Chapter 75, I See the Light!

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I’m taking a poll.  How many of you believe in at least one urban legend or myth?  It can be that bigfoot is real or there are alligators living in your sewers or Bill Clinton wasn’t a pathological liar and womanizer or a myriad of others.  There are lots of them out there and I think, to some degree, we all believe that some totally unproven event or thing actually might exist.  My favorite one is UFOs.

There have been hundreds of books and documentaries written and produced about the subject.  Thousands of eyewitness accounts yet there really isn’t one piece of indisputable evidence proving their existence.  So now that I’ve got some of you true believers fired up, it’s time to tell my UFO story.

I’ve written about my first Aircraft Commander at least once.  He was an old, crusty, Vietnam vet named Mike, but I’ve never mentioned my second AC, Jim.  By the time Mike left the crew, I was considered a seasoned copilot.   What they usually did was to balance out the cockpit experience level by pairing up an experienced copilot with a brand new aircraft commander.  That was Jim.  Jim was a great pilot but his outlook on life was a little different than Mike’s.  Jim was a lot more, shall we say, fun loving.  It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when you’re flying a 488,000 lb bomber, there’s a lot of opportunity for “fun loving” to get you in trouble.  Here’s what I mean.

On the bottom of the B-52 there’s a very odd piece of equipment.  There have been lots of things added to the venerable BUFF over the years.  Antennas,  cameras, lumps and bumps everywhere, but an original piece, that by 1980 was never used, was something called the “terrain clearance light”.  No one ever explained it’s use, they just said; “Leave it alone, we never use that thing anymore”.  Here’s how it worked.  In the cockpit there were two switches.  One was an “on/off” switch and the other an “extend/retract” switch.  When it was turned on, an large 1,000,000 candlepower spotlight mounted in the belly of the airplane would illuminate and you could then extend the light to the point where it would shine out ahead of the airplane.  You could also stop it any intermediate position.  It purpose was a little confusing.  A million candlepower seems like a lot, but when you’re moving along at 350 knots, 300 feet off the ground, it really couldn’t illuminate out far enough to accomplish anything and by the time I was flying the airplane, there was a low light camera mounted in the nose and a bright light would have rendered the camera useless.  And besides, why in the world would you want to turn on a huge light if you’re trying to penetrate enemy defenses.  But, because it was installed on the aircraft, the maintenance guys still had to keep it in working order.  Jim had come up with a “fun” use for the thing.

The first night we flew together we were on a standard 3 hour low level leg somewhere in Montana or Wyoming or Nebraska, they all ran together.  We were flying in a wide valley at the end of which was a highway running perpendicular to track on a plateau.  We were actually slightly below the altitude of the highway and when we were about ten miles from it Jim turned to me and said, “extend the terrain clearance light”.  It was a request I had never heard before but, after fumbling around the dark cockpit for a second to find the toggle switch, I dutifully extended, without illuminating, the light.  As we got close enough to see individual vehicles on the highway Jim pointed out a camper.  He said that he was going to fly right over it and when we were three miles from the road he wanted me to turn on the light and then slowly retract it and keep it aimed at the camper until we were directly over it and then turn it off.  It’s at this point that I was in a position to make a conscious, life changing choice.  I could be a responsible, mature adult, or could head down the path of perpetual practical jokes and sophomoric pranks.  A difficult decision.  Only seconds to decide.  I turned on the light.

The camper lit up under the blistering intensity of a million candles.  I could see the brake lights come on but as the vehicle slowed Jim eased in some right rudder to keep the light squarely on the side of the weaving Winnebago.  I slowly retracted the light and as we passed directly over the terrified driver, whose face I could just make out, I turned off the light.

I can’t help but wonder what the driver told his children and probably tells his grandchildren today.  “There I was, 1:00 in the morning, driving my camper in the middle of nowhere when I had an alien encounter.  The noise was deafening, the light was blinding.  It seemed to hover over me for a second and then it disappeared in a instant.”

Ah, the good old days!

Chapter 74, “Finally”

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Finally!  1 July 2013, is finally here!  Those of you who work for the Federal government might want to,  for planning purposes,  take note.  I retired 8 months and 2 days ago and today I receive my first retirement check.  There were no errors in the package, no documents missing, no clarification required on any forms.  AFPC (Air Force Personnel Center) executed their part of the process flawlessly.  But, once my package reached OPM (Office of Personnel Management) it was as if I ceased to exist.  A file in an “In” basket waiting for the bureaucracy to decide it was my turn.

When I retired I was told that I could expect to wait 3-6 months for the process to be complete. (How many of you, getting close to retirement, have saved up 6 months of living expenses!?)  When, after 4 months, I was finally able to actually speak to a human at OPM I was told that the waiting period was actually 6-12 months. (How many of you, getting close to retirement, have saved up 12 months of living expenses!?)  That’s when I decided it was time to be the squeaky wheel.

