John A. Smith, LTC USAF, Ret - RIP 3-24-10, In his own words ... Options

[homefront41]

Here you go, Colonel. The empty page.

[appell8]

Just to prime the pump, courtesy of BK:


mejthec0 - 10/20/02 8:13PM PDT (14091 of 14132)
Re: Discuss the show
cias,

"In widely scattered posts, you have mentioned different planes you' ve flown. When you get some time, would you please list all the different ones you' ve flown and in which wars or in between? Also, which were your favorites and why. When did you fly under the Golden Gate Bridge and wasn' t there a second bridge you did the same day?
Also, did the "borrowed" train incident ever catch up with you?"

Oh, man, you're really taxing the ol' memory; but, okay, I'll try:

Too may civilian lightplanes to list (or remember), but I flew my first ever solo in a Piper J-3 and owned a Luscombe Silvaire between wars. I'll exclude my chopper time (about 90 hours, mostly HH-3 Kamens) and stick to military trainer, bomber, and fighter aircraft:

PT-19, BT-13 (Aviation Cadets 1944)
B-17, B-24 as aircrewman(Stateside training '44)
B-24 8th/9th AF (Radioman gunner)(1945)

The remainder as Aircraft Commander and/or Instructor Pilot:

AT-6 (all versions) (Pilot training)(1949-50)
F-80-A (Pilot Training)
P-51-D, F-80-A (Korea) (1951)
F-80-C, T-33
C-47, AT-11. B-25 (co-pilot)
F-84-C,D,E and G (US and Europe,1952-1955)
Mark IX Spitfire (England, 1953)
DeHaviland Vampire (England, 1954)
F-84-F (Stateside)
F-86-C and H (Stateside)
F-100-A,C,D and F (Stateside and USAFE)(Vietnam in the D)
F-101 (Stateside)
A4D-1,2,and 2N (Navy Exchange duty)(Southeast Asia)
F9F-8T (Navy Exchange Duty)
F11F (Navy Exchange Duty)
Fiat G-91 (1970, USAFE)
F-104-A,C (Stateside and USAFE)
F4-C,D,E,H (USAFE and Southeast Asia)
RF-4-C (USAFE and SEA)

The sweet ones:

My favorite conventional fighter was the P-51-D (the only prop fighter I ever flew, other than 2:15 in the Mark IX Spit) because it was the best and most maneuverable prop fighter ever built... anywhere; my favorite jet fighter is a toss-up between the F-86-H and A4D because they both flew like they were reading your mind, were super-responsive to control pressures, and were highly maneuverable. Great for formation aerobatics.

I had more time (2700 hrs)in the F-100 than any other aircraft and didn't much care for the brute force performance of the F-4 Phantom (add another 1,000 hrs)

The bridges:

When they launched Air Group 11 between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oakland Bay Bridge in 1962, the first aircraft went off the cats as the nose of USS HANCOCK passed under the Golden Gate bridge, the heavies (Douglas A3D's) going first. By the time they launched (going downwind - the hardest cat shot I EVER had)VA-113's A-4's we were looking at the Oakland Bay Bridge coming up fast. I didn't fly under the Oakland Bay Bridge but was tempted to because I had a hint I might stall out trying to climb over it after just coming off the deck of USS HANCOCK. I went over it and didn't stall out but got a couple of shudders.

Choo-Choo Trains:

The Orient Express incident had no repercussions and was never again attempted - I swear! It was too soon after the war and the German Polizai didn't press the issue. Charlie Fisher, my cohort in, uh, adventure came back into the Air Force about the same time I did, flew F-94-C's in Air Defense Command Stateside and on Okinawa, then got out of the AF - after a somewhat touchy situation with his squadron commander's wife - and went to work for Boeing, Wichita. Wound up as Chief of Bomber Test for Boeing and I flew right seat with him on a couple of Max Bombing missions on the Smokey Hill bombing range in the B-52-H.

I have flown with the U.S.Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines; the RAF, Luftwaffe, French Air Force, Greek Air Force, Italian Air Force, Turk Air Force, Chinese Nationalist Air Force and Vietnamese Air Force.

I think I'm getting a headache.

Y.o.s.,
LongJohn

[homefront41]

LongJohn's favorite, at his request:

Okay, I'll tell you a story - a true story - that doesn't involve E&E or AE.

Experience is the curse of the maturation process, youse guys. Born to a military aviator's family on the morn of modern flight (1926) and before Lindberg had crossed the Atlantic, I and my siblings have “lived in interesting times.” I’ve had to run at 110% RPM to just keep my brother in sight, and we both know that causes an over-heated engine.

Aye, ‘twas I who experienced the Japanese shelling of Santa Barbara, the relocation of my Japanese classmates to Tule Lake, the anti-aircraft fire over Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley - prompting my parents to send my sister and me to the family lodge in Boulder Bay, Big Bear Lake, California for a year before moving to Rochester, New York. And ‘twas I who went from abalones, to police reporting, to Hershey bars and frauleins, to Mustangs, to Korea, to jets, to carriers, to Vietnam (which I won't much touch upon), to publishing and more. C’est moi, c’est moi who was a radio operator/gunner on B-24s and then spent 3 years in post-war Germany with U.S. Military Government, and c’est moi who returned disillusioned and saddened by it all to go back to school and Stanford.

