Sky Spy, Memoirs of a U-2 Pilot

by Jim Carter

  Parachute drops were an important part of our mission. While at Pope, we regularly trained with the 82nd Airborne Division. The normal airdrop mission usually consisted of three or more aircraft flying in formation over a specified route leading to one of the Ft. Bragg drop zones (DZs). These DZs are close to Pope, with the largest being Sicily DZ. Other DZs at Bragg include, Salerno, St Mere Eglise, Holland, All American, and Nijmegen. They were named for the DZs used during D-Day in World War II.

  We usually dropped 30 to 50 troops from 1500 to 2000 feet. The navigator kept us on course throughout. The navigator would call, “green light” to signal when the troops were ready to drop. The troops exited through both side rear doors. These were standard static line jumps. A thick metal wire ran from front to back about six feet off the deck on both sides of the aircraft. The troops would hook their chutes on to the line when it was getting close to jump time. At “green light” they started jumping out the doors. As they exited, their leader line, hooked to the plane’s static line, would pull the chute out of its pack causing it to inflate — most of the time. If the main didn’t open they inflated a spare chute worn on their chest.

  Initially, these jumps were exciting for me. Watching these kids jump out of a perfectly good airplane was fascinating. The novelty of the exercise wore off after a while and it just became another mission. Flying these repetitive missions became boring.

  Then came working with the Green Berets and things were not so dull anymore. The Green Berets were the elite at Fort Bragg. They were highly skilled, intelligent and fearless. They did things like HALO drops. HALO stood for High Altitude Low Opening parachute drops. We would drop these guys out at 15,000 feet and they would free-fall down to 1000 feet before opening their chute; like I said, fearless.

  Even more amazing were their night drops. A Green Beret would be situated on the ground and mark the drop zone for his airborne teammates. We would fly to the pre-determined coordinates and their on-board spotter would stick his head out the door looking for the DZ, many times marked by the spotter on the ground with just a flashlight. When the on-board Green Beret saw the DZ he would calculate his release point, call “green light,” and the guys would jump out into the blackness. The Green Beret training missions were the tactical side of the airlift business. There was also a humanitarian aspect to our work and I would become very familiar with this in the coming months.

  When I finished my training at Pope, I was termed “combat ready” meaning I was ready to go anywhere the Air Force needed me. The C-130 was in high demand around the world so I wouldn’t have to wait long.

  Chapter 4

  The first opportunity to travel came in 1971 during the Bangladesh independence movement on a mission called Operation Bonny Jack.

  In 1947, British India was divided into the independent countries of India and Pakistan. The two countries have been involved in four wars since then. The dispute over Kashmir has been the cause of three of these wars. In 1971 the two went to war over the attempted secession of East Pakistan from West Pakistan. The crisis was created by the political battle between Sheik Mujib, leader of East Pakistan and Yahya Bhutto of West Pakistan. The east declared their independence and this caused the Pakistani Army to crack down on the millions of Bengalis living in the east. A nine-month war of independence began in March of 1971. There were reports of mass slaughter and rape of civilians. People were fleeing the genocide and the US Air Force was asked to go in there and help.

  Both the US and the USSR had vital interests at stake. The Russians backed the Indian government; our government backed the Pakistanis. Each superpower picked a side and kept them supplied with planes and munitions in order to maintain the balance of power. Neither of the superpowers wanted to get involved in a shooting war so the only way to intervene was through humanitarian aid. This meant that both would send airlift support to help with the humanitarian crisis. Airlift to the rescue.

  The request for airlift had arrived and we were tasked with supplying three aircraft and six crews for a two-month deployment to India. I was eager to travel and immediately volunteered.

  Operation Bonny Jack called for C-130 crews to travel between India and Pakistan. From a base in India we were to fly into East Pakistan (soon to be Bangladesh) and deliver food and medical supplies. On the return trip, we would load up with refugees and fly them back to India where they would be assigned to resettlement camps.

