The Entirely Marvelous Adventures

of Bill and Ed

by Ed Rider

(Disclaimer: This tale was written from the viewpoint of a pilot. The events described actually happened. However, for the sake of humor, I have “somewhat” emphasized Bill’s discomfort in some situations. There is no intention to disparage the honored profession of Air Navigation.)

Adventure One

It was June of 1967. The 8th TAC Bomb Sq. (the “Yellowbirds”) was at Clark AB, Philippines, partying at the 21 Club and flying on the largest practice bomb range in the Pacific. The 13th TAC Bomb Sq. (the “Redbirds”) was at Phan Rang AB, South Vietnam, partying at the 21 West Club and flying on the largest unrestricted bomb range in the world. I was a Yellowbird. The two squadrons flip flopped every two months. While at Clark, we had occasional trips to Japan for various reasons, one being the delivery and pick up of aircraft undergoing IRAN (inspect, repair as necessary) at the Mitsubishi factory at Gifu near Nagoya. These were highly sought after missions because they allowed a chance for shopping where the dollar was almighty. The only problem was that you were required by custom and courtesy to take along myriad shopping lists from people not so fortunate.

It finally was my turn to go and I was crewed with a navigator that I had never flown with before. I will only identify him as “Bill” since I have no contact with him and he may not want to be identified in this article. We were to deliver a B-57 to Gifu and pick up one that had been IRANed (Inspect Repair As Necessary). To avoid the hassle of a refueling stop on Okinawa, we decided to go non-stop. I had a secret fuel management system that let me get more range from the B-57 than most could. I ignored the instructions in the Dash 1 concerning the sequence that fuel tanks should be consumed and flew with an aft center of gravity (CG) during much of the mission.

We flew on the Oceanic Airways used by airliners and navigated using Low Frequency Radio Direction Finding (LFRDF). Bypassing Okinawa, all was smooth and quiet. Very quiet. The airlines communicate using High Frequency radio (HF) or Very High Frequency radio (VHF). We had only Ultra High Frequency radio (UHF) which is line of sight and so we could not talk to nor hear anyone after we left the Philippines until we got within range of Kagoshima, Japan. When we were about 100 miles out from Kagoshima, from 45,000 feet we could see the thunderstorms that were building over the islands. This caused us some concern because the factory runway at Gifu was Visual Flight Rules (VFR) only.

A weather check was in order and Bill was just about to contact Kagoshima Radio and check the weather at the Nagoya airport, which is near Gifu, when I saw a red warning light in the cockpit. The main inverter had failed. It supplied AC power to all the important instruments, such as the attitude indicator, the gyro compass, and the Automatic Direction Finder (ADF). It also supplied power to the TACAN (Tactical Air Navigation), the IFF (Identification Friend or Foe), and the Instrument Landing System (ILS). I switched to the standby inverter and it failed immediately.  We were not in immediate trouble because we were in clear air with visibility 93 million miles. But it would be a little tense if we had to make a radar ground controlled approach (GCA) in bad weather using only the information available from the turn needle, side slip ball, vertical velocity indicator, and altitude and airspeed. For heading we had the standby compass, commonly called the whiskey compass because it floats in alcohol. It swings wildly in any kind of turbulence and is generally useless for precision approaches.  I had practiced hundreds of such approaches and successfully completed a few for real and was not overly worried. It just meant that we would not land at Gifu if the weather there was not VFR but at a U.S. military base with American GCA controllers.

When Bill attempted to contact Kagoshima Radio we discovered why it had been so quiet for the past two hours. You guessed it! No UHF radio. This made the situation a little more interesting. Now we had to find a runway to land on without the help of anything other than our eyeballs and wits. If we could not find one clear of clouds we would just have to find a way to get under the clouds and hope they were not sitting on the ground. We were getting closer to the Japanese Islands now and from 45,000 feet I could see that the clouds extended past the north shore. A narrow strip of the south shore was visible. It looked much worse in the direction of Gifu with thunderstorms building. I knew that Itizuki Air Base was somewhere near the west end of the island and near the north shore because I had read stories about the F-80s flying out of there on combat sorties during the Korean war. Just the name brought back memories of my pilot training days when we aspiring fighter pilots would drink beer at happy hour and sing “Itizuki Tower, This is Air Force 801” and “Throw a Nickel on The Grass, Save a Fighter Pilots’ Ass”. So I asked Bill to pull out his topographical map and locate it. He pulled out a map about the size of a sheet of typewriter paper that had all of East Asia on it. You could cover all the islands of Japan with the end of your thumb! What is a navigator for? At that point I would have traded him for 200 pounds of fuel.

And speaking of fuel, we did not have many options left. If we continued on toward Gifu and it was socked in we would not have enough to make it back to Itizuki. So we had to find Itizuki. I started a screaming decent to the portion of the south shore that was visible.  My plan was to get under the clouds, find a valley that crossed the island, and emerge on the north shore. Then we would look for Itizuki while staying under the clouds. This worked out quite well but a lot of farmers probably spent the rest of the day trying to catch their water buffalo. The clouds were almost on the ground and I maintained enough airspeed to pull up through the clouds if my valley came to a dead end. Bill was somewhat unhappy. We found the north shoreline in due course and I was about to ask Bill to flip a coin to see if we turned left or right. Then it occurred to me that the west end of the island was much closer and it made sense to try that way first. If we did not find Itizuki we would not have to return so far to search in the other direction. Two hundred feet put us in the clouds and visibility was about a mile. I stayed just within sight of the shoreline to keep my orientation. After a while, to our sorrow, we came to the end of the island without having sighted anything that resembled an Air Base. We turned back to retrace our steps and I realized we had not timed our sojourn to the west and would not know when we were back where we started. Not that it would make much difference. The fuel gauge was unwinding like one of those crazy clocks you see in bars that run backwards to Happy Hour. When the needle reached its resting place it would not signify a happy hour. Bill was somewhat unhappy.

About this time, I started paying closer attention to the terrain under us. It consisted almost entirely of small (and I mean SMALL) farm plots with many rock fences and canals. The roads were one lane crooked mud trails. The beach was out of the question. It was craggy rocks. I told Bill to start looking for any level piece of ground 1500-2000 feet long. Again, Bill was somewhat unhappy. Once I spotted an old WWII runway and my heart leapt with joy. But a closer inspection revealed 8 or 10 canals cut through its 3,000 foot length.

The situation was now beginning to get a little dicey. One must start thinking about the unthinkable. We just might have to get out and walk. I asked Bill to help me look for some smoke to indicate which way the wind was blowing. His comment was that it made no difference because there was no place to land. I patiently explained that it did make a difference because before we punched out I would have to aim the aircraft out to sea to avoid casualties on the land. I wanted us to drift back over land so we would not have to swim.  Again, Bill was somewhat unhappy.

At this point our fate was almost decided for us because we almost crashed into some radio towers. I snatched the control stick back and we cleared them by a few feet. While I was gently easing us back down out of the clouds using the few instruments I had available, a light went off in my head. I had seen towers arranged like that thousands of times while making instrument approaches. Four fifty foot towers in a square with another in the center. In the old days when pilots “flew the beam”, these range stations were the primary means of navigation. If you were on the “beam” you heard a constant tone. If you strayed left or right, you heard “dot dash” or “dash dot”, A or N, I forget which was which, but even before I became a pilot they were made obsolete by ADF equipment. They were now used as Outer Marker Locators (OML). This is a LF radio beacon located at the point where an aircraft begins its final decent to the runway. While I was gingerly trying to find it again without running into it, I told Bill to get out the ILS approach sheet for Itizuki and tune in the OML. When I was a young Staff Sergeant, I was an Airborne Electronics Technician working on, would you believe it, the B-57. I knew that the ADF receiver still worked without AC power; only the ADF did not work. In other words, we could hear the identifiers but the ADF needle would not point to the station. The approach sheet also gave the final heading and distance to the runway. With this information in hand, I found the towers again, aligned myself as best I could onto the final approach heading, and eased up enough to get over the top of them. We got a strong increase in volume as we approached the towers and a very brief cone of silence as we passed over the top. That told me that we had the right set of towers. I started my clock and figured it would take 2 minutes at 180 knots. I averaged out the swings from side to side of the whiskey compass. Just before 2 minutes were up, I saw a concrete ramp under my nose with aircraft parked on it. Hooray!  I could barely see the runway off to my left. The visibility was really bad now. I raised up a little so I could drop a wing without hitting the parked aircraft and then THERE IS THE TOWER! I banked and yanked and missed it by several feet. The control tower people were somewhat disturbed. I flew across the runway far enough so that I could make a 270 degree turn back to line up with it. I hated to lose sight of it and was afraid there were hills off to the side of it but it was necessary. I lowered gear and flaps and made my turn with my left wing practically dragging in the trees. Just as I estimated that I had made about 270 degrees of turn, I saw lights. The brave tower people had picked them selves up off the floor and turned the runway lights full bright. I do not know if they gave me a green light or not because the tower was only visible from a few hundred feet. I was not worried about other traffic because I knew no sane person would be flying in this weather. We were half way down the runway before I got lined up and put it down. We waited at the end until a Follow Me found us and led us to the ramp. We were followed by several fire trucks (a waste of time; there was not enough fuel left to start a Boy Scout campfire) and were met on the ramp by the Base Commander and various and sundry Flying Safety types. Many others came out who were curious to see the idiots who flew in this kind of weather. Bill was somewhat happy.

