U.S. Air Force pilot Rudolf Anderson, Jr., born in 1927 in South Carolina, was the only American airman shot down during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He joined the military in 1951 and soon flew reconnaissance missions during the Korean Conflict. By 1957 he was stationed at Laughlin Air Force Base, and he was there when the Cuban Missile Crisis developed in October 1962. On October 27, while piloting a U-2 plane over Cuba to provide surveillance of a medium range ballistic missile site under construction, antiaircraft fire hit his plane and killed him. The Air Force decorated him posthumously, and in 2001 renamed Laughlin's operation building Anderson Hall. He is buried in South Carolina.