Military Service
He was commissioned a second lieutenant, Infantry, after completion of Reserve Officers Training Corps and graduation from the University of Wyoming. He then entered active military service, transferred to the Army Air Corps, attended flying school and earned his pilot wings.
During World War II, Phillips served as a combat pilot with the 364th Fighter Group of the Eighth Air Force, based in England. He completed two combat tours of duty in the European Theater of Operations. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf clusters, Air Medal with seven oak leaf clusters, and the French Croix de Guerre. After the war, he was assigned to the European Theater headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. Then, in July 1947, Phillips was transferred to Langley Air Force Base, Virginia.
Phillips's research and development assignments included six years with the Engineering Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; duty as an electronics officer with the nuclear weapons experiments at Eniwetok Atoll during Operation Greenhouse; and in Project Officer assignments with the B-52 Stratofortress heavy bomber, the AIM-4 Falcon air-to-air missile, and the Bomarc surface-to-air missile programs.
Phillips returned to England in 1956, where he served with the 7th Air Division of the Strategic Air Command. His participation in negotiating and completing the international agreement with the United Kingdom for the deployment and use of the American Thor nuclear-armed intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). This latter assignment earned Phillips the Legion of Merit medal.
Phillips returned to the United States in 1959, and he was assigned to the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division of the Air Research and Development Command, in Los Angeles, California, as the Director of the Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Program (ICBM).
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