Adventure Two

After answering a million questions, we retired to the bar to get some medicine to counteract all the adrenaline that was coursing through our blood system. A call was made to Yokota Air Base requesting parts and they sent them down by T-39 next morning after the weather improved. We got a UHF radio and a main inverter but no standby. But it was only a short trip to Gifu and we would be going VFR under the clouds. The Weather Guesser assured me that the bottoms of the clouds would be no lower than 8,000 feet. So away we go on a VFR flight plan along the Inland Sea. This time Bill had a briefcase full of topographical charts and was religiously doing dead reckoning (DR). We started out at 7,000 feet but soon had to descend to stay out of the clouds. We kept descending until we were at 1,000 feet and could see that the clouds met the water up ahead. I had a few choice words to say about the Weather Guesser. There were some high hills at the east end of the Inland Sea so we had no option but to climb up through it or turn back. I was not about to go back so I told Bill to try to contact Traffic Control and get us an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) clearance. Naturally he was unable to because the UHF radio had gone Tango Uniform (TITS UP: A description of a dead female pig on her back). I was well committed to my climb before the new main inverter also went TU. HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN! Bill was somewhat unhappy.  I managed to keep us upright through all those bumpy clouds until we broke out on top at 25,000 feet.

I told Bill to let me know when our DR position was well past the last hills and then I would let down through the clouds and hope to break out over the flat land around Gifu. He was not too happy with that idea and it turned out not to be necessary. Shortly after we passed the last hills the clouds ended. It was clear and sunny and Bill was able, with his newly acquired stack of topographical charts, to actually find Gifu using surface features.  We buzzed the tower rocking our wings and got a green light and landed without incident. Altogether a rather boring day.

The aircraft we were to pick up, a B-57E, SN 55-4265, had to be test hopped and would not be ready for that until the following day. Bill was a bachelor and had something waiting for him in Tokyo so I told him to get on the bullet train and go. Just check the Visiting Officers Quarters (VOQ) at Yakota every day to see if I was there. The next day I inspected the aircraft thoroughly and flew it. It failed the test because of a badly rigged rudder. When I turned off the hydraulic rudder boost, it yawed sharply to the left. They worked on it some more and I tested it again next day. Failed again, same reason. The same on the next day. This was on Friday and I said “To hell with it, I’ll take it home and let them fix it there.” No problem as long as I had hydraulic pressure, which was always available. After all, I had a long shopping list and would need all of Saturday to complete it. So Friday afternoon I flew 265 to Yakota without incident, except that the weather was miserable there and I had to break IFR minimums to get on the ground.

Adventure Three

Bill contacted me that night in the VOQ and we spent Saturday in taxis running here and there to shop, mostly for someone else. Funny that they never reimbursed me for all the taxi fares. Our list included two Honda 90 motorcycles ($90 each delivered to the flight line by the dealer and tied onto the bomb door by the crew chiefs), several sets of Naritake China and myriad Hi-Fi components. Everything except the Hondas was loaded into the aft compartment. This was not intended to carry cargo because it is so far aft. It would increase the already aft CG normally present at takeoff. After everything was loaded on Sunday morning, we discovered we could not remove the tail stand that is placed under the tail to keep the aircraft from tipping back during refueling or in strong winds. There was too much weight on the stand. The aircraft would have tipped back if we removed it.. Not to worry. I told the crew chief to wait until I had the engines running before removing the stand. I could run up the engines and hold the brakes, relieving the weight on the stand. This was done and I taxied riding the brakes and using higher than normal thrust. This worked OK until I released brakes for takeoff. The aircraft tried to sit on its tail and I had to keep applying brakes to keep the nose down until the elevator became effective. This extended the take off roll somewhat. We made it airborne with several hundred feet of runway to spare, raised the gear and disappeared into the clouds. The weather was below ferry takeoff minimums but it was Sunday and no big wheels were around to tell us we could not go.

We had filed for a refueling stop at Kadina on Okinawa and since it was a relatively short flight we decided to go Super Cruise. This meant cruising at the limiting Mach number of .84 at the lowest altitude that would get us to the destination without running out of fuel. In our case that was 18,000 feet. This put us at about the freezing level. Since true airspeed is directly proportional to Mach number and temperature, the warmer the temperature the faster we could go. At .84 Mach and 0 degree C we would do about 540 knots True Airspeed (TAS) or 620 MPH. About a hundred miles out we broke out of the weather and it was beautiful and sunny. As we crossed Nagoya I could see the factory runway at the Mitsubishi factory about 25 miles off my right wing. 265 was a dual model and had controls in the back seat for an instructor pilot. As we were in clear air I was letting Bill drive from the back seat while I examined the inside of my eyelids. Shortly after passing Nagoya, I was rudely awakened from my lethargy by a severe yaw to the left, accompanied by much shuddering and buffeting. The aircraft showed every intention of doing a snap roll. At 540 Knots, I did not think that even a tough old bird like the B-57 could survive that in one piece. Simultaneously, I jerked power to idle, extended speed brakes, pulled 4-5 Gs to get the nose up, and stood on the right rudder. I said something like “What the hell are you doing back there?” as Bill was saying “What the hell are you doing up there?”. With the nose pointed straight up, airspeed decreased rapidly and I could control the rudder without giving myself a hernia. I then pulled the nose down to the horizon and was inverted headed back the way we had come from. I rolled upright, stuffed my heart back into my flight suit and made a quick assessment of the situation. I first noticed that there was no noise and buffeting from the speed brakes and spoilers. A quick look at the hydraulic gauge told me why. Zero pressure. Then I remembered; “no problem with the badly rigged rudder as long as I had hydraulic pressure”. Well, so much for optimism on this trip. After I had slowed considerably it was possible to use the electric trim to neutralize the rudder. After we both had gotten our breathing under control, I suggested that Bill contact Traffic Control and tell them we had an emergency situation. I had in mind a landing at the Mitsubishi factory and presenting them with this piece of junk they had pawned off on us. But, (have you guessed it yet? I’ll bet you have.) the UHF was Tango Uniform (TU). Bill was somewhat unhappy.

But not to despair. We had lots of things going for us. The weather was beautiful, the runway at Gifu was only about 100 miles away, and we had all our instruments and lots of fuel. I switched my IFF to the emergency squawk of Mode 3 Code 77 and turned toward Gifu. I buzzed the factory runway repeatedly but got no sign of life. There were no cars in the parking lots. Sunday. So, I figured we would just have to land uninvited. I pulled the emergency landing gear lowering handle and operated the hand pump to lower the landing gear. I pumped and pumped. Then I pumped some more. Then I banked so that the sun was casting a shadow of the underside of the aircraft onto a wing tip tank to see if the landing gear was coming down. It was not. All this time, I could hear Bill mumbling on the intercom comments like; “I don’t believe this. This can’t be happening again!” I really did not want to make a gear up landing on an unattended runway. After all, there could be a fire and we might need help getting out. Then I saw the commercial jets taking off from Nagoya Airport and that gave me an idea. I flew over there and positioned myself to join up on the next jet to take off. I intended to fly up alongside and use hand signals to tell him what my problem was. The next one took off and I set up an intercept. I pulled out of my dive and was perfectly positioned off his right wing. He never saw me and climbed away from me like I was sitting still. Those 727s really had lots of power. Embarrassed? Chagrined? All of that. The option of belly flopping uninvited and unannounced onto a busy commercial airport runway was barely considered.

