Edwin A. Loberg, Air Force Officer, 89

[DGH]

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Edwin A. Loberg, a retired Air Force colonel who was a combat pilot
and base commander, and who lived in Annandale, Virginis, since 1958,
died of cardiac arrest February 28, 2004, at Inova Fairfax [Virginia]
Hospital, at the age of 89.

Col. Loberg was a native of Tigerton, Wisconsin, and a graduate of
what is now the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point. He taught in
a one-room schoolhouse near Tigerton for about a year before he joined
the Army Air Corps in 1941.

Commissioned a second lieutenant, he graduated from Flight Training
School and was assigned to the 26th Bomb Squadron of the 11th Bomb
Group at Hickam Field on the island of Oahu, located between Pearl
Harbor and Honolulu.

He later recounted that on the morning of December 7, 1941, he was
walking out of his barracks, straightening his tie, when the attack on
Pearl Harbor began. He was nearly hit by the strafing from Japanese
warplanes. The attack on Hickam Field alone killed 121 men.

Col. Loberg later flew 90 combat missions in the South Pacific from
Hawaii to Guadalcanal to New Guinea. His war exploits -- including an
aerial dogfight between his B-17 Flying Fortress bomber and a Japanese
flying boat -- were included in a chapter of a book written by
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ira Wolfert. Wolfert spent six
months with Col. Loberg, who also piloted cargo flights over the Hump
-- 15,000-foot mountain ranges in the China-Burma-India theater. Col.
Loberg also flew the B-29 Superfortress during World War II.

In the Korean War, he was deputy chief of staff of the War Planning
Room at Strategic Air Command headquarters, Offutt Air Force Base,
Neb.

After the war, he had appointments as commander of Air Force bases in
England. He served at the Pentagon with the Joint Chief of Staff's
office of counterinsurgency and was chief of staff of headquarters at
Bolling Air Force Base before retiring from active military duty in
1968.

His military decorations included the Silver Star, the Distinguished
Flying Cross and Air Medals.

In retirement, he was a project officer for Martin Marietta and a
sales representative for Lord & Burnham, a manufacturer and marketer
of greenhouses.

He was a past president and Hixson fellow of the Kiwanis, a board
member of the Woodburn Mental Health Center in Falls Church and a
member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

His wife, June Madsen Loberg, died in 1978. The had been married 38
years.