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Guys,
Do any of you ex SAC KC-135 drivers remember any
restrictions on taking off through standing water? On 15 Jul 59 (the day I
flew home from Ellsworth AFB, SD to get married), my crew was waiting at the
NW end of Ellsworth's 13,497' runway (with 1000' paved overruns at
each end) for take off behind two B-52s while we all waited out a
hailstorm coming from Rapid City towards us. As the nav, I watched it
on radar till it hit/passed us leaving our runway with about 6 inches
of standing water in the about 2000' long low spot in the center of the
runway. Not being a pilot at the time, I don't remember any info
about standing water TO restrictions, but I remember a discussion on
the radio with the Command Post who finally ordered us to TO after the
52s. This was my crew's initial SAC KC-135 check ride and we had a
full Stan Eval crew also on board. We started our TO and made our S1 and
S2 speeds (I think that was what they were called) while heading
"downhill" to the standing water. When we hit the water,
acceleration almost stopped, by now too late to abort. I remember looking
forward when I realized/thought we weren't going to make it as we
headed straight towards the Sec Police guardhouse as we rolled through the
overrun, nose wheel in the air, over about 300' (best I remember) of SD
prairie and finally got airborne, clearing the SP guardhouse they
said by about 2 or 3 feet. As soon as you passed the guardhouse and entry
road to Ellsworth towards the SE, the land falls away, descending into
the SD badlands. My AC lowered the nose and we flew about 15 or 20 miles
into the Badlands before getting enough speed to climb. Of course we
had been dumping fuel on TO until we were airborne--don't know why we
stopped. The gear did not come up (or was not raised, can't remember)
but we flew back over the base at about 300' with the gear down for them
to check us out. The sheet metal from the main gear area back to the
tail was gone and hydraulic and electrical wires were dangling. Phone
patched to Boeing thought the Command Post, the engineers told us to leave
the gear down.
Discussions then were about landing/crash landing
finally leading to SAC Hdqtrs (Gen Powers himself I think it was) offering
us the choice of bailing out or attempting a landing. And now the
kicker--the Command Post then asked that before we did anything, since we
seemed to be now flying ok, if we could go down to the Happy Home (or
possibly it was the High Life) refueling area( over the badlands),
and at low level (I think it was at 10,000'), at least GET SOME DRY
HOOK-UPS with our B-47 receiver so that the Wing wouldn't LOSE ALL
of OUR SAC MCS POINTS !!!! SAC Hdqtrs told us to at least give it a
try and unbelievably we did just that--MADE DRY HOOK-ups WITH A B-47
at 10,000' in a DAMAGED A/C, with the GEAR HANGING.
Anti-climatically, we
returned to Ellsworth after this to attempt a landing--no one wanted to
bail-out since no one up to that time had survived a KC-135
bailout-- I think there was finally a bailout where someone survived years
later after I'd gone to pilot training.
When we landed and got out
of the A/C there on the runway, we were stunned at the damage to the gear
and the bottom of the plane. The Boeing engineers discovered??? that
the way the gear trucks were designed on the 135, that the front tires
threw up a water spray that essentially stopped the rear tires on
the truck, peeled the sheet metal on the bottom of the plane and tore loose
hydraulic and electrical lines. No problems were discovered on the
52s (vs. standing water) but our runway was immediately closed with
the 52s going to our sister base at Minot and the 35s to our sister base
at Grand Forks for 3 months while the center slope was taken out of
the Ellsworth runway. Ellsworth was the Div Hdqtrs for the bases at
Grand Forks and Minot ND and Glasgow, MT.
And for those waiting in suspense, now out to my Chevy Convertible with the top
gone, glass broken, trim dented on my car that had just come out of the shop THAT week
from having had these same items replaced by USAA from an earlier
hailstorm, it was off to the airport to fly home to GA and get
married. We spent a great summer/fall at Grand Forks before the
winter came. And the coldest I can remember it at Ellsworth (located in the
banana belt of the Dakotas, according to the Chamber of Commerce), was
-29 F while we were outside playing through an ORI-- in it must have been
1961 before I left for UPT in Feb 62.