It boiled down to the fact that we were going to have to plunge back into that terrible weather that we had just left at Yakota. We still had all our radio aids such as TACAN, ADF, and ILS. We also had, as far as I knew, an operable IFF. I knew that the controllers at Yakota would receive our emergency squawk and respond appropriately to it. So we turned toward Yakota and climbed to a high altitude to get above civilian traffic. I told Bill to tune in the OML and select it on the intercom so we could hear it in case Yakota tried to contact us on that radio. They did and asked us to respond by changing the code on the IFF. By asking us questions that could be answered Yes or No that we could respond to by changing the squawk on the IFF, they determined what our problem was, our altitude, our fuel state, and how many thousands of feet of foam we wanted on the runway. I thought the last request was a little funny because we really did not have any experience in this. At any rate, my guess of 2,000 feet turned out to be a good estimate. While things seemed to be proceeding in good order, both Bill and I kept a very suspicious eye on the main inverter failure light. It occurred to me that it would be extremely difficult to fly an instrument approach if we lost an engine because we had no rudder boost. I didn’t mention this to Bill.

After we let down through the weather and was under GCA control, with the instructions relayed to us over the low frequency OML, we were told that there would be a delay because they did not have enough foam and was having some trucked in from a nearby base. In the meantime, I was to do some practice approaches. I discovered during the practice approaches that I could not get slowed down enough on a normal glide path. The B-57 with no landing gear, no speed brakes, and no flaps will gain speed on a normal glide path of 3 degrees with the engines at idle. We were not able to transmit this to the GCA controllers because we had no radio to transmit on. Bill and I prepared for the landing by getting out of our parachutes and locking our shoulder harness. I told Bill that just before touchdown he should lean forward against the shoulder harness and put his chin on his chest so he would not get whip lash. I intended to do the same.

When all was ready, I descended from 1,000 feet to 500 feet on the downwind leg. On the base leg I lowered my altitude even more. I had to flatten out my glide path so I could get slowed down. I could not tell the GCA controller why I was doing this and he got pretty anxious. As I turned final 5 miles out I was in idle and side slipping to lose more altitude and airspeed.  The final controller really got excited when he saw me descending toward the ground about 4 miles out. I felt sorry for him but had no way to communicate with him. At 3 miles I was dodging smoke stacks and the controller was getting very shrill. Bill was somewhat unhappy. At one mile I saw the runway and knew I would be long unless I did something so I shut off both engines and cross controlled to kill airspeed. Forgot to tell Bill I was shutting down the engines. He quit breathing. I had judged it just right and touched down very nose high about 100 feet past the start of the foam. Of course I had my neck stretched to the limit to see over the nose and when the tail touched the nose slammed down and snapped my head forward. Bill was in the perfect chin down position.

The grinding and shrieking seemed to go on forever but we finally stopped before we ran out of foam. I asked Bill if he was OK and got a strangled reply but he looked OK. Lots of people were running up to the aircraft and it looked funny because I was looking up at them. I was afraid someone was going to be a hero and jettison the canopy to rescue us. I knew that it would fall back onto the rear fuselage and the tail causing lots of damage. There was very little damage so far and I did not want a major accident on my record. I screamed and waved my arms until I got them to agree not to blow it. A Sergeant opened a small door and activated the hand pump to raise the canopy and I was surprised when it started up. When it was open about two feet at the front it stopped. It is hinged at the back so the opening got progressively smaller toward the rear. The Sergeant said I should crawl out through the opening. I said “No way”. I was not about to stick my tender body under that 700 pound monster and have it do to me what an alligator does to a hound dog. While they were trying to locate something to keep the canopy from falling, I noticed a guy in a flight suit jittering back and forth from foot to foot and ruining the shine on his jungle boots in the ankle deep foam. He looked really familiar, almost like....IT WAS BILL! A quick glance to the back seat confirmed it. I never did figure out how he squeezed through that narrow crack back there without getting greased up.

After I extricated myself from the wreckage there was another Base Commander waiting to greet me. If these honors kept up I might get conceited. We were whisked away to the Flight Surgeon so he could assess the damage to our bodies. At least that is what I thought. It turns out there was a more sinister motive. He used his rubber hammer on my knees, shined bright lights into my eyes, and peered into most of my orifices. I told him I thought I may have some whiplash injuries. Not interested. What he was interested in was draining an inordinate amount of liquid from my veins so he could determine the alcohol/blood ratio in my alcohol system. After that we had to suffer through an inquisition by Flying Safety types, fill out multiple forms, and sign many statements. They particularly wanted to know why I did not follow the published emergency procedures and blow the canopy and use the fire extinguishers on the engines. That would have required two engine changes and the canopy would have done lots of damage to the aircraft besides ruining the canopy.  I pointed out that the first sentence in the emergency procedures said “These procedures do not preclude the use of good judgment”. Finally finished, I suggested to Bill that we go to the O’Club bar for some mood lifters. He looked at me as if I were a disgusting species of snake and said ”Ed Rider, I’ll never get into an airplane with you again”. He stalked off so I had to drink alone.

           

While gazing into my martini and rubbing my stiffening neck, I suddenly remembered that wonderful establishment outside the Main Gate at Yakoto called Kay’s Bath House. Thence I did repair to get myself repaired. I was put into the custody of a tiny doll-woman who barely came above my belt buckle. She took me into a tiled room with a steam cabinet, a sunken tub and a massage table. After she hung up my clothes, she stuffed me into the steam cabinet and cranked up the steam. My cries of pain got no sympathy and I discovered I could not open it from inside. When the steam started coming out my eyes and ears and I was the color of a steamed lobster, she finally let me out. She made me sit on a small six inch high wooden stool; a most undignified position for a grown naked man. She then scrubbed me with a rough sponge like she was scrubbing a greased up car engine. When she had removed eight of my ten layers of skin, she threw buckets of boiling water from the sunken tub on me. The place must have been soundproof because my cries for help went unanswered. She then threw me into that tub of boiling water. When I complained that it was too hot, she just put her foot on my head and held it under until I quit yelling. After a while it really didn’t feel all that bad. When I was well done, she hauled me out and placed me on my back on the table. She kept removing my hands and finally placed a towel there. She proceeded to find every muscle in my body, and if it was taut, she would twang it like Willie Nelson plucking a guitar string until it relaxed and would not twang any more. Then, with me on my stomach, she walked around on my back and, with her toes and heels, proceeded to disjoint my backbone like you disjoint a boiled chicken. There were lots of sickening liquid snaps and crunches. I would wiggle my toes now and then to see if I was paralyzed yet. She then worked on my neck and somewhere along there I either passed out or went to sleep. I was having warm fuzzy dreams when some vigorous shaking awakened me. She was saying “You go home now, GI”. She helped me dress and pointed me at the Main Gate. I fell into bed and awoke refreshed and with nary a sign of whiplash.

We arranged for the safe storage of all the merchandise that was on the airplane until another airplane from Clark could come and pick it up. Some of it looked a little worse for the wear. I had touched down on the tail compartment and the skin had worn through and scooped up hundreds of gallons of foam into the compartment. Oh well, none of it belonged to me. But some did belong to my Wing Commander, Colonel Chuck Yeager. We were put on a Japan Air contract flight to Clark. I tried to get some sleep but Bill kept waking me up. He was asleep and jerking and thrashing around in his seat. He was muttering things like “The main inverter failed again” and “Oh no! The radio is Tango Uniform!” and “Ed Rider, I’ll never get into another airplane with you again!”.

Adventure Four

Some months later The Yellowbirds were back at Phan Rang, South Vietnam, and flying night interdiction missions in the southern part of North Vietnam and on the supply routes down through Laos. I had a patch on my party suit that said “Laotian Highway Patrol”. There were two navigators in the squadron who would willingly fly with me. The others did not like my highly unorthodox tactics. I tried to point out to them that other pilots were getting shot up (or shot down) while I never took hits and killed more trucks than most. Those idiots were coming back with their airplanes full of holes and getting medals for it. Anyway, my navigator came down with a bad case of Hos’ Revenge and the other navigator was already flying so someone had to be volunteered. The hand of fate laid its clammy finger on ....Bill!  We had to drag him scratching and spitting, so to speak, to the airplane. We were taking off about midnight to hit a truck park way up in Laos. I asked the Crew Chief if his plane was ready and when he said yes I gave him four beers to put into the rear compartment and told him to button it up (close all inspection doors). I didn’t insult him by inspecting it. The crew chiefs liked for me to fly their airplane and I never had one let me down. I went around with the Armorer and checked the fuses on the bombs for proper settings and the arming wires for proper routing. Then I spread my maps on the ramp and showed the Crew Chief and Armorer where we were going and what we were supposed to hit.

