Also in 1949, thanks largely to the efforts of the newly appointed secretary of state, Dean Acheson, the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed, linking the United States, Canada, and ten nations of Western Europe in a mutual defense pact that proved to be a remarkably successful deterrent to the Soviets' aggressive plans for expansion. The Federal Republic of Germany was organized with Konrad Adenauer as chancellor. Known better as West Germany, it later became a strong member of NATO. East Germany was a Communist state ruled by the Soviets. Ireland became the Republic of Eire. The Soviets and the United States withdrew their troops from Korea. Events in Korea and Vietnam would loom large in the future of the United States.
It was a good year for the arts. Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical South Pacific opened on Broadway, Arthur Miller published his play Death of a Salesman, and George Orwell published 1984. The Christmas favorite "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was written by Johnny Marks. Albert Schweitzer published Hospital in the Jungle. The film version of the novel All the King's Men, based on the life of Huey Long, won the Academy Award for best picture, and its stars Broderick Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge won acting Oscars.
The Atomic Energy Commission announced the development of a breeder reactor that provided energy while creating more fuel than it used. In England, Geoffrey De Havilland introduced the first jet airliner, the ill-fated Comet. As the world entered the second half of the twentieth century, the U.S. Bureau of Standards forever abolished a prime excuse for being late to work when it developed an atomic clock accurate to one second in three billion years.
20
The Last Year of Heaven
One of the major difficulties in instrument flying in fighters was the reaction of the primary reference instrument, the artificial horizon, to roll and pitch. If an airplane banked, climbed, or dived too steeply, the gyro tumbled, and the instrument became useless until the plane resumed straight and level flight and the pilot caged and reset it. Normally, a pilot performed violent maneuvers only in clear weather, and the gyro instruments would be caged to prevent damage. However, if because of vertigo or extreme turbulence the pilot exceeded the limits of the instrument, he would be deprived of its use when he needed it most. In late 1949 we began to test a new attitude indicator, the A-1 vertical gyro, that would not tumble regardless of the attitude of the aircraft; it would indicate correctly through 360 degrees of pitch and roll. The instrument's display was different from the artificial horizon's in that the horizon bar was replaced by a ball on which the equator represented the horizon. The upper half of the ball was gray, representing the sky, and the lower was black, representing the ground. It was immediately nicknamed the eight ball.
It was installed in the rear cockpit instrument panel of the T-33, and after some flights to familiarize us with the presentation, the testing got under way. The objectives were to determine if the gyro would remain erect, not tumble, regardless of the airplane's attitude and to evaluate its suitability for precision instrument flying.
To satisfy the first objective the pilot performed many aerobatic maneuvers and combinations of aerobatic maneuvers while observing the instrument. In some of the most violent maneuvers the gyro did tumble, but its self-erecting mechanism quickly restored it. In the second series of tests, one pilot flew under the hood (a canvas cover that f its inside the canopy blocking the pilot's view outside the airplane) in the backseat. The pilot in the backseat closed his eyes while the safety pilot in the front seat rolled, zoomed, and dived, leaving the plane in an unusual attitude — in a wing-low climb approaching a stall; in a screaming, rolling dive; upside down; or whatever the evil mind of the safety pilot could devise. When the safety pilot shook the stick, the backseat pilot took control and tried to return to level flight by reference to the attitude indicator and the other flight instruments (airspeed indicator, altimeter, rate-of-climb, directional gyro, bank-and-turn). Sometimes in attempting to recover, the pilot under the hood put the airplane in an even more unusual attitude, including a few spins. Of course, the backseat pilot would get his revenge on the next flight when they switched cockpits. Following that phase we flew a large number of ground-controlled approaches and other precision instrument procedures under the hood. Once we became used to the new instrument, we found it a great improvement over the old one and were much more confident in our ability to fly under all weather conditions.
The A-1 vertical gyro was approved for installation in USAF planes, and although improved throughout the years, the same basic system has been used in virtually all military planes ever since. In the latest ''glass cockpits," in which the attitude indicator and other instruments are displayed on cathode ray tubes, the eight ball is still used as a backup.
Although there were still a few F-80s in the fighter squadron, most of our testing was performed in F-84Es and F-86As, both of which were undergoing operational-suitability tests. The F-84E was the latest model of the Thunderjet and was a rugged, reliable plane. As usual we were doing a great deal of bombing, rocketry, and gunnery to ensure that all the systems functioned properly. The high-g gun firing was tiring, but at least the F-84E cockpit was air-conditioned, helping to alleviate that wrung-out feeling we had experienced in the F-80 when the cockpit temperatures often exceeded 120 degrees. The tests went well with no structural or control problems, and the mechanics found the airplane much easier to maintain than the earlier models, a vital factor in combat aircraft.
On one of these gunnery flights I made a careless mistake that did no harm but certainly focused my mind. I was letting down from 20,000 feet on the way back to the field after expending my ammunition, and though still over the Gulf, I was approaching the shore when I spotted a bright green splotch on the water about five miles from the shore and about five miles to the west of me. The splotch was the sea-marker dye that each pilot carries on his Mae West or life raft to make it easier for searchers to locate him. I started diving toward the splotch to see if a pilot was down in the Gulf and was about two miles away when there was a tremendous fiery explosion about 1,000 feet above the splotch. I pulled more g's than I ever had in combat with a Zero on my tail in turning back for shore. Then it dawned on me that a B-29 was scheduled to test airburst fire bombs over the Gulf that morning. Luckily no one saw me, and I haven't mentioned it to anyone until now, so please don't tell.
About two weeks before, Captain Hank Pashco, one of the squadron pilots, was engaged in a gunnery test in the F-86 when it caught fire, and he was forced to eject over the Gulf. The ejection seat and the parachute both functioned properly, and he landed safely in the Gulf. He had radioed that he was ejecting, and by good fortune another pilot spotted him descending in the parachute and circled his position until a crash boat arrived and picked him up. He was not injured and, aside from having swallowed a bit of the Gulf, was in fine shape. I think that his recent bailout led me to connect sea-marker dye with downed pilots instead of air-burst bombs, but that's not much of an excuse.
It has been said that flying is the second greatest thrill on earth; landing is the first. If that is true, the pilots in the fighter test squadron led an extremely thrilling life. Because of the high fuel consumption of the early jet fighters, especially at low altitudes, their speed in getting to and from the various ranges, and the nature of our weapons tests, we made an inordinate number of landings for the number of hours we flew. In looking over my Form 5 (official Air Force logbook) I found that in six months I made 176 landings but flew just 99 hours in ten different types of aircraft. That figures out to 1.77 landings per flying hour or 1 landing per 34 minutes. In addition, during the same period I flew twenty-five GCAs, all with simulated missed approaches, while testing the A-1 vertical gyro. I was fortunate to have made the same number of landings as takeoffs, which is one criterion for a successful flying career. One other criterion that I met was never being examined by a pathologist.