The aircraft would be unloaded and we proceeded to our respective Q’s and spent the night. The next two days were spent resupplying some of the smaller, remote stations like Diyarbakir, Mardin, Elazig, and Batman. When I saw that Batman Turkey was one of our destinations I was more than a little curious. Were these Turks really big fans of the American comic book hero or was something else going on here? A little research revealed that Batman was originally a unit of mass in the old Ottoman Empire and that’s where the town got its name. But even with this new knowledge, I thought it would be cool to say I lived in Batman, Turkey.
Flying into these places was never a problem as long as the weather was good. When low ceilings or dust storms rolled in, getting on the ground was not a sure thing. While our aircraft had all of the modern instrumentation required to land in the weather, the ground facilities didn’t always work like they were supposed to work. Flying into Diyarbakir one dark and stormy night, we set ourselves up for an Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach. The ILS is a very precise system giving both azimuth and glide slope information bringing you right to the end of the runway. When flown as published, you would break out of the weather, see the runway, and be able to land safely. On one particular night, the weather was not cooperating. Low ceilings, with heavy rain amid thunderstorms covered the entire terminal area. Pilots don’t intentionally fly into thunderstorms; we go around them. The C-130 had a decent radar so we had a good picture of the heavy weather. We saw that we would be able to fly an approach to the landing runway and keep clear of the weather. However, we wouldn’t see the runway until we got below 400 feet. Most ILS approaches have descent minimums of 200 feet and half-mile visibility. If the ceiling is less than 200 feet or the visibility is less than half a mile, you couldn’t legally fly the approach. Your options in such a situation would be to enter a holding pattern somewhere until the weather got better or divert somewhere with better weather. Under the circumstances we had 200 feet to play with.
We set up our approach, tuned and identified the ILS frequency. Each ILS has its own unique frequency and Morse code identifier. We turned the airplane onto final approach and waited for the glideslope to start down. As we started down the glideslope all looked good. We had only come down the glideslope about 300 feet when both needles, azimuth and glideslope, went to full-scale deflection. This dictated we do an immediate go-around, which we did. We then tried to set up for another approach. But now, even the ILS Morse code identifier was not working. The weather was not improving so we had no choice but to head back to Incirlik. We let the air traffic controllers know we had lost the ILS signal and they promised to look into it. The next morning, under sunny skies, we went back to Diyarbakir and made an uneventful landing. We found out from the Operations Officer that a goat had disabled the ILS. Tracing the power lines to the ILS transmitter, they found the main power cable had been chewed through, so much for modern technology.
When we returned to Incirlik that afternoon, we were surprised to learn that we had been kicked out of our BOQs and would have to spend the night at a hotel in the nearby town of Adana. A group of USAFE VIPs was touring the area and had priority for our BOQ rooms. I was not thrilled with this news. Incirlik was not on our list of favorite bases but it was better than Adana. In fact, Adana was what we in the Air Force refer to as a “shithole.”
Incirlik was famous for their Turkish crew van drivers. These guys sold pistachio nuts and porn pens. These pens would display several pornographic images as you rotated the barrel, extending or retracting the nib of the pen. These were a must have item for every crewmember and a real conversation starter when we showed them to our friends back in the US. But aside from the pens and the nuts, Incirlik was rough duty.
As bad as Incirlik was, Adana was much worse; at least the hotel we stayed in was. The room keys were giant, dungeon like, with big, carved wooden balls attached to them. I guess they didn’t want anyone sneaking off with one in their luggage. It wouldn’t fit anyway. At least they put us all on the second floor. Our rooms had small balconies overlooking the street.
My first order of business was a hot shower, so I headed into the bathroom, pulled back the shower curtain, only to discover about four inches of standing green water. After two room changes (the next room had no sheets covering the soiled mattress) I was finally able to clean up and prepare for the evening. We had a delicious meal of roasted goat kabobs. For all I knew I may have eaten the goat that chewed through the ILS cable the night before. We discussed this possibility at dinner but it didn’t, in the least, detract from our enjoyment of the meal.
After dinner we left in search of some real Adana nightlife. Turkey is a majority Muslim country but it has a secular government. This meant that alcohol, though strictly controlled, was available. We found a small nightclub not far from the hotel. After several cocktails Herb, Bill and I got up to leave, but Ed Parman insisted on staying. Clint said he would stay with him so we said our goodnights and started back to our rooms.
I was sleeping soundly until I was awakened by loud, angry, Turkish voices coming from the street below the window. I stepped out onto the balcony in the early morning light to find the cause of the commotion and noticed several people pointing up at the second floor. I looked over to see Parman, in his skivvies, peeing off the balcony onto the sidewalk. He had rained on several people on their way to work and they were making their displeasure known. I saw Herb stick his head out of his room and we acknowledged each other with a nod and both raced to Parman’s room. We yanked him off the balcony and back to bed. It took some serious sweet-talking to convince the hotel manager not to call the police. We told him that Parman had a medical condition that caused him to sleepwalk. We assured him that Parman would take his medication, thereby allowing the citizens of Adana to proceed to work without getting pissed on.
After four days in Turkey, we were all grateful to be back in Mildenhall. We had a few days off to do some socializing and to catch up on letter writing and laundry. I ran into Irv at the O Club that night and was introduced to his new girlfriend, Angie.
She was a local girl from Thetford, a village not far from the base. She seemed a good match for Irv. She loved to drink and party and, of course, had answered in the affirmative to Irv’s standard question to every woman he met: “Hi, do you wanna fuck?” Angie knew Irv was married so she wasn’t looking for any long-term commitment, just a good time; and he provided it.
Angie was a beautiful woman and would bring several friends to the Officer’s club with her. We called them “The Thetford Girls.” The girls had been coming to Mildenhall since long before our arrival. They knew when the C-130 crews were rotating in and made it a point to show up at the club that first week to screen the newcomers for potential boyfriends. Most of these girls weren’t as pretty as Angie. Actually, they were all pretty ugly, but available. The kindest phrase one could use when discussing the possibility of having sex with these babes was, “There’s not enough beer.” They were good sports, however, and could put away their share of the beer.
Chapter 8
One of the most colorful characters in our squadron was Captain Buzz Sawyer. Buzz had been an aircraft commander for three years and had been on several rotations so he was very experienced. He was an Air Force Academy grad affectionately known as a Zoomie. We all admired Buzz but knew that he could be a troublemaker when he overindulged. One night at the O Club, Buzz had knocked back a few too many and was cut off by the bartender. This did not make Buzz happy, and it led to a heated exchange with the bartender. Unable to resolve the issue, the bartender called over the club manager. Buzz would not back down; he wanted a drink and he wanted it now. The club manager escorted him to the door and kicked him out. That worked for about five seconds. Buzz came storming back in and then all hell broke loose.