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Third Quarter (Jul - Sep) 2009
Volume 22, Number 3
The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum
Editorial
W
e continue our efforts to offer
articles about interesting, important historical aircraft, including some not in the War Eagles Air
Museum collection, by presenting, in this
issue of Plane Talk, a Featured Aircraft
article about an old “Cold Warrior.” The
Convair B-36 Peacemaker was the largest U.S. military aircraft ever. Designed
during World War II, it did not serve in
that conflict, but rather came into its own
after the war as one of America’s most
critical strategic assets. For years, before
the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and missile-launching submarines, the B-36 was the “big stick” that
kept the Soviet Union at bay in the dark
days of the Cold War. Soon supplanted
by jet-powered bombers, the B-36 nevertheless served a vital, if relatively brief,
role in protecting America. Fortunately, a
few Peacemakers managed to escape the
ignominy of being cut up for scrap, and
are preserved in museums around the
country. An Internet search will tell you
where to find them. There will probably
never be another flying B-36. But, even
just sitting on static display in a museum,
they are incredibly impressive and well
worth seeking out.
We’ve had many positive comments
on Eric Mingledorff’s reminiscences in
the last Plane Talk of restoring and flying
the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk that is now in
our collection. We include more from Eric in this issue, and hope you all enjoy his
hair-raising true tales about flying the
P-40 on the air show circuit.
Featured Aircraft
T
he weather in El Paso on December 11, 1953, was unusual for the
season. The temperature hovered
around the freezing point. Low-hanging
clouds with intermittent light snow showers masked the upper slopes of the Franklin Mountains. Early in the afternoon,
Westsiders heard the window-rattling
thunder of a U.S. Air Force Strategic Air
Command (SAC) B-36D bomber passing
low overhead. The unique, throbbing
beat of the Peacemaker’s six huge propellers, never perfectly synchronized,
could not be mistaken for the sound of
S Now that’s a big wheel! Convair’s prototype XB-36 had single main-gear tires over
nine feet in diameter. Only three runways in
the world could support the tremendous
weight loading of these tires—one at the factory in Fort Worth, Texas, and two at other
U.S. airfields.
Contents
Editorial......................................1
Featured Aircraft........................1
From the Director.......................2
Erratum ......................................4
P-40 Airshow Adventures ..........6
Membership Application ............7
Wings of Freedom Tour.............8
Featured Aircraft (Continued on Page 2)
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www.war-eagles-air-museum.com
Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum
From the Director
O
n May 21, we lost our long-time
friend, airport neighbor, aviation enthusiast and decorated
World War II pilot Richard N. “Dick”
Azar, at age 88, after a brief illness. Born
in Clayton, New Mexico, Dick joined the
Army Air Corps in 1941 and flew B-24
Liberators in the Pacific Theatre during
the War. One of his more memorable
missions was flying Eleanor Roosevelt
on her Red Cross tour around the South
Pacific. He was married to former El Paso Mayor Suzie Azar and owned and operated Blue Feather Aero Flight School at
the Santa Teresa Airport. A founding father of the Amigo Airsho, Dick was passionate about aviation and giving back to
the community. We miss him a lot.
Richard N. “Dick” Azar
January 13, 1921 - May 21, 2009
Plane Talk
Published quarterly by:
War Eagles Air Museum
8012 Airport Road
Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008
(575) 589-2000
Author/Executive Editor: Terry Sunday
Senior Associate Editor: Frank Harrison
Associate Editor:
Kathy Sunday
[email protected]
www.war-eagles-air-museum.com
any other aircraft. People on the ground
probably didn’t think much of it. The 95th
Bomb Wing, based at Biggs Air Force
Base, had been flying B-36s over El Paso
since mid-1952, and they were a familiar
sight to those who stopped what they
were doing and looked skyward when the
world’s largest operational aircraft flew
overhead. But this time was different. At
2:27 in the afternoon, the roar of the engines abruptly stopped and the rumble of
an explosion echoed down through the
clouds. The unseen bomber had crashed
on the western slopes of the Franklins,
just northwest of Ranger Peak and about
300 feet below the ridgeline, while its pilot was trying to land at Biggs Field.