Here’s a story you haven’t heard, but which I tell now for your amusement. It involves me and Charles Francis Fisher, the now retired Chief Test Pilot for Boeing, Wichita who became famous for flying and landing a B-52C with the entire vertical stabilizer torn off by shear winds. Charlie and I were enlisted men together in Germany and were inseparable. Had been since we were Aviation Cadets in the same class in 1944. We both spoke German and a few other languages, so the world was pretty much our oyster, in 1945 post-war Germany. I was a Sergeant, Charlie a Corporal, and we were on detached service to the little town of Neustadt-an-der-Aisch, 47 km north of Nurnberg on N-8, doing the background investigation of Julius Streicher, Der Gauleiter von Franken. We had returned to Nurnberg on a Saturday in January, 1946 to get our jeep repaired, but the Mil Gov motor pool in Furth was unable to give us a replacement to take back to Neustadt, and we really didn’t want to spend the night in Nurnberg. (Nurnberg was about 85% destroyed, and still so unrestored that the stench of decaying human bodies was enough to gag a maggot.)

What to do? We wandered down to the Hauptbahnhof to see if there might be something headed north to Frankfurt or Berlin, but nothing stirred in the ruins of what had once been a magnificent railway station. We knew where the rail lines went from Nurnberg, knew where the switching stations were, and knew the train had to go through Neustadt-an-der-Aisch to go to Wurzburg and anywhere north. We had seen trains on that section of rails almost every day for several months. What we did not know was that it was one of the first post-war runs of the Orient Express. There was this Reichsbahn engine with about 8 cars behind it, sitting there and just slowly chugging to itself, when Charlie said, “I can run that *&^%ing engine.”

Ya see, Charlie is from Emporium, Pennsylvania, and before entering the Air Corps had worked one Summer as a Fireman on the old Nickle Plate Railway, so he knew which valves to turn and which levers to push. I knew which end of a shovel to grab and where to stuff the coal, so we were in business!

Charlie hopped up into the cab, looked over the hardware, then told me to “Git your butt up here – we’re on our way.” And we were!

47KM went pretty fast, and with a cold wind blowing through the cabin, Charlie and I were just about frozen solid when we began recognizing topography and landmarks around Neustadt-an-der-Aisch. “When we gonna get off, Charlie?” I shouted over engine noise. “Pretty soon,” Charlie said, just a chugging right along.

We knew there was a large caserne on the southern edge of Neustadt, occupied by the 19th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and had showered there quite often. It was easily visible from the railway tracks, and when Charlie saw it a few minutes later he pulled back on the levers and started slowing down. The snow was about a foot or so deep, and it was about a half mile from the railway tracks to the caserne, up on a hill. Charlie maneuvered that choo-choo train to a stand of trees running at right angle to the track, then shut everything down. “Okay, let’s haul butt!”

We worked our way through the woods, then across an open field to get to the caserne. All the while I could hear that engine doing its “chu-chu-chuuu,” looking back once to see several German civilians gathered alongside the engine.

We made it to the caserne and to the CQ’s desk, where we picked up a couple of towels and headed for the showers. The CQ didn’t even look up or ask us to sign in. We came out of the showers draped in nothing but our towels, our uniforms hung on hooks in a locker room off the shower room. There were3 Landpolizei talking excitedly with the CQ and looking for “Zwei verruckte oder betrunkene Amerikanische soldaten, die einen Zug gestohlen haben”?

The CQ asked Charlie, “You guys seen any drunks around here?”

”Nope,” Charlie answered. “Haven’t seen any drunks in the showers.” He turned to me: “Are we missing anybody?’


LongJohn

[appell8]

The definitive annotated encyclopedia of fighters and their foibles:


mejthec0 - 2/13/02 5:11PM PST (6502 of 6514)
Re: Flyboys' Ditties
appell8,

Tried to answer this last night but got time out.
Come to think of it, Doug, you are right. Some references in this song won’t mean much with clarification:

Give Me Operations

Don't give me a P-38; the props, they counter-rotate
She's smattered and smitten from Burma to Britain
Don't give me a P-38

**The P-38 Lockheed Lightning had twin Allison inline engines on twin booms, with props that counter-rotated to almost zero out torque. One of the earliest U.S. fighters to enter the war, it saw action in Europe
and the Pacific. Richard Ira (Dick) Bong, the U.S. leading ace in WWII, flew the P-38.

Don't give me a P-39; the engine is mounted behind
She'll tumble and roll, and she'll bore a deep hole
Don't give me a P-39

**The Bell P-39 Cobra had the engine mounted behind the cockpit and a 37mm cannon firing through the prop hub, loaded by the pilot putting in Ammo between his legs. The aft-mounted engine made it a tad unstable and induced transverse coupling, causing the P-39 to “tumble” in high speed stalls.

Don't give me a Peter-four-oh; it's a hell of an airplane, I know
A ground-looping bastard, you're bound to get plastered
Don't give me a Peter-four-oh

**The Curtis P-40 Tomahawk, Warhawk, etc., had very narrow landing gear, making it a ground-loop accident looking for a place to happen. One of those aircraft you had to fly from start engine to shut down. Early versions didn’t have hydraulic gear and flaps, so the pilots had to hand crank them up or down.

Don't give me an old Thunderbolt; she gave many pilots a jolt
It looks like a jug, and it flies like a tug
Don't give me an old Thunderbolt

**The Republic Aviation P-47 Thunderbolt. Typical of Republic aircraft, it was the heaviest prop fighter ever built (10 tons) In an overhead view it looked like a glass milk bottle, thin at the tail and thick at the nose. Powered with a P&W R-2800 Radial engine – same as the B-24 – it could absorb a lot of damage and still get home.

Don't give me a P-51; the airplane that's second to none
She'll loop, roll and spin, but she'll auger you in
Don't give me a P-51

**North American P-51 Mustang. Most responsive prop fighter in the USAF inventory. Early models had the Allison inline engine, the D model the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. You not only had to fly it from start engine to shut-down, you also had to think at least 10 feet ahead of it. The P-51A and C were sometimes called “The Allison Time Bomb” because the engine (built by Packard) was prone to internal failure.


