American Patriot

by Robert Coram

  On the surface, the code was a simple document of six articles:

  1. I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

  2. I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender my men while they still have the means to resist.

  3. If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

  4. If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners. I will give no information nor take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way.

  5. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give only name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

  6. I will never forget that I am an American fighting man, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

  The code was printed on wallet-size cards and given to all members of the armed services, who were also required to memorize it. Day studied the code and parsed every sentence from the standpoint of a lawyer. To him, the document was clear and unequivocal; it said what it meant and it meant what it said.

  DAY’S work took him away from the base more than two hundred days each year, but he was climbing the ladder of responsibility, becoming known in the Air Force as a man who took his work seriously and who eagerly assumed responsibility beyond his rank. Some of these trips took him out of Europe. The Air Force had a base near Casablanca in North Africa, and because its weather was good for more than three hundred days a year, Day conducted many check rides and stan-eval flights there. (In an F-100, he could reach Casablanca in slightly more than two hours.) It was on a flight out of Casablanca that Day had his fourth brush with death. The beginning of the flight was uneventful, but later in a violent thunderstorm the aircraft’s electrical system failed. His backseater lost control of the aircraft and Day barely recovered in time to clear the tops of the Pyrenees. When he landed at Bordeaux, France, his tip tanks were dry and only three gallons of fuel were left in the main tank. Another few seconds and he would have crashed.

  THROUGH all this, Day was a reservist, but in 1957 he became a member of the regular Air Force. Now he was a “lifer.” Day continued with his job as stan-eval officer and flew not only out of Wethersfield but out of other bases around England.

  On June 10, 1957, he went to the officers’ club at Wethersfield to cash a check. Day was flying over to Woodbridge to conduct a stan-eval flight and thought he might need some cash. At the club he heard, “Hello, Judge. What are you doing here during the day?”

  Day looked up when he heard “Judge” — his call sign. The man addressing him was Flight Surgeon Hap Hansen, a good friend. Doc Hansen said he was about to leave on temporary duty for a day or so, and Day said he was about to do the same. Neither said where he was going.

  The next morning Day climbed into an F-84 with the name ATOM BUM printed on the fuselage. The aircraft was known as a hangar queen, a maintenance hog with a long history of mechanical problems. But it had been in the shop for weeks, and the maintenance officer had signed off on it as being in good condition. Day flew from Wethersfield to Woodbridge. It was one of those rare English days when the weather was clean and clear, and visibility was unlimited — a great day for flying. Once on the ground, Day listened as the other pilot conducted a briefing of the proposed check flight. Then the two men climbed aboard their F-84s.

  Stan-eval flights were a complicated mix of high and low altitude, of navigational problems and checkpoints that the pilots had to hit with only a few seconds’ variation permitted. These were simulated combat missions and were conducted under wartime rules of radio silence. Pilots communicated by hand signals.

  The two pilots took off, Day in trail, and flew west over the Atlantic, then turned, dropped to the deck, and came back across the coast of England, brushing through the treetops, clicking off checkpoints, and simulating an over-the-shoulder toss of a nuclear weapon on a target north of Cambridge. Then the two aircraft headed back to Woodbridge at about three hundred feet altitude. As Cambridge passed under their wings and they saw the racetrack at Newmarket, Day suddenly smelled JP-4.

  Anytime the pilot of a fighter aircraft smells fuel, chances are he is about to either burn or explode. The danger was compounded by the extremely low altitude.

  He had to land immediately.

  RAF Bentwaters was only a few minutes away. But when Day tried to call Bentwaters for emergency-landing clearance, his radio did not work.

  Day took the lead, hand signaled to the other pilot to call the tower, and scrambled for seven thousand feet, the “flameout altitude,” or the altitude from which an F-84 could be flown to a dead-stick landing. Day hoped to hold at seven thousand feet until he was over Bentwaters, then drop down and land. But a huge cloud — the only cloud in the sky in any direction — hung over the approach end of the runway. He turned slightly to circumvent the obscurity and saw two fighters coming at him on a collision course. He banked sharply. Then he saw two more fighters on the runway, rolling for takeoff.

  Bentwaters was out as a landing site.

  Woodbridge was only a few miles farther, the two bases separated by some fifteen thousand acres of Rendlesham Forest. Day raced for it, and seconds later, the field was in sight and he began his descent for landing.

  As Day backed off on the power, the engine began coming apart. Suddenly explosion after explosion racked the F-84. Pieces of the engine were being blasted through the fuselage. Even with an oxygen mask on, Day found that the smell of vaporized JP-4 was so strong he was instantly nauseated. He rolled out on a runway heading, looked down, and saw he was over base housing. It was not far to the runway. At about three hundred feet, he blew the canopy, a necessary step before ejecting.

  “Stay cool. Stay cool,” he said to himself. “Just hold this heading another few seconds.”

