By dint of my solid middle of the class standing in both my Nav and my Nav/Bomb classes, I found myself at Loring AFB in April 1964 looking at piles of snow and wondering if it ever thawed this far north of the Equator. I had gotten an assignment to MATS at Charleston AFB but SAC had exercised its superior muscle and decided it needed one more piece of young navigator flesh so….snow.

I struggled in the beginning, both with the B52 systems and with the SAC systems but eventually reconciled myself to making the best of both. A couple of years later, I was asked to upgrade to the left seat as a radar navigator but I exercised my less than superior muscle, checked the calendar and said my 4 year commitment is finished in December. So here’s the exit paperwork. We were allowed to initiate this within six months to the exit date so I was knocking at the door on June 12th. This did not make me especially popular among some of the starched flight suit types but crew scheduling loved me. I found that my now not so young navigator flesh was raw meat for every flight or alert vacancy. Right up to two days before my exit date.

One of those replacement gigs stands out in my memory. I was “volunteered” to stand alert with a Barksdale crew that was pulling alert with us for reasons that are lost in the mists of time. And of course, during those seven days, the Omaha powers that be/were decided that it was time to make “the monkeys jump” as we called it. And of course, it had to be a COCO exercise. That was the one where we fired up the engines and single filed out to the runway, taxied down to the end, came back to the parking slot and waited for the tug to push us back into the slot. As we sat in the alert truck, the pilot who happened to be next to me in the driver’s seat, called back to the copilot and asked if he had set the brakes. No, but no big deal, right?? I proceeded to try to point out that the hardstands on this side of the base lean ever so slightly back to that tiny little creek back there but I was interrupted by “SHE’S MOVING”. I still picture the cigarettes hanging in the air. Some of us starting throwing chocks behind the wheel but she was merrily rolling along by that time. The copilot finally managed to get his foot on the hanging entry stairs, which were moving along backwards at the same merry clip. The rest of us were reduced to fervent prayer.

Finally, “SHE’S STOPPED !!!” One third of her fully bomb loaded rear end was extended over that tiny creek back there. When the wide eyed tug crew finally arrived, we asked them to pull us up to the parking slot and forget they ever talked to us. Happy ending to a possible Broken Arrow (nuclear weapon accident).

Another not so happy ending occurred during the beginning of one of those Operational Ready Inspections. We were on alert when the call came from the Command Post that there was a KC 97 on final without a flight plan. Just like the movies. We began to gather up all our equipment and stack it in the alert truck while muttering varied curses. About an hour later, KLAXON. Out to the aircraft, power up, “To all aircraft, this is a COCO alert.” As we pulled out, the aircraft commander, who had spent a couple of years in the command post, called to the deputy wing commander, “Be advised, we have no steering, no braking”. This was meant as a signal to him to downgrade the exercise and to remain in place. Safety of Flight was always the watchword in those exercises. The deputy, a “bird” colonel in more than one way, replied, “Roger, be careful”. The next words, spoken only to the crew, involved several pounds of invective directed at the colonel, followed by, “OK boys, hang on, here we go.” At the time, Loring had two bomb squadrons, the 69th and the 70th. As a result we always had 16 or so aircraft on alert, utilizing hard stands at both ends of the runway. We turned to the right and joined the stream, followed by the hard crunching noises of brakes being applied against snow and ice. We stopped in time but the aircraft behind us had to turn sharply to avoid a collision. It went down a slight grade, maneuvered between two hangers, did a 180 and powered back up the grade in time to join the parade. Meanwhile, at the other end of the base, one plane was not so lucky. We all became aware of a problem when the tower transmitted, “Aircraft approaching tower, TURN LEFT, TURN LEFT.” That aircraft had taxied up a slight grade to get to the main taxiway and then couldn’t make the turn. It travelled downhill towards base ops and stopped in the snowpile that covered what occasionally was grass in that godforsaken place. There it sat for the rest of the ORI, non effective for the rest of the exercise and a down payment on the wings’s eventual fail. The next day, some of the crew that did the 180 went out with tape measures to confirm what they had seen that night. There was only about 10 feet of clearance on each wing for that 52 to get through, turn around, get through again and join the stream. And that was the a/c’s first ride in the left seat, having recently upgraded. We thought he should have gotten a Distinguished Driving Cross for his efforts.

Sadly, my a/c who tried to warn the command post of the conditions, died in another ORI at the base a couple of years later. By that time, he was chief of standardization and the Inspector General was riding with him. The aircraft, 215 as I remember, had engine problems and had to taxi back for repairs. It taxied out just in time to beat the non effective deadline, took off and suffered a flameout of all four engines on the right side at about 1,500’. The entire crew, including the IG were killed. The nav was my replacement on that crew. The aircraft commander was my best friend in the unit. Nels Olaf Anderson Oxehufwud. He always insisted on using his entire Norwegian/Swedish name. My Norwegian father in law swapped herring recipes on one of his visits to the North Country.

Me?? I was out the main gate at about 2100 on December 10, 1966 (having cheated by a couple of hours) on my way back to my beloved NYC with a wife in the front and two babies in the back. I joined the Chase Manhattan Bank’s training program the following week and discovered the pay just didn’t equal that of a Captain on flying status, living on base with a family. So I joined the NY Air National Guard for an interim part time job where a person could pick up about 50 duty days a year if he put his mind to it. Which I did, flying cargo, tankers and rescue birds. Just an interim part time job that lasted 27 more years. A good gig. But that’s another story, for another time.