Mildred

I learned with some trepidation that our simulator for my re-qualification ride was known as “Mildred.”

“Why the name Mildred” I asked my pilot instructor (PI).

“Because she's a bitch.”

“But surely not all ladies with that name are bitches,” said I.

“This one is,” he said.

The briefing then began. Two first officers and I had gone non-current, all for different reasons. I had been grounded for three months with a hurt arm. The others had more dubious excuses.

The PI said we each would fly a visual takeoff and landing, a V1 cut and an engine-out approach. I would be in the left seat the whole time. We sat through a quick review of all the maneuvers, made a head call and headed for the sim.

The route took us through a couple of cavernous structures the size of hangars and alongside rows of simulators of various types, most of which were in operation. "What's so bad about Mildred?" I had to yell at the PI to make him hear me through the soup of sounds washing over us. Blowers bellowed, relays clicked, hydraulic motors hummed and electrical gadgets buzzed and whirred. 

He explained that Mildred was the oldest of our 767 simulators. She was cranky and mean. She didn’t like to fly and sought every way possible to avoid it. Gremlins abounded in her wiring, hydraulics and her Jurassic computers. And when she did fly, it was nothing like a modern sim, much less a real plane. She was quirky, jerky, jumpy and lurchy. He explained that the training center only used her when they had to, due to outages of the other sims, or overflow training. “Sorry,” we’ve got to use her, you guys,” he assured us. “Just do your best and we’ll get you on your way.”

We reached the ladder, climbed high to the tower of Mildred and entered her dark haunts. I took the left seat, Mark the right and PI sat down at his panel and started throwing switches. He began cursing immediately and was soon on the phone to sim maintenance soliciting a technician. “Sorry guys, we’ve got to clear up some stuff here. Go ahead, strap in and get ready to takeoff on runway 1C at Dulles, visual conditions.

I looked at my EHSI. We were on runway 12. Mark said, “Look here!” I saw him pointing at the right engine instruments. They were all blank. The PI leaned and looked. “Well, crap!” About then the technician came up, grumbling. Obviously, Mildred was a pain in his neck too. It looked as though the old gal had folded her arms, jutted out her lip and blocked us from flying.

After a few minutes fiddling with it, the technician shut Mildred down to darkness and rebooted her. We swapped war stories while she came back to life and finally we were sufficiently ready to go. A ton of stuff was wrong but we agreed none of it affected what we intended to do. Mark took off and climbed into the night sky, which was reasonably well represented in our windshields. We circled the airport and lined up on runway 1C. Mark’s approach was a little jerky. He couldn’t get used to Mildred’s weird handling. I snickered when I heard him call her a pig. But he put her down okay. Then the PI backed us up to the approach end, lowered the visibility to 1800 feet and said, “Now we’ll do a V1 cut. Questions?” We had none.

Mark pushed up the power and we rolled. Dutifully I called the speeds as we reached them: “100 knots…V1…”

BOOM! Mildred shuttered.

The left engine instruments rolled back. We swerved left. Mark kicked right rudder—too much. We headed for the right edge lights. “ROTATE!” I yelled as we reached flying speed. Mark hauled back on the yoke and we went airborne. He yelled out a curse. The wings rocked. We drifted over the right side of the runway. We rolled right.

CRUNCH. (It actually was a crashing sound.) Mildred stopped dead still. The sight picture in the windshield froze in a 60-degree right bank. We were dead. Mark looked around. “Oops,” he said. “This bitch really is hard to fly.”

The PI assured him not to worry, that the sim was just too sensitive, and he admonished Mark to be especially delicate with his control movements. We reset and flew another V1 cut, which was successful but still jerky and unstable. By the third time Mark had developed a good touch and Mildred seemed tamed.

Brent had sat in the jumpseat and watched Mildred shred Mark. He bobbled and bucked for a few minutes before getting the feel. Then he too bolted for the airport shuttle.

Now the PI slipped into the right seat to be my co-pilot. He positioned us on the runway and I took off. I found Mildred as docile as a purring kitten. When we turned onto a 10 mile night visual approach the PI began setting me up for an ILS approach. “Wait!” I said. “I thought this was going to be a visual?”

