Sky Spy, Memoirs of a U-2 Pilot

by Jim Carter

  The story of Irv remains unfinished. I was unable to find out where he wound up, but I’m sure it was interesting.

  Chapter 2

  Selma, Alabama wasn’t anything like I had imagined it would be. We only knew it from what we had seen on the nightly news. The place was supposedly a hotbed of racial tension as evidenced by the famous marches from Selma to Montgomery.

  Thousands of blacks from all over the U.S. had come to march in solidarity with local citizens who were trying to achieve the right to vote. The first march occurred on Sunday, March 7, 1965, with only 600 participants. The police attacked the marchers with Billy clubs and tear gas. Two days later they attempted a second march but police forced the 2500 protestors back after they had crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. U.S. Army soldiers, Alabama National Guardsmen, FBI agents, and Federal Marshalls protected the third march that finally made it to Montgomery. These marches were instrumental to the passage of President Johnson’s Voting Rights Act of 1965.

  The Selma we discovered in August of 1973 was quiet and boring. No marches, no fighting in the streets, no sit-ins at lunch counters. It was just a slow-paced southern town where everyone, regardless of color, was friendly and respectful to each other.

  Doreen and I had a choice. We could live on base and forego our housing allowance, or buy something in town and get a housing supplement added into my pay. Base housing was very unattractive and we wanted to be exposed to the local culture. Living on the base meant we would only interact with fellow Air Force officers and their families. Like Jerry Seinfeld would say, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” We were just looking to widen our circle.

  We started looking at houses in downtown Selma. Selma was only five miles from the base and housing was very reasonable. We bought an old Victorian house on King Street. It had 14-foot ceilings, a new kitchen, three bedrooms and a nice back yard for our daughter, Krista, to play in. All this for only $25,000.

  The place needed some paint and minor repairs but it was ours, the first house we had ever bought. We quickly got to know our next-door neighbors, Joe and Betty Williams. Joe and Betty were an older couple in their 60’s. They were lifelong Selma residents and they filled us in on all the local happenings. Across the street lived Millie and Steve, about our age, with a daughter just a year older than Krista.

  This was a working class neighborhood. The houses were built in the late 1940’s to early 1950’s. They were all single-family homes. All parking was either on the street or on a pad in the back yard. The Alabama River wound its way just south of town and then snakelike, to the south and west through Dallas County.

  Chapter 3

  I was assigned to the 52nd Flying Training Squadron (FTS). The 52nd FTS was part of the 29th Flying Training Wing at Craig. The Wing consisted of the T-37 section, the T-38s and all maintenance and support functions. I was raring to get to work but I couldn’t do anything until I was trained. T-38 Pilot Instructor Training (PIT) School was located at Randolph AFB, Texas. Slots in this program were limited and I had to wait for an opening. The wait could be as long as four months but after a month on the list, a slot opened up due to a cancellation. One of the other candidates was thrown from a horse and broke his leg. One man’s misfortune was another’s opportunity. A week later, I left for Texas.

  USAF Pilot Instructor Training was an intense eight-week course covering all phases of flight training. The T-37 and T-38 student pilot training programs were similar in content. Both consisted of three phases that began with instrument procedures, or how to fly the airplane on the gauges. Then came the contact phase, which concentrated on takeoffs, landings and aerial maneuvers. The third phase was formation: two, three, and four ship.

  Our training syllabus for the T-38 instructor course followed the three phases. Relearning to fly the airplane was a joy. The key to flying this or any airplane was to stay ahead of it mentally. The faster the airplane, the further ahead you had to be. The T-38 entered the visual overhead-landing pattern at 300 knots. If you hadn’t planned your pitchout, final turn, touchdown and rollout, you were behind the airplane and may be forced to go around; all due to poor planning.

  I quickly re-acclimated to the plane and was soon comfortable with the much faster pace. The difficult part was factoring instruction into flying. It wasn’t good enough to simply stay ahead of the airplane. I had to learn how to tell a student what we were going to do, then demonstrate it, and then have him repeat it. All this had to be done while zipping along at 400 knots. Sometimes my most carefully crafted instructor spiel on a particular maneuver would just disappear as I struggled to keep the plane in its assigned area. Flying areas were assigned to specific flights. These areas were based on defined radials and distances from navigational aides. These areas were pie-shaped, usually 25 to 30 miles wide and 10,000 feet thick, meaning we flew between 10,000 to 20,000 feet.

  There were specified departure and arrival tracks and strict control of area assignments. The procedures were in place to keep airplanes separated, but the ultimate responsibility for separation rested with the pilot. In addition to instructing, flying, and staying ahead of the airplane, I had to keep my head on a swivel looking for traffic conflicts. I remember several training rides at Randolph in which my carefully constructed dialogue abruptly halted as we started to bust out of our area. When this happened I had to calmly regroup and start over from the beginning. This was a humbling experience but it happened to all instructor trainees and I didn’t let it affect my attitude.

