Lt. Colonel Steve Brown, Vietnam Veteran, Pilot

St. Charles County Veterans Museum

Lt. Colonel Steve Brown served in the Air Force from 1968-1991, twenty-three years as a pilot. Steve had a very distinguished career in the Air Force. As a new pilot he paid his dues flying a Caribou carrying everything from ammunition, supplies, troops to livestock in Vietnam. He graduated to B-52’s flying bombing missions during Operation Linebacker II. Negotiations for peace talks had bogged down, President Nixon ordered the bombing of Hanoi. Operation Linebacker II was important because it forced the communists back into serious peace negotiations. After Vietnam, as the cold war intensified, Steve sat on the tarmac on alert in the cockpit of his B-52 armed with nuclear weapons. From B-52’s Steve joined a very elite group of pilots flying the U2 reconnaissance plane. Dressed in a astronaut suit, armed only with a camera, Steve would fly over cold war hotspots shooting pictures.