Posted on 01/05/2011 3:07:37 PM PST by Pyro7480
One of the head designers of the Patriot missile has died in Florida. He was 91.
The son of Zdzislaw Starostecki (z-GEE'-slav Star-o-STE'-key) said his father died in Sarasota on Dec. 31.
Andrew Starostecki says his father fought for his native country of Poland during World War II and moved to the United States in 1952....
...In the early 1980s, Starostecki led a group designing the radar and warheads for the Patriot missile system.
The surface-to-air missiles were first used during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The system has since been sold to American allies around the world.
Poland's president and parliament granted Starostecki the honorary rank of general in December 2009.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This man provided an incredible service to our country!
RIP
The Patriot missile was vital to Israel when Saddam Hussein was lobbing SCUD missiles in on them back in the Gulf War. Dan Quayle fought for the Patriot missile back when he didn’t have much help from Congress trying to keep funding for it. And to think, the left beat him up over the spelling of “tomato”.
It was “Potatoe”(Potato), but I get what you are saying. I was a kid at the time, so I barely remember it, but I recall Quayle being the butt of every joke for a year or two because of that little slip up. Even as a kid, I didn’t think it was fair.
What’s so terrible is Biden and 0bama have BOTH made gaffes FAR worse than the one gaffe Quayle made in that classroom.
The Left and the media STUCK Quayle with the ‘stupid label’ for the rest of his political life, and 0’Biden are allowed to slide....
RIP.
Imprisoned in a Siberian gulag shortly after the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland in 1939, the former Polish army private was eventually released by his Russian captors to fight Germany. Starostecki joined a tank unit under British command, was wounded three times and nearly lost a leg during the last week of the war. ...Starostecki was convicted of being a U.S. spy by the Soviets in 1939 and sentenced to hard labor at a gold mine in the Arctic region of Kolyma. He was freed after Hitler turned on Russia. Starostecki made his way to British Palestine, and was with a Polish force in Italy that defeated the Nazis in the bloody siege of Monte Cassino. With just days remaining before Germany's surrender, Starostecki nearly had his leg blown off by a sniper near Bologna. - Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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