I called and I emailed.  I spent hours on hold.  They promised that they would answer emails in “just 20 working days”.  20 working days?  That’s a month!  To answer an email?  I repeatedly got scripted responses and it soon became obvious that their goal was to simply put me off for another month.  Just keep kicking the can down the road by giving me a nugget of hope that it was almost done.  I was very close to calling in some favors from two congressmen and two senators but I really wanted to see how long it would actually take and, besides, I know how easily bureaucracies can deflect and delay congressional inquiries.

So what’s the point?  Am I whining, or just boring ya’ll by venting?  Maybe a little of both.  But the real point is this.  This is a process that has been in place for decades.  People retire every day.  There’s nothing new.  So why doesn’t the process work?  Thomas Sowell once said, “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong”.  Sadly, when a bureaucracy fails, no one gets fired.  It simply gives the bureaucrats ammunition to ask for more money to “improve”  the process and enlarge their empire.  And it’s the same at all levels.  Remember the last time your school district, or city, or county had a fiscal crisis because they overspent on frivolous programs or bloated staffs?  Did they try to manage your money better, streamline, or get more efficient?  No, they told the community that they would lay off police, firemen, teachers and eliminate essential infrastructure repairs unless they got a tax increase.  Pathetically, a significant percentage of the electorate actually believe it.

So, let’s put on our logic thinking caps.  How can it be possible to reduce the cost of something like healthcare by adding an enormous new bureaucracy on top of the costs of hospitals and doctors and medications?  How can we get better care when decisions about your health aren’t made between you and your doctor but by an unaccountable bureaucrat who just sees you as another file in his in box?  It is, of course, not possible.  The bureaucracy will simply grow and grow and grow and demand an ever increasing budget so that it can fix the problems it has created.  Can you afford to wait for a bureaucrat to decide if you should live or die?

My retirement is just money.  I anticipated the failures of the system because I’ve seen how the system hasn’t work for the last 35 years, but I don’t think any of us are ready for the inevitable results of the destruction of the best healthcare system in the world.  As my friend Dr. Dave always said, “Getting old is not for the faint of heart”.

Chapter 73, Plumb

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Those who know me well know that, when it comes to building things, I’m a bit of a stickler for doing things right and a true believer in “straight and level”.  I learned early on that a job is much easier if you build things square.  I’ve remodeled lots of houses and buildings and when it was obvious the original builder owned a tape measure and a level, and knew how to use them, the project went much smoother.  So when I started to build a deck for my sister in Canada I was a little confused by the local building practices.

Normally, when you build a deck, you make sure that the structure is as unmovable as possible.  I like to lag bolt the deck into the house with a 1/2 inch bolt at least every 12 inches and pour caissons with sonotubes at least 4 feet deep for the main support posts.  I prefer 6×6 posts to 4x4s and 2x8s to 2x6s.  You might accuse me of over-engineering but I want everything I build to stand the test of time and feel like you’re standing on solid ground.  What hadn’t occurred to me was what the extreme conditions of Canada could have on a structure.  Prince Edward Island is made up, almost entirely, of sandy soil and sandstone.  It tends to retain water and when the winter weather hits and everything freezes, it can heave the ground up to six inches.  So, to keep your deck from ripping off the side of your house, decks are usually built “freestanding”.  In other words, it’s like a big table sitting next to your house.  It’s right up against the house, but not connected.  Even the stairs aren’t hard mounted to the deck.  They’re attached to it with 2-3 large hinges to allow them to rise and fall with the ground.  There’s no concrete to pour, the posts simply sit on precast concrete pads which just sit on the ground.  The whole process was foreign to my preconceived engineering sensibilities but “When in Rome….”.

I was, freezing and heaving be damned, determined to start the thing off plumb and level.  Once I got my head around the new paradigm, the project progressed smoothly and building basics are still building basics.  I did bolt some additional diagonal cross supports between the vertical posts to prevent side to side sway, but, for the most part, I kept to the original plans.  By the fourth day, with Pegs help, everything was done except the railings.

Railings are functionally and esthetically the most important part of a deck.  No matter how sturdy the deck if the railings don’t feel sturdy and, more importantly, meet code then the project is a bust.  It has to be high enough that your average person can’t tumble over it (for obvious reasons I usually make them taller!) and the balusters have to be spaced close enough together that a small child can’t stick their head between them and choke.  That distance varies from place to place but it’s generally a maximum of 4″.  As usual, I prefer to exceed the code so I go with 3 1/2″.  It’s not that I know children with exceptionally small heads it’s that 3 1/2″ inches makes my life a little easier.  Here’s what I mean.