Don't give me an F-82; that monster from out of the blue
You won't understand just who's in command
Don't give me an F-82

**North American F-82, also called the Twin Mustang, had two P-51 fuselages sharing a common wing and horizontal stabilizer. The pilot flew from the left fuselage, the EWO (Electronic Warfare Officer) in the right, where he had intercept radar but no flight controls.


Don't five me an old Shooting Star; she goes, but not very far
She'll rumble and spout, and will surely flame out
Don't give me an old Shooting Star

**Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star. Until drop tanks were added it had a very short radius of action. It did rumble and spout, especially on start, was prone to having high EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature) on start and would flame out if flown inverted or under negative G forces for more than a few seconds. Dick Bong was killed testing an F-80 at Edwards AFB. The Main fuel cell was immediately behind the cockpit, and if ground maintenance refuelers failed to securely lock the cap on the tank, fuel siphoned into the plenum chamber through the two chamber doors aft of the cockpit and fuel cell, causing an explosion.

Don't give me an F-84; her pilots they ain't here no more
They bombed in that crate, but they all pulled out late
Don't give me an F-84

*** Republic Thunderjet. Like the P-47, big and heavy, but also under-powered. Used mostly for Close Air Support in Korea, its weight caused it to sink badly on pullout from dive bombing runs and end up
“Unscorable at twelve o’lock.” Later versions, with a more powerful engine and wingtip tanks, had exceptional long range and were the first fighters used for nuclear strike forces all over the world.

Don't give me an 86D, with rockets, radar, and AB
She's fast, I don't care; she blows up in mid-air
Don't give me an 86D

**North American F-86 Saber converted to an Interceptor/Night Fighter role with intercept radar. No internal weapons, only air-to-air rockets on a big door that dropped down below the fuselage. Another version of the song is “with rockets, radar and TV”

Don't give me a One-Double-Oh to fight against friendly or foe
That old Sabre dance made me crap in my pants
Don't give me a One-Double-Oh

** North American F-100 Super Saber. “Saber Dance” refers to a famous film clip of a young Lieutenant on his check-out flight getting into a full stall about 10 feet in the air, then engaging the afterburner. The F-100 stood VERTICALLY on its tail, gear and flaps down, weaving across the runway in a Saber Dance before flopping on its side and exploding.


Don't give me McDonnell's Voodoo; there's nothing that she will not do
She'll really pitch up, she'll make you throw up
Don't give me McDonnell's Voodoo

** McDonnell F-101 Voodoo. First big twin-engined jet fighter after which all others followed, including the F-4 Phantom. Swept wings mounted far back on the fuselage, transverse coupling between wing and horizontal stabilizer while under high Q forces caused the F-101 to tend to pitch up and throw the aircraft into a flat spin that was all but uncontrollable and/or unrecoverable.


Don't give me an F-104; she's faster than lightning fer shore
But after one pass there's no bullets, no gas
Don't give me an F-104

** Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. Also called “The Missile With A Man In It.” Without external tanks, range was very limited, and with a J-79 engine it really sucked up the JP4 just getting to altitude. It had an M-61 Gattling Gun in the nose but 1200 rounds could be used up in little more than 1 second of continuous firing. Not good for close air support.

Don't give me an F-105, 'cause I like being alive
She's great for attack, she soaks up mach-mach flak
Don't give me an F-105

** Republic F-105 ThunderChief. Again, the biggest and heaviest in Air Force inventory. Also called “The Squat Bomber” because it had very wide landing gear and stood so high off the ground the pilot could taxi over a tank, retract the gear and squash that tank. Carried bombs both internally and externally. Attracted SAMS and AAA in North Vietnam and dozens were planted on Thud Ridge.

Don't give me an old F-4C, with a navigator flying with me
Her dihedral's neat, but she's got a back seat
Don't give me an old F-4C

** McDonnell F-4C Phantom II, originally a Navy fighter, was followed by the D-E-F-G and H models. First fighter with a pilot in the rear cockpit to act as an EWO; also called a WISO (Weapons System Officer) and GIB (Guy In Back). Would have been a better fighter but the Pentagoons kept finding more hardware to hang on it to degrade its performance. GIB’s were noted for saying “Daddy’s going to take me flying!”


Any questions?

LongJohn

[appell8]

The Colonel and Chuck Yeager:


mejthec0 - 1/12/02 11:51AM PST (4535 of 5477)
Yeager
homefront:

Okay, homefront, you wanted to hear about my sojourn with Chuck Yeager, so here beginneth the reading:

When I returned to the Air Force after 2 years on Navy Exchange Duty, I was assigned to the 31st Tac Fighter Wing, George AFB, CA. I reported in at Wing Hq and was ushered into the Wing Commander?s office. I was delighted, because the WingCo, B/Gen John A. ?Big John? Dunning, had been my WingCo in the 20th Tac Fighter Wing at RAF Station Wethersfield, England and was my hero. There?s a long story about ?Big John? and the Flying Tigers in China I will get to later.

Niceties over, he asked me how I?d like being assigned to Chuck Yeager?s squadron, the 306th Tac Fighter, as Assistant Ops Officer. I bounced up and down four or five times and he took that to mean I accepted the assignment.

I reported in at the squadron, dumped my flight gear in Personal Equipment, then strolled around to eyeball my new home. Standing on the ramp and looking at the lines of F-100?s, I almost had to jump back when a black Ford Model-A coupe pulled up alongside, so close I could feel it before I could see it.

