C-130 Anti-missile Defense System In Action

 

 

 

 

Operation "Nickel Grass"

Yom Kippur

 

In 1973 the Arab world started the Yom Kipper war against the Israelis, and of course the American Government stepped up to support their allies with equipment and war supplies. I was assigned to Charleston AFB in South Carolina as a Flight Engineer on C-141's during this period and was on one of the first aircraft to takeoff toward Israel with supplies.

 

Our first stop was Warner Robins AFB in Macon Georgia, a large Supply Base for the Air Force. We had a crew of two Pilots, one Navigator, two Flight Engineers and one loadmaster. We landed at Warner Robins where ground crews proceeded to load sixty-five thousand pounds of high explosive shells and ammunition for the Tanks of the Israeli Military.

 

We were loaded and ready to go just about midnight and took off headed east toward Lajes AFB in the Azores. The Flight Plan was to crew rest at Lajes, then takeoff and fly through the Straits of Gibraltar. It had to be an overwater flight all the way to Lod Air Port in Tel Aviv because the Arabs were angry with the United States for helping Israel in their war effort and threatened to cut off oil to any country in Europe who gave assistance to the United States in their support of Israel.

 

This put a lot of pressure on the Navigator who had to navigate us over International waters all the way to Israel from the Azores. We were under orders that if we had an in-flight emergency that caused us to have to make an emergency landing that we were to ditch the plane in the ocean as no country along the route of flight would give us permission to land. They did not want to have their oil supply cut off by the Arabs for aiding the Israelis.

 

Our Pilot was Barry, one of the funniest Pilots it was my pleasure to know. I spent many trips with Barry flying all over the world and had so much fun with this guy that I knew we were in for some adventures with him as Pilot in command.

 

My other Flight Engineer was a guy named Jack Anderson, who was to be shot down in a C-130 by a missile over Africa while flying a UN mission a few years later.

 

We took off early the next morning after a night at the NCO Club and split the Straits right down the middle. We were cruising at 35,000 feet and passed by the Southern tip of Spain, south of Italy and south of Greece heading east to Israel. Normally at 35,000 feet we would start our descent 100 miles out from the airport we planned to land.

 

Sometime in the recent past, Israeli soldiers had blown up a Russian airplane at an Amman, Jordan airport. This really ticked off a terrorist group called the "Black September Group" They vowed to blow up or shoot down an American plane in retaliation for this act by the Israelis. Because of this threat, the Israeli Defense Force would send out fighter aircraft to escort our cargo planes once we entered Israeli air space. This just happened to coincide with the 100 miles distance from the Airport we were heading for.

 

We were tooling along around 600 knots just southeast of Greece when the Israeli F-4 fighters joined up with us off our wing tips. We got so involved with taking pictures of these fighters and watching them flip upside down next to us to give us better pictures of them that we passed our descent point. Instead of the normal 100 miles to descend, we were down to thirty miles from the airport and had to get down fast. All aircraft, by flight rules have to fly no faster than 250 knots at Ten Thousand feet and lower so that they can be controlled by ground controllers.

 

We could not legally go out of Israeli airspace to slow down as their country is so small that we would have crossed into Arab airspace and that was an invitation to shoot us down and we sure didn't relish that idea! Barry cracked the Flight Spoilers, pulled the throttles back to idle, and pushed the nose over.

 

We came screaming down with the Mediterranean Sea filling the windscreen! 30,000 feet, 25,000 feet, 20,000 feet, 15,000 feet, the altimeter was unwinding as if we were in an elevator! Ten miles to go and we were just passing through 10,000 feet. We were supposed to be at 250 knots, but was still scorching the sky at 550 knots!

 

We were teasing Barry that he was gonna get busted for breaking all kinds of flight rules and he was gonna get a speeding ticket to boot! We were laughing, but he was sweating up a storm trying to get 200,000 pounds of aircraft safely down with 65,000 pounds of high explosives right behind our butts.

 

He got us down to our approach altitude but we were still screaming through the air at 300 knots as we crossed the shoreline into Israel. We slowed down to 200 knots as we passed over Lod Airport and had to make 4 circles before we got the airplane slowed enough for our approach.

 

I told Barry that if we had hit any one of the hundreds of airplanes flying around there he would have won the war for the Arabs when 65,000 pounds of explosives blew Tel Aviv and Lod off the face of the earth. He asked me if I thought the Arabs would give his family free gasoline for the rest of their lives if he had won the war for the Arabs.

