The foul purplish scud overhead had changed to an
unrelenting downpour. The constant
tapping against the drafty window only worsened Dunham’s already foul mood as
he studied the memo on his battered wooden desk for what seemed like the
hundredth time. He reached for his cup
of coffee and recoiled in disgust. It was
now ice cold. He was about to call his
aide to bring more coffee but stopped short.
The memo was code word Top Secret/NOFORN and he had several maps spread
out over the desk along with many scribbled notes and calculations. There was much to do and it wasn’t worth the
trouble to tidy up and secure it all for the sake of a hot cup of coffee. His wide and naturally intense black eyes
burned with incendiary irritation.
Gathering himself, he turned and took a worn blue binder out of the
small gray steel bookcase behind his chair.
Thumbing through his worn copy of T.O. 1F-101A-1, “Flight
Handbook, USAF Series F-101A Aircraft,” he flipped through the first few pages
to Figure 1-2, “Block Numbers.” Dunham
stared intently at “F-101A-25-MC, A. F. Serial 54-1444A thru 54-1452A,” wheels
turning as he mentally ticked off the tail numbers of the nine aircraft
produced. How many of them have made it over here? He needed to go talk to Senior Master
Sergeant Rawcliffe, the section chief in charge of all maintenance of all of the
wing’s aircraft. Dunham picked up the
phone and dialed the five-digit extension to hear the young voice of Staff
Sergeant Mersky on the other end. SMSgt
Rawcliffe had gone over to RAF Woodbridge, the second of the Bentwaters “twin”
bases, to sort out a problem with the 78th’s line chief, Stedman. Muttering a gruff “Thanks,” Dunham called his
driver to bring the jeep over to take him the several miles over to
Woodbridge. Muttering invectives under
his breath, he tightened his rain jacket, secured his service cap, and as he
closed his office door behind him told his aide that he would be out and that
no one was to enter his office.
The sound of the rough treads of his jeep announcing his
arrival, Colonel Dunham stepped out of the vehicle and stopped to look toward
the flight line before continuing into the squadron maintenance shed that stood
in for Master Sergeant Stedman’s office.
“As you were!” he growled as the two senior sergeants began to snap to
attention. Walking in toward the window
opposite their desk and then turning back toward them, the colonel greeted them
with a wide horse-trader’s smile. “Good
morning, boys! I hate to disturb you,
but I was wondering if I could borrow Master Sergeant Rawcliffe for a few
minutes?” Stedman agreed and hastily
excused himself to give the two senior men the room.
“Good morning, sir.
What’s going on?” The tall
sergeant was rough-hewn, but had softer features than the intense colonel
before him. Dunham shot a toothy grin
back and said, “Walt, I received a special request this morning that I was
wondering if you could help me with? How
many Block 25 aircraft do we have assigned?”
A puzzled look shot across Rawcliffe’s face as he counted
through the memorized tail numbers.
“Well, sir, a couple of aircraft remained stateside for test work, and
one or two more have been lost, but by my reckoning, sir, we have five Block 25
aircraft assigned to the wing: 444; 445; 44…9; 451 and 452, sir.” Dunham was lost in his thoughts for a second
as he looked again towards the flight line.
Without looking back he asked, “Have any of those five birds suffered
any landing gear failures or had the original gear replaced?” Rawcliffe stood silent for a few seconds, not
sure where the conversation was going or if he wanted to know, for that matter. “Well, sir, I will have to check the 781
forms, but as I recall 451 had a gear failure about a year ago that required
replacement of the main struts, and I think maybe 449, too. I can check and let you know right away once
I get back to my desk, sir.”
Dunham rubbed his short, thick brush of graying black hair as
he paced back toward Stedman’s desk. “So
that leaves 444, 445, and 451, doesn’t it?
445 is a hangar queen, isn’t she?”
Rawcliffe noticed the uncharacteristic tone in the colonel’s voice. “Yes, sir, she seems to spend more time in
the hangar than out on the line, but she has never had any landing gear work
done that I know of. May I ask what this
is all about, sir?”
Rawcliffe was met with Dunham’s large, wide-set, beady eyes
looking back with a rare reserve as he thought through his response. “Walt, I want you to keep quiet about this
and I want you to pull the records for all three of those planes and scour them
with a fine-toothed comb. If there is a
squawk of any sort I want you to personally double check it and make sure it is
fixed and fixed right. Next, I want you
and Master Sergeant Stedman--he is a hydraulics guy, right? I want you guys to GI those struts and run
both the main and nose wheel struts to their full extension. You will find that on these particular
aircraft you are going to get more extension on them, about an extra six inches
or so. Lastly, I want you to pull that
little center panel between the engine bay doors and check that external stores
hook on each bird. Make sure that it is
working and that it’s not going to fail in any way. There’s also several small panels forward
between the fuel drain doors, just aft of the ammo bay, and I want you to open
them up and check out the plumbing and electrical connections in there,
too. Make sure that it is all in good
working order. I’ll tell you more later,
but right now I want you to get on this and report back to me ASAP. Any questions?” Radcliffe unconsciously stood ramrod straight
as he acknowledged the gravity behind the colonel’s request. “No sir.