  The crew assignments were published, and ours was as follows: Aircraft Commander, Captain Herb Gaston; Navigator, Captain Bill Corcoran; Flight Engineer MSgt Ed Parman; Loadmaster SSgt Cliff Brown and yours truly, 1st Lt Jim Carter, copilot. There would be three airplanes flying with two crews each. The crews would switch off for each leg of the flight.

  Herb was a Tennessee native who attended Vanderbilt University. He took pre-med in college and planned to become a doctor until he discovered flying and all that changed. After college he went to Air Force Officer Candidate School and then on to pilot training. He had been in the C-130 for about five years.

  Our navigator, Bill Corcoran, also wanted to be a pilot but he washed out of pilot training and became a navigator. Bill was the crew clown always coming up with the funniest jokes and raunchiest stories.

  Ed Parman was a career enlisted man who had been in the Air Force for 22 years when I first met him. Ed knew the airplane inside out and was a wealth of information about its systems and limitations.

  Cliff Brown was the loadmaster and the youngest member of the crew. He had been on the 130 his entire career and had delivered everything from horseshoes to hand grenades.

  We departed Pope just after sundown heading up the US coastline to eastern Long Island before heading out to sea. The first stop on the way to India would be Lajes Field in the Azores, a mid Atlantic pit stop for aircraft heading to and from Europe. The Azores, a Portuguese possession, are a series of rocks in the middle of the ocean and Lajes is an airbase on the island of Terceira.

  It was a clear, moonless night with the stars spread across the sky in a dazzling array. We settled in at our cruising altitude of 25,000 feet and rolled on through the endless blackness.

  Occasionally, we could see lights in the ocean and the conversation turned to discussing those poor bastards manning those lonely ships in the deep darkness below us. Navigator Bill Corcoran loved to communicate with the ocean stations whenever he crossed the Atlantic. These ocean stations were ships anchored at specific spots. Their job was to relay weather information used in forecasting. They would report their observations via radio, on both VHF (Very High Frequency) and HF (High Frequency) bands. They also aided in search and rescue operations and acted as relays when needed for trans Atlantic flights. The standard tour of duty on these ships was three to four weeks; so you can imagine how eager these guys were to speak to any aircrew transiting the Atlantic.

  Bill was the only navigator I ever knew who talked to the ships, and he loved it as much as they did. After talking the latest gossip, news, or sports, the subject turned to jokes — the cruder the better — and limericks. Bill would throw out a joke or a limerick and they would try to come back with a topper.

  Bill exchanged several limericks with Ocean Station Echo that night. They asked us where we were headed and Bill said: “the Azores.” So they came back with the following:

  “There once was a girl from the Azores,

  whose body was covered with sores,

  and the dogs in the street

  would chew on the green meat

  that hung in festoons from her drawers.”

  Not to be outdone, Bill shot back:

  “There was a young man from Poole,

  who found a red ring round his tool.

  He went to the clinic

  where the doctor, a cynic,

  said, “wash it, ‘tis lipstick you fool.”

  So they responded:

  “There once was a hermit named Dave

  who kept a dead whore in his cave.

&n
bsp; She was missing one tit

  and smelled like shit.

  But think of the money he saved.”

  Nothing is quite as monotonous as an ocean crossing at night but these exchanges kept us awake and laughing like hell. The exchanges went back and forth while we were in radio range, usually a half-hour. Before we lost contact, we promised to catch them on the way back.

  These ocean stations were gradually phased out, replaced by weather buoys. The last ship was retired in 1977. The weather buoys were cheaper but not nearly as funny.

  We arrived in the Azores on June 2, 1971 after a 9-hour flight. The chain of islands known collectively as the Azores is famous for its bread and wine and we heavily sampled both. It’s a quiet, beautiful place. At least it was until we arrived.