“It is, but I thought I’d give you a descent path for your flight director.  Just to make it a little easier, you know.”  I looked askance at him. Did he think I needed a crutch? What was I, a 25,000 hour rookie? I could see the runway 10 miles ahead. Even saw the PAPI. I shook my head. "No, I don’t want the ILS." He wouldn’t give up. “Well, let me program a VNAV descent path for you.”

“No! I don’t want that either.” He looked aghast at me when I reached up and slammed the flight director switch off. “Don’t want no stinkin’ flight director either." I pointed at the runway. "I’ve got a PAPI. What else do I need?” He shrugged and chuckled. 

I set up a 700 fpm descent rate and kept two reds and two whites. The threshold came up and I planted Mildred where she likes it—on Terra Firma. When the V1 cut came, I knew Mildred didn’t like horsing with her rudder. I kept it gentle and smooth. She climbed on out on one engine, kept the centerline and accelerated.

Mildred's got a bum rap. Some parts of her didn’t work very well, but she flew fine. A lot of people are like that.

The PAPI is on the left.

Are we high, low, or on glide path?

(I didn't take this. Got it off the Internet.)

 On my way to Denver for simulator re-qual I 
rode a 757 jumpseat and took this neat vid of
night arrival at the gate. The captain stops a
little too soon and has to spool back up to taxi
a few more feet. I hate it when I do that.

Catch 787

Don’t you wish Joe Heller were still alive so he could write a new Catch 22 type of novel on this absurd airline business? If he followed me around he would gather plenty of material, like that day my first officer, Rick and I were strolling through the crowded concourse to our outbound flight to Lima. 

We saw passengers were disgorging from a jet bridge. As we passed that area, I looked out and saw a Dreamliner sitting out there. It was a 787, and on one of its first revenue flights at that. Neither of us had seen one so close. I glanced at my watch. We had enough time for a cursory inspection. But Immediately I saw a problem.

The line in front of the agent was long, and she was working furiously to process the outbound folks. She was a small Asian gal who looked like Suzy Wong. I sensed she was trouble.

The question played through my mind: Should I interrupt her and request permission to go down the jet bridge to see the Dreamliner? I turned to Rick. “Should we?”

He shrugged. “She’ll probably get pissed and say no.”

I nodded. He was almost certainly correct. Better to play ignorant than ask permission. We snuck around back of the podium and mixed in with the disembarking passengers. We hugged the right side of the bridge and made our way down against traffic.

We had nearly reached the plane when Suzy yelled from behind. I turned. The bridge was a chaos of passengers flowing off and ear-splitting noises coming from the ramp through open side doors, through which the cleaning crew was arriving for duty, chattering loud in several foreign tongues. Suzy peeked at us from about 20 feet away and yelled, “Excuse me! Excuse me! You’re not supposed to be here! You should have checked with me!” The passengers were looking behind them to see who the object of her accusations was.

Although we were in uniform, still we took off our company ID badges and held them for her to see. “I’m sorry. We didn’t know. We are company pilots,” I said. "We’re just going down to have a look at the plane.”

“You can’t look at the plane!” she yelled.

“What not?” I yelled back.

“Because you didn’t check with me!”

“Did all these cleaning people check with you?”

She whirled and marched back up to her post.

Rick and I stepped onto the plane. Most passengers had gotten off when we paused to look back down the aisle toward the tail. The cleaning crew was already swarming through there. We turned toward the object of our interest—the cockpit.

Two captains were sitting there—one checking out the other. “Can we take a quick look?” I asked.

“Sure! Come on up.” He had hardly begun to give us a quick tour of the Dreamliner’s cockpit trappings when we were nearly bowled over by a throng of mechanics pouring into the cockpit. We backed out of the way, hearing the captain yell, “Sorry guys. We’ve got mechanical issues.” We thanked him and went back out onto the bridge, our three minute tour terminated as abruptly as it started. There, squarely facing us, hands on hips, was you-know-who—with a big guy behind her holding a radio set, eyes darting between us.

“That was rude and insulting! You should have checked with me first!” she said.

“Would you have allowed us to see the plane?” I asked.

“No!” You’re not authorized to see the plane! It’s a security risk!”

“But what about all those passengers?” I asked. “They all got to see it.”

Her face turned an even deeper shade of menacing red. "And it was rude of you to go down the jet bridge while the passengers were getting off!”

