Hamfist Out: The Chill Is Gone (The Air Combat Adventures of Hamilton Hamfist Hancock Book 4)

by G. E. Nolly

I carefully placed the baby next to her in the bed.

  “So,” the nurse said, “the baby’s name will be John?”

  “Yes,” Sam replied, “John Adams Hancock.”

  24

  July 4, 1973

  We were in the recovery room now. Sam was sleeping, and I was resting on a sofa against the wall. I’ve never seen her look more beautiful.

  I got up to visit the nursery, to see my son, and the sound of my stirring woke her.

  “Would you like a visit from our newest family member?” I asked.

  “Yes. I really need to hold him again to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.”

  I went to the nursery and got the attention of the nurse who was attending to Johnny.

  “Can you bring him by my wife’s room? She’s awake now.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  I went back to the room, followed shortly by the nurse carrying our son. She placed Johnny into Sam’s arms, and Sam beamed.

  “I think we did pretty well,” she remarked.

  “You did all the heavy lifting,” I replied, “but I’m thrilled with the result.”

  We took turns holding Johnny, and finally I got up the nerve to discuss the name choice.

  “You know, of course, that he’s going to be getting ribbed about his name for the rest of his life. Every time he needs to sign something, people are going to say, ‘Put your John Hancock right here’, then they’re going to snicker.”

  “I thought about that, Honey, and I realized what an honor it is to be born on the Fourth of July and have the name John Hancock. Choosing the name John was really a no-brainer. And if he gets a little heat for his name, I’m sure he can handle it. You know, the original John Hancock never shied away from adversity. When he committed treason by signing the Declaration of Independence, he signed his name in bold letters, so that King George would be able to read it without his glasses.”

  “Fifty-six patriots signed that document,” she continued, “and they all pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. So, I think our son will be able to handle a little ribbing from time to time.”

  “You really do know your American History. So how did you choose the middle name?”

  “John Adams was also one of the original signers, and, like our Johnny’s father, he really had guts. He was the only attorney willing to defend the British soldiers who killed the five civilians during the Boston Massacre. He did that in the face of incredible animosity from the civilians. And the Fourth of July is an important date for him, also.”

  “Right. Because he was one of the signers,” I said. I was anxious to show Sam I knew a little American History also.

  “Plus, that was the date when he died, fifty years later.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.”

  “I guess it is. I can see I’m going to need to learn a little more about our country’s history.”

  “A little more?” she smiled, “I can see you still have your sense of humor.”

  25

  July 16, 1973

  I had returned from military leave the previous night, and was actually anxious to get back to the office. My work, other than the day-to-day facilities scheduling, had piled up, and there were several projects with short suspense dates that needed immediate attention.

  More important, I was due to be removed from DNIF status, and I was really chomping at the bit to get back into the Phantom. I called the Flight Surgeon’s office and made an appointment for a follow-up visit in the afternoon. I had checked in with his office when I had first arrived back at Kadena from CCK, and had informed him that I was really anxious to get off of DNIF. He had been expecting to hear from me.

  “Good morning, Captain Hancock. You look like you’re feeling a lot better than when I last saw you.”

  “And I feel great, Doc. I’m ready to get back into the cockpit.”

  “Okay, let’s take a look.”

  The Flight Surgeon proceeded to give me the most complete physical I’d had since my Initial Flight physical back at the Academy. In addition to drawing blood and checking my vital signs, he spent a lot of time pressing on the glands under my chin, and feeling my abdomen to assess my internal organs. And at the end of the process, he declared me fit to fly.

  “You are officially off DNIF status,” he announced, as he signed the form in my medical record folder.

  “Thank you, Doc. How do I get the information to the squadron?”

  “Here,” he said, as he handed me a copy of the form, “give this to the squadron Admin section. We’ll follow up by sending a copy to Flight Records Section.”

  I was pumped. I drove down to the squadron and handed the Flight Surgeon paperwork to Sergeant Molloy.

  “I’m back on status, Sarge. Can you arrange for my re-currency flight as an attached pilot?”

  I figured I would take the C-130 over to CCK and get on the flying schedule pretty quickly.

  “Sorry to tell you this, sir, but you’re not on the attached flier list.”

  “There must be some mistake,” I protested, “I just got off DNIF status, and the Wing Staff pilots fly with the squadrons.”

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but Lieutenant Colonel Milner specifically directed that you are not to be placed on the attached flier list. He said the squadron doesn’t have sufficient flying hours to support any more attached pilots.”

  Milner, that bastard, had done it to me again. I knew it would be fruitless to discuss this with Sergeant Molloy. I left the squadron, seething, and went directly to the DO’s office.

  “Hi, Amy. Would it be possible to see Colonel Wilson?”

  “He’s in a meeting right now, Captain. I can set you up with an appointment for,” she scanned her daily planning calendar, “1500 today. May I tell him what this is about?”

  “It’s about my attached flier status. Thank you, Amy, I’ll be back at 1500.”

  I went back to my office to catch up on work until 1500.

  It was really hard to concentrate.