I could go around the entire deck and mark the top rail and the bottom rail every four inches and then line up each baluster with the marks and hold them by hand, or with a clamp, while I screw them in.  100 balusters, 1 at a time.  Sounds painful!  Or, I could, use a scrap piece of 2×4 (which is really 1 1/2′ x 3 1/2″) the same length as the balusters and simply slap it, and the next baluster, up against the previous one and screw the next one in.  Basically using the 2×4 as a spacer.  I choose the latter!  There is only one small problem with the 2×4 spacer method which really isn’t a problem as long as you’re aware of it.  There are always minute variations in lumber.  It might be that there’s a knot that protrudes slightly from one side or that one section shrunk a little while the lumber was drying.  It’s imperceptible to the naked eye, but it’s there.  You wouldn’t notice a variation of 1/32″ or even 1/16″ between two balusters but by the time you get to the end of a 16 baluster run it could be 1/2′ to an 1″ off  and it will be obvious and it will look like crap.  The solution is simple.  Every 3-4 balusters you just have measure the gap, at both the top and the bottom from the one you’ve just installed to the end of the run.  If the gap is larger at the top than the bottom then, over the next 3-4 balusters, hold the tops a little looser to the spacer at the top than at the bottom.  Don’t make the correction all at once.  The discrepancy worked its way in gradually, take it out gradually.  You know the first corner is plumb and the next corner is plumb you just have to manage the process along the way.

In many ways building a deck is like building a life.  We try to build it square and plumb on solid ground because we know that strength comes from a good foundation.  But if we make it too rigid and the ground shifts or heaves the results can be catastrophic.  We start off knowing that the end is perfectly vertical but imperfections sneak in along the way.  Wrong choices and bad decisions don’t seem like much at the time but when we measure them against the objective we realize that we’re gradually straying off plumb and need some correction.  And we need to remind ourselves that there’s only one carpenter who’s ever been able to create something that will always be plumb and never fail.

 

Chapter 72, “One Man’s Ceiling…….”

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Time for apologies.  I think for the first time in nearly a year and a half I missed a week publishing “Hovering Over Send”.  I hate to make excuses, but I’m going to make one anyway.  Eight days ago Peg and I embarked on something very rare in our 33 years of marriage, a vacation.  Most of the time, when I take time off, it’s been to work around the house.  Rarely did we go anywhere unless it was somehow connected to an official TDY.  I told Peg, and myself, that once I retired we would begin to go places we had never been before.  It’s been over seven months, and still no retirement check for those who are wondering, so I figured it was about time.  To that end, a week ago Saturday, we hopped in the truck with my sister Jody, niece Maddie, and a cargo bed full of tools and headed northeast.

For those that don’t know, Jody and family live in the smallest Canadian Province, Prince Edward Island.  Before she moved there, all I knew about Prince Edward Island, or PEI, was that it was way out east but not as far out as Newfoundland and the novel “Ann of Green Gables” was written about the place.  That was about it.  So when Jody flew to Pittsburgh for my nephew Ben’s wedding I told her that Peg and I would save her the airfare back and drive her instead.  So began our “vacation”.

Now my sister-in-law Ruth lives in Pierre, SD and after looking at a map I realized that Pittsburgh to Pierre was almost the exact same distance as Pittsburgh to Montague, PEI, give or take a few miles, somewhere around 20 hours of driving.  The first day we went as far as Manchester, NH which is exactly half way and I thought, “Piece of cake”.  Nice scenery, some traffic to dodge around NYC and Boston, but it keeps you on your toes.  The second day was a little different.  I’d been to Maine before, but it was for a conference in Portland and I flew there.  I didn’t realize how quickly civilization disappeared in Maine as you drive north.

Mile after endless mile of trees and rocks and not much else.  We hit Bangor, left I-95, and turned east on route 7 and headed for the thriving town of Calais, ME (pronounced callus).  Two hours of two lanes of nothing.  My only thought was, “If it’s this barren this far north and we five more hours of driving after we hit the border, PEI must be like Nome, Alaska.”  We stopped at a Walmart on the US side of the border, topped the tank off with relatively cheap fuel, bought some frozen chicken (it costs three times as much in PEI) and headed for the little two lane bridge which crosses the border into Canada. 

We cleared customs and a few miles west of the border I was surprised when the two lane opened up into a brand new four lane interstate.  We went through St John, New Brunswick and headed for Moncton and as we drove further northeast the landscape opened up to farms and fields which looked more like central Ohio than the cold tundra.  The highway returned to a two lane as we approached Moncton and as we turned north we were met with a “High moose crossing area next 24 kilometers” warning sign.  Luckily, no moose, and at the end of the 24 kilometers there was the only way to drive to PEI, the 8 mile Confederation Bridge.  I thought for sure that PEI would be like Newfoundland, a little rough around the edges and ramshackle.  In need of a coat of paint and a little TLC.  But, at the end of the bridge, I felt like I had crossed a 2,000 mile bridge and crossed into the UK.  Gently rolling hills, neatly plowed fields and picturesque villages seemed to be the central theme of the island.  Tourism is huge, at least for the 10 weeks or so during the summer when it’s not snowing, and the lobster, mussels and scallops are cheap and fantastic.

