by G. E. Nolly
“Sergeant Withers,” Major Riner said, “I’d like you to meet Captain Hancock.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Sergeant Withers said, as he stood and shook my hand.
“Sergeant Withers will be our Flight Engineer,” Major Riner announced. He turned to Sergeant Withers. “Time to go fly.”
“What? I thought we wouldn’t be going for another hour.”
“Captain Hancock is Speedy Gonzalez when it comes to test-taking. Let’s go.”
We all walked out to the airplane, which was now located in a different part of the ramp. As Major Riner and I climbed the stairs to the entry door, Sergeant Withers started the preflight inspection.
“The Sarge will take care of the walk-around,” Major Riner said.
For most pilots, performing the walk-around preflight inspection is not fun. But it’s the price they have to pay to go fly. Having someone else do it was a nice change.
Major Riner spent a good deal of time showing me around the cockpit. He showed me how to adjust the seat and rudder pedals, where the light switches were, and went over the controls and indicators, which I had already committed to memory. When we got to the landing gear lever, I knew I was really in an antique airplane. The gear handle was made of wood!
Major Riner called for our Air Traffic Control clearance and received permission to start engines. By this time, Sergeant Withers had entered the airplane, closed the door, and seated himself in the cockpit. We completed the Before Start checklist and then Major Riner demonstrated how to start the Pratt & Whitney 2000 horsepower R-2800 Twin Wasp engines.
“That’s the same engine that’s on the F4,” he smiled.
I gave him a quizzical look.
“What?” I asked.
“That would be the F4F Wildcat,” he continued, “a Navy fighter from World War II.”
“Oh.” I gave a wan smile.
“So, here’s the deal with starting,” Major Riner said. “First, we open the Cowl Flaps and rotate the starter to the number one engine.” He pointed at the Starter Selector switch. “Then, we press and hold the Starter button, and watch the engine. We want to count nine propeller blades, then we’’ll rotate the Magneto switch to Both and press the Ignition Boost switch.” He paused.
“Oh. Okay. So that starts the engine?”
“No. That’s when the fun begins. We have the engine rotating, we have the ignition turned on, now it will be time to give it gas. We start by pressing the Prime button, then advance the Mixture, just a little, and feed in some Throttle, based on how the engine is starting. When the engine catches, release the Starter button. If the engine doesn’t catch, you may need to tickle the Prime Switch.”
“Sounds pretty easy,” I said, “if you have hands like a concert pianist.”
“You’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly. I’ll demo the first start, then you’ll do the second.”
He reached across me to the starter panel and artfully started the engine. He made it look easy. Then it was my turn.
“One last thing you should know,” he announced, “If you get a backfire during start you owe Sergeant Withers a case of beer.”
I was grateful I had memorized the starting procedure in my studies. I reached down and let my fingers do a dance on the buttons, while guarding the Throttle and Mixture controls. The giant radial engine belched white smoke as it roared to life, but it didn’t backfire. The engine had a throaty sound reminiscent of the World War II fighters I used to see at air shows when I was a kid.
After we completed the Before Taxi checklist, we eased the throttles forward and the engines gave their distinctive staccato growl as we carefully moved forward. When we were cleared for takeoff, Sergeant Withers ran the propeller controls to Full Increase and tapped my hands. I smoothly advanced the throttles, with Major Riner guarding my hands, and the engines gave a throaty roar.
And I didn’t get a backfire.
30
July 23, 1973
As the T-29 lifted off and climbed out, we retracted our flaps on schedule, adjusted the cowl flaps and trimmed for level flight as we entered the practice area east of the island of Okinawa.
Performing our air work, I realized something I had forgotten a few years earlier – at altitude, the sensation of speed is nonexistent. Going Mach 1 on the deck is an incredible rush, but going Mach 1, or even Mach 2, at altitude has the same feel as flying at 300 knots. Unless you’re close to the ground, there is no real visceral feeling of speed.