We were in the Northeast Monsoon and had forty knots of wind down the runway. The standard night departure called for a right turn to South after takeoff until reaching the coast, Then a turn to East and then follow the coast to Cam Rhan Bay and turn on course. This was supposed to keep you out of the out going artillery but it wasted about 3,000 pounds of fuel. So naturally I didn’t follow it. After I raised the gear I turned off external lights (so the Tower could not see me). When I was high enough to drop a wing, I turned right 270 degrees so as to cross the west end of the runway headed northwest. I roared across the 101st Airborne encampment and shook all the grunts out of bed and headed up the valley that led to Dalat in the mountains. The hills on either side were invisible as there were no lights on the ground but if I maintained the proper heading I would not run into any rocks before I got high enough to clear them. Bill was somewhat unhappy with this exercise. In due course we climbed out of the valley and turned north to Pleiku and points north.

We checked in with Blindbat, our C-130 flare ship, and from over 50 miles out we could see his flares and the anti-aircraft fire he was attracting. The gunners must have just gotten a fresh supply of ammo because they were even shooting at his flares. We let down and coordinated altitudes so that we would not run into each other. We made eight vertical dive bomb passes dropping our “funny bombs”. This is the name that Forward Air Controllers (FACs) gave to the Mk-35 fire bomb. It was the same bomb used to start the fire storms in Tokyo in World War II. It is a large cluster bomb that opens up a few thousand feet above the ground. The falling bomblets make a fiery waterfall until they hit the ground. Then they spew out burning white and yellow phosphorus like roman candles. Really something to see at night. We stirred up a hornets’ nest and the flak was thick and when it got close you could hear it popping like popcorn. We left the flare ship to count the burning trucks and started home. Just another routine mission. But we still had our 20 mm ammo left and I hated to take it home. I called the airborne command post and asked if they had any gun targets. They told me to contact a FAC at Tchepone. He had spotted trucks on a ferry crossing the river there.

We contacted the FAC to coordinate altitudes before we got into his area. We used a secret “base” altitude which changed every 12 hours so that the enemy could not listen in and find out our altitudes and set the fuses on his shells for that altitude. That night base altitude was 8000 feet. He said he was at base plus 4 or 12000 feet. I said you must mean minus 4. He said no. I asked what the hell he was doing way up there and he said his Cessna O-2 wouldn’t climb any higher. His flares were floating so high that they did not illuminate the ground and I had to circle until I got their reflection on the river before I could see it. Bill kept saying something about Bingo fuel. (The minimum required to get back home with 2000 pounds remaining). A few guns were shooting at our sound but not coming close. I knew there were no radar controlled guns because otherwise we would have been tracked and fired on accurately while we were circling. I finally got it worked out and caught the ferry in the flare reflection on the river and rolled in. I fired about a 3 second burst in a 30 degree dive from about 1500 feet. The muzzle flashes lit us up like a Christmas tree and said “Here I am! Shoot me!” And did they ever!  Now I knew why that FAC was so high. I pulled about 5 Gs to get pointed straight up. A small part of my mind registered a red light flash somewhere in the cockpit but I was too busy to look at it. When I ran out of airspeed at the top and had figured out up from down and was upright again the light was out. The FAC was encouraging; said he had seen lots of hits on the ferry with his night scope. So I got set up to go in again. Bill didn’t think it was a good idea. Indeed, there were lots of guns protecting the ferry. Most of them were twin barrel 37mm. I could tell because the strings of red hot beer cans came in strings of eight. The 37mm fired clips of four so eight meant twin barrels. I was worried about radar controlled 57mm twin barrel units mounted on tracked vehicles that often accompanied large truck convoys. But no evidence of them. The most spectacular show was provided by the many 23mm ZSU units. These were four barrels mounted on a tracked vehicle and they put out a string of tracers that waved around the sky like a kid playing with a high pressure water hose.

My normal tactic at night over a well defended target was to get directly over the target at about 8,000 feet, roll inverted and pull the nose down to the target, drop my bomb at about 5,000 feet, and pull up into a vertical climb. Just before I ran out of airspeed, I would pull the nose down to level and roll upright. This faked out the gunners because they expected me to be off to the side of the target. I was only vulnerable in the first part of my pull-up. Under very heavy fire I sometimes varied this by not pulling up immediately but by turning 90 degrees and continuing down to low altitude with low power and coasting a few miles away from the target (and the guns).  When using my guns, I would dive slightly off to the side, go lower, and pull up to a 30 degree dive before firing.

Bill kept bothering me with this Bingo fuel business but I didn’t have time to discuss it with him. On my second pass, I had to use the same heading as the first pass in order to see the target. Not a very smart thing to do. When our muzzle flashes lit us up again, I had the feeling that if I pulled up as usual every gun would be aimed at our recovery path. So I didn’t pull up; I used my alternate tactic. The sky behind and above us was filled with a spectacular display of fireworks. The FAC was figuratively jumping up and down because we had torched off some of the trucks on the ferry and on the south shore of the river, where the ferry was now resting. Now we did not have to circle around to catch the reflection of the flares to locate the target. We still had about 600 rounds left; about 6 seconds of firing. We could approach from any direction since we could see the burning target. Bill was getting a little shrill now and yelling something about Bingo minus two. I told him I would wind it up with two more passes and we would go home. After each pass when I was pulling 5-6 Gs to fake out the gunners, there was this pesky red light in the cockpit. I was so busy trying not to join up with those strings of red hot beer cans that I never found out what it was.  We left the FAC to add up the damage and headed home.

Relieved of all ordinance and most of its fuel, the B-57 climbs like a homesick angel. In short order we were passing 35,000 feet and I had Bill tighten his oxygen mask and check his system for pressure breathing. As we passed 45,000 feet, we had to forcefully breath out and just relax and let the pressure blow up our lungs to breath in. At 53,000 feet we were above over 95% of the atmosphere. At that altitude, the engines used very little fuel. When we arrived over Pleiku we were 150 NM from home and had 800 pounds of fuel. Normally when you land with 2000 pounds, that is considered an emergency. But I had been through this many times before and was only concerned with having enough fuel to taxi to the ramp. At that altitude, when you reduce power to idle, the power only reduces slightly because the engines cannot reduce fuel consumption very much without flaming out. So, in order to reduce power and expedite our decent, I had to shut off one engine. I shut down the right engine because we would be flying a left hand traffic pattern. Bill was somewhat unhappy. 

I made a .84 Mach decent which meant that it got progressively steeper as you got into the dense air at low altitude. This let us down inside the hole of the artillery doughnut  at 12,000 feet. We were approaching from the north and had to land to the east. Once inside the hole, I extended speed brakes and pushed the nose over to maintain speed. Extending speed brakes at 500 knots is like running into a brick wall and we were thrown forward hard enough to lock our automatic shoulder harness. That is when that pesky red light in the cockpit came on again. This time I determined what it was. It was the low fuel pressure light. This was confirmed by the unwinding of the left engine. I was at a critical point in my traffic pattern and had no time to deal with a double engine flameout. So I shut off the left throttle, banked 90 degrees right, and pulled the nose around to a heading 180 degrees from the landing heading. Then I rolled inverted and with about 5 Gs pulled the nose down the line of approach lights to the end of the runway and then up the center of the runway lights, varying the Gs to complete my split S at about 1500 feet and at about 400-450 knots. While I was busy doing this I asked Bill to inform the tower that we had a double engine flameout and might need a tug to tow us in. Bill had lost his voice and never did make the call. When I leveled off from my split S I hit both airstart ignition switches and advanced both throttles to idle. After a 4 G break to downwind, I lowered gear and flaps and both engines were making the low moaning sound they make when running at idle. After touchdown I raised the flaps and added power so I could hold the nose up. With 40 knots of headwind it was a long taxi to the far end of the runway. I tried to get Bill interested in betting on whether I could make it all the way into the de-arming area without lowering the nose wheel to the ground. For some reason he was not interested. Anyway, I did and scared the bejesus out of the de-arming troops.

While they were de-arming my guns I figured it out. It had to be an inoperative forward boost pump in the main fuel tank. When I went to full power and pulled lots of Gs at Tchepone, one fuel pump could not handle the load and the pressure dropped. Not enough, thank God, to flame out the engines. When I extended speed brakes in my decent to Phan Rang, what little fuel we had left splashed against the forward wall of the tank, uncovering the rear fuel pump and resulting in a flameout. There is an old saying; “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots”. Not so. But us bold pilots need more luck than most.