Right now I’m sitting in a cottage, kindly loaned to us by the Knox family, watching the sun set over the Cardigan Bay which is only 20 yards away on three sides.  There’s no television, wifi, or cell phone coverage and I could care less! Those of you who are my age will remember the Paul Simon song “One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor” I guess it works the same if you were to say “One Man’s North is Another Man’s South”

So there’s my excuse.  You would think that I have all the time in the world to write, but so far I’ve built a deck on Jody’s house and gutted/hung drywall in her guest room.  I guess my idea of a vacation is a little different than most! 

Chapter 71, Love at First Sight

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I’m taking a one week break from “Stories That Peg has Never Heard”

Do you believe in “Love at First Sight”?  I never did.  I always thought that love was something you built over time.  I think most people probably mistake “lust at first sight” for “love at first sight” although that initial physical attraction, given the opportunity, can grow into something deeper.

When I was in high school the bus would drop us off at the cafeteria entrance and they wouldn’t open the gates into the rest of the school until the all students had arrived.  It meant that those who were on the earliest buses had to sit around for over 30 minutes anywhere there was space.  My friends and I, the non-cool kids, would usually sit around one of the windows next to the gates.  We had no girls in our little group, mainly because we were terrified of them and no idea how to approach a pretty one, so we would pass the time “rating’ them as they walked by.  We would probably be suspended nowadays as sexists or misogynists but we were just the geeks who could only dream of actually asking a girl out.  Well, on the first day of my junior year, I found myself with the same guys sitting in the same place ready to grade, on the standard 1 to 10 scale, the fresh crop of sophomores.  Not much to look at until a flash of red caught my eye.  Long straight red hair to the middle of her back and long legs that went……well, you get the picture.  It was the early 70’s and hair was long and skirts were short!

I immediately threw up a 9.8, only Farrah Fawcett  rated a ten back then, and the guys knew I was smitten.  It took me over a year to finally ask her out and that was after she had already become a part of my close circle of friends and family and had dated two of my best friends.  I really had no idea how to talk to girls.  I might be a lot of things but a ladies’ man is not one of them!  Which is a good thing since we’ve been married for almost 34 years, engaged for the 3 years before that and “going steady” for  3 years before that. (I don’t think anyone says “going steady” anymore.  I think it’s called being “exclusive”!)  So what’s the point?  There was an immediate attraction, at least on my part, but real feelings grew over time as we got to know each other.  A life time commitment to one another grew over time.  “Love at first sight”, a myth.  At least I thought it was until 4 months ago.

It’s time for a confession.  I’m sorry Peg, I’ve been keeping this from you.  I’ve met someone.  I’ve been sneaking around behind your back.  When you go to work on Fridays I slip out on my Vespa to see her.  When I’m out running errands, it’s usually just an excuse to see her.   I didn’t mean for this to happen, but it did.  The first time I gazed into her beautiful blue eyes my heart melted.  I knew in an instant that there was nothing I wouldn’t  do for her.  When she’s asleep in my arms time stands still and I wish it could go on forever.  If being with her is a glimpse behind the curtain to heaven then I will die a happy man.  How can one person bring so much joy?

Her hair’s not long and red, it’s short and brown.  Her legs aren’t long and thin, they’re short and a bit pudgy.  She doesn’t talk much, I do most of it.  She just smiles and coos and makes me happy beyond description.  She gets angry, but I never do.  She cries and it makes me laugh.  And I let her win all of the arguments because, for now, she’s never wrong.

Don’t worry Peg, there’s room in my heart for both of you and I realize I do know how to talk to girls.  At least the ones that weigh 15 pounds.

Chapter 70, “Stories That Peg has Never Heard” #4

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32 hours is a long time to spend in an airplane.  It would be one thing if it were a 747 with flight attendants, in flight meal meals, and a bathroom, but it’s a horse of another hue when it’s a B-52 with no place to even stand up and stretch your legs.  So, as the expression goes, “there I was” on my first deployment to beautiful, tropical Guam.  Home to lots of brown tree snakes and Japanese tourists.  It was the very early 80s and we were keeping the pressure on the Iranians and the Russians by making our presence known in the Persian Gulf.  Even if it was just a pair of B-52’s working with a carrier task force and taking pictures of ships and it was making the point that we could project power anywhere in the world if need be.  So, because there weren’t that many bases in that part of the world which could, or would, support the Buff, we were launching two-ship formations out of Guam and making the 32 hour non-stop round trip.  We would takeoff with four tankers who would top us off over the Philippines.  The tanker crews would land at Clark AFB, do a little shopping,  get a nice dinner, go to bed, get up, file their flight plans, preflight their airplanes, takeoff, and join up with us to top off our tanks for the final sprint back to Guam.  The gas-passers always had it better than us!

