{"id":504,"date":"2017-01-23T19:24:47","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T02:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deamaltzchallenge.com\/?p=504"},"modified":"2017-01-23T19:24:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T02:24:47","slug":"air-force-capt-eric-b-das","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/2017\/01\/23\/air-force-capt-eric-b-das\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force Capt Eric B. Das"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bookmark<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Air Force Capt. Eric B. Das<\/h1>\n

Died April 7, 2003 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom<\/h2>\n
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30, of Amarillo, Texas; assigned to the 333rd Fighter Squadron based at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.; killed when the F-15E he was piloting went down during a combat mission in Iraq. The incident remains under investigation.<\/p>\n

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When Eric Das was a kid, growing up in Amarillo, Texas, he had a game he\u2019d play.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever an airplane flew overhead, he\u2019d point up and say, \u2018Coach, do you know what kind of plane that is?\u2019 \u201dJim Langdon, who coaches track at Amarillo High School, recalled. \u201cI\u2019d say, \u2018No.\u2019 Then he\u2019d tell me. He knew every kind of plane that flew in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Das, 30, died April 7, piloting an Air Force F-15E that went down during a combat mission over Iraq. He was listed as missing until April 18, when the Air Force announced that his remains had been identified. People who knew him say two things stand out about his life: He always wanted to be a pilot, and he openly professed his Christian faith.<\/p>\n

Das is the son of missionaries. He was born in the Netherlands, when his parents were working there. The family lived briefly near the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where Das watched planes fly overhead and people parachute from the sky. He eventually went to school there.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the kind of kid who made coaching fun,\u201d said Langdon, who remembers Das even though it\u2019s been more than 10 years since he graduated and went on to the Air Force Academy.<\/p>\n

After earning a degree in civil engineering and his wings, Das was stationed in Alaska. He met his wife, Nikki, 25, an Air Force first lieutenant, there. She was a sister of one of his pilot buddies. They met at the Officer\u2019s Club. When the song, \u201cAmarillo by Morning,\u201d played, he asked her to dance. They married 18 months ago and were stationed in Kuwait in side-by-side tents \u2014 he as a pilot, she as an intelligence officer. \u201cWe\u2019d eat together in the mess hall and he\u2019d joke that he was buying,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to have priorities in life, and Eric had them \u2014 God, family and country, in that order,\u201d Nikki Das said. \u201cHe had a wonderful magnetic spirit. He had a fulfilled life, and he died doing the thing he loved. He was very patriotic. And our freedom is not free.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Air Force Capt. Eric B. Das Died April 7, 2003 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom 30, of Amarillo, Texas; assigned to the 333rd Fighter Squadron based at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.; killed when the F-15E he was piloting went down during a combat mission in Iraq. The incident remains under investigation. When Eric […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017honorees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":505,"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions\/505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maltzchallenge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}