by G. E. Nolly
Patrick itself was a great base. It was very compact, making it easy to walk to any office for official business. The Officers Club was outstanding. It was located right on the beach, and the dining room for their Sunday Brunch had a magnificent view. Every Sunday morning Sam, Johnny and I would have a leisurely meal as we watched the seagulls soar, glide and dive. The casual bar at the O’Club was called the Propwash. When the squadron moved down from Hurlburt, they had thrown a party there. When they entered, there were several military retirees sitting at the bar. One of the squadron guys said, “What’s with all the near-deads?” and the term “near-dead” was adopted as short-hand for any of the numerous older retirees that populated the Space Coast.
When I processed in at the Patrick Consolidated Base Personnel Office, the Sergeant reviewed my records with me. This was my first opportunity to see the OER I’d received from Kadena. The narrative was glowing – naturally, since I had written it – and the endorsement was really well-written also, but was signed by the Kadena Wing Commander, a one-star General. So much for the anticipated four-star endorsement.
And so much for my plans to make Major below-the zone. When the Major Selection Board met, I was dead in the water. At nine years, I was not yet in the zone for primary promotion consideration, and with a one-button endorsement on my OER, my record didn’t stand out in any way. I could see I would need to re-think my career plans.
The one really bright spot in my record, other than the combat awards, was the award I received for my service at Kadena. One day, the Squadron Admin Officer advised me that there would be an awards ceremony the next day, and I would be a recipient. When it was time for me to receive my award, I was surprised to see that I had received a Meritorious Service Medal. Normally, a MSM is only awarded to field grade officers, Major and above. In fact, it was pretty much unheard of for a Captain to receive an MSM. The MSM seemed to resurrect me in Lieutenant Colonel Dillard’s eyes.
61
November 15, 1976
Maintaining morale in a peacetime FAC training squadron would be a real challenge under any circumstances. The main problem, though, was Lieutenant Colonel Dillard’s lack of leadership. He was failing to exercise control over a Major who had been recently divorced, and was really into chasing women. And the real problem was that the Major’s targets were some of the wives of guys in the squadron.
At squadron social functions, the Major made a habit of hitting on every female he met. Naturally, he tried to drop a hook in Sam’s pond. When I heard about it, I was outraged, but Sam took it in stride.
“Honey,” she said, “the guy’s obviously a jerk. I can see why his wife left him. But I kind of feel sorry for him. Most important, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
That kind of put it in perspective for me. After hearing that, I felt a little sorry for him, but I was still pissed that Lieutenant Colonel Dillard didn’t do anything about it. I was also pissed about my check ride downgrade. It was clear to me that Dillard had lost control of the squadron, and had lost the respect of the jocks
After the sleazy come-on from the Major, we decided to avoid squadron social functions, since most of them did not include children. Sam, Johnny and I were a family, and we saw no reason to break the team up just to attend an event we wouldn’t enjoy.
And there were plenty of places nearby that we could enjoy. We were in Central Florida, about an hour from lots of family-oriented attractions. It took exactly 55 minutes to drive from our base house to the parking lot of the newly-opened Walt Disney World. And Disney World was a real bargain for us.
It cost exactly one dollar to enter the parking lot, and then admission to the theme park was free. Anyone who wanted to ride on an attraction had to purchase a ticket for each ride. Some rides, the tame ones, were inexpensive A-ticket rides. The more adventurous rides were the B-ticket through the most expensive, the E-ticket ride. Since Johnny was too young for most of the rides, we could have a great time at the park for very little money. Just walking around the park, and watching the Main Street parade, was enough to make a great visit.
We probably went to Walt Disney World fifty times while we were stationed at Patrick. We also visited Circus World, Sea World, Busch Gardens and Weekie Watchie, where we could see actual mermaids perform. Okay, they were beautiful women dressed as mermaids, but it was a great show.
We settled into a lifestyle that was very comfortable. Unless we had night flying, I would leave for work at about 0700 and get home at 1700. During the summer, when the days were long, we would walk to the beach after I returned from flying. And every day Sam and I took turns watching Johnny while we ran along the beach in turn. Altogether, it was an idyllic time.
Professionally, I was enjoying my work. I had become a SEFE, and enjoyed administering check rides. I liked see a guy who was putting on his best performance. And I really enjoyed seeing the looks on my students’ faces when we went to the tactical range. Until that point in their training, they were just pissed off about their assignments. But once they controlled actual fighters in simulated combat, they would return with shit-eating grins.
The fighters we worked with were active-duty and Air National Guard fighter units who would come to Patrick TDY for a week at a time to get experience working with FACs on Avon Park Range. It was a win-win; the fighters got to work with a real FAC, and our students got to work with real fighters. Every now and then I’d run into a fighter jock I knew when he would cycle through Patrick.
Toward the end of the year, Sam and I decided that Johnny should have a brother or sister.
59
May 8, 1977
My mother and my dad’s war buddy Phil had driven down from Pensacola a few days earlier to visit us and help out while Sam was in the hospital. Sam was approaching nine months into her pregnancy, and had experienced several episodes of false alarms. After hearing about the problems during the previous pregnancy, our doctor wanted to keep her under continuous observation until her delivery.