On my first mission, I was a lowly lieutenant and I was flying with my lieutenant colonel aircraft commander and, to “augment” the crew, an extra pilot, a major.  Obviously, I was the low man on the totem pole.  The extra pilot got in the seat for 3 of the 4 air refuelings but, otherwise, he slept on the floor.  My AC, an old C-47 pilot, decided that the lieutenant could use the flying time so I flew the airplane for at least 24 of the 32 hours.  Now, while the B-52 does have an autopilot, it was prone to failure and, you guessed it, it failed about 6 hours after takeoff.  Not only did I find myself hand flying the airplane, but we were #2 in formation.  3000′ behind lead, in and out of the weather gets pretty old after awhile.

We descended into the Persian Gulf, did our low level work with the Navy, which included buzzing the deck of an aircraft carrier at 100′ surrounded by 20 Navy aircraft, climbed back to 39,000′, topped off with tankers  out of Diego Garcia, and watched the sun slip below the horizon behind us as we started the long leg back to Guam.

It was a beautiful night.  Not a cloud in the sky.  It was filled with billions of stars with no ground lights to wash them out and, occasionally, a little green St Elmo’s fire dancing on the windscreen.  If I hadn’t been awake for over 24 hours, if lead could have held a constant heading and not been continuously turning back and forth, if the autopilot had been working, if I could have just taken a good dump, it would have been perfect.  At some point, I think it was about 2 AM, I realized that I was the only one awake on the airplane.  I think the gentle swaying of the airplane as I tried to stay in position behind lead, who I found out later had also lost his autopilot and copilot instrument lights and he was the only one awake trying to fly by looking cross cockpit to the pilots instruments, had rocked my crew to sleep.

We were coming up to the Straits of Malacca when I noticed something to the right, out of the corner of my eye.  I turned my head to get a better look and several thousand feet below me I saw flashing lights.  At first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but as it continued to move away from under us, I realized that it was another airplane.  Normally I would just assume it was a commercial airliner and think nothing of it but, in my sleep deprived state, my brain went through some odd scenarios.  I thought, “Why is lead heading that direction?  He was in front of me just a minute ago”.  It took a few seconds, but I did come to the right conclusion and then turned my attention back to the task at hand, staying behind lead.  But when I did turn my head back to find lead I was in for a surprise.  Flying is sort of like driving.  Unless you’re careful, your hands will follow the direction you’re looking.  If you’ve ever taught someone to drive you know that new drivers tend to keep their heads looking straight ahead.  It takes some practice checking for threats by moving your head to see what’s going on all around you while still driving the car straight ahead.  The same is true in an airplane.  You’ve got to keep your head on a swivel yet keep your head disconnected from your hand. Well I had failed to disconnect the two and, while I had been looking at the airplane cross beneath us, I had rolled the airplane into 90 degrees of bank.  All I saw outside was stars and blackness and my HSI was telling me that something wasn’t right.  It took a second to realize the instruments weren’t lying so I fought with the seat of my pants and slowly rolled the airplane level and climbed back up to altitude after losing nearly 2000′.

I picked up lead in the distance and as I gradually worked my way back into position I realized that everyone else in the airplane was still sound asleep.  I guess it’s best to die in your sleep but I’m glad I wasn’t the one to facilitate it.  Adrenaline got me through the rest of the night and I figured the rest of the crew didn’t need to know how close they came to death so this is also a “Story my old B-52 crew has never heard”.

Chapter 69, “Stories That Peg has Never Heard” #3

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There’s an expression I frequently use to describe those who think highly of themselves.  It goes like this: “He’s a legend in his own mind”.  I know ya’ll know what I mean.  Sometimes the guy really is an outstanding individual and has earned all of the credit he thinks he deserves.  But, more likely than not, he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t really measure up.  As a society we’re certainly guilty of telling our kids how wonderful they are before they really do anything to deserve the praise.  An overabundance of unearned self-esteem has created a generation of narcissists who can’t understand why the real world doesn’t worship their brilliance. Sorry, I’m off on a tangent!  Rich was a “legend in his own mind”.

He wasn’t a bad loadmaster, he just wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.  He had been around a long time, had a lot of experience, but was lacking in the most essential aircrew attribute, common sense.   We were on a standard Bosnian rotation.  Not the rotations that were eventually considered “combat” missions, but the ones where we worked for the United Nations and were on “humanitarian” missions.

A normal day was a double shuttle into beautiful Sarajevo with an airplane full of food  from a variety of countries.  Some days it was pasta, cooking oil and vegetables from Italy and the next it could be rice and beans from Germany.  Whatever would fit on six pallets we would roll into the back of the plane and then fly the gauntlet into Sarajevo.  More on that next week.