None of the nine crewmembers survived
the impact and the resulting fire.
The B-36D that crashed on that cold,
dreary December day was being ferried
to Biggs from Carswell Air Force Base in
Fort Worth, Texas. Uncertainty and confusion on the parts of both the flight crew
and the ground controllers led the crew to
believe they were East of the Franklins
rather than West—a tragic error. They
were lining up for an approach to the runway at Biggs, never realizing that the
Franklins were between them and the airport. The pilots probably never saw the
looming mountainside in the last second
before the aircraft struck the ground right
wing first and disintegrated.
The Air Force quickly removed most
of the wreckage from the crash site, but
much is still there. Scattered around the
impact point are landing gear struts, propeller blades, brake pads, a nearly intact
jet engine, pieces of structure and skin
and thousands of fragments of aluminum,
wire, glass, canvas and plastic. In some
places, the soil is still discolored from the
fuel-fed fire that raged after the crash.
Today the crash site is within El Paso’s Franklin Mountains State Park, a
unit of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. At 27 square miles, it is the largest
urban wilderness park in North America.
Accompanied by a Park Ranger, it is possible to reach the site, but the effort involves a steep, strenuous, off-trail climb
through flood-scoured arroyos, loose
limestone rock and bayonet-sharp lechuguillas that seem to cover almost every
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S Here’s a nice photo of a Convair B-36D
Peacemaker, the same version that crashed
in El Paso’s Franklin Mountains in 1953.
square foot of the terrain. Removal of
any items from the site violates state law,
and is strictly prohibited. War Eagles Air
Museum displays a few parts, but all
were donated before the State acquired
the land. Please do not bring parts to us
for donation—we will not accept them.
Plans to build a trail to the site and to
place a monument there have languished
because of concerns that easier public access will increase vandalism and theft.
Regardless of such plans, the site today is
a memorial to the nine men—representing, as all SAC crews did, a cross-section
of America—who gave their lives while
doing the job they were trained to do—
“Protecting the Peace.”
Birth of the B-36
By late 1940, few Americans felt the
nation could remain out of the war then
raging in Europe. Since World War II began on September 1, 1939, with Hitler’s
lightning invasion of Poland, European
countries had fallen like dominoes to the
Nazi Blitzkrieg (lightning war). Norway,
Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France
had all succumbed. France had resisted
the longest, 35 days, while Denmark lasted only 24 hours. England was the last
holdout. In the skies over the island nation, gallant Royal Air Force Spitfire and
Hurricane pilots fought the swarms of
Dorniers, Heinkels and Messerschmitts
that battered their homeland. The very
survival of England was in question. To
U.S. observers, the vision of a Europe totally under Nazi domination was real.
U.S. military planners thus faced the
unpleasant possibility, when the war inevitably engulfed the then-neutral nation,
of having to strike European targets from
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bases inside the Continental U.S. If this
happened, the Army Air Corps would be
in serious trouble, for it had no aircraft
capable of performing such a mission. At
the time, the largest bomber in U.S. service was Boeing’s B-17C Flying Fortress, which could carry 4,000 pounds of
bombs over a range of 2,000 miles. Consolidated’s B-24A Liberator, the first of
which would not enter service until June
1941, could carry the same bomb load a
scant 200 miles further. Neither even approached the long-range performance the
Air Corps required. A new bomber was
needed, one that could haul a huge load
of bombs to truly intercontinental, oceanspanning range. On April 11, 1941, the
Air Corps initiated a competition for a
bomber of unprecedented size and capability—an aircraft that could carry 10,000
pounds over a distance of 10,000 miles at
400 miles per hour. This aircraft was intended to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany even if all nearby Allied bases fell
to Hitler.
