Lieutenant Colonel (Lt Col) David Lamar Smith, known as “DL”, was born December 8, 1940, in Rossville, Georgia, to Lamar Andrew Smith and Mary Elizabeth Clarkson.  His father served in the Army during World War II and worked for the Department of the Army after the war.  Lt Col Smith attended Rossville High School before entering The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina.  After graduating in 1963 with a degree in Mathematics he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force and selected for Undergraduate Pilot Training.  Upon receiving his wings Lt Col Smith became a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighter pilot.  After an assignment in South Korea he flew 353 combat missions during the Vietnam War.  During his second combat tour he was assigned to the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing (the “Wolfpack”) at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand.  In May 1972 he helped lead two successful missions against North Vietnamese railroad bridges using laser-guided bombs for the first time.  Lt Col Smith attended the Air Force Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and in the 1970s flew as an aggressor pilot providing realistic training for Air Force fighter pilots (the Air Force equivalent of the Navy’s Top Gun).  Lt Col Smith then helped start a classified program codenamed Constant Peg which flew captured Soviet jet fighters (such as the MiG-21) to provide training in Soviet Air Force combat tactics and capabilities.  In 1979 Lt Col Smith was selected to lead the elite Thunderbirds, the Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, based at Nellis Air Force Base.  Tragically, he was killed September 8, 1981, in the crash of a Northrop T-38 Talon jet following an airshow in Cleveland, Ohio.  His crew chief, Staff Sergeant Dwight Roberts, ejected successfully.  Survived by his wife Judy and two daughters, Lt Col David Lamar Smith was buried in Section G of Culpeper National Cemetery.  Resting nearby is fellow Thunderbirds pilot Captain Joseph N. Peterson III, killed in another T-38 accident January 18, 1982.  

Thunderbirds over the Golden Gate Bridge. 

This is a picture of the Thunderbirds over the Golden Gate bridge.

This is a picture of Lt Col David L. Smith at the Citadel. 

This is a picture of Lt Col David L. Smith as a Thunderbirds pilot.

8th Tactical Fighter Wing F-4 Phantom II.

DAVID L SMITH

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