Hamfist Over the Trail

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Cover art by Tony Stencel, http://www.tonystencel.com.

Copyright © 2012 G. E. Nolly
. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

Version 2012.05.22

This book is dedicated to American military veterans, past, present, and future.

1

October 16, 1968

As soon as the ENG FIRE light caught my attention, my left hand was moving – almost without my intentional thought – to perform the BOLD FACE actions for an engine fire:

Throttle – Idle

Throttle – Off

If Fire Light Remains On – If fire is confirmed – Eject

In all of our daily pre-flight briefings, the chief instructor pilot had randomly called on one of us, the students, and we were required to immediately respond, verbatim, with the Bold Face responses to whatever emergency of the day he called out. It got to the point that the responses became automatic, pretty much unconscious. It now looked like all of that preparation had paid off.

Time seemed to stand still as I waited to see if the fire light would go out. It was probably only a few seconds, but it seemed like longer, much longer. The light went out.

While I was performing the Bold Face memory items of the Emergency checklist, I was totally functioning on mental autopilot. I felt like I was out of my body, watching this young Lieutenant student pilot go through his actions from above.

But now that the engine fire was out, I was starting to have a visceral reaction. This was my first real emergency, and no matter how many times I had visualized and practiced an Engine Fire procedure, I hadn't expected it to play out the way it did. I certainly hadn't expected everything to seem like it was happening in slow motion.

Now my mouth was dry, my heart was racing, I could feel my pulse pounding in my temple, and I was having a hard time flying smoothly. Being solo sure didn't help.

I was alone in my T-38, leading a 4-ship flight, with my Instructor Pilot – IP – in the number 2 bird. As soon as the ENG FIRE light illuminated, the IP was screaming on the radio.

“Knock it off, knock it off. Lead, your left engine is on fire!”

I acknowledged by repeating the Air Force command for all maneuvering to cease.

“Dingo Flight, knock it off, knock it off.”

I gradually slowed from 300 knots to 250 and rocked my wings, signaling for the formation to rejoin to close “fingertip” formation, with three feet wingtip separation. It was clear to me that my maneuvering was done for the day, but there was no need to ruin it for my wingmen.

“Three and four, you're cleared off into the practice area. I will RTB with number two”. The IP in the number three aircraft peeled off with number four, and I watched with a twinge of envy as I envisioned the combat training they would be doing in a few minutes. For me, the fight was over, and it was time to Return to Base – RTB.

We'd been scheduled for an Air Combat Maneuvering practice ride, and I had really been looking forward to finally getting to see ACM first-hand. All of the student pilots in our formation would be progressing on to fighter aircraft after graduation from Undergraduate Pilot Training in a few days, and this would be our introduction to the type of flying we would be doing in the near future. We hadn't received our final aircraft assignments yet, but the four of us in this formation flight were at the top of our class, and we'd all indicated our desire to go to fighters, so it was a foregone conclusion we'd be getting F-100, F-105 or maybe even F-4 assignments to Vietnam any day now. In fact, the assignments should have come in by now.

This was my last scheduled solo flight, and I had been looking forward to returning to base with a nice, tight 350-knot 4-ship flight down initial approach, with a crisp pitch-out and textbook 4-ship in-trail landing. Instead, I would be doing a long, straight-in approach, with the fire department waiting for me to make my emergency landing. Disappointing.

I was starting to calm down again as I headed back to Laughlin Air Force Base. I switched our 2-ship flight over to Approach Control frequency and mentally reviewed the single-engine landing procedure. I started configuring the flight for landing a bit earlier than usual, just to make sure no aircraft systems had been affected by the fire. It was the first time I had ever performed a post-emergency Controllability Check. The absence of any verbal advice from my IP indicated to me that I was probably doing everything correctly.

The scrub brush of the south Texas landscape zipped by at a faster rate than usual on final, since I was flying a higher approach speed due to the inoperative engine and the higher speed due to the lower flap setting. Otherwise, everything seemed pretty much like a normal approach.

A single-engine approach in the T-38 was not that big a deal, really. The only challenge would be the last part, between 500 feet and 100 feet. If the remaining engine were to fail then, I would really b
e screwed. Too low to bail out or
stretch a glide to the runway. They call it a “zero-zero” ejection seat, but what works at zero altitude and zero airspeed won't necessarily work when you're descending at over 800 feet per minute. I unconsciously held my breath.

Luck, I preferred to think it was karma, was with me, and it was an uneventful landing. My IP had been flying fingertip formation on me all the way down final, and executed a missed approach as I rolled out. The fire truck followed me as I taxied to my parking spot, and the crew chief gave me a “thumbs up” after carefully inspecting my bird.

As I finished filling out the aircraft logbook, Airman Folsom, the squadron Admin Clerk, came running up to me. “Lieutenant Hancock, Colonel Ryan wants to see you ASAP.”

I knew that Colonel Ryan, the Deputy Commander for Operations – the DO – was informed any time there was an emergency, but I didn't think that he met with every pilot immediately after landing. I guessed he must have really been impressed with my performance, and wanted to personally congratulate me.