  26

  July 16, 1973

  Amy escorted me into Colonel Wilson’s office, and I saluted him as I faced his desk. This was different from my usual visits to his office to address routine training matters, and I wanted to set the proper tone.

  “Have a seat, Hamilton,” he said, as he returned my salute and motioned toward the couch. After I sat down, he joined me there.

  “I think I know why you’re here, but why don’t you fill me in.”

  “Sir, I just was released from DNIF status, and I’m supposed to be flying with my old squadron as an attached pilot, but I just found out I’ve been removed from their attached flier list.”

  I really wanted to tell the Colonel that I knew the reason Milner had kicked me out of the squadron, and now removed me from the list. It was because I hadn’t gone whoring with him. But it would seem petty if I said that, and it would be a totally unsubstantiated accusation, he-said versus he-said. Besides, I suspected that Colonel Wilson had an idea what was going on in the squadron.

  “I had a talk with the Ops Officer,” Colonel Wilson said, “and he said they’re just plain out of flying hours. You manage the training program, and you know how thin they’re stretched.”

  “Sir, how can I adequately manage the squadron’s training program if I don’t have an opportunity to see the operation first-hand? Every other Wing Staff member flies as an attached pilot with one of the squadrons.”

  I didn’t need to point out that Colonel Wilson traveled to CCK – at the controls of an F-4 – to maintain his own F-4 currency. All the other Wing Staff pilots, other than the ROAD Majors, flew the F-4 for currency.

  “The Majors at O&T don’t fly anything at all.”

  He was talking about the ROAD Majors.

  “Sir, that’s because they were originally assigned to Kadena in nonflying staff positions. They’ve never been qualified in the F-4. But the other Wing personnel, like t
he Wing Weapons Officer, all fly with the squadron.”

  “Hamilton, some day you’re going to be an Ops Officer or Squadron Commander. In that position, you’ll be expected to manage your squadron’s resources. And you sure wouldn’t want someone from higher up micro-managing your squadron and second-guessing your decisions. If the squadron tells me they don’t have available flying hours, I have to take them at face value. I’m really sorry, but flying with the squadron is not in the cards for you.”

  He got up and retrieved a form letter from his desk.

  “Don’t worry, Hamilton, you’ll still get to fly. Take this form to Major Riner, at Base Ops, and he’ll set you up to be an attached pilot with his unit.”

  I was very familiar with the Base Ops flying operation. I had seen it in operation several years earlier, when I had been flying T-39 Sabreliner jets out of Yokota and had transited Kadena. Unlike our operation at Yokota, Base Ops had an antique T-29, a propeller-driven twin-engine airplane. I had flown in the back of T-29s when I had taken a Navigation course at the Academy. Even back then, in 1966, it was an old airplane. It looked a lot like an airliner from the 1940s. It had a three-person crew, it was loud, it was slow, and it wasn’t an F-4.

  I took the form the Colonel handed me, saluted, and left his office, doing my best to not display my emotions. I made it to the privacy of my car before I broke down.

  27

  July 16, 1973

  I looked around to see if anyone had observed me in my car. There was no one in the area. I adjusted the rear-view mirror to look at my face to see if anyone would be able to tell that I’d been crying.

  As I looked in the mirror, it hit me. What the fuck was so important about flying an F-4 in the peacetime Air Force?

  I felt like a complete idiot, and an ungrateful one at that. Less than two weeks ago I’d held my son, my first-born, in my arms when he was less than one minute old. And he was perfect, totally perfect, completely healthy. I had a terrific wife that loved me unconditionally. I’d gotten to fly the top-of-the-line fighter in combat, and had been lucky enough to get 100 missions over North Vietnam before the war was called off. And less than two months ago I’d finally scored aerial victories.

  And now, even though I wouldn’t be flying a fighter, I’d still be flying.

  And then I thought of all my friends who had never made it home from the war, or who came back with permanent, serious wounds, some visible, some not. Suddenly, I was no longer upset. It was like a giant wave had swept over me and carried away my sorrow, my stress, my angst.

  Sure, I could have kept my fighter by going whoring with Milner, but I would have lost much more in the process. If I had gone to the Dirty Dozen, I would have lost my sense of self-respect. I would have sabotaged the relationship Sam and I had, a bond that we always thought was special. And I might have picked up some disease and infected the most important person in my world – actually, now that I was a father, Sam was one of the two most important people in my world.

  In the overall scheme of things, flying a fighter wasn’t all that important now. I’d had my fun, gotten my rocks off, and now it was time for me to be more than just another jock. It was time for me to be, as they said at the Academy, an officer and a gentleman.

  I squared my shoulders, started my car, and drove to Base Ops.

  28

  July 16, 1973

  Major Riner was expecting me, but wasn’t expecting to see me smiling.

  “Hello, sir. Colonel Wilson said you could use me as an attached pilot, and I’m really looking forward to getting back in the cockpit.”

  Major Riner looked at me with a mixture of shock and surprise. He probably wasn’t sure if I was sincere, or being a wise-ass.

  “You’re really happy to be flying a T-29?”

  “Sir, I just got off two months of DNIF, and I’m happy to be flying anything. And, deep inside, I was hoping I’d get a chance to fly something with round engines before they totally disappear.”