We had enough fuel to make it back to the ramp. After we had parked and deplaned, I made an inspection tour with the Crew Chief, armed with powerful electric torches. Not a scratch on her! Again skill and cunning wins over ignorance and stupidity. The Crew Chief brought out the four beers from the tail compartment, ice cold from their sojourn at 50,000 feet, and I spread my maps on the ramp. I gave a blow by blow description of the mission for my Crew Chief and Armorer and had an additional audience of most of the crew chiefs and armorers on the ramp who were not otherwise busy. Bill did not want his beer so I drank it too.

 Needless to say, Bill never got into an airplane with me again.

March ARB, CA, to Germany and back in 50 days.

We did not go to Europe last year because of medical problems and were later than we wanted this year for the same reason. As it turned out we missed some bad weather. I sent out my sign up letters about 7 weeks before we planned to leave for the trip over and the sign ups for the trip back after we got there. I signed up using takeahop.org except for March where I signed up in person. I live just across the freeway from March.
On 13 June we caught the regular scheduled Friday bird that goes to Dover-Ramstein-Sandbox and returns every Tuesday from Ramstein. March always gives the number of seats as 10 but the bird was empty and they took all who showed up, about 15. We had hoped to go all the way to Ramstein on it and asked to be manifested thru but they could not. Dover would release the seats for the next leg. As it turned out, they did not release any seats because of hazardous cargo. I explained to the pax reps that I had spent 4 years hauling hazardous cargo to people who were very emphatic about not wanting it. To no avail. It was about 2AM Sat. and the NCOIC called the hotel and found that they had a room for us. He was going off duty and was kind enough to give us a ride to the hotel and even helped us with our baggage. I reserved a room for three days.
While at Dover I tried to log on to pepperd.com both on the computers in the terminal and the hotel but it was blocked. I don’t know why. The hotel has wifi in the lobby. At McGuire they have wifi throughout the terminal and I logged on to pepperd.com with no problem.
There were no flights to Germany on Sat. or Sun. but there was a C-5 to McGuire Sunday with a 1700 show time. I called McGuire and found that the same C-5 was going on to Ramstein after taking on cargo. We got on with about 6 people and were booked through to Ramstein so we did not have to take our luggage off at McGuire. About 30 people got on at McGuire so we had plenty of seats and we both had a row of three seats to try to sleep in.
At Dover Sunday we had a show time of 1700 and did not want to wait in the terminal so stayed in our room until the cleaning maid showed up on our hall about 1400 and then went to check out. The girl at the desk said I would have to pay for Sunday night because we were late checking out. I explained we had not delayed the maid and had checked in very late. She would not budge and said if I did not check out I could use the room if I did not make the flight. So I kept the key card. I found out when I checked my credit card that they also charged me for Monday night when I was staying in the BOQ at Ramstein. So I got charged 4 nights for a room I used one and one-half nights.
The Dover Inn is about a mile from the terminal. It is across the freeway so you have to exit the base and re-enter on the other side. After the check point it is about 100 yards, left and left again. The building across the parking lot from the lobby has a fitness room. Behind that building is a small BX annex. The golf club house is across the street and they serve breakfast and lunch.
At Ramstein we got a suite in a building near the mess hall and Chili’s for two nights. I picked up my car in Ramstein Village and we went to Spangdahlem to rest up. We made some trips to Trier and Luxembourg and had a really nice stay. The hotel is brand new and very nice. It has eathernet connections to the internet free in every room. We had to extend our stay every three days but had no problem.
Before I left home I called my cell phone provider and got the unlock code for my phone. After I picked up my car at Ramstein village I looked for an Aldi grocery store to buy a sim card. I did not find Aldi but went to a Penny Market and they sold sim cards. The lady at the register was kind enough to call in to activate it after I inserted the card and used the unlock code. The only problem was the phone co. wanted an address. I gave my room number and they said that was not a valid address. Finally they accepted it when told that I was a tourist and would be living in hotels. I paid EUR 10 for the card and it had about 65 minutes I think. I never did use all of it. I could reload at any Penny market. I had my laptop with me with Skype installed. I bought $10 credit with PayPal and made almost all my calls on Skype. I called the States numerous times and many calls in Europe and still had about $4.00 left. At 2 cents a minute you can talk a lot for $10. I had an internet connection almost every where we stayed.
As a retiree, if you have a medical problem in Germany, do not expect any help from the military medical facilities. They will not even talk to you. You have to use German medical care. You may have to pay up front and file a claim to Tricare for a part of the cost. I had to make use of it and am still trying to pay for the ambulance by bank transfer. It is difficult to settle bills once you are back in the States.
As a retiree I could not use the commissary or BX so one of the first things we did at Spangdahlem was to go to a big supermarket in Bitburg, near Spang, and stock up on good thing to eat. We bought good German roggen brot (rye bread), several kinds of raw, cured ham, wurst, drinks, fruit, and two paring knives. It was cherry and strawberry season and we ate lots of them.
After 10 days at Spangdahlem I called the American Arms Hotel in Wiesbaden and reserved a suite for 3 days on a weekend. You can almost always get a room on the weekend. Monday morning I was waiting at the door of Reservations when the lady came to work and was able to extend our stay until the next Sunday. The hotel is run by the Army and is almost downtown. It has wifi in every room. You can walk to the main shopping street in 15 minutes. A continental breakfast comes with the room and there is an Italian restaurant for lunch and dinner. We usually had lunch downtown. Sometimes we bought bread, hams and wurst and ate in our room. We went to a wine village named Frauenstein just outside Wiesbaden for lunch at the Winzerhaus. Great German food and wine. Keep going uphill thru Frauenstein to the top of the hill and there is a left turn to the golf course. Just around the turn is the Foresthaus, another great place to have lunch. We bought enough wine to last about 3 weeks. There is a Bavarian restaurant in the basement of the Rathaus (courthouse) that has tables outside on the Market Square. It is a very pleasant place to have lunch and has excellent beer. The pedestrian shopping street is Kirschgasse and can be found by walking down hill from the hotel and then up hill without turning. When you reach Kirschgasse, turn left and you will find my favorite shop. I wish I had one next door. It is called Schlemmermyer and sells every kind of smoked and cured meat. Dozens of kinds of wurst and several kinds of cured, raw hams such as Parma, Süd Tirol, Schwarzwald, (Black Forest), and others from Spain and France. My favorites are Süd Tirol and Parma. Süd Tirol is best with butter and rye bread and Parma is best with butter and a white brotchen (roll). As a snack when sipping wine, I love the hard, smoked blütwurst (blood wurst). If your mouth does not water when you walk in, you are not normal. One day we went for lunch to the Domaine Mechthildshausen. It is an old farm likely from the time of Napoleon. It is huge and houses horses in one section and is sill a working farm. It has its own wines and sells fresh produce in one of its halls. It has a gourmet restaurant as well as a wine café. It is very impressive. To reach it, go toward the Wiesbaden Air Base and when you get to the roundabout at the gate, turn right. You can’t miss it. It also has its own butcher shop where you can buy its cured hams. They hang from the ceiling. It was the only air conditioned place I saw in Germany.
After 8 days we had to move on. Our reservation in the Edelweiss Hotel in Garmisch-Partenkirchen started on Sunday so I topped off the Opel Astra station wagon and off we went. We went east past Wurtzburg and turned south on autobahn 7 to Ruette, Austria and then east to Garmisch. No trucks are allowed on the autobahn on weekends but the highway was full of Netherlanders pulling camper trailers heading south for vacation. Fortunately, not many were taking autobahn 7 so we had an easy drive with very little traffic going south. The Opel was a 1.6 liter diesel with a 6 speed stick shift. It was very easy to drive and had a nice short gearbox. I drove my normal 75 mph and, of course, was the slowest thing on the road. I had reserved a Ford Escort type station wagon and they did not have that class so they moved me up one. I had to turn it in on Tuesday and after seeing where the hotel was I decided we needed a car. I had another reservation for the end of our time there and just moved it up. (I used Charter USA). The car I had was having fuel pump problems so they gave me another and upgraded me again to an Opel Zafari, a 1.9 liter diesel with a 6 speed shift. For some reason it was cheaper. It was pretty big but very efficient. I figured out my fuel miles per gallon and it was about 40MPG for both cars. That was nice since diesel cost about $10 per gallon and gas costs more. I have a Mercedes 300SD and it gets about 20MPG and diesel cost $5 so it cost me the same per mile in Germany as I pay at home. The first thing you notice in Germany is there are lots and lots of very small cars. Most have engines of less than 2 liters, are diesel, and weigh less than 2000 pounds. Some are them are cubes and seem too high for their length. We saw one upside down on the autobahn and it looked like he got airborne and landed on the roof. I checked the specs on the Mercedes A-class and it will go 110MPH. That is how fast they drive it. Even the larger cars have small engines. I saw Mercedes E and S Class that in the US have 3 liters or more and in Germany they have a 2 liter engine. The road tax in Germany is determined by horsepower. That may be a factor as well as the gas price.
