JFK visits Homestead Air Force Base, headquarters of the Tactical Air Command, on November 26, 1962, not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis. This reel is taken with a camera on the runway. It captures JFK arriving by Air Force One and a flyby of F-100 Jets.
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Date: November 26, 1962
Original Title: TAC OPERATIONS, HOMESTEAD AFB, 10/1962 - 11/1962 / Reel 26
Film Type: Color / Silent
Credit: U.S. Air Force
Archival Source: National Archives / 342-USAF / 342-USAF-34535
Transcript / Shot List
Reel 26: 1) F-100D and F-100F taxiing to runway and taking off. 2) VC-137 taxiing in to flight line, President Kennedy debarking, getting in car and driving away. 3)F-100 flyover.
Notes
During this visit, Kennedy had an opportunity to witness first-hand a demonstration of a Blue Moon low-level reconnaissance run by Air Force RF-101 Voodoo jets. The Blue Moon missions had proved crucial for gathering intelligence on Soviet missile bases and other military bases in Cuba during the recent Cuban Missile Crisis.
Time magazine reported Kennedy’s reaction to the 26 November demonstration: “They were gone the instant they came—a brace of Air Force RF-101 jets screeching 200 ft. above Florida’s Homestead Air Force Base. On the reviewing stand, President Kennedy turned to General Walter Sweeney, commander of the Tactical Air Command, and asked: ‘They wouldn’t have been able to shoot down those ships at that speed and altitude would they?’ The general said no. Said Kennedy: ‘I’d like to see them again.’ And so the reconnaissance jets once more simulated the flights that had helped document the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.”1
- Time, 7 December 1962, p. 14. ↩
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