'Smith? What the hell are you doing out here. Get your butt in here.?

Ya see, the 'Fastest Man In The World' drove a ?29 Model-A he had restored to perfection, the antique looking like it had just rolled off the production line in Detroit. And go? MAN!, it could GO! I had met and known Chuck Yeager for a few years, back when I was doing a solo aerobatics show for Armed Forces Day at Langley AFB and some other East Coast bases.

During the short drive back to squadron ops, Chuck, then a Lt.Col., told me my boss would be Don Hughes, due to report in the next day. More old friends! James D. Hughes and I were together for almost 5 years in the 20th Fighter Wing under ? you guessed it ? Big John Dunning. Don was a West Point graduate and went from that assignment to being ADC to Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Remember when the Nixons were stoned in Caracas, Venezuela? The major who jumped up on the hood of their limo and stood between them and the Caracas mob was Major James D. Hughes. Talk about a squadron of happy campers!

Three or four days after finding out if my butt fit the seat, Yeager strolled into the office I shared with Don, waving a copy of Flying Safety Magazine at me.

'Smith, did you really write this TACAN thing?'

He referred to a text I had written for Point-To-Point TACAN navigation that had been excerpted in Flying Safety.

?Well, uh, yes Sir, I guess I did.?

?Looks interesting. Let?s go out and see if I can learn it.?

'Going out' meant getting into a two-place F-100F with a fabric hood that would extend over the rear cockpit and put the back-seater in a purely instruments environment, unable to look out and see the horizon.

We launched, and during the climbout I explained I had learned about the method of point-to-point TACAN navigation from Gene Cernan, my wingman and friend from my Navy tour and my aerobatic team 'The Stingers.' I won’t get into it here, but it’s a mathematical trick of visually constructing a parallelogram from where you are to where you want to go on the face of the TACAN instrument. Alternate interior angles being equal ? and all that jazz.

It permits a pilot to go from point A to point B in space by the most direct route, and being able to estimate the precise time of arrival at point B and which direction to turn to enter the holding pattern or start penetration.

Chuck had read the excerpt, which contained all the fundamental elements of the technique, so I set up the first problem.

'We are on the 140 degree radial of the George TACAN at a distance of 35 miles. We want to be on the 290 degree radial at 26 miles to enter the holding pattern. Take us there and enter holding.'

I expected Chuck to make an instrument Standard Rate (6 degrees per second) turn to set up the parallelogram, not the 90 degree bank that slammed me against the canopy rail! Wham, G’s, Whap .. and the parallelogram was set up.

It took a little talking to explain how the pilot corrected for drift to maintain the track to Point B, make adjustment to estimated time enroute and direction of turn to enter the pattern, but unlike other such flight instructions, I had to tell Chuck only once.

We flew 3 problems, then Chuck popped his hood and said, 'Enough. Let’s have some fun.'

I held my hands over my head, signifying he had control, and Chuck half-rolled and Split-S’d for the desert. An inveterate hunter, he knew every damn quail patch and deer trail from Saugus to Sacramento, and I think we checked every one of them in the next thirty minutes.

Inverted, Chuck said, 'See that little pond down there? Chucker quail all over the place. Want to try it tomorrow?'

That was my first of many flights with my new squadron commander. Unfortunately, that happy time lasted only a few months because Chuck was promoted to full Colonel and reassigned to Edwards AFB to Command the
Flight Test Center and train astronauts. We flew together, hunted together, partied together, and I was introduced to men and women I had only read about and never dreamed I would meet and know.

I will never forget slipping the surly bonds of earth to dance the sky on laughter silvered wings - with General Chuck Yeager.

LongJohn

[appell8]

The Colonel and John Boyd:


QUOTE (appell8 @ Jan 13 2003, 12:36 AM)
Colonel, the Washington Post today has a book review of a bio of Colonel John Boyd, said to be a fighter pilot who literally wrote the manual on fighter manuevers. And who also was a maverick in frequent conflict with the Pentagon establishment. I have not copied the review here because it is written by a correspondent for the Nation and includes the requisite slams against the Pentagon.

Any comments? From what I can glean from the article, I can envision you liking this guy. Or not. Fighter pilot advocate. Seemed to foster a cult of personality. I'd be glad for your reactions. y.o.s., Doug

Book: "Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War." by Robert Coram.

appell8,

Oh, yeahhhh, MacDougal ... I knew John Boyd. You already know I was stationed here at Nellis for F-80 CRT, F-100 Upgrading, F-86 and F-100 Fighter Weapons School, Fighter Weapons Instructor course, and Fighter Weapons Commanders' Course. The F-100 Upgrading was in 1956, when John Boyd was at the acme of his career as a fighter pilot. I never accepted or tested his 40 second offer.... I knew too many who did.

Things were different then; the Air Force was pretty loose about flying regulations, and anything with "Wheels in the well" was legal game in the Southern Nevada sky. John Boyd was one of my instructors, and although a couple years junior to me in grade and experience, taught me some real whiz-bangers, including flat-plating the F-100, or what we called "Setting the hook." Flat-plating made the F-100 a momentary Frizby.

The way he set up the flat-plate was to watch the adversary making an attack "curve of pursuit," and eyeballing the distance to where he would open fire. At precisely the moment he reaches that point in space, he would honk full back on the stick, lock his elbows against the armrests to keep the stick from moving and inducing aileron drag that can cause a spin, then - stick still full back - stomp on one of the rudders and drive it to the fire wall. That rolled him inverted, so he'd neutralize rudder pressure and now above, behind, and looking down on the adversary, he'd have him completely confused and wondering where the hell he went. BUT, the maneuver would put him out of maneuvering speed, so he'd bring the nose down below the horizon, ram full throttle to get maximum acceleration under negative G's, put his pipper on the surprised adversary and blow holes through him ... on gun camera film, of course. His secret was to FORCE his adversary to commit himself to an attack, then force an unstoppable overshoot.

