The next morning, we had a most hearty and excellent breakfast, a year's supply of calories and cholesterol by today's standards, but that was 1946 B.C. (Before Cholesterol). We staggered away from the table and took off for our final destination, Ladd Field, Fairbanks, Alaska. Just out of Whitehorse I saw Lake Lebarge, where the cremation of Sam McGee took place in Robert W. Service's poem of the same name. The rest of the two-hour flight was over hilly terrain through which the Alcan Highway twisted and turned.
After landing at Ladd, which with Fairbanks is in a valley in a bend of the Tanana River, I checked into the visiting officers quarters and was handed a wire from Eglin ordering me to return to Great Falls as soon as possible since a B-25 from Eglin would be coming through and would bring me back. Somewhat disappointed that I would not have a chance to see more of the area, I went back to base operations to see if I could catch a ride to Great Falls. Unluckily, a C-47 was leaving the next morning, so my stay at Ladd was a short one.
I arrived at Great Falls on August 2 and spent four boring days waiting for the B-25 — another standard hurry up and wait situation. One of the pilots was from Helena, Montana, and they had spent several days there before picking me up. Since the other pilot was the deputy commander at Eglin, I vouchsafed no complaint. With two pilots already aboard, I was free to spend most of the flight in the nose compartment sleeping or observing the country below, which is always fascinating when you are low enough to see it clearly. On the first leg of the flight, I was dozing in the sunny nose when I was awakened by the bail-out alarm bell — the prearranged signal for me to don the headset. The pilot told me to look out on the right side, and there, practically at the same level, were the presidents' faces on Mount Rushmore. It was a magnificent sight, and we circled several times for further viewing. I didn't say anything, but I was completely surprised to see the faces, since I had been told many years before that they were on the Hudson River palisades in New York.
Back at Eglin I found that drastic changes had taken place in the fighter test squadron. The much larger test squadron from Pinecastle, Florida, had been merged with our squadron. Their C.O., Lt. Col. Dewey Slocumb, had become our C.O. Colonel Muldoon was going to Alaska to command the Eglin cold-weather test detachment. Dick Jones had left for Wright Field, Ohio, to attend test pilot school, and about a dozen new pilots had joined the squadron, along with many new aircraft and maintenance personnel. Most of these pilots, including Don Dessert, Len Koehler, Ray Evans, Fred Belue, and Hank Pashco, became my good friends later. I knew before I left that this transfer was contemplated, but I didn't expect such an early consummation.
Barney gave me the good news that he and I were to take two P-80s to Alaska for cold-weather testing, which meant we would be working for Colonel Muldoon. We were not to leave for Alaska until October, giving us about two months to prepare the test programs and read up on Arctic flying.
While I was gone, a new night fighter had been delivered to the squadron, a North American P-82C Twin Mustang, the perfect name for two stretched P-51H fuselages joined together by a mutual wing center section and a mutual horizontal stabilizer. It had been designed as a two-pilot, long-range fighter to operate over the Pacific, but a number of them were converted to the night-fighter configuration by the addition of radar housed in a long nacelle that protruded from the center section forward, extending beyond the arcs of the counter-rotating propellers. It immediately acquired the nickname ''the Dong." The pilot's controls in the right cockpit were replaced by the radar operator's gear. It was armed with six .50-caliber machine guns in the wing center section and was powered by two 1,350-horsepower Merlin V-1650 V-12 engines. Painted shiny black, it looked rather strange on the ramp with its four-wheel landing gear. Each fuselage had a min landing gear and a tailwheel.
As soon as possible, I read through the pilot's operating instructions and arranged a checkout flight. The cockpit was identical with that of the P-51H with the exception of the dual engine controls and instruments. I decided that the best way to fly it would be to ignore the right fuselage, except while taxiing, and fly it like a P-51. That worked well, and I felt quite comfortable with the airplane as I put it through its paces. I found it considerably heavier on the controls than the Mustang, but the performance was roughly the same.
All went well until I came in to land. I was looking forward to my first four-point landing, but instead I made four one-point landings. I peeled up into a normal fighter pattern for a P-51, but as I was holding it off the runway waiting for the stall, the nose dropped sharply despite full back stick (up elevator). I hit on the left main gear, then bounced to the right tailwheel, the left tailwheel, and then the right main, as best I could tell. By then it had stalled, and all the wheels stayed on the runway. By good fortune I had landed on the cross runway, so no one in the fighter squadron had seen me dribble the airplane down the runway, thereby avoiding the loss of yards of face.
After some thought, I decided that the radar nacelle's forward location caused the center of gravity to move too far forward for the elevator to have full control at landing speeds, although no one had mentioned it in my briefing for the flight. On my next flight I left a little power on, about ten to twelve inches of mercury, which took care of the problem. Some time later, when I flew the day-fighter version of the F-82, sans dong, I had no trouble holding the nose up without power.
My brother Carl, who had trained in P-61s, had not seen combat in World War II because of the end of the war, but he made up for it in Korea. He was stationed in Japan with the 68th Fighter Squadron (All-Weather) as a radar observer in F-82Gs. On June 27, 1950, his pilot, Lieutenant Hudson, and he were covering the air evacuation of Seoul when a group of North Korean Yak-9s appeared. The F-82s attacked and drove them off, and Lieutenant Hudson and he shot one down, scoring the first USAF victory of the Korean conflict.
In mid-August I was told that I would be going to the Lockheed field at Van Nuys, California, to pick up one of the first two P-80s to be equipped with a radio compass as soon as it came off the assembly line, and that in October I would take it to Alaska. A radio compass has an indicator on the instrument panel with a needle that rotates through 360 degrees. When a radio beam or commercial station is tuned in, the needle indicates the heading to the station. Turning the airplane to align the needle with the fixed marker at the top of the dial heads the airplane toward the station. The range of the radio compass depended on both the strength of the station signal and the altitude of the airplane and could be more than a hundred miles. Since the instrument worked in the low-frequency band, it was almost useless around thunderstorms, unless you were interested in the heading to each flash of lightning.