  Since we were only at the base for one night we were restricted and told to remain on base. This meant nothing to Irv Ashton who was the co-pilot on another crew headed to India. While the rest of us joined up at the Officers Club for some carousing, Irv decided to head into town. His goal, always the same regardless of location, was to drink prodigious amounts of alcohol and have sex with any female that had a pulse.

  Unfortunately for Irv, he picked the Mayor’s daughter. The Mayor himself interrupted him midact. Irv managed to gather most of his clothing before fleeing out of the daughter’s window. He got back on the base by climbing a security fence but snagged his pants on the barbed wire. He showed up back at the Bachelor Officers Quarters sans pants but still alive.

  We left the Azores hung-over but happy to be moving again to the next stop on the road to India, Madrid, Spain.

  Lucky for us, our aircraft needed some minor maintenance work so we had two days to see the sights in Madrid. That meant trying to cram in as much as possible without benefit of sleep. It was tough, but we succeeded. Our tourist whirlwind included the Prado Museum, Flamenco dancers, and tapas bars. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and this time Irv behaved. My favorite parts were the amazing artwork at the Prado and the intricate steps of the Flamenco dancers.

  The weather was beautiful as we made our way to the next stop on our journey, Aviano Air Base, near Pisa, Italy. Seeing the Alps for the first time was breathtaking. On a sunny day, we flew into Italy at 22,000 feet, or about 7,000 feet over the jagged peaks of the Alps. We marveled at the beautiful, intricate villages that dotted the valleys between the peaks. I envied their beautiful countryside and their splendid isolation.

  Once again, a two-day break allowed us to “go local” and sample the dining and shopping. Among the specialties of the Pisa area were beautiful handcrafted globes they sold in the artisanal shops that lined the streets. The globes were large, old-world style, about 2 feet in diameter and suspended in a beautiful wooden gimbal. Best of all, the globes opened at the equator to reveal a bar inside. Those that could afford one loaded it on the airplane and off we went.

  One of the advantages of the C-130 is that you can shop for souvenirs from your travels and store it all on the plane as you move around the world. We packed bread and wine from the Azores, guitars from Madrid, and globe bars from Italy. The airplanes were filling up and we hadn’t even reached our destination yet.

  Our next stop was Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. We arrived at night, the stars were twinkling and the outside air temperature was 106 degrees F. It was a dry heat and there was a fine coating of sand on everything. The people we encountered were not very friendly. If I had to live in those conditions, I’d be pissed too!

  The only memorable nugget I can relay from this stop was my encounter with a Saudi commode. They don’t have toilets like ours but instead have a hole in the floor with a ceramic footpad on either side. I couldn’t understand why if they could manufacture ceramic footpads they couldn’t make a toilet. Middle East tradition I guess.

  Just before we left, I had to use the facilities. It was dark and all the stalls were unlit. I unzipped my flight suit and proceeded to take care of business. The flight suit is a one-piece garment made of a fireproof material called Nomex. To don it, you step into it, pull it up, stick your arms in the sleeves, and zip. It zips from the crotch to the neck and has zippered compartments on the chest, legs and arms to hold all the crap the typical pilot carried around with him: Hat (in the leg pocket when not on the head), sunglasses, pens, cigarettes, logbook, survival knife, small flashlight, keys, and wallet. It was just like a ladies purse only worn as a garment that kept you from burning alive in a post crash fire. It was not the most comfortable thing to deal with while squatting over a shit-stained hole in the ground.

  So there I was, balancing myself on ceramic footpads, in a full squat, while trying to hit the target hole in the dark. I couldn’t even estimate the last time this place had been cleaned. The stink was like a living organism. I only managed to survive it by mouth-breathing. This was not for the faint of heart, but when nature calls …..

  When I finished, I availed myself of some of the industrial strength sandpaper that they used for toilet paper and cleaned up as best as I could. My one concern during this process was keeping my flight suit out of the line of fire. I zipped up and made my way to the aircraft for the next leg of the trip.