I was ready to scratch my head over that one. If we were forbidden to go down at all, then our going down against traffic seemed a moot point. I began to suspect she was making up her own rules.

“But we do that all the time,” I retorted. “We politely stay to the right and go against traffic. That’s how we get these flights out on time.”

“You should have checked with me!” she said, for about the fiftieth time.

I turned and looked to Rick . He shrugged. No help coming from him.

“Well, we’ve got a Lima flight. Got to go.”

She blocked our path. “It was disrespectful, what you did!”

I gathered all the patience I could muster. I smiled. “I know. You said that already. And I apologized. I apologize again. Now we’re going. Goodbye.”

We brushed past her and headed up to the concourse. I expected to hear the big guy bellow out that we were under arrest, or something akin to that, but he said nothing, bolstering my conclusion that Suzy was making up her own rules. She was still grumbling when we got out of her sight.

I half expected to be called onto the carpet, but I never heard a thing more about it.

So, our tour of the 787 was short and disappointing. More disappointing still is knowing that much has changed since Heller described the twisted logic of red tape and turf battles spawned by big bureaucracies. It's gotten a lot worse. Yossarian would know.  

 Col Cathcart: You're a disgrace. I'd like to know how you got to be a Captain, anyway.
  Yossarian: You promoted me.
  Col Cathcart: That has got nothing to do with it.

Colonel Lilly's Snakeyes

Colonel Jim Lilly was our sister squadron’s commander at Korat Air Base. A thin, easy-going and religious gentleman from the South with nearly 300 combat missions under his belt, Col. Lilly seemed a bit out of place among the hell-raisers and snake eaters of the 354^th Tactical Fighter Wing. Not that all the wing’s pilots were of that sort. But, from remarks I overheard at the club, some of the guys didn’t respect him. I was not among them.

I knew Col. Lilly only by sight and name until he came up to me one evening at dinner in the club. He said, “Didn’t I see you at chapel service Sunday?” I told him he probably did, as I was there. He invited me to go along with him and a few of his pilots to their weekly dinner visit at an American missionary’s house in nearby Nakhon Ratchasima, which we simply referred to as “Korat City.”

When we arrived the house was crowded with USAF airmen of all sorts: technicians, fuelers, cooks—you name it. And a handful of pilots. We all chipped in to help pay for the groceries and enjoyed home cooking for the first time in months. The missionary's wife struck up a hymn on her piano and we sang loud. I’m sure the others felt what I was feeling. We were closer to home than 10,000 miles should allow. Then Col. Lilly got up.

He said he wanted to tell us a story from years earlier (it was a very long war) when he was a captain flying ground support missions in South Vietnam. We hushed and focused in on him as he related a mission that changed his life.

He was a part of a 2-ship coming back to base from a troop support mission. The other guy had spent all his bombs, but Lilly had two left. They were 500 pound Mark-82 general purpose bombs with retarded fins—“snakeyes,” we called them, because from the enemy’s point of view, a retarded bomb coming at him looked like a snake’s eye. The flat fins acted like a parachute, slowing the bomb's descent. This allowed the fighter to get in closer to the target for better accuracy and get out of the frag pattern before it hit.

The flight was diverted on its way home to a firefight in progress between friendly South Viet Nam troops and some Viet Cong. Upon arriving overhead, they were told the VC were holed up in a Christian church that had recently been built near the village. The friendlies were pinned down by fire from within the church and around it. Lilly’s two snakeyes were the perfect weapons to settle the fight in the good guys' favor.

The other plane being “winchester” (out of ordinance) held high while Lilly circled. He was a new Christian and he was being told to destroy a church. His insides churned with anxiety. He circled for a long time trying to decide what to do, drawing demands from the ground that he attack. Lilly said he prayed hard, but there didn’t seem to be an answer coming. (Fighter pilot prays in cockpit: Try to wrap your head around that word picture.)

He swallowed hard and made his decision. He selected “BOMBS MULTIPLE” and moved the arm switch to ARM. The green lights came on. Abraham was raising his dagger over his son.

He rolled in and placed the center dot of his reticle (called the "pipper") just short of the church, stabilized his dive and waited for the pipper to track across its target, almost hoping he would miss. As the pipper moved across the church, he pressed his bomb release button, felt the “thump” of the two bombs releasing, and pulled his Super Sabre hard back toward the sky. As he soared back up he banked the jet and looked back over his shoulder to see where they hit. Nothing happened.