On October 6, 1941, Boeing, Consolidated, Douglas and Northrop turned
in their proposals. Consolidated’s massive XB-36 was an enlarged version of
its XB-32 Dominator, a 4,450-mile-range
bomber that had been in development for
over a year. Douglas offered the XB-31,
a B-19 upgrade, while Boeing bowed out
entirely to concentrate on its B-29. The
Air Corps chose Consolidated’s design
on November 15 and executed a contract
Consolidated B-36D Peacemaker
General Characteristics
Powerplants
Six 28-cylinder 3,500-hp
Pratt & Whitney R-4360-41
radials and four 5,200pound-thrust General Electric J47-GE-19 turbojets
Cruise Speed
225 miles per hour
Max. Speed
406 miles per hour
Service Ceiling
45,200 feet
Length
162 feet 1 inch
Wingspan
230 feet 0 inches
Range
7,500 miles
Weight (empty) ~ 170,000 pounds
Weight (max.)
~ 360,000 pounds
Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum
S It’s hard for people who haven’t seen one to appreciate how big the
B-36 was. Here’s how it would look if we could fit one into the Museum
hangar (which we couldn’t—it would never fit through the door and the
tail is far too high). Compare its size with the Douglas DC-3 Skytrain,
the biggest aircraft currently in our collection, and the Globe GC-1B
Swift, the smallest. The grid lines are 25 feet apart.
for two XB-36s, the first to be delivered
in May 1944. At the same time, the Air
Corps ordered two radical XB-35 Flying
Wings from Northrop. The culmination
of John K. Northrop’s 20-year pursuit of
aerodynamic efficiency, the XB-35 was
all wing—it had no fuselage. Political rivalries between the B-36 and YB-49 (the
XB-35 follow-on) raged in Congress for
more than a decade, eventually costing
aviation pioneer Northrop his dream and
raising questions about the legality of the
government’s procurement practices.
XB-36 work at Consolidated’s San
Diego factory had barely begun when the
December 7 Japanese Pearl Harbor attack
brought America into the war. The U.S.
needed a lot of aircraft very quickly, so
the Air Corps told Consolidated to build
B-24s around-the-clock rather than work
on the XB-36. When it became apparent
that England would not succumb to the
Nazis, the XB-36’s priority fell. At war’s
end, the B-36 finally got a higher priority, but its specifications had changed in
one important way—its primary payload
would now be atomic bombs.
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Development and Deployment
XB-36 flight testing began at Convair’s Fort Worth plant on August 8,
1946, with the prototype’s nearly troublefree 37-minute maiden flight (Consolidated had merged with Vultee Aircraft in
1943 to form Convair). It was clear that
the prototype’s huge, nine-foot-two-inchdiameter main landing gear tires would
not do at all—their heavy ground loading
meant that only three U.S. airfields could
handle the bomber. Convair developed
new four-wheel main gear that greatly reduced the load. One of the many bizarre
ideas that seemed to afflict the B-36 program involved “treaded” landing gear,
which used caterpillar tracks similar to
those on a tank or bulldozer. That idea
did not work out well. Other modifications during the B-36’s lifetime included
Featured Aircraft (Continued on page 4)
Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum
Featured Aircraft (Continued from page 3)
upgraded piston engines, various types
and calibres of defensive armament, improved avionics systems and, beginning
with the D model, the addition of two underwing pods, each containing two General Electric J47 turbojet engines. These
pods were virtually identical to the inboard pods on Boeing’s B-47 Stratojet.
