In the Papers
Sixty-three press clippings, 1933–1970 — read against the records
Bob Burns appeared in newspapers for thirty-seven years: a Mississippi cadet learning night flying in 1939, a 26-year-old lieutenant colonel quoted on the wire after leading Clark Gable’s last mission, a Guard colonel flying Tennessee’s governor, a general retiring at Ent AFB. This page collects all sixty-three clippings in the family archive — each linked to its scan.
But newspapers are secondary sources, written on deadline. Some of these articles get facts wrong — a wrong air force, a scrambled career sequence, and three articles that are almost certainly about a different General Burns entirely. Rather than hide the errors, this exhibit marks them: ✗ where a claim conflicts with his Form 5s, personnel file, or headstone, and ✓ where the press preserved something the official records don’t. That is how this archive weighs all of its sources, and the papers make an honest demonstration of the method.
Photo of cadets Ralph Brann and “Robert Wiygul Burns of Ecru, Miss.” at Randolph Field, “learning to pilot a 400-horse power basic training airplane through the intricacies of night flying.” The earliest known photograph of Bob.
“Following 2nd Lts., from Kelly Fld., Texas, to Panama Canal Dept., sail Charleston, 22 Dec.” — Robert Wiygul Burns among the Kelly Field classmates shipping out together.
Front-page report of the training crashes of April 14, 1941 — one of which killed Bob’s brother, Eliam Baxter Burns, with portrait photos of the victims and the wreckage. The official accident report is preserved in the archive’s documents.
Read the clipping (PDF) →Five wire stories filed within a day of the mission that won Bob the Silver Star — with Clark Gable in his crew. These contain his only known direct combat quotes.
“The fighters were persistent as hell but coming out we dove down into a fog bank and then beat it while they were scrambling around to look for us.” — “Major Robert W. Burns, 26, of San Antonio, Texas”
Eyewitness account naming the B-17 Duchess, with Gable photographing from the waist.
“…coming out we feinted them into a fog bank and then beat it…”
The UPI version of the same remarks — “feinted” where AP heard “dove down.” A neat live specimen of why two papers quoting one man can disagree.
Read the clipping (PDF) →The Distinguished Flying Cross for leading the wing against the Genshagen engine works near Berlin, August 6, 1944 — with the citation quoted and, on page 3, a rare wartime press photo of Bob in uniform. This is also the only article giving his first wife’s maiden name.
Page 3 with photo (PDF) → Page 4 (PDF) →The 351st’s second anniversary: activated at Geiger Field November 1942; by January 1945, 229 missions and 12,900 tons of bombs, 303 German fighters destroyed — the same group totals shown on the WWII page.
Read the clipping (PDF) →Two Mississippi sergeants of Burns’ group decorated for the March 12, 1945 strike on Swinemunde — “the closest Eighth Air Force bombers had ever been to the fighting on the Eastern Front… in direct support of Russian troops pounding at Stettin.”
Read the clipping (PDF) →Six of the wartime articles name Bob’s wife as Mrs. Rachel N. Burns of 1421 Hicks Avenue, San Antonio — his first wife, Rachel Nugent, whom the family archive documents through these clippings and his personnel file. Two 1933 society pages cover her birthday party; a 1938 item places her in the Kelly Field cadet social scene the year before Bob arrived. The marriage ended around the end of the war, before Bob married Ruth Blackburn in 1946.
1933 (PDF) → 1933 (PDF) → 1938 (PDF) →Ten Memphis and Nashville clippings trace Bob rebuilding Tennessee’s air guard — and flying the governor.
Governor McCord flying to Raleigh with “his military aide, Col. Robert Burns, assistant state adjutant general for air” — the only source for his formal state title, on top of his regular-army instructor role. A March 1948 Knoxville item has Bob personally at the controls of the governor’s aircraft.
Bob and Lt. Col. “Skeets” Gallagher lead “a 12-man P-51 team from the 155th Fighter Squadron” at a Memphis air show.
Three clippings in the collection are almost certainly not about our Bob at all — a same-name trap every researcher of this era falls into once.
The 1949 article names a major general Robert W. Burns as deputy commanding general of Air Training Command at Barksdale; the two 1963 articles name a lieutenant general Robert W. Burns commanding Air Training Command.
President Eisenhower nominates Col. Robert W. Burns — assistant deputy for operations, ADC — for brigadier general, with one of the clearest uniform photos in the collection. The pinning followed in May 1960; the family photographed it.
Read the clipping (PDF) →The most complete press biography of Bob ever printed — Nettleton to Kelly Field to Panama to Polebrook to Greece to ADC, “currently rated in T-33 and C-131.” It also says he “flew 24 combat missions” — one of several conflicting press counts (24 here and in 1967–68 profiles) that the archive tracks as an open question against the 351st’s own mission records.
Read the clipping (PDF) →“General Burns… was a teacher for some time before entering the Air Force.”
Full career biography for Seymour Johnson’s top officer — with the family details right and the middle of the career scrambled.
Named ADC Chief of Staff — his final assignment.
The definitive retirement announcement, with a clear portrait — and the only document giving the children’s full legal names: Robert A., Susan Jane, and Mary Rebecca.
The ceremony photo: Lt. Gen. Thomas K. McGehee presents the Distinguished Service Medal at Ent AFB — the last press photograph of Bob in uniform, five days after his final Form 5 closed at 7,451 hours.
Read the clipping (PDF) →
Clippings collected from Newspapers.com and family scrapbooks; PDFs preserved in the
archive repository and mirrored to S3. Catalog and per-article research notes:
data/supplemental/newspaper_articles.md. Corrections are grounded in Bob’s
Individual Flight Records (Form 5), his DD-13 grade history and 201 personnel file, and
family photographs. Errata determinations follow the archive’s standing rule:
contemporaneous primary records outrank press accounts, which outrank latter-day
recollection — and each is preserved, marked, in place.