Then, in 1986, an old dream was suddenly resurrected. On a Saturday UTA, Colonel Bailey asked for a show of hands from all of us who wanted to switch to C-141s. Mine was one of the few that went up. But despite the lack of enthusiasm from the crews, the announcement was made public. Senator Stennis, seeking more jobs for his constituents, threw some heavy political weight around and made us give up our almost new C-130s to become the first Air Guard unit to be equipped with the C-141B Starlifter. I had come full circle at last.
The '141 was a big four-engine jet transport with a worldwide strategic airlift mission. Suddenly there was no more low-level flying, no air drops, no formation flying, no short runways, and very few nice weekend cross-country trips. Bull Run DZ was shut down.
Although the jets were beautiful and sported a modern, streamlined appearance, they were oldolder than some of those who were flying them. They were maintenance headaches, and the transition to our new global mission was not easy for the crews. Suddenly it wasn't a very suitable part-time pursuit anymore. An operational trip to Europe and back took a minimum of four days. It was tough for most guys to get off from their jobs for that amount of time. Great changes began to develop among us. Those who couldn't do it dropped out. Those who took their place had jobs that were more flexible. Our ranks began to swell with airline pilots and self-employed people. Some didn't have jobsGuard bums, we called them. They volunteered for all the flying that the scheduler would give them and made a decent living at it.
Again I went back on active duty, this time for six weeks to check out in the Starlifter. It was an opportune time, as I was again between retainers. The course was designed as a refresher for people who had previously been qualified in the Starlifter but who had been in a desk job or some other pursuit that had taken them out of the cockpit. The "short course" wasn't intended to check out pilots who had never flown the C-141there was a twelve-week course for that purposebut the Guard had persuaded the Air Force that we could hack it. After all, the C-130, to which we were so accustomed, was, like the C-141, a Lockheed product. There shouldn't be too much difference. But in fact there were tremendous differences, we would discover.
My stick partner and longtime friend Hugh Stevens was the argumentative sort. A computer programmer by trade, he always kept one eye scrutinizing detail, and when I displayed disrespect for certain minutiae, Hugh mounted an intensive campaign to educate me. It was not uncommon for Hugh to burst into my room, through the connecting kitchenette, armed with a "Dash-l," gleefully documenting some minute fact that had been in dispute and about which I had ceased to care. During the long debriefings after our simulator flights, Hugh invariably engaged the instructors in protracted discourses over some morsel of flying knowledge, while I sat back and yawned, fidgeted, and tried unsuccessfully to subvert the debates. For six weeks he dogged and niggled me unmercifully, but finally we graduated and happily returned to Jackson to become the pioneers of a new concept of strategic airlift in the militia. And as the oil business grew steadily worse, I found myself increasingly plying the world's skyscapes in the big jets to make ends meet.
In 1989, I gave up on the oil business and joined United Airlines, commuting to Chicago to fly Boeing 727s. My life was completely dominated by airplanes at that pointmaybe too many. I had to keep up with, and devote time to, three aircraft: the C-141, the 727, and my own Grumman AA-5.
By then I had spent fifteen years "flying the line" for Uncle Sam. Had I still been on active duty, maybe as much as half of that time would have been spent flying a desk. Young Air Force pilots often complained of the incessant pressure to "broaden" one's career. Most of them wanted nothing else but to fly, to be the best they possibly could, maybe to command a squadron and pass their knowledge on to the next generation. It seemed rational, but the Air Force continued to insist that all pilots become managers, bean counters, and upwardmoving professional administrators.
It has been changing more in favor of pilots recently, but I remember when a visiting general was speaking at Officer's Call at Altus Air Force Base while I was in C-141 school. He was asked why the Air Force couldn't establish a career track for those who wanted exclusively to fly for twenty years.
"Oh, but we have" was his response. "That career track you speak of is called the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard."
I'm exceedingly glad that reserve component funding came from Capitol Hill and not from the Pentagon. Otherwise the militia would have been neglected stepchildren. As it was, pork barrel politics worked in our favor. The politicians whom we sent to Washington were big on the Guard. "Nothin's too good for my boys down thea. I want 'em to have the best tanks and arrowplanes money c'n buy." And for the most part, we got them. Life was good.
Our unit, in particular, had done well. We were the 172nd Military Airlift Group, Mississippi Air Guard" The Wings of the Deep South" we'd called ourselves. We had been the first militia unit back in the early 1980s to get brand new "H" model C-130s; the first such unit to respond to the Hurricane Hugo devastation; the first into earthquakeravaged Soviet Armenia; the first of any Guard or Reserve unit to plunge into Operation Just Causethe liberation of Panama; and the first unit in the entire history of American airpower to log twenty-five years of accident-free flying. Our unit drew its strength from a vast population of Mississippians to whom the slogan "Duty, Honor, Country" was much more than just poetic words uttered from the lips of a fading old soldier. Mississippians had never heard that "patriotism" was supposed to be an outdated and unfashionable thing. And it was no secret that the Mississippi Air Guard was a proud, shining star over a state that abounded in problems both real and imagined. Mississippians had invested their trust and pride in us, and we carried the banner of the Magnolia Militia the world over. Even foreign radar controllers recognized the call sign "Ruler." One thickly accented German controller had once asked me on a congested frequency, "Rula Eight Fife, are you from Mizzizzippi?"
"Citizen Airmen" the recruiting pitches called us. It meant that you held a regular job (maybe), or you were a student, using the Guard to work your way through college (a smart idea), or maybe your wife worked while you bummed it at the Guard Base. Whatever you did, at least once a week you had about an hour after work to make the transition from whatever job you normally toiled at, to the cockpit of a military jet. You had to give Uncle Sam twelve of your weekends and at least fifteen additional days each year. But to stay reasonably proficient in the jet, everyone put in three or four times as many days. You'd take a couple of days off from work, pair them with a weekend, and cross continents and oceans as routinely as your neighbor drove to his Warren County deer camp.
It was uncanny to me how people from such different backgrounds could join together for such a specialized and demanding taskand do it with relative harmony. The other pilot across the cockpit from you might be a stockbroker or lawyer. The flight engineers and loadmasters could be accountants, truck drivers, or students. But no matter what you did outside the gates, your heart was always sprouting wings, yearning for the smell of burnt JP-4 fuel (which you joked about) and the whine of the big turbines. Being a macho crewdog, you rarely spoke of yearnings of the heart. But they were there. Yes, it was a great jobsflying, getting paid for it, and serving your country.
By all accounts, I had enjoyed a flying career that spanned the spectrum of military aviation. I had known the thrill, the joy, and the excitement of the fighters. The heavies had matured me as a flier, had shown me the world, and had taught me the satisfaction of job accomplishment. Along the way, I found the kind of friendship and brotherhood that rarely existed in other enclaves of life. I had good reason to be content, to feel immensely blessed. Time and again, over the years I felt indebted to someone, or something.