FLY ME TO THE MOON

Blog number 505******* 08 April 2011


When I was in the United States Air Force, I worked on T-29 aircraft which were used to train bombardier / navigators.


In my shop we had this master sergeant that somehow talked a pilot into letting him pilot his aircraft on its missions. Now, enlisted men - of which sergeants are a member, are not allowed to pilot military aircraft - let alone pilot one without any formal training at all.

One day I was flying on the same ship that this sergeant was and I watched him fly a bit, and I was standing in the doorway behind the copilot and the sergeant, who was sitting in the pilot's seat. The sergeant was going to make a landing attempt. About 15 feet off the ground, the sergeant made a move on the controls which caused the copilot to give him a look of fear and then reach over too late to do any good, and the aircraft dropped straight down, bam! It hopped a couple of times before it settled down.


I remember at the time wondering what the people in the control tower would be thinking of this landing, and of course they would think it was the pilot that had made such a grave error. The plane probably had to be checked later to see if any damage had occurred due to a "hard" landing. Would the pilot be given a "bad mark" anywhere in his records?


I heard the copilot explain to the sergeant that when he cut the engines down like that, the props would change pitch and no longer be pulling the plane forward, resulting in loss of power and propeller at the same time and thus the sudden meeting of aircraft and runway sans grace.


That was the last mission the sergeant was allowed to fly as pilot. In fact, I never saw him ever fly again on those aircraft.


Just as a curious aside, when we enlisted were being considered for promotion, our records would be given to the promotion board. In the case of officer's promotions, they had their photograph placed in their promotion records. We didn't. Evidently they didn't care how handsome we were, but to an officer, that must have been important.


Furthermore, the base commander was a general and in an article about him in the base newspaper, it was said that he was known as, "the Silver Fox." Think about that.


Please.