 

We eventually got the aircraft on the ground and parked safely. When we opened the door we had a welcoming committee of Golda Mier, and Moyshe Dyan, the Premier, and Minister of the Israeli Defense Force. They gave each one of us a Key Ring as a welcoming gift. I still have mine, it is a little faded, but a reminder of how we almost won the Yom Kipper war for the Arabs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chief B-727 Ground School Instructor Continental Airlines

In the summer of 1984 during my last quarter in college prior to graduating, a company that flew and maintained a plush B-727 for some Arabian Sheik, Flight International, Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia hired me.

In addition to flying the Sheik around whenever, and wherever he wanted, the additional responsibility of the company was to prepare civilian pilots to take the FAA Written Exam for the Flight Engineer Rating.

My position was to Instruct Pilots in preparation to take the FAA Flight Engineer Exam to earn the FAA Rating. Pilots needed this rating to be considered for a position with the airlines, because most new hires started off in the Second Officer, or Flight Engineer position.

I worked out of Peachtree DeKalb Airport (PDK) in Chamblee, Georgia where we had classrooms and a cockpit trainer. The condition of my hire was to complete the class, take the written and flying FAA exam (pass them of course) and then began teaching the B-727, which most of the questions on the exam were about.

For a short time I was taking my senior level classes at Kennesaw State preparing to get my degree and at the same time training for the Flight Engineer written and flight check ride.

I was a busy puppy during this time and what made it worse was a demanding college playmate that was angry with me for the time I spent in the books. It was great fun appeasing her though and I kept her happy while burning the candle at both ends, ya might say.

Around the time I received my degree in 1984, Flight International bought a B-727 full simulator and moved down closer to Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta. I had completed the course and took my checkride with Fed Ex in Memphis, Flight International had a contract with Fed Ex to give its' students an aircraft line checkride at Memphis on available aircraft.

The check ride was a whirlwind of a ride with an FAA examiner sitting behind me as I did the checklists. We took off, made a 360-degree turn, lined up with the runaway and landed. All in about five minutes. I passed, but my head was spinning for two hours from everything whizzing by so fast.

There were two other guys getting their checkride at the same time, so we made three takeoffs and landings. One of the other dudes failed his checkride and I didn’t feel it was prudent to discuss it since they were paying customers and I was a paid employee of Flight International. It was a very quiet ride to the airport for our trip home.

As I became more experienced and became qualified to teach the simulator I started becoming discouraged with things and people at Flight International, so I started sending resumes to all the airlines.

I was interviewed by several Airlines with Continental seeming to be the most interested. I flew to Houston Intercontinental for an interview with a gentleman I grew to really like over the next few years.

Ted Rasch was the Chief of Ground School Training for all the aircraft that Continental Airlines was flying. He was a German/American citizen, who spent four years in the American Air Force, got out of the military to work for Eastern Airlines in Atlanta.

A few years later he was laid off and ended up working at Texas Air owned by Frank Lorenzo. As Frank Lorenzo expanded and started gobbling up airlines old Ted’s position expanded along with the company.

At the time of my interview a corporate war was going on between the old heads of Continental out in Los Angeles and the new upstarts of Lorenzo’s gang who had the audacity to buy the large old giant, Continental. The old Continental was based in Los Angeles with huge hangers and huge buildings that housed operations and classrooms.

Frank Lorenzo and the new regime wanted the operations moved to Houston Intercontinental Airport where Ted ran the Training Department. I was unaware of this when I agreed to be hired and based in Houston at Terminal C in IAH.

I was not too happy about leaving Atlanta and wasn’t too pleased with the weather in Houston. My college playmate was not too happy with me either for taking the job in Houston. I really had no choice, because as it turned out, unknown to me, Flight International sold out to a small outfit in North Carolina and I would have had to move anyway, so Houston it was.

I kept my apartment in Atlanta, and rented a room in Houston from a reservations clerk. I spent the week in Houston and weekends at home in Atlanta

This became crazy sometimes when I had to go to Los Angeles to teach a class on Monday morning, so ended up commuting to LA many times from Atlanta.

The B-727 fleet was the largest at Continental and therefore had the most pilots to be trained, both Initial Training for new hires and annual recurrent training for old heads. The old 727 Lead Instructor out in California wanted to keep classes out in LA rather than Houston. He bumped heads many times with Ted, the boss, about this and many times I was caught in the middle.

Besides LA, we had 727 pilots based in Hawaii, Denver, Guam, Houston, and New Jersey. So we had to teach recurrent classes in all these locations. The Lead instructor out in LA did not much care for me since I was hired by old Texas Air’s Ted and at Ted’s insistence taught many classes in Houston.

He overruled Ted several times causing me to fly out to LA in the morning to teach a class only to have Ted demand that I return on the next flight back to Houston.

