FIRST SOLO PLUS FIFTY

Fifty years ago today I took an aircraft off the ground by myself, and I returned it to its owner—intact.

I was a 16 year-old high-school sophomore.

May 11, 1965 was a Tuesday.  All through classes I had felt that I would solo that afternoon.  What I did not realize was that I was well past the typical eight hours to solo.  In retrospect, I realized that my father was hedging to the max.  My mother had lost two friends in airplanes—never mind that one was in a B-25 in WW II—and she was, to understate things immensely, concerned.

But she also knew how much I wanted to fly.

At the time I had a learner’s permit to drive but was far more interested in flying.  Dad always took me to Martin Field at College Place near Walla Walla, where he’d chosen Herman Martin’s Piper dealership to instruct me.  It was a 20-minute drive from my home town at Athena, just across the border.  I’d begun flying that February and got my student’s license in March.

Martin Field was 1940s ambience with two hangars and knotted wood paneling in the lounge.  Elevation was 746 feet msl, which meant we flew the pattern at 1,550.  Or so.  The single paved runway was 5/23, set amid neatly-mowed grass most of the year.

My main instructor was Al Bixby, a 50-year-old crew-cut professional who, like most IPs, was equal parts mentor and taskmaster. 

We nearly always flew N6053W, a standard 140-hp Cherokee delivered the year before.  I was always short and slight—in fact, I started flying by sitting on a red cushion for a full view over the instrument panel.  Normally I flew twice a week but I’d missed one day previously, having logged 1.00 in takeoffs and landings on the 6th.

On Der Tag Al had me start up and take off, as usual to the south-southwest.  After a semi-grease job, I was about to shove in the throttle for another go when Al said, “Let it roll out.” 

I knew what was coming. 

As I braked at the fuel island, Al said, “Take it around three times and stop back here.”  I don’t think he said anything as dramatic as “Good luck,” though he may have advised me to abort a landing that didn’t feel right.  (I’m not even sure if the radio was turned on.)  I glimpsed Dad leaning on the cyclone fence; he seemed cool.

Takeoff was procedurally routine but the emotion was not.  I was beyond elated—exultant, actually.  I pounded the dash with my right hand: “You and me, baby!”

It was wonderful. 

Honestly, I don’t recall much after that, not after 50 years.  But I do remember the routine in the pattern: turn crosswind southbound, left 90 for downwind, and turn base leg over the school east of the field, pulling on the flap handle—three clicks, all the way down for 40 degrees—then reaching up to give the trim a turn, relieving pressure on the yoke.

Two good landings and an excellent one, and I was done.  I’d realized my lifetime dream and wondered if I would ever be that happy again.

On the way home, Dad said, “I think it’s time you got your driver’s license.”

Al Bixby died19 years later, and I regret that I didn’t get to say goodbye.

N6053W still exists.  Checking the FAA register, I see it’s registered to a gent in Kerrville, Texas.  I hope he gives 53 Whiskey an extra quart of oil for the high school kid who lovingly caressed her.

Whatever else happened in America and the world, that May was memorable all-round.  My younger brother and I received our Eagle Scout badges (he was precocious in all things, graduating from Stanford en route to a Rhodes scholarship.)  We were active kids in school, church, and community.  We won district, state, and regional titles for debate and oratory, and in ‘66 John won Oregon’s humorous interpretation title with a raucous rendition of Julius Caesar.  Certainly The Bard never expected anybody would render his classic as a hard-boiled gumshoe who-done-it.

I had won my first state percussion championship the year before, playing tenor for the Falcons Jr. Drum and Bugle Corps, would take a third in ’65, and scored another win in ’66 on rudimental bass.  Meanwhile, I broke into print in 1965 with a column in a drum corps magazine, learning the joys and perils of publishing.  (IIRC the publisher used his press for, um, innovative purposes that drew dolorous inquiries from The Authorities.)