Boyd was all tactical with nothing tactful, so he was never very popular at the Head Shed at Langley AFB. We loved him here at the Fighter Weapons School, though, and John Boyd wrote a lot of tactics manuals, usually winding up with a discussion of the OODA Loop. "For every maneuver there is a counter-maneuver, and for every counter-maneuver a counter-maneuver;" and that applies to everything, not just flying a fighter. Every US and Foreign pilot participating in Red Flag is absorbing some of John Boyd' tactics and concepts. He didn't make General, he just made a hell of a lot of good fighter pilots.

Y.o.s.,
LongJohn

[appell8]

Gonna pause here, to give y'all a chance to read, and the Colonel a chance to save and combine. But we have much more.

[hwhap]

BK & Doug,

You guys have just read my mind. Here I was thinking there needed to be a thread in the Veteran's Stories for Col. Long John's stories, and presto, it appears!

How about copying the story he posted over on the Mein Kampf thread over here? It would be a shame if people overlooked that one, because they didn't want to read about Royalties for Mein Kampf, little knowing there was this GREAT story there.

Vee

[VanessaBinder]

Excellent idea Vee, if ya email Gino, he should be able to switch it over. Vanessa

[appell8]

Here's my remembered index of the Colonel's stories, transplanted.

I'm not going to do a poll, because there aren't enough members familiar with the Colonel's stories, but if they were, and I were, and there were enough options available, I might do something like the following:

What is your favorite Colonel story?

-Father's WWI flying career, followed by photographic and other technological pioneering, that resulted in Burr Smith enlisting with Skip Muck in Rochester, NY.

-Colonel and Burr growing up in California, including the not-fully-formed LA of the '30's.

-Colonel taking Home Ec with Norma Jean, who would grow up to be Marilyn Monroe?

-Colonel's career as a B-24 crewman, most especially including "Straighten Up and Fly Right"

-Colonel's career in the Occupation of Germany, including languages, Nuremberg, war criminals, calories, a highly distressed society, highly interesting DP's, and . . .

-the Great Train Caper

-Return to the US, and motorcycles on Route 66

-Colonel's interlude at Stanford, interacting with other vets and

-Colonel's part-time career as a San Francisco newspaper reporter

-Colonel's re-upping for the Air Force and flight school in light of Korea

-Colonel embarks on a career in Air-Mud, starting with P/F-51s. See Open Door, Insert Rocket story. And cue classic AF songs. Colonel transits to jets.

-Colonel and the Cold War. Flying (I'm working from memory here), F-84? Panther? F-86?, F-101, F-104 Starfighter (in which he instructed the Israeli Air Force);[insert other aircraft] (continued . . . )

-the Colonel and John Boyd at Nellis

-the Colonel and hand signals [cue Vee's request]

-the Colonel and [insert name of German top fighter ace; Hartmann?]

-the Colonel and Boots Blesse

-the Colonel flies into a Dutch NATO airbase

-the Colonel and Chuck Yeager, including the TACAN article.

-planning and executing a flyboy party from a base in England. Including the special drop-tanks.

-the Colonel as a White House briefer, including the Cuban Missile Crisis

-the Colonel and the day that JFK was assassinated

-the Colonel as an exchange pilot with the Navy, flying on an exhibition team with future astronaut Gene Cernan, and flying off a carrier into San Francisco within sight of his father

-the Colonel and the transition of France's withdrawal from NATO

-the Colonel and F-4's in Vietnam

-the Colonel and publishing

-the Colonel and places special to the Indians in Colorado and poetry
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This is just off the top of my head. There's much, much more.

PUBLISH

y.o.s., Doug

[appell8]

Here's the Colonel's story about reflex flying, transplanted.



QUOTE (hwhap @ Jul 26 2003, 12:06 AM)
Colonel, have you posted on this board, the story that you told on the HBO Board about the time you were sick when flying, and were unresponsive, and how ... well I won't tell any more.

If you have told it here, maybe you can direct newcomers to where that thread is, and if you haven't, that's one you MUST post here.

You must post it...... you must post it.....

You... must.... post..... it.

Are you mesmerized yet?

Vee


Vee,

Ye Gads and little fishooks, that's a yarn that goes back to the beginning of the BoB board! I don't think I can dredge it up from the BoB archives, so I'll just have to wing it from memory.

Since you know the basics of the story, you already know I had contracted spinal memingitis while TDY at Eglin AFB, Florida in 1951, and that my unit was flying the F-84-D Thunderjet.

We had been TDY to Eglin AF No.9 for the ASWET (Air Force Special Weapons Evaluation and Test) Program for about three weeks and we're getting ready to return to Shaw AFB, SC, home of the 20th Fighter Bomber Wing. Capt. Frank C. Buzze was leading the flight, 1/Lt Bill Casey on his wing, 1/Lt Herbie Brewer leading the element, and I on his wing, making me butt End Charlie because I was the junior flight member.

I woke up that morning feeling like I'd been dragged backward, wet, through a keyhole; had a headache, sore throat, and was sweating like a pig. First on my mind, though, was to get back home to my bride in Sumter, South Carolina. Captain Buzze had filed the flight plan in Base Ops, gave us a quickie briefing on route and weather, then we all headed for our separate cockpits. Crank-up and taxi was normal, and we lined up in diamond formation on the runway. Buzz gave the wind-'em-up signal and we all ran our engine up to 100%, then gave Buzz the nod we were set to roll.