After several months of this I decided I'd had enough and turned in my resignation. I was sick of the weather in Houston, sick of the round trips to LA and back in the same day. Besides, an old friend of mine from Flight International had been hired at Air Atlanta and offered me a job there. I was looking forward to returning to Atlanta.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my resignation caused everything to come to a head with the warring factions in LA and Houston. With the results being all LA facilities were closed, all old timer instructors took retirement and the whole Training Department was moved to Houston, with LA eventually closing all Continental Operations down.

To top it all off I was offered the position of Chief Ground School Instructor of the B-727 at Continental Airlines.

If I thought there would be peace now at Continental I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Another war was being fought that I soon learned about and that was between old Continental pilots who had gone out on strike, were replaced by scabs, and now were court ordered to be returned to duty.

It became my chore to bring this very angry group of pilots who had been out of the cockpit for years back up to speed and requalified to fly first, as Second Officers, and then as Captains of the B-727.

Looking back at all the turmoil I jumped into back in 1984 I think I would have done things differently. Since I was mostly only teaching returning striking pilots they began to appreciate my predicament and actually began to like me and treat me as one of them.

They hated everything about Lorenzo and the new Continental and what they had been through and were very vocal about it. Some had lost lifetime savings fighting Lorenzo and then trying to start New Orleans Air only to have it shutdown and go broke losing the rest of their retirement funds.

I shared a condo at first with one of these Pilots named Harry and this was about the craziest SOB I have ever run across. He sold cars at a used car lot in Dallas while out on strike, before being allowed to return to the cockpit and man, it took everything I could think of to get this guy trained and qualified. He eventually went back to being Captain of a DC-9, which I was fortunate enough to never have flown on with him.

As Chief Ground School Instructor on the B-727, the largest fleet at Continental I had the help of several Instructors assigned to me. I had no choice in the hiring or firing of these individuals and ended up getting chewed out many times for the failure to perform the jobs assigned to them.

One big no no in the Flying Training business is to cut pilots loose from FAA required Training Sessions early, yet sign FAA forms declaring that they had completed the required hours of training.

I had one Instructor, a former Marine Corps Pilot, who did this every chance he could. The pilots would beg him to release them early to catch flights home all over the country and he would do it. He would then sign off their training as completed.

I would then be called on the carpet for this transgression. Nothing I could do caused this guy to stop doing this. I had to fly to Denver, LA, Guam and other FOBs just to chew this guy out for screwing up and he only continued to do it over and over again.

I had two other Instructors who I could not depend on to be on time to classes they were scheduled to hold.

I soon learned that an old Texas Air Instructor, who didn’t care for my friendship with returning strikers, was watching every Instructor I had, only to report them when invariably they did screw up. I got so damn angry at the whole thing that I confronted this clown in the Pilot’s Lounge and offered to adjust his attitude.

Well, of course he reported me to a friend of his who just happened to be the Vice President for Training at Continental.

This blow up cost me my position as Lead Instructor on the B-727, but as always, my lemons turned to lemonade when Ted, who supported me through all this, moved me over to be the assistant instructor on the B-747 at Continental. We had less of them and a smaller fleet of pilots, so it was easy to switch over and learn the B-747.

This was early 1988 and I had been at Continental going on four years. I still did not like Houston, too hot and too much humidity. I heard about UPS starting their own Airline by buying up smaller airlines to obtain their certificates and one of those outfits they bought was the group that had bought Flight International when I left for employment with Continental.

I drove up for an Interview with UPS at Louisville, KY and was hired as part of the Initial Cadre to start the B-747 training program at the UPS Flight Training Department.

The first 108 pilots trained to fly the B-747 at UPS were trained in my classroom, by the Training Program I designed and implemented.

The rest is history.

 

 

 

"Flipping Switches"

 

In my former life as an Instructor Flight Engineer and a Systems Instructor at 3 well-known airlines I was adamant to the extreme in Aircraft Safety issues. This included correctly reading Check Lists and especially Emergency Procedure Checklists.

 

When it comes to safety issues of passengers and aircraft operation it was my contention that you could never be too cautious and that included phrases used during operation of aircraft in all phases of flight.

 

As an Instructor I would emphasize on a daily basis the correct terminology in aircraft systems. We had many foreign language pilots in training and we needed to get them headed in the direction of common terms and phrases.

 

There are many examples of phrases these students butchered in their daily training and none so bad as their use of “Flipping Switches.”

 

When a Checklist” declared, “Place a switch “On” or “Off” or “Standby” and the student would simply say, “Flip The Switch” I’d stop everything and start my “Switch Position Lecture” which would drive them up the wall on a daily basis.

 

I convinced them that they’d never get out of my Ground School into the Simulator Training Phase of Initial Training until they had the vernacular down to a “T” on the subject of placing a switch to the, “On” “Off” or “Standby” position.

