Hometown: Wichita, KS
Branch: U.S. Navy
Unit: Training Airwing 5, Training Squadron 6
Date of Sacrifice: February 23, 1990 - near Summerdale, Alabama
Age: 29
Conflict: No declared conflict

As a young boy, “Bruce” Wulf loved to hunt the open fields of Kansas with his father and younger brother. His brother Lincoln recalls that Bruce “was always, without exception, the first to rise—having often times packed the car and loaded the dogs in the darkness of the early morning before Dad or I had even gotten dressed.”

Bruce graduated from Wichita’s South High School in 1978, where he was on the Titans’ swim team. He then attended Wichita State University as a biology student, with the goal of becoming a doctor.

At WSU, Wulf fell in love twice. There, he met Julie Bauer, also from Wichita. The two would marry in 1984 and later have two daughters—Emma and Hannah.

During those college years, Wulf also began parachuting out of airplanes and fell in love with flying. So much so that he dropped his plans to become a doctor and joined the United States Navy as an aviation officer candidate—six months before he graduated from college in 1983.

Wulf earned his pilot’s wings in 1985 and served three years at Naval Air Station Brunswick, Maine, assigned to Patrol Squadron 23 (VP-23). Patrolling the coast of the North Atlantic, the VP-23 “Seahawks” were part of a long tradition of maritime patrol aviation.

The pilots and crew who flew out of Brunswick protected America’s east coast from enemy submarines during World War II (1939-1945), the Vietnam War (1959-1975), the Cold War (1947-1991), and between conflicts, “often in harm’s way and usually out of the limelight,” according to the Brunswick Naval Aviation Museum.

At Brunswick, LT Wulf became a mission wing commander for the P-3C Orion long-range, anti-submarine warfare (ASW) patrol aircraft.

In the summer of 1989, LT Wulf transferred to Naval Air Station Whiting Field in western Florida’s Panhandle region, where he served as a flight instructor.

Assigned to Training Airwing 5, Training Squadron 6, Wulf trained student pilots in a T-34C Turbo Mentor training aircraft. The T-34C was a tandem cockpit, low-wing turboprop aircraft used to train Navy and Marine Corps pilots.

On February 23, 1990, LT Wulf was training Marine pilot 1stLt Cary K. Smith. The two took off from Whiting Field and were flying near Summerdale, Alabama. Smith was practicing a clockwise touch-and-go maneuver. At the same time, another T-34C training aircraft was in the air, moving counter-clockwise to practice emergency landings.

The two aircrafts’ paths crossed near the end of the runway and resulted in a mid-air collision. Smith and Wulf’s plane overturned, killing both pilots. The pilots of the other T-34C were able to land their damaged aircraft and suffered no injuries.

Lieutenant Bruce Wulf was 29 years old. His student pilot, First Lieutenant Cary K. Smith of Columbia, South Carolina, was 25.

When LT Wulf was lost, his daughter Emma was just 20 months old. He and his wife Julie were also expecting a second child. Their daughter Hannah was born six months later. 

LT Wulf was deployed and not able to be home for Emma’s first birthday. In a letter to her, Wulf wrote, “For now…all I want is to come home and see my girls. I wish you could see the way your mother has loved you these last six months. I haven’t [seen] it much at all but if Grandma Wulf says it’s so then it’s so. I guess she’s making up for the love I’d give if I were home.”

Sources
Details and card photo (digitally enhanced) submitted by Emma Sammons, Lt. Wulf’s Gold Star Daughter
The Wichita Eagle, Feb. 26, 1990: Gordon Wulf died doing what he loved
Pensacola News Journal, Oct. 6, 1990: No warning before crash, report says
Tampa Bay Times, Oct. 7, 1990: Blame for air crash is shared, report says
Brunswick Naval Aviation Museum
Burial Site: Find a Grave