I was getting low on fuel. I informed Sandy that I was bingo. Greg and I returned to base without speaking. We found out that the A-1Es contacted the Bravo and that he too was whispering. Hidden and uninjured. The clouds stayed over the area for two days. Rescue teams stayed above the clouds constantly. After a day, Bravo could no longer be heard on radio, and several days later the search was discontinued. The clouds had not moved away. An informal search lasted several weeks. It was unsuccessful.
Recently I found out, through a Web search, that Jingo 2-Alpha has not been found, but that the backseater, Jingo 2-Bravo, was captured, served as a prisoner of war, and was released in 1973.
I WAS FLYING with a young pilot, Lieutenant Marty Carroll, on his first combat mission. I believe he was the grandson of an Air Force general, or perhaps a son. I don’t recall. In any case I had the feeling that he was not happy doing what he was doing but that he was flying out of a sense of duty.
Over Mugia Pass, a highly defended area, we began taking antiaircraft fire.
“Sir,” he said, “would you take the aircraft for just a minute?”
“I have the aircraft.”
I banked to look for sources of fire, flashes from the ground at the base of an imaginary line of orange tracers, slowly coming from the ground up toward us. I looked into the front seat. Carroll was taking off a glove. He threw up into it, placed it on the floor of the aircraft, and then said, “I have the aircraft, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yessir.”
After the mission, Carroll seemed upset, quiet.
He was reassigned. I never knew where he went, but I suspect he was unhappy flying combat and was able to get a transfer. If he requested to be relieved of combat duty, then he’s the only pilot I ever knew who did so.
DANNY NICHOLS, FRESH from pilot training in the States, became my student. I liked him immediately. I broke him in just as Captain Charles had broken me in. Danny’s call sign was Nail 16. He was freckle faced, easygoing, and eager to do well. He was also intelligent and a very good pilot. You could sense that he’d always been an A student, but he had a kind of mischievousness about him that was winning. He was a joy to instruct, one of the best of our new young pilots.
Hoot, besides flying with Prairie Fire, was also an instructor for the Nail FACs, and he flew with Danny a few times.
Hoot recruited Danny for Prairie Fire. And on July 6, 1971, not long after he’d joined, he did not return from a mission. He was due back around 5:30 in the afternoon. By 6:30 those of us in the Nailhole and in headquarters knew that Nail 16 was overdue. Such tardiness was not unheard of. Sometimes a pilot lost hydraulics or electrical power, or even an engine, and diverted to another air base in Thailand. And several hours might pass before we got word.
I remember that I was in a headquarters briefing room, and high on the wall was a small speaker. I sat in a big, soft chair and listened. An announcement with the latest on Nail 16 came every thirty minutes to an hour. I stayed around for a long time to hear good news. It never came.
I learned later that Danny’s last radio call came at about 3:30, when he reported that the weather in his area was bad. I’ve learned since—on the Web—that “a source” reported seeing an OV-10 pilot as a prisoner in Laos a week or so after Danny was last heard from. Some reports say as many as six hundred pilots remain missing in Laos. Other reports say that that number is a consequence of faulty statistical analysis. In any case, many pilots apparently survived crashes and bailouts over Laos, never to be heard from again. A rumor during our combat time was that pilots captured in Laos were beheaded.
I’d begun to think to myself that the reason I flew was to protect my former Yokota roommate, Jim Butts, who was stationed at Da Nang Air Base in South Vietnam. Traditional reasons for warfare were wearing thin. A general feeling among us, though we never said it directly, was that we were losing. I heard rumors of pilots refusing to conduct reconnaissance over highly defended areas unless a strike was scheduled. My rationale for flying combat was that if I did not go out and do my job, then the supplies shipped down the Ho Chi Minh Trail might cause Jim harm or death.
When Danny didn’t return from his mission, I decided to write his parents to tell them how much I liked him and what a fine young man he was. It struck me hard: I’d known him well. I kept seeing his face. He was gone, and it was because of the war that he was gone. If we’d not been over there—and I was no longer able to believe we were defending our country—if we’d not been over there, Danny would not be missing and very probably dead. I did not have a sense that he had made a sacrifice for something more important than his own life. This was not the way things were supposed to be turning out. Before getting to SEA, I had believed that going to this war was right. After participating—listening, seeing, learning—I didn’t.
End of Tour
BEFORE I ARRIVED IN Southeast Asia, several pilots, prior to landing after their last flight, had put on high-speed, low-level air shows. Their tour was over. What could happen? Why not have a little fun? But one of the pilots from another squadron had attempted a low-level loop just before landing and had flown into the ground, killing himself.
The new policy: pilots on their final mission would have an observer along on the flight. The assumption was that the observer could prevent hotdogging. I took a tape recorder and a Super-8 camera on my last mission along with Bob, an O-2 pilot I’d never flown with.
The flight was like most flights except that awaiting me after landing was a bottle of champagne and a dousing with a fire hose from the flight line fire truck.
