I recently heard another Lynch story from his days as a test pilot for North American Aviation. In early 1954 he and Bob Hoover, the now famous stunt airshow pilot, gave a cockpit check to an Air Force pilot who was picking up a new F-100 Super Sabre at Mines Field, now Los Angeles International Airport. The engine exploded just after takeoff, and the pilot ejected. Tragically, he was much too low and was killed as he hit the runway, still in the seat. The airplane continued on and crashed a mile or so away in El Segundo. It hit in an open field, so no one else was killed or injured. Lynch and Hoover went out to the runway with the ambulance. It was obvious the pilot was dead, and Hoover was leaving the area when he saw that Lynch had gone some distance down toward the takeoff end of the runway. He joined him and asked what he was doing there. Lynch pointed at the centerline of the runway, the pilot's seat, and the smoke from the burning plane and said, "Bob, there was a guy that knew how to hold a heading."
The flight to Great Falls had been bad enough, but the day after our return I received the chilling news that I had been transferred from the fighter test squadron to the climatic hangar, where I would be the project and test officer on the all-climate testing of the P-80. Although my recent experience in Alaska made me the sensible choice to run the test, I didn't want to give up test flying as my primary duty. Fortunately, Colonel Slocumb, the fighter C.O., agreed and said that I could be attached to the squadron for flying and do as much flying as I had time for.
The climatic hangar is a large structure that can accommodate a B-36 bomber along with several other aircraft. The temperature of the entire hangar area can be maintained at anywhere between minus 65 degrees and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition, there are several smaller temperature-controllable compartments in which smaller items can be tested. At the time that I was assigned there, the functional acceptance tests of the hangar had just been completed and the first aircraft tests were about to be run.
Once I learned that my flying time wouldn't suffer too much, I warmed somewhat to the assignment. As I learned more about the hangar, I was impressed with the amount of cooling and, to a lesser degree, heating equipment required to control the temperature in such an enormous building. In today's parlance, it was totally awesome.
The entire P-80 project, including the preparation of the test program, the running of the tests, the data reduction, and the completion of the final report, took only four months, from mid-March to mid-July of 1947. I had so much free time that I not only was able to fly as much as before but I also continued as test officer on the A-1 radar computing gunsight in the P-38. Along with most fighter pilots, I rated air-to-air gunnery as one of my favorite occupations.
The cold-weather part of the test was done first, with hangar temperatures at approximately 10-degree increments from freezing down to minus 65. After the aircraft had been cold soaked at the desired temperature (held at a given temperature until the entire aircraft had reached that temperature), a series of starts were made using the gasoline injection system developed in Alaska a few months earlier. In addition to the starts, all of the aircraft systems, such as landing gear, flaps, and trim tabs, were cycled. The airplane was heavily instrumented, and a great deal of information was gathered on the performance of the various systems throughout the test range. The airplane performed well, and there was no trouble at all with the starts at any temperature.
I was in the cockpit for all the starts, dressed in suitable arctic clothing. The P-80 tail pipe was vented to the outside through a duct that penetrated the hangar wall. One of my duties, before each start, was to go outside through a door next to the duct to ensure that the area was clear. At the very low temperatures, I would emerge from the door like a wraith in a cloud of vapor into an instant temperature change of some 150 degrees. As I walked around in that 90-degree heat in a fur-lined parka and mukluks, people driving past must have wondered if this was the same character who had climbed out of a P-47 in the same outfit in the middle of a softball field last July. In any case, it was reported as the first sighting in Florida of the abominable snowman.
The hot-weather test went much faster, since we had only three temperature increments: 100, 110, and 120 degrees. In Florida summers most of our starts were at 90 degrees or above. The only problem in this phase was the vile concoction of salt water and God-knows-what that the flight surgeon forced me to drink to protect me from the effects of the heat. It was nauseating. I needed something to protect me from the flight surgeon.
Just about the time I moved to the climatic hangar, I was notified of another chilling move to come. The powers-that-be at Eglin had decided to convert all the bachelor officer's quarters into family apartments. During and immediately after the war, there were large numbers of bachelor officers who did not wish to be married in wartime, but by early 1947 most of them had married. Since there was a severe housing shortage in the Eglin area, the decision was made to move the bachelors out and the married folks in. It was a sensible decision in retrospect, but it did not seem so at the time to the displaced bachelors, as the off-base housing shortage applied to them as well.
Maj. Don Rodewald, or Rode, as he was called, had been an armorer in the American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers. When it was disbanded in July 1942, he accepted a commission in the Army Air Forces as an armament officer in the 23rd Fighter Group. In late 1943 he returned to the States and went through flying training, becoming a fighter pilot. After a short tour at Eglin he rejoined the 23rd Group as a pilot in the 75th Fighter Squadron, my former outfit. He served in Shanghai with the AAF after the war until being recalled to Eglin, where his young wife was dying of breast cancer. She died while I was in Alaska, and Rode, his two young daughters, and his mother were living in a big rented house about fifteen miles from Eglin near the small town of Mary Esther. I'll say more about Rode's courage later, but one mark of it was that he flew his wife's body back to Wisconsin for the funeral in a C-45, a plane so small and cramped that the coffin was constantly visible from the pilot's seat.
Barney and I were commiserating with Rode about our housing plight when he suggested that we move in with him, since his mother and daughters were to move to Tucson in a few days. We jumped at the chance and moved in as soon as his family left. The house was a far cry from bachelor quarters. It was a large, roomy two-story frame house surrounded by beautiful old oak trees situated on the inland waterway overlooking Santa Rosa Island. I could see that my life-style was about to make a dramatic change for the better.
Two more bachelors soon joined us. One was Lt. Col. Walt Glover, a handsome Virginian who was the base ordnance officer, and the other was Lt. Wes Posvar, a young redhead who had been graduated from West Point in June 1946 with the highest academic record compiled there by any cadet except Douglas MacArthur. After finishing flying school, he was assigned to Eglin and joined the cold-weather test detachment in Alaska in January. Upon returning to Eglin, he too was assigned to the climatic hangar, where we shared an office. We had been acquaintances in Alaska but became friends and roommates at Eglin and are good friends to this day.
Wes has the brain of a genius and the heart of a fighter pilot, a rare combination possibly attributable to his red hair. He loved to fly and party, and his favorite remark at about two in the morning, when festivities were beginning to wane, was ''Let's start a brand-new party!"
Near the end of his first year at Eglin he was sent to the Air Tactical School at Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, Florida. He came back to Eglin regularly to fly and to visit, but at the conclusion of the four-month course he made a spectacular return to the area. Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch had just been put back on the market following the war. Wes had seen some of the advertising posters and obtained a large number of pennants proclaiming, "Red's back," which he plastered all over the town of Fort Walton and the base.