Page 3 - Aerotech News and Review, March 18, 2022

CARDENAS, from 2
trees and there were some tall radio towers that were hidden by the trees. The White House is also hidden by trees. I slowed it to about 350 miles per hour and flew a low pass down Pennsylvania Avenue looking care- fully for towers. Next thing I knew, I looked up and the Capitol Dome was straight ahead and I had to pull up to miss it.”
But before becoming a test pilot, he was a B-24 Liberator pilot in Eu- rope during World War II. Serving with the 506th Bombardment Squad- ron based at RAF Shipdham in Eng- land, he flew his first B-24 mission over Europe in 1944.
On his 18th mission, then-Cap- tain Cardenas’ plane was shot down over Germany when its right wing was severely damaged by a shell and both engines caught on fire. He landed on the German side of Lake Constance, and walked along the north side of the river at night to evade the Nazis.
“I went down, and the Germans never got me,” he said. “I walked along the river at night and started swimming across, which is when I made a fatal mental mistake.”
As a child, Cardenas swam miles in the ocean. However, three miles in the ocean is far different from travel- ing the same distance in freshwater.
“I think I had a near-death experi- ence,” he said. “First it was panic, then resignation, then a kind of calmness. Then, a Swiss man in his rowboat tapped me on the head.”
Rescued and taken to Switzerland, Cardenas was eventually flown back to the United States to recover from a head injury.
“As an only child, my mother was very protective and scared I might
Air Force photograph by Master Sgt. Donald Allen
Retired Brig. Gen. Robert Cardenas speaks at the opening ceremony of the 70th Anniversary of Supersonic Flight held Oct. 13, 2017, at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Behind him is retired Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager and his wife, Victoria. Cardenas piloted the B-29 launch aircraft that released the X-1 experimental rocket plane in which Yeager, a captain at the time, became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound.
The Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing over Washington, D.C.
March 18, 2022
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hurt myself,” Cardenas said. “My parents were floored when I went down, and [they] assumed I was KIA, or Killed in Action.”
After recovering from his injury,
for which he was awarded the Purple Heart, Cardenas attended instructor school for the B-24 bomber and be- came a test pilot. In 1945, he began piloting experimental aircraft.
After returning to the United States, Cardenas was assigned to Wright Field, Ohio, as a test pilot where he attended Experimental Flight Test School.
Cardenas’ last Air Force assign- ment was as chief, National Stra- tegic Target List Division, Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, at Offutt AFB, Neb. His mission was to develop and compile a list- ing of targets that must be struck in a general nuclear war by U.S. retal- iatory forces and develop estimates of enemy defenses and offensive capabilities.
On April 15, 1993, the University of New Mexico, College of Engi- neering, honored him for his Out- standing Professional Contributions and Leadership.
The USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB honored the general on Dec. 10, 1994, as a “Distin- guished Alumnus” and in Septem- ber 1995, he was inducted into the “Aerospace Walk of Honor” at Lan- caster, California.
Cardenas was one of five test pi- lots honored on the Walk of Hon- or in 1995, along with Capt. Glen W. Edwards; Fred W. Haise; Wil- liam C. Park and Brig. Gen. Guy M. Townsend. The Walk of Honor website at www.awoh.org lists a veritable “who’s who” of aerospace history.
Aerotech contributor Cathy Han- sen recalled meeting Cardenas at the Walk of Honor event in 2005.
“My husband Al and I had the honor of meeting him in 2005, at the Aerospace Walk of Honor in Lan- caster,” she said. “We displayed our UH-1H helicopter during the event and also attended the black-tie ban- quet held that evening. We had the feeling of an instant bond with the general. That often happens to me when meeting folks from the avia- tion community.
“We were just visiting with a group of people and we struck up a conversation with this really neat guy that we had not met before,” she continued. “It was General Carde- nas.
“Immediately we found ourselves reminiscing about mutual friends from Edwards AFB, and historic aircraft and became lost in time. His
wife tapped him on his shoulder and reminded us that it was time to sit down for dinner. I think we could have talked right through dinner and not even missed eating that night!
“Brig. Gen. Robert and Mrs. Cardenas were delightful and he is a giant aviation legend who flew at Muroc and Edwards AFB. He is one of a handful of living icon test pilots that we have the distinct pleasure of knowing,” Hansen said.
Cardenas served as a Founding Patron of the Flight Test Museum Foundation, the organization re- sponsible for raising funds for the Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base, and previously served as chairman of the foundation.
Brig. Gen. Robert “Bob” Carde- nas was an aerospace legend and will be missed.
Courtesy photograph
Courtesy photograph Brig. Gen. Robert Cardenas, his wife Gladys, and Cathy Hansen.