The Big Winner

There's an old story that made its way around back in the brown-shoe Air Corps when most airplanes were propeller-driven, and there was no inertial guidance system to tell the pilot where he was. According to the post-WWII air jockeys, a grizzled old pilot found he had a new, fuzzy-cheeked navigator fresh out of flight training. Quick to let the new arrival know the 'pecking order,' he placed his .45 on the aircraft console when they entered the plane for their pre-flight check. His curiosity aroused, and the neophyte navigator asked why he did that, to which the crusty old veteran replied, "I used that on the last navigator who got me lost." 

"Oh…Okay, sir," replied the new crewmember as he opened the latch on his map case, removed his own .45, and put it on his desk. 

"And what's that for, Junior?" thundered the plane commander. 

"Well, Sir, if we get lost, I'll know it before you will."   

My Operations Officer had scheduled me for my first navigation flight check since joining the 46th Air Rescue Squadron at Westover Air Force Base, Massachusetts, in January of 1957. This would be my first flight in the SA-16, the military version of the Grumman Albatross. This aircraft is a flat-sided, wide-bodied, slow-flying seaplane with a boat-hull shape on its bottom. Some of them are still around, used to fly rich sport anglers into remote lakes or exhibited as curiosities at Air Shows.

The plane's short wings, located at the top of the fuselage, supported twin engines whose roars were mightier than their bite. The engines' acoustical vibrations threatened to deafen anyone in the plane, making normal conversation during flight possible only through the intercom system. A pontoon float jutted downward from each wing, giving stability to the plane when in the water. Two torpedo-shaped fuel tanks are attached to the underside of the wings. A large radar bubble on the plane's nose, looking much like that of the old-time movie comedian, W.C. Fields, completed the designer's attempt to make the world's ugliest airplane. I had a love/hate relationship with it; it was like having a girlfriend with a plain face and a great personality.

In 1957, Captain DeWitt might easily have been that tough old pilot I referred to earlier in this story. He was then an aircraft commander, having been called back into the Air Force some years before, the result of the Korean "police action." At the ripe, old age of thirty-five years, he seemed a little long in the tooth. The pink glow of his nose confirmed his years of taking advantage of inexpensive Officers' Clubs liquor. His attitude toward his subordinates reflected the frustration of his civilian career being interrupted twice. Only now did he accept military service as his only viable career choice? Hopelessly mired in a system that afforded scarce hope of advancement, he saw little in his future. An overabundance of officers of his rank meant he would probably remain a captain for a long time.

The brash navigator in the anecdote could likewise have been me. I was twenty-one years old, green as grass, fresh out of the Aviation Cadet Corps, and owned the world. Young and strong, with a pretty girl back home, I knew it all and loved the feel of the shiny gold bars on my collar and the wings on my chest. The sun shone only for me. I felt immortal.

Our co-pilot was Bill Leeper, a "down-home guy" and a country-fresh family man with a couple of well-behaved kids. He had a nice hearty laugh. He had come right out of an Ohio farm and into the Air Corps during WWII. I liked flying with him. He was a damned good pilot. I would find out just how good he was before the day was over.

The squadron's Chief Navigator, Jim Kellem, would check me out. His job was to find out if I had learned anything in training school. He briefed me on the flight, and the crew went down to the airfield to do our pre-flight checks. I was confident that I was on top of everything and knew my job, and with my usual smart-aleck attitude, I let Jim know I knew. We took off without incident, my only reservation being that the tip of the starboard propeller was whirling past my ear only a few feet away from my workstation.

Nevertheless, I was comfortable with the maps, charts, and orange glow of the radar and other electronic devices in front of me. Under Kellem's critical watch, I directed our pilots to our assigned starting point east of Cape Cod. For a few hours, Jim put me through the drill. Neither of us knew how soon we all were to be tested.

The excitement began with a call from the radar tracking station at North Truro, located near the tip of Cape Cod's peninsula. I didn't hear the call since only the pilots were tuned to air traffic control frequencies, but I could feel the charge in the air change in an instant. The roar of the engines grew to an unbelievable fury as the pilots pushed the throttles to the firewall. Walking up to the cockpit, I asked, in an almost childlike manner, "What's going on?"

Leeper leaned back and yelled in my ear, "We've got two guys bailing out of a jet trainer. North Truro's vectoring us to them." I knew instinctively that this was not part of the check ride; it was real. I would not wake up in bed and wonder about this strange dream. Everything up to this point in my life had been schooling, learning, and training.

So, this is what it was all about. I thought I was about to graduate. I didn't think about the possibility of failure; tests had never terrified me. However, a bit of knowledge I had picked up along the way did unsettle me almost immediately. We were over the North Atlantic in the middle of winter, with the ocean at near-freezing temperature. I had been taught that, without cold-water survival gear, a man suffers hypothermia at that water temperature in four to five minutes. Was it possible, I thought to myself, that we could get to these fliers before they succumbed to the cold?