The Edelweiss Hotel is really beautiful. If you have not been there you can go to their web site and see it. We had a room on the third floor on the front of the hotel with a view to the mountains. The advantage of the third floor is that you have very high ceilings as it conforms to the slope of the roof. We had a balcony, they all do, and I spent lots of time sitting out there sipping wine and watching the para-gliders sail around up over the mountains. There were good updrafts and some of them came down to land only when they got hungry, I guess. Years ago we were vacationing in the Alps and I was sitting on our balcony watching the para-gliders. I saw one trying to find an updraft and he sailed under a small cumulus cloud and up into it he went. A couple of minutes later he was spit out the side of it about 3000 feet higher with some of his shroud lines over one end of his canopy. He was spinning rapidly and falling fast. He disappeared into the trees and if he survived he found out what every pilot knows: there is vigorous convective activity in cumulus clouds.
As nice as the hotel is, it has some faults. There is no micro in the room. There is a coffee maker and a small, and I mean small fridg. It would hold two bottles of wine and a liter of coke and a little wurst. The first thing I did was get on my knees and find the temp control and turn it full cold. I saw some smart people unloading coolers, a must if you have kids. Each room has two queen sized beds. The hotel has high speed internet but they want $10 for 24 hours or $50 for a week. If you get your password at 1700 you only get 18 hours because it ends at 1100. I used it once. In the BX/commissary area is an espresso café that has free wifi and I used this every 2-3 days to get and send mail and make phone calls. The food in the hotel is not great. In the sit-down restaurant the steaks were excellent but their attempt to cook German dishes were a laugh. We found a small family owned restaurant in a nearby village and had some excellent home cooked German food. There are some excellent places to eat in Old Partenkirchen, such as the Drei Mooren and the Shatten. We also had an excellent lunch at the Post Hotel in Oberammergau.
Since we could not use the commissary, we found a market just 2km from the hotel in the opposite direction from town. It is an EDAKA market and has a meat, wurst and cheese counter so you can order what you want. We bought fruit, bread, buttermilk, yogurt, wurst, ham, drinks, etc. If you like buttermilk, try kafir. The cassocks made it from sour mare’s milk but it is now made from cow’s milk (I hope). There is a deposit on all bottles and in every market is a machine where you can feed in your bottles and it will issue a ticket you can redeem when you check out.
We drove to Munich one day to go to the new museum and had lunch there. The traffic in town is awful and the signage is worse. We were not sure we were at the museum until we walked up the steps and saw a 3 inch sign on the side wall. There is not one polite driver in the town. We also drove over to Mittenwald. The mountain there looks like it is going to fall onto the village. We took some beautiful drives in the mountains around some large lakes. There were places where water was pumped up to a high lake at night and then let run down in the daytime to generate electricity. We drove up to the town of Murnau on the Staffelsee and went to the museum in the castle there. The two lane roads were a pleasure to drive on. They are well marked and it looks like every one was freshly paved. I never saw one pothole on the whole trip to Germany. I don’t know how they do it in the mountains where there is lots of snow in the winter.
The hotel had tours every day to two different attractions and two bus loads left every morning. We did not take any of them as we had already seen all the places they were going. There were wagon rides from the hotel to town every evening and they were very popular with the kids. And speaking of kids; I didn’t realize how many kids the military families have. The hotel was over run with them, especially at breakfast. Breakfast was the best meal. For $9.00 you had every thing you could want for a typical American breakfast. They even had biscuits and gravy and grits. The evening buffet for $19 was not so great. That is why we ate in town or our room most of the time. We had a few days of rain but we didn’t mind too much as we are from Southern California and seldom get to see rain.
After 16 days it was time to start home so we packed up and left for Ramstein. There were no rooms available on Ramstein and we asked for and got a suite at Sembach. It is our favorite place to stay while in the Ramstein area. It is a base where the runway and hangers/shelters were turned over to the Germans and the Air Force kept the communications facilities, housing, commissary and some other facilities. There are dozens of 3 story, 16 unit apartment houses on top of the hill sitting empty. I don’t know why they don’t use them to house the people from Ramstein as it is only a 15 minute drive north.
We got there on a Tuesday and planned to try to catch the March bird home the following Tuesday. We took some side trips like the one to the Deutche Weinstrasse which runs from Gruenstat to the French border. The town of Didesheim has a famous restaurant where Chancellor Helmut Kohl brought all the heads of state who visited him. There are many pictures of famous people with the chef including Queen Elizabeth and Gorbochov. We had a very nice lunch there and I got my saumagen (sow stomach) card punched. With three glasses of wine, a soup, a water and coffee it was just over $100.
The following Tuesday we packed and checked out but told the desk to hold our suite as we might be back. When we got to the terminal it was bedlam. There were hundreds of people trying to go to the States and most of them seemed to have 2 or 3 kids. Most were Cat III or higher so there was no hope for us. Back to Sembach. We went through the same drill Wednesday. O Thursday the crowd got smaller and there was one C-17 with 101 seats and another with 53. We could have gotten on the last one but there was a non-stop to McCord, WA in the afternoon and we waited for that. We made it and I waited until they called us to board before I dropped the keys to the car in the box. Thirty minutes later we got the bad news: the airplane was broke and would not go until Friday. I quickly got on my cell and called Hertz in Ramstein Village and asked them to get someone out there to give me my keys back as I could see the car still in he parking lot. They did and we went back to Sembach. Friday morning we found out that the plane was hard broke and we were manifested on another C-17 to McCord that was stopping at Dover. We were already manifested to McCord so we did not have to meet roll call and just checked in our baggage. I checked pepperd.com for flights from McCord to Travis but no luck. I checked Whidbey Island and there was a C-40 going to North Island in San Diego on Saturday with 121 seats. We planned on renting a one way car and catching that.
The flight to Dover looked like a big picnic. There were dozens of kids and the mothers spread out blankets and pillows all over the floor. Kids ran around and generally had a good time playing with each other. Many of the women were wives of deployed soldiers traveling on CAT III Plus status. One mother had 4 children, the oldest about 10 and the youngest about 18 mo. She read a book the whole way while the oldest looked after all but the youngest. As soon as we got through customs, I reinstalled my old sim card in my cell phone and started trying to reserve a room in the BOQ in McCord. I could never get them on the phone. I think they were busy registering the week-end trainees. There were not so many people on the plane to McCord and many people made beds on the floor and tried to sleep. It did not work for me. I am too old and stiff to sleep on a steel floor. The aircraft looked like a slumber party. I was the only one upright. I talked to the load master and told him about our plans. One of the other passenger’s wife also talked to him and he told me that this couple was trying to do the same as us. I talked to the man, an O-6 in the Marines, and we agreed to share a rental car to Whidbey Island the next morning to catch the Navy flight to North Island. By the time we arrived at McCord the terminal was closed and we got our baggage and was looking for a telephone number for a taxi. The O-6 had DV quarters but could not help us lower ranking folks. As often happens, a fellow space A traveler came to our rescue. From Dover I had made a reservation at a Hotel in Tacoma. A couple we met at Ramstein lived near Tacoma and offered to give us a ride to our hotel as it was on their way home. The next morning the O-6 and his wife picked us up in a rental car and off we went to Whidbey Island. It was further than we thought and we raced the clock to get there. We made it and got seats on the C-40. A great airplane after the C-17. A real airline type. We arrived in North Island about 1800, too late to rent a car on the island as they closed at 1730. I called Hertz from Whidbey and they quoted me a price of $200 from San Diego Airport for a one way car to Riverside because every thing was closed on the weekend and we could not turn in the car until Monday. Again, the fellow travelers saved us. The O-6 and his wife had a car at North Island and lived in a city near our home at March and offered us a ride home. And so on 2 Aug 08 we arrived home after 50 days with many memories good and bad of our trip but it was worth it.

