William Gregory, "Greg" to all, was born into a sharecropper\'s life in the hills of north central Tennessee.
Following his U-2 command, Greg attended the National War College, was assigned to the reconnaissance office at the Pentagon, and then was named Vice-Commandant of the Air Force Institute of.
He found time to also become one of the first to fly U-2s off aircraft carriers in a demonstration project.
It was during that five-year command that Greg and his team provided critical overflight intelligence, including during the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam build-up.
When that program neared its design end, and following the Gary Powers shoot-down over the Soviet Union, Greg was assigned to command of the CIA\'s U-2 unit at Edwards AFB.
Flying RB-57D aircraft, Greg and his team flew peripheral "ferret" missions around the Soviet Union and its satellites, collecting critical order-of-battle data so desperately needed by the Air Force at that time.
While a B-47 pilot, Greg was selected to join America\'s first high-altitude program--the Black Knights.
In his frequent deployments, he was always assigned the same target in the Soviet Union--Tblisi, Stalin\'s home town.
Following the war, Greg served with a B-29 unit, then transitioned to the new, red-hot B-47 strategic bomber.
Earning his wings in 1942, Greg became a P-38 combat pilot and served in North Africa during the summer of 1943--a critical time when the Luftwaffe was still a potent threat, and America had begun the march northward from the Mediterranean into Europe proper.
While at college, Greg completed the Civilian Pilot Training Program and was subsequently accepted into the Army\'s pilot training program.
Refusing to accept a life of continued poverty, Greg sought and found a way out--a work-study college program that made it possible to leave farming behind him forever.
from the back of a mule-drawn plow, Greg learned the value of resilience and the importance of living a determined life.
William Gregory, "Greg" to all, was born into a sharecropper\'s life in the hills of north central Tennessee