And I was enjoying flying the T-29. Part of the enjoyment was probably because this two-month layoff was the longest I had ever gone without flying, but another part of it was the allure of flying an antique airplane.
And this was really an antique. The instruments were basic round-dial displays. The T-39 and the F-4 had modern Horizontal Situation Indicators, but this airplane had the same basic instruments as the O-2 I had flown in Vietnam. It even had the precession-prone J-8 Attitude Indicator like the one in the T-37 basic instrument trainer. My instrument scan came back pretty quickly, probably because of my time in the O-2. I was doing well in the air work maneuvers, and I could tell that Major Riner was pleased.
“Now let’s practice engine-out work,” he said.
Next thing I knew, he had pulled the Mixture on the number two engine to Cut-off. The airplane yawed, and I dutifully stepped on the left rudder to keep it flying straight. In all honesty, it wasn’t as dramatic as I had expected. It was about like an engine failure on a T-39, which has engines much closer to centerline thrust.
“Not too bad, is it?” Major Riner smiled, “That’s because of the Auto-Feather system. When we get an engine failure, the Auto-Feather system automatically feathers the prop on the dead engine. You know what it means to feather a prop, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, “We had to feather the prop on the O-2 when an engine failed. But it didn’t occur automatically.”
Feathering a propeller was a procedure to stop the propeller on a dead engine from spinning – called windmilling – and creating excessive drag. Once a propeller is feathered, the blades align to a streamlined position and stop turning, creating much lower drag.
“As long as Auto-Feather is working, an engine failure is pretty easy to handle. Now let’s see the engine failure without the Auto-Feather system.”
He advanced the Mixture and hit the Unfeather button, and the engine started quickly. While he was doing this, the Flight Engineer was managing the Cowl Flaps. Then he turned the Auto-Feather switch to OFF and pulled the left engine Mixture lever to Cut-off.
This time the aircraft yawed violently. I jammed in the right rudder, and could really feel pressure in my right leg. With the propeller not feathered, the dead engine was really creating a massive amount of drag. I could see I would need to get to the base gym and start doing some heavy squats to strengthen my legs.
We practiced engine-out maneuvering, with the engine feathered and unfeathered, and performed other air work, such as slow flight and precision climbs, descents and turns.
“Looks like you have a good handle on the air work. Let’s have some fun and enter the pattern.”
The landing pattern is where, literally, the rubber meets the road. It’s easy to have a good feel for the airplane when you’re flying at altitude, but the real test of a pilot’s skill is his ability to manage the last several inches of the flight. In most airplanes, the goal of the landing is to alight smoothly onto the runway.
The F-4, my previous airplane, was not like most airplanes. It was designed to land on aircraft carriers by slamming onto the deck with a force that would instantaneously dissipate energy and airspeed. And that was the way we flew the plane in the Air Force, when there wasn’t an aircraft carrier anywhere in sight. But that was the way the airplane was designed, and the way we flew it.
I’ll admit there were times, when I was light and landing on a long runway, when I would attempt to grease it on. And I got to be pretty good at it. There were even times wh
en I’d say to my WSO, “Turn up your Aural AOA.”
The Aural Angle of Attack was a tone in the helmet headset that indicated the angle of attack. During an approach, when the airplane was on speed, the Aural AOA would emit a solid tone. This tone would immediately stop when the aircraft landed.
One time my WSO asked, “Why should I turn up the Aural AOA?” and I answered, “So we can tell when we’ve landed.” And, on that particular flight, I had a real grease-job. The only way I could tell my wheels were on the runway was when the tone stopped. It wasn’t the right way to land the F-4, but it was satisfying as hell.
Now it was time to see if I could grease on the T-29. Although the airplane weighed in at about the same as the F-4, it was a lot bigger. It was 75 feet in length, compared to the F-4’s 58 feet, and had a 90-foot wingspan, compared to the 38-foot span on the Phantom. And it had a control-wheel yoke, while the F-4 had a stick.