Cheers,
Jim Bilk
24
Subject: Re: Avoiding the SAC
Hey this is great - a walk down the water wagon memory lane. Yes, I've been
"sacomcised" also. The promised fighter after my FAC tour was an F-135
to Plattsburgh. My baptism came on a Loring to Spain flight as a new left seater
(right seat guy was a zoomie out of UPT). Heavy as always we lined up in the
overrun, ran throttles to 100% and released brakes. For about 2 seconds, we did
not move - and when we did it was like a VW bus full of hippies. Rotating close
to the other overrun as we broke ground the outboard water ran out. I leveled
off (not optional), called for the gear up and there we sat at 25 feet trying to
accelerate. God is good as there were no trees or hills off that runway at
Loring over 25'. The thing I remember most - next to the messy pants - was
seeing the farm houses going under the nose and knowing they were fixing to be
very awake and a bit of satisfaction knowing that the sacomcised lifers back in
Hdq. were going to be getting some phone calls. Thankfully, Boeing had separeted
the water systems to inboard/outboard from the original left /right. What's a
reverser?
Jim Glanton, Nail13, Ubon/NKP, 68-69
Guys, And you KC-135 crew members would all remember living on board the A/C
for your alert tour of 4 days at a time (at least at Ellsworth) with the host
base bringing out one hot meal a day for re-warming on the 135 stove. Don't
remember if this was a SAC experiment/trial but we (Ellsworth) did it by flying
to Glasgow, Minot and Grand Forks, in the winter, parking at/near the end of the
runway and living on board for the alert tour. Talk about miserable:
boring (no TV, pool table, etc., like on the alert pad), the cold, the johns
that had to be emptied each day, the K type in-flight rations (but at least
heated on our stoves), the noise from the T-37 engine powered internal APU (at
least it wasn't as loud as it was in the actual T-37)--and did I mention the
boredom? Don't remember how long this went on because it had shifted to where we
were pulling strip and war alert at Elmendorf by about Christmas 61 when I was
taken off crew duty in preparation for going to UPT. And did I mention how hard
I tried to go back to SAC when I returned from Vietnam..........<LOL>????
Cheers, Jim Bilk 24
--- Don Brown <nahkbin@cox.net> wrote: ...Rotating close to the other
overrun as we broke ground the outboard water ran out. I leveled off (not
optional... ====================
The exact same thing happened to us once in a KC-135 out of Takhli in 1966 on
a Young Tiger. I was the copilot, shiny new silver bar, with a left-seat Major
(Roger Trumbull) who had been an IP at Walker since Christ was a 2/Lt. He very
calmly instructed water cutoff, explained very matter-of-factly that we were
going to use ground effect, wiggled that beast through the trees, and VOILA --
just as he said, we were flying again. If his heart-rate rose during all that,
none of the crew knew it.
I'm still in awe that we lived through it.
Ed Kalkbrenner
I also remember a beautiful, multi colored 319th Bomb Wing mural painted on
the wall of the main entry tunnel to the alert facility. It was huge and when
you entered the upstairs tunnel it read "PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION"
around the corner it said "EVERY F_____ing DAY OF THE YEAR." This
happened the Christmas Eve of 1967 when the airplanes were iced to the ground,
attached, with an estimated gross weight of one million pounds. The crews felt
we should stand down and all wanted to go home with families. The CO came out to
visit the troops about 0830 on Christmas Day and after we either hitched a ride
home on the half tracks, walked or hiked out, all was peaceful for Christmas
dinner at home. Part of the sign was repainted by an unknown person when the
alert shack was vacant
Nail21www@aol.com Walter W. Want NKP 8/68-8/69 O2-A
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