Talk:Robert F. Travis

Year of death
"...General Travis was killed on 5 August 1950 .... Fairfield-Suisun AFB was officially renamed Travis Air Force Base on 20 April 1950, in his honor."

The second year must be wrong, The Travis AFB page mentions the name changing in 1951, which would make more sense, honoring him after his death.

208.107.114.145 (talk) 04:49, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Travis B29 crash
To user 70.240.213.105 (Robert L. Duquette):

Thanks for your edit about the B29 crash that killed General Travis. However, I'm moving it here, because Wikipedia has a policy of "No Original Research". You can read about it here: WP:NOR. Essentially it says all edits to Wikipedia must be supported by reliable published sources.

Here's the edit:
 * The mission on which General Travis attended, and lost his life was highly classified. The B-29 bomber on which he attended that day (for a training mission) was carrying a nuclear weapon. After the crash of the B-29, the plane went up in flames, and only a remote chance was seen in stopping a nuclear accident that would have leveled San Francisco, and all neighboring communities. It was only sheer luck that the blast of the other weapons aboard (12-500lb demolition bombs) blew the nuclear bomb safely away, and the military retrieved what was left.


 * The Department of Defense claims that the bomb was a dummy, except that Col. Louis Duquette stationed at Fairfield Suisun AFB during the incident was told by his good friend General Travis that the plane would be carrying a live nuclear bomb for the test flight the night before the training mission. In the end, Col Duquette helped carry his dead friend from the plane after the accident. In closing, the sight in which the plane crashed is still to this day being monitored for radiation, pretty good for a dummy nuclear bomb.


 * Additional Note: Col. Louis Duquette is my father, and he has recounted this story to me all of my life, and thought I would share this information. Col Duquette is still alive today at an age of 94, he can only recount bits and pieces of the story. Weather you use this information or not, is entirely up to you.


 * Thank You


 * Robert L. Duquette

There's a description of the crash on the Travis Air Force Base page (History section, 6th paragraph). It's supported by these two published sources:
 * The Crash of the B-29 on Travis AFB, CA
 * Jimmy Doolittle Musem - The Travis Crash.

The sources say that it was not a training mission, but a live mission to carry a nuclear weapon to the eastern Pacific, because of an escalation in the Korean War. The nuclear weapon was carried on two planes. General Travis' B29 carried the outer casing, including the 5000 lbs. of high explosives, but the uranium core was carried on another plane at another time and route. A nuclear explosion is only possible if the core is installed in the casing, so no nuclear explosion could have occurred. However the high explosives ignited 20 minutes after the crash, killing several more people. User:Davemck (talk) 19:15, 9 May 2011 (UTC)