No sooner had I asked myself the question than my eyes answered it. "Oh, Lord," I breathed. They were; right out in front of our cockpit windows, hanging in the sky! I think we all saw them at the same time. The parachutes almost seemed painted against the grayness. The sight fixated me, but DeWitt was all business. "Go to the back, and strap yourself in," he barked. I hastened to obey. No sooner had I secured myself than the plane banked sharply to the left and went into a steep dive. We were headed for the water two thousand feet below. The ocean appeared green and gray, with a frothy covering of whitecaps. I had never landed in water before, much less a wild and freezing ocean. A level of excitement and alertness I had never felt before now overcame me.

Up in the cockpit, Leeper flipped a switch. A sharp 'Thump!' confirmed that mounting bolts had been exploded, allowing the extra fuel tanks to be torn away from the underside of the wings by the rush of air. After what seemed like hours, the plane leveled off, only a dozen feet above the water. Our pilots were looking for a spot where the waves and troughs cancel each other out for just a moment and form a short-lived smooth lake in the middle of the raging ocean. The pilots would pull off engine power and allow the plane to mush gently into the sea. At least, that was what it said in the manual.

Suddenly…we were in the water. We hit hard, and I watched the water boil up over the window from which I peered. The body of the plane partially submerged, as if it were a submarine, and then, like a cork, we popped into the light. The landing hadn't been pretty, but Leeper had helped Dewitt maintain control. There was no time for a planning session. Each crew member knew his job and jumped into action. Our flight engineer was already pulling up hatches in the deck, checking to see if we had taken on leaks in the hull. The radio operator was busy relaying messages to the radar station at North Truro. Kellem and I bounced out of our seats and wrenched open the two side doors. The plane pitched wildly in the nine-foot seas as our pilots fought to maintain stability. Through all the pitching and rolling, our eyes kept scanning the ocean surface. We knew the parachutists were in the water...and they were already dying.

I have always been a lousy sailor; I even get seasick in the bathtub. This time was not to be different, but even as I was sharing my lunch with the fish, I kept looking for the bright parachute colors I knew would lead us to where the pilots were. Then…a shout erupted over the intercom. Someone had spotted one of the pilots! Looking straight out my door, I could now see him, too, perhaps a few hundred feet out our port side. It obviously wasn't possible for him to swim to us or even for us to tell if he were conscious. We would have to go to him.

I didn't think we could make the delicate maneuvers necessary to bring a twenty-ton plane alongside him in those turbulent seas. So…with the foolhardiness and overconfidence of youth, I told myself I'd have to go to him. After all, I was strong, virtually indestructible, and immortal, right? Looking back, in my defense, I plead immaturity and/or, at least, temporary insanity. Perhaps envisioning the medal being pinned to my chest, I started tying one end of a nylon rope around my waist in preparation for jumping into that water and swimming out to the flier. That was dumb, dumb, dumb...especially considering that I'm not a strong swimmer, and the water was intensely cold. In retrospect, now I know that I probably would not have made it to him. Fortunately, Kellem was both more levelheaded and experienced than I was, and he easily dissuaded me.

With the delicacy required to pluck a butterfly from a spider's web while leaving both web and butterfly unharmed, our pilots maneuvered the plane alongside the man in the water. Inching closer by the second, he was almost within reach. Then, as if in an act of mercy, a sea swell lifted him up as I leaned out the door. My fingers clutched at the back of his flight suit and tightened in a near-death grip. With a single motion, my strength multiplied by the adrenaline coursing through my veins, I lifted him clear of the water and in through the door. No event in my life, before or since, ever gave me a bigger high.

He collapsed immediately onto the deck, assuming the fetal position that is common to people who have been found frozen to death. Jim and Ralph were on him in an instant, removing his Mae West life preserver and soaking his flight suit and boots. They had him wrapped in a blanket and sipping hot soup in a matter of minutes. All this time, the rest of us kept looking for the other flier. I would have liked this story to have a happier ending, but sadly, we never found him. Even the helicopters that joined us in the search could find no trace of another parachute or life jacket. A C-123 "Flying Boxcar" arrived and flew a search pattern for several hours while we scoured the surface of the sea. Of course, we knew that even if we found him, it would now be too late. The unstated rule was that he was one of ours, and we had to bring him home, even if it were on his shield. It was not to be. He now belonged to the sea.

We were ordered to abandon the search and return to base. We had, however, damaged the aileron surfaces during our controlled crash-landing, and could no longer take off or fly. Instead, we taxied for several hours over the water surface until we reached the North Truro radar station, where we tied up in the bay and transferred to the station for debriefing, a meal, and a bed. After the meal, several of the crew decided to play a little poker before hitting the sack. "It's just a 10 and 25 cent game," our survivor said, inviting me to join the game.

I quickly recalled that he had bailed out over the freezing Atlantic Ocean, without a survival suit, but with our Air Rescue seaplane only minutes from his position. Amazingly, we had located him in that raging water, the rough equivalent of finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Finally, he had the incredibly good fortune to have had a sober Captain Dewitt and determined Bill Leeper at the controls of that plane.

Reason prevailed over foolhardiness. "Thanks, but I don't play poker with guys as lucky as you," I told him.

I was right. He won eleven dollars that night. He was The Big Winner.