Sky Spy, Memoirs of a U-2 Pilot

Herb was a Tennessee native who attended Vanderbilt University. He took pre-med in college and planned to become a doctor until he discovered flying and all that changed. After college he went to Air Force Officer Candidate School and then on to pilot training. He had been in the C-130 for about five years.

Our navigator, Bill Corcoran, also wanted to be a pilot but he washed out of pilot training and became a navigator. Bill was the crew clown always coming up with the funniest jokes and raunchiest stories.

Ed Parman was a career enlisted man who had been in the Air Force for 22 years when I first met him. Ed knew the airplane inside out and was a wealth of information about its systems and limitations.

Cliff Brown was the loadmaster and the youngest member of the crew. He had been on the 130 his entire career and had delivered everything from horseshoes to hand grenades.

We departed Pope just after sundown heading up the US coastline to eastern Long Island before heading out to sea. The first stop on the way to India would be Lajes Field in the Azores, a mid Atlantic pit stop for aircraft heading to and from Europe. The Azores, a Portuguese possession, are a series of rocks in the middle of the ocean and Lajes is an airbase on the island of Terceira.

It was a clear, moonless night with the stars spread across the sky in a dazzling array. We settled in at our cruising altitude of 25,000 feet and rolled on through the endless blackness.

Occasionally, we could see lights in the ocean and the conversation turned to discussing those poor bastards manning those lonely ships in the deep darkness below us. Navigator Bill Corcoran loved to communicate with the ocean stations whenever he crossed the Atlantic. These ocean stations were ships anchored at specific spots. Their job was to relay weather information used in forecasting. They would report their observations via radio, on both VHF (Very High Frequency) and HF (High Frequency) bands. They also aided in search and rescue operations and acted as relays when needed for trans Atlantic flights. The standard tour of duty on these ships was three to four weeks; so you can imagine how eager these guys were to speak to any aircrew transiting the Atlantic.

Bill was the only navigator I ever knew who talked to the ships, and he loved it as much as they did. After talking the latest gossip, news, or sports, the subject turned to jokes — the cruder the better — and limericks. Bill would throw out a joke or a limerick and they would try to come back with a topper.

Bill exchanged several limericks with Ocean Station Echo that night. They asked us where we were headed and Bill said: “the Azores.” So they came back with the following:

“There once was a girl from the Azores,
whose body was covered with sores,
and the dogs in the street
would chew on the green meat
that hung in festoons from her drawers.”
Not to be outdone, Bill shot back:
“There was a young man from Poole,
who found a red ring round his tool.
He went to the clinic
where the doctor, a cynic,
said, “wash it, ‘tis lipstick you fool.”
So they responded:
“There once was a hermit named Dave
who kept a dead whore in his cave.
She was missing one tit
and smelled like shit.
But think of the money he saved.”

Nothing is quite as monotonous as an ocean crossing at night but these exchanges kept us awake and laughing like hell. The exchanges went back and forth while we were in radio range, usually a half-hour. Before we lost contact, we promised to catch them on the way back.

These ocean stations were gradually phased out, replaced by weather buoys. The last ship was retired in 1977. The weather buoys were cheaper but not nearly as funny.

We arrived in the Azores on June 2, 1971 after a 9-hour flight. The chain of islands known collectively as the Azores is famous for its bread and wine and we heavily sampled both. It’s a quiet, beautiful place. At least it was until we arrived.

Since we were only at the base for one night we were restricted and told to remain on base. This meant nothing to Irv Ashton who was the co-pilot on another crew headed to India. While the rest of us joined up at the Officers Club for some carousing, Irv decided to head into town. His goal, always the same regardless of location, was to drink prodigious amounts of alcohol and have sex with any female that had a pulse.

Unfortunately for Irv, he picked the Mayor’s daughter. The Mayor himself interrupted him midact. Irv managed to gather most of his clothing before fleeing out of the daughter’s window. He got back on the base by climbing a security fence but snagged his pants on the barbed wire. He showed up back at the Bachelor Officers Quarters sans pants but still alive.

We left the Azores hung-over but happy to be moving again to the next stop on the road to India, Madrid, Spain.

Lucky for us, our aircraft needed some minor maintenance work so we had two days to see the sights in Madrid. That meant trying to cram in as much as possible without benefit of sleep. It was tough, but we succeeded. Our tourist whirlwind included the Prado Museum, Flamenco dancers, and tapas bars. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and this time Irv behaved. My favorite parts were the amazing artwork at the Prado and the intricate steps of the Flamenco dancers.

The weather was beautiful as we made our way to the next stop on our journey, Aviano Air Base, near Pisa, Italy. Seeing the Alps for the first time was breathtaking. On a sunny day, we flew into Italy at 22,000 feet, or about 7,000 feet over the jagged peaks of the Alps. We marveled at the beautiful, intricate villages that dotted the valleys between the peaks. I envied their beautiful countryside and their splendid isolation.

Once again, a two-day break allowed us to “go local” and sample the dining and shopping. Among the specialties of the Pisa area were beautiful handcrafted globes they sold in the artisanal shops that lined the streets. The globes were large, old-world style, about 2 feet in diameter and suspended in a beautiful wooden gimbal. Best of all, the globes opened at the equator to reveal a bar inside. Those that could afford one loaded it on the airplane and off we went.

One of the advantages of the C-130 is that you can shop for souvenirs from your travels and store it all on the plane as you move around the world. We packed bread and wine from the Azores, guitars from Madrid, and globe bars from Italy. The airplanes were filling up and we hadn’t even reached our destination yet.

Our next stop was Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. We arrived at night, the stars were twinkling and the outside air temperature was 106 degrees F. It was a dry heat and there was a fine coating of sand on everything. The people we encountered were not very friendly. If I had to live in those conditions, I’d be pissed too!

The only memorable nugget I can relay from this stop was my encounter with a Saudi commode. They don’t have toilets like ours but instead have a hole in the floor with a ceramic footpad on either side. I couldn’t understand why if they could manufacture ceramic footpads they couldn’t make a toilet. Middle East tradition I guess.

Just before we left, I had to use the facilities. It was dark and all the stalls were unlit. I unzipped my flight suit and proceeded to take care of business. The flight suit is a one-piece garment made of a fireproof material called Nomex. To don it, you step into it, pull it up, stick your arms in the sleeves, and zip. It zips from the crotch to the neck and has zippered compartments on the chest, legs and arms to hold all the crap the typical pilot carried around with him: Hat (in the leg pocket when not on the head), sunglasses, pens, cigarettes, logbook, survival knife, small flashlight, keys, and wallet. It was just like a ladies purse only worn as a garment that kept you from burning alive in a post crash fire. It was not the most comfortable thing to deal with while squatting over a shit-stained hole in the ground.