March ARB to Travis to Charleston to Rota

We had planned our annual trip to Germany to start about 21 April when there was a flight scheduled from March to Dover. There were no seats on it so we slipped a week and planned on a flight to Charleston. No seats on that so we decided to go through Travis. About two weekends a month there is a shuttle (usually a KC-10) that comes down from Travis on Friday afternoon and picks up a bunch of reservist (30-40) and takes them to Travis for their weekend duty. There is also a C-17 that leaves March on the same Friday afternoon and goes to Phoenix (Williams) and Nellis and brings reservist to March. As far as I can tell there is no connection. On Sunday afternoon the process is reversed and the reservist are returned from Travis and returned to Williams/Nellis. There is almost always seats on all these flights.

We elected to take the KC-10 Sunday afternoon to Travis as it would be empty and the reservist would no longer be filling up the quarters at Travis. There were four of us with about 50 airline seats. We had reservations in the new hotel and they held it for us as we got in after 18:00 using the credit card they had on record from my stay a year ago. I had a terrible time contacting the hotel as they have not yet ironed out their telephone problems. I usually had to go through the base operator. The hotel is really nice but when I stayed at Travis before I usually had a suite with a stocked fridge, micro, coffee maker and two big TVs. The hotel rooms are OK but the fridge is not stocked and it is not nearly as roomy as a suite. They do have lots of stuff for sale at the desk such as drinks, wine, and micro wave sandwiches. There is a computer room with broadband access. The telephone has a button for the terminal recording.

There was a C-5 scheduled for Dover/Ramstein that we planned on taking. It was broke and we checked in two or three times and had to reclaim our baggage. They have lockers so we did not have to drag all our bags to the hotel. (10 minutes walk) We ate lots of our meals at the mess hall which was just 5 min up the street from the hotel. Then there was a C-5 to McGuire and we planned on going there and getting a rental car to Dover. There were only 5 seats and we were number 5-6. At one time I had room reservations at 4 bases: Dover, Charleston, McGuire, and Travis plus a car rental at McGuire. Finally we got tired of waiting for the Dover flight to go and took one to Charleston/Rota. So on Thursday night we arrived at Charleston and of course the C-5 broke. It was about 0200. Two other people were with us. A good person who had just come in from Hawaii saw our problem (they were going to kick us out of the terminal) and unloaded his wife and kids and luggage from his van and drove us to the billeting office. I still had a reservation but the O-6 with us did not and I got the only room left in the BOQ. He did get a room in another building.

We got out the next afternoon and, after refueling off a KC-10 over the dark Atlantic, arrived at Rota on Sat. I had reservations for a week in the Navy Lodge as well as three days in the BOQ. We went to the BOQ first as it was $38 a day and the Navy Lodge was $68 a day. The BOQ had a suite with A/C and a fridge, micro and coffee maker. We took the BOQ. There was a laundry room down the hall. They made us renew every three days but never made us change suites. It was about 15 min. walk to the terminal where there was a KFC/Taco/grill. It was also about 15 min to the pizza place/golf course. This was near the gate that went into Rota and you could walk to the peak of the peninsula in about 15-20 minutes. There were beaches on both sides of the town with the most beautiful ones on the west side. Lots of cafes overlooking the beach where you can eat and drink in a great location. The timing of the Spanish culture takes some getting used to. Every store closes at 13:30 except the cafes and there is a rush hour. Nobody eats lunch until about 15:00 or later. At about 17:30 there is another rush hour as people go back to work and stores stay open until 21:00 – 22:00. Dinner starts at 22:00 or later. Retires are allowed to eat in the galley (dining hall) and we did a few times. Ilse did not like to be the only female there. We had lunch on Mother’s day with grilled rib-eye steak and lobster tails and all the trimmings and it cost us $3.05 each. That is what it cost for every lunch. The pizza palace had good Italian food. We spent some afternoons sitting on the golf clubhouse patio enjoying a cool breeze and beer. We were not allowed to use the exchange or commissary but we could use the exchange annex which was just around the corner from the BOQ. There was a Subway and every kind of drink and canned food and frozen dinners. Everything except fresh food. Just outside the base we found a small grocer that sold fresh melons and fruit and dry cured ham. The cured hams were the greatest thing. I ate lots of ham and melon. There were whole hams hanging from the walls of all the grocery stores by the hundreds. I would have dearly liked to have been able to have brought a couple home with me. Serreno ham here costs about $4.00 per ounce and over there I could have bought a whole ham, including the hoofs, for about $15.00. People all over Europe eat dry cured ham from Spain, Italy, France, and Germany. Our FDA thinks that a ham that has not been cooked in not fit to eat.

We made some trips by bus to some neighboring towns, like Cadiz, and one trip to Malaga to see an exhibition of Picasso that was the biggest ever. We got a chance to see the buildup of the coast that is going on. I would not want to live there anymore. Many of the Germans are moving out and the English are moving in.

We found the place to be very clean and well taken care of. Every restroom I saw was spotlessly clean whether it was in a fancy hotel or a small cafe. The beaches are clean and groomed. There are places to wash the sand off and clean tiled restrooms. The weather was great, not too hot or cold. Our room had A/C but we never used it. We opened the big windows to the fresh Atlantic ocean air. The last two days there was a front coming through and the wind was strong and it was over cast. We were lucky we did not go to Germany because the weather there was awful the whole time.

When we arrived at Rota it looked like a C-5 base. There were about 6-8 C-5s on the ramp. All the parts they were waiting for must have arrived on the same plane because 2 days later almost all were gone. There were lots of flight leaving for Norfolk, Charleston, and Dover. The flight we planned on taking was going non-stop to Travis but, of course, it broke. By the time it was fixed, a body had arrived from the Sand Box that had to be dropped off at Dover so we had to stop there. We departed Rota at 13:00 local and made a fast (for a C-5) turnaround of 3 hours and arrived at Travis about 21:00 with a 9 hour time change.

Of course, I had a reservation at Travis and we had a bottle of wine and tried to get a little sleep. There was an air-evac flight next morning with a 10:15 show time going to MCAS Miramar. I did not sleep much and went down to bring up breakfast about 07:30 and called the terminal about 08:30 and found out that the roll call was now at 08:50. We grabbed our bags and ran. We made it in plenty of time and at roll call my e-mail sign up over thirty days before, of which I had a copy with me, got us seats 5 & 6 of the 7 seats available. The one hour flight to Miramar got us there about 13:00. A sailor on leave with his 3 year old son came with us from Rota and lived near where we live. I had a car reserved and upgraded it to a larger one and we shared. We were gone 26 days. A neighbor drove me out to March to pick up my car. The 25 year old Mercedes diesel, with 244,000 miles on it, cranked on the first try.

We are already planning our next trip. To Germany again. This time we might even get there.

MILITARY SPACE-A TRIP TO GERMANY

THE PLANNING

Early this year (2005) Ilse and I planned to go to Germany for a month as we had last year. We planned to go Military Space-A again. I have two books I ordered from http://www.militaryliving.com: Space-A Air and Temporary Military Lodging around the world. The two books have all the information you need to plan and enjoy space-a travel. My first step was to get the e-mail addresses of all the military terminals that there was even a remote possibility we would go through and e-mail them my sign-up sheet for space-a. You can get a form from http://public.travis.amc.af.mil/space_a/suusignup.htm
Copy and paste the form into your word processor and then you can fill it out and copy and paste it into your e-mail composer and send it to all the terminals at the same time. Most terminals will not reply so you do not know if they got it or not so print out a few copies of your e-mail and take them with you. If you get to a terminal that does not have you signed up, just show them the e-mail and they will sign you up as of the date you sent it. The order of priority for catagory 6 (retirees) is determined by the date you sign up. The sign-up is good for 60 days. I signed up 30 days before we planned to leave so that when we started back I would have been signed up for almost 60 days.

Most terminals have a recording with the flights scheduled for the next two days. They say for security reasons they cannot give schedules for longer than that. I guess they have not noticed that commercial airlines publish their schedules many months in advance. I had been calling the March terminal recording every couple of days to check on flights (951-655-2913) and finally one Saturday about the middle of May there was a KC-135 scheduled out the following Monday going nonstop to Geilenkirchen, Germany. It is a NATO base with AWACS airplanes north of Aachen and the AWACS are supplied air refueling support by National Air Guard refueling units from all over the US. The units rotate the duty and each unit is required to provide 10 days support about every 14 months. We were just lucky to catch one when we wanted to go. There were people from Utah and Arizona who came here to catch the flight. They were mostly Guard people who are familar with these flights. The deployment lasts 10 days so it is a nice way to go over for 10 days and then have a guranteed flight back home.

