Scroll of Honor – Kevin N. Earnest
Presidential Mission
Written by: Kelly Durham
Shortly before a scheduled mission to the western United States, Air Force Captain Kevin N. Earnest and his wife Carol dropped by Summerville to visit his college roommate Robbie Albertson, his wife Pam, and their one-year-old son Brett. Kevin presented little Brett with a stuffed bear, which was quickly christened “Boo.” That seemed appropriate as Kevin’s Air Force call sign was “Boo-Boo.” That was the last visit the two families would share.
For his summer vacation in 1996, President Bill Clinton traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. From there, the president was scheduled to fly to New York for a fiftieth birthday party. Whenever the president travels, his Secret Service detail, their equipment, and security vehicles go along. Moving the Secret Service’s vehicles from one destination to the next is the mission of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command. Kevin N. Earnest, Clemson Class of 1988, was the pilot of an Air Mobility Command C-130 aircraft supporting the presidential trip.
Earnest was a mechanical engineering major from Kingsport, Tennessee. An Eagle Scout, he had served as student body president of his high school and had earned his pilot’s certificate while still a student there. At Clemson, Earnest continued his record of achievement. He was an Air Force ROTC cadet earning the commission of a second lieutenant. He served as president of the Student Alumni Council and was selected for membership in Tiger Brotherhood, Blue Key, and Mortar Board.
By the summer of 1996, Captain Earnest was assigned to Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas. On Saturday, August 17, Earnest and his crew of seven other Air Force personnel, were dispatched to Jackson Hole Airport to load one of the presidential security vehicles into their C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and deliver it to New York City, the president’s next scheduled stop. Jackson Hole’s is the only airport located wholly inside a national park. It rests on a plateau near the base of the spectacular Tetons mountain range, the peaks of which rise to heights of more than 13,700 feet.
Earnest’s aircraft took off at about 10:45 pm. Approximately three minutes into the flight, fifteen miles southeast of the airport, the C-130 slammed into the side of Sheep Mountain, 1,000 feet below the peak’s 11,300-foot summit. The airplane exploded in a fireball seen twenty miles away at Teton Village resort community. Earnest, his crew mates, and a Secret Service agent were killed. Searchers were able to reach the crash site only on foot or by horseback. The force of the impact and resulting explosion demolished the large airplane. The Air Force would subsequently attribute the accident to the crew’s failure “to monitor the aircraft’s position and flight path relative to high terrain surrounding the Jackson Hole Airport.”
In the fall of 1997, three of Kevin Earnest’s friends established the Captain Kevin N. Earnest Leadership Award to be presented annually to a rising Clemson Air Force ROTC senior cadet who demonstrates outstanding leadership in the program and within other student organizations.
Captain Earnest and the other victims of the crash are memorialized on a plaque near Sheep Mountain, Wyoming. Brett Albertson, earned a civil engineering degree from The Citadel in 2017 and a master’s degree from Clemson in 2022. Now an Air Force captain himself, this summer Brett trekked to the crash site to remember and honor the sacrifice of his family’s friend. And Boo, the stuffed bear, though showing his age, continues to reside with Brett’s mother Pam.
For more information about Kevin N. Earnest see:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/scroll/kevin-n-earnest/
For additional information about Clemson University’s Scroll of Honor visit:
https://soh.alumni.clemson.edu/
Worthy graduated and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force on June 5, 1955. He reported for active duty and was sent to Harlingen Air Force Base, Texas to train as a bomber/navigator on the B-52 Stratofortress. Operational assignments as a B-52 navigator followed in Oklahoma and Ohio. Worthy then earned an MBA degree from the University of Oklahoma before shipping out to Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii for a tour of duty as navigator on a C-124 cargo aircraft. He was awarded the Air Medal for meritorious achievement while serving with the 50th Military Airlift Squadron and displaying outstanding airmanship and courage under extremely hazardous conditions.
the Air Medal, he was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal with One Oak Leaf Cluster, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with One Oak Leaf Cluster, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Air Force Longevity Service Award with Two Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Award. He is buried in the Florence National Cemetery.
