A few weeks after my return Colonel Muldoon called me into his office and handed me the report of my grade in the course. It was Superior. He was effusive in his praise. He said, "Well, Lopez, at least you didn't disgrace us."
5
Fighter on First Base
One of the things that Colonel Muldoon stressed in the squadron was sports. He may have been ahead of the day's psychologists by recognizing that athletics is good for relieving stress and for making an organization more cohesive, or maybe he just liked sports. In any case, the fighter squadron had a team in the group officer's softball league that played two or three times a week on a field just off the southeast end of runway 1331, the runway running southeast and northwest. (The actual runway headings were 130 degrees and 310 degrees.) This runway was seldom in use, because the north-south runway was much longer and wider. We also had a bowling team in the group league. When baseball was out of season, we played pickup basketball and volleyball in the base gym and touch football at the beach or on one of the fields on the base.
Dick Jones was the star of our bowling team, scoring on average about fifty pins higher than anyone else in the league, so our team won several trophies. I was a below-average bowler, never having bowled before, but the league gave me one of the trophies anyway, a typical one with a bowler mounted on a stand. Once when I was away on a trip, some of the pilots removed my trophy from its stand, broke off its arms, screwed it to the top of my jet helmet, and painted on the helmet, "Look, no hands!" It looked a bit like a German pickelhaube. On my return, I donned the helmet without comment and tried to wear it in a P-80, but with the seat lowered enough to close the canopy, I could not see out of the cockpit. I had to remove the ornament.
Dick was also a fine catcher on the softball team, and I was an adequate first baseman. If my baseball ability had matched my love for the game, I would have been a major leaguer. I grew up in New York and was an avid Yankee fan, thanks largely to a kind uncle who often took me to Yankee games. I was fortunate to have seen Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig (who was my idol), Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, et Al (Al Lopez, that is).
Colonel Muldoon was the shortstop, Major Schoenfeldt the pitcher, and Barney Turner the third baseman. Fortunately, slow-pitch softball had not yet been introduced, and none of the pitchers in the league was a real hotshot, so the games were well balanced and enjoyed by all. At times some of the secretaries stopped by to watch the games, which were played just after work, inspiring us bachelors to do our best. Some of the base organizations that worked in shifts played softball on those same fields in the early afternoon, and thereby hangs a tale.
One afternoon I was testing, in a P-47N, a new engine-control regulator and a pressure-demand oxygen mask, both of which had to be tested above 40,000 feet. Although the temperature on the ground was about 90 degrees, at 40,000 feet it was minus 65, so I was dressed in heavy winter flying gear. When I reached 41,000 feet the test program called for me to try a number of different throttle settings to determine the manifold pressure at which insufficient air flow would cause the turbosupercharger to stall. When it stalled, the engine power dropped about 50 percent, and the airplane lost several thousand feet before I could regain full power. After repeating the test three times with identical results, I proceeded to the test of the oxygen mask. I had switched the oxygen system to the pressure position above 35,000 feet as prescribed by the operating instructions. Oxygen must be supplied under pressure above that altitude, because even if the pilot is breathing 100 percent oxygen, the atmospheric pressure is too low to force the oxygen from his lungs into his bloodstream. The pilot may become hypoxic (oxygen starved), lose consciousness, and eventually die.
The pressure-breathing system forces oxygen into the pilot's lungs under pressure, which is difficult to get used to: the pilot must force the air out of his lungs to exhale, and as soon as he relaxes his diaphragm muscles, his lungs fill up again. Besides testing the general functioning of this equipment, we were to determine how effectively a pilot could communicate on the radio with oxygen being forced down his throat. The answer was, not very well. I made several calls to the ground radio, but no one could understand a word. It sounded garbled in my earphones, and I doubt that I could have understood it. Some pilots in my squadron were airborne at the time, and I received several derogatory remarks, including, ''Lope, you're not supposed to eat peanut butter when you're transmitting," and, "If you're drowning, Lope, I'll drop you a life raft."
Other pilots using this system had the same problem, although some were able to develop a technique for speaking clearly enough despite the pressure. I never could, however. My technique was to turn off the pressure while I was speaking, which worked quite well. In the next few years, cockpits in jet aircraft were pressurized, and we seldom if ever had to use the pressure system in the oxygen masks again.
Anyway, after completing the tests I dived back toward the field for landing. The main north-south runway was under repair, requiring me to land on runway 13, to the southeast. I came in at about 100 feet and peeled up to the left for a standard circular fighter pattern and made my usual great three-point landing. About halfway down the runway I began to apply the brakes gently. The left brake reacted normally, but at the first touch, the actuating cylinder broke off from the right pedal, and the pedal itself flopped loosely forward. Suddenly, what had been a routine roll out after landing turned into a potential accident. If I didn't use the brakes the plane would run off the end of the runway; if I applied the good left brake it would run off the side of the narrow runway into the soft sand and either nose over or rip off a landing gear. I was too far down the runway to take off again, which wouldn't help anyway, since the brake couldn't be repaired in the air. I would still have to land with only one brake.
Knowing that the softball field at the end of the runway was hard-packed clay, I opted to run off the end of the runway, where I would be moving as slowly as possible, then unlock the tailwheel and ground-loop the airplane. I had immediately pulled back the mixture control to shut off the engine, and when I had passed the end of the runway and reached the outfield area, I unlocked the tailwheel and stomped on the left brake. When the nose started swinging to the left I saw to my horror that the field was full of players running in all directions as this monstrous airplane chased them in circles with the propeller still windmilling. I hadn't been able to see them earlier because the nose of the P-47 completely blocks the pilot's forward view when the tail is down. I was afraid I might complete my first unassisted triple play, the permanent kind, but by the grace of God, and because I started my ground loop in the outfield, the team remained intact. Instead of a triple play I had twirled a no-hitter.
When the plane finally came to a stop the players all ran toward it and stood there, sweating in their shorts and T-shirts, gaping as I opened the canopy and clumsily climbed out of the cockpit in my heavy, sheepskin-lined flying gear. I felt foolish as I apologized for breaking up the game, but since no one had been injured, they took it in good spirit and even seemed to enjoy the adventure of seeing the P-47, and a genuine Arctic explorer, up close and personal.
During my first year at Eglin I had my only experience with the military justice system, when I was appointed to a general court-martial board that had been convened to try a number of cases. General courts-martial handle major cases such as murder, desertion, stealing, and embezzlement, while special courts-martial deal with lesser offenses including absence without leave (AWOL) and drunkenness. The court-martial board comprises five to seven officers, all of whom must be of equal or higher rank than the defendant, and acts as both judge and jury, determining guilt or innocence and the sentence, if guilty. Col. Thomas McGehee, the 611th Group commander, was the president of the general court-martial board, Major Schoenfeldt was appointed defense counsel for general cases, and Capt. Dick Jones was made a defense counsel for special cases. Neither Schoeny nor Dick had any legal training, but the trial judge advocate (prosecutor) was a lawyer. That was not as unfair as it seems, because the cases were thoroughly investigated and reviewed by lawyers before formal charges were made and went through several higher reviews after sentencing. Because of the appearance of bias against the accused, however, the Uniform Code of Military Justice now provides that the defense counsel must be a lawyer if the prosecutor is a lawyer.