“Oh, Bewdy!”

One afternoon I was flying in a 4-ship of T-38s at Vance AFB, OK. It was a beautiful day and we were really enjoying ourselves. The mission was going quite well, the students all doing fine. At one point I took the jet for a straight ahead rejoin. Captain Marty Miller was Lead at the time.

Marty was one of our “young troops;” highly motivated with being an IP, and very competent. When he called for the rejoin I was in the Number 3 position. We were all in trail, with 1 mile spacing between jets when Marty called for the rejoin. Being Nr. 3, I was 2 miles behind Mart. For whatever reason I was determined to “beat” Nr. 2 back into our fingertip formation that day. Number 2 was to rejoin on one of Marty’s wings, and I was to rejoin on the other wing, with Nr. 4 then rejoining on my wing.

So, out came my fangs and I lit both Burners! I “blew by” Nr. 2 about a quarter mile out from Marty, with a great deal of “Smash” (overtake) – too much as it turned out! I just couldn’t get that Bad Boy slowed up. Throttles idle, speed brakes extended, cross-controlling the jet – nothing was slowing me down! So when it was apparent (even to me) that I was going to overshoot, I rolled away, inverted and pulled, exposing my belly to Marty as I went by. All I heard from him was, “Oh, Bewdy,” in a manner that made me just want to hide!

We eventually all got back together and the mission continued – with me a bit humbled. A lot humbled actually! From that time forward, the term “Oh Bewdy” has stuck with us. And we both laugh every time we hear it.

When I later was transferred to Texas, I applied for a personalized license plate:

O Bewdy!

This is one of the tags hanging in Marty’s garage today…the other tag hangs in my shop. And some 45 years later now, we are still laughing about it… Gawd did we ever have fun back then!

This entry was posted in The Book, UPT. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.