This Military Service Page was created/owned by
SSgt Robert Bruce McClelland, Jr.
to remember
Baker, David Earle, Brig Gen USAF(Ret).
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Contact Info
Home Town West Stewartstown, New Hampshire
Last Address Mitchellville, Maryland
Date of Passing Jan 29, 2009
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Gen. Baker was deployed to South Vietnam in January 1972 and was captured that June after his aircraft was shot down. He spent the next eight months as a prisoner of the Viet Cong in Cambodia. During captivity he tried to escape but he was shot and recaptured. In February 1973, one month after a peace treaty was signed between the North and South Vietnamese, he was released. According to the Air Force, he was the only Air force prisoner to be repatriated from Cambodia, after the war ended.
In April 1973, he told the Associated Press that during captivity he was paraded past Cambodian villagers who beat and threatened him. He was denied medical treatment for a bullet wound in his leg. He said that because he would not make antiwar statements he was given rice only and pork fat to eat.
After the war he was a pilot instructor and later a fighter pilot in the Netherlands.
Source: The Washington Post Obituaries, February 15, 2009.
1994-1997 Served as support staff for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Aircraft/Missile Information
Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star was a US Air Force/US Navy airborne early warning radar surveillance aircraft. A military version of the Lockheed Constellation, it was designed to serve as an airborne early warning system to supplement the Distant Early Warning Line, using two large radomes, a vertical dome above and a horizontal one below the fuselage. EC-121's were also used for intelligence gathering (SIGINT).
It was introduced in 1955 and retired from service in 1978, although a single specially-modified EW aircraft remained in service with the U.S. Navy until 1982. The US Navy versions when initially procured were designated WV-2 and WV-3. Warning Stars of the U.S. Air Force served during the Vietnam War as both electronic sensor monitors and as a forerunner to the E-3 Sentry AWACS. U.S. Air Force aircrews adopted the civil nickname, "Connie" (diminutive of Constellation) as reference.