Harold “Buck” Rigg, founding curator and director of the 8th Air Force Museum at Barksdale AFB, La., has died. The Shreveport Times reported that Rigg died at his home in Haughton, La., on Nov. 25 due to complications of a lengthy illness. He was 56. His burial was scheduled for Monday in Haughton. The son of an Air Force bombardier, Rigg worked for Barksdale’s 2nd Bomb Wing, setting up the museum in the late 1970s. Under his leadership, the museum acquired bombers such as World War II-era B-17, B-24, and B-29 aircraft, Cold War-era B-52D and B-52G models, an FB-111A, and a British Avro Vulcan, according to the newspaper. He retired in Oct. 2009 as the museum’s curator. (8th Air Force Museum website)
In 1941, Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold of the then-U.S. Army Air Corps, personally reviewed a jet engine patented by Sir Frank Whittle flying on a Gloster E.28/39 aircraft. Impressed by its design, Arnold arranged for a Whittle engine to be brought back to the U.S. and tasked General Electric…