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.

On Thunderbird Lead's Wing, Part II

--continued from previous post-- 
(Click here if you haven't read it.)

Col. Ryan had told me there was trouble ahead for taking the plane with the nose wheel problem, and boy, was there. Moore never summoned me, but that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. He chewed out Col. Ryan and our Ops officer, who was my flight lead that day. Next day Col. Ryan called for me to report to his office. In his laid-back Texas way, he never raised his voice or offered a hint that he was mad at me. “Moore wanted to give you an Article 15,” he said. I froze. That was a punitive action in the Uniform Code of Military Justice—just short of a court martial. It was also a career killer.

He held up a letter. “I got it reduced to a Letter of Reprimand.” He stared at me for a while. I was a quivering pile of jello. Then, to my astonishment and profound relief, he tore it up and put it in his trash. “It won’t go in your file.”

I wondered if tearing up the letter in front of me—as well as the Article 15 threat—were tactics just to get my attention, or whether Col. Ryan did it on his own without Moore’s knowledge. Events that happened later helped me figure it out. I was thankful to Col. Ryan for taking care of me, but I knew I needed to keep my nose clean.

Col. Ryan retired a few weeks later, and I was sorry to see him go. A stocky little 5’-5” Nebraskan replaced him, who liked to introduce himself as, “Hi, I’m Stanley Schneider from Wahoo, Nebraska!” Stan, too, turned out to be a good squadron commander and a great guy.

One very early morning I reported to the squadron to begin my tour as the “Duty Officer.” It was also called Duty Pig. It was rotated among the junior officers of the squadron. The Pig was charged with posting the schedule, answering the phone and a whole other bunch of non-inspiring tasks. I was the only person in the building that dark morning when Joe Moore walked in, helmet and harness in hand. I knew he was scheduled to make a proficiency flight that morning.

I was nervous when he came in, thinking he might lecture me on the incident of a few weeks ago, but he only looked around and said, “Where’s my wingman?” I looked on the scheduling board. Lt. Hawkins was scheduled. Hawk should have been there by then. He was in big trouble. I said, “Colonel, he must have over-slept. I’ll call his hooch right now.”

Moore studied the board, then me. “No. You’re coming. Get your gear.”

I swallowed hard and hurried to the life support shop for my gear. He briefed the flight and never said a word about what had happened earlier. It was as if he had forgotten, but I knew better than that.

We took off and flew out to the training area for some wing work. He maneuvered the A-7 hard, pulling 4-5 Gs and I hung in close as best I could. Then we swapped leads and I gave him some wing time. We broke off and headed back to base for practice instrument approaches. He flew an ILS and a PAR with me on the wing. Then he gave me the lead and I flew an ILS.

He said nothing during the van ride back to the squadron building. His debriefing was quick and to-the-point. Finishing, he got up and shook my hand. “That was some good wing work. Good, steady lead too. Thanks for flying with me.” As if I had a choice.

And that was it. The over-sleeping Hawkins had done me a great favor (But not for himself. He damned near got an Article 15 himself out of that.) I had erased my earlier transgression (I think) and felt that Thunderbird Lead had given me a fair shake. He earned my respect. But there was yet one more mistake I was to make with him—one of costly consequences.

I was standing on the porch leading into the wing bar. Before I explain what happened, let me tell you about this bar. Each wing on the base had its own bar, separate from the main Officer’s Club (The "Kaboom Club")—which by-the-way was the biggest O-Club bar in southeast Asia, and I have stories about it. But later. Occasionally, but surely not often, the headquarters brass would venture into one of the private wing bars for a drink and some banter. Our bar was a huge room in a wooden building beside our hooches. A local Thai tended it, who was paid out of sales. High stakes poker and pool games were common, as well as darts rocketing across the room, sometimes over the heads of drinkers sitting at tables. The most unusual feature of the bar was the indoor bombing range.

A wooden A-7 hung on a long cord from the ceiling. An electrical wire ran down the cord that energized an electro-magnet that held a “bomb” on the A-7. A standard fighter control stick sitting on a nearby table was wired so that the bomber could press the bomb release button and drop the “bomb” on a target on the floor. But this had to be done while the A-7 was dive-bombing as it swung. The challenger was responsible for pulling the A-7 back and releasing it. Money always rode on the outcome.

On any given afternoon, especially Fridays, the bar buzzed with activity. I had arrived from the flight line and was about to go in, but I met a buddy on the porch and we talked a long time. I took no notice of the door being open and me being in full view of the drinkers at the bar. One of them sat drinking and quietly eyeing me—Col. Joe Moore.

My conversation with my buddy went on for a long time and must have annoyed Moore, who was hoping I would enter with my hat on. In fact, he had a bet placed with some other colonels that I would do exactly that. Unlike the Navy and Army, the USAF doesn't have many traditions. The one they do have (He who enters covered here, shall buy the bar a round of cheer) is vigorously enforced. A bell hanging over the bar serves to incriminate the perpetrators.

As I turned to go in, I reached up to take off my cap. Pandemonium erupted. Moore rang the bell like hell with one arm while pointing at me with the other, straight as a machine gun, yelling to his cohorts, “I TOLD YOU HE WOULD. I TOLD YOU, NOW PAY UP, YOU!” The bell rang and rang and rang. All heads turned my way and cheers went up.

Moore's challengers protested that I did not get far enough inside to qualify for being uncovered and that I was at least taking my hat off, and thus he (Moore) had lost the bet. But he was the wing commander. They relented and paid.

Of course, I paid too—bought rounds for the whole bar. That was the price for coming in with a hat on. I was just a lieutenant. The tab about broke me. As I stood signing a tab for all the drinks, Moore sipped his beer and smiled at me, then turned back to the other brass huddled around him.

I guessed he had finally balanced his book on me and I was glad to be the object of his entertainment rather than his wrath. I think he told Col. Ryan to wave that letter in front of my face and then tear it up.

Most importantly to me, I had flown on Thunderbird Lead's wing and had not been found lacking. That's closer than most get to wearing this patch:

  

p.s: I never found out who wrote YGTBSM.