A military career, life ‘beyond expectations’

From the skies above World War II, to the U2 Spy program, to the inception of the Riverine Warfare tactics used in the Vietnam War, Frank Forsberg has seen it all. Maybe not the inside of the White House – a job he was offered and turned down – but it seems he was involved in everything else along the way.

Last week, as he turned 100 years old, he was honored with a plaque on the Veterans Memorial hilltop at EmilyAnn Theatre and Gardens surrounded by his family and local veterans.

Forsberg joined the United States Navy in 1938 at the age of 17.

“My dad was in the Navy,” Forsberg said. “I was a very independent person. I had a lovely family, just a perfect family, but I ran away from home. I was on the streets of Baltimore trying to make a living, and the only job I could get was selling magazines door to door, which was a way to start. I saw a big line (in the street), and I asked what they were doing. They said they were going to the Navy, and so I got in line.”

That line led him to boot camp and soon to riding along in anti-submarine warfare patrols flying as an observer gunner. Once World War II started, he was standing watch on base. Three centuries were out in the cold on the watch. He would relieve one at a time to let them warm up. Then a car drove up to the base unannounced.

“I blew my whistle and tried to flag him down,” Forsberg said. “He wouldn’t stop. I pulled my .45 out and said ‘halt.’ That got his attention.”

The person driving the car said he was the commanding officer of the station. Forsberg asked him to “dismount and be recognized” but the officer, with a few girls in the car, wasn’t having it.

“I had already put my .45 away,” Forsberg said.

“He became angry as hell at me. I pulled it out again, and said, ‘Halt. Stop, turn around, put your ID card on the ground and walk away six paces.’ But when I picked up his ID card, I saluted him.”

The next day his commanding officer asked what he had done to the Skipper.

“I said, ‘I stopped him.’ He said ‘What a masterpiece of an understatement. For this I’m going to send you to flight school.’”

He flew bomber aircrafts in World War II, but the Navy was having issues losing ships to typhoons. They created a typhoon reconnaissance squadron tasked with flying into the storms to see what was happening. Forsberg was the first pilot to fly into a typhoon at 235 knots at 500 feet to take pictures.

When it came time for the Korean War, he was tasked with flying a plane full of dynamite from a ship to the tunnels. That was, until they tried to load up on the ship and the commanding officer said, “You’re not putting a bomb on my ship” and turned them back. He was then assigned to Task Force 77 as an intelligence officer.

“I was doing all the targeting for the battleships and cruisers, and three carriers with all aircraft,” Forsberg said.

He then went to War College.

“I made a serious mistake,” Fosberg said. “I was selected to brief the President on intelligence, because I had been in the intelligence office for a while. I turned it down, because I wanted to go to Vietnam to start Riverine Warfare. That is what I was really trained in.”

He was eventually sent to train people in intelligence, which led him to the U2 Program, which is now looked back on as one of the most famous spy planes ever flown. He traveled the world with the program before becoming a Navy Liaison Officer with Headquarters for the US Air Force.

“This general had a C47,” Forsberg said. “He said, ‘I want you to pass to qualify when I want to fly the plane, so you can take the plane and practice...’ I flew all over… That was a job that was fantastic. They paid me to be there, I would have paid them.”

Forsberg retired from the military in 1966 as a Navy Captain. For more of his exploits and his story “from seaman to captain”, purchase his autobiography “Beyond Expectations” and “Beyond Expectations Part 2.”

When you live to be 100, sometimes it takes two books to tell the tale.