by CDR Jack Woodul, USNR(Ret)
Back in the days before Mr. OPEC cornered the JP-5 jet fuel market and before the Rooskies started swapping MiGs for Levis 501 blue jeans, it was acceptable practice for Naval Aviators to growl menacingly and belch lots of petrol out of tailpipes. Steely knives were to be held between white teeth, and gas chits were liberally expended at exotic Air Force bases and naval air stations on opposite coasts during "cross-country training flights." Life was good.
Puresome's only problem in the Naval Reservista squadron was that the legendary 55-ft.-long, swept-wing, supersonic F-8 Crusader was often bent. Pilots were frequently treated to the spectacle of teams of frustrated maintenance troops standing in pools of red hydraulic fluid as they madly cranked speed-handles, trying to undo hundreds of dzus fasteners to get at hydraulic leaks. Or pilots listening to their UHF radio make a zishing sound like a cigar being stubbed out in a coffee mug and the subsequent silence of the lambs. Or the Tacan needle refusing to point to any station. Or the generator going "clunk," most of the instru ments going dead and holding one's breath to see if anything on the ram air turbine circuit was going to work.
If an aircraft was lucky enough to get airborne, there were lots of radar vector requests by frustrated pilots and inquiries on guard channel by worried controllers and exasperated fliers. No one was ever complacent enough to launch without an ONC chart or Texaco road map for visual navigation.
But for a bagger like Puresome, it was "no hill for a stepper." The object was to get airborne, then improvise. Radars were for F-4 pukes and didn't work anyway. IFR flights became "I Follow Roads," and section and sometimes division launches often became solo launches. The situation made for interesting and sometimes hairy flights, but of course it had to be done.
Today's early morning launch was no different. Puresome's fearless leader had gone through two aircraft before launching his nav bag at maintenance control in frustration, and Puresome had cheerfully put thumb to nose and waggled his fingers at his dejected lead as he blew an arrogant raspberry as he taxied by.
"I got mine -- pull up the anchor!" Youthly thought joyously as the burner thumped him in the butt.
Of course, Puresome had a plan. Rocketing into a beautiful, clear Texas sky, he was on a Victor Foxtrot Romero flight plan and, as long as he stayed an acceptable distance from the gaily painted airliners converging on the international airport where the big jet engines whined, he was on his own and didn't have to talk to anyone.
Puresome's complex mission was a high-low-high nav exercise that included an attack on a hostile ranch house and cow lot belonging to a pal. Since the area of positive control started at 24,000 feet, Puresome leveled off at 23,500 feet and turned west. Even though it was the wrong altitude for the direction, he felt at least semi-virtuous for staying out of high altitude airliner country. Puresome enjoyed the scenery, confident that he would have no trouble in finding the difficult first check point, the city of Lubbock, Texas.
At nine miles a minute, it didn't take long. Puresome passed over the city, going all squinty-eyed at the unsuspecting white T-38 and T-37 grapes flitting about the Air Force base on the far side of town. Following a westbound highway, Puresome readied himself for the bend in the road that marked his swoop from altitude toward the target. He noted with satisfaction that he would be attacking out of the sun.
Finally, Puresome eased out of altitude, leaving the throttle up and picking up airspeed. He craned his neck around the gunsight, wet com pass and angle of attack indicator that cluttered up the front windscreen as he looked for the ranch house, barns and cow lots that constituted an oasis in the New Mexico desert. With any luck, the enemy rancher would be drinking coffee while the cattle munched high-tech fat-pills in their troughs, marbling up their t-bones.
"Ya haha ha!" Puresome chortled as he picked up the target, simultaneously picking up the leading edge droops, advancing the throttle to full military and opening the oil cooler door, which was known to cause a whoostling noise at high speed that was known to cause organisms or soiled knickers in susceptible people. Just for drill, Puresome cranked the gunsight rheostat up to max bright.
At 550 knots and 50 feet, Puresome
delivered his simulated ordnance against the completely
unsuspecting Jim Willy Cattle Company. Not a No. 4 shotgun pellet
was fired or cow flop was hurled. He could only guess at the
psychological effect that his great, screaming war bird had on
his victims, but he figgered "that ought to get them out of
the house!" as he swooped up in a giant oblique egg for the
re-attack.
As he zoomed for space, Puresome sucked the throttle to idle and popped the speed brakes. As the airspeed decayed, he re extended the cruise droops, dropped the gear and raised the wing, pointing the nose down again back toward the target. For added flair, he put out the refueling probe and dropped the tailhook. When Puresome went by the front yard again at 50 feet and 150 knots, the whole family was outside waving madly.
Puresome rocked his wings in acknowledgment of their adulation, then lit the burner, sucked up the gear, lowered the wing, pulled in the refueling probe and upped the tailhook as the fighter accelerated. Picking up smash, the "Meanest Mother in the Valley" rolled in again.
The only reason Puresome could afford to violate the "only-an-ass-makes-a-second-pass" rule was that the only witnesses within a hundred sections were Jim Willy and his family, a bunch of notably inarticulate Hereford cattle, plus various jackrabbits and rattlesnakes. And the entire Jim Willy bunch liked having their coffee spilled and wild-eyed cows bellowing and trying to organize a stampede.