  Chapter 4

  The T-38 has front and rear seating, known as tandem seating. The student usually sits in the front with the instructor in the back. The only exception to this was instrument training. During this phase, the student sat in the back, under a hooded canopy. This hood was a canvas covering that ran the length of the canopy. Pulled forward, it blocked out the outside world forcing the student to fly using only the instrument panel. When not in use, the hood could be moved back behind the ejection seat.

  My usual seat was in the back. I liked it back there. I sat up a little higher than the front seater and had a clear view of everything, with one exception. In the normal landing attitude, with the wing flaps down, I could see the runway over the head of the front seater. When practicing no flap approaches, while simulating a flap failure, the nose of the airplane was much higher, making it hard to see the runway. The only way to stay aligned was to shift my view from left to right, constantly making small adjustments to stay on the centerline. This ability to land the airplane by looking out the side would prove invaluable later in my career.

  Instructor candidates came from varied backgrounds. We all agreed that the most challenging flying was in formation. Formation flying is a counter-intuitive exercise. During your flying career you do all you can to avoid hitting other airplanes. The object in formation flying is to get very close to the lead aircraft — three feet — and stay there until told otherwise. The correct position is an extended line off the leader’s leading wing edge. If you draw that line out, your proper position as wingman results in a three-foot separation between the planes. Number two can be either on the left or right, depending on the lead’s choice. Your job as number two is to stay in position and help the leader clear the area. The leader communicates with air traffic control for both aircraft. The wingman acknowledges by saying his position. In this case, the response would be “two.”

  For example, air traffic control issues a radio frequency change:

  “Gin 21 Flight, contact Houston Center on 271.3”

  Lead responds: “Roger, Gin 21 Flight go 271.3”

  Two responds: “Two”

  There are several visual signals used in formation as well. A quick pulse of the stick to the left, for example, will dip and then re-level the wing. This is number two’s signal to move from the right wing position to the left wing. Number two would crack back on the throttles, move back and slightly down to a position behind lead with sufficient nose to tail clearance;
then power back to stop rearward motion, slide to the left and move up and in on the left wing.

  Radio frequency changes and fuel states can also be communicated with hand signals. If the two aircraft need to talk about something (maintenance issue, for example), the formation will switch to a discreet frequency where they can talk openly about an issue.

  While at Pilot Instructor Training (PIT), it took some work to get my formation flying skills back. The initial tendency is to get into proper position but very gradually slide back to a safer position. I had to fight myself to stay in position. Added to that was learning how to give instructions while flying. I was supposed to be telling a student how I was doing all this and then effectively demonstrating it. On my first few formation rides I did a great impression of Silent Bob. My words wouldn’t come. All of my energies were directed at keeping that wingtip in the star, which is what I saw when in proper position. Once I became comfortable flying so close to another airplane again, I regained the power of speech.

  Now that my positioning was under control, we moved on to more difficult maneuvers. From flying straight and level, we progressed to turns, climbs and descents. Then on to increasing “G” turns, climbs and descents. My instructor demonstrated the first high G turning descent. It was very smooth and we stayed right in position as he told me what he was doing to maintain such a rock solid platform. Now it was my turn. As soon as the leader started loading up the backpressure on the stick and increasing the G’s, things started happening to my airplane. It started bobbing up and down and weaving left and right as I tried to ease on the correct backpressure and bank to stay in position. I was all over the place, except in the right position.

  My instructor took the airplane, put us back in position, and we tried it again with the same result. We took a break to talk about it. He gave me a tip that brought it all together for me. The T-38, unlike most airplanes, can be flown flat-footed. The thrust was symmetrical and on centerline so you could fly with your feet off the rudder pedals and flat on the floor. You only really needed to use the rudder pedals for takeoff, in a single engine situation, or when using the brakes. Pushing the bottom of the pedals moved the rudder. Stepping on the top of the pedals activated the brakes. My gyrations in formation occurred because I was flying “free armed.” I was moving the control stick with my whole arm and these large stick inputs were causing the plane to hop around like a bug on a hot griddle. My instructor told me to plant my right forearm just behind my right knee, and keep everything from my wrist to my shoulder absolutely still. The only stick input now was from my hand. He also changed my grip on the stick. I went from a death grip to a light touch. From that point on I had no trouble staying in on those five G turns. Now I was having fun.