Johnny’s feet hardly touched the ground the whole time Mom and Phil were visiting – they were constantly picking him up, pinching his cheeks, playing with him. He wasn’t used to the constant attention from anyone other than Sam and me, and was really enjoying it.
My mother was making breakfast when I walked into the kitchen.
“Happy Mother’s Day,” I said, as I gave her a big hug and kissed her on the cheek.
“Thank you. This is my best Mother’s Day ever, getting to spend time with my grandson.”
“I’m going to head out to the hospital to give Sam her Mother’s Day present,” I said, as I showed Mom the box of Whitman’s Sampler candy I’d gotten at the BX.
“I think she’ll love it, and…” She was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.
I ran over and picked it up on the first ring.
“This is Doctor Weatherby,” the voice on the other end said, “It’s time.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Don’t worry,” Mom said, “we’ll watch Johnny. Get going!”
I got into my car, turned on the emergency flashers, and sped up South Patrick Drive to the Base Hospital. I arrived just as they were wheeling Sam into the Delivery Room. I quickly scrubbed and donned a gown.
Sam looked really relieved to see me. Her contractions were coming closer together, and I was able to offer more help this time than previously. She was in labor for a little under three hours and produced another son for me. I was starting to feel like an old hand when I cut the cord this time, but I still cried, a lot, as I held my newborn son. I carried him over to Sam.
She held out her arms.
“Let me hold Tommy.”
“So his name is Thomas?”
“Yes. Thomas Jefferson Hancock. You know how Thomas Jefferson relates to John Adams, right?”
“Sure,” I replied, “I’ve been studying my American History. They were both signers of the Declaration of Independence, and both early presid
ents.”
“That’s the grade school answer. Give me the college level answer.”
“Not sure.”
“Thomas Jefferson died on the same day as his former arch enemy, John Adams.”
“The Fourth of July?”
“Yes. Fifty years to the day after signing the Declaration of Independence. They had buried the hatchet before they died.”
“That’s really amazing. So,” I looked at her, “what name were you going to use if we’d had a daughter?”
“You’ll see when we have our daughter.”
I gave Sam and our newest family member a gentle hug.
“Happy Mother’s Day, Darling.”
60
October 10, 1977
The one thing I hadn’t anticipated about being an RTU IP was the repetition, the monotony. Unlike all of my previous flying, where every mission was different, most of the missions I flew at Patrick were pretty much the same. They were either local Qualification sorties, Navigation sorties, or range rides. The Qual sorties consisted of instrument approaches and landing practice. The Nav sorties provided the students with training reading and flying with reference to 1-to-50 charts. On a 1-to-50 chart, one inch on the map represents fifty thousand inches on the ground. It was a perfect chart for navigating as a FAC.
Range rides consisted of either firing willie pete rockets at the target on the scorable range, or conducting simulated air strikes against targets on the tactical range, simulating combat. So there was a bit of variety, but after taking 30 or 40 students through various stages of training, it started to get old, really old. We always took off and landed at the same airport.
Almost always. On one mission to the tactical range, we were in the middle of a simulated air strike when I saw a sudden drop in the indication on the rear engine Fuel Flow gauge. The Fuel Flow gauge was actually a fuel pressure indicator, and a sudden drop would indicate a broken fuel line, which could cause a fire.
The Emergency Procedure for a sudden fuel flow drop was to instantly shut down the engine and feather the propeller.
“I have the airplane,” I said, as I went through the required actions. The rear engine on the O-2 is the critical engine. In fact, the Service Ceiling when operating on only the front engine is 4000 feet below the Service Ceiling when operating on only the rear engine. And, on this particular hot Florida day, the front-engine-only Service Ceiling was only 100 feet MSL, and the terrain in the vicinity of the Avon Park range was about 100 feet MSL, with trees extending another 80 feet.
We were at about 1000 feet when we shut down the engine, and the aircraft could not maintain altitude. At that altitude we were too low, too close to the trees, to see the emergency airfield located at the town of Avon Park, but I knew the direction for an emergency diversion from the range. I took up a heading of 280, looked below the aircraft to ensure the area was uninhabited, and jettisoned the rocket pods.
We were drifting down at about 100 feet per minute, and there was a real question about whether we would make the airfield before we ran out of altitude. I could see a treeless area up ahead where the airport was located, but still couldn’t see the runway due to the trees. Finally, runway 28 came into view, directly in front of us. I waited until I was sure I would make it, then I lowered the gear and landed on “brick one”. After I landed, I taxied to the ramp and shut down. It reminded me a lot of my emergency landing at Saravane, in Laos, in 1969. It was nice to be back on the ground, and it was also cool to land somewhere other than Patrick Air Force Base.
I had another very memorable mission. I was taking a student out on a Navigation mission, and the lesson plan called for practice using binoculars to locate targets on the ground. It was a hot day, there were a lot of thermals making the airplane very unstable, and it was extremely difficult to keep the target in the binocular field of view.
