“Are we sure we haven’t gotten lost in the old airplane museum?” I commented.
Just then a pair of Jeeps came racing up. The first was full of Honduran officers, all beaming at us, visibly proud of their antique airplanes. Following them was Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox, looking equally horrified. We ignored the gabbling Hondurans and I followed Donovan, along with Sergeant Hightower, as he went over to Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox. We sent the Jeep driver away, and the four of us talked. Okay, Hightower and I just listened, while Wilcox and Donovan talked.
“Are you kidding me?” asked Donovan.
“I just found out myself!” replied the horrified battalion commander.
“Colonel, my jumpmasters haven’t ever seen one of these things, let alone jumped from one of them. They don’t even know how to rig one of them!” There was a loud clatter from the flight line and we watched as a mechanic dropped a wrench, and a stream of black oil came from one of the engines on one of the Gooney Birds.
“I know!”
“Colonel, we’ve never ever trained on these things!” he protested. This was quite true. American paratroopers train on C-130 Hercules and C-141 Starlifter planes. I doubted any of us had even been alive when these things were still being used! Even the radio frequencies would be different.
“I know!”
“We can’t do it!”
A third Jeep came barreling up, with Brigadier General Hawkins, smiling and looking inordinately proud of himself. We stopped talking while he joined us. “Isn’t this great!?” he exclaimed. “What wonderful airplanes!”
The colonel stared at the man. Hawkins was what we called a ‘five jump chump’. He had been through jump training, probably back when he was a second john, did his three weeks of training and his five mandatory jumps, and then checked it off his list and never looked back. He knew as much about airborne operations as my son did. “General,”, he said, “my men have never trained on C-47s. They’re not qualified for this.”
“This will be the perfect opportunity for them, then, won’t it?”
“Sir, with all due respect, they aren’t trained for this. They could get hurt. We can’t use these planes,” he said.
General Hawkins did not want to hear this. In fact, for the next five minutes, he did all the talking. Screaming, actually. We were going to get on the planes. We were going to jump. He didn’t care that it was dangerous. He didn’t care that we weren’t trained. He didn’t care if we all crashed on takeoff! We were going! Anything less would be an insult to our hosts and a blemish on our (his) record and an international incident. If Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox didn’t like it, he could be replaced, as could any other officer who didn’t like it!
Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox then told Hawkins to put his orders in writing, which Hawkins refused to do. I had never seen this sort of behavior before. Why Wilcox didn’t simply refuse is beyond me, but he backed down at this point. Then General Hawkins got back in his Jeep, after giving us another batch of idiotic orders, and took off.
Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox gave Captain Donovan a nervous look and climbed into his own Jeep. “I’ll see what I can do, but start figuring it out. Make sure there is a place on the lead bird for me. If we’re doing this, I’m going first.” He took off.
Donovan turned to me. “Do you believe this shit?”
There was only one thing to say. “How can I help?”
Donovan motioned Hightower and me together and we headed over to the nearest Gooney Bird. We climbed in and looked it over. It was frighteningly primitive, although lovingly maintained. It was also blindingly obvious we were going to have to quickly learn how to jump out of the side of the airplane. Both the C-130 and the C-141 have both a tail exit system and side doors. Unlike the C-47, they have two side doors, and the tail elevators are high enough you don’t have to worry about hitting them when you jump out. We normally jumped from the doors.
The other big difference is in size. Gooney Birds can carry 18 paratroopers. The Herky Bird can carry over 60; the Starlifter can carry over 100. Once you’re inside a Gooney Bird, it feels like the inside of a tin shed. By comparison, a modern transport feels like a four car garage!
Hightower spoke up, “Pardon me, sir, but can I make a suggestion?”
“Please, Top, anything!”
“Well, my old man was a jumper back in World War II, with the Screaming Eagles, and he told me once that the real trick with jumping from a Goony was that you had to use both hands on the doorway, and almost dive out, to keep below the rear stabilizer on the plane.”
Donovan stared at him for a second and then looked at me. “Oh, joy!”
“Sir, let’s get a bunch of cushions or something and start practicing jumping from these things.”
Donovan nodded. “Let’s make it happen, Top!”
When we got back outside and onto the tarmac, Donovan called together his three platoon leaders and their platoon sergeants. “Here’s the scoop. We are jumping out of these C-47s. It will be just like dropping from a Herc. We’re just going to have to make a few changes.”
Donovan’s officers and noncoms stared as he outlined the changes. First and Third Platoons would drop; Second Platoon would stay behind and handle support and service. We would drop light — no heavy weapons, no mortars, no machine guns, no anti-tank or anti-air weapons. A dozen and a half jumpers in each plane. The change even affected the artillery element — me. Normally a FIST element consists of a junior officer, a radio operator, and a couple of security troops at a minimum. Now it was just me and the radio operator. Aside from a half dozen radio operators and medics, it was just a shitload of Eleven Bravos, infantry enlisted. We even cut down on the personal gear we were taking. Since the plan was to do live fire training at a range once we landed, we were issued live ammo, quite unusual. We went with three days rations. It was basically a Hollywood drop but with guns and food.
It was when we got to how the planes would be loaded that I started to wonder. We had four transports and five officers — the colonel, the captain, two platoon leaders, and me. Standard doctrine was that each bird gets an officer. This is combat loading, where everything gets split up, so that no single airplane that gets shot down loses all the officers or all of a single element. Instead, Donovan assigned Wilcox to the lead plane, his First Platoon leader to the next plane, and Third Platoon’s platoon sergeant to the third plane. Donovan and I would ride in the last Goony-Bird with Third Platoon, with 2nd Lieutenant John Fairfax. Lieutenant Fairfax was the most junior platoon leader. The other two were both first lieutenants, and seemed quite competent. Fairfax, not so much.
If we were supposed to launch and drop by mid-afternoon, that was looking quite unlikely. The troops moved inside a hangar to get out of the sun and get access to a toilet. Lieutenant Hobart of the Second Platoon got everyone who wasn’t dropping back to their barracks, and then organized some food to get sent back to us. Meanwhile the mechanics kept working on the engine on the C-47. Maybe I would get lucky and that was the plane I was assigned to drop from, and it would get stuck on the ground! Maybe I could go out and shoot holes in the tires!
In the meantime First Sergeant Hightower rigged up some cushions and had the troops start practicing jumping out of the doorway of one of the C-47s. After a couple of tries, I really wanted to shoot holes in the tires! On the plus side, since we were dropping so light, we could put 20 men on a plane, not just 18.