I put on my “Joe Cool all-in-a-day's-work” face and went to Wing Headquarters to receive my accolades.

Boy, was I in for a shock.

2

October 16, 1968

Emily, the DO's secretary, ran up and gave me a long, passionate hug as soon as I walked in to the outer office. I immediately looked around to see if anyone else was in view. We were alone. PDA – Public Display of Affection – was seriously frowned upon, and I didn't want to get myself, or Emily, in hot water.

She looked like she might have been crying. “Hamilton! I was so worried!”

Emily and I had been seeing each other, dating, pretty much every day since we'd met at a barbecue at Colonel Ryan's house two months earlier. Colonel Ryan had invited the three top students in our class to his house, and Emily and I had hit it off immediately. She had just been hired as a secretary, right out of college, shortly before we met, and I think I was the first pilot, all right, student pilot, she had ever dated.

“There was nothing to worry about, Emily. It was routine. I'm fine.” I paused. “Colonel Ryan sent for me.” Other than using her first name, I tried to keep it strictly professional, just in case Colonel Ryan could hear us in his office.

Emily knocked on Colonel Ryan's door, and walked into his office. I followed her with my eyes. Damn, she was good-looking! She was petite, about five-two, and had a great figure. Her blonde, shoulder-length hair framed a model's face, and she had a great, bubbly personality. I was really looking forward to seeing her later.

I could hear Emily through the partly open door, “Lieutenant Hamilton Hancock is here to see you, Colonel.” I heard a muffled response, and then Emily reappeared.

“The Colonel will see you now.”

“Thanks, Emily.”

Colonel Ryan rose as I entered the room, and I walked over to his desk, stood at attention, and gave my best Academy salute. “Lieutenant Hancock reporting as ordered, sir!”

Colonel Ryan returned the salute and sat down. “At ease, Lieutenant. Have a seat.”

I sat in the stiff wooden chair opposite his desk. It was a chair probably meant to intimidate, rather than provide comfort. I briefly thought of all the poor brown-bars who'd received serious ass-chewing sessions in that chair, and wondered if maybe I'd screwed up somewhere along the way and it was my turn.

“Relax, Ham. You're not in any trouble, but I have some disappointing news for you.” He'd never called me Ham before. In fact, He'd only called me by my first name, Hamilton, once before, when he introduced me to Emily, at his house. Had he learned my nickname from Emily?

“I know you had your heart set on getting a fighter,” he continued, “but I'm afraid that's not going to happen. There are no fighter slots in the assignment roster for your class. I made some phone calls to MPC, but there was nothing I could do for you. Needs of the service.”

I wondered briefly if he really had called his contacts at the Military Personnel Center. Yeah, he had – he was a stand-up guy, and if he said he did something, he did it.

“But sir,” I stammered, “You remember, at the barbecue at your house, you told me I could get any airplane I wanted. You said they did that for every DG.” If I couldn't get the assignment I wanted, why had I worked so damned hard to be Distinguished Graduate – the top student in my class of 48.

“Well, Lieutenant,” the Colonel bristled, “I don't recall the Air Force needing to check with you before they determine their requirements.”

“Let me tell you something about the needs of the service, Lieutenant. I was Top Gun in my class, also. But the needs of the service, in 1944, were for glider pilots. So instead of a P-51, I was assigned to fly a G-4.”

He could see from my face I had no idea what a G-4 was.

“I got a total of two hours fifteen minutes of combat time in the air during all of World War II. My glider was towed aloft on June 6th, glided to Normandy with 13 grunts in the back, and then crash-landed in some goddam field, at night, and I became a goddam infantry officer for the next 10 months, while the guys in the class ahead of me were racking up their victories.”

“I'll tell you something else, Lieutenant. If something is meant to be, it will be. If it's in the cards for you to get a fighter, at some point you'll get a fighter. I finally got my fighter assignment in Korea, and it was worth the wait.” His eyes darted over to a photograph on the wall.

I followed his eyes, and saw a grainy black-and-white photograph of a much younger Lieutenant Ryan, in a flight suit, painting a fifth star on the nose of his F-86, surrounded by a group of equally young Lieutenants holding champagne bottles. Lieutenant Ryan in the photo had a full head of hair and was at least 50 pounds lighter than the balding Colonel in front of me.

But this balding Colonel was an ace!

Colonel Ryan slid a sheet of paper across his desk to me. “Here's the list of available aircraft. Since you're number one in the class, you'll get your choice of whatever you want from this list. I need to have your selection by close of business today. Dismissed.”

I stood up to attention, saluted, did a crisp about-face, and walked out of his office.

Colonel Ryan was a goddam ace!

3

October 16, 1968

I looked at the list of airplanes on the paper the Colonel had given me, and felt like I'd been marooned on a desert island with nothing but ugly women.

There were the usual expected airplanes: B-52, C-141, C-130. And, of course, the Air Training Command airplanes, T-37 and T-38. Then there were two other airplanes I'd never heard of: O-2A and OV-10. These planes were marked with an asterisk, and the bottom of the sheet stated, “*Pipeline Southeast Asia (SEA). Volunteers for this assignment will receive choice of aircraft following service in SEA.”