Lonely Pilot Bob

I am currently watching a series on the Bible on “Fox Nation,” narrated by Charleton Heston. One of the things I have just learned is, the meaning of the name “Eve” is, “the mother of mankind.” I found this interesting, and humbling.

When Johannes Holliger came to America in 1833, he settled here in NW Ohio and married a woman named Eva (eve) Cripplever. She, in turn, became “the mother of our family” here in America…

Today I got a crumb; a “like” on the Facebook from one of my grand daughters. I rarely hear from either of them, but today I got a ‘like’ from one of them, and it made my day…

To get 3,000 hours in any Air Force aircraft is an achievement in and of itself. I was blessed to hit this plateau in the T-38A. Over my 20-year Air Force career, I managed to fly 17.5 years; 11.5 years in the T-38A in one capacity or another.

The printout below is a summary of my T-38A experience.

This product was run on 15 March 1988. It reflects at the time I had 3043.3 hours in the ’38. When I retired, on 15 Jul 1988, I had a total of 3243.4 hours in ‘the Jet.’ Then, adding my T-38A time from UPT takes me up to 3351.2 hours in the Jet and that is what I had when I left the USAF. However I wasn’t done yet. In May of 2006 I was invited to speak at Columbus AFB, MS and was given a T-38 ride! What a thrill! And another 1.0 hour of T-38A time!

All-in-all, I was truly Blessed!

On INTEGRITY: In the early 80’s there was this student pilot in T-38s at Columbus AFB, MS. After landing one afternoon, he filled out the ‘Forms,’ then left the flight line. The Crew Chief, on his Post Flight Inspection, noticed that the “G” meter in the Rear Cockpit registered an “Over-G”; probably something over 7.3 G’s or so. He then rechecked the G meter in the Front Cockpit and saw where it had been reset to 1 G. There was nothing in the Forms about an “Over G.” He then went to the Maintenance shack and called his supervisor.

The supervisor showed up, saw the problem here. An Integrity issue here, or simple oversight? He, in turn, called the Director of Maintenance (DM). When the DM showed up and saw everything he called the Director of Operations, DO. So now you have the Crew Chief, his Supervisor, the DM and DO standing there by the Flight Line MX shack scratching their heads when the student shows up, heading for the jet. They all watch as the Student climbs up the rear ladder, leans in and “punches off” the G Meter! He was confronted immediately.

It turns out that when he left the Flight Line, he went back to his Flight Room, filled out his grade sheet then went to his BOQ room. As he was showering it dawned on him – Rear Cockpit, G Meter! So he put on his flight suit back on and returned to the flight line.

To their credit they took the appropriate action – they threw his ass out of the Air Force! And this is how it should be. INTEGRITY Matters!

On oof the training missions we had at McGuire in the early 70’s was the CAM mission, Combat Airlift Mission. I wasn’t really very fond of them but they were great opportunities to build flying time. The pre-flight and post-flight briefings damned near killed me, with my ADD, AD/HD and WD-40…

We would take off in a 6-ship formation and fly around South New Jersey for a bit then head over to the drop zone (DZ) and toss out either cargo or personnel. During the summer months we would drop Air Force Academy cadets out the back. Then, upon landing, we would meet them at the O’Club for a few beers. And, of corse, we usually bought the beers for them.

One evening, after we dropped the cadets, we circled around to see how accurate we were with our timing, winds and so forth. We were scored on how close we got our cargo to the center of the DZ. As we circled about, our navigator exclaimed, “They are running! The little bastards are running away!” (They were running away from the designated target zone.)

Well it turns out that this particular navigator was renown for NOT buying beer for the cadets. In fact, he made a point of it that he would not buy any beer for any cadets. So these cadets were running from their target to offset themselves as much as possible for the scoring. The judges weren’t allowed on the DZ until after all the troops, in this case the cadets, were down…

I can still hear him crying, “They’re running, the little bastards are running away!” It made for an interesting debrief before we got to the club that night…

Once, on a late night flight across the pond to Europe, I decided to take a “combat nap” for a bit. I removed my boots, kicked the (left) seat back, coordinated with the copilot, and dozed off for a bit. Cockpit was warm, airplane slowly rocking, radio was quiet – it wasn’t hard to doze off..

A couple hours later when I awoke, I reached back for my boots. It turns out that the Loadmaster was very bored that night and decided to spit-shine one of my boots!

Do you have any idea how “goofy” it feels to walk around with ONE spit-shined boot? Took me the better part of that 13-day trip to get them to match again…