I was probably aware of national and world events more than most of my contemporaries.  Being head over heels about aviation, I followed Vietnam avidly.  Operation Rolling Thunder began that April with initial attacks on the notorious Thanh Hoa Bridge, about which I may have to say downstream.  The 173rd Airborne Brigade arrived in-country, as did Australia’s first contingent.  But things didn’t go especially well: the vile-putrid Lyndon Johnson called off the bombing later than month in the first of many carrot-and-stick efforts to get the hard-eyed pragmatists in Hanoi to play Texas back-scratchin’ politicks.  Y’all.  To this day, my Lone Star friends change the subject when LBJ comes up.

An early example of the grief that was Vietnam occurred at Bien Hoa Airbase on the 16th.  Twenty-seven Americans, four Vietnamese, and at least two dozen airplanes were destroyed in an “own ordnance” explosion on the flight line.

Cyclones killed tens of thousands in India; at least 15,000 Bangladeshis died in a horrible wind storm; China exploded its second A-bomb; a Pakistani airliner crash took 121 lives in Egypt; India and Pakistan resumed feuding over their border; and in a month filled with sports news, Scottish Grand Prix champ Jim Clark became the first foreigner to take the checkered flag at Indianapolis since 1916.

We all remember 1965 for our own reasons.  And like the rest of us, I’ll forever remember it as bittersweet vintage.

JOE's PISTOL, PART 2

Unless you stumbled across this blog completely by chance, you know about Joseph Jacob Foss.  He lived one of the most complete lives of anyone I have ever known: a natural outdoorsman, talented aviator, successful politician, unrepentant spokesman for Second Amendment rights, devoted family man, and always an intensely passionate patriot.

Variously, Joe was the top-scoring Marine Corps fighter ace (“Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children” refuse to acknowledge that unassailable fact 70 years later), Governor of South Dakota; commander and brigadier general of his state’s Air National Guard; first commissioner of the American Football League; and president of the National Rifle Association.  Among his lesser accomplishments, he helped convince the AFL and NFL to cooperate in the first Super Bowl.

I got to know Joe in the 1980s through our mutual friend Doug Champlin who owned a world-class fighter aircraft museum here in Mesa, Arizona.  Later I worked with Joe when I was secretary of the American Fighter Aces Association, and in various NRA events. 

Joe and Didi practically adopted me over the decades, in much the way of other military aviation families: Bud and Ellie Anderson; Marion and Edna Carl; Bob and Betty Dose’; Jig and Ginger Ramage; Alex and Kay Vraciu.  Sharing those relationships was an unexpected blessing, a byproduct of research and writing.

Because of a major frabup in the the Marine Corps bureaucracy, Joe’s age made him ineligible for a regular commission, never mind that he was the service’s top gun and recipient of the Medal of Honor.  Consequently, when he left the corps in 1946 he helped establish the postwar South Dakota Air National Guard.  (He trained and led a 16-plane aerobatic team; today the limit is four gofigger.)

There’s always been heavy cross-pollination between Airplane People and Gun People.  Doug Champlin was a prime example—he had a custom rifle shop in Oklahoma before he began collecting historic aircraft.  As a ranking fighter ace and devoted hunter, Joe was a prime example of the melding of those two pursuits.  It’s also how I came to own his pistol.

As an Air Force general officer Joe was entitled to take his sidearm with him when he retired.  He kept the M1911A1 and put it away for decades but in 2000, he offered to sell me the last sidearm he carried on active duty.  How I acquired “Joe’s Pistol” is detailed in the accompanying NRA article from 2012.

http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2012/2/21/joe-foss-pistol/

When I brought Joe’s Pistol home I thoroughly cleaned it, took it to the police range to let some of the guys shoot it for bragging rights, then stashed it in my safe.  Fifteen years passed, hardly ever touching the Colt, as I had little intention of shooting so collectible a firearm again.