To make matters worse, my student had been up all night, driving back from a bar he had been at in Jacksonville, celebrating after watching a football game the previous day, a Sunday. He was hung over, and, in retrospect, someone should have prevented him from flying. That someone should have been me. But I didn’t realize he was in such bad shape until we were already airborne.
I showed him how to use binoculars, how to keep track of a target on the ground while still flying the airplane, and how to locate the target on the map. I thought he could handle it. I thought wrong. He lowered the binoculars from his eyes, turned to me, and said, “I think I’m going to…”.
And then he threw up, all over himself. But at least it didn’t get on me. It didn’t get on me until he opened his fresh air vent, which allowed outside air to enter the cockpit. He opened his vent, fresh air entered at 120 knots, and his vomit sprayed all over the cockpit. And all over me. We terminated our mission, of course, returned to Patrick, and got clean by getting hosed down by the Fire Department.
61
March 12, 1978
Because of my previous experience in the O-2, I was pretty much considered the squadron expert in all things relating to the airplane. A few of the other IPs in the squadron had flown in Vietnam, but their experience had been in other airplanes. Some were fighter jocks, some had flown as FACs in OV-10s, but nobody else had flown the O-2 in combat. So it was pretty natural for me to be assigned an additional duty as Flight Manual Review Officer.
The O-2A Dash One was officially called Technical Order 1-O2A-1. The Dash One was the final word on anything relating to the systems or operation of the airplane. Whenever a system was changed, or a procedure was amended, the Dash One was revised. Even with the airplane already a mature airframe, having been in Air Force service for over ten years, there were still changes that required issuing a revised Dash One. Sometimes the changes were small, basically word-smithing issues. Some other changes were more significant.
Whenever the Dash One needed an immediate change, a notice would go out to all the pilots to make a pen-and-ink change to the copy that each pilot owned. After a while, it seemed like almost every page had some annotations, and when it got bad enough, a new Dash One would be produced, incorporating all the previous pen-and-ink changes.
As a final quality control filter, all the major stakeholders would send attendees to a Dash One Review Conference to go over all the proposed changes. One representative from each operational squadron, plus a conference leader from Tactical Air Command Headquarters, would go over every page of the Dash One in detail. Even though the Dash One was only a few hundred pages, the process usually took an entire week.
This year, the Dash One Conference was being held in Denver, and I was the representative from our squadron. I was looking forward to getting back to Colorado, since I hadn’t been there since my graduation from the Academy. I had a rental car reserved, and planned to drive down to Colorado Springs during my free time, if there was any. This was going to be a nice trip down memory lane.
Patrick Air Force Base was an easy one-hour drive to the Orlando airport, and Sam drove me, with Johnny and Tommy safely in car seats in the back. This was going to be the first time I’d be spending any time away from home since arriving at Patrick. It was a strange feeling.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay while I’m away?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“I think we’ll manage,” Sam smiled, “and I think you need to go back and visit your roots.”
“Okay. You have the hotel’s number if you need to get in touch with me, and I’ll call every night.”
It occurred to me that this was the first time in Tommy’s entire life that I wouldn’t be there to tuck him into his crib. I leaned into the back seat and kissed Johnny on his cheek, and then kissed Tommy on his forehead. Tommy looked at me and, probably sensing my tension, started to cry.
“He’ll be okay,” Sam said, “I’ll have him giggling in a few minutes.”
Then she held me tightly and gave me a warm kiss.
“This, plus last night, will have to hold you over until you get
back.”
It had been a challenge finding time for any intimate moments ever since the kids were born. But the previous night we had found the time, recreating the tradition we’d established ever since we were based together, at Yokota. Whenever I would leave for a TDY assignment, we’d made a point of having one last lovemaking session the night before my departure. It was nice to keep up the tradition.
As I walked into the terminal, I gave one last look back and saw Sam already driving away. Yeah, they’d be okay while I was away.
I was a bit early for flight check-in, so I went into one of the restaurants in the terminal. Sam had cooked me a great breakfast before we left home, so I bypassed the breakfast buffet and sat at the counter. I ordered a cup of coffee and looked around. Off in the corner, I saw a pilot and copilot helping themselves to seconds, or perhaps thirds, from the buffet. The Captain, the pilot with four stripes on his sleeve, looked to be about five years older than I was, while the copilot, with three stripes, looked about my age. I wondered if they were going to be operating my flight.
It didn’t take long for me to find out. After I finished my coffee I went to the gate to wait for my flight, and saw the same pilots at the podium talking to the agent. Then they went through the access door on the loading bridge. I suspected they might have been former military pilots, since they looked in my direction several times, and it appeared to me that the Captain gave me a slight nod.
I would have preferred to have traveled in civvies, but the rules were that we needed to be in our Class-A uniforms whenever we traveled on an airline flight. Personally, if I had to travel in uniform I would have preferred a flight suit, but rules are rules. Judging by the appearance of the other passengers, I would be the only active-duty military passenger on the flight.