On this particular deployment, Rich was my senior loadmaster.  They had paired him up with a young guy in the back and had given me a young copilot, navigator, and an experienced senior Flight Engineer.  All in all, a good mix, a good crew.  Our first lift had gone off without a hitch.  We had landed, the French had downloaded the cargo, and we were airborne in just under 10 minutes.  We had taken no mortar rounds and there were no 7.62mm holes in the airplane.  A good start.  We landed in Ancona, Italy to pick up another six pallets of food and to pick up a one star general.  I don’t remember who he was, but he had flown in from the states that morning so that he could catch a ride to observe an airlift mission.  We were used to “tourists”, as we called them, so after introductions at the cafe in the terminal we headed out to the airplane where I directed him to a seat on the bunk in the cockpit.  By then the loadmasters had finished loading the airplane and computing the weight and balance.  The timing was perfect.  Each airplane going into Sarajevo had a 15 minute “slot” time.  If you couldn’t make your slot you had to get on the radio and negotiate a new one and there might not be one available for hours.  So timing was everything and we were right on.

Engine start and taxi was uneventful.  Since the mission required that the Aircraft Commander make all landings and takeoffs into Sarajevo, it was the copilots turn to make the takeoff out of Ancona.  He lined up on the center of the runway, set takeoff power, and released the brakes.  The aircraft lunged forward and almost immediately an odd noise came over the interphone.  If you’ve ever watched Sesame Street, and don’t deny that you have, I’m sure you recall the muppet named Beaker.  He’s the one with the tall skinny head and tiny mouth and the noise he makes can’t be described as speech but more of a screech.  Kind of like “mee, mee, mee ,mee, mee!”.  That was what were heard as we accelerated down the runway.  Just a high pitched, other worldly, “mee, mee, mee, mee, mee, mee!”  After what seemed an eternity, the general chimed in and said “I think someone is saying “reject”!”  Now , that word means something when you’re rolling down the runway.  I directed the copilot to abort the takeoff and as he brought the throttles back, and began to decelerate, the voice suddenly became intelligible.  It was Rich and he started pleading “Stomp on the brakes,  stomp on the brakes, please, stomp on the brakes!”  By that time I had taken the aircraft from the copilot and, not knowing the reason he wanted me to stomp on the brakes but assuming it must be important, I obliged.  We all flew forward, straining against our harnesses.  At this point Rich’s voice came down a full octave but all he could say over and over was, “It’s bad, it’s bad, it’s really bad”.  We had slowed to taxi speed and when I glanced over my shoulder I noticed the general was gone.  He had unstrapped from his seat and was clamoring over the pallets to find out what was wrong back there.  The next thing I heard was his voice, on the loadmasters interphone, asking that we call for and ambulance, which the copilot did, and as we taxied back into the ramp a little Italian ambulance started circling the airplane obviously oblivious to the fact that props were dangerously close to turning his vehicle into a convertible.   They carried Rich out of the airplane and, with sirens blaring, hauled him off to the nearest hospital.  As the dust settled I finally had a chance to ask the other loadmaster what had happened.

Apparently, since the airplane was fully loaded, Rich had decided to sit on the fold down step for the toilet during takeoff.  Not only is it not an approved seat  but, if you sit on it, the only place to put your feet is on the ramp hinge.  When the ramp is down, for airdrop or loading pallets on the ground, it’s level with the rest of the cargo compartment floor but when you raise the ramp and lock it in the up position for flight, it angles upward towards the tail at about a 30 degree angle (I’m sure someone will correct me on the actual angle!).  Rich had failed to ensure that all of pallets were properly locked into place so when we released the brakes for takeoff physics took over and the last pallet, with 5,000 lbs of pasta, rolled back and smashed his foot into the ramp.

The Nav  got on the radio, got a new slot time, and we flew the lift.  We landed back in Ancona 3 hours later and Rich was there waiting on a stretcher.  His foot had about 20 pounds of bandages on it and as the ambulance driver handed me a large manila envelope he just said one word, x-ray.  Out of curiosity I opened the envelope, pulled it out, and held it up to the light.  You didn’t need to be a doctor to diagnose this one.  Five toes, five perfectly aligned fractures.  Each toe was halfway to the next one.  We changed our call sign to “Medevac” and headed back to Germany.

I guess if you’re going to do something boneheaded it’s best that you be the only victim of your own stupidity.

Some of you might have noticed that I didn’t use my normal anonymous name  “Fred”.  Rich is no longer with us.  He passed away way to early.  Another friend taken by alcohol.

Chapter 68, “Stories That Peg Has Never Heard” #2

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If you’ve flown long enough you learn that, although all crews are “safe”, some crews are safer than others.  A mix of experienced and inexperienced crewmembers is usually best since half of the crew is watching the other half to glean knowledge from the old guys and the other half is in “instructor mode”.  It’s a dynamic mix that results in great attention to detail and enhanced alertness.  The opposite ends of the scale are where you have to be a little more careful.  It’s obvious that a crew made up of all inexperienced crewmembers could be problematic but, conversely, a crew made up of all highly experienced members can be just as tricky.  If you’re not careful it’s easy to get lured into the false security that the other guy must know what he’s doing because he’s been doing it for so long.  I know I’m preaching to the choir for you flyers out there, but I’m not sure your average layman will understand.  Anyway, I found myself on a crew made up of members that fall into the latter category.