  Then every light on the panel lit up. Day dropped the gear and flaps and nudged up the power. The engine did not respond. The aircraft shuddered violently and Day knew he could not make the final half mile. He was going to have to punch out.

  On the ground, hundreds of people had heard the explosions racking the F-84 and looked up, watching in fascinated horror as the aircraft trailed fire and smoke.

  At Woodbridge, Lieutenant John Pardo was serving as the mobile control officer. It is the job of whatever pilot holds this rotating job to sit in a vehicle at the end of the runway and make sure that all incoming aircraft have their landing gear down.

  (More than a decade later, Pardo would be flying an F-4 Phantom in Vietnam. When another F-4 was shot up, he had the pilot drop the tail hook. Pardo maneuvered his F-4 until his canopy was against the tail hook and then he pushed the wounded F-4 until it was over Laos and the crew could bail out and be rescued. “Pardo’s Push” became one of the great flying stories of the Vietnam War.)

  Suddenly Day’s radio, which had not worked for the past few minutes, cut in and he heard Pardo shout, “Eject! Eject! You are on fire! Eject!”

  The transmission was also heard in the tower, in base operations, in the squadron commander’s and wing commander’s offices, and in ready rooms. Pilots from all over the base ran outside and looked skyward.

  Day, hearing Pardo’s announcement that he was on fire, muttered, “Like I don’t know it?” The controls locked and Day pulled the ejection handle. As he separated from the seat, the aircraft rolled and exploded.

  Because he was below three hundred feet and because the ejection an
d the spectacular explosion were almost simultaneous, all eyes followed the burning jet as it hit the trees and erupted into a tremendous fireball and column of black smoke.

  By now Day should have been descending gently beneath a parachute. Instead he was at about a hundred feet, upside down, following the trajectory of the crashed aircraft. After watching his aircraft crash and explode, he took a quick look over his shoulder and saw the chute had not opened. He put his feet together, bent his knees, and said, “I am about to bust my ass.”

  Then he was in the trees. For a split second he heard the sound of snapping branches. Then he heard nothing.

  Across the base, an alarm went off in the hospital. The flight surgeon, who was there on temporary duty covering for someone else, heard the siren. His first thought was Thank God this is one pilot I won’t know. He lit a cigar and jumped into the right front seat of the ambulance. When the ambulance and rescue personnel arrived at the crash site, firemen climbed over the wreckage to pull the pilot’s body to safety. But there was no pilot.

  Day regained consciousness, hearing the burning of his aircraft and the sound of .50-caliber ammunition cooking off. Through the trees he saw the fire trucks and emergency vehicles around his aircraft and wondered why they were there instead of with him. He also wondered if he would be hit by his own ammunition.

  Day pulled himself to a sitting position. Now he could hear the rescue personnel. They had found no pilot in the wreckage and were wondering how they could have missed seeing his parachute. They were whistling and shouting. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.

  A few moments later a flight surgeon was bending over him.

  “Judge?”

  Day looked up and said, “Doc?”

  “Bud?”

  “Hap?”

  It was Hap Hansen.

  Day laughed. “I thought I was dead. But now I know I’m alive because you would never make it to heaven.”

  Day was in great pain. His right ankle was smashed, and X-rays would later reveal a hairline fracture of his lowest lumbar vertebra, the L-5. From head to toe he was covered with bruises. But considering he had just become the first man in the history of the U.S. Air Force to eject from a jet aircraft with no parachute and survive, his injuries seemed almost incidental.

  Day was taken to surgery. The next morning the surgeon came into Day’s room and shut the door. He was very sober.

  “Captain Day, I hope you are a Christian,” he began.

  “Not a very good one,” Day said.

  “Then you better pray.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you will never fly again. Your ankle was powdered. I see no way we can fix it. You will have a stiff ankle for the rest of your life. You have to face that reality.” He looked at Day and repeated, “You will never fly again.”

  “Well, I’m gonna try,” Day said.

  Day’s squadron commander, Major Michael McCarthy, also visited.

  He stood by the bed, stared at Day, and said, “Bud, by all accounts you should have died out there.” He shook his head. “There is not enough luck in the world to attribute your survival to luck. You . . . survived . . . a . . . no-chute . . . bailout.” McCarthy was a devout Catholic with thirteen children. He paused again. “God must be saving you for something special.”

  Day thought about all the times he had cheated death: the fire on takeoff at Moody, the near crash at Matagorda, the zero-zero landing in England, landing with three gallons of gas in France. And now the most improbable of all.

  The idea that, as Major McCarthy first suggested, God was saving him for something special would become a bone-deep and fundamental belief of Bud Day. And out of that belief would come great strength and the calm assurance that no matter what happened to him in life, he would prevail. Until he had performed his appointed task, he would be safe from all harm.

  But what was the task?

  WHEN a fighter crashes, the details are sent to the Pentagon, and from there to Air Force bases around the world, the purpose being twofold: first, to determine the cause of the crash so preventive measures can be taken to avoid another crash for the same reason, and second, to point out what the pilot did right and what he did wrong so other pilots facing similar circumstances might profit.

