by CDR Jack D. Woodul, USNR(Ret), artwork by Carl Snow
Ricochet Rabbit peered at Puresome over the top of his half-frame, senior-citizen spectacles. The harried TAR officer was in high PRF due to the extraordinary number of his Crusaders that had fluttered out of the sky while on the way back to NAS Dallas after two weeks of rum and gunnery in faraway Puerto Rico. His ducks were not in a row, and various operations folks from far, faraway Air Force bases were ringing him up about his static displays that were leaking hydraulic fluid on their ramps. His gypsy Reservista aviators had gone back to their regular jobs to rest up, and the full-time LCDR Rabbit was learning once again to take the bitter with the sour.
“Puresome, we’ve got a plane down at Homestead AFB in Florida with hydraulic problems. You wanna ride down there in the station T2V with a part and bring it back?
Youthly was not permanently perched in the TAR’s office because he liked to watch the man bounce off the bulkheads. While that certainly was fun, hanging around often provided extra flight-time opportunities. While bagging was in itself fulfilling, Puresome had himself a new house, a couple of car wrecks and a new bambino at home. The extra Reservista money often allowed him to upgrade to Alpo dinners and better grades of flour sack for Tunita to stitch together into fashionable gowns.
“Sah! Yes, Sah! Jolly, jolly good, Sah!” was delivered with a stomp and an exaggerated open-handed salute worthy of a Coldstream Guards’ color sergeant.
Puresome was available for this sort of adventure because Grits Airways had disappeared his oily steed, the DC-6, and he was in a holding pattern awaiting a flight engineer class to qualify him to listen to jet engines whine. Tunita gave him dispensations because everything had been painted and planted, and because he was turning into a surly arsepain around the house. So, he sacked up some silkies and his Dopp kit, and headed to the Air Patch.
At base operations, he met his pilot, who appeared as long in the tooth as the ancient station T2V. Since plotting boards, astrolabes, E6Bs and charts of varied scale and purpose littered the planning table, Puresome figgered that they probably would find their way to Florida. He wandered off to maintenance control to pick up the hydraulic line that was supposed to fix his plane. When they finally rumbled into the air, Puresome kept his gloves off and constantly studied his fingernails for blueness, as he’d contracted a mild case of the anoxics on the trip home from NAS Roosenfelt Roads in this same airplane.
But the trip was a piece of cake, and Florida was found without any goofy Irish rebel songs from an oxygen-deprived back seat. Puresome said adios to the T2V and took his hydraulic line to the transient maintenance troops, who were happy to do anything to get rid of the object that was bringing down the real estate value of the ramp.
While the mechanics were turning wrenches and servicing the Crusader, Puresome ran to base operations and filed a flight plan back to Navy Dallas by the shortest possible route. This happened to be across the Golfo de Mexico and straightaway home, since any extension of flight time expanded the probability of further mechanical hiccups. When he started the mighty J57, no hydraulic fluid spewed from the nether parts of the F-8, so he waved the chocks away and called for taxi clearance. “Real good!” Puresome exhaled with relief.
But Grong the Goat God, protector of junior officers and deity of happiness hours, also had a collateral duty of trick-foxing aircraft systems. He paid particular attention to fighter pilots who got too cocky about systems actually working, and Puresome had further tempted Grong by saying something out loud. Accordingly, the Goat God certainly had to get the uppity boy.
Taxiing out, Puresome suddenly noticed that his RMI compass card had frozen, which certainly wouldn’t help navigation much. His Tacan wasn’t working either, but he hadn’t expected much help from that quirky instrument. But when his UHF radio started to fade, that was messing with getting radar vectors from Air Traffic Control chaps — serious stuff, indeed! Driving across the Gulf without a compass or a radio in a rickety airplane did not have much appeal, but neither did staying on the ground with limited silkies and little money.
Salvation lay in getting airborne. Youthly quickly called the tower, cancelled his instrument clearance to Dallas and refiled VFR to NAS Cecil Field. Just before his radio died completely, the still-functional parts of the 55-ft. long Crusader enabled it to slip the increasingly surly bonds of Homestead AFB.
Puresome was happy enough. The motor worked and the flight controls flopped the aircraft around acceptably, and he didn’t have to talk to anyone. Navigation meant turning left at the ocean and following the coastline north to Jacksonville. It was a pretty day and he had bags of gas, so he whoostled and cavorted around the sky. Cecil Field was just where he left it, and after smoking into the break and waggling his wings — the tower folks dutifully gave him a green light — he was cleared for landing.
The maintenance troops were not real happy when he presented them with his list of things unwell with his aircraft. But they knew that “it all goes for 20,” and they dragged out their toolboxes. Since it was late in the day, Puresome caught a ride to the BOQ and tried to ring up some of his pals who might feed him some whiskey and home cooking. But it was not to be, and he had to content himself with some frothy beverages at the bar and enjoying the battleship-gray decor of the room the Filipino steward reluctantly let him occupy.
By the middle of the next morning, Puresome’s Crusader was pronounced fixed. July thunderstorms were starting to pop up along the moist Gulf Coast, so he filed his flight plan and launched before they started turning into monsters. Everything in his airplane … worked! Puresome should have known better, but here he was, talking on the radio, actually tracking Tacan radials with miles clicking off in his DME counter, looking like he would easily outclimb the nasty looking cumulonimbus towering up over Tallahassee. He just had to mutter “Real good!” into his oxygen mask.