Then on Thursday, April 16, I realized that the next day was the 100th anniversary of Joe’s birth.  What better way to commemorate his centennial than to shoot Joe’s Pistol again?

Early this morning I met my shooting partner at my home range to shoot the historic .45 one last time.  My pal has known the Foss family nearly as long as I have, and besides, it’s more fun with a likeminded friend who shares the fusilogical pursuits. I decided to be cautious—we would only shoot a few five-round groups with factory ammunition, John M. Browning’s load, .45 caliber 230-grain hardball. 

Precision shooting with a “rack grade” G.I. pistol is an iffy proposition.  Joe’s Colt was wartime production, made in 1942 but nearly pristine.  The bore was extremely clean.  I don’t know how much Joe had shot it but obviously not much because the bluing was still apparent.

However, in 1911 (four years before Joe’s birth) the Army Ordnance Board decided to put nearly unusable sights on the big Colt.  The front is a mere nubbin--almost an afterthought--and the notch in the rear sight is pretty narrow.  On top of that, the trigger is, um, challenging.  I’d guess it lets off at seven or eight pounds, and though it breaks clean with no “creep,” that’s twice the figure of most 1911s today.

I plopped down in a sitting position and shot the first group at a home-made hollow bullseye at 10 yards.  Despite the heavy trigger, four rounds felt good.  Upon inspection, those four went into one inch extreme spread (that’s 0.55 inch net, deducting one bullet diameter.)  The flier opened the group to 2.25 inches (1.8 inches net.)  Not bad for 30 feet: most gunfights occur at 20 or less.  The only glitch: center of the group was 3.25 inches above my aim point.  As I learned, that’s not unusual.

Next I moved back to 20 or 25 yards, shooting at an old (old) U.S. Treasury 20-yard rapid fire bullseye.  Again firing five rounds from sitting, elbows braced on knees, I pressed off four good shots.  They printed exactly two inches extreme spread, or 1.55 inches deducting one diameter--extremely impressive accuracy.  The called flier went about four inches out toward seven o’clock.  Center of the four good shots was seven to eight inches high—consistent with the 10-yard results.  

My partner was more interested in practical than inherent accuracy, and shot two groups.  Firing one-handed at 10 yards, he put seven rounds into less than a pie plate, as fast as the heavy trigger permitted.  Standing back at 20-25, using both hands, he kept five high on the torso—all fight-stopping hits.

As of this evening, Joe’s Pistol is thoroughly cleaned, oiled, and comfy back in the safe.  It’s likely to remain there indefinitely, until the next custodian or an institution acquires it.  Meanwhile, somewhere far above the contrail level, I believe that my friend Joe enjoyed the small yet heartfelt tribute to the centennial of a proud American.

NAS PASCO

In southeastern Washington State is the city of Pasco, just north of the Columbia River.  Today it’s part of the Tri-Cities including Richland and Kennewick, but 70 years ago it was a remote railroad town with a prewar population of 4,000.  My father got to know Pasco pretty well during “War Two.”

John H. “Jack” Tillman was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1922 and learned to fly as a teenager.  He attended Oregon State College in 1940-41, studying engineering, before working as a draftsman for Douglas Aircraft in California.  After Pearl Harbor he entered Preflight at St. Mary’s, California, progressing to the Civilian Flight Training program in Idaho in late 1942.  He reported to NAS Pasco in May1943.

Recalling his time at Pasco, Dad said, “I went through CPT at Nampa, Idaho, with ten other Navy fellows and ten Army.  Our Navy and Marine Corps bunch was sent to Pasco, which was a pretty bleak place in southeastern Washington.  It had been a railroad town before the war, with some airmail flying, but that was about it.  There was no place to go and nothing to do.  Mainly it was windy and cold.

“The base was brand new; in fact, it wasn’t quite finished when we arrived.  There was a large concrete mat and hangars for A, B, and C Flights, plus Assembly and Repair.  But the gym and base exchange weren’t done, though you could get half a cantaloupe with a scoop of ice cream for a dime.