  Once airborne, we all noticed a strong, foul odor, like a St. Bernard had taken a dump in the cockpit after eating some bad Indian food. All nonessential activity stopped until we could locate the source of this rank obscenity.

  After an hour of searching, the source of the smell was found. It was under the collar of my flight suit. It seems one of the previous users of my stall didn’t have the same accuracy as I did, and my collar had picked up a brown souvenir from our stop at Dhahran. I set some kind of record unstrapping from my seat and peeling off the flight suit. I actually thought about throwing it away rather than washing it, but since I only had four of them, I kept it. I wrapped it up in a plastic bag and stuffed the fowl package into my suitcase.

  The next day we arrived in India. Our destination was an Indian airbase in Gauhati, in the state of Assam in northeast India. Assam sits just southeast of Bhutan and our view of the Himalayas was spectacular. Earlier in the trip I had been very impressed with the Alps. The Himalayas, however, were the major leagues of mountain ranges. They were massive in both height and width. These mountains were at least twice as tall as the Alps and the chain seemed to stretch to infinity. Even though we didn’t have to fly over them they were nonetheless awe-inspiring.

  In stark contrast to the mountains was the jungle. Gauhati sits along the Brahmaputra River with jungle bordering the other side of town.

  After landing, we secured the aircraft and met representatives of the Indian Army and Air Force. These gentlemen would be our guides helping us acclimate to life in India. Since the British Raj ruled India for so many years, these officers mirrored their British counterparts, from the handlebar moustaches to the uniforms. The first order of business was a tour of our quarters.

  This is where we would be living for the next six weeks. The officers would be in one building, the enlisted men in another. The buildings were not modeled on the Taj Mahal. They were originally meant as barracks for the Indian Army, whose standards were nowhere near the ones for the US Army, much less, our Air Force. These were cinder block buildings. Each room had built-in shelving on the walls, and a single bed, equipped with a mosquito net. The communal bathrooms had the same ceramic footpad arrangement as the ones in Dhahran, but at least now I had some practice. The communal showers came with an unlimited supply of cold water. There were hot and cold faucets but they both yielded only cold water.

  The windows of our barracks were covered with chicken wire. When we asked our Indian government representative about it he assured us it was meant to keep out bugs. It turned out he wasn’t kidding.

  Once we settled into our new home, we attended our newcomer briefing. The Indian officers talked about the weather conditions we would be dealing with in the Gauhati area. The word “thunderstorm” was use quite frequently. High heat and humidity also figured
prominently in the briefing; so we had that going for us.

  The discussion then turned to the local wildlife. We were warned not to go out alone because there were tigers roaming through the jungle and they would occasionally come into the outskirts of town and carry off the unlucky villager. Snakes, particularly cobras, were part of the landscape, along with various and sundry bugs. I don’t ever recall the subject of man-eating tigers coming up while I spent twelve months in pilot training. Live and learn.

  We were also instructed on how to deal with the cows. Cows were sacred in India and they had free reign over everything. Cows had the right of way every time. If a cow felt like lying down in the middle of the street, which they often did, the traffic would have to go around them. We were not allowed to impede them in any way. We were also warned to steer clear of the hashish vendors who prominently displayed their goods on many street corners in town.

  We went to India to fly and boy did we. We flew every day, with an occasional, very rare, day off. Our day started early and went on until dark. Luckily, we were young, eager pilots looking to build flying time and experience. India provided both of those.

  The airplanes were loaded in Gauhati with pallets of rice. Our pallets were flat, rectangular metal transport structures with locks on the side. The rice was loaded on the pallets and secured with a tie-down strap. The pallets would slide into the airplane on a built in roller system on the floor and then lock into position. This roller system made loading and unloading a snap. A guy on a forklift and a loadmaster on the plane could finish the job in 15 minutes. After loading up we flew across the border into East Pakistan. We landed at a forward operating base and offloaded the rice. The rice was removed from the pallets and then the empty pallets were placed back on the aircraft.