Although SAC’s Peacemakers were
in service for just ten years (late 1948 to
early 1959), Convair’s “magnesium overcast” was the only Air Force aircraft ever
built that could carry the Mk-17 thermonuclear bomb. Weighing 41,000 pounds
and with a yield of 15 megatons, the
Mk-17 was the biggest and heaviest (but
not the most powerful) nuclear weapon
the U.S. ever deployed. With only one
type of aircraft able to carry it, and with
dubious operational scenarios envisioning its use against well-defended Soviet
cities, the Mk-17 had an even shorter life
than the B-36. By November 1956, just
two years after it entered service, the big
nuke had been fully replaced by smaller,
lighter, more efficient bombs that would
fit into Boeing’s B-47 Stratojet and B-52
Stratofortress (and could even be carried
underwing on such fighters as the Republic F-84F Thunderjet).
Erratum
S
S The Mk-17 thermonuclear bomb was one
of the reasons for the B-36’s existence. Although there’s no sense of scale on this image, the bomb was five feet in diameter and
almost 25 feet long.
When the prototype B-52 first flew
on April 15, 1952, it was the beginning
of the end for the B-36. The Air Force
put all further Peacemaker development
efforts on the back burner not long afterward. When Convair delivered the last
B-36J on August 10, 1954, it was clear
the big bomber’s days were numbered—
sleek, glamorous, high-performance jets
were the wave of the future, and the lumbering B-36 could not hope to compete.
Of the 385 Peacemakers that entered Air
Force service, only a handful—none flyable—remain in museums today. The indescribable deep, pulsing, rumbling thunder of America’s biggest bomber with
“six turning and four burning” is a sound
no one is ever likely to hear again.
Diversions and Derivatives
everal sharp-eyed readers noted
an error in the photo caption of
the Curtiss production line on
Page 4 of the last Plane Talk. Eric
Mingledorff, who told his P-40 story in
that issue, as well as New Zealander
Graeme McDermott and Australian researchers Gordon Birkett and Buz Busby, all correctly pointed out that the
aircraft in the photo are not all P-40s.
Those in the background are actually
Republic Aviation Corporation P-47G
Thunderbolts. Curtiss license-built 354
of them from December 1942 through
March 1944. They were used only for
training in the States. Thanks for the
correction, guys!
One of the problems with the B-36
as a deterrent to Soviet aggression was
its vulnerability. The Peacemaker’s huge
size, relatively slow airspeed, poor maneuverability and “barn-door” radar crosssection meant that an adversary could detect, track and intercept it at great distances from its targets. Its high-altitude capability offered some protection, but continuing advances in Soviet fighter technology made that a temporary advantage
at best. SAC realized it needed either a
very-long-range escort fighter, or a fighter that the B-36 could carry on-board and
cut loose for protection when necessary.
The latter idea goes back to the Navy’s
1920s-era dirigibles Akron and Macon.
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These Hindenburg-sized rigid airships
each carried four Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawk biplanes that were launched and recovered from a retractable “trapeze” that
extended below the gasbag. The Akron
and Macon crashed in 1933 and 1935, respectively, but the idea of carrying small
“parasite fighters” aboard larger aircraft
lived on. The Air Corps resurrected it in
March 1947, when it placed an order
with the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation
for the tiny XF-85 Goblin.
The concept was simple, but making
it work was a big challenge. The design
constraints were unforgiving. The Goblin
had to fit inside a B-36 bomb bay, carry
enough fuel for full-throttle aerial combat
and be well-enough armed to engage enemy fighters. The resulting aircraft was a
strange bird, resembling nothing ever before seen in the annals of aviation.
Not quite 15 feet long—the size of a
2009 Honda Civic—and with its folding
wings spanning only 21 feet, the Goblin
had a squat, fat fuselage housing the pilot, the 3,000-pound-thrust Westinghouse
XJ34-WE-22 turbojet engine, four .50calibre Browning machine guns and fuel
for 1.3 hours of flight time. The diminutive “flying egg” had no landing gear. If
he couldn’t hook back onto the “mother
ship” after a mission, the pilot would be
forced to crash-land. This shortcoming,
along with new air-to-air refueling capabilities and the fact that the Goblin was
no match for contemporary Soviet air defense fighters, was one of the reasons the
program never went anywhere. Starting
in August 1948, the Air Corps conducted
XF-85 flight tests using an EB-29 Superfortress as the carrier aircraft, but these
tests simply confirmed the difficulties of
“rendezvous and docking” in flight. The
program quietly faded away in mid-1949.