“The base commander was Captain B.B. Smith.  He was kind of a tyrant whose pride and joy was a Staggerwing Beechcraft.  The only other one he’d let fly it was a chief naval aviation pilot.  Sometimes when word got around that BB was due back we’d go down to the flight line to watch him land.  It could be pretty airy.

“Pasco was a primary base, mainly with N2S Stearmans.  They were a lot different from the way the purists think of them, with regulation yellow paint schemes.  Some were clear doped, some were silver and yellow, but they were all beat up.  There was at least one groundloop a day, every day.  Eventually ten N3Ns were ferried in from NAS Seattle to take up the slack.

 “The instructors were a mixture of military and civilians, probably with more civilians when I was there.  They tended to be older and more laid back.  But I noted that my two instructors took more time to critique each flight than the Navy pilots.“  Practically the first thing they impressed on us was that we were never, ever, to fly over the Hanford area northwest of base.  Naturally, that was the worst thing they could have done because practically every cadet who soloed made a beeline for Hanford, to see what he could see.  There was nothing obvious out there—just more sand and sagebrush.

“Rumor Control had two theories as to what was going on at Hanford.  Republicans said it was a secret factory making Roosevelt campaign buttons.  Others said, ‘No, they’re making the front ends of horses for shipment to D.C. and final assembly!’

“Right at the end of the war, after the A-bombs, we learned that Hanford was a nuclear research facility.  The plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was produced there.

“The base had some enlisted men eligible for flight pay—cooks and whatnot.  A lot of them were terrified, because I think we lost three cadets while I was there.  One got into a spin, another got clobbered in a landing accident, and I think the other damaged his tail feathers while dropping rocks on improvised targets.  Another guy went berserk, flat hatting all over the country, chasing a phone company truck off the road.  Finally a bunch of instructors boxed him in and forced him to land.  He was gone forthwith; we never heard what happened.

“Anyway, one of our pastimes was dive-bombing with rocks.  We’d have some sailor in the back seat jump out at one of the auxiliary fields and pick u three or four good-sized rocks.  Then we’d fly out to the Columbia River, which still had some small islands before the dams were built.  Some of us cadets held bombing contests to see who could come closest to a spot on an island.  It was illegal as hell, but nobody seemed to mind as long as you brought your airplane back in one piece.

Jack completed training at Pasco in July 1943, proceeding to NAS Corpus Christi, Texas.  After the war he continued flying and restored two WW II aircraft, a Naval Aircraft Factory N3N-3, and in the early 1970s the world’s only flying Douglas Dauntless dive bomber, which was based at Pasco until space became available at Pendleton, Oregon.

Jack died in March 2014, age 92.

I was acquainted with a few other Pasco aviators via the American Fighter Aces Association.  In 1944 the NAS became an operational base, supporting carrier air groups preparing for deployment to the Pacific.  One of them was Air Group Nine which had completed a combat cruise aboard USS Essex (CV-9) in 1943-44.

Among the leading lights of Fighting Squadron Nine was Lieutenant Eugene Valencia, already an ace with seven victories.  In training his new four-plane division he spared no effort to gain as much experience as possible.  That included cadging bootleg fuel from the eminently bribable flight-line crews eager to exchange high-octane gas for booze.  It was of course illegal as hell but Gene was a flamboyant, press-on type of aviator who saw no reason to let regulations interfere with flying.  His charismatic personality won him admirers up and down the chain of command, and never moreso than when VF-9 completed its 1945 deployment aboard USS Lexington (CV-16) and Yorktown (CV-10).  In that time his division downed 43 Japanese planes with all three of his pilots achieving ace status. 

After the war the Navy sold the air station to the base to the city, which still operates it as the municipal airport.  A local historical group is raising funds to preserve the original building, and I hope you’ll visit the web site at “Save The Tower.”  http://savetheoldtower.com/ .