Unlike the F-4, we would not be performing an overhead pattern, the airport traffic pattern used by fighters because it was an expeditious way to land a lot of airplanes in a brief period of time, like when they’re recovering from a combat mission. We were going to fly a wide rectangular traffic pattern, the kind of pattern we fighter jocks derisively called a “bomber pattern”. Major Riner demonstrated the first pattern.
And we were really wide! While we were on downwind, I jokingly said, “Should I get us a new altimeter setting for this area?” The regulations require pilots to reset their altimeter settings every 100 miles.
Major Riner smiled.
“Welcome to the world of big iron,” he said.
I paid careful attention to his pattern, especially his final approach and the landing attitude. It seemed to me that the airplane sat a bit higher than the F-4, but not really a whole lot more. During the landing flare, the nose was noticeably higher. The tires gave a satisfying chirp as he smoothly landed the plane and performed a touch-and-go.
“Your airplane,” he said as we climbed out.
“Roger,” I responded, “landing gear up. Request closed pattern.”
He called tower and received clearance for a closed traffic pattern. What I really wanted to do was pull up into a tight-as-hell pattern and show him how we fighter pilots do it.
But I wasn’t a fighter pilot now, and I wanted to do this the right way.
I gently banked to a wide downwind, called for gear extension as I came abeam the touchdown zone, and called for flap extension on schedule. I turned base to put myself on a 2-mile final, and set up with a stabilized final approach. Throughout this pattern, the Flight Engineer had been adjusting the prop controls and reaching up to fiddle with the mixtures and the cowl flaps. It was a bit disconcerting, but, what the hell, he was doing his job.
My landing was terrible. Just as I was about to flare, the wheels hit the runway, well before I thought we were in a position to land, and we bounced. I executed a go-around and sheepishly flew the next pattern in total silence. Obviously, I needed to recalibrate my eyeballs.
“I think you started to flare a little late,” Major Riner commented.
“I think you’re a master of understatement,” I answered.
My next several landing got progressively better. First, I flared a bit high, just a little, then I started flaring at the correct height, and my final landings were really pretty good.
All-in-all, I felt pretty good about our flight.
31
August 27, 1973
I was really enjoying the challenge of graduate studies. This was the last day of my first course, and I was apprehensively looking forward to finding out my grade. I had submitted my final project the previous Wednesday, and felt pretty good about it. We had taken our closed-book final exam on Monday, and our final course grade would be a weighted average of our in-class quizzes, our final exam, and our final project.
My final project had been a term paper discussing the use of simulators for aircraft training. I felt that I had performed pretty thorough research, considering the fairly limited resources available at the base library. I had also visited the medical library at the hospital at Futenma Marine Corps Air Station, not far from Kadena, to research the current developments on motion simulation. Since the inner ear is involved in the perception of motion, I cited numerous studies by otolaryngologists and psychologists. All-in-all, I felt pretty confident about my paper. But still, I fretted.
When the class assembled, Jack handed out our graded exams. I received a perfect score. So far, so good. Then he returned our term papers. Most of the papers had grades written on the front. Mine had “See me after class” written on the cover. I wasn’t sure what to think. Had I inadvertently failed to properly annotate a quote, perhaps appearing to commit plagiarism?
My stomach churned for the rest of the class. Finally, Jack wished us all well, told us the next class would commence in two weeks, and we were dismissed.
“Hi, Jack. This note says to see you,” I ventured.
“Ham, that is the best paper I’ve ever received. Have you considered submitting it to a peer-reviewed publication?”
My relief must have shown in my face.
“Did I forget to write your grade on the paper? Oh, gosh, I’m sorry! Naturally, you got an A.”
“Well, Jack, I wasn’t sure what your note was about. This is my first course, so I was a bit apprehensive.”
“I sure didn’t mean to make you worry. I’m sorry.” He paused. “You say this is your first course, and you already told me you are scheduled to return to the States, when, March of 1976?”