Goddard’s mission on that Wednesday was to instruct cadet Vincent Finewood in the AT-6 Texan, a single-engine advanced trainer aircraft widely used by both the Army Air Force and the Navy. Of course, given the pace of training, Goddard and Finewood weren’t the only crew in the air that day. Instructor pilot Second Lieutenant Frederick Schaeffer was also aloft in an AT-6 with his student, aviation cadet Jack Gibbs. In both cases, the instructors, Goddard and Schaeffer, were in the front seat of their aircraft, while the students were in the back seats. The AT-6 is a low-wing aircraft, limiting the pilots’ visibility below. At some point during the training flights, as both planes were about nine miles north of Berlin, Georgia, the two aircraft collided. All four occupants were killed and there were no witnesses to the accident. Army investigators determined that the likely cause of the crash was pilot error, that neither instructor saw the other plane as he was focusing his attention on his student.
The 116th was part of the great armada of warships of every size and purpose that sailed from ports stretched across England’s south coast, from Sheerness at the mouth of the Thames River in the east to Helford in the west. As the invasion fleet headed into the English Channel on June 5, 1944, the men in the ships were headed toward what General Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, called “the Great Crusade.”
For more information about Private First Class David Aiken Crawford, Jr. see:
By the winter of 1943, Taylor was a first lieutenant assigned to VMSB 144, a Marine scouting/bombing squadron based at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. The squadron, flying Douglas Dauntless SBD-4 dive bombers, completed its first combat tour in mid-March and then joined its ground echelon on Efate, in the South Pacific some 400 miles northeast of New Caledonia on the eastern edge of the Coral Sea.
On the morning of May 12, 1944, First Lieutenant Carson was assigned as the pilot of an RB-34 twin engine aircraft for a radar training mission. The RB-34 was a radar-equipped version of the Lockheed Ventura medium bomber. In addition to Carson at the controls of the aircraft, eight other crew members and trainees were aboard.
snipers. The 374th Battalion history described him as “one of our best boys.” The following day, the 374th, after a record-setting 178 consecutive days on the line, was pulled out and placed in the 7th Army’s reserve.
two brothers, and three sisters. After the war, his remains were returned to the United States and laid to rest in the Columbia Baptist Church Cemetery.
homeland invaded, Hitler and his Nazi cronies were unwilling to face the reality of their dire circumstances. They refused to give up and so the fighting and the dying continued. Thomas Edward Davis, Jr. was one of the junior officers leading the Allied offensive inside Germany.
With Germany far from defeated, the need for replacements, particularly among the infantry, was acute. To meet the increasing manpower need, the Army shipped individual replacements to existing divisions and deployed fresh divisions that had been organized and trained in the United States. Second Lieutenant David Alexander was assigned to the 71st Infantry Division which was among the last US infantry divisions committed to combat in Europe. It arrived at Le Havre, France in early February 1945. After in-theater training, the 71st moved east in March and relieved the 100th Infantry Division at Ratzwiller in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France. The mission of the 71st was to continue to push the Germans out of France, across the Rhine River, and into Germany. 
Germany as the copilot of Pegasus Too, piloted by First Lieutenant L. Wilson. From 0600 to 0651 on March 23, 1944, thirty-one aircraft took off from the 388th’s base. Assembling into formation without difficulty, the aircraft turned to the east. According to the group’s mission report, the formation crossed the enemy coast ahead of schedule. This efficiency led to disaster. “Consequently,” the report continues, “no friendly fighter escort was met until the formation was near the IP,” the point from which its bomb run commenced. As a result, thirty-five to forty-five enemy fighters, mostly Focke-Wulf 190s, attacked the formation between 0955 and 1010 hours. “The attacks were vicious.” The German fighters attacked from above and to the left front of the bombers. Two of the bombers were shot down. Coleman’s aircraft, however, was attacked in a less conventional manner.
Second Lieutenant Charles Edward Coleman was awarded the Purple Heart. He was survived by his wife and his parents. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
When Ben’s friend Ernie Pyle, the famous Scripps-Howard columnist, arrived to cover the Blitz, Ben showed him how to navigate wartime London. “I feel like a mental child beside them,” Pyle wrote of his correspondent colleagues. “Yet I discovered that almost without exception they are friendly and helpful. And I discovered that among them almost nobody stands higher than my one old friend in London, Ben Robertson of PM.”
