My preparation for combat airlift
in
Vietnam began years earlier.
Duke required two years of
AFROTC
so I endured it. I didn't have much money for college and I
wasn't eager to be drafted, so a college scholarship and an Air Force
commision were appealing. My junior year at University of Florida
I got an
AFROTC
scholarship, which meant that if I did well I'd be commissioned as
a
second
lieutentant; if not I'd be enlisted as an airman. One way or
the other, I'd be in the Air Force two years hence.
My senior year I enrolled in AFROTC Flight Instruction Program
(FIP). I learned to fly a
Piper
Cherokee and the USAF learned that I was worth sending to pilot
training. Pilot training would mean spending 5 years in the
military rather than 4, but the Air Force was all about flying
airplanes and I wanted to be on the first team. My FIP was at
Sieg Field, near Gainesville. It had a 2,000' grass strip and a
wooden shack
that could hold two people. After 20 hours of flying I earned my
private pilot's license.
Most ROTC graduates received a reserve commission, but I did well, and
when I graduated from UF the Air Force gave me a regular
commission. They sent me a hundred miles up the road to
Moody
Air
Force
Base in Valdosta, Georgia--next to the Okeefenokee Swamp.
This was my first real assignment--Undergraduate Pilot Training--the
year of 53 weeks.
First I flew the
T-41
(a
Cessna
172
without
wheel
pants), nicknamed
the
"Attrition
Machine".
The instructors were civilians and we flew out of
Valdosta
Municipal
Airport. The
Air
Force
wanted
to
weed out students at low cost
before investing a lot of time and money. It worked.
My T-41 instructor was "Similin' Jack"
Fletcher, who was a former Air Force fighter pilot and a genuine
hardass. He was the lead T-41 check pilot, so the one good thing
about
having him as your instructor was that you couldn't have him as your
check pilot. He was the only teacher who ever made
me cry.
There was plenty of machismo among pilot training "studs". One
day we
were told we were going to watch a gory film about first aid. The
sergeant said anyone who felt queasy during the movie should just put
his head between his knees and wait for the lights to come up. We
students exchanged knowing glances and chuckles indicating our
toughness. When the lights came up there were quite a few
guys with
their heads between their knees.
Next we flew 5 months in the
T-37 "Tweetie Bird"
and that's when we really learned aviation--emergency procedures,
oxygen, parachutes, ejection seats, jet engines, hydraulics, fuel
management, instrument flying, aerobatics, formation flying.
We learned how high-G maneuvers (loop, cloverleaf, split-S, etc.) can
drain the blood from your brain. When you pull more G's than your
body is ready for, you get tunnel vision. When you pull even more
G's, you grey out--you're still conscious, but blind. When you
pull even more G's you black out--go unconscious. That's how
Hartford, Connecticut's Bradley Airport got its name--
its
namesake
blacked
out
in
a high-G maneuver and augered in.
We got pretty accustomed to tunnel vision--it told us to back off a
little. Once I flew solo when I wasn't feeling well and I blacked
myself out. When I went unconscious I apparently released the
stick, which reduced the G-load. I woke up some seconds later
with the airplane in a steep bank and heading for the ground. I
shook for a little bit, flew some lazy 8's, then returned to
base.
Finally we flew 6 months in the supersonic
T-38 "White
Rocket". Everything happens twice as fast in a T-38 as in a T-37
and four times as fast as in a T-41. For example, its
landing speed is faster than the
top speed of the T-41! The
T-38 is quite unforgiving of sloppiness or relaxation. It also
has a high pilot workload--if you are flying along straight and level
not doing anything, you probably just forgot to do something
important. If you can make this airplane do what it is
capable of, you get your wings.
Many of my classmates washed out. One student had over a hundred
flying hours before he arrived at Moody. He could certainly fly
the T-41; he just couldn't
do it
The Air Force Way, so he
washed out. One student had been knocked out for a few seconds
during a basketball game at the Air Force Academy. He was washed
out because he admitted he had been unconscious at some point in his
life. Another student just couldn't get the hang of formation
flying. One clanked up during a parachute landing and broke his
leg. Others simply failed check rides.
For those who persevered, class standing determined your
assignment. If you were #1
you got first pick from the block of assignments. If you were
last, you got the least desirable assignment. I was pretty high
in the class
so I got my second choice--a
C-141
Starlifter at Travis
Air
Force
Base,
California.
The war took the lives of
five
graduates of Moody AFB class 69-01.