On Sunday, I called Hertz International to reserve a car. My Lodging book said here was a car rental on base at Geilenkirchen. The agent looked in her computer and I spelled the name for her and she finally said "Yes, we have an office there." I reserved a medium sized car and was given a reservation number and a quote for one month of Euro 931. I have a Hertz # One card and that makes it easy since they have all the information they need including my credit card info. I reccommend it. Then I called Spangdahlem Air Base billiting, which is about two hours from Geilenkirchen, and reserved a suite for 7 days. All set!! We packed for all kinds of weather. We also packed a lunch because there is no in flight lunches available at March. We carried coats and sweaters as hand luggage because it can get cold on military cargo aircraft.

THE GOING

On Monday morning I picked up $1,000 in cash from the Credit Union and went by the Recreation office to see about getting a long term parking permit. The right person was not there and they said there was no room. I informed them there was at least 150 spaces empty but the burocrats won. I then checked with the terminal and found that the show time had been moved up from 12:30 to 10:30. I rushed home and there was near panic as we threw the rest of our clothes in the bags and ran. We made it on time but as usual there was a long wait and 12:30 would have been fine. We made the flight but I was surprised that some people were ahead of us even though I had signed up 30 days ago. The terminal people were very nice and we finally boarded about 14:00. There were about 10 space-a passengers and about 30 duty passengers plus all the crew. There were quite a few of them as the aircraft would fly every day and extra crews were needed. There were several airline seats up front, most of them for the crew but they found two on the front row for me and my wife. The duty passengers had to sit in web seats in the back.

We got airborne about 15:00 and headed north toward the Dekotas, northen Canada, Greenland, and down over Ireland and Holland. Eleven hours later we landed at Geilenkirchen to cold, windy and dark weather. We collected our luggage and were bussed to German customs. They were not intrested in our passports but gave me and another guy, a guardsman who had been stationed there before, a ride to the car rental place. There I found out that Hertz did not have an office there. It was a local company who only rented cars that must be returned back there. The man running the place was American and was nice enough to get on the internet and find the number for Hertz Germany and called them and after much discussion found out that my reservation was for a Hertz office in Geilsenkirchen, not Geilenkirchen. Geilsenkirchen was about 100 miles north. Finally, my reservation was transferred to the nearest Hertz office which was in Aachen, about 40 miles south. The guardsman with me was nice enough to wait until I had all this straightened out and then gave me a ride back to the terminal. Also, while he was buying tax free coupons for gas, I asked th agent to sell me some. He said he could only sell them with a rental car license number on them. Then he took a license number from a car he had not rented yet and sold me 200 liters of high test coupons. On the way to the terminal we stopped at the bank on base and I got 600 Euros from their ATM using my March Credit Union Card. The customs people called us a cab and we went to the train station and caught a train to Aachen, then a cab to Hertz. All told about an hour and 30 Euro. The agent at Hertz made up my contract and it totalled 2388 Euro. I said "Whoa". Hertz had quoted me 931. The manager was called and he called Hertz with my reservation number and eventually the contract was rewritten for 931 Euro. They offered to upgrade me to a large Ford but it was diesel and I had gas coupons so I took a four door Renaoult. It was a four cylinder with 16 vaulves, a five speed stick shift and even had satellite radio. It was a great little car and got about 45 MPG. I didn't use all the coupons and after we got home I found the NATEX address on the internet and mailed the rest back and they refunded to my credit card.

OUR STAY AT SPANGDAHLEM

We drove down to Spangdahlem, about two hours. The nearest way was through Belgium for a ways but the map from Hertz did not include Belgium so naturally I missed a turn. Belgium takes the liberty to change the name of towns to their own language (they have three). We arrived in the late afternoon and checked in and were given the VIP suite. Sweet!! Two big rooms, two big TVs, golden faucets in the bathroom and a 19 inch laptop computer on the desk with high speed internet. Spang has won lots of awards for having the best quarters in Europe. After a week we had to move and they gave us a brand new suite they had just built for disabled people. Wide doors, a shower to let wheel chairs roll in, a stove, big refrigerator and dishwasher and pots and pans and dishes. We stayed there eight days.

Spangdahlem has F-16s and A-10s and there is much construction and I heard that it will act as a terminal to take the place of Rhein Main which is closed. It is located about 6 miles from Bitburg with its famous brewery. That airfield is closed but the US kept the housing, commissary, BX etc. It is located in what is called The Eifel, an area of rolling wooded hills north of the Mosel river. The Mosel is only a few minutes away and we went to some of the wine village wine fests. One of the first things we did was to go to the wine farmer we used to buy wine from when we lived in Germany and buy a couple cases of good Mosel Reisling. We also made day trips to Trier, an old town that was the Roman center for the area. The Roman city gate and colusium ruins still stand as well as baths and other ruins. It is a beautiful town to walk in and we had lunch under blooming old chestnut trees at a winery across from the Cathedral. The city of Luxembourg was a short drive away and we went there on a few days and had lunch on the market square.

WEISBADEN

Just before our time was up at Spang I called the American Arms in Weisbaden to see if we could get a room. We were lucky as a conference had just ended and they had 75 suites empty. The Arms is an Army hotel and is right downtown. We drove over in about 90 minutes and got there about noon so we detoured to one of our favorite places to eat lunch. It is a wine village about 15 minutes outside Weisbaden called Raunthal on a hill overlooking the Rhein and we are partial to it's wine and food. The wine makeing consortium has a restaurent. I got my schnitzel card punched and had as much of their excellent wine as I thought I could have and still drive. We drove around back and down to the keller and stocked up for the dry days to come. We checked in and I asked for and got five days. The Army thinks their suites are more valuable than the Air Force suites. The Air Force charges $36 for a suite and the Army charges $73 plus $6 per extra person. But I did not complain as a hotel room in downtown Weisbaden would likely cost ten times that. The Arms does not have a dining room but has a continental breakfast included and there is a bar at night. But the beauty of it is that it is only 10 minutes from downtown with all that that offers. Restaurants, sidewalk cafes, shopping, shopping, shopping. Big department stores. Exclusive boutiques. Bakeries with 100 kinds, butcher shops to make your mouth water, smoked hams, raw hams from France, Spain, Italy, Germany. Wurst beyond belief. Cheese that we have never tasted in the US. Butter that taste like real butter!! The basement of the city hall has a restaurant run by monks from a monestary in Baveria that makes the best beer you will ever drink. And food to match.

MOVING ON

When our time was up in Weisbaden we moved on to a town near Mannheim where Ilse has family. They had a small apartment for us to use and we were taken out to eat just about every night. Finally it was time to think about going home and I called Ramstein AB billiting and reserved a room. We went there on a Saturday and checked in at the terminal. There was a flight out Sunday going to Dover. We had hoped we would be as lucky as we were last year when we got a flight nonstop to Travis. I called Dover and reserved a room for three days. It was a good thing that I did because the aircraft, a C-5, was full of dependants and school teachers and retirees. At Dover, every one wanted a room and we were the lucky ones. Lots of people had to go downtown to motels. But we were not lucky with the flights. Nothing was going to California. After three days we were kicked out of billiting and went to the terminal to sit and wait. We spent one night there and it was miserable. The seats are not comfortable and there is not place to lie down. But next day there was a C-5 to Travis and I called and reserved a suite. We ate at the chow hall which is just across from the quarters and next morning checked at the terminal for flights to March. Nothing was on the horizon so we decided to drive home. I called Hertz and they said they could not deliver to the base but would reimburse me for taxi fare. The taxi was $20 and a one way car to Riverside was $61. Minus the taxi it was $41. They upgraded me to a Malibou and away we went. I came down highway 99 to avoid traffic and ran 80-95 most of the way. With a couple of stops, it took us eight hours to cover 515 miles and surprisingly, only used 15 gallons of gas.

MONEY MATTERS

Retirees are not allowed to use the BX or commissary in Germany but you can go in to cash a check. They will cash $300 pe day. You can also buy Euro there. However, I paid all my billiting bills with a credit card and got Euros from an ATM either on base or in a supermarket on the economy. We were able at times to shop in the BX annex. It depended who was on he cash register and how much you could distract so they would not look too closely at your ID.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS

Military cargo aircraft are not like airliners so expect some out of the ordinary conditions. For example, some times the cargo floor is exposed with all the tie down points and it is tricky to walk, especially if you do not have sturdy shoes. On most flights, sandals are not allowed. If you catch a hop on a C-5, you must be able to climb, carrying your hand luggage, up outside stairs about forty steps to get to the passenger compartment which is in the top of the aircraft. It has about 55 airline type seats. When we landed at Travis the wind was so strong that they could not erect the outside stairs so we had to climb down the internal ladders. They are very steep.