As
the sailor is home from the sea
and
the hunter home from the hill,
the
flyer is home from the sky.
FLY FOR THE
LIGHT
The
phrase “flying stories” as used in the title of this book is a cliché term akin
to “war stories” and “fishing tales.” It refers to those BS sessions pilots
have waiting in the ready room or standing around the hangar when one story
reminds someone of another story and so on.
The
title I had originally chosen for the book was Fly
For the Light, but I changed it to Flying
Stories thinking my first choice might be confused with one of those
New Age religious experience books. True, many who venture into the realm of
flight often feel something akin to a religious experience, but that’s not what
Flying Stories is about.
To
fly for the light is what a pilot does climbing out in a heavy overcast.
Leaving the ground on a dreary rainy day, an airplane lifts into the air
trailing small vortices of moisture behind from the wingtips and enters the
clouds. As the plane climbs higher and higher, the clouds turn a lighter shade
of gray. When the plane nears the top of the cloud layer, a bright silver glow
engulfs everything. Then suddenly, it bursts into a beautiful sunshiny day on
top. The plane is suspended, hanging as stones do not, in the air high above a
white cotton blanket that stretches from horizon to horizon.
On
an airline flight some years ago, I was looking out the window through misty
clouds to the earth 30,000 feet below. Passengers that are pilots themselves
are the ones looking out the window, listening for the gear to go down or
hearing the ATC clearance to land in their heads. As my thoughts pondered the
mystery of flight one more time, I hit on several good ideas for writing about
my own flying experiences.
How
could I express these profound thoughts without writing a whole book to go with
them? I’ve authored engineering reports, manuals and some magazine articles,
but as I pondered a collection of non-fiction stories instead of the Great
American novel I always planned to write, a single sentence passed through my
head like one of those moving light ads on a bank sign. “Write about what you
know,” the standard advice given to all would-be authors. It would be a good
opportunity to re-tell all those old flying stories family and friends have
heard so often that we now call them out by number.
Research
is the fun part of writing, so why would I want to write about something I
already know about? After all, I’ve seen the story. I lived it. So I wrote the
stories as I remembered them even if not recorded for posterity with exacting
accuracy.
This book is somewhat biographical,
but eclectic in its writing with a generous helping of sarcastic humor. The
events are chronological within a given subject, but with gaps in the time
periods. Thus, the reader is not about to read the great American novel. Most
of the stories are true to the best of my recollection, but only first names
have been used to protect the guilty and those who might possibly still be
alive.
The
title is Stories not Story so
don’t look for a beginning, a moral or an end. Life is a series of choices.
Whether we choose wisely or poorly, these choices are what make up the stories
of our lives. This book is simply a compilation of loosely related vignettes of
my life experiences in aviation and my desire to build things, not to destroy
them.
The
original manuscript of these stories was thrown in a drawer in 1989 and
forgotten until 2002 when it was published in a limited edition. In need of a
good proofing and rewrite, the manuscript was resurrected and republished in
its present form thanks to the encouragement, expert proofreading and valuable
suggestions of friend and fellow aviator Commander Ken Bjork, USN (Retired).
Ken flew countless hours as a Patrol Plane Commander in the P2V Neptune ASW
aircraft mentioned in the military chapters of this book. He had read the
original draft and volunteered his assistance in completing the final draft.
The
stories begin with my boyhood recollections of what it was like growing up
during World War II and the external forces which cause each of us to become
what we become, in my case an engineer and pilot. Hopefully, some of these
stories will give younger readers an insight into a time when the American
aerospace industry was still coming of age.
Pilots were a dime-a-dozen after
World War II. Who wanted pilots anyway? A hundred thousand young men had
learned to fly in the military. Many did not come home, many did. The dedicated
ones and the lucky ones found jobs in new aviation businesses. Some became
engineers. Others test pilots and airline captains.
About this time, there were kids born
in the mid 1930s who came of age in the 1950s. Born too late to be part of the
era of dirigibles and barnstormers, they were also too young to fly the B-17s
and P-51s or help design the early postwar birds like the P-80 jet airplane and
Bell X-1 rocket plane. This in-between generation entered the work force while
the baby boomers were still in grade school. They would pick up where the
aviation pioneers left off and establish the United States as the unchallenged
world leader in aviation.
This is the story of one of those
kids who was too young to go to the last big war, but grew up in the midst of
it. One of those faceless thousands of young engineers who designed and
developed the million component parts that helped make air travel safer than
riding a bus and put the first man on the moon. These stories, with different
names and places, are the stories of the golden age of civil aviation and the
forgotten pilots and engineers of that era.
PART
I. Growing Up
In
the early 1930s, dad and his cousin Roy managed to acquire a used biplane. Roy
was a year older than dad and taught himself how to fly the plane. He would
land in my grandparents' pasture to pick up dad to go flying.
On
one of Roy’s pasture landings, he turned the tail of the biplane into some high
stiff weeds that tore the fabric on the elevator and rudder. Dad and Roy used
newspaper and banana oil dope to patch the tail adequately enough to get the
old bird flying again. Dad joked that if they would have had color comic strips
in those days they could have made their patch job a little more colorful.
Dad's
ancestry was Scot, German and English. Grandma Arnold was able to trace her
ancestry to the Stewarts and to the daughter of the brother of the king of
Scotland in the 1660s. Dad’s grandmother was a Hinkle, a misspelling of the
name Heinkel, like the German aircraft designer.
Dad’s
father, Jesse Earl Arnold, was a Missouri cowboy-turned-farmer when he
inherited a ranch in Oklahoma from his dad who was shot by a sharecropper in an
argument over a load of corn stolen by a colored sharecropper. Not surprising
in view of the fact that the elder Arnold had been tried and pardoned for his
involvement in a gunfight some years before. Some say grandpa and some
vigilantes hunted the man down and hung him. Others hold to the view that the
sheriff caught the man and he went to prison. As we say in Texas, when the
legend is a better story then the truth, tell the legend.
My
dad knew early on that he did not want to be a farmer. He was dark haired,
good-looking, not real tall, but personable sort of a fellow. During his high
school years, he played football. He lettered all four years, but claimed he
warmed the bench more than he played. He owned an Indian motorcycle that he ran
on oil field drip-gas. He and his friends would put a bucket under the leaks
from the pipeline fittings and would come back later to collect the gas when
the drips had filled the bucket to put it in their old car or motorcycle,
clearly one of the benefits of living near the oil fields.
After
graduating from high school, dad left for Chicago where he attended Coyne
Electrical Engineering School. He worked at the Harvey House Restaurant in the
Chicago train station to pay for his room and board. It was a fantastic time to
be in Chicago as the Century of Progress Exposition was in full swing and dad
attended the Exposition several times. He was fascinated by an RCA
demonstration of early television.
My
mom's ancestry was Scot, Swede and Cherokee. My grandma Swanson’s father,
Charles McClure, was a Deputy U.S. Marshal. His father was a Scotsman and his
mother a full-blood Cherokee. He was ambushed and shot by two masked gunmen
from the Star gang during the Porum Range Wars. The full story has since been
written up in True West magazine.
Oklahoma Territory was a rough place to live in those early days. McClure’s
wife, also half Cherokee, was born in Macon, Georgia and I believe she came to
Oklahoma as a young girl with her family on the Trail of Tears.
My
mother's father, Marvin Henry Swanson, for whom I was named, was an oilman and
cotton ginner. His parents were first generation Swedish-Americans. His dad
came to Arkansas to work on the railroads in the late 1800s.
Grandpa
Swanson was a big man, well liked and respected. He owned two cotton gins and
in his dealings with the farmers and sharecroppers, Granddad Swanson had the
reputation of “running an honest scale.” During his lifetime, he made and lost
more than one fortune wildcatting for oil. He was the mayor of the town and
served as county commissioner for several years. Marvin Henry had also been
known to do a little bootlegging in the early Oklahoma prohibition days. I
think I took after him more than a little and most of my family seem to agree
on that point.
Mom,
who was a year younger than dad, was one of the football team’s cheerleaders
and played basketball for the Beggs Demons. She was a beautiful woman and was
often told she looked like the movie actress, Gloria Swanson. My mom, Lola
Evelyn Swanson, had four younger brothers and one older brother. My granddad
spoiled his only daughter with riding horses, cars and just about anything she
wanted. She was more apt to be found wearing pants and high top riding boots
than a dress, but she knew early on that she didn’t want to be a small town
girl the rest of her life.
When
dad returned to Oklahoma from Chicago, he married his high school sweetheart,
Lola. My parents moved to Stillwater where dad attended Oklahoma A&M, while
working part time installing and repairing radios.
This
writer was born at the Payne County hospital in Stillwater in July of 1936. The
year of my birth coincided with the pinnacle of the Oklahoma dust bowl, which
John Steinbeck wrote about in his novel The
Grapes of Wrath. The Midwestern United States was in the process of
drying up and blowing away. Many of the Okie farmers left for California. I was
told that the summer I was born, my crib rails were draped with damp towels to
keep my skin from drying out.
When
I was one year old, dad opened his own radio repair shop in North Platte,
Nebraska. Dad, now in his mid-twenties, was still very young looking. On one
occasion, he made a house call to repair a radio and the lady of the house ran
him off saying she wasn’t going to let some kid fool with her radio.
While
installing a car radio, not a factory option on most cars in the 1930s, battery
corrosion fell in dad’s eyes causing temporary blindness. With dad unable to
work, we returned to Beggs to stay with family until dad recovered his
eyesight.
Growing
up, I spent a lot of time in that little ol’ cotton town of Beggs where the
steam locomotive freight trains went rolling through at high-speed twice a day.
For years there was a stop light on Main Street, but it was finally taken down.
If you blinked your eyes twice on old Highway 75 driving through Beggs, you’d
have missed it.
My
cousins and I spent a lot of summer days trying to find something interesting
to do in that town where they rolled up the sidewalks at sundown. The
depression-era red sandstone National Guard armory was a good place to go climb
around on an old olive drab armored car and an Army tank parked there.
When
my cousins and I weren't out at the Arnold farm trying to catch a horse to
ride, we were down at Grandpa Swanson’s cotton gin exploring the large
corrugated metal gin building or jumping from cotton bale to cotton bale in the
shipping yard.
On
Saturday nights, the picture show down at the end of the two-block long Main
Street opened up. For fifteen cents, we could see a black and white double
feature, a cartoon and one of the continuing chapters of Rocketman or The
Phantom.
Movies
during the war years were limited in genre. They were either westerns or war
movies. Somewhere in the movie the star, someone like John Wayne, would give a
hundred word speech on what America means to
me. Most of the movies that had any flying in them were war movies
and managed to provide us with the latest patriotic propaganda. The movie
always ended with a reminder for all of us to buy U.S. Savings Bonds and
Stamps. And we did. I faithfully purchased my twenty-five cent savings stamp
each week at the local post office window.
By
late 1939, the United States was on a collision course with becoming involved
in World War II. “The War” would change many people’s lives. Had it not been
for the war, I might have grown up a cotton farmer or cowboy. Being just a punk
kid at the time, I had little or no awareness of the coming war that would set
my family, along with millions of others, on a different life’s journey.
While
still in high school, two of my mother's brothers, Raymond and Royce, along
with my dad, joined the Oklahoma National Guard, which in WW II became part of
the 45th Division. The National Guard in the 1930s was akin to a boy’s social
club. Dances were held at the local armory on Saturday nights and the two-week
active duty tours were more like summer camp than war maneuvers. These Oklahoma
boys were, however, fine outdoorsmen and good shots with a rifle long before
they were ever called to active duty with the U.S. Army.
My
dad’s cousin Roy joined the Army Air Corps about a year before Pearl Harbor was
attacked. Due to Roy’s previous flying experience, he was made a flight
instructor and stationed at Enid Airbase. About this time Central Aircraft
Manufacturing Company (CAMCO) the cover company for the American Volunteer
Group (AVG), was recruiting pilots for General Claire Chennault’s Flying
Tigers.
Roy
saw a notice posted on the base bulletin board to the effect that any flight
officer who wanted to enlist in the Flying Tigers could receive an honorable
discharge from the U.S. Army in order to join the AVG. Roy told me that he
thought about joining the Flying Tigers for the high pay and a chance to fly
fighters. It was tempting, but he had just gotten married and decided not to
sign up.
Oddly
enough, Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna, Lloyd Stearman and years later even Bill
Lear, all founded their aircraft companies in Wichita, Kansas. Stearman being
the predecessor to Boeing aircraft company.
