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>From: (Art Sackett)

>I was stationed at Eglin AFB, up on the panhandle, working on a radar that
looked south toward the Cape and watched for missiles that thankfully never
came;

You do mean Uncle Nikita's missiles in Cuba, don't you? I like to think that
one of Uncle Sam's stray rockets never went thataway any farther than
Titusville...

During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, I was stationed at Edwards AFB, which
was just out of the extreme range of enemy missiles in Cuba...

Edwards AFB was a research and development center for new Air Force weaponry,
but we didn't have any atomic bombs or hydrogen bombs stored there, at least,
not so far as I ever knew...

Two nuclear-armed B-47's arrived at the base and parked at the end of the
runway, ready to head out if the shooting started. No way could the B-47's
reach Russia without refueling, they were aimed at Cuba...

I was on standby in case the B-47's had electrical problems. I would be able to
change burned out light bulbs, fer sure, fer sure...

Some Tactical Air Command fighter pilot with a broken F-101 woke me up at 2:00
AM and demanded that I hurry down there and fix his plane so he could fly back
to Oxnard AFB. I told him that I was just on standby for the B-47's, and he
threatened to have me court-martialed if I didn't get down there and fix his
Voodoo. He said the US was in a state of war and that I'd be in serious trouble
if I didn't haul my butt down to the flight line...

It must have been some secret emergency mission he was on that had him out
there flying around in the dark instead of grabbing a bunk in the transient
barracks...

Or maybe he just wanted to get home to his wife...

The Strategic Air Command was just beginning flight tests of the latest B-52H
and I was out looky-looing at the new bird when a thing like a lumber loader
rolled up, carrying a dummy hydrogen bomb. Those early hydrogen bombs were huge
things that looked like huge propane tanks...

And the War Plan for Edwards AFB became imminently clear when they loaded all
of us airmen up into our blue Air Force busses and took us out to the borax
mines in Boron, CA. There are about 100 miles of tunnels underground there, and
we were all going to take our blanket off our bunk and a bottle of water in a
clorox jug and we were going to hide in those tunnels for two weeks until the
nuclear fallout subsided and we would proceed to kick some Russkie ass with
whatever we had left standing...

SAC deployed its B-52's out on dry lakebeds in Nevada about that time. Another
internet denizen said that B-52's were practicing emergency landings on
deserted interstate highways in Wyoming, too in case they made it back from
Russia and found their home base was a smoking crater...

Fat chance of that. Not too many GI pilots knew about the Russian SS-5
surface-to-air missile that had shot down Francis Gary Powers in the U-2 spy
plane, but they were going to find out about the flying telephone poles in a
few years, over North Viet Nam...

I went out to Mud Lake near Hawthorne, NV on a mission to fix the broken rescue
helicopter for an X-15 rocket plane mission. The X-15 couldn't fly until all
helicopters and fire engines waiting to recue the pilot were in place and ready
to get him out of the rocket plane...

I saw all of the SAC B-52's parked on the dry lake bed. I saw some of them from
the back seat of a Cessna 172 that a local rancher owned. He'd graciously
volunteered to support the military effort by flying us back from Hawthorne
after a night in a casino hotel room...

He wanted to prove to our helicopter pilot that a Cessna could do zero forward
airspeed too, but after a few stalls above all the B-52's, the SAC general in
charge came onto the radio and politely ordered the Cessna pilot to stop doing
those stalls over his warbirds...

We got the danged helicopter started, it was a bad boost pump, but the X-15
mission was scrubbed that day, when the pilot of the B-52, a hotshot major who
had never been
commander of an X-15 mission couldn't get one engine started...

He was supposed to carry the fully-fueled X-15, which was a flying bomb full of
liquid oxygen and ammonia fuel up to 39,000 feet and drop it so the rocket
plane could fire its rocket engine and fly 50 miles up, going maybe 5000 miles
an hour...

But, with one engine refusing to start, he should have aborted the mission. He
thought he'd be a hero and save the day by taking off and windmilling the
engine to start it...

It wouldn't start, so he decided he would land and the mission would still be
saved if mechanics could fix the engine problem...

He should have dumped all the jet fuel, as well as dumping the X-15's dangerous
fuel, but he didn't. He attempted a landing while grossly overweight...

On his final approach, he popped the drag chute out, that should have only been
deployed on the rollout after landing, but doing it in flight tore the drag
chute door off, and the force of landing bent the B-52's landing gear, and the
mission was scrubbed...

So, we loaded up all the fire trucks that were deployed all over Nevada and
California dry lake beds and flew back to Edwards in our C-130 Herky Birds....

>I was the king of bug spray for my last month in Florida, because I wasn't
wanting to be the one who introduced those nasty damned things to the
neighborhood where I grew up in California.

Fortunately, as a barracks rat, everything I brought back ro California from
Florida would fit into one duffle bug, a suitcase, and about three cardboard
boxes...

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