I was, at the time, the chief of Stan/Eval.  The aircraft commander was the Wing Commander, the navigator was our highest time nav, former AATTC instructor, and the engineer was a flight examiner.  You couldn’t ask for a more experienced crew.  And, on this particular mission, for good reason.  It was after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the US was trying to cash in on the “Peace Dividend”.  Our enemy was vanquished and the world would be at peace at last.  We can see how well that worked out!  But I digress.  To meet what we saw as the new paradigm, the Army was downsizing and consolidating.  To that end, a Special Ops unit in New York was being decommissioned and we had volunteered to help in the ceremony to celebrate their long and distinguished history.  We were going to drop them on their final jump mission and then attend the formal ceremony retiring the unit.  Kind of a big deal and a lot of pressure to get the mission off on time and on target.  High visibility and lots of DVs.  The kind of scenario that can quickly go sideways.

You always hope that the weather is either beautiful or total crap.  It makes decisions easy.  Sadly, that’s rarely the case, and that morning was the worst case scenario.  The weather at the airfield was marginal, at best, with 3 miles of visibility and ceilings ragged at 1500ft.  Along the route the weather was even more questionable with limited information available.  We looked at the low level route we were scheduled to fly and decided that we could delay our takeoff for awhile, hoping the weather would improve, and shorten the route to just enough time for the jumpers to run their checks and for us to get our checklists done.  We sat down with the charts, eliminated some legs, cut off some turns, added new points and headed out to brief the jumpmaster.  There were over 40 jumpers in the back including all of the senior leadership of the unit being decommissioned.  They all wanted to be a final part of their units history.

At our scheduled departure time, the weather hadn’t improved at all.  But it was, technically, VFR so off we went, hoping for the best.  It didn’t take long for us to realize that the weather observer at the field was, shall we say, an optimist.  We almost immediately found ourselves “scud running”.  For you non-flyers, that means flying just below the bottoms of the clouds trying to stay as high above the ground as you can without popping into the clouds.  Not really legal by the regulations!  Trying to stay out of the clouds was just the tip of the iceberg.   Because we had shortened the route it meant that we had multiple checklists to run, I had to backup the nav, I had to get in contact with the Drop Zone Officer, and I had to work two other radios to advise New York center and the control tower of the progress of the drop.  We reached the IP (Initial Point, the last point before the drop) on time and, because we had shortened the route, had to make a huge 150 degree turn.  We were now 15 miles from the drop, about 5 minutes.  When we rolled out of the turn, I looked at my chart and I thought the heading on the INS was 5 or 6 degrees off of what I thought it should be.  When you make a large turn, if your angle of bank isn’t constant, it’s easy to roll out either wide or inside and that can have a large effect on your heading to the next point.  I didn’t see it as a problem and by that time I was concentrating on getting clearance to drop and worrying about what I saw ahead.

The biggest danger in scud running is if the bottoms of the clouds start getting lower or if the elevation starts rising.  You find yourself in a squeeze play and that’s what was happening the closer we got to the Drop Zone.  The Wing Commander in the left seat was concentrating on staying out of the clouds and not hitting the ground, I was trying to get the Drop Zone Officer to give me some idea of the weather ahead, and all of time we were getting closer and closer to terra firma.  We ran the slowdown checklist, lowering the flaps and opening the paratroop doors.  There were very few ground references from which to navigate, but the INS showed us right on course.  We should have seen some farms along the way, but I was only seeing more and more forest.  Finally, a mile from the drop zone, with nothing ahead but clouds and trees, I said, “Let’s get out of here, no-drop, climb!”.  The pilot started an immediate straight ahead climb and, since flaps were already at 50%, did it at 150 knots.  I began retuning the radio to New York center but was interrupted by the flight engineer who said’ “What’s up with the radar altimeter?”.  I looked down and noted that we were climbing at 500′ per minute, but the radar altimeter was decreasing rapidly through 1000′.  The terrain along the route was pretty flat and rolling and the only high terrain was 5-6 miles west of the drop zone and it was a huge sheer cliff that the locals used for parasailing.  I checked our heading.  It hadn’t changed, but instruments don’t usually lie so I pulled back on the yoke, but the throttles to the wall, and asked the AC to slow to 130 knots.  We all watched as the radar altimeter finally stopped decreasing at 168′.

It was a very quiet flight back to the airfield.  The jumpers were disappointed, but the ceremony went on.  They would have been much more disappointed if we had splattered the aircraft on the ground.  But I was still confused.  Had the radar altimeter malfunctioned or had we really been that close to the ground?  I sat down with the nav to review what had happened.  In our hurry to get the mission off on time and make the whole thing work, he had entered the wrong coordinates for the drop zone.  It was a 6 mile error which headed us directly at the massive cliff to the west.  I hadn’t checked his entries prior to takeoff like I should have and when my spider senses went off after the big turn I had ignored them because I was busy with other things.

