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Canyon Flights My Grand Canyon story starts about a week ahead of the story to provide the whole picture, or maybe 15 years ahead. I had heard stories about the cables from my UPT days in 63-64 and remembered that they had been in the FLIP special notices.. Pete Flieshacker was four or five months behind me in UPT and lived in the same area in Lubbock. Pete had been born in Germany, grown up in Argentina and entered the USAF before he was a US citizen. He did not discuss how his family had made it from Germany to Argentina. Pete had a tour in the 70s with the RAAF flying Mirages. When I arrived at Sheppard to instruct in the T-38 in the spring of 77, Pete was there. I needed some kind of XC checkout before I could start instructing I guess or for some other reason, so we went off for an out and back to Barksdale. Did a touch and go or two and the gear wouldn't come up. We landed to get a full load of gas and were planning to go back with the gear down below 240, the gear speed. Orders came down to have it fixed. Took three days or so. Meanwhile we are in the Q in our flight suits, Pete was smallish and proceeded to strip down, wrap a towel around his waist, and go wash our flight suits, his underwear and my T-shirt while I hung out in the room in my skivvies. Got the gear fixed and headed back to Sheppard by way of Tinker. Made a touch and go at Tinker and the burner didn't light, something called a T-6 switch, perhaps I have forgotten over the years, that closed the nozzles before the light. This time orders came down for us to go to the bus station and get a bus home and bring all our flight gear, parachutes included. I was incredulous. I just come from AFTEC, now AFOTEC, and was used to traveling all over the country TDY on the airlines and could not imagine being told to ride a bus. Went to the bus station and got the last bus of the day from OK City to Whicita Falls. We got the last two seats on the bus which was already late to leave. When we got on everyone was talking. When they saw us in flight suits, helmets, parachutes etc. the bus immediately went as silent as if we had been from Mars. The only seats left were up front by the driver but each had an occupant in half of seat with one half "vacant" if you can call the half left with a 250#er in the other half vacant. I squeezed in. A front had gone through with rain and tornados the night before. Somewhere before we got out of OK, we came to a long bridge that was flooded, water was flowing over the bridge several feet deep. The OK highway patrol was on either side of the bridge and a few vehicles were making it accross. We headed accross at the same time a car came from the opposite side. The bus was okay as long as we were in the center of the bridge. When we met the car the driver pulled over to the right, the upstream side of the bridge. The bus started floating down stream, hit the car, bounced off the guard rail, and got traction just before I was going to jump out the door. The car and bus made it accross to opposite sides of the river. The highwas patrol decided it was time to stop travel accross the bridge. We made it to Wichita Falls sometime before midnight. Pete's wife met us, mine wouldn't come. We had not unpacked our boxes yet, the tornado fringes had done a little damage to our barn, we had bought a place where we could have horses, and blew the yard furniture into the pool. The reason why they wanted us home was so I could go fly in the Grand Canyon the next morning and I had agreed to go. Wife was not a happy camper. At that time, Sheppard was GAF fighter pilot training. The GAF was making a movie about pilot training in the USA and we were off to fly a four ship formation in the Grand Canyon and over Hoover Dam with a spare and a camera ship for several days. When we got to Luke to stage from, I said "what about the cables". "What cables," was the answer. I researched the FLIP and could not find any cables mentioned. Off we went. Sometimes, I flew four and sometimes I was the spare. Twice in my life, I have watched an aircraft skim up the side of a mountain waiting for the fireball. The first time was at USAFA when the Tbirds were in F-105s. This was the second. I was spare. The camera ship was close to the formation flown by a GAF F-104 pilot with the GAF camera man in back. He was banked about 90 degrees for a good shot when the formation turned into him, he rolled on over, split to the bottom, and back up the opposite side. They made it only on a good burner light. I had one final turn where the best student in the class stalled us, almost, that the burner light saved my ass. I wouldn't want to rely on it to make it over a mountain. Incidentally, in the B-52H, got a trip up the side and over the top of a 14,000 foot mountain in Montana with the terrain avoidance radar set on 700 feet. The very first of my USAFA 63 classmates to be killed in aircraft accident was on his first solo in the T-37 at Craig. He was buzzing his grandparents farm. Too many tragedies like that have occurred for me to get any joy from even hearing about buzzing. Whenever I had the chance, I would take the T-38 studs up over an overcast deck and have them do a roll. When they went in the clouds for not pushing negative gs inverted, I would tell them they were dead. I hope they learned not to do it instead of how to do it. Phil Maywald