“Right. Sometime in the middle of March,” I replied.
He looked at the Filo-fax planner in his attaché case.
“It looks to me like you’re not going to finish up your Master’s Degree before you leave the base unless you double up on courses.”
I had suspected as much. The courses ran ten weeks in duration, and there was a two-week hiatus between courses. If I had started taking my course work as soon as I had arrived on base, I would have been able to complete all twelve required courses before my DEROS. But now I would come up one course short if I simply took one course at a time.
“What do you suggest?”
“Well, we offer two courses every term. One course meets Mondays and Wednesdays, the other meets Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now that you’ve gotten into the swing of things, I think you should take two courses next term, and probably two courses the subsequent term, just to make sure you finish up before you leave. It will be really hard to complete the degree once you leave, since we don’t offer these courses anywhere except overseas.”
“Thanks, Jack. I’ll head over to the Education Office tomorrow and enroll in two courses for the next round.”
The next day, I signed up for two courses, and decided to take two courses at a time until Sam and Johnny arrived at Kadena.
32
September 23, 1973
I had been flying a lot during the previous two months. After four training flights, I had been cleared “solo”, which meant I was allowed to fly unsupervised as a Copilot. Most of the missions were flights between Kadena and CCK, carrying troops, mostly enlisted, in support of Commando Domino. We also had some VIP transport missions, which I was comfortable with due to my previous T-39 assignment.
On every other flight the Aircraft Commander and I would trade off flying duties, alternating who got the landing. Most of the missions were one-day out-and-back flights, which allowed me to get into the office every day, so my work didn’t pile up too much. I was really starting to enjoy the flying, because I was performing a rewarding mission. On just about every flight, the passengers would come up to the cockpit and tell us what a great flight it was, and they would usually thank us. And, I have to admit, it was kind of fun playing make-believe airline pilot.
After the first month, Major Riner upgraded me to Aircraft Commander. Now I really felt like an airline pilot, with a crew of three and carrying up to 40 passengers. I got a kick ou
t of making passenger-address announcements, and I’ll admit I tried pretty hard to get that gravelly sound in my voice that I’d heard on flights when I had been an airline passenger. Chances are, the passengers thought it was corny as hell.
The downside of flying a big plane was that it could carry a lot of baggage. And souvenirs. It seemed every General and Colonel in PACAF had a special purchase that needed to be picked up at CCK. And they knew that the T-29 could carry large items.
One time, there was a huge carpet waiting at Base Ops, with a Master Sergeant standing guard over it.
“Sir,” he announced, “this carpet is for General Samuels. It cost over $1000, so you need to be careful loading it.”
“I’ll tell you what, Sarge,” I said, “it looks like it weighs a couple hundred pounds. Why don’t you find several of your troops to carry it to the plane, and I’ll have the Flight Engineer compute the weight-and-balance to see if we can carry it.”
I had already done more than my share of go-fer shopping trips for high-ranking officers. More than once I had gone to one of the off-base bicycle shops to purchase a bike, and then had to pedal it back to Base Ops, usually into the wind, and load it onto the plane. It seemed like every Colonel at Kadena thought he could make points with his neighbors by having one of the base T-29 crewmembers pick up something that was cheaper at CCK – and sometimes not by much – than it would cost back in Okinawa. We T-29 crews had become slave labor for the higher-ups. When I had flown T-39s we didn’t have that problem, because the airplane was too small to carry any large items.
I had discussed this with Larry, a Major who was also an attached pilot. Larry always refused to do any shopping favors when he flew.
“When I was flying C-130s at Langley,” Larry said, “I put my foot down and refused to do any more shopping for people. I had one guy in my church, a former friend, who had seen Noritake china in the BX catalog, and had heard it was cheaper overseas. He cut out the picture from the catalog, with the pattern number, and asked me to pick up a complete dinner set for him. He offered to pay me in advance, but I told him he could pay me afterward, when I found out how much it cost.” He paused. “Big mistake.”