Tall Man-1

Tall Man 55 - Part 1

In 1959, the 305th Bomb Wing, equipped with some 120 or so B-47's, moved from Macdill AFB in Tampa, Florida to Bunker Hill AFB, Indiana. I had joined the wing at MacDill AFB as a brand-new 2nd Lieutenant B-47 navigator approximately a year and a half before in November of 1957. I remember that we had just bought our first home right outside of MacDill AFB and were quite surprised a few days later to find that the entire wing was being relocated to the cornfields of Indiana.

In the eighteen months we were in Florida, I became part of an outstanding new crew, teamed with Lt. Col. Chuck Marshall and lst Lt. Bill Kingsley. We quickly completed our crew checkout and became very proficient in the B- 47, rising to the position of Lead Crew. Competition was fierce and each flight was patterned after our wartime mission profile, with mid-air inflight refueling, celestial navigation and practice high and low-level bombing. Over the door of the 364th Bomb Squadron building that was our "home," were the words, "Through these doors walk the finest aircrew members in the world!". ..We believed those words and worked hard to live up to them!

It was the greatest job any aviator could have wanted .The Strategic Air Command in those days was already legendary for it's professionalism. THE mission in the Air Force was strategic bombing and nobody did it better than the 305th Bomb Wing, which had strong military history and traditions dating back to World War II when it was the 305th Bomb Group. Every crew was trained and tested to the limits of its ability and beyond. The flight line buzzed with activity around the clock as the finest combat crews in the world matched their skills with others to determine who was THE BEST on that particular day.

Each crew trained hard and each flight very realistically duplicated our wartime mission, but we had a lot of fun along the way. Because crewmembers flew almost every mission as a crew, we got to know and like each other a lot. One week out of two or three, we lived and trained together in the Alert Barracks, moments from combat-loaded aircraft, ready for the klaxon sound that might take us into real combat. Daily, there were one or more tests of the system. The klaxon would sound and all crews would drop everything and literally run to their aircraft, answer the radio while starting engines and await instructions. Only after copying the cryptic message and referring to code books did we know if it was an actual alert or a practice exercise. It was very good practice and kept us very much on our toes.

After daily study and simulator sessions, there was lots of time for cards, TV and stories of the “big one” that got away. During the Olympics, we even instituted our own Alert Barracks version of the Olympics, with the “25-pound ashtray twirl,” going for longest time in motion.

On every flight, there was serious consideration of the skills we were practicing and why we did so, but there was also a lot of banter back and forth and the usual jokes and fun together.

I can remember one daytime navigation training flight over the Gulf of Mexico at about 40,000 feet. Earlier, I had consumed my box flight lunch of sandwiches and fruit, but I had a packet of mustard left unused. Right overhead in the navigator position where I sat was a periscopic sextant port with a little flapper valve that normally kept the plane airtight and pressurized, but allowed me to extend the long tube neck of the sextant for star sightings. This port opened directly in front of the pilot's windshield and about 5 feet forward of it. Suddenly I was seized with an idea and without hesitation I tore the corner of the mustard pack and held it up to the port opening as I flipped the valve open with the other hand. In an instant, the mustard was sucked up the port opening and right back onto the pilot's windshield. An amazed pilot came on the interphone with an incredulous voice saying, "Would you look at that! We just hit a bug at 40,000 feet!" I laughed myself silly, but never told him what had really happened!

I can also remember one long winter flight that took us over Rapid City, ND where we hoped to practice a bomb run on their radar bomb scoring (RBS) site. The radio conversation went something like this... "Rapid City Bomb Plot, this is OILCAN 23 (our B-47's call sign for the day), requesting an RBS run on your plot, please." Rapid City Bomb Plot replied, "Negative, OILCAN 23, be advised that our weapon (the radar used for tracking and scoring the bomb run) is bent (meaning, inoperative.)" We muttered to ourselves about coming all this way from Indiana and then not being able to get our training requirement. Then the co-pilot, Bill Kingsley, said, "Hey, guys, maybe I can get a non-concurrent Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) score out of them." He then called, "Rapid City Bomb Plot, OILCAN 23 again, requesting a non-concurrent ECM run, please. " They replied, "Negative, OILCAN 23, be advised that our buzzer (the radar used for ECM scoring) is also bent." At this point, the co-pilot said, "Hey Rapid City, this snow storm is really getting to you guys, isn't it?" There was much laughter in the background as Rapid City responded, "OILCAN 23, be advised that our snow shovel is also bent!!!" We laughed all the way home that night!