 

No one ever graduated from an Initial Training class of mine that simply “Flipped Switches”

 

I know this may be a minor point to some, but I am familiar with several accidents in the airline business that came about by misunderstandings of simple phrases, such as, “What position was a switch in” becomes very important in determining what caused a fatal accident.

 

 

 

 

Desert Storm

The government has a program called the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, (CRAF). In case of National emergencies when the Air Force would be hard pressed to support the needs of all branches of service, the CRAF is activated.

During peacetime the government pays a fee to the airlines for them to beef up the structural strength of aircraft in their fleet. Then, when needed the aircraft are called up for service to haul personnel and equipment all over the world to aid the Air Force in airlift responsibilities.

I was instructing and flying as a Flight Engineer on the B-747 at UPS during the buildup toward Desert Storm. We were called up along with several passenger airlines. We hauled equipment on our cargo aircraft and the passenger types carried military personnel.

UPS aircraft ferried Marines and their equipment from Twenty-nine Palms California through Louisville, KY and Rome, Italy to Dhahran, AB Saudi Arabia. I lucked out and was assigned to the Rome, Saudi Arabia leg. I was based out of the Holiday Inn in Rome and about every other day we would take an aircraft down range to Dhahran, unload the equipment and return to Rome. That made for some pretty long days, but it beat having to crew rest in Saudi Arabia.

As I lay at pool side waiting for an aircraft to arrive from the states to ferry down range, I thought about my war in Vietnam and the mud, dirt and grime I had to live with there compared to how I was participating in this war. In Vietnam I was a lowly Sergeant, but here, because I was a civilian flight crew being used by the military they gave me a Geneva Convention Card with the rank of Colonel.

Now, if I had survived a crash and was captured I wondered if the enemy would treat me any different than if it had Sergeant on the ID Card.

On one trip as we returned through the airport we met a flight crew from ATA who were doing the same as us, but hauling passengers on L-1011s while we were hauling equipment with Marine escorts. As I talked to one of the flight attendants (naturally) I learned that her bags and purse had been stolen in the airport and the crew had been gone a month without being paid, so they could not help her out.

I adopted this flight attendant and made sure she had whatever she needed until an emergency supply of money could be sent to her. Her schedule was pretty close to what ours was and we would see each other down range in Saudi Arabia and then we'd meet for dinner back at the Holiday Inn in Rome. I thought this was one fine way to fight a war!

I spent eight years in Spain in my younger days and made several trips to Rome, so I was not into the sightseeing gig as the rest of my crew was. While they tramped around Rome I was laying out in the sun at a beautiful swimming pool with my adopted flight attendant.

As all good things do, my wartime experience in Rome during Desert Storm came to an end with a direct flight from Rome to Louisville, KY in an empty cargo hauling B-747. Sure hated for that experience to be over with.

Flying The Line...

...One night just south of the tip of Greenland

At 35,000 feet over the North Atlantic on a moonless night you had better be instrument qualified, or you could end up as fish bait as one recent popular member of society did. The cockpit of a C-141 in these conditions at 3:00 AM is a lonely, mysterious place. Only two of us awake watching the autopilot maintain correct heading and altitude.

Ground speed, with a good tailwind and we're surfing over the ocean toward Prestwick Scotland at a blistering ground speed of 750 miles per hour.

The INS was new at the time and only nine waypoints could be inserted. If you did not leapfrog the coordinates and the Aircraft reached the last waypoint you would find yourself in an airplane making a 180 degree turn toward the first waypoint inserted into the INS. (Inertial Navigation System computer) Nowadays I hear you can plug in an unending stream of waypoints. Guess that is progress.

This one particular night I looked out the left window and got my first actual look at the Aurora Borealis! The Northern Lights! Wow, I almost spilled my cold black coffee all over the center console in wonderment.

What a sight. A phosphorus pea green in color. It was streaks of light dancing a slow dance. They were nearly vertical lines but not quite. they angled toward the ground on almost a 60 degree line. Now with no other light available that night it made your equilibrium feel that the plane was in a 30 degree bank, or turn to the right.

Your body screamed for you to bank those wings back to the left. One look at the attitude indicator told you point blank that your body was lying to you and the plane was actually flying true and level.

We just stared at the wonderment of those lights. I wanted to wake the rest of the crew up so that they could enjoy the sight too, but knew they would not be pleased to have their slumber interrupted.

Watching those lights reminded me of a recording of radio bloopers I had purchased many years ago. There was an announcer interviewing a woman who swore she could change the pattern of the Northern Lights by flapping sheets at the lights. The announcer could not contain his laughter and it forced the listener to laugh also.

Well, we got to giggling about that record and my laughter grew until I spilled the coffee I was drinking and I woke the rest of the crew up.

About that time the Northern Lights disappeared from view and our story of why we were laughing so hard was not enjoyed by the poor souls we woke up!