16th Annual Dakota Thunder Run

     The annual ride, from Ellsworth to Sturgis, will conclude at a military appreciation event where two Rapid City WWII veterans will be honored by leadership from the SDNG and EAFB, followed by a B-1 flyover.

     Lt. Col (Ret) Chuck Childs flew a B-17 starting in 1941 against the Third Reich, earning two Distinguished Flying Crosses, continued into the Berlin Airlift, and subsequently the Korean War.

      Former Coast Guardsman Gordon Lease commanded LST-381 which transported 20 tanks, 20 Jeeps with trailers, and 250 men between the fleet and shoreline in support of invasions in Salerno, Italy and Normandy, France. Lease earned the Chevalier Légion d’honneur, the highest French order for military and civil merits, for his support of the Normandy invasion where his crew transported 265 soldiers and sailors from the shoreline to England for medical treatment.