A test program's final report is prepared by the project officer and reflects the daily reports submitted by the test officer. The test officer's reports are compilations of the data from each mission and the comments of the pilots. In the F-84B program, pilots from Eglin and from the 20th Fighter Group at Shaw Field commented. Both the test officer and the project officer had to approve the content and wording of the final report before it was forwarded through channels for distribution. Informally, the pilots would discuss the day's missions with each other and pass on any information about the aircraft that might be useful or affect safety. The project officer, usually a pilot who flew a few of the missions himself, would sit in on these sessions several times a week.
In late March 1949, Eglin was invaded by Hollywood as Gregory Peck and a host of other actors, along with directors, cinematographers, and an enormous support crew, arrived to shoot the flying scenes for the now classic film Twelve O'Clock High, a story built around a World War II bomb group in England. The moviemakers came to Eglin for B-17s. The First Experimental Guided Missile Squadron (XGM) at Eglin was still flying a large number of B-17s, most of which were equipped to be flown as drones (unmanned aircraft), primarily for use in the testing of nuclear weapons. The XGM B-17s were the only ones still flying in the Air Force, except for a few individual test aircraft.
Twelve of the B-17s were painted in World War II markings and used exclusively for the film for about a month, flown by XGM pilots. Many of the ground scenes were filmed at one of the Eglin auxiliary fields and at the abandoned airfield at Ozark, Alabama, about eighty miles northeast of Eglin. The movie's flying schedule was published daily, and all other flights were instructed to keep well clear of the auxiliary field and the B-17 formations.
One of the scenes in the film called for a B-17 to make a wheels-up crash landing. Paul Mantz, the premier movie stunt pilot, had flown a B-17 to Ozark that he would crash. Some of the Air Force pilots heard what he was to be paid for crashing the plane and said they would do it for nothing. The director declined their offer. Paul Mantz was experienced in that type of work, and Air Force pilots spend much of their training learning not to crash. If you have seen the crash in Twelve O'Clock High you can appreciate the wisdom of the director's decision.
I don't know how long Gregory Peck was in the area, because he stayed in Fort Walton Beach in the best, and one of the few, hotels in the area, Bacon's by the Sea. He traveled directly from the hotel to the auxiliary field, and few, if any, of the Eglin personnel saw him. Many of the other actors, however, came to the officer's club occasionally, and they were quite friendly and outgoing. The remoteness of Eglin must have been a shock to the filmmakers, and I'm sure they were glad to return to the bright lights of Hollywood.
18
Sonic Booms and Radar
In March 1949, Dick Jones, then stationed at Shaw Air Force Base, near Sumter, South Carolina, asked me to be the best man at his wedding on Saturday April 2. He and Lois McConnell were to be married in their hometown of Lewiston, New York, near Niagara Falls. Glyn and I had met Lois a few months earlier, when she and her twin, Phyllis, visited Eglin for a few days while Dick was staying with us. I, of course, accepted. Dick had filled the same role for me a little over a year before, and I was glad to reciprocate.
The problem of how to get to Lewiston was neatly solved when I was asked to pick up a new F-84D at the Republic factory in Farmingdale, Long Island, on Friday the First of April. I was flown to Mitchel Field in a B-25 and was picked up there by a company car from Republic. At the factory airfield, I inspected and signed for the airplane, then took off and flew to Mitchel Field, all of five minutes away. Col. Ed Rector, who had been Dick's and my group commander in China, was now stationed at Mitchel and was to be an usher at the wedding. He met me at base operations and said he had a C-45 scheduled for the weekend and that we would fly to Niagara Falls that afternoon.
Following a quick lunch, we took off for what was planned to be a two-hour flight, but Robert Burns was right, our plans ganged a-gley almost immediately, as they aft do. As soon as we became airborne Ed (whom I always properly addressed as "Colonel" then) moved the landing gear switch to the up position, and the two green lights went out as they should. However, the lack of normal acceleration, airspeed, and rate of climb indicated that the gear had not fully retracted. Ed elected to continue on course while we attempted to correct the problem. None of the circuit breakers had popped, so we felt safe in cycling the switch several times, which we did to no avail. After leveling out at about 6,000 feet we tried to raise the gear by means of the hand crank on the right side of the pilot's seat. While Ed flew, I operated the crank handle. It was easy to turn at first because the airflow was helping the gear swing backward toward the up position, but after the halfway point it became increasingly difficult and then impossible, because I was lifting the total weight of the gear with precious little mechanical advantage. Ed tried to help by pushing over to create negative g to reduce the load on the crank, but the carburetors were not designed for negative g and caused the engines to sputter.
Since my unsuccessful attempts had been from the copilot seat, I decided to apply more leverage by standing up. It worked well until the last few turns of the crank. I was applying maximum pressure when the airplane suddenly nosed over into a dive. Ed yelled for me to stop, I immediately released the crank, and we leveled off. We tried to raise the gear again with the same result. We couldn't figure what was causing the dive until, on the third try, Ed noticed that I was bracing myself on the copilot's control wheel. On the last turns of the crank, I would force the control wheel sharply forward, and the airplane would obediently go into a dive. Ed decided we had fooled around long enough, so we lowered the gear with the switch, which worked properly going down, and landed at Stewart Air Force Base, near West Point, New York, where a mechanic located and replaced a defective relay. Reassured, we took off; the gear came up, and the rest of the trip was uneventful.
Dick picked us up at the airport along with Rode, who had arrived a bit earlier in a Mustang from Eglin. He drove us to the home of a neighbor who had volunteered to put us up for the wedding. After cleaning up and changing our clothes, we took off to see the Falls. I had never seen them except from the air, and while they were certainly impressive, I found them oppressive. I was uncomfortable standing against the rail only a few feet from that unbelievable torrent. I felt much safer in the air.
That evening after a short wedding rehearsal we all went to the home of the McConnells, Lois's parents. They were Scottish, and later in the evening I realized how Scottish. After tea, which was quite a ritual in itself, we held hands and sang "Annie Laurie" with the same reverence that most people accord "The Star-Spangled Banner." When we returned to our quarters, a new experience awaited us. Our twin four-poster beds were quite high and had feather mattresses about eighteen inches thick. I could have used an F-84's ladder to climb into it, and when we lay down we sank slowly out of sight into the feathery deeps. I could not see Ed, and when I said goodnight, he, as a former Navy officer, replied, "Up periscope." It was a weird but comfortable feeling, and I slept quite well, but at that age I always slept well, whatever the surface.
The next afternoon, the wedding went off perfectly. Lois wore a traditional wedding gown, and Dick, the groomsmen, and I wore our uniforms, which was also traditional for military weddings. Shortly thereafter, Dick and Lois left for their honeymoon, and after some mild celebrating by the wedding party, we retired, in Ed's and my case for another feathery night. In the morning we flew back to Mitchel Field with no landing-gear trouble. I stayed overnight with Ed in his BOQ, watching that new technical marvel television, which would not arrive in the Eglin area for several more years. I was mesmerized, even though the TV picture and the shows themselves were awful. The picture has improved greatly since then.