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From: Jim Wilkes <bilk24@yahoo.com>
Tom,
Hadn't heard or remembered the term "MITO"in a bunch of years. We did a couple of those at Ellsworth with 10 B-52's
and 4 KC-135s the first time (we were the (928th ARS, then with only 9 KCs in the Sqdn.) and the next
time with 10 B-52s and 10 KCs (we were now the 28th ARS with our full complement of 21 KCs) and we did one at
Grand Forks AFB, ND while there TDY while the runway
at Ellsworth were being rebuilt to get the slope (lowered center 2000')out of it where the water
settled when it rained and then tore the bottom out of
KCs when they went through it on T.O. My crew,J-02,was the first time that had ever happened
to KCs (didn't bother the B-52s),on our INITIAL Stan/Eval in Jul 59. You might remember the SAC Safety
report on it--sheet metal and hydraulic lines from the main gear struts back to the boom pod were ripped out
by the force of the water coming from the FRONT tires hitting into the REAR tires on the strut, with the
appropriate lack of acceleration from S-1??? speed to S-2 speed???(As the Nav, I ran the stop watch on the
speeds but not sure what they were called)
We went out across the over-run, by the Base main gate guard house, over about 500 yards of prarie grass
leaving ruts about 6-8 inches deep, all the while
dumping fuel since failure to reach S-2??? speed. Thank God we were taking off to the SE as the land
fell away about 500 feet in a gorge about 50 miles
long heading out into the SD badlands. We finally got airborne but the gear wouldn't come up. Contact with
the world (read Command Post, SAC, and Boeing, etc.) said to leave the gear down and offer bailout options to
the crew and the Stan/Eval crew. However the next call from the Command Post or SAC
asked if we could fly down to the "Happy Home" refueling area/track and at least get some "dry"
contacts with our receiver (a B-52) so the Wing wouldn't lose ALL OF the MCS (Management Control System, I think) POINTS FOR the MISSION before we
returned to Ellsworth to bail out. Really, I'M NOT
S******G YOU-----here we are at 10,000'(can't remember why we couldn't/didn't climb higher than 10,000' unless it was because we could't
pressurize), with the gear hanging down, hydraulic lines dangling along the bottom of the a/c and the sheet metal gone from the
belly of the plane from the main gear rearward, facing bailout (up to that time NO ONE had EVER bailed out of
a 135 and lived), and they want us to make dry hook-ups with our receiver, to score some damn points. Course
that was SAC in those days. We made the dry hook-ups, flew back up the 30 miles or so to Ellsworth (Happy Home ran east/west just below
Ellsworth), talked it over in the cockpit and ALL decided to not bail out and just hope the gear would stay down.
It did, we landed safely and after about a 2 hour delay at the Rapid City airport for WX, I flew home to GA to get married.
Sorry 'bout the length--I got carried away when I remembered the MITO takeoffs.
From: "Randy Roberts" <nail38@earthlink.net>
Jim,
I sure as hell hate to admit to being a former SAC escapee, but it were
MITO- Minimum Interval Take-Off - we figured in water wagons (-135's) that the
only way we would get flying was to firewall the throttles and take what we got
and that, hopefully, someone ahead of us would crash and we would catch the
"liftees" from the fireball!!!! After a couple of heavywts at around
280 in real life, we knew that unless God intervened, we were not going to get
some additional power to get off the runway at 290 plus. Ah the joys of being a
SAC weenie - ugh. R2
-----
First of all, in peacetime training, we did not exceed MTOGW. Many is the time we sat at the end of the runway burning off fuel, or
waiting for the temp to drop another degree or two. However, in EWO, we blew off the safety margin associated with takeoff calculations,
and prayed that during takeoff, all 4 motors kept running as advertised. If we had too much fuel for a full-4 takeoff, then yes
we sprayed kerosene all over. However, they kept a close watch on weather conditions, and adjusted fuel accordingly. If we lost an
engine on takeoff, but didn't have a 3-engine safety margin, and it looked like we weren't going to make it out alive, we were supposed
to die off the runway centerline.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. From: Jim Wilkes <bilk24@yahoo.com>
Ed,Bob,et al,
As a follow on to your comments, do you remember what
the code was for the B-52 to request ALL OF YOUR FUEL (except that 600 pounds or so trapped in the fuel
lines), leaving you with only about 10 minutes of flying time to get to that "eskimo village" where they
had been paid to help you survive, provided you didn't
die in the crash landing on the ice pack????
How about the code, "I HAVE TO GO", which required you (KC-135) to pump every bit of fuel possible into the
B-52,otherwise he couldn't make his mission.
Lovely choice we tankers had!
Jim
Bilk 24
From: gene mc cutchan <llkvfly@yahoo.com>
3CB wrote:
"I'd like to hit Redmarker 01 with a question at this point. Do you recall how
many B-17's were launched together during your time at Molesworth? And, what
were the intervals between the aircraft? I'd also like to know a little bit about the
procedure for forming up after the group was airborne. I'm assuming each"
Bob: Each Bomb Group had 4 Squadrons. On a Maximun Effort, each Squadron would launch 13 aircraft. No 13
would RTB at the enemy coast if no other A/c had aborted. So a Group put up 48 aircraft. Yes, a single
Squadron could be tasked for a mission and the Group would put up only 13 a/c.
