Squadron 8 History

quadron 8 began its life shortly after the end of WWII as K Flight. It was the fall of 1949, and the Air Force had become a separate service just two years before. That fall, there were about 70 freshmen at A&M who had previously been to another college or to junior college. (We refer to them nowadays as "frogs", but at that time they were called "fish" even though they were transfer students.) Initially they were scattered among a number of oufits. Due to overcrowding in those outfits, after a few weeks, a new outfit was formed called K Flight. All the Air Force transfer students were moved into the new outfit. One of the first Air Force units, it was housed on the main campus rather than on the Bryan Field campus with the rest of the Freshman outfits. The first commander of K Flight that year was Robert E. "Bob" Pierce '49. He left the outfit to get married in the spring, and Clifford K. McGown '49 took his place for the second semester. The executive officer was Jack Happy '50, and the first sergeant was Waymond C. Nutt '51. The next year, the outfit was redesignated as Squadron K. At that time, freshmen were separated from the rest of the Corps in fish outfits and housed in the North Gate area. In the early '50s, there were also a Squadron 8A and a Squadron 8B, which were athletic outfits that combined in 1952 to become Squadron 8. In addition, there was a Freshman Squadron 8, but none of these Squadron 8s are in any way related to the Squadron 8 of today. Ironically enough, in Squadron K's first year there was a cadet in Freshman Squadron 8 by the name of Ted Outlaw '54. A shadow of things to come? Outfit membership was somewhat more fluid in those days than it is now, and occasionally a few cadets changed outfits from one year to the next. In addition, a number of juniors and seniors transferred as cadre to the freshman outfits. Corps membership was mandatory for the first two years, but veterans, international students, and graduate students were exempt, as were those who were medically disqualified from military service and those who had been admitted as part-time students. As a result, some students left the Corps and finished their last year or two as non-regs. There were also several all-senior outfits for those who married before graduating, and a number cadets transferred to those units for their final year at Texas A&M. In the fall of 1952, the Corps was reorganized, and Squadron K became known as Squadron 13 for the next two years. Fish were integrated into the main Corps in 1954, triggering another reorganization, and the outfit was renumbered to Squadron 8. It wasn't until the mid-'50s that outfit logos began to gain in popularity. They were first used to identify which outfits owned the football 'spirit' signs that were judged in contests. The penguin-and-eightball logo was adopted by Squadron 8 during that time. n 1959, the U.S. Army reorganized itself, and the Corps was reorganized along with it. In the summer of that year, a number of upperclassmen from Squadron 13 ("Lucky 13") were transferred to Squadron 8, while most of the upperclassmen from Squadron 8 were moved to Squadron 7. Ed Lux '60 came over from Squadron 5 to be the CO. Because it was virtually a new outfit, the cadets felt that a new logo was in order. They chose the moniker of Animal, and fashioned a logo based on magazine photos of gorillas. It is said that one of the outfit members also served as a model, but there is some disagreement as to which one it was. Squadron 8 was known as Animal Eight for the next twenty-seven years, from the Fall of 1959 to Final Review 1986.