\u00a0Kern County WWII veteran celebrates 102nd birthday\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n“I guess the Yanks have been all right,” Holdsworth said.<\/p>\n
Last week, prior to the flight, Everett Williams offered a bit of advice to anyone who might find themselves aboard a B-17 that’s been hit by fire from an enemy aircraft.<\/p>\n
“If your B-17 is shot down, you’ll go into a tailspin,” he said. “You have to get out within the first two spins or else centrifugal force will pin you to the wall and you’ll never get out.”<\/p>\n
Good advice from a World War II vet who knows about air battles all too well.<\/p>\n
The A-Z Foundation Group often does special events for veterans, but the organizers of this excursion said they had never seen three vets over the age of 100 take a B-17 flight all at the same time. 10 or 15 years ago, this type of thing was more common, but it’s rare to have a centenarian vet come fly in this program \u2013 let alone three.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KGET 17 News.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OXNARD, Calif. (KGET) \u2013 Three Bakersfield World War II veterans took a half-hour tour of the Southern California…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[183033,183034,183031,151,153,152,183032,183027,183028,177728,183030,183029,5937,126493],"class_list":["post-464781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-a-z-foundation-group","tag-army-air-force","tag-b-17-flying-fortress","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-bill-glaspie","tag-everett-williams","tag-general-george-patton","tag-kget-17-news","tag-oxnard-airport","tag-ronald-holdsworth","tag-southern-california-coast","tag-world-war-ii-veterans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}