  We moved on to the advanced formation maneuvers starting with pitchouts and rejoins. These maneuvers are done to give the pilot practice in getting back in position after becoming separated. There are two types of rejoins: turning and straight-ahead. Both maneuvers start the same way, in level flight. The leader signals for a pitchout by pointing his index finger straight up and making a circle with his fingertip. Number two acknowledges with a head nod. The leader goes into a level 45-degree banked turn away from his wingman. The “away” part is important because students in the lead would occasionally turn into you, so you had to be ready for that. As soon as lead turned, or “pitched out,” number two started counting to four while remaining level. When he got to “four” he turned after the lead and tried to find him. This may seem like a minor point, but if you couldn’t see the lead, the rejoin was off. The T-38 is a very narrow airplane and trying to spot one from a mile or two back is not automatic. All you could see from that far back were the tailpipes and maybe the vertical stabilizer. On a clear day this was not a problem. On a cloudy day you had to work for it. If you couldn’t see the lead, you’d ask him to rock his wings. This usually did the trick. If the lead wanted a straight-ahead rejoin he called it on the radio: “Gin 21 Flight, Straight ahead, left side, 280.” This meant he wanted you to join on his left wing at 280 knots. Your job as wingman was to get back in position as soon as possible. To do that you needed an airspeed advantage. The lead would be holding his called speed. Normally, a 40 or 50-knot airspeed advantage worked well for a speedy rejoin. Timing was critical, however. As the lead aircraft got bigger in your windscreen you had to control the thrust so as to arrive in position matching his airspeed exactly. Sometimes, bringing the throttles back wouldn’t dissipate your energy enough and you sailed right on by the leader. Your ace-in-the-hole were the speed brakes. These were small, rectangular panels normally flush with the bottom of the fuselage. Hydraulically operated, they popped out and slowed the airplane.

  The other, more challenging rejoin was the turning rejoin. The leader, after pitching out, would turn at least 180 degrees, wait four seconds, then rock his wings and settle into a left or right 45-degree bank level turn. No radio call is necessary. When you see your lead in a turn, it’s a turning rejoin. Your job as two is still to get back in position. But now you must use cutoff angle instead of only airspeed. The term “cutoff angle” is another way of saying, “turn inside of lead.” Number two would turn inside of lead until reaching the proper rejoin line. Then it became a matter of flying up this line into position. This maneuver took a lot of practice with occasional scary results. The cutoff angle had to be just right. Too much cutoff and you would pass in front of, or even through the lead. Not enough cutoff and you’d never get there. If done correctly, number two would slide up that extended “wingtip in the star” position with just enough of an airspeed advantage to pull in three feet out and stop. Judging your energy dissipation as you moved in was essential. At the start of the rejoin, lead’s aircraft looked small in your windscreen. As you moved up the line using cutoff, he got bigger but his position in the windscreen didn’t move. This could be both good and bad. Manage your energy properly and you slid into position. Come in too fast with no correction, you’d go right through him. As my experience increased I did learn one trick to managing too much energy while trying the turning rejoin. If I had too much energy as I was sliding up the line, I would start a barrel roll about 20 feet from lead and do a complete turn around his aircraft. By the end of the roll I was back in proper position. The roll had dissipated the excess energy.

  The normal return to base ended with a pitchout over the end of the runway. The formation then landed single ship. As we advanced in training, we began to practice formation landings. The leader would set up a long, straightin approach. He would configure with gear and flaps and fly down the glide slope to the runway. Number two would maintain position and mirror the leader, configuring with him. Number two would then have to “keep the faith.” Number two had to trust the lead and stay in his slot. If you did that, you would come down and land without ever having seen the runway; faith, indeed.

  The next phase of training moved us from two ship to four ship. All of the basics of two ship still applied but four ship required more planning for lead. Lead was responsible for staying in the area so he had to allow for the two extra airplanes. Four ship rejoins required a much larger area to complete than a two ship rejoin.

  The term for proper formation position was called “fingertip.” Looking down at your left hand, palm down, the middle finger is the leader, two is on the right, three and four are on the left (the thumb doesn’t participate).

  A two-ship mission started with both airplanes taking the runway, and then lining up in an extended fingertip position. Number two was still lined up, wingtip in the star, but separated by 25 feet, instead of three feet. The lead gave the run-up signal and both airplanes advanced throttles to 100 %. Lead tapped his helmet and gave an exaggerated head nod then released his brakes and selected minimum afterburner. Afterburner was a throttle bump above 100 percent. It kicked in extra thrust by mixing fuel with the engine exhaust and reigniting the mix. This was really spectacular at night when twin blue flames shot ten feet out of the
tail pipes.

  Number two selected maximum afterburner, then adjusted as necessary to stay in position. Two mirrored the lead for gear and flaps, and then slid into position three feet out.

  The four-ship takeoff had a few differences. The lead had to leave enough room for three and four when taking the runway. If lead took the left side, three would take the right so that four would already be in position when three joined on the leader’s left wing on departure. As lead and two rolled down the runway, three gave the run-up signal to four. When lead and two broke ground, three nodded, released brakes and went into afterburner. Four just followed along, configured when three did, and then slid into position.

  The Pilot Instructor program exposed us to the common student errors. Our Instructors, playing the part of students, attempted to wander out of the assigned flying areas. They entered a loop at 400 knots instead of the specified 500 knots. Back in the traffic pattern, they “forgot” to lower the gear prior to the final turn. They overshot the runway or attempted to land from a too steep approach. In short, they flew like typical students and wanted us to correct their mistakes. We couldn’t simply point out the errors. We had to analyze why it happened and propose corrective action. Sometimes this meant taking control of the airplane. Other times just an appropriate comment would suffice. The risk factor was especially high in formation. When your wingman is only three feet away and you’re doing 400 knots, reaction time is minimal.