He rejoined the other plane. When the BDA (bomb damage assessment) transmission came up from the friendlies, he couldn’t believe his ears. Both bombs were duds. He dove back down and crossed the church to have a look. There were two holes in the roof. The bad guys were quite uncomfortable with the two unexploded 500 pounders resting in their midst and were running away.

Standing there in that living room Col. Lilly looked around at dozens of astonished faces. “What,” he asked us, “are the chances of not one, but two duds on the same drop?” Some of the guys were ordinance men who work with bombs. They were astonished. All our heads shook.

We all came away astounded by the story. Maybe it was a colossal coincidence; maybe it was a miracle; maybe Col. Lilly was lying; maybe God really does take sides. I wrestled with those “maybes” for a long time and finally dismissed them all. Yet I was never able to put together a checklist for doing the right thing. I finally decided, as Col. Lilly had done, that you just trust God and do your best. If you think He’s a myth, then I guess you trust yourself and do your best.

Lt. Col. Lilly was promoted to full colonel a few weeks later and rotated back to the States. I never saw him again. But I’ll never forget the story that night of his two dud bombs and how it changed a bunch of GI's ideas on faith and duty.

Collateral Damage

Rumor is out I am no great hero of combat aviation. I confess it. Yeager can rest easy as I am, alas not his peer. I got to Vietnam only in time to cover the retreat, and in the Persian Gulf War, I pushed cargo jets around the sand box. My only combat medal is an Air Medal, which is awarded to you for being shot at, not because  you did something heroic. That said, I feel compelled to confess that one of my most successful missions resulted in a grievous unintended casualty.

It was a damned cold day for a bunch of Mississippi air guardsmen to endure. We had just landed our C-141s at the Salt Lake City airport. Snow piles stood high where the plows had shoved it, and we hurried, shivering and cursing with fogging breaths to put the two Starlifters to bed.

The mission was typical for us: Fly somewhere, spend the night, pick up a military load and fly it somewhere else, and then go home to Jackson. Three days, two nights. That was the life of weekend warrior heavy jet crews. I don’t remember exactly why we were in Salt Lake City, only what happened that night.

We had many people with us—more than we needed so that some currency training could be done. Each crew was composed of three pilots, two to three engineers, and at least three loadmasters. It took three rented vans to get us all to the hotel. The ride was raucous. Mississippians have an instinctive propensity to horseplay and b.s. with each other. I knew when the beer came out even before we reached the hotel that it was going to be a lively night.

My NCOIC (Non-commissioned officer in charge), who was my head loadmaster, began handing out keys to our crew. The other crew was doing the same. Lt. Col. Bill “Chalky” Lutz, the aircraft commander on the other crew yelled over to us, “Meet in my room in 30 minutes!”

We all knew what that meant. We would assemble in Chalky’s room to decide where to go for dinner. I was the aircraft commander on the second C-141, but I knew Chalky was over me in rank and would be calling the evening’s shots. And I was cool with it.

Lt. General William "Chalky" Lutz

Chalky and I went back a few years. We had both flown A-7D Corsairs at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson and knew each other back then. Chalky had two combat tours under his belt, one as a legendary Raven FAC. He had a couple of Distinguished Flying Crosses and more Air Medals than you can shake a pitot tube at. 

 
Now we were together again, this time in the Mississippi Air Guard flying aluminum overcasts all over the world. The difference this time is we both had civilian jobs. I was a petroleum geologist; Chalky was a lawyer and was soon to become a judge. I was looking forward to spending some time with him. But I had no idea that in less than a half hour I was to cause him to be a causality of war.

Our hotel was huge and was laid out like a campus with open courtyards between buildings. Chalky’s room was quite a walk through the brisk night. I changed quickly and headed out the door, feeling the cold hit me like a sledgehammer. As I turned toward Chalky’s room, I noticed Catfish Brown hurrying along on the opposite side of the courtyard.

Catfish was a feisty staff sergeant and flight engineer on Chalky’s crew. I had tangled with him before—had thrown him into a pool while still clad in full flight gear, but at the expense of him dragging me in along with him. He didn’t see me. The stage was set. 
 