My first several missions were IFR take offs.
Probably my second or third taste of actual instruments. The first was en route to England over
Greenland. But suddenly one day, over England, the sky was clear, Arizona style. And here were these
streams of aircraft following in trail, all in preplanned directions with maybe 2000ft altitude
clearance when the streams crossed. The utter amazement that this could have been happening in IFR
conditions and how critical your pilot ability was to the overall mission of join up.
The B-17, combat loaded (A plane was gassed for the lenght of mission - Berlin 2700 Gals ( a groan when
one saw the fuel load in briefing ). But remember those were 1000 plane raids with the participating a/c
climbing IFR at 300 ft/min rate of climb. Thats 3 min per thousand feet or 60 minutes to 20,000 ft. The
formation, for all intents and purposes climbed most of the way to the target.
Interval between takeoffs: Wish I could remember for sure, with 52 a/c to launch it was a short interval
but to rely on my memory as to exactly what interval was would be wild guessing. I only know that our
Commander's response to a question of what would happen if an aircraft lost an engine on our
accelerated landing procedure was "you will roll into a little ball on the ground".
Several takeoffs were made with me on the controls, on instruments, and the co-pilot on the controls VFR
where he could see maybe two runway lights.
So a Group took off, flew its prescribed course with turns to allow the Group to get into formation, then
on to Ipswitch on the coast where the bomber strean formed with Groups departing the Buncher at prescribed
times, forming the 1000 plane formation that defeated Germany.
Red Marker
From: tjeigelsr@aol.com
Subject: SAC and Its Heavyweight KC-135s
C3B says; If the Kcs were so overweight, why did Sac fly them (or words to
that effect!) The KC-135A Dash One had the following weight limits:
Maximum Taxi Weight - 306,000 pounds
Maximum Weight Inflight - 297,000 pounds
Thus, on the Chrome Dome missions (airborne alert support) which required a minimum offload of 125,000 pounds of
JP-4, SAC woulkd load us up to the Max (306,000) and we would burn 2500 pounds of fuel for taxi, 2500 pounds of water
on takeoff and about 4000 pounds of fuel on the takeoff roll. Viola! We'd get
airborne at exactly 297,000 pounds gross weight. ( If you had a fat copilot,
your TO roll would be longer and your fuel burn higher, so you were still at 297,000!) We would fly out to the coastal
ADIZ, reaching 25,000 feet just as the B-52 would call for rendevous, do one turn in orbit, poke the bomber,
offload and RTB. We'd land with minimum fuel; we could NOT make an approach and
still reach our alternate landing field. We did not have enough fuel.
As an aside, our EWO mission (off ground alert) had us running out of fuel about 400 miles off the coast of Newfounland.
Do you think that we would truely offload all of our fuel "keeping only enough fuel to clear the refueling
track" as SAC Tactical Doctrine Manual woul have us do? I used to cheat the
Chrome Dome bombers 5000 pounds on every mission. They never questioned the amount of fuel they'd gotten.
(If they caught it, they thought their copilot had screwed up the fuel calculations. The bombers were recovering with 5,000
pounds of fuel, while I was recovering with 4000 pounds of fuel.)
I was convinced that they couldn't keep that good a handle on their fuel, and that, if I had to go to war for real, the'd never
miss 5000 pounds and I could use that fuel to get over land instead of ditching in the cold North Atlantic!
Tom Eigel Trail, Bilk, Gimpy '68
From: <ned@wingset.com>
Subject: Re: Rice Bugs
Crash,
Rice Bug? Are they the big brown hard shell delicacies about 3 inches long that could be eaten by snapping the heads off and
sucking the meat out of the shell? MMMMM makes me want to go back. Sorry no photo available from C3B
Yup..but they were bigger. They used to fly into the Arc lights around the
ramp and fall stunned to the ground where they were picked up by the Thais. They
sold for about a Bhat each and were consumed as you noted. One bit off the
head...sucked out the innards and smacked ones lips...while trying not to BARF.
On my first trip to UT...we were loaded onto the Crew Bus and were driving in
(it was oh dark thirty and we had just flown in from Guam) when I noticed a very
large plastic bag of ...well I wasn't sure what it was .... but it wasn't popcorn...
Being a dull dumb shit... I asked...and was told that the plastic bag was full of rice bugs...being a total dull dumbshit...
I asked What's a Rice bug...about that time I noted that the bag was...well...er...ah....MOVING. There
were a mass of writhing BFBs in the bag. The smiling driver whipped one out (at
that point it looked bigger than a RAT), bit its head off...sucked it
dry...and...I held my in-flight meal...but just barely!!
The NAV turned to the AC and said.... Toto I don't think we are in Kansas anymore!!
Crash | |