Love for the Air Force
Don't know why but I as I was perusing a Phantom FaceBook site, it struck me how many USAF Phantoms there were in the hay day of that great fighter. There were more USAF Phantoms by far but I think our experiences were richer.
So I figured I would leave this remembrance of several of my 251 episodes that sort of tell a story of Marines, airplanes and Air Force bases.
My first 251 flight, first in a gun squadron, was a cross country to the west coast to get some part that was needed ASAP back in Beaufort. The plan was to stay in Yuma Friday, Sat night and sometime along the way before Sunday, head over to North Island as I recall to fetch the part. Then back to Beaufort on Sunday. All was well except I guess the coordination was off and we couldn't get the part until Monday morning so it was clear the plan was missing something. Anyway, got the part and headed to Carswell AFB as the stop. Refueled, filed and off we went. Except...
Dash 2 had an airplane that had some ghost that now and then decided the nose gear would not stay up. o as we departed and joined up, I looked back to see his nose gear streaming in the wind. Declared an emergency, and as usual, the gear successfully locked down, we landed safely. But because we had just taken off, and were heavy, had to dump fuel. Uneventful landing.
So we called our maintenance folks in Beaufort for guidance and the consensus was get the part back even If we had to fly back with the gear down. Here we were in base ops, and no one knew how far you could go with gear down. Being the new guy I was dispatched to get my checklist so we could at least plan what our range might be. Off I went.
Humph? The planes were parked way down the ramp, away from ops so as we neared it was pretty clear there was some excitement at our planes. I kind of doubted the USAF was admiring the Marine Phantoms. In fact, the opposite was true and there was a fire/crash truck hosing down the ramp with a pretty good crowd looking things over.
Seems dash 2 pilot had not closed the dump switch before shutting down so the dumps were wide open as the tanker pump in the JP. Before they could shut off the truck, lots and lots of JP had dumped onto the ramp. I climbed into the cockpit and moved the switch to closed but obviously the only effect that had was to allow me to 'confirm' a whimsical tale it had not apparently closed the stuck dump valves.
Some Air Force major started screaming at me he was the base environmental officer and we were in big trouble, blah, blah, blah. I recall he mentioned ' DAMN MARINES' in a derogatory tone several times. When I said there were more senior folks back at ops and talking to a lowly 2nd Lt was not getting him any where our conversation ended.
We got back to the Ops office and this guy found some LtCol who identified himself as the duty officer. He got into a discussion with our senior guy, Rollie Taylor, a Brit exchange Sqd Ldr, I guess equivalent to a major. After some loud back and forth and a few more 'every time Marines land at our base', he said you can not leave until you have your plane fixed. Problem is no one knew what the problem was, no one had been able to find the cause for a while and obviously there was no AF maintenance people who would touch our airplanes.
We were in a quandary, and the LtCol left. I don't exactly recall how it worked out but another Air Force ops guy, with the stripes he had, {might have been an E25 he had so many stripes), pulled us aside. I guess some other officer had hinted to him he'd approve our flight plan to let us leave, but only if we promised to never come back to Carswell AFB.
We happily agreed and off we went uneventfully.
Another 'incident.' A few years later, after we had returned from WestPac, I don't recall exactly why, but we ended up with a one plane mission to support some sort of USAF exercise in Florida. We were carrying a load of blue bombs to drop at some range, I think near MacDill. When we got there, weather had moved in and it wasn't good enough to bomb. We tried loitering a while but it never got better and we got to where we had to land at MacDill to refuel.
Had an uneventful landing and all was well until we turned off the runway. Then the tower went crazy. Tower guy asks are you carrying ordnance? Duh? Yeah, blue bombs, they don't explode except for the smoke charge. So the tower guy says you can't taxi to the transient line with the ordnance. We couldn't convince him we weren't going to bomb their base from the ramp so he insisted we hold on the taxi way. Ok, now what?
It was pretty clear the tower didn't know what to do with us but after a while they concluded if we made the bombs safe we could taxi to the transient line to refuel. Fine, send someone out to pin the bombs. I am not sure why but for some reason I had a bag with the safety pins for the bomb racks in my back seat. I told that to the tower.....send somebody out and I'll give them the pins.
But, the USAF did not have anyone qualified to pin racks on a J/S model. Again, a quandary. So I told the tower I would pin the racks. Guy started yelling over the radio no one was allowed to exit a plane on the taxiway. Using my better judgement and a few crackling mic clicks I climbed out and pinned the racks, got back into the back seat.
With the potentially destructive bombs safely pinned, we were allowed to taxi to the ramp. When we got there some major, I guess a tower supervisor, was waiting for us. He started yelling at my pilot, Joe Marthiljohni for allowing a crew member to exit his airplane and then he started on me for leaving the airplane while it was turning and on the taxiway -- blah, blah, blah.
Guy wouldn't stop, wouldn't listen to our explanation that since the USAF had no one to pin the racks, what were we supposed to do? Then he dropped the big one, I won't let you leave until I call your CO. Almost like getting sent to the principal's office. We happily gave him LtCol Schober's name and I guess the Autovon number.
This guy, the major, then muttered something about "MARINES" every time they come here, but he approved our flight plan and let us leave. I think we ended up flying home with the racks pinned because they wouldn't unpin the racks on the ramp and I was afraid to get out at the end of the taxi way. I didn't want to push our luck at that point.
We got home uneventfully.
LtCol Schober apparently got a call from the USAF guy and passed this along to us. He asked for our version of the story which was pretty much like I noted above. So he told us, its a good God-damn thing you didn't listen those a-holes. My airplane would still be there as we tried to figure out how to meet their rules. If you guys didn't take the initiative to do what you had to, I would have had your asses.
I am getting long winded but there was one more tale with the USAF. When we were in Japan, I flew with LtCol Allinder to do some bombing at Nightmare range. We landed in Osan as I recall to refuel and go back to Iwakuni. Anyway, due to their annoying noise abatement rules, we landed with an under-stated tail wind, decided not to use the drag chute because we had experience with the USAF not packing Marine chutes, and ended up in the chain gear over run.
This time, the duty officer or the base operations officer ( a major or LtCol maybe?) found us and I not surprisingly was really pissed off. No chute, a Phantom in the overrun, he had to get a dozer/tractor to drag the chain gear back into place. So he says, I want to know who is your CO! So the skipper says, I am the CO. Then after a bit of an not so friendly discussion, off we went. I think we had to promise to never return to that USAF facility.
Anyway, I am guessing that probably every USAF base must have had episodes that ended with Marines promising to never return to their base. I can't prove that is true, but if a guy with 1200 hours had those and a couple other experiences, I got to believe similar events happened pretty frequently all over.
The moral of the story is we did what we had to which sometimes (often?) caused the USAF to have conniptions. But we got done what we were tasked with.