But the idea wasn’t quite dead yet…
In 1952, the Air Force tried again in
a project called FICON (FIghter CONveyor). Convair installed a trapeze in the
bomb bay of a production RB-36F-1, and
Republic grafted a matching hook onto
the nose of an F-84E. The first successful
in-flight hookup of the F-84E, which
took off separately, occurred on April 23,
1952. The first complete takeoff-releaseretrieval-landing mission took place on
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S In this dramatic photo, a Republic F-84F
hooks up to the trapeze in the bomb bay of a
B-36 during FICON flight testing in 1953,
probably over Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.
Photo by Howard Sochurek from Life Magazine. Used without permission.
May 14. Within a year, the program had
notched an impressive 170 launches and
retrievals. While the parasite fighter concept was thus more or less proven, their
mission was changing.
SAC’s B-36s served on nuclear alert
with little fanfare during the height of the
Cold War, but the Air Force also adapted
them for aerial reconnaissance missions.
RB-36 recon versions could carry tons of
cameras and electronic countermeasures
gear, a load of flash bombs for night photography, a darkroom and up to 22 crewmembers. Peacemakers excelled in this
role. FICON tests showed a way to make
them even better, and spawned another
little-known project called Tom-Tom.
In 1954, RF-84F Thunderflash tactical recon fighters began entering service.
The Air Force re-oriented FICON to use
the Thunderflash to overfly and photograph targets while its B-36 mother-ship
loitered safely outside enemy air defense
range. Convair converted 10 production
RB-36Ds to GRB-36D carrier aircraft,
and Republic modified 25 RF-84Fs to
RF-84Ks, which included a retractable
hook and downward-sloping (“anhedral”)
Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum
tail surfaces to better fit into the bomb
bay. SAC crews flew operational FICON
missions until April 1956. By then, it had
become clear that SAC’s “regular” pilots
were far less skilled at performing aerial
hookups than the highly trained, experienced test pilots who had proven the concept under ideal conditions.
Project Tom-Tom was similar to FICON in that it involved B-36s and parasite fighters (a similar project called TipTow used a Boeing B-29 Superfortress as
the carrier aircraft). The difference was
that the fighter attached to the bomber
wingtip-to-wingtip. Unlike FICON, these
other two projects were largely unsuccessful. Considering the strong wingtip
vortices streaming from a B-36, it’s remarkable the fighter pilots were ever able
to hook up at all. But they did, occasionally, just enough to maintain some
official interest in the concept. The death
blow for both projects came during a
Tip-Tow test on April 24, 1953, when the
F-84 broke away from the B-29’s left
wingtip, flipped over and struck the
bomber’s wing. Both aircraft crashed,
with the loss of all on board. That was
the end of wingtip coupling experiments.
The Nuclear Aircraft That Wasn’t
Another obscure aircraft that used a
B-36 airframe was the NB-36H Crusader. Back in the days of “our friend the
atom”—before we knew what we know
now about the effects of radiation, before
the sobering Three Mile Island and Cher-
nobyl events, and before the thorny issue
of nuclear waste disposal reared its ugly
head—the Government saw atomic power as the answer to every question. Nuclear-generated electricity was going to
be “too cheap to meter.” Atomic engines
were going to power everything from
ships to aircraft to locomotives to automobiles. Nuclear bombs were going to
excavate harbors. The Atomic Age was
going to be an incalculable boon for all
mankind. Of course, it didn’t work out
that way (with the exception of submarines). But, for a couple of years in the
mid-1950s, Air Force Project MX-1589
laid the groundwork for what could have
become a nuclear-powered aircraft.