Take off was normal, even though I could feel myself getting an even worse headache, one to end all headaches, and a stiff neck that would kill a giraffe. I hung in there on Herbie's wing while we got airborne, cleaned up the gear and flaps, and he set up the cut-off vector and closed formation on Buzz and Stan. From there on out, though, is still pretty much a huge void in my memory, so I'll have to tell the rest of this the way Buzz, Bill, and Herbie told it to me:

Headed north, Buzz checked in with Atlanta Center as we leveled off at about 25,000 or 27,000 feet (N to E is Odd altitudes, E to S Odd + 500 feet, S to W is Even thousands, W to N is Even + 500 feet) Everything seemed to be settled down for a quiet ride home, until Buzz waggled his wings to close up the formation while we went through a little deck of clouds. Then Herbie said, "Lead, Number Four isn't responding." Herbie looked at me and I was sort of hanging in my shoulder harness, head down. I'd raise my head occasional, apparently to check my instrument panel and RDF (Radio Direction Finder), then my head would drop again. "Lead, number four looks like he's unconscious ... or something."

Buzz told Herbie to move out of the way so he could get on my wing. Buzz got on my wing and tried to get me to look at him, pay attention, get my head up. I'd raise my head, apparently look around, then go back to playing ostrich in a sand pile. He even got his wingtip tank under my wingtip to put me in a slight turn, keeping us on course for Shaw AFB. I was so far out of it that Buzz called Atlanta Center and declared an Emergency, so Alanta cleared out all traffic below our altitude, all the way between about 30 miles north of Atlanta and 50 miles north of Charleston, SC.

Buzz kept talking to me in a calm, steady voice, and I kept responding - not by radio or visual signals but just by doing whatever he asked me to do. "Turn left. Roll out. Watch your altitude," etc. About the time we reached Columbia, S.C. it was time to start the descent to the initial point for entry into the Shaw AFB traffic pattern. Herbie and Stan stayed clear while Buzz talked me down, making a series of small turns in a shallow bank to get me on a long final approach to the W-E runway at Shaw.

"Okay, Smitty, we're coming up on the final. Gear down ... NOW. Add a little throttle. Okay, flaps down ... NOW. Steady on the throttle. Keep your nose level, let it settle in the groove. Coming down nicely, 500 feet per minute ..." and so forth. making small throttle adjustments, Buzz got me over the overrun and told me to chop the throttle. I chopped, kept my nose up, and the F-84 squeaked onto the runway at Shaw. Buzz stayed on my wing, slightly high, until I was rolling on concrete, then he cobbed it and went around to make his own landing.

They later told me I rolled-out to the end of the runway, then sat there with my brakes locked and engine running. Col. John A. Dunning, my Wing CO, came out with an ambulance and my Crew Chief, Sgt. Tidwell. Tidwell crawled up on the wing and rolled back the cockpit canopy; I was hanging in my harness, head down. He pulled me upright and said, "Are you okay, Lieutenant?" or something like that. I reportedly shoved him away and pushed up the throttle, like I was going to taxi in. Tidwell grabbed the throttle and stop-cocked it, shutting down the engine.

My first recollection came three days later, when I woke up in the hospital at Shaw AFB and saw my wife sitting in a straight-back office chair at the door to my room.
She called a nurse, who came skipping in with my good buddy and bosom bar companion Squadron Flight Surgeon (funny --I can't now recall his name) I had a vague recollection of being on an operating table, my right leg jerking violently, and Doc telling me they were doing a spinal tap.

I learned they got me to the hospital with a temperature of 105; I had all the symptoms, so Doc and our Hospital Commander did a spinal tap, the results of which confirmed I did in fact have spinal meningitis. The leg jerk I remember was when the needle hit al nerve in my spinal chord, and it must have been one hell of a jerk because I still remember it.

Had it not been for Frank C. Buzze, then-Captain, USAF (he died as a Retired full Colonel in 1997), I would probably have planted myself in some God-forsaken cottonfield in Alabama, Georgia, or South Carolina. Had I not been trained to do exactly as ordered, and to respect and recognize the authority of my flight leader, I would undoubtedly have spun in and busted my butt. I'm alive today because I received the best pilot training in the world.

I flew with and for Frank Buzzy for about 5 more years, three of them in England and Europe, and he was my God, Saviour, Hero, and Guardian Angel, all rapped up into one bright image I shall never forget.

And that's the name of that song.

Y.o.s.,

LongJohn

[hwhap]

Colonel, that story is still amazing, even second time around. You know how people say "they've done something so often, they could do it in their sleep". Well that was really true in your case. Wow.

Vee

[homefront41]

By popular demand -- herewith, The Smith Family Chronicles ...

homefront41 - 01:34PM Dec 29, 2001 (3480 of 3480)
Colonel,
On another note, your posts continuously evoke a simple but poignant phrase from the recently made film of "The Raj" spoken by one of the principal heroines to a lifelong English missionary posted on the subcontinent. "What a lot you know!" she says to the older woman. And hardly any of that "lot" came from books; it was merely ... her life.