I paused to make a big snowball, then darted along in the shadows waiting for him to get in range. I nailed him good. Snowball fragments burst in all directions from the impact point squarely on his chest. I took off running, hoping to get to the relative safety of Chalky’s room.

The "Col. Rebel patch" (right) was out-lawed by the Mississippi Air Guard, but thanks to the miracles of Velcro was often worn with pride by crews away from base.

Now, to those of you who are under the impression that officers and enlisted men don’t engage in such fraternal relations, I remind you that this was the Guard. In the Guard (the Guard of those years) we held each other as equals, used first names, ate and drank together, and got the job done together. 
 
The military élite had always said you couldn’t do that—it would result in a breakdown of discipline if the two factions got too chummy with each other, and the result could be mission failure. That's clearly true for active military units, but we were the Air Guard, and our unit’s multiple awards and citations proved we could handle the mission our way.  
 
My current mission—to nail Catfish—had been decisively successful, but a counter-attack quickly got underway. We made our way from obstacle to obstacle, exchanging frigid missiles across the snowy courtyard without Catfish getting his revengeful shot on me. Fortuitously I was the first to reach Chalky’s door. It was ajar. Music and laughing issued from within. And warmth. Oh yeah! That’s what I wanted the most. My hands were frozen. I grabbed the door, jerked it open and scurried in. Just as I slammed it behind me, a loud bang signaled the impact of a round intended for my backside.

“What the hell’s going on out there?” Chalky demanded. I turned and saw him lying sprawled out on his bed, spread-eagled, boots off but still in his zoom bag, the zipper pulled down to his belly button. With a glass of Irish whiskey in one hand (his preferred poison) and a local restaurant guide in the other—he was the very embodiment of a day’s work done; a mission accomplished; a task completed and a pleasurable agenda under careful assembly. “We’re trying to pick a restaurant!” he called to me. “Go get a beer!” I glanced behind me. The door was still closed and Catfish had not yet knocked. I knew the truth. He was waiting. He knew we would all soon be coming out.

Several crewdogs moved aside as I followed Chalky’s pointing finger to the bathroom sink. It was full of snow with beers and sodas sticking in it. One look at it and my mind exploded with devious thoughts. I grabbed a bunch of snow.

They all wondered what I was doing with the double handful of snow as I walked to the door molding it into an icy grenade. “What the hell you doin’?” Chalky demanded as I carried on by his bed toward the door.

“Just watch this!” I said, snickering, while I positioned for the ambush. Catfish would never, never expect a shot from within. As I reached for doorknob, I noticed the banter in the room subsided and changed into giggling expectations, but Chalky’s face was buried in the restaurant guide. Just as he said, “This might be a good place—” I parted the door and peered out.

The spectre of a white comet growing bigger and bigger headed for my nose set my lightning reflexes in motion and I lunged out of the way. Although I didn’t plan it thus, I pulled the door with me.

The snowball came in fast and furious, a white streak thrown so hard I would have hated to be standing in its path—Catfish was a stout kid. Very athletic.

The thing whooshed past me and headed hell-bent for the bed. I cringed as it impacted on Chalky’s genital area, smashed against his pelvis and cascaded up his body breaking up into snowballettes, fragments and flakes, shooting and tumbling into the recesses of his T-shirt, underarms and upper body. The glass of Jamison's Irish Whiskey tumbled backward onto the pillow and the restaurant brochure launched into a spinning trajectory toward the floor. That traumatic sight—I’ll never forget it: Chalky grimacing as white slivers of frigidness broke like a sea wave across his neck and face.

Insensitive, wild guffaws exploded from the crowd in the room as I stood, mouth agape at what I had done to my friend and my superior officer, but then I remembered that the enemy was still outside the door and would likely be astounded himself at what was happening inside. Another opportunity. I took a deep breath, rounded the door and let go my missile square into Catfish’s chest.

Helplessly laughing, I sank back against the wall while Catfish stomped in, took careful aim and nailed me from point blank. Crewdogs howled, and curses and proclamations, the likes of which you have never heard issued from the bed. If Chalky had had a gun he would have emptied the clip on me.

We composed ourselves and swept the snow off the bed while the grumbling Chalkster changed clothes, then headed for the vans. We had fought the good fight and it was a fitting start for another Magnolia Militia Starlifter weekend.

How can you not love the Starlifter?

Click here to take a ride on it.