I’ll get Stedman and we will get right on it, sir.” Dunham picked his cap and as he made his way
back toward the door he turned back. “And
Walt, check and be sure on 449. I could
really use four aircraft.” With that he
stepped out into a break in the weather.
Fighting the glare of the sunlit puddles covering the slick road,
Colonel Dunham climbed back into the jeep as they ground down the road back to
Bentwaters and, with any luck, a warm steaming cup of coffee.
Back at his desk, Dunham remembered a small bit of
information that he had heard several years before in the spring of 1956. The whole F-101 program was a train wreck
then, teetering on the razor’s edge of being cancelled. Among all of the other problems was one that
still remained closely held and unknown to most of the pilots and maintenance
troops that serviced their aircraft.
Block 25 was being produced at that point, but the aircraft then sat on
the ramp in St. Louis for nearly a year while various fleet-wide modifications
were carried out to fix the major problems and get the Voodoo ready for
squadron service. The original armament,
about which he never spoke except to the old man and the squadron commanders
who were around the airplane in those days, was deleted but the early aircraft
still retained the long-stoke struts that could be inflated to give the extra
ground clearance needed for the large, and now defunct, centerline store. He was
pretty sure that they were gone by Block 30….
The extension provisions were supposed to be removed after cancellation
of Shape 96, but in the rush to get everything done and the intensive effort needed
to make over 300 critical modifications to each aircraft he thought that he had
heard that they just left it alone in those early squadron aircraft. Rawcliffe would let him know for sure by
close of business that afternoon.
Dunham looked down at a large scale map spread out on the
center of his desk. He used his extended
pinky to pace out distances on the map. The inbound course to the target is about
1,500 statute miles, accounting for a couple of “doglegs,” with a direct return
of a little over 1,000 miles…call it 1,100.
The original fuel store carried 1,400 gallons of fuel and the refueling
stores carried, what, about 1,200 gallons of transferrable fuel? Are there any of those things gathering dust
somewhere? I really need to get a hold
of Adrian and see if he knows anything.
I will need a minimum of two of those for tanker aircraft, and two of
those spoofing pods, if those things even exist anymore. Four airplanes. Just four measly airplanes…that’s all I need
to get this done. Are these aircraft
equipped for the countermeasures
pods? I’ve got to check on that,
too. Might have to do some rewiring….
Reviewing his growing mental checklist, Dunham began to
organize the scattered pages of notes into a manila file folder and clean off
his desk. Turning the silk-smooth dial
of the combination lock on the safe behind his desk, he heard it click and
pushed down the heavy steel lever to open it and placed the folder inside. He flattened the large map smooth for one
last time as he studied the familiar shape of the Caspian Sea, and traced out
in his mind the penciled line that he had drawn, dancing along its shoreline
and headed north. He could feel the burning
blue over the faraway desert, see in his mind towering dust devils plying
across the dusty sands in the distance.
It would be a tough mission under the best of circumstances and they
would need every drop of fuel to get to the objective and back. There was no doubt that it would not be under
the best of circumstances, but perhaps the audacity of the plan would give them
the advantage of surprise. It seemed a
delicate thing to hang an important, presidentially-directed plan on but it was
all he had, and even then the tools to accomplish it simply might not be
available anymore. Four young men were
going to have to be selected to fly the mission. Dunham carefully folded the map, deposited
them all into the safe, closed the heavy door and pulled up on the level to
hear the satisfying “chunk!” as it locked shut.
Standing up and turning toward the window, Dunham reached
for his cup of coffee to take a sip, lost in the vision of faraway places. He grimaced as he sipped and then held the
mug out at arm’s length, inspecting the lukewarm coffee with utter
disdain. Not again! Well, just shaping up
to be one of those days, I guess…. Listening
to the distant ringing whine of big J57 engines as a pair of F-101s began to
taxi out for a training mission, Dunham looked out through the broken, soggy
cloud deck and into a vision of a barren, incandescent landscape of impossibly
bright blues, tans, and grays. He would
give anything to be out there and not tied to the worn old desk and the stale
carpet behind him.
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