Researching the AFC missile decal

[geometry]

In regards to the 5/17/77 attack on Sandbar Circle, a car was seen parked behind the victim's house earlier that day. The witness saw a decal on the car. It depicts a missile hanging from a parachute, above the letters "AFC". Information about the decal was then spread to military bases throughout California.



The following information was provided to be by portofleith, who received it from guessting.

A similar vehicle and decal was observed by a naval gate guard at Coronado (San Diego), who challenged the driver because he didn’t recognize it. He was told by the driver it had been issued at Naval Station North Island, but the gate guard couldn’t verify it. He asked the man to sign in and he did so, but used a fake name and ss # (this was later checked, and the real person is a black male, the driver was a mid 20’s wm). Anyway, the decal may in fact be from North Island, but they have no record of it.

I have been trying to find more information about it. Another user and I looked through thousands of US Air Force patches, emblems, and decals trying to find a match, or at least something similar. We found nothing.

I decided to contact historians at the Air Force Historical Research Agency. Here are their responses:

I have forwarded to our emblem specialist the image of the emblem you sent, to see if she recognizes it.

I have checked the USAF organizations that were based at Mather in 1977, and found none with an "AFC" nomenclature. The 323d Flying Training Wing and its groups were stationed there, along with their assigned squadrons. There were seven flying training squadrons at Mather in 1977. There was also a 940th Air Refueling Group, and its associated squadrons.

The emblem appears to refer to parachute recovery of a missile, but it is not in the shape of a standard USAF emblem, which by 1977 had been standardized to disk shape for squadrons and flights and to shield shape for higher level organizations such as groups or wings.

All I can say at this point is that the design does not appear to be an official emblem of any USAF organization that was stationed at Mather AFB, or in its vicinity.

This post by dbw elaborates on some of the squadrons at Mather back then. earonsgsk.proboards.com/thread/988/excerpt-wikipedia-history-mather-afb

Where could this decal be from? Shelby says it is drone recovery, and the AF 4200 Support Squadron at Beale AFB was assigned to this. Beale is just north of Sacramento. My historian says it is missile recovery.

What about AFC? I've heard some talk here about "Aerojet Fine Chemicals" (they are now called Aerojet Rocketdyne). Aerojet is company based in Rancho Cordova that made propulsion systems for missiles, among other things. Here is something interesting I noticed. Aerojet is at the very East end of Rancho Cordova, basically next to Folsom. There were only two attacks in this area: 4/2/77 and 5/5/77. These two are several miles from any other EAR attacks. Interestingly, the AFC decal was spotted shortly afterwards, at the 5/17/77 attack. What was EAR doing so far East? Maybe he had some connection to Aerojet.

That's as far as I've gotten. I'm not sure where else to go with this. What are your thoughts?

[Deleted]

Decal is pretty familiar except that most patches that decals are designed after with parachutes were Navy,sea bee,and airborne. Most equipment in the patches under the parachute were transport planes,some could be mistaken as a bomb as they were rough.I've been around sea bees as a child and remember patches close to this decal.

I will also add that police had decals for sky diving as did private sky diving schools.

[winters]

One of the things that makes me nervous about this decal is the fact that it was fleshed out under hypnosis. Some context about the spotting of this decal:

This is related to victim #21, the Italian family that lived on Sandbar Circle that was attacked in the early morning hours of May 17, 1977.

On May 16th, sometime during the day, a vehicle is seen parked on the river levee behind the victims’ house. It was a new model El Camino, brown, CA license plate 366-T??. The driver was a white male, 25-27 years old, with collar length brown hair and deep-set eyes.

In order to recall more information about this sighting, the witness underwent hypnosis. While under hypnosis, she revealed details about a decal that she had seen on the car. It was of a parachute with a missile carried underneath, set on a diamond pattern.

[geometry]

May 11, 2017 15:05:01 GMT winters said:

One of the things that makes me nervous about this decal is the fact that it was fleshed out under hypnosis. Some context about the spotting of this decal:

This is related to victim #21, the Italian family that lived on Sandbar Circle that was attacked in the early morning hours of May 17, 1977.

On May 16th, sometime during the day, a vehicle is seen parked on the river levee behind the victims’ house. It was a new model El Camino, brown, CA license plate 366-T??. The driver was a white male, 25-27 years old, with collar length brown hair and deep-set eyes.

In order to recall more information about this sighting, the witness underwent hypnosis. While under hypnosis, she revealed details about a decal that she had seen on the car. It was of a parachute with a missile carried underneath, set on a diamond pattern.

I totally agree. I'm very skeptical of any pseudoscience, including hypnosis. Unfortunately, there isn't much else to go on with regards to this incident. Assuming it might be accurate, I'm going to keep researching. However, even if the decal existed, it could've been a stolen car, or completely unrelated to the case. Maybe a guy just coincidentally parked there to smoke a joint, and we're researching his bumper sticker 40 years later.

[geometry]

May 11, 2017 15:23:17 GMT winters said:

Another interesting anecdote, the victim's family started driving around looking at parking lots trying to find a car with that decal. I love that image, I can just picture this Sicilian family going around ready to dispense the justice that so needed to be served, and I SO wish that they'd have found him and would've, as the male victim in the case said, "saved the county a WHOLE lot of money."

