THRILLS OF AN AIR FORCE PILOT
In these pages I tell stories and show pictures that are still vivid in my memory. Question: What makes memories vivid and long lasting? Answer: Intensity. Nearly every flight I made was intense, and so I have memories from parts of hundreds of flights. My total flying time, including student pilot, was 6,441 hours, which is quite a lot for military flying.
Air Force Pilot Training
Class of 50F
During the '50s the US Air Force was training a lot of pilots in a one-year program. There were lots of training bases and lots of classes at each base. The Class of 50F was the sixth class to graduate in 1950. For the first six months (called primary training) I was stationed at Perrin AFB, Sherman, Texas, which is about 50 miles north of Dallas, then finished up…
FIRST ASSIGNMENT AS A PILOT
B-25 and C-47 - Years 1951-52
My first assignment after pilot training was to Ellington AFB, south of Houston, Texas, as a "mission pilot." I was there for about 18 months beginning in November, 1950. Then I was sent to instructor pilot training at Craig AFB, Selma, Alabama and from there back to Reese as a flight instructor. Ellington was a navigator training base. They were using B-25's…
After completing Flight Instructor School at Craig AFB, Selma, Alabama in 1952, I was assigned to Reese, which is where I had received a lot of my own training. New instructors would first be assigned to fly with students in the T-6. The students got about 40 or 50 hours more flying time in the…
When I was promoted to captain, I was told I immediately became the most eligible captain in the Training Command to be sent to Korea. The reason for that was that I had some Navy time at sea prior to the official end of WW2. I was sent to Kimpo Air Base "K-14," and assigned to a very small unit that was monitoring air operations in North Korea.
Approach for landing at K-14,…
The Boeing B-47 represented a major advance in aeronautical engineering. It was America's first multi-engine jet aircraft and it established the basic principle of design. It introduced swept-back wings to large aircraft and the engines were hung below the wings on pylons.
This design proved so viable that it was used on the B-52 bomber and the KC-135 tanker that followed. The latter became the…
By 1960 the Cold War had heated up to the point that in Strategic Air Command (B-47's) we were getting very little flying time - only about one flight per month. Instead, we were spending nearly all our time on alert with the planes loaded and "cocked," ready for war. At my base in Savannah, while on alert duty we lived in an…