After several pilots had flown their last flight, a going-home party was held in a back room at the officer’s club. Everyone wore his party suit. The party suit was particular to Southeast Asia, a tailor-made flight suit, black, decorated with an assortment of patches, in addition to our names over one chest pocket and a small OV-10 over the other. It was unofficial, paid for by the pilots. A pilot’s motorcycle jacket, I guess. All kinds of patches would be sewn on party suits—perhaps a map of Southeast Asia on the back, squadron emblems on the sleeves, a tiger, a flight school patch, and a personal patch commemorating a battle or an event or a flight school attended. (Some pilots wore pendants. One I remember was something like a peace symbol except that the symbol held the word WAR.) These suits were macho outfits, and most pilots seemed to enjoy wearing them.
I didn’t particularly like the party suits—I was never fully socialized into the “club”—so when I had mine made (at a tailor shop off base, where we all had our party suits made) I asked for no patches except for a small one on my left shoulder that said BLUE PATCH and a white one on my right that said WHITE PATCH. The tailor was puzzled. I have a photo of Hoot Gibson and me in our party suits at my going-away party. That must have been the night I told him about almost shooting him down.
IN JULY I OFFICIALLY requested a forty-four-day rollback; that is, I asked to go home forty-four days short of my scheduled one-year tour so that I could enter graduate school back in North Carolina in time for the fall semester. I doubted that the request would be granted. Why should the Air Force do me any favors? But I was wrong. My request was granted.
At Travis Air Force Base in California I collected a cash payment for my unused leave days.
My days as an United States Air Force pilot were over.
Before flying home to North Carolina, I detoured through New Jersey, where Johnny Hobbs (still a close friend then—and in 2005) was living and flying with the National Guard. We found a Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee concert in New York City and celebrated. We’d been gone from Yokota for two years. It seemed like a lifetime.
Then I flew home. I was twenty-seven and wanted to do something different.
PART 6
(1984–91)
ANNABELLE
The Purchase and Beyond
IN THE MID-1980s, when I lived in the little town of Apex, North Carolina, a bright yellow Piper Cub flew over my home alm
ost every Sunday afternoon—low and slow. It reminded me of the first airplanes I’d seen as a child.
Since my Air Force days, I’d renewed my pilot’s license three times and flown for a few months each time, for a total of less than a hundred hours. I didn’t care much for civilian flying; it was a letdown. I’d also taught high school and college and had published two novels. I’d started a third novel, The Floatplane Notebooks, which included passages about combat flying. Somehow that writing made me want to fly again or at least be around airplanes.
So one day in 1987 I drove out to the local airfield and happened to see a beautiful little yellow airplane sitting in a hangar—surely the one I’d seen flying around on Sunday afternoons. It sat nose high, unlike modern planes. The third wheel was under the tail, not the nose.
I assumed that all little planes were configured inside like the Cherokee 140 I’d flown with Mr. Vaughn, or like the T-41 I’d flown when I was still wearing shoes instead of boots with my flight suit in Laredo.
I walked over and looked into the cockpit. There was no yoke, no throttle knob out of the instrument panel. A stick stood on the floor, and the throttle was on the left against the side panel. And not only that: there was room for only one person up front and one person in the back. I’d flown in no civilian aircraft without side-by-side seats. In the T-38, the F-4, and the OV-10 the seating was tandem, just as in this little beauty. I’d be by myself up front or in the back. There were controls in back for flying too. Exactly like a two-seat fighter.
A strong, long-dormant urge to fly came thundering back alive after almost twenty years. I had to get one of these little airplanes. I had to start flying again. Suddenly, as a consequence of form, shape, and memory, I was re-hooked, reinfatuated.
I drove home, ordered flying books, and started reading. I couldn’t help it. I read about tail draggers. Since the third wheel is very small and under the tail, the nose sits high. In the old days this high nose kept the propeller away from sand and gravel. It also allowed more room for big propellers, and the high nose set the wings at just the right angle for takeoff.
I saw myself landing a tail dragger on a beach somewhere. I decided that if nothing else I could renew my license again and do some simple civilian flying in a simple civilian aircraft. I drove out to the airfield again and again—and dreamed.
I read more about tail draggers. With the advent of asphalt runways back in the 1940s and 1950s came a new configuration of landing gear. The third wheel, enlarged, was moved to beneath the nose, making these new airplanes much easier to land. I learned that old tail drag-gers, practically all, were flown with a stick and with the throttle to the left.
A dilemma was that I wanted to fly two passengers rather than just one, yet I wanted to fly alone in the front seat. Perhaps I’d have to settle for a four-seater. The problem seemed insurmountable until I found a book called The Piper Classics. In it I read that during the years 1946 and 1947 about thirty-seven hundred PA-12 Super Cruisers had been built, designed with a slightly wider backseat than that of the Piper Cub—wide enough to hold two people. Otherwise it was almost identical to the Cub. I could hardly believe it! The perfect little airplane for me.
I called the Piper dealer in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I asked him about these Super Cruisers. “Oh, sure,” he said. “Would you like to have a list of all PA-12 owners in North Carolina?”