In
the build-up years before the war, Beech Aircraft received a contract to build
BT-10 bomber trainers based on the commercial Twin Beech Model 18. The same
basic design became the Army C-45 and the Navy SNB. Although originally used as
a nickname for an early twin Cessna, the name Bamboo Bomber was often used for
wartime twin BT’s due to part of their structure being plywood. Worthy of note
is that some of the fastest and best aircraft ever built in that era, like the
de Havilland Mosquito, used wood in their construction.
Dad
decided to head up to Wichita where he had heard the aircraft factories were
hiring. Mom and I stayed with her folks until dad could find a job and come for
us.
When
dad arrived at Beech, he was told his skills might be of more value at the
government procurement office. When he inquired there about the job, an Army
Air Corps officer and procurement inspector told him that a young fellow like
him wouldn’t be able to do the job. The officer explained that he needed
experienced men and went on to say. “I’ve got two dozen new airplanes out there
on the ramp that I can’t deliver because the radios don’t work.”
Dad
asked if he could take a look at some of the radios that were having problems.
The officer laughed and allowed as to how he should go ahead because it sure
couldn't hurt anything.
Dad
went to his car, got his toolbox and proceeded to the nearest airplane. By
sunset that evening, every aircraft on the field had a working radio. Needless
to say, he was hired on the spot. Soon after the war began, dad became chief of
Air Corps electronics procurement for Beech and Boeing aircraft companies.
Raymond,
mom's older brother, served in the Corps of Engineers and was captured by the
Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. For several years, our family did not
know if he was still alive. Years after he returned home, I asked him to tell
me about the final hours before he was taken prisoner.
The
Germans had surrounded his unit, but he made it to the second floor of an empty
shop building in a small village. He could hear a lot of gunfire nearby. On the
street below, he saw some German soldiers he thought he had shot at earlier. He
still had an M1 carbine and a 45 caliber automatic, but was out of ammunition
for both. He decided to hide where he was until some of his own unit showed up.
Hours
had passed when he heard a man yelling in broken English, “They haff
surrendered.” Raymond looked out the window to see the man walking down the
center of the street waving a white flag. Raymond yelled back something to the
effect that it was about time those German bastards surrendered, but as it
turned out, it was the other way around. His unit had surrendered and he became
a prisoner of war.
Raymond
always hated the Red Cross after the war. He claimed that when they arrived at
the prison camp with packages sent from the states, the Red Cross people would
sell them to the Nazi guards. In all fairness, even though the packages had
come from the states, they were probably not being delivered by the American
Red Cross.
During
the winter of 1944, American prisoners were force-marched north in a blinding
snowstorm. Raymond told me that many of the younger soldiers, who were stronger
than he, would just lie down in the snow and die. He made up his mind to
survive. He had a wife and two kids back home he intended to see again and that
kept him going.
Near
the end of the war in Raymond’s prisoner of war (POW) camp, the prisoners began
hearing the sound of heavy guns in the distance for several days. They knew by
this the invasion force was moving towards them. One morning, they woke up and
their German guards were gone, left in the middle of the night. At this point,
the prisoners were too weak to walk out of the camp, so they waited for the
allied forces to reach them. Raymond and the others were loaded onto C-47
transports and flown to England for medical care. Raymond had survived and was
going home.
Raymond’s brother, my uncle Royce,
became a military policeman and served in Africa. The Army hired camel jockeys
to take supplies to the soldiers in North Africa. Royce claimed he could smell
the caravans coming a day before they got there and three days after they left.
Royce also served later in Europe and was a top Sergeant in the infantry in the
Korean War. Both Raymond and Royce were highly decorated soldiers, Raymond
receiving the Silver Star and both receiving Bronze Stars.
Royce's twin brother, Harold enlisted
in the Air Corps and you guessed it, was stationed at Enid Air Base. Private
First Class Harold was assigned to the same training squadron as dad’s cousin
Roy, now a Captain and an instructor pilot. Harold’s enlisted buddies claimed
that PFC, in Harold’s case, meant Personal
Friend of the Captain because of his ability to get weekend passes
to go home to see his wife in Beggs.
In the early 1940s, somewhere in the boonies
near the Boeing airfield, my mom and I would take dad’s dinner to him when he
worked late in the evenings. This wasn’t his office where we dropped him off at
work, but a remote test site. Parked near the olive drab military truck and
trailer where dad and several Army guys were working was a large dish antenna.
Atop another trailer were several smaller antennas going around.
The
couple of times I was allowed out of the car, dad would be in one of the
trailers seated in front of a large bank of electronics, monitoring several
oscilloscopes. For many years, no one knew these radar installations even
existed. This particular radar test sight was being used in conjunction with
top-secret B-29 airborne radar navigation and bombing systems.
During
the war many goods were rationed and my dad had received a draft deferment
because of his secret government work. Also, because of dad’s work, we were
able to purchase new tires for our car and had an "A" sticker for
gasoline. Mom took a lot of verbal abuse from the other wives whose husbands
were overseas because of dad's apparent draft dodging status, but she never let
it bother her, as she knew he was doing important work that would hopefully
shorten the war. Dad always wore civilian clothes, but he carried a military ID
card indicating he held the rank of an AAC Major.
The
head of the Army Air Forces during WW II was General Henry "Hap"
Arnold. With our last name also being Arnold, dad was often asked if he was
related to General Arnold. Dad's personal private joke was to reply, "You
mean ol' Uncle Hap?" and let it go at that. To my knowledge, we were no
relation.
With
the single exception of Jimmy Doolittle's raid on mainland Japan, there was no
practical way of attacking the Japanese by air until the American forces
captured Pacific islands closer to Japan.
The
China-Burma-India (CBI) theater of war was the back door into China over the
Himalayas. Pilots referred to the long high altitude mountain flights as Flying the Hump. It was the only means of
attacking the Japanese occupying China and Burma by air. As I found out later,
my dad had been instrumental in the development and installation of the
airborne radar systems on the Boeing B-29s.
On
one particular day, I recall my dad coming home from work early. He went into
the kitchen with my mom and I could hear them talking quietly. For several days
after that, my folks seemed very sad. It was only after the war I learned that
many of my dad's friends, pilots and crewmen, had been lost during the first
B-29 raid over the Hump. Dad had personally trained many of those men in the
use of airborne radar. During subsequent raids, more Army Air Corps (AAC)
aircraft were lost to engine trouble and bad weather in CBI than were shot
down.
Wichita,
Kansas with all its defense plants became a boomtown when WW II broke out.
Construction was going on everywhere. When we first arrived in Wichita, the
government put us up in something akin to a tourist court and then in an old
second story apartment until our new home in suburban Wichita was completed.
I
had a stuffed monkey in a red and gold uniform to which I would tie a large
cowboy bandanna handkerchief by strings under its arms. He was my parachute
dummy. I would toss him out of my upstairs bedroom window in order to watch him
parachute to the ground. After going up and down stairs to retrieve the old
monk, I finally got smart and tied a long cord to him so as to pull him back up
again.
Kids
in 1940 didn't have lots of toys like kids today. The only childhood
possessions I can recall were the monkey, a large metal Army truck with a
canvas top, some lead toy solders and an English bike. That was it till I was a
little older and took up building balsa wood, doped paper-skinned model
airplanes.
As a
kid living in Wichita during the war, I did the usual things like collecting
photos of airplanes, listening to Captain Midnight on the radio and ordering a
Captain Midnight secret decoder ring. By the way, the coded message at the end
of the radio broadcast was "Drink Ovaltine".
The
Douglas B-19 Flying Behemoth bomber aircraft was designed and built before WW
II. The United States wartime propaganda promoted the B-19 along with the
Boeing B-15 as the largest bombers in the world.
On a
summer afternoon, while playing in the yard, I recall seeing the B-19 fly over.
It is possible it was a Boeing B-15 that lumbered high above in the blue sky,
but I was familiar enough with airplanes by that time to recognize it was much
larger and different than other bombers I had seen fly over.
Large
numbers of B-17 Flying Fortress bombers were built quickly by several aircraft
companies around the country for the war in Europe. As it turned out, both B-15
and B-19 were technologically outdated prototype aircraft used as cover stories
to hide the advance designed B-29 Superfortress.
At
the Boeing factory ramp over on the highway, the newly assembled B-29s would
taxi to an area where they would test fire the turret machine guns against a
large dirt embankment. Whenever I could, I’d talk my dad into driving me over
there to watch the tests.
We
moved to a newly completed housing addition that was down the street from a
grass strip airport, a favorite place for us kids to play. Parked in the weeds
behind an old hangar was a Fairchild low wing tandem trainer that someone had
crashed. I flew many a fighter mission in that old wingless Fairchild fuselage.
Other kids played soldiers or cowboys, but we always played aviators.
Air
Corps pilots often came to our house for dinner and I would always hang around
to hear their latest flying and war stories. It was probably because of these
many stories that I knew someday I wanted to learn to fly.
The
War Is Over
On
VJ-Day (Victory over Japan), most of Wichita turned out on Main Street to
celebrate. Life in America, however, would never be the same again. Beechcraft
celebrated a few weeks later by hosting a gigantic open house. People who had
never seen the inside of a defense plant could now see where their friends and
relatives worked.
My
mom sewed some pilot wings on a military school uniform for me and I took the
hatband out of the cap to make it look like one of those Fifty-Mission hats the Air Corps pilots
wore. At the Beechcraft factory open house, a photographer took my picture in
the uniform and it appeared in the commemorative edition of the Beech Log company magazine.
The fifty-mission crushed hat
nickname originated from the number of missions a crew had to fly before being
rotated home for leave. By removing the stiffening ring from the hat, it was
more easily stuffed into a bag or behind the seat. With the ring removed the
hat drooped on both sides.
The Eighth Air Force in Europe
suffered the highest number of casualties of any unit in WW II, about
twenty-seven percent. The number of missions required for rotation started out
to be twenty-five. The Memphis Belle B-17 crew was first to meet the goal. As
the war wore on, the number was increased to fifty.
After the war ended, Roy stayed in
the new Air Force and served at Wright Field and at the Pentagon and retired as
a full Colonel. My mother’s twin brothers, Harold and Royce worked at Douglas
Aircraft in Tulsa until they retired.
Uncle
Raymond took a job mowing grass at an oil company after the war. When several
wells all came in at the same time, the oil field superintendent driving
flatbed truck stopped to ask Raymond, “You know anything about oil wells?”
Raymond
replied, “Guess I do, I grew up in an oil field. My dad was a wildcatter,” and
he climbed on the truck. Years after that Raymond retired as the New Mexico
superintendent for the Amerada Oil Company.
The
1940s were a time when men took their hats off when the flag passed by and
folks held their right hand over their heart. Most people knew all the words to
the National Anthem and believed
in the words to the Battle Hymn of the
Republic. There were no arguments about the fact that God was the
protectorate of our great nation. Now with the passing of the Last Great Generation, America’s age of
innocence has faded.
PART
I. Growing Up
In
1946, we moved to Dayton, Ohio. Dad was transferred to Wright-Patterson Air
Force Base and assigned to Air Research and Development (ARDC) at Wright Field.
Except for my early glimpse of the radar project dad worked on during the war,
I never knew exactly what it was he did at work. He never talked about his job.
For example, my education consisted of bits of information like being told that
RADAR was not a word like radio, but an acronym meaning Rapid Automatic
Detection Alignment and Repeats.
After
a brief stay in North Dayton, we moved to Fairfield. The adjoining town of
Osborn was incorporated with Fairfield to become Fairborn. The main gate to
Patterson Air Force Base (AFB) lay at the center of Fairborn and the backyard
of our townhouse apartment backed onto a section of the airbase called Wood
City.
My
brother Don, who is ten years younger than myself, was born shortly after we
moved to Fairborn. The day he was born, the Dayton Daily News ran a front-page
story about a naval officer who had overshot his carrier and went over the
side. He was fished out of the drink unharmed. My brother was named Donald
Keith after that Navy flyer for no other reason than my mother thought the
fellow must have had a charmed life.
Our
next-door neighbor, a young Air Force officer, drove a brand new, baby blue
Lincoln Continental Cabriolet with push button door openers. He must have been
from a wealthy family as I am sure he didn’t buy that baby on a junior
officer’s pay! My lifelong interest in the Lincoln marque must have began with
that very automobile.
The
young officer and his wife must have felt I was being neglected due to all the
fuss being made over the new baby boy in the family. For Easter, they gave me a
brand new Zenith radio receiver, which I prized among my favorite possessions.
DXing is a forgotten hobby that
involved seeing how many distant radio stations one can pick up. Using a long
wire antenna strung across my bedroom ceiling, I would sit up nights carefully
tuning the radio dial and waiting for the next station identification call
letters to be announced so that I could enter the station in my logbook.
As
indicated in the sub-title of this book, How
I came To Be An Engineer, the next couple of chapters will dwell on
what creates a sense of design. What makes an artist, an athlete or a designer
is an inherent ability plus a desire to acquire that skill. The same can be
said for a good designer. We learn by baby steps, not giant strides.
Before
I ever heard of an official soapbox derby race, I had constructed two coaster
cars. The first was built of parts from my brother's disassembled baby buggy.
The body was a wooden shipping crate mounted on the buggy’s springs and axle,
complete with white rubber tires and spoke wheels. The soapbox buggy’s steering
directional control depended on which way you leaned.
For my second non-powered vehicle,
the Green Hornet, I used an aircraft’s drop-tank with the bottom cut out and
nailed to a five-foot 2X10 plank chassis. The rear axle was nailed directly to
the wood chassis. The steerable front axle used a single bolt to hold the angle
iron and was steered by means of a rope fastened to each side of the front
axle. The four wheels were stock wheelbarrow wheels from a hardware store.
A U-shape cockpit was cut out of the
top for the driver to sit on an old chair cushion. The wheels were enclosed
inside the body reflecting the bulbous auto body designs of that era. The Green
Hornet was a popular radio mystery show, but the car was actually given that
name after we borrowed some forest green paint from the apartment maintenance
folks and painted it with a brush. It was exceptionally heavy for a coaster
car, but sleek and modern in appearance.
Ohio people were big on soapbox derby
races, so that summer I registered to enter the annual soapbox derby race down
Wright View Heights Hill. At the race banquet, I won the door prize, a bicycle
speedometer.
The day of the race, my shanghaied
neighborhood pit-crew and I toiled to push the drop-tank soapbox to the
starting line at the top of the hill. The car looked fast, but was probably no
match for the assemblage of sleek, thin-wheeled official soapbox cars built
from kits and by kids denying any assistance from their coaching parents.
Before
the official trials started, I made one coaster ride down the hill. Steering
wasn't that good and sitting low to the ground, I felt like I was doing about
50 mph instead of fifteen. When the derby officials arrived on the scene, I was
immediately disqualified due to my non-regulation wheels.
Who
said anything about regulation wheels? What rules? I didn't read any stinking
rules! I went to Coach Bushmire who was one of the judges and asked if I should
give back the door prize I had won? He said he didn't think so as I had won it
fair and square in the drawing. Thus ended my non-powered racing career.
Oklahoma
Vacations
During
the nine years we lived in Ohio, my dad would always schedule his vacation for
late June. When the time came for our annual vacation to Oklahoma, we’d load up
the family car and departed Fairborn at the crack of dawn. Old U.S. Route 40
passed through Indianapolis and headed west. Arriving in St Louis the second
day of the trip, we would change to Route 66.
Route
40 lay a little north of present I70 and ran across the flat Ohio farmland, a
straight shot from the Dayton airport to Richmond and Indianapolis. Thus, the
airline airways followed the highway. The old nighttime air navigation beacon
light towers, which predated radio navigation were still standing in those days
and could be seen from the highway.
For
lunch we’d stop in Terra Haute at a grocery store, purchase a large slice of
baloney, crackers and cold drinks, which we ate somewhere along the road. Dad
had it figured out that if we ate breakfast at home and had a picnic lunch,
then we could afford to take mom out that evening for dinner to a really nice
restaurant of her choice.
It
was my job to navigate during the trip. This, however, did not include making
any of the decisions like which road we’d take. Dad did that. Nor when we would
make the next restroom stop. Mom did that. Restroom stops were usually made
after my brother and I had screamed for about fifteen minutes and, according to
dad, he had just managed to pass a long line of trucks that he would now have
to pass all over again.
What
my navigating meant was that each hour of the trip, I was to log the miles on
the odometer and determine our average speed. I would use these figures and a
freebie gas company map to announce our estimated time to the next town or
point of interest. A good average speed was about 50 mph on those old roads
that passed through the center of every small town along the way. Each time we
filled the car with gas, I logged the number of gallons and divided them into
the miles driven since the last fill-up to determine our average fuel economy.
Looking
forward to crossing the mighty Mississippi, the mile-wide river of legendary
Tom Sawyer fame, over the Chain of Rocks Bridge was good for at least two hours
of anticipation. We always stayed at the same tourist court on the bypass
around St Louis, the Blue Bonnet Courts. I recall we used to pass by the
Lambert Field airline terminal on the highway around St Louis.
Dad
always tried to be there before dark so there’d be no chance of having car
trouble on the road after dark. Before leaving the tourist court, dad would go
to the office and make our reservations for the next summer because he knew
exactly what day and time we would once again be stopping over. A typical
postcard from my dad to his mother on our return trip read "Left St. Louis
at 7 a.m., breakfast at 8:45 a.m., bacon and eggs at the diner on Hwy 40,
arrived Fairborn 6 p.m., boys and Lola doing fine. Love Earl."
Dad
drove the entire trip and I generally rode up front, my mom and brother in the
back seat. We had a water evaporative air cooler that mounted on the
passenger's window. It would cool off a little if the humidity was low, but
most of the time we gave up and rolled the windows down. Route 66 to Tulsa was
over a winding, narrow two-lane road through the Ozark Mountains. If we got
stuck behind a truck, it’d be a while before we could pass.
Every
old rickety barn for 200 miles east and west of the Ozarks was painted with an
ad for Meramec Caverns, Onondaga Caves or some cave that was Jesse James’
hideout. Once and only once, we actually stopped at the Onondaga Cave just long
enough to take the underground tour.
Years
later, my cousin Phil asked if I remembered the government men who followed dad
around when we visited Oklahoma. He told me that his folks always knew dad was
in town when they saw the two guys in suits and hats driving around in a black
Ford. Phil remembered seeing them talking to grandpa in the feed store one
time. Actually, I never thought much about it. Kids just seem to take things
like that as a normal part of life.
The
fact that we always had an FBI agent living next door to us also never occurred
to me to be unusual. Stan, one of the agents would even pick me up after school
sometimes. I remember him showing me his ID so I would know what a real FBI ID
looked like. Once, I talked him into showing me his sidearm. He unloaded it
first, of course. Now that I think about it, I believe the Air Corps Captain
neighbor of ours might have been a G-2, intelligence officer, as I don't
remember him wearing pilot's wings like most of dad’s other friends.
The
name of the Army Air Corps was changed to the Army Air Forces during WW II, but
now it was a separate branch of the service known as the Air Force. We began
seeing the new blue uniforms, affectionately referred to as bus driver suits.
Those old style dark brown jackets, gray trousers with dark leg stripes and
fifty-mission hats had always been an impressive sight to me and I was sorry to
see them go.
The
Air Force pilots that had flown in the war often came by the house to see dad
and like back in Wichita, I would hang around in hopes of hearing some good flying
stories. Stories including neat phrases like, “The flak was so thick that day
you could walk on it," and “There we were at 20,000 feet.”
Pilots
who flew with the 8th Air Force in Europe told how, towards the end of the war,
they were so short of navigators that a whole squadron would line up behind the
lead aircraft who had a navigator onboard. When the lead aircraft dropped their
bombs, the rest of the squadron would follow suit and release their bombs.
The
bombers would often fly into bad weather and become separated from their
formation. If an aircraft returned with its bomb load, it did not count as a
mission not to mention how dangerous it was to land with a full load of bombs.
Targets of opportunity became the order of the day. When lost over enemy
territory, the pilots would find a railroad track and follow the rails to the
nearest rail yard or some industrial buildings to release their bomb load.
It
got so bad toward the end of the war that when the 8th Air Force crossed the
English Channel, the entire German front went on alert because they never knew
where in the heck the bombers would end up releasing their bombs.
One
pilot told us a story of bringing back a badly shot-up B-25. Unbeknownst to
him, the landing gear and indicator lights had failed. Upon flaring out for
landing at his home base, a terrible racket hit the side of the airplane.
Convinced that the airfield had been infiltrated with enemy snipers and they
were being shot at, he pulled up and went around.
The
tower advised him that his landing gear was not down. He had put the gear
handle in the down position, but the landing gear had not gone down. After
recycling the gear several times, it went down and locked. He had come so close
to the ground on his first attempted landing that the B-25 props were picking
up gravel and throwing it into the sides of the fuselage.
A
C-47 pilot lamenting how bad the weather was in England said that they often
returned from channel crossings low on gas and the fog would be down to the
ground. With no options except to try to land, they would come in on a radio
beacon. As they crossed the airfield and couldn’t see anything, they would turn
around and come back over again taking fifty feet of altitude off each time.
They’d repeat this procedure until they either flew into something or felt the
wheels touch the ground.
Wright
Field was affiliated with the test pilot school located at the Dayton Municipal
Airport in Vandalia. It was here that my dad worked with some of the famous test
pilots such as Chuck Yeager. The government announced two years after the fact
that Yeager had broken the sound barrier on October 14, 1947. Dad had known it
all the time, but was unable to tell the story until it was formally announced.
In
my room, I had hung a picture of a P-80, which I mistakenly thought had been
the plane used to break the sound barrier. There were reports from British
Spitfire pilots who had approached or even exceeded the speed of sound in power
dives, so I just assumed that was how it had been done by the P-80. Later, I
discovered it was not that jet at all, but a Bell X-1 rocket plane that had
broken the sound barrier.
The
Bell P-59 Airacomet, the pioneer U.S. jet aircraft, first flew in October 1942
from Muroc Dry Lake later known as Edwards AFB. The P-59 was only capable of
speeds up to about 350 knots and was operational only for a short time.
The
postwar P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter just plain looked fast, but it and most
of the jet fighters up until the century series were unable to approach the
speed of sound in level flight. There had been reports of jet fighters
exceeding the speed of sound in a dive that became uncontrollable. Some claimed
that the only way of counteracting this out-of-control condition was to reverse
the control inputs. Fact or rumor, it is doubtful anyone really knew because
those few pilots who attempted it often did not live to tell about it.
Mom
always liked to go for drives in the country. So when dad would ask what we’d
like to do on a Sunday afternoon, I’d always vote with mom to take a ride, but
my diabolical plan was to end up at the civil airport located north of Dayton
near the small town of Vandalia. You were allowed to wander through the hangars
as well as get to watch the airliners and private planes takeoff and land. The
General Motors Aeroproducts Division that produced propellers was also near the
airport at Vandalia.
Other
places I remember going to were the war surplus salvage dump and to my dad's
amateur radio club at the base. The HAM Radio operators at WPAFB maintained a
worldwide radio net with the call letters W8AIR. Dad loved to get on the HAM
radio and talk long distances. He knew the technical aspects better than most,
but his Morse code speed was a little lacking.
This
was the early post war era. We had just finished fighting for our very survival
and there were a lot of secret projects underway. America tottered on the brink
of a nuclear standoff with Russia and now gazed towards the heavens as we stood
on the threshold of space.
Our
townhouse apartment backed up to a part of Patterson Field known as Wood City.
Wood City was primarily a housing project with enlisted barracks, housing for
married personnel, a recreation hall, theater, swimming pool, post exchange and
a library. The back gate to Wood City was a stone's throw from our back door. I
had friends that lived on the base and kids were largely ignored going and
coming from that part of the base.
Wernher
von Braun, his family and working associates had been brought to Wright Field
after their escape from Peenemunde, Germany. Wolfgang von Braun, Wernher's
nephew, and I were the same age. He was in my seventh grade class at school.
The first day he attended our school, I recall his making fun of our math class
saying he had been taught the algebra we were studying at his German school in
the third grade. Wolfgang and I became good friends over the next year and he
told me stories of the war.
Peenemunde
was the rocket development and launch site for the V-1 and V-2 missiles that
were fired on London during the Blitz. The “V” designation stood for vengeance
weapon or in German, Vergeltungswaffe. The V-1 buzz bomb was a flying bomb
powered by a pulsejet engine. They were designed to run out of fuel over their
intended target. When the engine quit, the rudder would go full left sending
the missile into a dive toward a random target. The buzz bomb had a top speed
of about 220 mph. If an RAF fighter like a Spitfire or Hurricane could be
vectored into the area of an incoming V-1, the fighter could easily overtake
and shoot down the missile. This was not the case with the larger V-2 rockets,
which entered from the stratosphere.
Wernher
von Braun’s personal dream was to build a rocket capable of traveling to the
moon. The V-2 was a step in that direction. It was a large missile that stood
about three stories high and was powered by a liquid fuel engine. The 1942
version of the V-2 could be fired to an altitude of 5.2 miles. Several V-2
rockets were test fired from the White Sands Missile Range after the war. A
modified two-stage version of the V-2 set a world's altitude record when it
climbed to an altitude of 244 miles above the earth in February of 1949.
As
WW II was ending, the U.S. Army under General Patton were moving toward
Peenemunde, but it looked as though the Russians were going to get there first.
Wolfgang told me his version of what he remembered. Most of the livestock on
their farm had been slaughtered to feed the retreating German army.
His
father woke him in the middle of the night and instructed him to bring with him
only what he could carry. He and his family walked all night to get to the
American lines so as not to be captured by the Russian army and taken to
Russia.
One
story that Wolfgang's father liked to tell was of trying to get pencil
sharpeners for their office. The German command would turn down any requests
for items they considered non-essential. Their office staff was able to obtain
them by ordering “honing devices for grinding conical points onto
ten-millimeter wooden hand-tools.”
Wolfgang
left Fairborn with his family when the entire rocket development unit was moved
to Huntsville, Alabama to work for the Army, but von Braun never gave up his
dream of building a three-stage rocket that would someday travel to the moon.
After
the war, captured aircraft and rockets were brought to ARDC at Wright Field and
thoroughly scrutinized for any advanced technology. In the far back section of
Wood City near some old training buildings, ARDC stored many of the tested
aircraft. These relics of the war in Europe and Pacific were being stored there
for eventual donation to an Air Force Museum, which would be established
sometime in the future.
Looking
out my upstairs bedroom window of the Lovington Arms townhouse apartments, I
had a panoramic view of assorted captured Luftwaffe and Rising Sun airplanes. A
large V-2 missile with its explosive propellants removed sat upright, held in
place by four long guy-wires.
Just
inside the old Wood City gate, a P-80 jet fighter had been placed on the grass
lawn. The jet was probably one of the early prototypes and its engine had been
removed.
Parked
just beside the V-2 rocket was a twinjet engine Messerschmitt Me-262 Stormbird.
The Me-262 was able to utilize tricycle landing gear due to not having a large
prop like the other fighters of this era. It also seemed fairly large for a
one-man aircraft. The Stormbird was powered by a JUMO-004 turbo jet engine
designed by the Germans in 1937. The ME-262 had an attack speed greater than
the postwar P-80.
The
famous German JG-7, the Jagdgeschwaker Seven squadron, flew the Me-262s. There
were approximately 1,300 of these aircraft built, although only 149 ever flew
in combat. They were used towards the end of the war against our B-17 bombers
over Europe. The Me-262 would have been even more effective except for its high
rate of fuel consumption that limited the aircraft’s time aloft. Ace WW II
fighter pilot Chuck Yeager, flying a P-51, successfully shot one down when it
was low on fuel and on final approach for landing at a German airfield.
A
rocket plane with a short fat fuselage, the Me-163 Komet was parked nearby. It
was in one of these rocket aircraft that von Braun's sister, Wolfgang’s aunt,
crashed and was killed during an experimental flight test at Peenemunde. There
were about eighteen different versions of this rocket plane built by the
Germans. This particular Komet was a Me-163B with tail number FE500. The FE
prefix on the tail number was a U.S. designation, which stood for Foreign
Evaluation.
Next
to the Me-163 was a GO-229 one-man flying wing in which the pilot lay on his
belly to fly. The cockpit of this aircraft had been sealed shut. Respecting
that, us kids made no attempt to crawl inside as we did many of the others.
There
was also one very unusual Japanese man-guided rocket called the Baka, meaning
crazy, parked in the same area. The Baka was designed to be carried aloft and
launched from a larger aircraft. Under its own rocket power, the Kamikaze pilot
would guide the flying bomb into a target like an enemy ship. It contained one
thousand pounds of explosives and about a half ounce of common sense.
I
the far back of the Wood City area was the fuselage of a B-29 bomber with no
wings or tail section. It rested in two large wooded cradles close enough to
the ground for us to climb into. Next to the B-29 was the nose section of a
C-54 transport.
We
kids spent many hours playing pilot and crew on these two planes. We crawled
through the B-29’s long center tunnel and tried to figure out what we thought
all the switches and controls were used for. I came to know these two planes’
cockpit layout as well as any pilot that ever flew them.
Occasionally
the civilian guards, making their rounds, would run us out of our favorite
playground. However, after they left, we went right back. The Air Police (AP)
seldom bothered us and we got to be good friends, often going for cigarettes
and coffee for them.
The B-29 fuselage is on floor display
at the Air Force Museum and the last time I visited, the fuselage nose art was
painted to represent Command Decision,
the B-29 that became an Ace bomber after shooting down five Mig-15s in the
Korean War. Its new nose art is a cartoon of Disney’s Dopey and Doc flipping a
coin, i.e. a command decision.
Additionally, many of the other
aircraft I remember from Wood City have been refurbished and are presently on
display at the impressive and expansive Air Force Museum on Wright Field.
I still think of the old B-29
fuselage and the other old Wood City airplanes at the AF museum as my own
personal toys. I consider them to be only on loan to the museum. When I leave
the museum, I will often say to one of the volunteers, “Thanks for taking care
of my toys.”
This is usually met with a questioning
look or occasionally with a polite smile when I am mistaken for one of those
old WW II hack aircrewmen that used to fly in them.
PART
I. Growing Up
As a
youngster, I was fascinated by the world of mechanical wonders and never missed
an opportunity to take something apart to see how it worked. Being the son of
an engineer and tinkerer only encouraged my oft times flawed investigations.
Dayton,
Ohio was the home of Leland, Delco, and National Cash Register. It was the
industrial East to me. There were small job shops everywhere that could machine
or manufacture any part needed. One of my best memories was of going into the
railroad repair barns down on Third Street where they overhauled the
locomotives and being amazed at the sheer size and power of those old Baldwin
steam engines.
Growing
up around airplanes left me with little ambition other than wanting to learn to
fly. I asked my mother onetime, “What will I be when I grow up?”
She
replied, “You will be a jack of all trades and master of none.” She was
kidding, of course, but for the most part it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
During WW II, there were no private
automobiles or aircraft produced. Until the late 1940s, a person owning a ‘4l
or '42 model car was considered to own a late model automobile. You repaired
the car you owned or had it repaired. Watching my dad overhaul our ‘41 Nash
Ambassador up on blocks in our back yard was my introduction to auto mechanics.
My
first powered vehicle was a Schwinn bicycle with a Whizzer motorbike kit
mounted on it. An Ohio driver's license was not required if the motorbike was
pedal started, but was required if it had a kick-start. There the similarity
between my bike and a stock Whizzer ended. What my dad did not show me, I
picked up from other mechanics on how to soup-up the bike.
Dad
kind of enjoyed helping me build up the bike as he had courted my mom on a 30’s
Indian motorcycle. The Whizzer bike's engine was bored oversize, valves ported
and relieved and the compression raised. The frame was cut down for a lower
center of gravity and the engine mounts redesigned.
One
of my fondest memories is of riding in the early autumn on those old Ohio
blacktop roads through the countryside. The trees often formed a full arch over
those narrow farm roads. In late afternoon, the golden rays of the sun
flickered and flashed between the tree branches as we rode at 60 mph down a
seemingly endless tunnel of fallen leaves that swirled in a vortex behind the
bike as it passed.
My
friend Larry and I seldom encountered any traffic on those old narrow back
roads. We didn’t ride close together, but kept each other in distant view. We
wore old leather bomber caps, more to keep our ears warm and to muffle the wind
noise than for safety. Resting, by leaning forward on the bike's fuel tank, we
would run our tanks nearly dry before turning once again for home.
I
worked part time managing a small newspaper branch for the Dayton Daily News at
Gate 12 on Patterson Field. The papers were dropped off by truck. I distributed
them to the sales boxes and ran a delivery route to the base quarters on my
motorbike.
The
chief of the gate guards hated teenagers. At least, we were convinced he did.
He had already gotten my friend Roger, General Light’s son, prohibited from
riding on the base. That was after a wild chase across the officer's club golf
course. The chief would never have caught Roger except he hit a concrete drain
and spilled his motorbike, breaking his right foot.
Sure
enough, the chief got me for speeding in a residential area and confiscated my
gate pass on the spot. Bureaucracies being what they are, I waited a few days,
applied for another pass and got it.
Forty Ford Tudor
On one of those cold, dreary gray sky
Miami Valley winter days I had gone with my dad up to Springfield to a car
dealer where dad liked a certain mechanic to service his car. A light rain the
night before had frozen into a wafer-thin sheet of ice, but the roads were
clear for driving.
I had been saving my money to buy a
car. Sitting out on the dealer’s lot was a 1940 Ford Standard Tudor. About what
I had been wanting and it was in my price range. The dealer offered to throw in
an oil change and lube job. I paid the asking price of $125 in cash. The grease
rack boy commented that he didn’t think the car's grease fittings had been
serviced in several years.
The
ol' Ford had the slickest, shiniest black paint job. That was, until I got it
home and the sheet of clear ice covering it melted. The car had been painted
with a paintbrush. Oh well, that made it easy to maintain. When a little spot
of rust or a scratch turned up, I just got out the ol' quart can of black
enamel and touched her up. That summer, the Ford underwent a metamorphosis.
Longer spring shackles were installed to lower the back. The running boards
were removed and a lot of tuning was done to the flathead V-8 engine.
Auto
mechanic classes were not offered at the jerkwater Bath Township High School I
attended. Hot rod and custom car builders were considered hoods and disapproved
of by educators and proper society. Who you dated and who you ran with was
important to the local gentry, but not to me.
My
mom was a pillar in the community, officer in the PTA and president of the
local garden club. Thus, due to my family's standing, I’d clean up, leave my
black leather jacket and jeans at home and be invited to all the best social
events. I seldom missed Westminster Youth Fellowship at the First Presbyterian
Church on Sunday evenings. I also earned my God and Country Scouting award at
that church. On the other hand, I was equally welcome to drink 3.2-beer with
the hot rod crowd that hung out downtown. It seemed natural and comfortable for
me to live between the two socially separated worlds.
Jaffey's
Auto Supply was a local auto parts store. Jack Jaffey, a fine Jewish fellow,
moved to Fairborn from back east somewhere. Most of the car dealers bought
parts wholesale from him. Working part time at the Studebaker dealer, being in
the business so to speak, I was one of the first to hear that Jaffey had an
opening for a parts runner. I high-tailed it to Jaffey’s and applied for the
job, which paid big bucks, $1.75 an hour.
The
company delivery truck was a red Ford Standard pickup and I put many a mile on
that ol’ truck. Working for Jaffey was an education in itself. He was one of
those people who had a gift for gab and got along with everybody. That ol' Jew
taught me more about business and human nature than I could have learned
anywhere else and I liked him. Jaffey told me, “The customer is always right,”
and when the customer wasn't, it would be Jaffey’s job to tell them. Not mine.
An
Air Force officer pulled up out front of the store in a silver Buick Skylark
convertible. I was working the counter and he asked for a set of radiator hoses
for the Skylark. After looking them up in the parts catalog, I used a long
stick to hook them from a rack high on the wall. I filled out the counter
ticket and told the officer that they were $1.25 each, plus tax. The officer
started in on me about how I was ripping him off.
I
tried to explain that the hoses we carried were a better quality than those
most other stores sold. I glanced pleadingly towards Jaffey who was waiting on
another customer.
Seeing
my dilemma, Jaffey came over and asked the officer, “What seems to be the
problem?”
The
officer complained, “Down the street at Western Auto, the hoses are only
seventy-five cents each.”
Jaffey
asked politely, “Why then don't you just go down to Western Auto and buy them?”
“Well,
they’re out of them right now,” the officer replied.
Without
cracking a smile Jaffey said, “If we were out of them, I’d sell them for fifty
cents each,” and returned to waiting on his previous customer. The officer paid
me, picked up his radiator hoses and left.
In
the spring of 1953, dad bought a brand new light blue Ford Fordor. A few weeks
after the car was purchased, I was asked on a Sunday morning to deliver my
little brother to church school. On my way back, I decided to take the long way
home, out behind the Portland Cement Plant, down through the quarry and back
onto the main road.
The
Lincoln automobiles of that era had been winning all the Mexican road races, so
I thought I would see just what this new Ford would do. That was the first of
three mistakes I made that day. My second mistake was thinking that I was an
experienced competition road race driver. My third and worst mistake was
getting too high in a turn on a gravel road.
That
lightweight, narrow track Ford went into a four-wheel drift and off the top of
the curve. As best I can recollect, it did something akin to a roll with a half
gainer thrown in for good measure. Till this very day I can still see the grass
in the windshield as it disintegrated before my eyes. I was thrown hard against
the driver's door. The car came to rest on its two left wheels, tottered there
for an instant and then fell upright on all four wheels.
The
driver's door swung open and total silence replaced the deafening noises of a
few seconds ago. There was a fourteen-inch triangle piece of windshield glass
embedded in the seat between my legs, but except for a scrape on my left side
where I had hit and broken the plastic armrest, I was unharmed. Half falling,
half stumbling, I exited the car hoping maybe I hadn’t done much damage. Not
true. A quick walk around revealed that the roof and every corner of the car
was badly mangled.
I
hiked about a mile to a nearby farmhouse where I called my dad to tell him I
had just wrecked his new Ford. What I was expecting to hear on the other end of
the phone was my dad asking about the condition of the car or to be yelled at
for wrecking it. All my dad said was, "Are you okay?"
About
this time in our growing up process we learn two important lessons. Even though
we have convinced ourselves we are invincible and our parents don't care
anything at all about us, something happens to show us how wrong we are on both
counts. When I think back on that day, I realize my folks cared and worried
about me just as much as I do my own.
The
insurance company totaled the car and for a few extra bucks, dad got a new 1954
Ford. Needless to say, I was seldom offered the use of the new family car again
after that.
Our
family home was an old two-story, white-frame house that had a three-car
garage. Actually it was an old carriage house. This was great place for working
on old cars. Two of my friends and myself chipped in $25 each to buy a 1937
Ford coupe and modified it into a stock car. We removed all the glass from the
coupe, welded in roll bars and installed a 59AB V-8 engine out of a wrecked ’41
Mercury. We borrowed the needed four racing slicks from our partner's older
brother who raced cars.
The
eldest of the three of us was eighteen and the driver had to be eighteen to
enter the stock car races at the local track, so he would be the first to race
the car. The night of the race, in the first heat on the first lap, our driver
was forced off a high-banked back turn and rolled the coupe. He was unharmed,
but he ruined our racecar budget.
The
old abandon town of Osborn was located in the Huffman Dam flood plain. Years
ago, the whole town had been moved further east to higher ground. However, the
paved main street of the town still remained. It was there the hot rods would
assemble to drag race on the weekends. My stripped down ’40 Ford Tudor was one
of the best, but a lot depended on my hitting each gear shift just right
without over or under-torquing the engine.
I
had gone on a Sunday afternoon to answer a challenge from a ’34 Ford coupe. I
had specified copilots so as to decrease his weight-to-power ratio. Larry
usually rode with me because his '46 Plymouth couldn't beat diddle. I beat the
duce coupe off the mark and lead all the way to 60 mph where, according to our
local rules, I backed off. The duce coupe kept on winding past 70 mph and
claimed he had won the quarter mile, but my ‘40 blew his doors off and he knew
it.
Near
dark, after the drag races, my buddy Delbert wanted to go to some drive-in with
three girls and one of the girl’s brother in a '40 Buick four-door convertible.
Her brother was weird. I didn’t want to ride with him, but ended up in the
middle of the front seat. The Ford rollover taught me a lesson about the misuse
of speed this Buick guy had yet to learn.
I
had just told the driver to slow his car down or stop and let me out as we
approached a fork in the road where the left lane of the Y-intersection was
under construction. He took a sudden left turn down the closed road. Another
car had slowed up at the stop sign on the right fork of the intersection, but
thinking our car would go right with the regular traffic flow, pulled out
directly into our path.
We
were traveling at 50 mph or better when we impacted the other car doing about
20 mph, head on. It shortened the front end of the Buick by about four feet and
turned its straight eight engine sideways in its mount.
Delbert,
on my right, went through the windshield. I hit the dash and cut my face on
part of the broken windshield. The three girl passengers in the back seat came
forward and hit the backs of our seat, but as luck would have it, the car had
sedan seating, which the backs did not fold forward. Once again, I heard that
sickening crunch of metal and glass, a sound I had heard once before and now
had come to hate.
Somehow,
I managed to get out of the car and pulled Delbert out. He was semi-conscious.
Unaware I was bleeding profusely from the forehead and chin, a bystander
shrieked when she looked at me. Some lady from a nearby café came and handed me
a wet towel. It seemed only a short time before an ambulance arrived on the
scene. They were from a local volunteer fire department and loaded one of the
three people in the other car into the ambulance on a stretcher.
Putting
Delbert’s arm around my neck I drug him to his feet and walked towards the
ambulance holding him with one hand and the towel on my bleeding face with
another. Delbert collapsed into the medic’s arms as we climbed aboard. Sitting
between the two stretchers, I watched over the driver's shoulder as we entered
the Dayton city traffic.
The
co-driver in the right seat of the ambulance would radio ahead to have the
traffic lights changed to red in front of us. Fascinated with this high speed
run through downtown traffic, I forgot any pain from what turned out to be a
broken right jaw. I was also unaware until later that the passenger from the
car we hit, now laying on the stretcher beside me, died enroute to the
hospital.
Upon
arrival at Miami Valley Hospital, Doc Wynans, our family doctor, nearly beat us
there in his Porsche. Someone we knew had called dad and he had called Doc. All
I remember after that was some nurse sticking me with a needle. I woke up
briefly with a bright operating light in my eyes and Doc Wynans yelling at me
to, “Hold still,” and then I passed out again.
Later,
I counted twenty-seven stitches in my lower lip, chin and forehead. It took
several months to recuperate from my injuries. With some minor cosmetic surgery
and rest I was back to my old self soon enough, but there went football.
However, to this day, I still get angry when I recall the incident and the
reckless, irresponsible way some people operate automobiles.
I
came across this '39 Lincoln Zephyr 3-window coupe in a rundown part of town
and I thought it was about the slickest design for a car I had ever seen. It
appealed to some inner sense of design that I related to, long before I knew
anything about streamlining or art deco.
The
guy wanted $300 for the Zephyr. It had some minor damage to the passenger side
running board flange, a broke axle and the V-12 engine needed a valve job. He
finally agreed to sell me the car for $200. Mom always bought me nice clothes
and I don't ever remember going hungry, but her theory on money for my
“machines,” as she called them, was my problem. The '40 Ford was sold for the
$125 I had originally paid for it and I raked up the rest.
Delbert
was always a little bit crazy even before our car crash. He had this Whizzer
Sportsman motorbike. The local cops chased Delbert after he ran a stop sign and
he ran six more trying to get away, but they caught him. The reason he ran from
the cops was because his license had already been revoked for a year. Delbert's
dad gave him twenty-four hours to sell the bike. I offered him $45 and bought
it.
The
little Sportsman was economical and fun to ride and the Zephyr still wasn't
running by winter, so I traded the Sportsman even for a maroon '41 Oldsmobile
torpedo-back, two-door sedan. It had a flathead straight six engine and more
importantly, a good heater. The body and drive train were good, but its engine
knocked. I drove it easy cause I sure didn’t want to have to fix it, too! I
needed the money to get the Zephyr running.
Some
of my first engineering thinking began with that car. If airplanes and racecars
needed seatbelts why didn't cars? Soon the Olds was fitted with seatbelts and a
makeshift sponge rubber padded instrument panel. All of this, several years
before Ford introduced the padded dash. If anyone made fun of my makeshift
safety devices, I’d just point to the scars on my chin and that usually closed
the subject to further discussion.
When
spring arrived, Sam, who worked in the shop at Jaffey's during the day and the
night shift at Delco, helped me grind the valves on the flathead V-12 engine. I
installed a salvaged right rear axle and the '39 Lincoln Zephyr 3-window coupe
hit the ground running.
The
Zephyr had a floor shift, but the long, curved shift handle was concealed by a
center console extending from the dash to the floor making it appear the shift
was in the dash below a large, round center speedometer and instrument cluster.
The Columbia rearend was vacuum controlled giving six forward gears. You could
come up beside someone doing 60 mph and still shift one more time without
over-revving the engine.
The
backseat of the business coupe had a narrow jump seat on which I installed
hinges at the top of the seatback. This allowed the back seat to be brought up
level with the back of the front seats and looked like a shelf. The trunk in
the coupe had a long wooden deck. When we went to the drive-in theater, at
least three people could comfortably hide in the trunk.
The
Fairborn Drive-In Theater charged admission by the person, not by the car. This
baffled me because so many kids would sneak in by hiding in the trunk of the
cars. Most got caught when they parked and opened the trunk to let their
stowaways out. The coupe's hinged back seat design permitted my stowaways to
come forward in the car without opening the trunk.
Another
way to sneak into the drive-in was to turn off your headlights and drive in the
exit. The Zephyr had a separate set of lights called driving lamps, but your
brake lights would still come on. To avoid this, I mastered the art of coasting
into a parking space, but also installed a switch in the tail, brake and
license plate lights wiring to turn them off.
The
drive-in theater operator had apparently grown tired of kids sneaking in and
hired a man to watch for trunks being opened and to also guard the exit. On a
Saturday night, I hit the drive-in exit doing about 30 mph and the ol' fart
jumped out in front of me waving a flashlight. I hit the brakes and slid on the
gravel all the way up to him. I don't know who was scared worse, me or the
watchman who looked like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. Throwing
the Zephyr in reverse, I peeled gravel all the way out the exit.
The
story doesn't end here for this was a night that would live in infamy. Just
down the road was the entrance to the game preserve behind Patterson Field.
There were some crashed aircraft near there that were used for fire training.
There was a small hill there that overlooked the lights of town and was a local
make-out parking place. As we pulled in, my buddy, his girl, my girlfriend and
me saw another car parked some distance away and I gave the usual four-short,
two-long honks on my horn.
Turned
out it wasn't anyone we knew. The car’s interior dome light came on as the door
flew open and the silhouette of a large man in the distance raised his arm. All
I heard were two muffled cracks, but the muzzle flash of a pistol in the dark
night was unmistakable. Someone was shooting at us. Crouched low in the seat, I
slid and skidded into a U-turn getting the heck out of there. I also switched
off the taillights thinking it would make us less of a target.
As
we came back onto the highway here came a sheriff's patrol car and we flagged
him down. It was one of the deputies I knew and after explaining to him what
had happened, he took off into the game preserve. The deputy told me sometime
later that he never found anyone that night.
In
addition to being a great place to park, it occurred to me that the area also
provided an excellent vantage point for viewing the B-36s when they took off
and landed. I concluded it must have been Soviet spies we had come upon that
night.
After
dropping off my friends, a Fairborn PD car pulled me over on the way home. I
knew Tiny, an overweight police sergeant, but I didn’t know this guy. The
patrolman said he had stopped me because I didn't have any taillights. Glancing
down at the dash, I saw that I had left the tail light switch in the off
position. As I opened the door to get out, I casually flipped the taillight
switch on. I explained that I was sure the lights were working as the patrolman
and I walked to the rear of the Zephyr where, of course, the taillights were
lit.
The
patrolman allowed that he may have observed me as I passed under some bright streetlights,
but he was going to give me a ticket anyway for having four, forward-facing
headlights, referring to my twin driving lamps. He was right. Until Ford Motor
Company got the laws changed for their quad headlights in the late 1950s, dual
forward-facing driving lamps were illegal in many states. I decided one traffic
ticket for the night from hell
was fair enough.
At Fairborn High we had a real jerk
for a principal and our math teacher couldn't calculate her way out of a wet
paper bag. I asked my dad several times if I could go to Stanton Military
Academy, but the extra money just wasn’t there.
I stayed in trouble at school, mostly
out of boredom I suppose. Except for Coach Bushmire running interference for
me, I probably would never have made it through high school. Thus, without a
good basic educational foundation, especially in math, I went off to college
ill prepared.
Someone
once wrote I learned everything I needed to
know in kindergarten. I feel the same about learning to be an engineer
or, for that matter, any trade that comes naturally to a person.
Between
what my dad taught me building up electronic components as I held the parts
while he soldered them in place and what I learned tinkering with all my junk,
I was probably a pretty darn good design engineer by the time I was sixteen.
PART
I. Growing Up
During
the summer of 1950, my folks decided we would take a weekend trip up to
Sandusky, Ohio. The short trip, which I wasn’t particularly interested in
making with them and my kid brother, was to include a life-long memorable
experience. I had grown up around airplanes, but had never gotten the chance to
fly in one. Airliners hadn’t yet become as common a means of transportation as
they are today. People either traveled by car or took the train on most long
distance trips.
The
second day of the trip, we happened upon an airfield close to Lake Erie. As
usual, I asked to stop and look at the airplanes. A local air service flew Ford
Trimotors out of the field over to Put-in-Bay, a small island community off the
shore of Canada. For a small fee, one could ride over and back on the
Trimotor’s daily mail run for a short sightseeing trip.
Some
of my friends had flown before and had told me when you’re flying high up in
the sky everything looks like a miniature world, cars looked like models and
people looked like ants. I wanted to see this for myself, so I pleaded for
permission to take the ride in the Trimotor. Mom was against it, but dad said
the boy’s bent on flying one of these days so it might as well be now and I was
off on my first flying adventure.
Upon
boarding, I went forward to sit in the seat just behind the pilot’s cabin. The
copilot’s seat was empty. When the pilot boarded, he was wearing mechanic’s
overalls, not an airline uniform. I was hoping he would ask me if I’d like to
sit in the empty copilot’s seat, but it didn’t happen.
The
ol’ Ford Trimotor rolled down the grass airstrip at 80 mph and lifted
effortlessly into the air. Cars, buildings and roads passed under the wings and
soon we were in the realm of the birds. Before long, we were up among the
clouds and out over Lake Erie like Gulliver taking giant steps. Trees and
buildings were no longer obstacles as we had wings upon which to ride.
The
Trimotor landed on a small airfield on the island. We didn’t deplane. The pilot
went to the back, handed some stuff out to a person on the ground and we took
off again for the return flight to the mainland. The noisy ol’ Trimotor climbed
at 80 mph, cruised at 80 mph and landed at 80 mph, at least that was the way it
seemed to me. From where I was seated, I could see the instruments on the
panel, but not well enough to read.
I
spent most of my time pasted up against the side window. I cannot remember all
the details of the flight on that day, but there is one thing, which I do
clearly remember. It was on that very day I decided flying was everything I had
ever expected it to be. Somehow I was going to learn to fly and that flying would
become part of my life.
The
Ford Trimotor came into existence as the outgrowth of Jack "Knife"
Stout's all-metal aircraft designs. Edsel Ford, interested in expanding Ford’s
business into aviation, convinced Henry to purchased Stout's company as a means
to that end.
The
Ford Trimotor model 5-ATB went into service in 1929 and flew the Mexico and
Central American routes for Pan American Airways until 1936. Nicknamed the Tin
Goose, the Trimotors originally sold for $55,000 and were powered by three
Pratt & Whitney Wasp engines. The aircraft had a top speed of 122 mph and
could fly 500 miles with 13 passengers without refueling. A few of these
aircraft are still flying today.
Airlines
soon turned to the Douglas DC-3 and the Lockheed Vega series aircraft for passenger
flights due to their higher speeds and greater payloads. For all practical
purposes, Ford Motor Company's commercial aviation enterprises ended with the
Tin Goose. However, during WW II, the aircraft division of Ford produced
hundreds of B-24 Liberator bombers from the Willow Run plant in Michigan.
On a
hot summer evening in the early 1950s, in the city park across the street from
our house on Central Avenue, a ballgame was in progress on a lighted diamond at
the far end of the park. A gang of us had been having a water fight at the park
fountain. After awhile, everyone except my girlfriend and I wandered over to
the ball field. We were lying on the grass, looking up at the stars.
In
the night sky, just to the right of the Portland Cement Plant, coming toward
us, were what appeared to be two aircraft flying in formation each with a
single landing-light on. One was slightly ahead of the other. Being familiar
with the traffic patterns in the area, I knew these aircraft were not on a normal
approach to either Patterson or Wright Fields.
I
was also familiar with the different sounds various types of aircraft made and
could often tell the plane by the sound of its engine. I listened for the
sound. There was none. This is not overly odd, as wind can delay an approaching
sound. Problem was, there was only a light breeze that evening.
Helicopters,
like the Sikorsky H-5, were not widely used at this time and were primitive at
best. Never the less, I considered maybe that was what we were observing
because they appeared to be flying much too slow for an airplane. This too is
not unusual. There is a phenomenon that will make an approaching aircraft
appear to stand still. This occurs when the aircraft is coming directly at the
observer and descending at the same time. But, this too was not the case.
The
two lights, mostly white with a bluish glow around the edges, grew from a point
of light to a slightly oval shape as they came closer and we continued to
watch. The people in the ballpark probably couldn’t see the objects because of
the bright lights on the field. My girlfriend and I were a good distance away
from the ballpark, so it was pretty dark where we were.
The
objects came closer. I would estimate about a quarter mile away and about 30
degrees up elevation. There was now enough ambient light from the ball field
lights and the light emanating from the objects to clearly see they were not
aircraft. The light emanating from the objects began to pulsate as they slowed
to a full stop and appeared to be about the size of a mid-size airplane flying
at 2,000 feet or a small airplane at 1,500 feet above the ground.
We
were standing now, our eyes fixed on the two objects. Never will I forget the
eerie feeling of thinking that something or someone was looking back at us.
The
objects moved closer and paused again. They were now at about 1,000 feet, about
45 degrees up. The objects were just beyond the railroad tracks to the north of
the park. I thought, surely by now I should be able to hear some kind of sound
to identify the type of craft, but there was still none.
Suddenly,
both objects went straight up to a point directly overhead in a fast count of
ten. The objects were easily seen against the clear, black night sky. They
appeared to be about the size of a bright star and were still traveling
together. At their highest apex, both made a sudden 90-degree turn and
disappeared eastward over the horizon in about a minute.
The
next day, I described to my dad exactly what I had witnessed the night before.
Knowing that he had a secret clearance, he might not tell me what it was, but
at least he might tell me that I wasn't seeing things and that the technology
for such an aircraft did exist.
Dad
assured me that he believed what I was telling him, but nothing that he knew of
could fly the way I described. Time has born this out. The truth seems to be
that nothing known at that time and possibly even today could fly the way I saw
those two objects fly that night.
My
classmate Roger, an Air Force general’s son, told me he had gotten into his
dad's briefcase and read a report about three little gray men who had been
brought to Wright Field for investigation. This was not too long after the
purported alien space ship crash incident near Roswell, New Mexico. That rumor also
ran rampant throughout the area for several years.
The
UFO sightings I experienced occurred after similar objects were spotted over
the capitol in Washington DC. Those were seen on radar. About the time we
witnessed the UFOs in the park at Fairborn, numerous incidents of other
Unidentified Flying Objects were being reported. As time progressed, these
sightings were not seen on radar. Thus, either confirmation reports were
suppressed or the UFOs went to radar stealthing.
Major
Kehoe, a Marine Corps pilot, wrote a book on the UFO phenomenon entitled Flying Saucers are Real. That book best
explains what I saw and fits many of the rumors I heard.
The Scouting program, from Cubs to
Explorers, was an important part of my life growing up. Little league baseball
and other organized youth sports were not as prevalent as they are today. The
only supervised activities available outside of school were at the YMCA and in
the Boy Scout programs. Beginning with Cub Scouts, I worked my way through the
Cub, Bear and Lion ranks. From Webelos, I joined Scout Troop 54.
There I learned about camping,
canoeing, knot tying and all the things that sharpen your survival skills. We
camped out at John Bryan State Park a couple times a year. The park was a
glacier terminal moraine, which made it a great place to go exploring. I worked
my way up merit badge by merit badge to Life Scout and also earned the God and
Country Award.
However,
it wasn’t until I joined an Explorer Post that met at Patterson Field that I
found my niche. This particular Explorer Post was one of the first Air Scout
squadrons formed and was kind of an experimental program. Regular Explorer Post
scouts wore the dark green khakis. Our Air Explorer uniforms were sky blue
khakis with a dark blue tie and belt, a wonder to behold and we were proud of
them. Air Scout merit badges were rectangle in shape with a blue background
instead of round. I completed the rest of the requirements for Eagle Scout and
was awarded the Explorer Silver Eagle.
Our
squadron leader was an Air Force Captain by the name of Dinsmore. Captain
Dinsmore's hobby was building model airplanes. On one particular control-line
model, he mounted a ram jet engine that was a miniature version of the V-1 buzz
bomb. Compressed air was blown into the intake in order to get the spring steel
flapper valve in the engine started. It was flown by control cables and went
like a bat-out-a-hell for about three times around the circle before running
out of gas.
The
first control wire model that I built completed one and a half turns before I
over controlled and crashed it into the ground, disintegrating it into dozens
of un-repairable pieces.
On a
winter night, our squadron camped out on the game reservation behind Patterson
Field. About midnight I got up to take a leak and it had started to snow.
Before dark, we had explored a crashed aircraft parts dump near our camp.
Recalling a fighter cockpit canopy laying on the ground, I went to get it,
dragged the canopy back to where I had bedded down and placed it over the top
of my sleeping bag. When morning came, the rest of the guys woke up covered
with snow. I was snug, warm and sound asleep with the sun shining in on my
Plexiglas cockpit shelter.
That
summer, the Semi-Centennial of Explorer Scouting encampment was held at Clinton
County AFB. As part of the event we were all treated to an airplane ride.
Donning our parachutes, we boarded several Air Force C-46 Commando transports.
The best part was we all got to go forward and look in the cockpit while we
were flying. This was my second airplane ride and now I was an old hand at this
flying thing.
The
Annual Dayton Air Show, a worldwide event, was also held that summer. Explorer
Scouts were invited to an encampment and asked to volunteer to help with the
show. The air show sponsors housed us in Army field tents on the airport
grounds and provided us with AP helmets and white belts. Talk about crowd
control; we parked cars, directed traffic and guarded the aircraft on display
with resolute dedication.
Nobody
parked where we didn't want them to park! General Eisenhower once remarked that
General Patton would have made a good New York City traffic cop. After that
week at the air show, the same could have been said for us Air Explorer Scouts.
On a
summer afternoon in 1952, my second or third girlfriend rode with me in my ’40
Ford out to the Vandalia Municipal Airport were the local Piper dealer was
located. I had no idea how I would pay for flying lessons, but I was intent on
taking my first lesson.
Firmly,
but politely, I was told by the man at the Piper office that I was too young to
enroll in flying school because their insurance wouldn’t cover me.
I
explained, "I’ve been up in a large airplane a couple of times, but never
flown in a small airplane. I’d sure like to."
The
salesman, whom I assume was also an instructor pilot, smiled and handed me a
coupon that read, “Five-dollar special introductory offer for prospective
airplane buyers. A demo flight in the new Piper Tri-Pacer.”
It
took a moment for the light bulb to go off in my head before saying, “Hey,
that's it, the special introductory flight offer. That's what I’m here
for!"
That
afternoon, I went for my third ride aloft and for my first flight at the
controls of a private plane. The pilot let me take the wheel and make a few
shallow turns and I watched his every move flying the plane.
When
the pilot pulled the power back for landing, my girlfriend sitting in the back
seat, was sure the engine had quit and she screamed out. I kept my cool though
because I knew airplanes were able to glide without power.
The
term “stall” applied to an airplane is the most commonly misunderstood of all
aviation terms. Non-flyers think of it like stalling a car on the railroad
track, but a stall in an airplane occurs when the air flowing over the wing
stalls and the wing no longer generates upward lift on the airplane.
Developing
sideways lift by air flowing over an airfoil is the principle used by sailing
ships for thousands of years. It was only in modern times that lift was
understood well enough to apply it to an aircraft for obtaining upward lift.
The
Piper Tri-Pacer airplane that I first flew was the tricycle gear, post-war
version of the Piper Pacer. The new plane was considerably easier to land than
its tail-dragger cousin. The plane is so stable it will stall in straight and
level flight and fall out of the sky at an excessive rate of descent. Pilots
refer to this level flight stall phenomenon as a horizontal stall. When planes
of this type stall, they do not buffet and dip the nose as is the case with
most airplanes.
Piper's
tandem monoplane, the Cub, had established Piper in the light aircraft business
before the war. The designs for early Piper aircraft were for the most part
those of Clarence G. Taylor, the founder and builder of the Taylorcraft as well
as the Cub. Looking into the history of the Taylorcraft, one will discover that
W.T. Piper was the secretary-treasurer of the Taylorcraft Corporation. Piper
was just a much shrewder businessman and his company survived when others
failed.
By
1952, new cars were readily available. The new body designs were impressive and
old cars were plentiful. At one point, I owned three cars in varying stages of
rebuild. However, none of them were running, so I bought a '38 Packard Sedan
for $50. Today that car would be considered a high dollar classic.
The
girl I had gone with for about a year moved away with her divorced mother to
Ashland, Kentucky down on the Ohio River. I decided to take the Packard on a
road trip to visit her. During the summer, I had been using a thick motor oil
so as not to burn so much. It was a cold, fall day and the engine was probably
not oiling properly. About halfway there, the Packard’s old flathead
straight-eight engine let out one loud clank and screeched to a stop.
The
highway on which the Packard had chosen to blow itself up was the main road
into Chillicothe, Ohio. As I stood looking under the hood at the hole in the
side of the block where the connecting rod exited, a wrecker driver stopped to
ask if he might be of assistance. The going rate for a wrecker tow was $12.50.
How much I asked, negotiating with the driver, did he think the Packard would
bring for junk. He thought because it was a heavy car it might scrap out for as
much as $25.
The deal we finally settled on was
that the wrecker driver would give me $10 cash for bus fare to Ashland and tow
the Packard away. I threw in the remaining half gallon of oil in the Packard’s
trunk as part of the deal. With the Packard in tow, the wrecker driver
delivered me, my toolbox and my suitcase to the Chillicothe bus station.
I
had a small portable radio with me because the Packard’s radio didn’t work. I
recall riding on that nearly empty bus listening to my radio. It was the first
time I had ever heard the song Earth Angel,
still one of my favorites. Even now when I hear that song, it reminds me of
that trip. This story makes me think of the old joke about the guy who went to
Las Vegas in a $10,000 Cadillac and came home in a $200,000 Greyhound bus.
Bath
Township was a backwater school system ill qualified to educate the influx of
the widely traveled Air Force brats. Academics at Fairborn High School where I
attended were sorry at best. Roger, the one whose dad was a general, and I got
up a petition with forty names on it to start an aeronautics class.
We
were promised that the class would begin in the fall and a textbook for the
course was selected. When we showed up for class the first day, we were told
that the class had been cancelled. No reason was given, but it is likely that
the same backwards thinking that prevented auto mechanics from being taught at
our school was what prevented the aero class.
The
best book I ever read on how to fly an airplane was a 6x8 paperback with a
silver-blue cover. The black and white, cartoon-like drawings were of two guys
flying a two-seated, open cockpit pusher airplane with a twin tail boom. The
guy in the ball cap was explaining to this rotund kid how an airplane flies.
Wish I still had a copy of that old paperback.
Remembering
all those old movies where Americans joined the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF)
to fly with the British, I thought that sounded pretty glamorous so I wrote to
Canada asking how to enlist in their pilot training program.
The
answer I received was that while they appreciated the Americans who had
volunteered to fly with them during WW II, they were no longer accepting U.S.
citizens into the RCAF.
A
favorite place for us teenagers to gather on a Sunday afternoon was up at the
Wright Brothers Memorial. The memorial is located atop a wooded hillside just
behind Wright Field on the hill not far from where the Wrights flew their early
test gliders. The hillside also overlooks Huffman Dam that was built in 1922 to
protect Dayton from flood disasters like the one that nearly destroyed the city
in 1913.
Huffman
Prairie, where Huffman Dam is presently located, was named for the Huffman
family farm originally located there. It was on this prairie in 1904 the Wright
Flyer completed its first full-circle flight. The Wright Brothers’ located
their first flying school and hanger at the site. Some of the dirt was taken
from the floor of the old flying field hanger and placed in the foundation of
the memorial.
The
inscription on the Wright Brothers Memorial contains a sentence to the effect
that the development of the Wright aeroplane and of the aileron brought about
modern aviation. The structure of that sentence always troubled me because it
implies that the Wrights invented the aileron control. They did not. They used
a method known as wing warping to bank the Wright Flyer. Actually, Glen Curtis
used his development of the aileron to circumvent the Wright brothers attempt
to patent the airplane. Wing warping is more akin to the way a bird flies, but
mechanically it is harder to replicate.
An
inscription with an arrow on the wall around the memorial site points toward
the Huffman Prairie flying school. It was there that some of the earliest aviators
were taught to fly. Henry “Hap” Arnold, who became head of the Army Air Corps
in 1938, was taught to fly by Orville Wright there. As was RAF Flying Officer
Brown, who became famous for downing the Red Baron's crimson Fokker tri-wing
during the First World War.
In an area between Wright and
Patterson airfields, several large tracts of land were used for planting
Victory Gardens. During the war years, people were encouraged to grow their own
vegetables. Not everyone had enough land to make a garden so land in common was
divided into plots and loaned to persons wishing to plant and tend their own
gardens. The practice of planting these gardens continued for years after the
war.
One weekend, a jet fighter
approaching Patterson Field experienced a flameout. The pilot set up a normal
glide to make a forced landing onto what he thought was an open field. As he
approached the field, he saw dozens of people working in their gardens. Pulling
up to miss the startled gardeners, the aircraft stalled and crashed into
rougher terrain beyond the open field. The pilot saved many lives that day, but
paid the ultimate sacrifice for his compassion. He was a true hero.
Patterson AFB Flight Ops
Many
of the generals flying into Patterson Field parked their airplanes at the
operations ramp just down from Gate One. I especially remember seeing
Doolittle's B-17 parked there. It had polished chrome props and his general’s
stars were painted just under the pilot's cockpit window.
Yes,
I know General Doolittle was famous for flying B-25s in the raid over Tokyo,
but his postwar AF personal aircraft was a plushed-out B-17. Doolittle remarked
many times that he felt that it was his Boy Scout training that helped him and
his men survive their ordeal in China after the famous raid on Japan. This made
me proud to hear a man like General Doolittle praise the Scouting program.
It
was at this same operations ramp I’d pick up my dad when he’d return from a
long business trip inspecting military aircraft manufacturers. The last time I
remember picking him up from a flight, he climbed out of a B-25 that had been
converted to a passenger carrier by sealing the bomb-bay doors and adding seats
and upholstery.
As Dad unsnapped his parachute
harness, he indicated that they had come through some really bad weather and
that he’d had it with flying. He said this trip had worn him out and he thought
he would just take the Santa Fe Chief on his next trip. He may have flown a few
more times after that, but I think that was pretty much the end of his flying
days.
PART
I. Growing Up
In
1954, my dad was transferred to Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City,
Oklahoma. The ol' Zephyr really wasn't in good enough shape to make the trip,
so I parted with it for the same $200 I originally paid for it and boarded a
train for Oklahoma.
Mom
and my brother stayed in Ohio to sell the house on Central Avenue and pack to
move. St. Louis was the main hub for changing trains in the Midwest. Travelers
would take the Penn Central to St. Louis via an overnight Pullman and change to
the Santa Fe Chief the next morning. Even in the mid '50s, almost all
government-furnished transportation was still by rail.
Tinker
Air Force Base was a main depot for Air Material Command and dad was taking
over as Chief of Procurement for electronics. He had played a major role in
bringing airborne radar to its airborne operational capability and instrumental
in developing and procuring the P-61 Black Widow and P-69 Scorpion night
fighters for the Air Force.
B-47s,
trailing drag chutes behind them, would shoot practice approaches at Tinker.
Dad commented, “If a plane can fly pulling a chute behind it, that’s proof of
when you apply enough power to anything, you can make it fly.”
The
new high school was a far better school than the one I had just left and I
completed my senior year there. Roger's dad had been transferred to Tinker AFB
two years before and he had written to tell me how much better MCHS was than
our high school in Fairborn.
There
must be an unwritten rule somewhere that the new kid is going to be picked on.
Earlier on, I found that if I could whip the bullies, usually by dragging my
opponent to the ground, I wouldn't have to fight the rest. I had been on the
wrestling team for several years, but big enough now to slug it out.
While
we waited on a teacher to come to class, some hood was sticking a switchblade
knife into the wooden desktop. He had been trying to pick a fight with me
earlier. I told him to put away the knife and if he didn’t he was a coward. A
lot of kids had gathered to watch, so he put the knife away and came at me. I
mostly just boxed him, using long jabs to keep from getting hit in the jaw, as
I didn’t want that broken again.
The
fight drew a bigger crowd as kids came from other classes. We knocked down
every portable desk chair in the room. Actually, the kid wasn’t much of a
fighter. My right of passage was granted. I was no longer the new kid in town.
In
order to graduate, I needed one more elective class and I enrolled in a
half-year photojournalism course. From an early age, I had taken quite a
collection of black and white photos with my Ansco 620 camera. I entered and
won several statewide photo competitions. What I learned working in the photo
lab would come in handy later getting my first aircraft company job.
The
University of Okalahoma, down the road in Norman, had been unbeaten in football
for several years. One of the players who graduated the year before me at MCHS
had left his '29 Model A Ford coupe with a rumble seat at home. The car was
original except for the addition of ’35 Ford red spoke wheels and balloon
tires. I bought it for $50. With the car he was furnished by his college
sponsor, I’m sure he didn't need the old Ford. It wasn’t my old Zephyr, but it
was a great little car. At 60 mph, the occupants had to yell to talk over the
noise.
Rumors
had been going around about a new kind of music by Bill Haley and the Comets.
On the night the movie Blackboard Jungle
opened, several of us drove my ol’ Model A to downtown Oklahoma City to see it.
The theater was packed. Nobody was much interested in the movie, everyone had
come to hear the movie’s opening theme song Rock
Around the Clock.
The class of ’55 ushered in the
beginning of Rock and Roll. We called it the dirty-boogie at first, a holdover
from the '40s term boogie-woogie, and later the dirty-bop. That spring, we went
to see some guy named Elvis who was the warm-up act for Hank Snow down at the
Municipal Auditorium. The audience laughed and made fun of him when he stopped
and combed his jet-black hair in the middle of a song. Some of the girls wanted
to go backstage and meet this guy, so we all hung around while they visited
with him. Elvis was only one year older than myself and none of us suspected
he’d ever be famous.
At
graduation, the senior class willed my mouth to anyone who could get my foot
out of it and predicted that I would become the DJ at a bootleg honky-tonk
strip joint out on 23rd Street. What happened to my classmates that coming fall
sounded like the ending to American Graffiti.
Berry went to West Point. Brewster played quarterback for OU and the pros.
Ralph and Chuck became smokejumpers, but Ralph eventually return home and ended
up running his dad's old furniture store. Anita Bryant, Ralph's sister's
friend, became a popular singer and later owned her own music theater in
Branson, Missouri.
The
summer I graduated from MCHS, I caught a ride out of Tinker Ops on Wernher von
Braun's personal C-54. I was on my way to Dayton to visit Larry and look up an
old girlfriend, but von Braun's plane was headed to Washington, D.C., close
enough.
When
we departed that evening, von Braun had already gone to his private cabin to
sleep. I wanted very much to visit with von Braun. I told his aide I was a
schoolmate of von Braun’s nephew and asked if I could see him, but his aide
refused to disturb the most famous rocket man in the world.
We
landed at Bowling Green airbase on the Potomac River and it was my first time
to see the Capitol. There was a regular run between D.C. and Wright-Patterson
AFB each day called the Kitty Hawk flight. I missed the flight for that day,
but hopefully I’d get on tomorrow’s flight. Dad's cousin, Roy, was a Lieutenant
Colonel now assigned to the Pentagon. I called Roy. He picked me up and drove
me around D.C. sightseeing, as it was my first time there. I spent the night at
his family’s house.
The
next morning, Roy walked me out to the front of the Pentagon to a boat dock
where the Navy ran a modified PT boat as a shuttlecraft up and down the
Potomac. The C-47 used on the Kitty Hawk run that day was WW II vintage
complete with canvas jump seats. It was a hot, bumpy ride all the way and there
were everything from buck-privates to generals on the flight.
After
knocking around Ohio for a couple of weeks, it was time to head home. At
Patterson Operations, I bird-dogged up a couple of Military Air Transport
Service (MATS) pilots who were waiting on some cargo to be loaded onto their
C-47. They were headed for Topeka, Kansas, but said they’d be going to Tinker
from Topeka the next day and I could hitch a ride with them. Look on any map,
up in the corner where the little fat-faced guy is puffing wind, right there
where the edge of the earth falls off is where you look to find Topeka, Kansas.
I spent a week there one evening.
That
fall, I enrolled at the University of Oklahoma. My first year at OU was not a
pleasant experience. All freshman, including the frat-rat pledges, had to stay
in the dorms their first year. The dorms literally became a battleground
between the pledges and independent students. I was rushed by Sigma Chi and it
would have been my choice, but the money would be better put to use on a new
set of wheels in my opinion.
At
freshman orientation, the president said, "Look to your left and to your
right. If you graduate from this university, that person will not be
here." What a jerk to say it, but that’s the way things were. The state
schools tried to flunk you out in your first year or two to reduce the
enrollment.
This
seemed to be my year for screw-ups because I married a girl I had dated at
Midwest City high school and it lasted only a couple of weeks before we went
our separate ways.
I
also made the mistake of enrolling in Business Administration thinking it a
fast, easy way to a Bachelor's Degree, but my natural talents lay in the
technical fields. As it turned out, the bookkeeping and management courses I
did take were useful in later years when Peter’s
Principle kicked in and I was promoted to management or some other
level of incompetence and again when I started several of my own businesses.
Across
the street from the main OU campus was a popular record shop. Browsing the
record racks after class one day, I came across a new 45 rpm record. “Hey,
isn’t this that guy Elvis Presley, the one we saw down at the Municipal
Auditorium last year?” I bought the record.
My
third floor dorm room faced the Quadrangle courtyard and at infrequent
intervals, I’d mount my Webcor hi-fi in the window, crank the sound all the way
up and put Elvis' record on playing only the one phrase, “It was down at the
end of lonely street,” would echo down the canyon of dorms. Before anyone could
pinpoint the origin of the sound, the Webcor would be shutoff and taken out of
the window. Elvis and the phantom hi-fi became a campus legend.
On a
sunny spring afternoon of my second semester, three water bombs in rapid
succession hit two campus cops walking down the dorm sidewalk. The two cops
took off up the dorm stairs to extort revenge on the perpetrator.
A
large crowd of male students gathered on the Quadrangle courtyard as the two
cops went from room to room. Rumors had been going around for weeks about plans
for a panty raid on the girl’s dorm. Panty raids were the rage at other
universities and OU didn’t want to be left out.
In
short time, hundreds of dorm students were milling around yelling, "Panty
raid!" The crowd, lacking leadership and courage, drifted towards the
girl’s dorms and back again. At that point the campus cops arrived in full
force.
Mobs,
I learned, take on a character separate from their individual parts. The police
chief’s hat was taken and tossed about the crowd. Then a small group of guys
started rocking one of the campus police cars to turn it over. At that point, I
decided retreat was the better part of valor and I got the heck out of there.
It
was my surface Navy drill night and I needed to get into my uniform to attend.
Climbing the stairs to my third floor dorm room, I heard the fire alarm go off.
Someone had pulled the fire call box lever. Looking out my dorm room window, I
was watching this crazy crowd from above when two fire engines rounded the
corner with sirens screaming.
That’s
when something, almost dangerous, became one of the funniest things I’ve ever
seen. That mass of testosterone filled humanity scattered in a hundred
different directions. Everyone figured the fire trucks had been called by the
cops to turn the hoses on them and most didn’t want any part of it. I was still
laughing as I left to attend drill at the USN Reserve Center.
The
summer between my freshman and sophomore years at OU, my Uncle Raymond got me a
job working for Amerada Oil Company in Big Lake, Texas. I needed the job for
money to go back to school and child support for a daughter named Vickey by the
girl I had been married to briefly.
I
had sold the Model A when I went off to college, so in order to get to my new
job, I bought a really used '49 Hudson to make the trip south. The morning I
left, I stopped at Housing Services Insurance Agency to buy liability insurance
and a young lady in a cashmere sweater, high-heels and full skirt with about
three petticoats under the skirt, typed up the policy for me.
In
casual conversation, she mentioned she had grown up in Dayton, Ohio and I told
her I had lived in Fairborn. How was I to know that the following New Year’s
Eve she would be my blind-date and we would be married six-weeks later?
Pulling
into the oil field camp just outside of Big Lake, I spotted an old Spartan
aluminum trailer. Needing a place to stay, I asked the camp manager if anyone
was living in it and he told me no and I was welcome to it for the summer.
After
I removed a layer of dirt from the inside of the trailer and chased all the
lizards out, I was ready to call it home. I was told the hot water tank would
explode if I left it lit, so I’d only light it in the evenings to take a shower
and wash my cooking utensils.
It
didn’t take long to settle into the oil field routine. We worked six days sunup
to sundown and off Sundays. On Sundays, I’d drive the '49 Hudson into town, go
to church and mess around. The oil field culture rounded out my education.
The
first rule on a drilling rig was that the toughest guy gets to be driller, the
rig boss. Climbing on a new rig one day, I noticed a trash can with the word
TRSH painted on it and I asked one of the roughnecks, “Who painted that?”
He
replied, "The driller did," and I asked why he didn't tell the
driller how to spell it correctly. His reply was short and concise, "You
go tell him."
I
worked as a roustabout, plumbing tanks. Rattlesnakes were plentiful in that
part of the country and you got used to hitting the third step on a tank
ladder, as they liked to nest under the first step. I also learned to shake out
my boots in the morning before putting them on to get the scorpions out.
On
payday, a floating crap game usually developed. It cost me a few bucks to learn
that there are people who will palm the regular dice and throw a pair of loaded
dice when it's their roll. Watch the shooter's buddies because if his friends
drop out for a round or bet light, they know what he’s doing.
When
working a new well, we hauled the tanks and pipe on old flatbed tractor-trailer
trucks. The speed we drove was determined by when the accelerator pedal
contacted the floorboard. Routinely, we’d drive 75 plus miles to a well site.
If needing to take a leak or change drivers, we’d just keep rolling, open the
door, climb out, walk around the back of the cab and get back in on the other
side.
Most
of the time, to reach a new well site, we’d drive across the landscape. In
southwest Texas, there’s a lot of mesquite scrub with large thorns that’ll
puncture a tire. During my stay in the oil fields that summer, I changed my
share of flats on those old split-ring truck tires.
One
hot afternoon, we were connecting pipe using three-foot adjustable winches and
this roughneck, who referred to me as the college-boy, began telling me I wasn't
working fast enough to suit him. “You can kiss my backside,” I told him. He
took exception to my comment and knocked me off my feet with one punch. He
laughed and turned to walk off.
When
I got to my feet. I grabbed a long handled shovel off a flatbed truck and went
after him. Expecting to bring him to his knees, he turned and looked at me.
There I stood, holding a eighteen-inch piece of handle that used to be a
shovel. “Oh S…”
That
roughneck broke my nose, blacked both my eyes and hurt me bad, but I was still
swinging when the crew broke up the fight, probably only to keep me from
getting beat-up worse.
After
an overnight in the small local hospital and having time to reflect on the
incident, I realized that no matter how tough I thought I was, there was always
going to be one more guy who was just a little meaner and tougher than I was.
Thus, I resolved from that day forward, I was going to become a lover and a
diplomat. My tough guy days were over.
Jack
London, a young Presbyterian minister and I became good friends. Some nights,
Jack would go to that part of town where the bars were and spend time talking
to the forgotten men. So as not to be shunned, Jack would buy a beer, pop the
top and sit on the curb holding it as he talked with them. He was a true man of
God and I think of him as a mentor. I’m sure he eventually returned home back
East somewhere to a congregation where he was far more appreciated.
Reverend
London’s small church was next door to the town’s airfield. A fine lady I met
years later had grown up in Big Lake and learned to fly her father’s airplane.
When WW II started, she volunteered to join the Women’s Army Pilot Service.
Florene Watson became the commanding officer of the unit based at Dallas Love
Field. She and the ladies who served with her flew every type of AAC airplane
delivered, but Florene always claimed her favorite was the P-51. The airport in
Big Lake is named for her.
The
Oklahoma City airport sponsored a giant air show that fall. Dad and I went to
the show and spent the whole day. It was the only time I ever saw the C-99, a
cargo transport version of the B-36. During the show, a formation of six B-36s
made a flyover and that was very impressive. My dad died of a sudden heart
attack that November and in my mind, I will always think of that B-36 flyover
as a final salute to my father.
Mom
decided she wanted to move to a different house after dad died. We found a
place she liked in the same area of Midwest City. I moved home and commuted to
college. The young lady, who had written my car insurance when I had left for
West Texas, now lived five doors down. Suzanne Burrows had taken a vacation
from Ohio to visit her aunt. Her aunt’s husband, an AF Sergeant stationed at
Tinker, was leaving for Germany. Her aunt asked her if she’d like to stay with
her while he was away and she did.
Suzanne,
whom everyone called Tudy, graduated from Fairview High School in Dayton only a
few miles from where I had gone to school in Fairborn. She was a Sigma Delta
and popular with her classmates. I, of course, was the original lone eagle, hot
rod and motorcycle hood.
It
had been a good thing we hadn’t met in high school, as she wouldn't have had
anything to do with me. In fact, the first time I saw the movie Grease, I remarked that I wasn’t aware
they had made a movie about our high school years.
We went on our first date that New
Year's Eve. Our second date was to the Air Force Ball at OU where Tex Beneke's
band was playing and on our third date, I took her flying in a Taylorcraft
BC12. I didn’t even have a pilot’s license yet.
When I went to make out her nametag
at a church dinner, she hadn’t told me that her nickname was Tudy and I wasn’t
sure how she spelled Suzanne. I wrote down Suzie on her nametag and she’s gone
by that name ever since. We were married that February.
By spring, Suzie was carrying our
daughter and she wanted to return to Dayton to be with her mother and sister to
have her child. Our courting car had been a ’53 Studebaker sports model
Champion, which I had repainted black. I traded the sports car for a ’55 Ford
station wagon, loaded up everything we owned and we left for Ohio.
Dickson
Talbott, Suzie's father, had a dance band in the 1930s, but had worked
Aeroproducts, a division of General Motors, since the beginning of WW II.
Aeroproducts made propellers for the P-39 Bell Airacobra, Fairchild C-82 and
other aircraft. Dickson became Director of the Miami Valley Civil Defense after
retiring from Aeroproducts.
The
Civil Defense owned a Cessna 182, but I don't think Dick ever flew in the
plane. He told me one time he had enough flying, on flight-test flights at
Aeroproducts in those old Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcars, to last him a
lifetime.
Milton
Caniff, who drew the cartoon, Terry and the
Pirates and Dickson had gone through school together. Both were
members of a private athletic fraternity called the Ten Tigers. The Dragon
Lady, one of the characters in Terry and The
Pirates was always rumored to be based on General Claire Lee
Chennault's wife who was Chinese. Possibly not true, however.
Suzie
and her mother always claimed the Dragon Lady had been patterned after an
oriental lady who Milton and Dickson knew growing up. The real Dragon Lady, it
seems, was a Dayton local lady who had lived out her life not far from the
neighborhood were Suzie had grown up.
For
a brief period of time before returning to Oklahoma, we stayed with Suzie’s
folks at the home where Suzie had grown up on Merrimac Avenue in the north part
of Dayton. Suzie had wanted to remain in Ohio to be close to her mother and
sister until her baby was born.
It
was during this time that I designed a set of private pilot's wings and had
them dye-cast. Advertising in Flying
magazine, I sold hundreds of those silver wings.
The
design was the standard bird wings with a center shield and a silhouette of the
Wright Pusher aeroplane overlaying the shield. The wings were made of sterling
silver and the few, still in existence, have become collectors’ items.
When
our daughter, Laura, was born in May, I wrote self-employed in the blank for
employer on the hospital paperwork. This I am sure was a precursor indication
of my many future careers as an entrepreneur.
It
was now the post Korean War and pre Viet Nam era. The military was downsizing
and the waiting list to get into Naval Cadets and flight school was at least a
year. I might as well go back to college. Soon after Laura was born, we
returned to Midwest City and I enrolled in the summer session at college.
For
many years we returned from time to time to visit Suzie’s folks. The hill that
Suzie walked up going to grade school was called Wampler’s hill. When we
visited, I would often take long walks down by a creek that fed into the Miami
River and I wrote the following poem on the banks of that small creek.
“There is a creek that runs near a place at the foot of
Wampler’s hill. A creek that I have visited many times, and it runs there
still. A place, in memory seems, not to be as real.
There is a rise in the street where I taught her sis to
drive a stick shift Ford. The houses here are like gingerbread, the kind
workingmen can afford.
I walk down by the creek at the end
of Merrimac, when I am there. And think of a little girl with skinny legs and
brunette hair. She climbed this hill to go to school and played along the creek
right here.
I have walked this creek with wife and child, kin and friend
and talked together about how life begins and how it ends. At the top of the
hill, we said goodbye to the leader of the band.
There are things we ask ourselves as
we walk beside this wooded stream. Things that we do not understand, perhaps
the questions are not what they seem. We think of times we should have given of
ourselves, and of goals we only dream.
In summer we are like the children
who played here and built a fort. Now in autumn we wonder how our lives will
fair in God's grand court.
In times gone by, I paid no attention to the creek that runs there still. Now I stop to look with different eyes along this creek, I guess I always will. Our lives are like this creek that runs to the foot of Wampler’s hill.”