That is kind of hilarious, but still not a bad idea. Imagine if this was the last thing EAR saw:

[winters]

We always hear about how the missile in the decal is oriented wrong, so after 40 years, I decided to finally step up and do something about it. Here is the corrected decal:

[geometry]

May 11, 2017 15:31:34 GMT winters said:

We always hear about how the missile in the decal is oriented wrong, so after 40 years, I decided to finally step up and do something about it. Here is the corrected decal:

Maybe I should send this back to the historian to see if he recognizes it now.

[winters]

May 11, 2017 15:36:24 GMT geometry said:

May 11, 2017 15:31:34 GMT winters said:

We always hear about how the missile in the decal is oriented wrong, so after 40 years, I decided to finally step up and do something about it. Here is the corrected decal:

Maybe I should send this back to the historian to see if he recognizes it now.

LOL, you never know!

Thanks for your awesome research on this topic. You never know what little clue or detail could break this thing wide open. The decal definitely should continue to be investigated.

[ellebee]

Since this was done under sketchy circumstances, isn't it possible that some of the details that eliminate it from known decals are simply wrong? AFC could really be AFB and there might be other words missing. The shape might be wrong, too. And, just to mess things up even further, there's no evidence that EAR used his own vehicle in any of these crimes, since suspicious persons were seen in so many different ones.

[geometry]

May 11, 2017 15:57:26 GMT ellebee said:

Since this was done under sketchy circumstances, isn't it possible that some of the details that eliminate it from known decals are simply wrong? AFC could really be AFB and there might be other words missing. The shape might be wrong, too. And, just to mess things up even further, there's no evidence that EAR used his own vehicle in any of these crimes, since suspicious persons were seen in so many different ones.

These are all good points. It could definitely be something other than AFC. It could've been a stolen car. Anything is possible here. I'm just doing the best research that I can based on the information we have. 

 I've tried to find all the acronyms for AFC that I can. Here are all the ones that are remotely relevant:

Advanced Flight Control
Advanced Force Commander
Aerodynamic Flight Control
Aerojet Fine Chemicals
Air Force Cadet
Air Force Center
Air Force Command
Air Force Communications
Air Force Computer
Air Force Council
Air Frequency Coordinator
Air Fuel Controller
Air Fuel control
Airman First Class
Armed Forces Command
Armed Forces Communications
Army Family Covenant
Automatic Fire Control (Weapons system)
Automatic Flight Control
Automatic Frequency Control (used in radio communications)
Aviation Fire Control
 

[portofleith]

There are a few reasons why this decal remains compelling to me.  The same or similar vehicle with the same or similar decal made illegal entry at a military base with an unconscious or sleeping woman in the front seat.

If we suspend for a moment, the belief that EAR was a painter or day laborer, the decal research I have performed points to a military contractor and we know that all of our victim neighborhoods, with the exception of Smith and Harrington, abounded with employees of defense contractors like Raytheon, Aerojet, etc.  Elsewhere on the board, I have included comments from a retired Air Force colonel who has written three books about military patches and insignia. He believes the decal would have been issued by a military contractor to it's employees.

During the time of these crimes:

1)  In July 1979, Operation Global Shield was coordinated from Vandenburg near Goleta AFB, involving hundreds of missiles, bombers, tankers and aircraft around the world. This included the deployment of two test Minutemen III missiles.  The Goleta neighborhood directory lists numerous employees of defense contractors living within blocks of the murder scenes.

2) There was a missile test off the CAlifornia coast in the days proceeding the Smith murders.

3) The defense work at Vandenburg brought an influx of computer and engineering personnel from all parts of California and there were actually shuttles of employees who commuted from Irvine to Vandenburg weekly.

4) In 1981, missile and defense contractors were lured to Egypt to work in various military projects which could explain the 1981-1986 crime gap.

[winters]

This is one of my last days of freedom before some major projects start at work, so I wanted to do something to contribute to the decal conversation.

I made this! This is probably more in line with what the decal actually looked like, as opposed to that dusty old sketch:

[portofleith]

And then to add to the mix, one of the favorite past times of computer scientists I knew who worked at NASA Ames Research at this time, was model rocketry and check out the distinctive orange and white stripe on this retrieval model, which matches the retrieval balloon on the actual decal.

[portofleith]

May 11, 2017 16:11:27 GMT winters said:

This is one of my last days of freedom before some major projects start at work, so I wanted to do something to contribute to the decal conversation.

I made this! This is probably more in line with what the decal actually looked like, as opposed to that dusty old sketch:

Nice job and can you tweek it to show the actual red and white stripes of the balloon?

[winters]

May 11, 2017 16:23:00 GMT portofleith said:

May 11, 2017 16:11:27 GMT winters said:

This is one of my last days of freedom before some major projects start at work, so I wanted to do something to contribute to the decal conversation.

I made this! This is probably more in line with what the decal actually looked like, as opposed to that dusty old sketch:

Nice job and can you tweek it to show the actual red and white stripes of the balloon?

Thanks! Do you know if it's more of a gingham pattern, or more of a stripe pattern? The sketch makes it look like gingham but every parachute I've ever seen in my life is a stripe.

The gingham one looks really strange, like they'd land and then use it as a cloth for a picnic, lol

Rough versions of each: