After breakfast on Monday I took off in the F-84 for Eglin. Because of the hot weather and the relatively short runway at Mitchel, I elected not to put fuel in the wingtip tanks and to use only internal fuel. That did not give me sufficient range for a nonstop flight to Eglin. I landed en route at Shaw Air Force Base. While the aircraft was being refueled I visited the operations office of Dick's squadron and told his friends that although they had one less bachelor, Dick's lovely new wife was undoubtedly a net gain for the base. Dick's new sister-in-law, Phyllis, later met and married one of the pilots in his squadron. Sadly, he was killed in a crash not too long after the marriage.
Shortly after I returned to Eglin one of the squadron pilots was killed in a crash that had a particularly tragic aftermath. Lt. Arnold Adams, who had been in the squadron for about a year, was on a low-altitude test flight one afternoon in an F-80C but failed to land at the scheduled time. After the tower had checked the other fields in the area without locating the aircraft, we took off in all the available planes to search for it. About an hour later a helicopter crew spotted the F-80 under about ten feet of water in Choctawhatchee Bay approximately fifteen miles from the base. A crash boat was dispatched to the scene, and the skipper reported that the pilot was still in the cockpit. We never did learn the cause of the accident, but as he hadn't reported an emergency, there was speculation that he had simply flown into the water. It is easy for a pilot to misjudge his height above the surface of calm water. His body was sent home for burial with the proper ceremony, and the airplane was recovered and stored in the base salvage yard. Some months later two mechanics were busy removing parts from its fuselage when the ejection seat fired, killing one of the mechanics. No one had thought to disarm the seat, possibly because it was a fairly new installation.
On the brighter side of events, our athletic fortunes took a large turn for the better when Capt. Jack Flack was assigned to Fighter Test. He was an outstanding athlete, a four-letter man at Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi. He had excelled in football, baseball, basketball, and tennis. Just before the war he had signed a contract as an infielder with the Saint Louis Cardinals, but after four years in the service, he thought his chances of a baseball career had diminished, and he opted to stay in the Air Force. Because Jack was a little over his best playing weight, he didn't look like the athlete he was, and he fooled a lot of people. At that stage of his life he might not have made it into the big leagues, but most of the rest of us wouldn't have been starters in the Jules Verne League (20,000 leagues below the majors).
Jack played shortstop on our softball team and, in addition to his outstanding fielding, immediately became the Babe Ruth of the base. His first few times at bat he hit towering home runs, far over the heads of the opposing outfielders. Then when they had moved back into the next county, he would drop a hit just over the infield for a triple. Toward the end of a game he often announced that he would hit a home run for the folks that came late, and then he would do just that.
He was not very tall, but even in basketball he was by far the best player on the base. He was the first person I ever saw dribble behind his back or throw blind passes. He was an accurate shot and a master at faking people out of their shoes. In one game he made one of the funniest plays I have ever seen. He had stolen the ball at about midcourt and was dribbling toward the basket, with two taller players in pursuit and closing fast. When he got to the basket he stopped abruptly and threw his arms up as if shooting. Both opponents leaped high with their arms flailing to block the shot. When they came down Jack calmly shot a soft lay-up for a basket. He had caught the final dribble between his knees and thrown his empty arms up. The would-be blockers were totally baffled by the fake, as were most of those who saw it, and probably don't know how he did it to this day.
Later, after I had left Eglin, Jack was one of the pilots on Project Ficon (Fighter Conveyor), in which F-84s were modified to be carried in flight by modified B-36s so that the bombers could carry their own fighter escort or ferry camera-equipped RF-84Fs on long-range reconnaissance missions. After a long period of testing, these hook-ups were found to be feasible, and a strategic reconnaissance squadron was equipped with modified B-36s and RF-84Fs in 1955.
Just before the end of 1948, Eglin received an F-86A Sabre to be tested in the climatic hangar. The Sabre, a swept-wing fighter built by North American Aviation and powered by the 5,200-pound-thrust General Electric J47-GE-13, was the first fighter capable of exceeding the speed of sound, albeit in a dive. Not until the F-100 Super Sabre came along in 1952 was an operational fighter capable of supersonic speed in level flight.
Colonel Slocumb arranged for several of the pilots in Fighter Test, myself included, to make short checkout flights in the Sabre before it began its climate tests. In addition to the swept wings, it had nosewheel steering and leading-edge slats that opened automatically when the airplane approached a stall. They allowed the F-86 to land slower and turn tighter than would have been possible without the slats. Adding to my eagerness to fly the Sabre was the world speed record it had set on September 15, 1948, just two months earlier, of 670.981 mph. On these brief checkout flights we were told not to go supersonic — just get the feel of the airplane. That I did, and it felt good; everything seemed to be just the way it should be, there was good visibility, and it was stable yet maneuverable — a joy to fly. As much as I enjoyed that first flight, there was a slight moment of anxiety as I landed. Because of the swept wing, the nose was higher at touchdown than anything I had flown. The touchdown was smooth, but as I slowed and began to lower the nosewheel to the runway, the time before it touched seemed so inordinately long that I had a second or two of panic, fearing that the nose gear had not extended. As I taxied in toward the ramp I realized the reason for my anxiety. I had been flying F-84s exclusively for the past several weeks, and in that airplane the pilot sits farther back from the nose. The angle of sight over the nose was therefore much less than in the F-86, and unconsciously I had expected the nosewheel to touch when I had the same view over the nose as in the F-84.
The Sabre still is my favorite jet fighter. My opinion is shared by many pilots. I couldn't wait to fly one again, but it was not until three months later, in February 1949, that we received several F-86s and I began flying them regularly. Since I had never flown faster than sound, the first thing I did on my next flight was to climb to 40,000 feet and roll over into a vertical dive. The Mach needle moved up to and then past Mach 1, but the only sensation other than being in a vertical dive was a slight dip of the left wing as the plane went supersonic. Once the speed brakes on each side of the aft fuselage were extended, the Sabre dutifully slowed and backed across the sound barrier. It was quite a thrill to go through this mythical barrier that for so many years had seemed to be the upper limit of mankind's quest for speed. There were no restrictions on causing the sonic booms that occur each time a plane exceeds the speed of sound, so we all did it as much as possible, but always over the Eglin ranges. Breaking the barrier later became one of the regular features of our firepower demonstrations.
It is interesting to compare those vertical dives required to achieve supersonic flight at that period with the flights I took in the Concorde in 1989. In the Concorde, passengers sat comfortably, eating and drinking, while the digital Machmeter on the forward bulkhead smoothly climbed through Mach 1 and then inched past Mach 2, finally settling on Mach 2.1. There was absolutely no sensation, and only the warmth of the cabin walls and the windows indicated the great speed at which we were traveling. The Concorde trips, from Washington to Paris and return, were made to celebrate the occasion of Air France's promise to donate a Concorde to the National Air and Space Museum when it reaches the end of its service life.