Externally, the NB-36H resembled a
standard Peacemaker except for the forward fuselage. Starting with a B-36H that
had had its nose damaged by a tornado at
Fort Worth on September 1, 1952, Convair installed a new 12-ton, lead-and-rubber-lined cockpit section, with six-inchthick acrylic glass windows. The fiveman crew—pilot, copilot, flight engineer,
reactor operator and instrumentation engineer—all sat in this “capsule,” which
was intended to shield them from the radiation emitted by the nuclear reactor in
the aft bomb bay. The one-megawatt, aircooled reactor did not provide propulsion
or electrical power. The main purpose of
the NB-36H program was to investigate
the many unknown structural, avionics,
safety and operational factors associated
with the radiation environment of an airborne nuclear reactor. The aircraft logged
215 hours of flight time, 89 of them with
the reactor operating, on 47 test flights
over Texas and New Mexico from September 1955 to March 1957. By the time
these flight tests concluded, the bloom
was off the nuclear rose. The Air Force
cancelled Project MX-1589 and scrapped
the NB-36H in 1958, thus abandoning an
idea whose time had come and gone.
Plane Talk on the Web
S The NB-36H Crusader flies in formation
with a B-50 Superfortress chase plane on a
flight test over the Fort Worth, Texas, area.
Note the heavily shielded nose section and
the hard-to-see radiation trefoil marking on
the vertical tail.
rchives of Plane Talk from
the current issue back to the
first quarter of 2003 are now
available in full color on our website.
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A
Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum
P-40 Airshow Adventures
Warhawk Memories by Eric Mingledorff
I
n the summer of 1983, I flew my
Curtiss P-40 N1207V Holdin' My
Own (an airplane you know if you
read the last Plane Talk) at an Offutt Air
Force Base Open House in Omaha, Nebraska. It was a memorable event, because
several times over that weekend I could
have lost the airplane and/or my life.
It rained the night before I left Monroe, Louisiana, for Omaha, and the justly
famous humidity had coated everything
with heavy dew—one reason why Louisiana pilots learned to always bleed their
fuel sumps. Under an overcast sky, I taxied out, as ground control directed me, to
Runway 22. A strong quartering crosswind from the West was of no real concern to me at the time. My runup seemed
normal, so I took my clearance, pointed
1207V’s nose down the wet runway and
smoothly advanced the throttle.
As soon as I got up to full power, the
airplane started to slide downwind across
the runway. There I was, with a big handful of World War II fighter, not yet ready
to fly but with the ditches on the edge of
the runway coming at me fast. If I went
off the runway, it would be all over. Cutting power and aborting takeoff was not
an option. I was already sliding sideways,
and the reverse propeller torque would
have just made things worse. If she could
slide sideways, I figured, I could crab her
into the wind on the ground and straighten my path down the runway until she
was ready to fly. So that’s what I did, and
it worked. It must’ve looked like hell to
the guys in the tower as we careened at
an angle down the runway, but we made
it into the air.
Then I was in the clouds with no visibility in any direction. The engine chose
that very moment to start misfiring. The
hair on the back of my neck stood up and
I began to think that my flight was doomed. I considered asking the tower for vectors back to the field, but decided to first
change the manifold pressure and RPM
to try to correct the misfire. Whatever the
problem was—moisture in the fuel, a
faulty plug lead, an intermittent magneto
www.war-eagles-air-museum.com
Third Quarter 2009
glitch—went away after a minute, and the
big Allison resumed its
strong, throaty roar.