Terminal at New York’s Municipal Airport. Technically under the control of the Army, the Clippers though still crewed and piloted by Pan Am employees, were reserved for official government travel. Ben had waited for several days for his turn to board the big aircraft for its flight to Europe. Bound for Lisbon in neutral Portugal, Ben’s flight stopped first in Bermuda and then in the Azores before completing its journey on Lisbon’s Tagus River. The Clipper was a luxurious aircraft which had inaugurated trans-Atlantic passenger service. It was noted for aerial elegance, from its dining room to its sleeping berths. Settling into his seat, Ben looked across the narrow aisle to discover that his neighbor was Jane Froman, the prominent singer and a friend of Ben’s from their days together at the University of Missouri. Froman was bound for Europe with a USO troupe scheduled to perform for American military personnel.
The SS Ben Robertson, a Liberty ship, was launched from Savannah, Georgia in January 1944 and served both the Normandy landings and operations in the Pacific. It is a fitting honor to a man who traveled on and over the seas, but perhaps the most poignant tribute was paid by his friend Murrow. On one of his broadcasts to America, Murrow described Robertson as “the least hard-boiled newspaperman I have ever known. He didn’t need to be, for his roots were deep in the red soil of Carolina, and he had a faith that is denied to many of us.” Murrow’s deep, familiar voice crackled over the airwaves, “There never was a night so black Ben couldn’t see the stars.”
Moise was immediately assigned to a minesweeper serving in Japanese waters. After the war’s conclusion, as the Navy reduced its strength, Moise was put in command of the ship for its return voyage to Charleston Navy Base. Following an assignment in underwater research at Hampton, Virginia, Moise requested and was granted a transfer to the Navy’s aviation arm. On December 21, 1948, Moise married Betty Garris of Andrews.
routine armaments test. The Savage was a medium bomber designed to carry atomic bombs from the decks of Navy aircraft carriers. As such, it was at the time of its development the heaviest aircraft to operate from a carrier. It was powered by two wing-mounted piston engines plus a turbojet incorporated into the rear of the fuselage.
For more information about Lieutenant Moise McFaddin see:
collegiate career interrupted by orders from the War Department. All junior cadets and underclassmen were sent to basic training. Those like Henry Laye, who demonstrated military aptitude, were subsequently ordered to officers’ candidate schools to become the junior leaders of the still expanding Army. Henry Laye would soon be assigned to one of the Army’s storied divisions, the 42nd Infantry.
division arrived at Marseille, France on December 8-9, 1944 and was under the command of General Alexander Patch’s 7th Army. On Christmas Eve, the division relieved the 36th Infantry Division, entering combat in the vicinity of Strasbourg, the French city resting on the west bank of the Rhine River directly across from Germany. Most of the action at that moment was farther north, where what would become known as the Battle of the Bulge was raging. Before long, the desperate Germans, formerly masters of Europe but now reeling from the Anglo-American offensive in the west and the Soviet onslaught from the east, would attempt yet another counter-offensive, Operation Northwind.
on the west bank of the Rhine River when Germans from the 7th Parachute Division attacked. In three days of attacks and counterattacks in the cold, snowy villages and woodlands along the river, the Germans were driven off, but the regiment took many casualties, including Laye.
member of Company C, 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment of the Corps of Cadets, but no picture identified as Edens is included in the annual. Edens was among that large group of Clemson cadets whose educations were interrupted by World War II. In Edens’s case, the interruption was voluntary. Following stints at Presbyterian College and then Clemson, Edens dropped out of school in October 1941, even before the United States was dragged into the war. Conflicting accounts of Edens’s history pop up at this point. Although his home was in Pumpkintown in Pickens County, one account shows Edens enlisting in Miami, Florida while another places his enlistment at Fort McPherson, Georgia. Regardless of the location, Edens volunteered for the Army Air Force and was accepted into the aviation cadet program.