Lots of lessons learned that day.  You need to have a clear idea of when to say, “enough is enough”.  You need to never take things for granted.  You need to trust, but verify.  You need to speak up when things are going right.  You need to listen to that “still small voice”.

Chapter 67, “Stories That Peg has never heard” #1

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…..He asked, “What’s the highest peak in the rest of the route?”, and the Navigator answered, “Just under 10,000 feet”.  “We’ll fly the rest of the route at 11,000″……

Let’s start at the beginning……..

My first operational assignment was flying B-52s.  I had graduated #2 in my class and somehow I was deluded into thinking the higher you graduated the better chance you had getting the aircraft you wanted.  The problem was that I wanted a C-130 or C-141 but I was FAR (Fighter, Attack, Recce) qualified and, unbeknownst to me, that combination set you up for the venerable B-52.  It all worked out in the end, but I found myself at the most northern of SAC’s (Strategic Air Command) southern tier bases.  Only in the Air Force would South Dakota be considered a “southern” base!

After a year in the buff my first Aircraft Commander, a crusty old LtCol, was moved to a staff job. We ended up getting a brand new, straight from upgrade, AC.  With an experienced AC you usually got the “good” deals but once you got a new guy you were stuck with the less than desirable duties.  In this case, we were doing a practice ORI (Operational Readiness Inspection) and since our new AC wasn’t fully trained yet the rest of the crew was stuck flying as safety observers.  This meant that I would sit in the instructors seat, which was no more than an aluminum box with space for size 10 boots, I wear a 13, with a parachute on my back and no ejection seat, for a 10 hour mission, at night.  But at least I was flying with the S-01 crew.  They were the number 1 crew in the wing and the “S” meant that they were a Standardization/Evaluation crew.  The creme de la creme.  I figured I could at least pick up some new techniques.

The route we were flying was a brand new route that no one in the wing had ever flown.  It snaked its’ way through Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska  and a bit of Colorado.  Three hours of low level flying 300′ above the ground at 350 miles per hour in extreme mountainous terrain.  SAC’s idea of a good time.  To truly appreciate the hazards of this type of flying you have to understand that this was long before the days of NVGs (Night Vision Goggles).  The aircraft had two cameras mounted under the nose.  A FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) and a Low light.  The Low Light was an early generation night vision system but required some pretty significant moonlight or starlight to give even a grainy image.  You could select which camera image you wanted to be presented on your screen in the cockpit.  Along with the video presentation the screen also included a ribbon radar altimeter (height above the ground), airspeed, a little cartoon airplane in the center and, what I called, the “squiggly line”.

The squiggly line was a continuously updated presentation of the highest terrain in front of you at either 3, 6, or 10 miles.  The shorter the distance the more aggressively you would fly the route.  Theoretically, if you kept the cartoon aircraft above the cartoon squiggly line you would miss the, not cartoon, mountain by 300 feet.  All of this at night, with no moon, in unfamiliar terrain.  To add to the fun on this particular night, the gyroscopic stabilization of the squiggly line was malfunctioning.  This meant that the line was totally unusable unless the aircraft was straight and level.  Good times!

Now that I’ve set up the scenario, and given you way more information than you really needed, let’s proceed with the rest of the story.  So there I was, at 1:00AM( 0100 for those in the military), sitting on the little aluminum box, parachute on my back, helmet on my head, in the mountains, a lowly 1st lieutenant, flying with the #1 crew, 300′ above the ground, 350 miles per hour, a less than stellar terrain avoidance system, peering into the blackness.  We had just crossed over a 9,000 ft mountain peak and had started a large left, descending turn into a valley.  The squiggly line was useless and, since there was no moon, the cameras showed nothing.  There was that odd silence that occurs when an entire crew is unsure of the situation.  It’s a very unnerving silence that, once you’ve flown long enough, sets off a little voice in the back of your head.  At that point, inexplicably, I did something that you normally wouldn’t do while flying low level at night, I looked up.  On the B-52 there are two windows high up in the cockpit.  They’re used during air-refueling to see the tanker.  Otherwise you rarely use them.  What I saw, through those windows, were stars but the stars ended in the blackness of the silhouette of a mountain straight ahead and thousands of feet up.  I reached forward, pushed all 8 of the throttles to the wall, pulled the yoke back into the pilots lap and screamed “Climb!”.  Once the AC realized what was happening he took control of the aircraft and all I could do was watch as the airspeed bled down to 200 knots and the radar altimeter descended through 500′, 400′, 300′, 200′ and then started climbing again after it bottomed out at 134′.  After what felt like an eternity, someone finally spoke.  It was the AC.  He asked, “What’s the highest peak in the rest of the route?”, and the Navigator answered, “Just under 10,000 feet”.  “We’ll fly the rest of the route at 11,000”.  It was a very quiet flight home.