Soon I broke out
“on top.” The sunshine
in the clear sky above
the clouds felt really
good, and I relaxed a
little. I’d gone through
the wringer, and I really
hoped there would be
no more excitement for
the day. I was almost
right; the flight was uneventful—until I got to S Eric Mingledorff and his P-40 pose at his Fixed Base Operator
Offutt. Approaching (FBO) Tiger Air Center in Monroe, Louisana, in July 1984.
from the South, I followed the tower operator’s instructions
the nose up, I’m sure neither Holdin’ My
and entered a right downwind for RunOwn nor I would be here today!
way 18. Winds were light and variable,
In my headset, I heard the tower guy
and the runway was 11,000 feet long, so I
describe the problem as a T-39 Sabrelinfelt pretty good about setting up for the
er with a flat tire at the far end of the runlanding. As I was on short final, with my
way (nearly two miles away from where
gear down and full flaps out, the tower
I would have landed). I thought he needcalled, “P-40, GO AROUND!”
ed to get a clue! With 1207V clawing to
That got my attention fast! With the
stay in the air, I flew over the airfield and
prop already in high pitch, I immediately
then over the Officers’ Golf Course. I
advanced the throttle. I touched the gear
seemed to be beside them, not over them
handle, but then abruptly stopped. I re—I was that low. After clearing the golf
membered a warning in the P-40 Pilot’s
course, I heard from the tower. “P-40, be
Manual about not raising either the gear
prepared for another go-around.”
or the flaps during a go-around. What had
Man, did I prepare!
it said exactly? I knew the wheels turned
When he said “P-40, GO AROUND”
sideways as they retracted, causing more
again, I firmly said, “P-40 IS COMMITdrag, but I also thought there was someTED.” No way was I was going to do anthing about raising the flaps that posed a
other go-around! With a nice three-point
life-threatening danger. I just couldn’t
touchdown, I used less than 1,500 feet of
remember which one not to do. So, hangthe runway. The tower guy said nothing
ing on the edge of a stall, I decided to
more than a slightly peeved, “P-40, conleave the gear and flaps alone and try to
tact ground when clear.”
power my way through. I knew the danI taxied behind the “FOLLOW ME”
ger of a torque roll stall at low airspeed,
Jeep to the show pilots’ hangar. A skinny
and once again the hair rose on the back
guy with a big black mustache came out
of my neck. As I turned out to the right, I
and stood patiently off to the side while I
kept the nose level and added as much
cleared the carburetor and shut down the
power as I thought she could take withengine. As soon as it died, this guy held
out rolling over. Black smoke poured
up two cans of beer, one in each hand.
from the exhaust stacks as I fought to
“I’ve got one of these Silver Bullets and
keep enough airspeed to maintain good
I’ve got one of these Coors regulars,” he
airflow over the ailerons and rudder. I
said. “Which one do you want?” I told
didn’t care about altitude—I was about
him I wanted both of ’em. As Rick said
200 feet above ground, and that was fine
to Louis at the end of Casablanca, that
with me. The aircraft rolled and jerked a
was “the beginning of a beautiful friendfew times, truly scaring me. Had I pulled
ship” with Earl Ketchen.
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Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum
Membership Application
War Eagles Air Museum
War Eagles Air Museum memberships are available in six categories. All memberships include the following privileges:
Free admission to the Museum and all exhibits.
Free admission to all special events.
10% general admission discounts for all guests of a current Member.
10% discount on all Member purchases in the Gift Shop.
To become a Member of the War Eagles Air Museum, please fill in the information requested below and note the category of membership you desire. Mail this form, along with a check payable to “War Eagles Air Museum” for the annual fee shown, to:
War Eagles Air Museum
8012 Airport Road
Santa Teresa, NM 88008
Membership Categories
Individual
$15
Family
$25
STREET ____________________________________________________________
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Next morning I found out that I still
hadn’t quite had my share of problems.
