Hubbard joined the
United States Air Force Reserve at
Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base in 1955, at age seventeen. While there, he flew as a
flight engineer in a
C-119. In August 1961, he went on
active duty and entered the aviation cadet program at
James Connally Air Force Base in
Texas for Basic Navigation Training. On July 6, 1962, he was commissioned and received his
wings. On July 20, 1966, while flying his 26th mission over
North Vietnam, Hubbard’s
EB-66C was shot down by two
surface-to-air missiles. Of the six crew members, all but one survived the shoot down and subsequent captivity. Hubbard was a
First Lieutenant at the time. After running through the jungle for a number of hours, he was captured by the
Viet Cong and put in a
POW camp. There, he stayed in a six-by-six-foot cell and lived on less than 300
calories per day. After 2,420 days of being imprisoned, he was finally released on March 4, 1973, along with many others from his camp. This experience changed Hubbard's outlook on life. After returning, Hubbard started using his new, positive way of thinking, and after only eight days of implementation – increased the productivity of a $350 million resource by 50%. He later inherited an organization designated "...the worst managed..." among 58 units by an Air Force
audit. Within four months, Ed Hubbard turned the unit around and demonstrated statistically significant improvement in 96% of the audited areas. During ten years as head of the largest safety organization in the Air Force, they shattered all records. They achieved 30% to 70% improvements in all categories, where a 3% improvement had long been the norm. Ed Hubbard's organization was recognized as "Best in the Air Force" for ten consecutive years, and a previously accepted, multimillion-dollar loss rate per year was reduced to less than fifty thousand dollars per year. Hubbard retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1990. ==Honors and awards==