Pumpkintown.
of 1944. But the Allied offensive in Northern France was slowed by its very success; the more ground the Anglo-American forces gained, the longer their supply lines stretched and the more difficult it became to feed, fuel, and equip the advance. First Lieutenant Archibald Carlisle Dudley of Mullins was an infantry platoon leader in the van of the Allied assault.
vigilant witness to the sacrifice of American lives in World War II’s struggle against tyranny. More than 5,200 American service members are buried on the pristine acres of the Epinal American Cemetery, including Albert Powhatan King, Jr. of Ninety Six.
On Sunday, November 19, the 79th broke through to Sarrebourg, just 40 miles west of Strasbourg. Allied artillery overwhelmed German defenders, opening the road to Strasbourg. As the Germans withdrew, the 79th moved in. Four days later, as King’s Company C of the 313th Infantry Regiment enjoyed its Thanksgiving lunch, orders came to move into an area that the regiment believed was secure. The company moved out in a convoy with Captain King guiding the way in the lead jeep. As King stood to direct his company, a German sniper shot him through the forehead. King exclaimed, “Oh my God, men!”—and died. He was buried with full military honors the following day at Epinal.
Benning, Georgia. King’s Clemson story did not end with his death. His former Clemson roommate, James MacMillan, married his widow Bess after the war. King’s daughter Nancy was one of the first women accepted to Clemson, though the college’s lack of a nursing curriculum led her to enroll elsewhere. In all more than a dozen of King’s relatives subsequently attended Clemson.
Furman joined the crew of “Tillie,” a B-24D heavy bomber which he served as radio operator and waist gunner. Furman’s unit, the 372nd Bomb Squadron, was operating from Noemfoor, a small island off the northern coast of New Guinea. On November 4, Furman was seriously injured in an aircraft accident that resulted in the scrapping of “Tillie.” Furman’s injuries were significant enough to land him in the hospital, where he died three days later.
Rudolf Anderson, Jr. Anderson, a 1948 graduate in textile management, was the sole casualty in the Cuban Missile Crisis which pushed the United States and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war sixty years ago this week.
Force Base in Texas where he earned his wings in February 1953. He was next sent to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada where he learned to fly the F-86 Sabre, the Air Force’s primary air combat fighter of the Korean War.
CIA photo interpreters identified Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles being installed near San Cristobal, Cuba. In addition, Soviet surface-to-air missile defenses were being set up, though neither weapons system was as yet operational. These discoveries triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis—and would cost Rudy Anderson’s life.
long drive to Fayetteville, North Carolina. There, they intended to rendezvous with Rebecca’s husband, Clinton Childs Horton, Jr., then serving as a doctor in the Naval Reserve. The reunion never took place.
cohort to complete its academic career until after the war. Following commencement, Claude and his classmates headed directly to active duty, many of them funneling into officers’ candidate schools. Most of the other boys on campus were sent to basic training, their school days suspended for the duration.
Furman. In a sign of the times, Clemson also took the field against a team from Jacksonville Naval Air Station, losing 24-6. At the end of the season, Rothell and his teammates must have turned their thoughts toward the deadlier opponents that awaited overseas.
Clemson classmate Henry Hahn, who was assigned to one of the 7th Armored Division’s tank battalions.
volcanic islands in the Marianas chain. The island was part of a League of Nations mandate granted to Japan after its participation in the Great War as a member of the victorious Allied powers. That same year, Louis Gray Clark of Walhalla enrolled in Clemson College.
On August 22, 1944, Second Lieutenant Clark was ordered on a mission to attack the Japanese airfield on Pagan Island, some two hundred miles north of Saipan. He was slotted to fly as wingman to First Lieutenant Earl Harbour. The flight departed Saipan’s East Field and flew north. At about 1030 hours, Harbour completed a strafing pass from east-to-west over the Pagan airfield. When he looked back to check on his wingman, he saw Clark’s P-47 go into the water. Harbour saw Clark, under a parachute, drop into the sea only a quarter of a mile from the west-southwest shore of the island. Harbour orbited his wingman’s position and observed Clark floating in the water with his life vest inflated. Shortly thereafter, Harbour lost sight of Clark. Additional P-47s joined the search, as did a Navy PBM rescue plane. The search continued into the afternoon, but was called off at nightfall. Because the search planes were fired upon by Pagan’s Japanese defenders, Harbour speculated that Clark had either been captured by the Japanese or killed in the water by enemy fire. Clark was never recovered.