"Damn, Jim Willy!" a worried Puresome axed following his first such mission many months ago. "Doesn't that abort your cows or make them permanently batshit?"
"New! They love it! Besides, if they give me any trouble, I'll turn 'em into baloney!"
Thus assured, Puresome worked in re-strikes whenever he could. And as he had the flathatting franchise in this, his home state, re-strikes happened fairly often. He even worked out some codes. If Puresome left the area in a northerly direction, it meant "I'm going to Desert Hole Air Force Base -- call my folks to come get me." And if he left in any other direction, it meant "See ya another time!"
But the high point in the campaign against the Jim Willy complex came when Puresome called up his pal the night before a planned mission to see if a suitable audience would be present.
"Yessir!" was the answer. "Not only will we be around, we got a bunch of spray plane guys here who are putting Agent Orange on my scrub oak. What time you gonna be here?" Jim Willy and Puresome locked in a hard time-on-target.
As fate and some luck would have it, Puresome roared out of the sun at the appointed time and thoroughly thrashed the joint. The spray-plane guys enjoyed it so much that they invited Puresome to come fly their mighty Stearman shrub-busters.
But Puresome knew full well his days were numbered, the clock was ticking and he was pushing the envelope. The circle of witnesses had expanded, and there had been a bit of a near thing when he had gone to nearby Desert Hole AFB after an attack.
Since Puresome was honor-bound to do some impressive flying for the Air Force pukes, he zipped into the break as fast as the Crusader would go in basic engine, yanked and banked to the downwind at idle, hit the speedbrakes and grabbed six g's or so. He took pains to keep the nose of the aircraft on the horizon, which was barely discernible through the fog of the g forces. Naturally, he was still at the speed of heat when he called abeam for landing clearance. He was real busy dropping gear, raising the wing, slowing down and aiming at a suitable impact point when the tower cleared him to land.
"Alpha Fox 112, cleared to land, wind 220 at 15 knots, be advised, mumble mumble."
"Roger, Alpha Fox 112 cleared to land," responded the busy Puresome. With things more or less under control as he bracketed the final approach rails, Puresome's hemorrhoidal sense fired a question mark to his brain. "Whut was that mumble mumble?"
"Desert Hole tower, Alpha Fox 112, say again mumble mumble," Puresome axed.
"Alpha Fox 112, be advised the approach barrier is up," tower responded quickly.
"Boy, a barrier engagement on the approach end might ruin your whole day," Puresome mused just about the time he happened to glance at his hook handle, which was . . . down! He'd put it there for the air show dirty-configuration pass and not retracted it! Yaaaaaaa!
Puresome had just enough time to do his thousand-mile-an-hour hands thing to raise the hook handle, do an excess airspeed zoom over the clearly visible barrier and land further down the customary 12,000ft. Air Force runway. Thus his day was not ruined, but his flight suit nearly was.
Then there was the high-speed pass by completely irresponsible and unknown militarists over his mother-in-law's farm house that, inexplicably, broke windows. And it had to be made by some totally deranged F-100 driver from the Air Corps base that probably was disoriented one night, turned off all his navigation lights and lit his afterburner 50 feet above the house of COL and Miz RA. Puresome in a dusty New Mexican town. Youthly's parents totally agreed with their neighbors who blamed the ruckus on the Air Force.
Somewhere in a dusty dossier with his name on it, Puresome knew the circumstantial evidence was accumulating.
But it was a highly publicized single-plane Alpha Strike on a defenseless Indian pueblo that permanently shut down the "Rolling Thunder East" campaign (see "Dances With Womens," The Hook, Fa '92, Page 14). Everybody knew that the culprit had to be Puresome. Only hard photographic evidence of the real culprit gave Youthly's child bride any respite from the many sympathy calls for her husband's expected and impending execution.
Puresome had not been raised a totally stupid boy. He knew for whom the bell tolled -- that the hell-bent usually got where they were going, and the times, they were a'changing. This insight was soon strengthened by an imperial edict from all-highest Oscar Foxtrot Naval Persons that it was illegal and immoral to fly in visual conditions without a formal instrument clearance, the better to monitor by radar one's position, altitude and hat-size. It was great for the Canuglie Retention Program, and there was a certain amount of joy to be derived from telling some stressed-out air traffic controller that you were low fuel state and were going straight home.
Clearly an era had passed, and something wild and free had gone away. Elliot Ness and the Internal Revenue Service had come to Dodge City. Puresome sensed that there was lots more to come. But he knew that, in the countryside, the campesinos whispered that the Portales Gonsleenger was not dead, but was hiding out in the hills waiting to appear on a black horse on the darkest nights in the most unexpected places. Youthly bided his time, prayed for stealth technology and vowed not to disappoint them.
And on some nights in smoky bars where spray pilots congregate, a grizzled old Stearman jockey will get a far-away look in his eye and remember that he was there the day the Jim Willy ranch was whoostled.