In the "strange conversations" category was a flight over the Gulf of Mexico one night in a B-47 that was a last minute maintenance substitution for the plane we were originally scheduled to have. We had not planned on a gunnery mission, but since this aircraft was scheduled for gunnery live- fire, it was loaded, "hot-guns." The B-47 had a pair of 20 millimeter cannons in the tail that was controlled and fired by the co-pilot. Periodically, each aircraft and each crew practiced firing the guns and this was done over carefully controlled gunnery firing ranges marked out typically over the Gulf. Since this required careful coordination by radio we would have normally planned to have the proper frequencies and call signs ready to facilitate this, but we didn't know ahead of time that we had gunnery and were not prepared. Hurrying to make an on-time takeoff, it was only after we were airborne that we realized the embarrassing fix we were in. We had "hot guns" but no way to get cleared onto the firing range.

Thinking quickly, the co-pilot called a Ground Control Intercept (GCI) site which was part of the perimeter radar control we would cross on the way to the Gulf area and asked for the radio frequency and call sign for gunnery area R-1435 that was near our planned track. The GCI site cooperated quickly, giving us the radio frequency, but then said, "Nobody controls that range, sir." We thought it an impossible arrangement that there would be no control for a hazardous situation like gunnery. After all, many commercial fishing boats traversed these areas and it would require somebody to watch over things to prevent a tragedy. Bill Kingsley called the site again and said, "Nobody controls that area?" They replied, "That's correct, sir, NOBODY controls R-1435 and you can reach them on the tactical frequency we gave you. " It never occurred to us that "NOBODY" was a call sign. Later, when we called in to the site controlling R-1435 gunnery range, they played it to the hilt!" We said, "NOBODY Control, this is OILCAN 45, over." They replied, "NOBODY here!"

As with all flying, my 2,000 hours in the B-47 could be described as hours and hours of boredom, punctuated with moments of sheer panic, but I really did have a lot of fun with my crew. And we were fortunate that the B-47 was very good to us. In the 8 or 10 years that the 305th Bomb Wing flew the B-47, not one life was lost! It was an incredible safety record and especially in the contrast with our sister wing, the 306th, that gave rise to a saying, "One a day in Tampa Bay!" It wasn't really that often, of course, but I can remember many black wreaths hung on crewmembers front doors following tragic crashes.

The unit move to Bunker Hill AFB was carried out in the summer of 1959 with characteristic professionalism. Our combat mission was to have about half of our aircraft combat loaded with weapons and on alert, ready for immediate takeoff in the event of a nuclear attack against the United States. Combat crewmembers ate, slept and trained in the alert barracks near the aircraft parking area and were read~ to leap into their bombers and takeoff for their targets within ten minutes, 24 hours a day. With Soviet nuclear submarines cruising offshore of the United States, we only had 30 minutes to escape the destructive nuclear effects of Soviet cruise missiles.

With half of the aircraft on alert, the other half flew to it's new home at Bunker Hill AFB in Indiana and immediately were put on combat alert. Only then, did the MacDill contingent download weapons and fly to Indiana. In that way, the 305th maintained it's combat mission even during a total unit relocation.

Soon after getting acclimated to the new Indiana environment, we learned that the elite 305th Bomb Wing had been chosen to be one of two Air Force wings to transition into the new, supersonic B-58 Hustler. This was a super-sleek, delta-winged bomber, powered by four J-79 engines with afterburners and built by General Dynamics in Fort Worth, Texas. For the next two years, excitement built to incredible heights among the crew force as we anticipated the part we would play in this new scheme of things.

In the winter of 1961, Co-pilot, Capt. Bill Kingsley was reassigned to a B-52 unit in Michigan and Lt. Col. Chuck Marshall and I left Bunker Hill AFB to travel in separate directions for transition training into the B-58 Hustler. He went to an F-102 base for three months at Perrin AFB, Texas for delta-wing familiarization, while I went to the three month B-58 navigator course at Mather AFB, California. At the end of our separate initial training courses, we joined up again at Fort Worth, Texas for integrated crew training in the B-58.

Unfortunately, Chuck Marshall had some difficulties with the delta-wing and was "washed out" of the program and returned to B-47s at another Wing. I was then matched up with two new crew members who would become good friends over the years to come. Lt. Col. Leonard "Sully" Sullivan became my new pilot and 1st Lt. Jim Estrada became my new Defensive Systems Operator.

