a secure income. If you’ve got a family, it’s got medical. You got everything you need in the military.”

This story was originally published November 10, 2014 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Salute to Veterans: Serving and flying was Merced vet’s cup of tea."