Despite my caution, I respected their years of experience. I didn’t get it in return. Most had never been to college, and they resented those who had. They particularly disliked West Point graduates, believing that we received preferential treatment over war veterans. As there were only two of us in my squadron, we were easy to single out. I gritted my teeth and said nothing—for a while.
My superiors also wrote efficiency reports about me, which went in my military record. These reports were always good overall, but I was still convinced that my flight commander knocked me down a little simply because I had gone to West Point. A report that was merely okay would slow my chances of promotion. I vented my frustration in a private letter to Jim Allen, the tactical officer at West Point who had convinced me to become a pilot. He wrote back and told me that if I decided to resign I would be giving in to those people, who would then be in total command of the air force. He advised me to stick around, both for me and for the service. Jim was a clever guy, who ended up heading the Air Force Academy. It was some of the best career advice I have ever received.
I didn’t waste any more time sitting around drinking coffee and talking to those guys. I began to wander around the hangar more and more. Just as I had been curious about taking car engines apart and putting them back together as a teenager, I was eager to see what went on with airplane maintenance. I hung around the maintenance crews, talked with them, and grew even more fascinated. There were storage areas for munitions, guided missiles, folding fin rockets, and other amazing things. I wanted to know it all inside out. The guys who worked there, however, told me that they were having problems. They could never get the attention of the officer in charge, as he was always in the lounge with the pilots, relaxing with coffee and cigarettes. They were left to flounder on their own, and as a result the squadron received poor readiness ratings. It was not a good time to be so disorganized, because the air force was adding a special weapons storage facility, which meant we’d be able to have nuclear weapons on-site.
The squadron commander was aware of the problem and noticed my interest. He finally came to me and said he wanted to make some changes, and they involved me. He told me to take over and run the armaments and electronics shop. I had no idea of the scale of the problem when I began, but once I did my weekends were gone. I put in 120-hour weeks sorting out the mess, in addition to being on constant alert as a pilot for three-day shifts. With the help of my senior master sergeant, I put in all my time reorganizing.
The working conditions were deplorable. All the sensitive electronic repairs took place in a lean-to shed that wound around the back of the hangar wall. It was filthy, and despite the sweltering summer heat it had no air-conditioning. So we approached the Convair company, which built our F-102 airplanes, and Hughes, which built many of the weapons systems, and asked a question they had never heard before. We told them that if they would buy the materials, we would rebuild the armament shop. They saw that we were serious and agreed. It took a while, but we put in sound-absorbent ceilings, fluorescent lights, air-conditioning, brand-new workbenches, and a gleaming tiled floor. The place looked like a medical operating theater when we finished. The tools and all the test equipment were where they were supposed to be, and there was no longer any confusion about who did what. The whole operation turned around, and our air force readiness rating jumped from very low to very high.
It turned out that we fixed up that shop just in time. In 1960 we upgraded to the F-106 Delta Dart, dubbed the “ultimate interceptor” airplane. This sleek jet was an advanced version of the F-102 design, with a more powerful engine. It also had an almost completely integrated electronic flight system, with navigation, radio, munitions, and the flight-control systems in big racks. The F-106 was complex and needed the efficient maintenance facility we now had. Because we were so organized, when the air force demonstrated the airplane to senators, congressmen, and others from Washington, they frequently used our facility.
Our second child, Alison Pamela, was born that year. Many fathers would try to be at home and spend more time with two young children. I focused more on my job. I rationalized the decision by saying it was good for my career—and it was. But, to my regret, I missed a lot of my daughters’ precious early years: time that once lost is gone forever.
Luckily, Pam was a wonderful mother, who could fill in for my absence. I don’t remember her ever complaining about me being gone all the time. Perhaps it was my own guilt that I did not spend more time with my family and was not more of a father when my kids were small, but I suspect that a sense of unease crept into our marriage at that moment.
Up until then, despite any hardships, we had made it through on the understanding that we lived the roving military life. I don’t think Pam expected that things would change when we had kids, but I believe she became increasingly wary about what I was doing. When we married, she was a little upset that I chose to join the air force. She didn’t really want me flying, because there is an obvious element of danger to it. I am sure she must have struggled with the fears that all aviators’ wives have, and the pressure to not outwardly show them.
Then I got into the all-weather fighter business, which was not like flying cargo airplanes—it was far more dangerous. Adding to that stress, I was away from home and flying city alerts in the middle of the night. No wonder it was a tense time for her. I was getting more and more into my work, and she had the frustration of covering for me at home because I wasn’t there.
I understand now that Pam needed me to slow down. To reconsider what was most important to me. To invest in my new family. Yet I have to admit that I was oblivious to her worries at the time; I was so caught up in my career. The Air Defense Command came and inspected our maintenance work, and enthusiasm grew about the great job we had done. They particularly appreciated that the contractors, rather than the air force, had paid for most of the rebuilding. Soon I received a phone call summoning me to headquarters. They wanted me to visit all of the other air bases, talk with them about what we had done, and work with them to do the same.
I was grateful for this validation of my work, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. If I had to sit at a desk somewhere, I didn’t want to do it at Air Defense Command Headquarters. I wanted to make a choice that would benefit both me and the air force. So that day I jumped in my car, drove to the Pentagon, and requested that they send me back to college to obtain an advanced degree. At first, the officers I talked to wanted to send me to North Carolina to study nuclear engineering. No, I countered, please send me to the University of Michigan. In fact, I begged and pleaded to be sent to Michigan, to study aerospace engineering. It worked: they enrolled me.
Before we moved back to Michigan, I had my first brush with the space program. The pilots in my squadron all gathered in our coffee room in May of 1961 where we planned to watch the live television reports as NASA attempted to put Alan Shepard in space on America’s first manned flight. Just before his launch, we heard that there was an emergency back at our airfield. Our maintenance officer was trying to land an F-102 fighter, but he couldn’t get the gear down. He would have to land the airplane on its belly. We needed to decide whether to watch the historic spaceflight live, or to take our hot dogs out to the runway and watch the crash. We decided that we could always watch the launch later on, in repeats, but the crash would be unique. So we forgot about the space program for the next few hours, far more pleased to see our maintenance officer return safely to earth than any astronaut. Sorry, Al, it was nothing personal.