In the preceding three months, we had each learned the basics of the equipment we would have in the B-58. I had gone through an intensive period of systems study and flown special training aircraft equipped with the exact navigation gear I would find on the B-58. Sully and Jim Estrada had the same kind of systems study and Sully had learned first-hand in the F-102 exactly how delta-winged craft differed from standard wing aircraft. Now we were ready to put that knowledge together with personal experience in the B-58.

At Carswell AFB in Fort Worth, TX, the pilot and defensive systems operators flew together with an instructor pilot in a two-pilot trainer version of the B-58 (the TB-58). In addition to that flying training, all three crew members "flew" flight simulators which could be operated independently for special training as well as integrated missions when all three simulators were joined as though flying in the same aircraft. These simulators were "state-of-the-art" for their day and very realistically portrayed what each crewmember would see, hear & even feel in flight. The pilot could actually make visual landings and feel the normal accelerations of the aircraft. The navigator could see the same radar images he would expect to see in the air. It was very realistic training.

In a few short weeks, Sully and Jim were cleared for "solo" flight without an instructor. On that first solo flight without an instructor, they flew a standard three crewmember B-58 and I joined them in the navigator position which was right behind the pilot and just in front of the defensive systems operator (DSO). Yes... My first flight in the aircraft was with a pilot and DSO who were also making their first solo flight. Add those facts to the knowledge that each of our instructors had only about 25 more hours in the aircraft than we did and you get the picture. It was an intense moment to say the least!

I can still vividly picture my instructor kneeling on the 12-foot high crew access stand giving me final instructions and encouragement to the last second as my hatch slowly closed and locked, leaving me and my crew truly "on our own! "

We completed our very involved checklist of switches to position and instrument readings to check and record, then taxied slowly to the run-up pad at the end of the runway. In those early days, the small, high-pressure tires were easily damaged by even normal taxiway surfaces and especially by any foreign objects that got in the way. For safety, the tires were actually changed before takeoff and were only good for ONE takeoff and ONE landing. It would be more than a year later that technology would provide a high-endurance tire that would allow multiple mission use. Incidentally, the development of that military aviation tire was the reason for the sudden improvement in automobile tires that year.

At last, all checklists were complete and we were cleared for takeoff. The pilot smoothly advanced the four throttles to full military power, then beyond and into the maximum afterburner detent. Unlike fighter aircraft afterburners, which "boom" into full afterburner, the B-58's huge J-79 GE engines smoothly moved through three graduated stages of increasing afterburner. Even so... the deafening sound and sudden feel of raw power was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Both the pilot and DSO had been feeling and hearing this for several weeks in the TB-58, but this was a first for me and it was exhilarating!

With only a few seconds of rapid acceleration down the runway, the nose lifted smoothly and we leaped into the air. The sound of retracting gear ended with a heavy "clunk" as it reached fully retracted position and we continued our rapid acceleration in a climb to about 1,500 feet. At this point, the pilot pulled the throttles back to military power (roughly 90- 100% power) for a normal climb to our cleared altitude.

This first solo flight was purposely kept shorter than we would fly later. We got in a short navigation leg at high altitude, made a short in-flight refueling practice with an airborne KC-135 tanker and returned to Carswell AFB after only about 3-4 hours. From that flight on, we were primarily working together as a crew.

Those three months literally flew by and soon we were fully checked out and declared combat ready. We then left Carswell AFB and returned to Bunker Hill AFB, IN to the 305th Bomb Wing. As the first of the returning crews to be assigned to the 364th Bomb Wing, we had great fun dividing up all of the normal "additional duties" of the squadron between the three of us and actually publishing orders to that effect. Any time any of us were at the home of another on the crew, it was laughingly regarded as a "Squadron Party!" They were fun days and we did have the squadron ready for returning crewmembers over the next weeks.

Soon, all crews had completed B-58 training and many of us had ferried brand-new B-58's back to home base as we returned. We now had 40 B-58's assigned to the Wing. Our instructors at Carswell AFB were members of the 43rd Bomb Wing. At the conclusion of our training, the 43rd Bomb Wing was reassigned with their contingent of 40 B-58's to Little Rock AFB, AR. With only two wings of the sleek, delta-winged, supersonic bombers, and having all trained together at Carswell AFB, we had many friends at both operational bases as well as at the factory in Fort Worth, TX. In many ways, it was just one big family.

If you are looking for Burch Associates insurance prelicensing classes

click on -->> http://www.jtburch.org