The air-to-air combat maneuvers were nothing like dogfighting. Instead, I had to place the target on my radar screen, using a hand controller to move a little cursor until it covered the target, and lock on to it by pushing a switch on the control stick. The system would then begin to calculate the correct approach path and how far out to fire the rockets. Next, I would switch to a different mode where I’d keep the target in the center of the screen. If my target started to move away from the middle I’d maneuver the airplane to keep it centered. Sometimes, the target moved so quickly that I had to fly upside down in a crazy barrel roll just to keep up with it. I was comfortable with this control system, and my skills as a pilot greatly improved during this phase of training. I really enjoyed working as a combined unit: human and machine in precise harmony.
You might be imagining a squadron of close buddies, flying wingtip to wingtip. Not us. We launched solo and headed off in our own directions, spreading out so we could look for targets over a wide area. I practiced endlessly, like a student in medical school, honing my skills and experience. But it was mostly solitary learning, which was fine; I was confident and had always relied on my own abilities, not others’.
Training for different kinds of weather was far more challenging in Florida. With all the humidity, we had a lot of turbulent weather. We even had a hurricane come through, and rather than risk damage, the experienced pilots tried to fly the airplanes to other bases, while we students evacuated to the relative safety of the officers’ club. I remember standing in the front door of that club as the power failed, watching streetlights and electrical transformers dramatically arcing and sparking, thinking I was lucky to be alive. While the other pilots evacuated the airplanes, some collided in midair due to the terrible weather, and four guys died. Four jets, four pilots, all gone in one terrible accident.
Even though we were not in a combat zone, it was a dangerous life. I knew it could have been me who died that day. I understood that risks were part of my job, but incidents like that terrified Pam.
That made sense: she was on the outside looking in. As much as I wanted to share the excitement of my career, she couldn’t experience it with me. And when it came to dangerous incidents, like many young, dumb guys I thought it would make her feel better to discuss them, to explain them. Of course, I was wrong. My clumsy attempts to reassure her only increased her fears. I had changed since West Point—risk was part of my everyday routine and no big deal to me. For her, it was the thing that could kill her husband at any hour of the day. How she endured it, I don’t know, but she stuck with me as I dragged her from one military base to another.
The Space Age began in 1957, with the launch by the Soviet Union of the first satellite, Sputnik. I paid little attention, however. Pam and I were moving again, this time to my first post-training assignment, just southeast of Washington, D.C., with the 95th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base. Less than two years earlier I had piloted my first airplane, and now I was a jet pilot defending my country’s most vital assets.
My mission wasn’t called Homeland Security in those days, but essentially that’s what it was. They called our squadron “Defenders of the Nation’s Capital.” However, that grandiose title was a big joke, because for a long, long time we could hardly get an airplane off the ground. We just didn’t have the ability or the resources to keep them maintained. The Korean War had been over for many years, and the nation was scaling back on military spending. The air force was in a slump at that time. We did not have a good supply system for parts to keep our airplanes flying, and it didn’t help that we still flew those old F-86Ds.
Still, in theory, our squadron was part of the air defense command system, designed to guard the nation from airborne attack. Specifically, we were ready to defend the capital from long-range assault. Control centers all over the country, using long-range radars, calculated our intercept courses and told us where to go if they considered any incoming aircraft suspicious. Rather than engaging in combat overseas, we were prepared to oppose anyone who tried to attack the United States. In the middle of the Cold War, it felt like that attack could happen anytime.
President Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were engaged in a propaganda war in a fast-changing world. Both countries had nuclear weapons, and Eisenhower used their existence to keep the Soviets at bay. If events became too heated, both nations could destroy each other. In a time before large and reliable rockets, nuclear bombs would be dropped by waves of aircraft. It was our job to stop the Soviet planes.
Our targets would have been the big bombers. We had air force squadrons stationed everywhere, up along the border with Canada, in Greenland, and in Alaska, as a perimeter defense of the nation. We were trained to intercept those incoming Soviets as far out as our airplanes could fly, and to knock them out of the sky before they could get close to American shores. I’m glad that we never had to do what we were trained for.
All of my previous flying was in a training environment, but now I was in an operational environment. We stayed on alert just like firefighters, sleeping in bunks and ready to fly into defensive action. It felt very different from training. And once again, as the new, green pilot, I started at the bottom of the heap and had to work my way up.
Pam and I could finally afford to buy a home, in the District Heights area close to the base. It cost us more than thirteen thousand dollars, a fortune in those days, but it was a beautiful brick house on a pleasant street and we loved it. I wasn’t paid much, but we got by. In fact, I think we had more disposable income than I have ever had since, because we had so few expenses. After the frenetic years of moving, I felt I could finally give Pam a moment to breathe, and a little stability.
It also seemed like the right moment for us to start a family, and in 1958 we had our first child, Merrill Ellen. We gave her my father’s first name, which is also my middle name. I wasn’t totally sure it could be used as a girl’s name, too, but there were a lot of women called Meryl around, so we figured we could get away with it. I was extremely excited to become a father, and it was a very special moment when we visited my family back in Michigan with our new baby.
Nevertheless, my career still consumed me. In my second year at Andrews, the air force finally gave us new fighters, high-altitude supersonic interceptors called Convair F-102 Delta Daggers. These airplanes were specifically designed to defend the United States, and yet we still didn’t fly much. With the new focus on nuclear warfare, the air force was given little money for spare parts. We had a hard time keeping our airplanes flying. We’d cannibalize one F-102 to repair another, and plenty of aircraft just sat in the hangar and looked pretty, because they couldn’t fly. A lot of the pilots sat around, too, killing time, drinking coffee, and playing Ping-Pong.
I was disenchanted by the lack of focus and flying time. But there was more to it than those factors: there was added tension within the squadron because of two very different generations of aviators. My flight commander and the other senior officers in the squadron had advanced through the ranks during World War II, a decade earlier. They’d been let go at the end of the war, but pulled back in to fly in Korea. Many hadn’t flown for years, and when they did it had been propeller planes. They learned to fly jets relatively late in their careers and were cautious and uneasy about jet aircraft quirks. Little things in the air made them jittery, and I kept a wary eye on them when flying close by.