“You bet.”
He mailed me the list. There were thirty owners in North Carolina. A quick calculation—fifty states, thirty Super Cruisers per state, fifteen hundred total. Almost 50 percent of them were probably still flying.
I wrote a form letter. It started: “Dear _______, I’d like to buy your airplane.”
I sent the letter to each of the thirty owners. I received five replies. Two replies said something like, “I own a Super Cruiser, it’s a wonderful airplane, you’re on the right track, but I will never sell mine.” The other three owners had Super Cruisers for sale. The first was a “project,” meaning it was in separate parts and I’d have to put it together. The second was in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the third, in Charlotte.
I drove to Spartanburg with my buddy David McGirt, and we looked at the first PA-12 Super Cruiser I ever remembered seeing. I asked the old-timer who owned her to crank her up. I remember watching him climb in. The sound of her engine hypnotized me. I was in love. But the asking price was too much: $16,000. The most I could afford was about $12,000, $14,000 at the very outside.
In the meantime, from a small airport in South Raleigh, I renewed my pilot’s license with the prerequisite landings, takeoffs, and air work. I joined AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association). I joined a pilots’ book club and studied new FAA regulations from books I ordered.
My seven-year-old daughter, Catherine, had never flown before, and when I taxied out to take her up in a rented Cessna for her first ride, she said, “Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Did you finishing reading that book?”
I GOT TO KNOW the mechanic, Gary Durham, at the Triple W Airport in South Raleigh and found empty hangars there for rent.
I called Jim Council from Charlotte—the third owner wanting to sell. He said he had a sweet-flying PA-12, and he wanted $12,500 for it. It didn’t have much in the way of radios and navigational gear, and that’s one reason he could offer it for such a good price. He didn’t want to sell, but he needed the money.
A few days later I drove to a small airfield near Charlotte and met Jim. He was a pleasant man who seemed sad to sell his plane. We walked over to a row of airplanes under a long, open hangar.
“Here she is,” he said. “Want to fly?”
It was a beautiful airplane. White with red trim.
“Sure.”
Jim put me in the front seat, got into the back, and talked me through a takeoff. He mentioned the fact that since I’d once flown F-4s, this little airplane should be nothing. At the time I was blissfully unaware of the potential problems of landing a tail dragger, and luckily we had no cross-wind on landing. While we were in the air, Jim showed me how sweet she flew, how difficult it was to stall her, and how well she handled. She was unusually stable and steady. I was so eager to own the airplane that I almost made an offer, but I knew I should get my mechanic, Gary, back at South Raleigh, to check her out.
In a few days, Jim flew his airplane to South Raleigh. I stood near the flight building, watching him taxi in, the aircraft nose high and proud. Gary examined the engine and airframe and then took her up for a spin. He landed, taxied in, and motioned for me to walk over to his shop.
“That’s one fine little airplane, Clyde,” he said. “Very sweet—and in a stall she just keeps flying with the stick pulled back.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m glad you like her. What do you think about twelve five as an asking price?”
“Very fair. Very fair.”
That morning I’d written three checks and stuffed them into my shirt pocket. The check on top was for $11,000; the next, for $11,500; and the third, for the asking price, $12,500. I’d bargain with Jim, strike a deal, pull the $11,000 or maybe the $11,500 from my pocket, and save myself some money. Yessir.
I walked from Gary’s hangar, across the lawn, over to the flight building. Jim was inside, sitting near a stove with a couple of other fellows.
“Jim,” I said, “could we walk out to the plane?”
“Sure.”
We walked out the door and started across the lawn toward the little plane I would name Annabelle. It was a cold, clear January day.
I said, “Jim, I want to make you an offer for your airplane.”
“Sure.”
“I want to offer you eleven thousand dollars.” “Well . . . Clyde, I really need the money. I hate to sell this airplane, and I need twelve thousand five hundred.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching for the bottom check.
We shook hands.
“Let’s go back inside,” he said, “and I’ll sign
it over to you.”
We sat at a small table inside, away from the others. Jim filled out the title, and where it asked for price, he wrote, “$1 poc.” “That means one dollar plus other costs,” he said. “That way nobody knows what you paid, in case you want to sell her.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
He signed the title and pushed it over to me to sign. As he turned to look out the window, I saw tears in his eyes. I signed the title, folded it, put it in my pocket. I believe his sadness was as low as my joy was high.
“I’ll take good care of her,” I said.
In a rented Cessna I flew Jim back to his home airfield. I couldn’t fly my airplane because I had no insurance on it. A few days earlier I’d called the insurance folks, expecting no problems. I was certainly qualified, I thought. When I separated from the Air Force, I had a private license, a commercial rating, an instrument rating, a multiengine rating, and about fourteen hundred hours of flying time.
After I explained my qualifications, my new insurance agent asked for the make and model of the aircraft I wanted to insure.
“A Piper Super Cruiser,” I said. “A PA-Twelve.”
“You’ll need ten hours of instruction in that aircraft before we can insure you.”
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