Bill earned his private pilot license in 1970 at Laramie through Air Force ROTC, and earned his Air Force wings in 1971 flying the T-41, T-37, T-38. He transitioned to the F-4, and while stationed at Ubon Thailand April 1972 thru April 1973 flew 254 combat missions with the 497TFS "Nite Owls" (mostly at night) over North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as an instructor pilot and wing standardization and evaluation pilot.

He then spent about 16 years flying the F-111 in Nevada, England, and Idaho as an instructor pilot, squadron and wing weapons officer, flight commander, operations officer, and finally as the
commander of the 391TFS “Bold Tigers.” He is a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons
School (Air Force version of the Navy’s Top Gun) and sat Victor (nuclear) Alert while stationed
in England.

He had non-flying assignments at Tactical Air Command as a requirements staff officer for F- 111, Advanced Tactical Fighter (became F-22), and Dual Role Fighter (became F-15E).  He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and Air War College.  During the First Gulf war, he was Chief of plans, Headquarters Sixth Allied Tactical Air Force (NATO), Izmir, Turkey. Has was then tricked into becoming the Senior Air Force representative to the U.S. Army Aviation Warfighting Center, Fort Rucker, Alabama, with the promise of getting a full helicopter checkout, which eventually amounted to a few rides after much complaining. His final USAF assignment was as the Air Attaché to Indonesia, which included flying the C-12C (militarized King Air 200). His last good deal was a flight literally around the world: starting in Jakarta, heading more or less east, trading planes in South Carolina, and arriving back
in Jakarta after about 2.5 weeks and 97 flight hours.

In 2002 he earned his CFII (SEL) with American Flyers and has been doing very part-time instruction since. He owns a 1966 Mooney M-20E.  We are lucky to have all of Bill's experience available at KSHR!