Phil, Jim ---------------------------------- When we got a "newbie" in the WC-135 squadron at McClellan, his first "low level" over the pole into Norway out of Alaska (2500 AGL) we'd tell the new "co" to keep a sharp lookout for Polar Bears. The flight engineer would pretend "switchology" screw up to talk to the other crewmembers and would make a remark to the effect that the "new guy" had not seen even one where the "older heads" had seen a lot on their first mission. That would further "up" the tension for the poor bastard who wanted to be "accepted". Sometimes it took two or three of these low level trips until the guy finally "broke" and asked why he wasn't seeing any Polar Bears. The reply (the gotcha) was that at such low levels they would hear us coming and put their paws over their noses and shut their eyes........ ....too good. R2 ----------------- The recent postings about flying into the Grand Canyon made me recall one of my Laughlin UPT "out & back" flights. We left lovely Laughlin-land and went up that direction (Luke or maybe DM - CRS) and then planned a low-level flight to Nellis. Taking off about dusk, I managed to do OK on the nav part of things, but was puzzled when my IP said, "I've got it" and we departed from my carefully planned route. I soon found myself down IN the canyon and there was just enough light to see the walls on either side - some rather close at times, but I wasn't worried. After all, my IP was a seasoned veteran with lots more flying time than this lowly student. I figured I just might learn something important. We were rather enjoying this little diversion from the syllabus when ther was a sudden flash of light above us. In retrospect, we determined that we had flown under one of those cables and it must have had lights on it. We abruptly left for a much higher altitude and there was never any further discussion of the incident. Now my intrepid instructor wasn't the only 65-XH FACnet member I know of on
the net (Right, Joe Sowa?) and I'm wondering if that fool isn't lurking out
there somewhere. Anybody willing to fess up? Since we seemed to be in the confessional box, I learned about the cables in -- -------------------- Rumors of pilots flying through death valley
My borther flew F-4s with the Marines and regaled me with a tale of going Only made one pass as the element of surprise made certain his tail number was not reported! He said the driver swerved all over the place, but didn't wreck! Dale ----- MessageDale, ---------------- I've forgotten who the B/Gen was who related this story to me. He had gone to March AFB for a currency flight in a KC-135 and they were scheduled for a heavy weight take-off and mission. They were lined up for a north departure on the runway that runs generally north and south. He released the brakes they broke ground without too much runway remaining. All of a sudden the number four engine blew up but didn't damage number three or the airframe. Then he said, "If you've ever wanted to buzz the L.A. basin at altitudes between 50 and 500 feet, you should have been there." The second event occurred in about 1965 when I was assigned as a new co-pilot to the 28th MATS Squadron at Hill AFB flying C-124s. The C-124s had been released from their air-drop mission because of wing crack problems but a crisis had come up (maybe the Cuban missile crisis) when that capability may be needed. The 28th was tasked to provide a provisional detachment for six weeks to Yuma MCAS to retrain cadres of IPs and FEs for McChord, Travis and Norton. Normally co-pilots were not required but any time the IPs only had one pilot in training I went along to build up my time. This night the mission had gone as planned and we were going home. To make the navigators job easier we flew down a long, long stretch of railroad tracks leading to Yuma. We were tooling along at 500 feet down the tracks when far up ahead we could see the blink, blink, blink of the headlights on a train coming toward us. We were lead in the three ship formation and the IP who will remain nameless but his initials were DC gave the order to close up the formation, put the landing gear down and hold for his command to turn on all the landing lights, taxi lights and over-wing lights. At about a half mile out he gave the command, "Lights on now". Red sparks flew out for the whole length of the train and I'm sure the engineer had some tall explaining to do at his next stop when all of the cars had flat spots on their wheels. And I'm also sure he had some tall explaining to do about his encounter with the flying saucer. Charlie Pocock
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