The plan was for a group of us warbird
pilots to fly a “Dawn Patrol” over Omaha
to stir up interest in the airshow. Jim Orton and Jim Maloney, in the Boeing B-17
Sentimental Journey, circled the city in
close formation with six fighters, three
on each side. I had 1207V tucked in a little behind and below the bomber’s right
wing. I can still see it as if it were just
yesterday—the B-17’s big, round wingtip
seemingly hovered just outside my canopy, almost near enough to touch. My new
friend Earl Ketchen, flying a black North
American P-51 Mustang called Habu (a
Taiwanese name for a type of Southeast
Asian pit viper) was tucked behind my
right wing, and Jackie Lee Gaulding, in
the Confederate (yes, I know, but it was
“Confederate” then) Air Force’s Grumman FM2 Wildcat was on Earl’s right
wing. With three other fighters on the
B-17’s left side, we were Red Flight, and
we were all “trapped” the way one can be
only when flying in a tight formation.
About then, a Douglas C-47 Gooney
Bird, with TV cameramen and newspaper
people hanging onto straps in the cargo
bay (sans door), dove past us trying to
catch up so the guys could take pictures.
The SOB (I won’t define that term) leveled off right in front of us and slowed
down. I watched with great concern as he
began to drift back into our formation.
Jim Orton, as Flight Leader Red One, radioed to the C-47 pilot several times to
try to tell him that he was drifting back
into us. There was no acknowledgement.
Was the pilot on the wrong frequency, or
asleep, or what? We were all getting pretty antsy (a polite word), but, much to everyone’s credit, we all held our positions
until Red One called, “Red Flight break,
Red Flight break.” I had spent the seeming eternity while waiting for “the call”
figuring out which way I would go to
have the best chance of avoiding a midair collision. My only thought was that I
could pull harder and outclimb the B-17.
We were all ready to act in a split second,
hands beginning to sweat on the controls.
Red One barely got the words out of his
mouth when we were GONE—I climbed,
Earl dived and Jackie Lee rolled right.
Another disaster averted…
We had Officers’ Club privileges
that night. After we downed a couple of
beers, Howard Pardue and I went looking
for the C-47 pilot. Howard had been flying a Grumman F8F-1 Bearcat on the left
side of Red Flight. We didn’t find the
Gooney Bird driver. In retrospect, that
was probably lucky for all concerned.
I often think back to that day, and it
still haunts me. From Sentimental Journey through the entire right side of that
formation, I’m the only one of the pilots
still alive today. One day, when I cross
that mystical river, I know I’ll luck out—
I always have. I’ll see some old friends in
their flight suits on the other side. They’ll
be toasting glasses of Scotch toward me,
one in each hand. They’ll say, “Which
one do you want, the Johnny Walker or
The Glenlivet?” I already know what I’m
going to say.
And that’ll be okay.
7
www.war-eagles-air-museum.com
War Eagles Air Museum
Doña Ana County Airport at Santa Teresa
8012 Airport Road
Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008
(575) 589-2000
Wings of Freedom Tour
Visits Museum
T
he Collings Foundation, of Stow,
Massachusetts, is dedicated to
educating the American public
about the country’s heritage through “living history” events. One of these events
is an annual nationwide “Wings of Freedom” tour of exquisitely restored World
War II aircraft. This year, on April 15, 16
and 17, War Eagles Air Museum hosted
the tour. Hundreds of people showed up
to see the Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress
“Nine-O-Nine,” the Consolidated B-24J
Liberator “Witchcraft” and, new on tour
this year, the two-seater North American
TP-51C Mustang “Betty Jane.” Even better, many people signed up for unforgettable rides aboard the aircraft, allowing
them to experience at first-hand some of
the sights and sounds that the brave airmen of World War II experienced as they
flew these aircraft into combat over Europe and the Pacific.
www.war-eagles-air-museum.com
S The only fully restored and flying Consolidated B-24J Liberator in existence, the Collings
Foundation’s “Witchcraft,” poses proudly on the ramp at War Eagles Air Museum. Built in
August 1944 at Consolidated’s factory in Fort Worth, Texas, this aircraft saw combat in the Pacific with the Royal Air Force on anti-shipping patrols, bombing missions and resistance-force
resupply flights. It first flew after restoration on September 10, 1989. Photo by Chuck Crepas.
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