Colonel, I really hope I get to meet you one day. My best, BK
~~~

mejthec0 - 02:18PM Dec 29, 2001 (3482 of 3482)
Homefront41: Ach, Zo!, BK, you haff found me out! Jah, much of what I write - both here and in mss that go nowhere - comes from life. But you must remember, I had the best 28+ years of the Air Force (1944-1972) both Enlisted and Commissioned - from props, through transition to jets, a few wars, and many years when the military still had the respect and admiration of the civilian community. (Remind me to some day tell you about Charlie Fisher and I stealing the Orient Express) (Charlie is the retired Chief Test Pilot for Boeing Aircraft)

I have some pretty good digital editing tools (Photo Shop and Paint Shop Pro 7) but lack the necessary skills for restoring original quality and tone to the graphics in "Currahee." But I know it can be done, and DreamWorks has those who can do it.

The reason it wasn't thought of by Susan or any of the Smiths two years ago is because Burr died in 1983 and thus wasn't interviewed for BoB. Mary Jane (his wife and an ex-Goldwyn Girl) and their daughters weren't invited to the Paris do because nobody knew who the hell Burr Smith was or what he had to do with Easy Company. They didn't know he was Dick Winters' Ops Sergeant for D-Day or that he had the same duty for Bastogne. Being a true Smith, he went up and down the ladder faster than he could sew stripes on or have 1st Sgt Lipton rip 'em off. A Pvt at Toccoa, a T-5 at Chilton Foliat, he was a T-4 for Normandy and Bastogne and a Pvt at Zell am Zee. <LMAO>

Susan and I didn't know of the existence of Burr's copy of "Currahee" until I emailed John Burton last September to watch BoB. John then remembered he had the book in a box in a closet and asked if I'd like to have it, along with some of Burr's letters to him from Laos. I didn't get the book until late October, John Burton having 5 thumbs on both hands and not too swift when typing addresses. I scanned as much as I could, then sent everything on to Susan.

I'm really thinking hard about making the reunion in San Mateo in March, and I'd *love* meeting you in The City, should that come to pass.

LongJohn


homefront41 - 03:16PM Dec 29, 2001 (3483 of 3483)
Colonel, "Being a true Smith, .... Private at Zell am Zee" -- that's a portrait of the Artful Dodger. Where else would he excel better than the Company, when you think about it? Susan has her hands full. There's more than one book in there.

My DreamWorks contact is awol until next week. And me with no patience at all!

Hang on to your butt. You may need it. BK

mejthec0 - 05:32PM Dec 29, 2001 (3484 of 3493)
homefront41:

The Company was his natural habitat, I suppose. He was a Lt.Col. in the Army Reserve Special Forces when he was the Company's coordinator with Spec Fcs at Fort Bragg, NC for the origination of Delta Force, then later headed up the CIA portion of the mission to get our hostages out of Iran. We heard he was on Isla de los Pinos for the Bay of Pigs, but he never confirmed that. I was at Homestead AFB, Florida for the Cuber thang but never ran into him there.

Smiths are in our element as Artful Dodgers, having come by it naturally and rightfully: Our Dad bugged out to France in 1914 to fly for the French before the U.S. got into the war. He and his buddies called the Lafayette Escadrille "Those new guys."

I was in Thailand when Burr was in Laos, and although we tried several times to set up a connection in Bangkok, that never gelled. But I kept hearing about him, about "Mr. Clean," from all my buddies in Air America.

Patience? What's that? No need to hang on to something permanently welded to my behind.

LongJohn
~~~
-- About the Great Orient Express Caper --

mejthec0 - 09:38PM Jan 04, 2002 (3903 of 3918)
Re: Colonel Casey Jones

You would have to know Charlie Fisher to even begin to believe the story. Charlie, last I heard, had retired in Wichita, Kansas and lived on Wagon Wheel Road, but I haven't been in touch with him for more than ten years. We went from Neustadt-an-der-Aisch to Rothwesten Airbase, an ex-Luftwaffe fighter base just outside Kassel, Germany. Nosing around in the old hangars, we ran across a Fiesler "Storch," a STOL observation aircraft used by the German army throughout the war. You could slow that sucker down to slightly more than walking speed for landings, and could take off in about 250 feet.

Charlie and I spent all our spare time for about a month making that thing airworthy, finding avgas for it, and figuring out how to keep it secret. We finally flew it, circling the Hercules Tower on top of the hill overlooking Kassel and causing the military switchboards to be blocked with calls. <LMAO>