  “Well, Ham,” he said, as he shook my hand, “you’re right about that. There aren’t many R-2800 Twin Wasp engines in service any more. It’s kind of like going back to the early days of aviation.” He walked to the office door. “Let me introduce you to the Convair.”

  I followed him out the back door of Base Ops to the flight line, and we walked the short distance to the large aircraft that was parked in the VIP reception area. We climbed the portable stairs that were positioned at the left forward entry door and entered the airplane.

  Before we entered the cockpit, I looked to my right, toward the back of the airplane, and was really surprised. When I had flown in T-29s at the Academy, the aircraft were configured as a Navigation trainer, with about a dozen Nav stations in the back. This airplane had forty plush passenger seats and powder blue carpeting. This was a real airliner.

  “The civilian designation of the T-29 is the Convair 240,” Major Riner explained. “It was introduced into airline service right after the war, and was the first pressurized airliner to see service. Let me show you the front office.”

  When I sat in the cockpit, I felt a true sense of aviation history. The airplane had a feeling, maybe it was a barely perceptible smell, of a workhorse that had seen a lot. The throttle quadrant looked a bit different from what I remembered about propeller airplanes, from my days of flying the O-2. I saw two throttles, and two mixture controls, but no propeller levers.

  “Where are the prop levers?” I asked.

  “They’re back here,” Major Riner answered, pointing at the rear of the throttle quadrant. “The Flight Engineer owns these. He adjusts the props, then he tells us what power we can set.”

  “Oh.”

  Flight Engineer. That was going to take getting used to. In all of my flying, up until now, I was in charge of the engine controls. Now there would be a Flight Engineer – an Enlisted troop at that – who would tell me what power I could use. Yeah, this would take some adjusting.

  “When can I start flying?”

  Major Riner seemed pleased that I was anxious to start flying, and not bitching about losing my fighter slot. I suspect he had heard about what had happened to my attached flying status.

  “As soon as you pass your closed-book aircraft systems exam,” he said, as he reached into a closet in the cockpit and pulled out a T-29 Flight Manual. “Study this Dash One, and let me know when you’re ready to go flying. There will be a 100-question exam on aircraft systems, procedures and flight profiles, and then we’ll take a local flight. I saw from your records that you were an IP in the T-39, so we’d like to make you an AC as soon as we can.”

  I liked the idea of becoming an Aircraft Commander quickly.

  Every Air Force aircraft had a Flight Manual, and they were all titled “Technical Order such-and-such-aircraft dash one”. The T-29 Flight Manual was officially T.O. 1-T29-1. The Dash One for the T-29 was much thinner than the one for the F-4, but had a lot of procedures that would be new to me.

  I flipped through the Dash One and saw a lot of unfamiliar terms and systems. This may be a slow, old airplane, but flying it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park.

  “Sir, it looks like there’s a lot of information in here that will be new to me, but I think I’ll be ready for the test, and the flight, next Monday.”

  “Okay, Hamilton, I’ll put you on the schedule for Monday at 1500.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  My graduate studies would have some competition for my attention. I had one week to get ready for the T-29.

  29

  July 23, 1973

  I’ve been very fortunate to have a near-photographic memory. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. It served me well at the Academy, and again in Undergraduate Pilot Training. A lot of people mistakenly think that a photographic memory gives someone an unfair advantage in school, in college, and in business. That’s not really true.

  Taking a test when you have a photographic memory is like taking an open-book exam. Sometimes those
are the hardest kinds of test to take. They require understanding and application of the material, not simply rote memorization. So, when it came to advanced courses in college, my memory gave me a minimal edge, if any at all.

  But preparing for a closed-book aircraft exam was really a piece of cake. I was able to pretty much memorize every page of the Dash One, even including some terms I didn’t fully understand. For example, I knew the procedures that required feathering a propeller, and I knew what it meant to feather a propeller, from my time in the O-2. But I didn’t know how an unfeathering motor worked, and I didn’t know what an unfeathering accumulator did. But I was ready for the test. And I was sure ready to fly.

  I sat down and banged out the test in about fifteen minutes. The multiple-choice questions were taken verbatim out of the Dash One, so it was really easy. I stood up and walked into Major Riner’s office with the answer sheet.

  “Are you giving up?”

  “No, sir, I’m finished.”

  “So soon?” he asked, incredulously.

  “Yes, sir, it was pretty straight-forward.”

  “I’m tempted to accuse you of looking in the Dash One to answer the questions, but there is no way you could have looked up all the answers that quickly. Let’s see how you did.”

  Major Riner placed a plastic master answer key over my answer sheet and went down the columns of blackened circles. It didn’t take long for him to grade my test.

  “Well, this is a first for me, Hamilton. You got a perfect score, and you finished the test faster than anyone has ever done it before.”

  “Well, sir, I’m pretty anxious to get back to flying.”

  “I should say so! Okay, let’s go.”

  Major Riner opened his bottom desk drawer and grabbed a helmet bag. I could see it contained several aircraft headsets, along with two aircraft checklists with plastic pages. I followed him to an office down the hall, where a Sergeant was sitting at his desk.