American units engaged in this action. Since recapturing Hue after the surprise Tet Offensive, the 1st Marines had been involved in a number of combat operations large and small. Marine casualties were reported as “light,” but they weren’t light enough.
suffered the effects of stormy weather on terra firma.
Germans, and Italians on the defensive and operations in Guadalcanal and New Guinea would continue the trend into 1943. With the American military expanding at an explosive pace, young men from all over the country were scattered at training bases all over the country. Charles Henderson Franks, Class of 1942, was in Florida.
Training was, in fact, heavy at large and small airfields all over the United States. Thousands of pilots, copilots, navigators, radio operators, bombardiers, flight engineers, and gunners were learning to work together on dozens of different kinds of aircraft, from heavy bombers to single seat fighters. The combination of aggressive, young men, sophisticated aircraft, and the hurried pace of training inevitably led to accidents.
Cemetery.
attended school during the 1942-43 academic year. When the term came to a close in the spring of 1943, Clemson’s campus transitioned into Army training facilities under the direction of the War Department. Underclassmen like Kelley were scattered across the country, ordered to attend basic training. Those who demonstrated aptitude could apply for officer candidate schools. This is likely the path that Kelley took on his way to becoming an Army Air Force fighter pilot.
The P-47 had gotten off to a rocky start. Fighter pilots used to the sleek design of their streamlined aircraft initially balked at this huge, new fighter. Its wingspan was five feet wider and it possessed nearly four times the fuselage volume of the vaunted Spitfire. It was the heaviest single-engine, one-man aircraft of the World War II, weighing as much as eight tons when fully loaded with fuel and armaments. The fighter’s conventional landing gear meant that visibility on the ground was difficult as the pilot had to maneuver the airplane from side-to-side in order to see around the big radial engine encased in its massive nose. As first fielded, the Thunderbolt’s climb performance was disappointing, but in actual combat, its pilots soon came to trust its speed in a dive and its rugged durability. By mid-1944, the P-47 was well-established as both a capable escort for heavy bomber formations and an effective ground attack aircraft. From airfields in Corsica, Kelley’s squadron flew P-47 missions to attack German communications and supply routes in northern Italy.
take off acceleration.
participated in Clemson’s Honors Program, maintaining a high grade point average throughout his academic career. He was a four-year participant in Air Force ROTC and was selected for membership in Arnold Air Society. He was also a member of the Aero Club, serving as the organization’s secretary. During his junior and senior years, Ruzicka served as vice president of Phi Eta Sigma, the national academic honor society. He was a member of the Canterbury Club, the campus organization for Episcopal students, and served as president of the Jaberwocky Coffee House.
The three-plane cell, designated “Snow,” was scheduled for take-off at 1857 hours, but Ruzicka’s aircraft, Snow 3, reported a hydraulics problem that required maintenance attention. As a result, the cell’s departure was delayed until 1905. The subsequent climb to 35,000 feet was without incident. Instrument flight conditions existed in cirrus clouds with an increasing number of thunderstorms in the vicinity. At one point, the cell, with Snow 3 flying eight miles behind the lead aircraft, turned to avoid thunderstorms. Moderate turbulence, moderate icing, and heavy St. Elmo’s fire were experienced by the cell. St. Elmo’s fire is a weather phenomenon in which a luminous discharge is created by a ship or aircraft during a storm. The discharge itself is not considered dangerous, but it indicates the presence of potentially deadly thunderstorms containing heavy precipitation, damaging hail, and violent updrafts and downdrafts.
returned to Norfolk, Virginia for overhaul and then embarked on a voyage to Casablanca in North Africa on another ferry mission. Following her return to the States, Kasaan Bay again headed east, this time bound for Oran for anti-submarine warfare operations in the western Mediterranean before practicing for the Allied invasion of southern France. Kasaan Bay arrived on station for the invasion on August 15, 1944. Kasaan Bay’s aircraft flew missions in support of the Allied landings.
