By Sidney C. Schaer

Sometime this morning, a lone U.S. Air Force B-1 bomber will pass over the Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, on a routine training mission that momentarily will be become a symbolic fly-by honoring Capt. Eileen Moore.

Capt. Moore, an Air Force maintenance officer and one of the original members assigned to the fleet's introduction into the Strategic Air Command service, died Sunday of complications from chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer at Hendrick's Medical Center in Abilene. She was 34.

The former Long Islander and 1972 Copiague High School graduate had served 15 years in the Air Force.

"She was an independent, intelligent woman, and the Air Force had become her life," said her father, Lester, a retired New York Telephone installer who moved his family to Abilene two years ago. His daughter most recently was assigned to the 384th Field Maintenance service wing at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kan.

"Captain Moore was truly a special person," said her former commander, Maj. Judith Kautz. Capt. Moore was only one of three graduates of the Air Force's officer maintenance school at Chanute AFB in Illinois who were immediately assigned to the B-1 program, Kautz said, and she had special status because she was among the original flight and maintenance crews assigned.

There was another aspect to Capt. Moore's Air Force career - she had started out as an airman and rose to the rank of technical sergeant, spending seven years as an enlisted person before applying and being accepted to the Air Force officers' candidate school.

"It was only around 1978 that the Air Force began assigning female personnel to so-called non-traditional jobs, and of all the assignments, airplane maintenance still remains a domain of men," a colleague said.

"She could deal effectively with the enlisted personnel . . . she had credibility . . . they knew she had once been one of them," said Kautz.

Born in Astoria, Queens, she moved with her family to Copiague around 1957, and, after graduating from high school, earned a full scholarship to The Berkeley School in Hicksville. She then enlisted in the Air Force, and earned a psychology degree from the University of Maryland.

At one point, when she was stationed at Dyess, which is where the B-1 bomber squadrons were first assigned, she took a radio nickname as "F.M. Superette," a variation on field maintenance supervisor.

"She was a bit wary about becoming a maintenance officer," her father said yesterday, adding that she developed such a reputation that pilots would joke, `If Eileen OK'd the plane, we'll fly it."

She was diagnosed as having cancer this past summer. Her death on Sunday, according to Kautz, was especially felt by her friends thoughout the service. "You have to remember that even as an enlisted person, she had developed a reputation as one of the best in the Air Force," he said.

In addition to her father, survivors include her mother, Dorothy; two sisters, Patricia Medina and Barbara Moore; and three brothers, James, Michael and Robert, all of Abilene.

Following a funeral service this morning, she will be buried at Elmwood Memorial Park, Abilene.

October 20, 1988

Copyright 1988, Newsday Inc. Reprinted with permission.