Col. Lawrence B. McNary USAF, Ret.

1920 - 2017

Col. Lawrence B. McNary, U.S.A.F. (Ret.) of Ormond Beach, passed away peacefully on 15 Oct. 2017 at the age of 97. Born on 28 Aug. 1920 in the small town of Ormond, Volusia County, FL, he was the fourth child of Norman L. and Marie Louise (Maye) McNary and was descended from several families who founded the New Britain Colony, now Ormond Beach, in the 1870s to grow oranges. He attended Ormond Public School, now Ormond Beach Elementary School, from the first grade to the eighth and remained there during the ninth and tenth grades, those years being called Ormond Junior High School. During his Junior and Senior years, he attended Seabreeze Senior High School in Daytona Beach and played on the combined men's basketball team made up of students from both Mainland Senior High School and Seabreeze. While at Seabreeze he also participated in track and Diamond Ball and was one of only ten students who were members of the "D" Club, an athletic club made up of those who earned letters in one or more sports. After graduation in 1939, he worked at the A&P Grocery Store on Granada Blvd., now Granada Blvd., in Ormond but in 1942, by which time he had become Assistant Manager and America had entered World War II, he volunteered to be a U.S. Army Pilot. There were no openings at flight school until 1943 so he served part-time as a member of Ground Support with the Civil Air Patrol unit in Daytona Beach whose pilots flew patrols in civilian aircraft over the Atlantic looking for enemy submarines and survivors of ship sinkings. After graduation from flight training he was commissioned as an Officer and then trained to fly four-engine B-24 Liberator Bombers. His first overseas assignment was with the Eighth Air Force, flying missions over Europe from a base in England. He flew strategic missions to Germany, France and other countries and tactical missions in support of the D-Day Invasion, the Battle Of The Bulge and in support of ground troops as they advanced towards Germany. In Rumania he took part in a raid on the Ploesti Oil Complex, flying so low aircraft had wings sheared off by steel cables used to tether balloons. By the time his Tour of Duty ended he had been promoted to Captain and awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, one of three versions of the second highest medal a member of the military can receive in time of war or armed conflict. After the war ended, he chose to make the military a career that lasted 30 years, during which he took part in many historic events. A few of them are: In 1946 he was an original member of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) when it was part of the U.S. Army. In 1947 he and SAC were transferred to the newly created United States Air Force, making him an original member of that organization too. In 1948 and 1949, during the Berlin Air Lift, he flew sacks of coal into the beleagured city in C-54 Cargo Aircraft, often under whiteout conditions which forced pilots to fly a narrow air corridor using instruments only. (To stray outside of that corridor risked being shot down by the Soviets). Within days of the start of the Korean War in 1950 he and his bomb wing had flown their B-29 Bombers from their base near Tampa, FL to Okinawa and were attacking targets in North Korea. He flew 56 combat missions during that war. Later, during the worst days of the Cold War, he flew B-36, B-47 and B-52 Bombers with nuclear weapons on board. He also flew KC-97 and KC-135 aircraft which were used for midair refueling as well as other types of aircraft but then he was assigned to staff positions, all involving the highest levels of national security and secrecy for the rest of his career. In one assignment he was the officer with the famous "Red Phone". If the decision was made by higher command it would have been his duty to transmit the order for all SAC Bombers stationed in the United States to attack targets in the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. It was during this chapter of his career he began to focus on weaknesses in existing technology and procedures that had potentially catastrophic ramifications for the survival of the United States if nuclear war occurred. In notes he left about that period, he tells us "Since Intelligence estimated that in the event of a preemptive (nuclear) strike by the Soviet Union it would be approximately 15 minutes from the time Soviet missiles were identified until they impacted targets, consequently few, if any, SAC aircraft would have gotten off the ground." He goes on to write "A few of us developed a SAC Ground Alert Force..." which insured enough aircraft would be in the air within 15 minutes so that "In the event our missiles and ground forces were destroyed before they could be launched we would still be capable of destroying a considerable amount of the Soviet Union's war making capacity."
~Cont'd.