  Within days, almost every pilot in the Air Force learned that a Captain George Day had jumped out of a jet aircraft and survived. The British newspapers filled with stories about the American bloke who ejected from a jet with no parachute and lived to tell about it. The consensus among both journalists and generals was that no pilot could eject from a jet, have a failed parachute, and survive. Many in the Air Force said that Day must have had a streamer — a partially opened chute that slowed his descent — or that his chute blossomed at the moment of impact and saved his life. But a lone witness was discovered: a lieutenant colonel (who later became a three-star general) who had been in the tower that day confirmed the simple fact that the chute never deployed.

  The failure was no mystery. The Air Force had found that high-speed ejections from jet aircraft blew the panels out of parachutes that were designed for bailing out of propeller-driven aircraft. A new parachute designed for high-speed bailouts had been introduced, and Day had been wearing one of these. The new chute had powerful rubber bands around it so as to deploy slowly at high speed. But the bands were so strong that at low speeds the chute would not deploy at all.

  Day wrote a long message to the Air Force flight safety officer, and his wing went back to the old parachute.

  While Day recuperated from surgery, he revised the wing’s tactical doctrine — the bible for wartime deployment. Fourteen weeks after the no-chute bailout, to the astonishment of his doctor and against all conventional medical wisdom, he passed a flight physical.

  He was back in the cockpit.

  For years afterward, Day would meet Air Force people and introduce himself, only to hear, “Are you the same Bud Day who survived a no-chute bailout in England back in 1957?”

  He would clap them on the shoulder, smile, and say, “Yes, I am. How you doing, pal?”

  The person would stare in amazement. “How did you walk away from a no-chute bailout?”

  Day would laugh and throw his hands wide as if he were as mystified as everyone else. He would have to tell the story again and again, and in the end his questioner would look at Day as if he were some exotic specimen better found in a museum. People just don’t jump out of jet aircraft without a parachute and live to tell the story.

  DURING the 1950s, the Air Force held annual gunnery meets at Nellis AFB near Las Vegas. There, pilots from throughout the Air Force competed in all phases of aerial combat. The 1958 meet was particularly important because it was the first all–F-100 competition. Day was ordered to Nellis to be a judge in the bombing competition. A highlight of the trip was his meeting legendary Air Force officer Robinson Risner, who had been an ace in Korea.

  Day and Risner would meet again.

  One night Bud and a group of pilots went into Las Vegas and visited a club where an entertainer played a song called “Misty” on his xylophone. The song was introduced by the Erroll Garner Trio in 1954 but languished. In late 1959 Johnny Mathis would take the tune to number twelve on the Billboard charts, where it would stay for seventeen weeks.

  When Day first heard the melody, there were about five seconds of silence before the room erupted in prolonged applause. Then the entertainer played the song on the piano, and the applause was even greater. People in the room — including Day — simply could not get enough of “Misty.” Bud bought a dozen records of the song to take back to England. For years afterward, he walked around humming the song or singing snatches of it.

  IN Day’s ER covering the period from April to October 1958, the reviewing officer said Day was “one of the most highly qualified young Air Force officers I have known.” Air Force headquarters in Europe used tests developed by Day to measure the combat effectiveness of other tactical fighter units across Eu
rope. Day was ranked “one of the best F-100 pilots” in the wing.

  The wing commander endorsed the ER by saying that Day “is one of the most capable and proficient officers I have ever known” and that he “maintains a Marine Corps officer standard of discipline and military bearing.” The wing commander added that he had sent Day to represent the wing at conferences in Europe and back in the States because Day’s briefings were the caliber of those delivered by full colonels. He ended by recommending that Day be promoted to major ahead of his contemporaries.

  BUT not all was good news. In December 1958, Doris’s father died. In February 1959, Day’s mother died, followed by his father in April. He did not attend any of the funerals.

  The adoption process for Steven had dragged on for months and now was in a critical stage. Day felt he could not leave England until the Germans approved the adoption.

  Much of the delay had to do with the extreme — and sometimes bizarre — diligence of German bureaucrats. Since Day’s last stateside assignment had been at Bergstrom AFB, he was considered a Texas resident. But Day had been born in Iowa and had just been given orders sending him to St. Louis, Missouri. Somehow this utterly confused the adoption agency. In addition, Doris was of Norwegian descent, and postwar Norway was not known for its affection toward Germans. A German judge sent some staff to Iowa to investigate Doris’s family and to ensure Steven would have the same rights and privileges in America as those enjoyed by American children.

  Making sure that everything about the adoption proceeded smoothly became an obsession with Day. “God spared my life in the no-chute bailout,” he told Doris. “I think it was because we are supposed to get Steve.”

  Day’s superiors reminded him of his orders to St. Louis and said that he had to go back to the States.

  “No, I don’t,” Day replied. “I’m not leaving until this is fixed.”