So, at 41,000 feet, Youthly was nicely clearing the top of the thunderstorm when Grong, who had had quite enough of this cocky stuff, deftly inserted a stray electron into the Crusader’s generator, which promptly blew a fuse. Or something. All the nice-to-have instruments in the cockpit tumped over or otherwise ceased to work.
“Ratsfannies!” was possibly the nicest thing Puresome snarled into his oxygen mask. After twiddling some switches, he gave up and pulled the handle to drop the ram air turbine, which flopped out of the fuselage into the air stream with a clunk! After some more switch-fiddling, Puresome was able to regain his UHF radio and some pilot stuff. Since the RAT on the Crusader was a monster that furnished both backup electrical and hydraulic power, its drag also cut down the plane’s range by some 18 percent. It also neglected to power a boost pump in an aft gas tank — so that gas was not available for use. But, since he did have a radio, he told the good ol’ boys at Jacksonville Center that he was wheeling about and returning to Cecil. Since they had seen this sort of thing many times before, they did not snit and actually helped.
The maintenance troops back at Cecil sighed great sighs when the F-8 from Hell taxied back into the line. While they were diddling with his generator, Puresome called Navy Dallas for suggestions and possible kind words. A séance was held, and it was suggested that once reset, his generator might be happier if he flew at a lower altitude due to possible pressurization problems in the electronics area.
It seemed like a plan. But by the time the Crusader was ready to go again, the weather chaps at operations pointed out that Thunderstorm Alley along the Gulf Coast was in full bloom. A more northerly route might avoid some thumps, since Youthly was determined to not fly over the things. They also allowed that it was theoretically possible to fly VFR, so he elected to do just that, just under the level of positive control airspace. Once he got to Montgomery, Alabama, he could turn left and follow the Grits Airways Great Southern Route over Meridian, Jackson and Shreveport, on into the nascent Great Antheap and Navy Dallas.
Once again, Puresome got airborne and was flying along with a whole airplane. Having learned his lesson, he was not foolish enough to comment on that fact. Everything seemed to be tickedy-boo as he dodged through clear spots between thunderstorms in his Mach .9, potentially supersonic transport. Things were starting to get a bit sticky, clearance-from-cloud-wise, just short of Montgomery when the fuse-blowing electron, on continuing orders from his boss, came back out from where it had been hiding. All Puresome’s nice instruments immediately died with a single zishing sound in his earphones.
Yaaaaaa! Ratsfannies! Yaaaaaa! When the RAT clunked out, he was real glad that his attitude gyro and RMI worked. Puresome spotted familiar parts of Montgomery through a break in the clouds surrounded by lightning and dark clouds. A lot of figgering started going on, and Puresome opted for the Great Southern Route solution.
It wasn’t time to fess up and look bad just yet. He worked his way west through the lightest parts of the clag. Eventually, thunderstorm canyons and crevices gave way to nothing but gloom. When he was able to fumble out his book of approach plates, Puresome found that NAAS Meridian was one of the few remaining places on earth that had a UHF radio homing beacon. This was fortunate, because that was the one navigational tool that worked on RAT power. When he dialed in the frequency and switched to the ADF position, his number one needle on the RMI actually pointed off into the west where Puresome hoped Meridian was.
When Navy Meridian’s familiar parallel runways appeared in the dusk, Youthly called the tower and announced his arrival. When he set up for the break on the duty runway, the relief of yet again tap-dancing out of a potential frabb-up caused him to tap-dance into another: “Damn, I’m good!” he thought out loud.
In his smoky, celestial barroom, Grong slammed down his dice cup. While he encouraged a bit of a mouth on fighter pilots, it was obvious from the marks on his cocktail napkin that he had cut Puresome too much slack. He examined his dice, and it was obviously a “Horse” on Youthly. He waved the stub of his rum crook cigar, and in the air above Navy Meridian more errant electrons did his bidding. When Puresome put his landing gear handle down, one of his main gear landing indicators showed an unsafe “barber pole” instead of the little wheel that indicated gear down and locked.
“Jerbis Flinderbars! Now what?” muttered Puresome as he poured on the power and flew close aboard the control tower.
“Tower, Alfa Fox One Zero Three has an unsafe port main gear indication. What does it look like to you?”
“It appears to be down and locked, but we can’t tell for sure.”
“Is there anyone airborne that can give me a check?” Puresome wondered aloud.
“Ah, Navy aircraft requesting a gear check, this is Gumbo Four-Four. We’re Air Force Reserve C-54, and we can give a look if you want.”
“Rightie-O! Gumbo, say posit. And how fast can you go?”
It turned out that Gumbo 44 was not far off. It also turned out that his real fast was Puresome’s real slow. When Puresome staggered by the ancient many-motor, Gumbo had its nose down and exhaust smoke was boiling out behind its four straining reciprocating motors.
“Looked good when it went by us, Navy!” Gumbo allowed.
Nonetheless, Puresome eased the Crusader onto the runway as softly as he could and let the station line crew put on his gear downlocks and tow him into the transient line. He snuck his mustard-paisley bell-bottoms and go-home shirt out of his parachute bag. His yellowsheet write-up to the maintenance lads went something like “burn the bastid!” He then caught a ride out to the commercial airfield and jumped on the first Grits airplane that was going anywhere.
Two weeks later, he actually returned to Navy Meridian in the back seat of the station T2V to bring his Crusader home, band-aids and all. But he was very, very sure to wait until he was safe at home with a large, shaken-not-stirred beverage in hand before he reflected on jolly airplanes and how damn good he was.