Charlie Fisher is (was ?) my Doppelganger.

~~~

mejthec0 - 06:44PM Jan 05, 2002 (3975 of 3981)
Re: Careers

Hang on, Sport. I feel a long one coming on, then I’m off to Z land:

Different strokes for different folks, Doug. I never read the Hardy Boys or Tom Swift, and don?t ask me why. I think the first heroic book I read cover-to-cover was Kipling’s “Barrack Room Ballads,” given to me by my dad for my 7th birthday. Dad was a photographer and cinematographer, which is why Eastman Kodak Co. sent him to California as their representative to the motion picture industry in 1928. We lived at 241 S. Carmelina Drive, Brentwood, until 1939, then on N. Gunston until 1941, surrounded by the industry and all the kooks in it until Kodak called dad to come to Rochester to head up war production. (Dig into the patents and records and you’ll find Robert M. Smith and Eastman Kodak Company on all the patents for Photo Template, which is what gave this country the edge on the rest of the world in aircraft production)

My adventure stories all had something to do with airplanes and pilots. Burr’s were pretty much the same, but got more into the combat aspect of the military than did my heroes. There was a period when I got into deep sea diving stories by Commander Ellsberg, but that didn’t having the staying power of “G-8 And His Battle Aces.” Southern California in the 1930s was THE place for aviation and aircraft production, so Burr and I spent many Saturdays and Sundays at old Clover Field in Santa Monica, home of the original Douglas Aircraft Company, watching stagger-wing Beeches and Stinson tri-motors go round and round..

I think I mentioned John Burton being Burr’s friend who kept his copy of Currahee all these years before sending it to me in November? Well, John’s father was Ed Burton, Chief Design Engineer for Douglas Aircraft and basic designer of the DC-3, 4, 5, 6 and 8, the SBD Dauntless and the D-558-2, so airplanes and aviators were our natural habitat and why we hung out at the Burton home over on Bundy Drive.

The Great Depression really didn’t affect us very much. Brentwood and Bel Aire were rather insular during the 1930s, and Burr and I were very much into Scouting -- Burr with Boy Scouts and I starting as a Cub Scout. We spent a month every summer from 1935 to 1939 at Emerald Bay Scout Camp on Catalina Island, then Burr suffered banishment to Brown Military Academy as a result of some neat-o drawings John Burton gave him of German soldiers in Afrika Corps uniforms, Nazi flags, Lugers, Stukas and ME-109s. War was never glorified around the Smith household, Dad having served with first the French, then the AEF in WW-I, and our mother having been a 1st Lt in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from 1917 through 1918. Our mother served at Camp Jackson, South Carolina during the horrendous flu epidemic of 1918 that killed so many thousands. She was born in Canada (Prince Edward Island) but did a course in E&E to slip south of the border and enlist in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps -- using her sister’s credentials from nursing training in Revelstoke, Canada and being swift enough of mind and foot to become a Surgical Nurse through memorization of medical manuals and journals. In short, she could walk the walk and talk the talk.

At any rate, we didn’t think of war and the waging of it as heroic or desirable, but we were raised in an ultra-patriot environment that never left us, even when combat scared us spitless. My view of war and warfare was much different -- and infinitely cleaner and nicer -- than my brother’s. I always returned to hot meals, hot showers and a warm bed, seeing little of the carnage going on down below, where my brother lived.

Until you mentioned it, I had not thought of Otto Skorzeny or Castel Gondolfo for many, many years. Yes, I do believe he landed a Fiesler Storch in an incredibly small space to snatch Mussolini and get airborne once more. The Storch utilized Fowler flaps that extended wing lift area while changing pitch and angle of attack to such a degree that a butterfly could fly circles around it. Burr got a lot of Porter time in Laos, and that’s one airplane I never had the opportunity to fly, but I understand it was just as affective as the Storch. The Storch was by far the slowest aircraft I have ever flown, although my solo in a Piper J-3 wasn’t much faster.

As to the upper end of the scale, there was much difference between a Panther and the Phantom I but a world of difference between a Panther and Phantom II. The McDonnell FH-1 Phantom was the first all-jet airplane ordered into production by the Navy and the Navy's first airplane to fly 500 mph. On July 21, 1946, operating from the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, an FH-1 Phantom became the first jet-propelled combat aircraft to operate from an American aircraft carrier.

The McDonnell F-4H Phantom II was originally designed for the Navy but became a mainstay of the Air Force in its second year of Navy production. The F-4H (Air Force F4-C) established 16 speed, altitude and time-to-climb records. In 1959, its prototype set the world altitude record at 98,556 feet. In 1961, an F-4 set the world speed record at 1,604 mph on a 15-mile circuit. By the end of production in 1985, McDonnell had built 5,068 Phantom IIs and Mitsubishi, in Japan, had built 127. The F-4s bought by the U.S. Air Force were designated F-110s (also called Weapons System 110 and called "Spectres").

We were fortunate enough to have our dad around to listen to us lie to each other about our exploits in Europe. I think dad always suspected we were both trouble looking for a place to happen, but Burr being the taller (by an inch) and the older (by 2+ years), he was naturally expected to reach greater extremes. In fact, I was lucky enough to have my dad observe me launching from the deck of USS Hancock, an event which took place in San Francisco Bay between the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay Bridges. Hancock was running ahead of a fog bank that chased us from the Farallones all the way to the Golden Gate, and the Skipper wanted the damn Air Group OFF his bird farm before tying up at the carrier pier in Oakland Navy Yard. So he launched the whole friggin’ Group going downwind between the two bridges. Hardest damn cat shot I ever had! Our home base was NAS Miramar, so we loafed our way down to San Diego after getting booted off HANCOCK. Dad died in 1975, so he also knew all about Burr’s time in Laos and other places of note, such as Iran and Honduras.

Sheesh! Long sucker, wasn’t it? Okay, I’m outta here.

Long John
~~~

mejthec0 - 07:57PM Jan 05, 2002 (3991 of 3991)
Re: Careers

I've often thought of writing my dad's memoirs, but there is so much to tell that I don't know where to begin. He was raised by his mother on a farm in Iowa, then went to Montana when he was 16 to work for his uncle Jack Marquette in his lumber camp as a cook. Left that to become a Park Ranger in Glacier National Park, living with the Blackfeet Indians for two years and becoming bloodbrother to Three Bears, son of Flying Cloud - the Indian on the Indian Head Nickle. Then he left that to go to Iowa State to major in Chemical Engineering and started learning photography. Chucked all that to go to France and enlist in the French Air Service. That's for starters, then I have to work in my incredible mother and her nursing him back to health when he returned from France wounded and gassed.

Where's Stephen Ambrose when I really need him?

LongJohn

[ham and jam]

Awsome stuff I hope there is plenty more. And to think I know now the method of point-to-point TACAN navigation (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

Andy

[LongJohn]

Awsome stuff I hope there is plenty more. And to think I know now the method of point-to-point TACAN navigation  (IMG:http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

Andy

Ham and Jam,

At last! Someone understands Poinnt-To-Point Tacan Navigation! Kindly explain it to me ...

Just kidding. Hey, do you have an E-6-B plotter handy? The one where the inner ring rotates inside the outer ring with the compass on it? If you have one of those, or something like it, I can explain the whole schmear in less than 2,000 words.

LongJohn