Scope and Contents

The collection consists of a quarter of a linear foot of materials donated by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Zeybel. The materials include U.S. Air Force manuals, audovisual materials, correspondence, and writings by Lt. Col. Zeybel and others (including periodicals featuring his articles and books). The materials are dated 1962, 1971, 1979-1989, 2008, 2015, 2021, 2022, or are otherwise undated.

Biographical / Historical

Lt. Col. Henry Zeybel was born in 1933 in Pittsburgh, PA. In 1955, he reeceived a Reserve Commission into the U.S. Air Force through the Penn State ROTC program. In 1960, he accepted a Regular Commission. After almost two years of training at Harlingen AFB in Texas, Mather AFB in California, and McConnell AFB in Kansas, he served as a Strategic Air Command navigator-bombardier in the B-47 from 1957 to 1961 at Dyess AFB in Texas and in the B-52 from 1961 to 1963 at Bergstrom AFB in Texas. As a B-47 crewman, he participated in frequent overseas alert tours to Guam, Alaska, and the U.K. From 1963 to 1967, he led seminar sections at Squadron Officer School at Maxwell AFB in Alabama while also completing Air Command and Staff College as a Distinguished Graduate in 1967.

From 1967 to 1968, Lt. Col. Zeybel navigated 772 combat support sorties in the C-130 out of Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Vietnam. He then served as a faculty member at the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell AFB until 1970 before returning to Southeast Asia as a fire control officer/sensor operator in AC-130 Spectre gunships. He flew 158 interdiction missions into Laos from Ubon Air Base in Thailand. Officially stationed at Hurlburt Field in Florida from 1971 to 1976, he continued to operate peridoically in Southeast Asia, including taking part in a special gunship operation in Laos in early 1972 and serving as Special Operations Forces Liasion Officer for all of Southeast Asia from late 1972 to early 1973. During his final three years of active duty, he commmanded the Special Operations Forces Command Post and then Headquarters Squadron at Hurlburt Field. He retired at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1976, having received numerous awards including the Silver Star, 8 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and 19 Air Medals.

After his military career, Lt. Col. Zeybel did free-lance writing from 1976 to 1990. He produced three novels about the Air Force (published in the U.S., the U.K., and Japan) and dozens of magazine articles. From 1991 to 2011, he tutored rhetoric to student athletes at the University of Texas. Since 2014, he has reviewed books about the Vietnam War for the Vietnam Veterans of America.