A bald man wearing a blue t-shirt is standing in front of a tent.
Atomic bomb mushroom cloud
OCTOBER 2019 AVIATION LECTURE SERIES
Barney M. Landry, Jr.
COLLECTING RADIOACTIVE CLOUD SAMPLES

WACO will welcome Barney M. Landry, Jr. as a guest speaker to the WACO Aviation Lecture Series, on Thursday, October 24, 2019. Mr. Landry’s remarks will focus on his experiences as a USAF pilot who flew to collect radioactive cloud samples, following the A-Bomb or H-Bomb test explosions in 1956 at the Eniwetok and Bikini Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Landry will begin speaking at 7 pm and will recount his time spent flying the F-84G and the B-57B aircraft, recovering radioactive material for bomb efficiency analysis-- part of the bomb cloud sampling operations performed by the 4926th Test Squadron. This pilot’s storytelling style will keep the audience spellbound as he explains his role in Operation Redwing and the 19 nuclear test explosions during the Cold War.   

Barney M. Landry Jr., born in 1928, followed in his father’s footsteps; his father was a WWI aviator. Barney received a Congressional Appointment to West Point. He graduated and was commissioned into the USAF, Class of 1951. Landry entered USAF Flight School Class 52E (Greenville AFB, MS and Reese AFB, TX and received pilots wings in August 1952. He was assigned to the Air Defense Command at McGhee Tyson AFB in Tennessee and completed Jet Transition School at Craig AFB in Alabama. There he began flying the F-86 Sabre and later transferred to the 18th Fighter Wing, K-55 AFB, in Korea in 1954. Following Korean armistice, he relocated to Kadena AFB in Okinawa, Japan before returning to the US in 1955. It was at this time that he was assigned to the 4926th Test Squadron (Atomic). Following his days of cloud sampling, Landry transferred to the USAF Reserve and began a 33 year career as a development engineer at GE Jet Engines in Cincinnati. He retired in 1989 and continues to tell his stories while residing in Fairfield Township.

All aviation lectures are free and open to the public; donations to WACO Air Museum are gladly accepted. Lectures are held in the Willis Wing of the WACO Air Museum at 1865 South County Road 25A in Troy, OH. Doors open at 6:30 and the program begins at 7 p.m. Programs are scheduled to last one hour with questions to follow. For questions, please call 937-335-9226 or visit www.wacoairmuseum.org.