AIR FORCE ADVENTURES 'ROUND THE WORLD

Once upon a time I had a pretty decent job, but by early 1952, the Korean War was in full swing, and the draft board was breathing down my neck. But I got some immediate relief when my company wangled me a deferment as an essential worker in a critical industry. There were, however, three problems with this arrangement. It was uncertain how long the deferment would last, it made me really beholden to the company, and somehow I felt that I was not doing my part for the war effort. There was also another consideration. Since the Revolutionary War, every generation in my family had someone in the military, and it didn’t seem right to break that tradition.

Anyway, I talked to some recruiters, and also took the Armed Forces Qualification Test. I scored 100 out of a possible 100 on the test, and then I was really deluged with recruiters. Some of these recruiters were really creative, but I wouldn't have bought a used Buick from them, let alone rely on their promises. I finally decided on the US Air Force, and joined up for 8 years. Four on active duty, and four more in the reserves.

(At the time, I couldn’t figure out why my company got so upset when I enlisted. Later, I found out just how much work it was to get a deferment for an employee, and I couldn’t blame them)

So, I was off on a train with a bunch of other recruits, to a brand new basic training base near Oakland CA, named Parks AFB. We arrived about midnight, were fed, and then issued bedding and herded into a barracks. I suppose it was about 2:00 AM when we finally settled down. Anyway, at 4:00 AM whistles blew, the lights came on, and a big burly Sergeant came through yelling “Drop your c***s and grab your socks. What an introduction to military life.

About two years later, this same thing happened to me when I had crashed in an Infantry barracks in Germany. Being older and wiser by then, I merely told the Sergeant to perform an unnatural act, and turned over and went back to sleep. The poor guy was so shocked by this outburst that he left me alone thereafter! And I was a real hero with the doggies in that squad room

I will digress here for a moment to give you, the reader, some insights into the military as I saw it. This, of course, is a grunt's view. Exalted personages like senior NCOs and particularly officers, probably see things differently, I am sure. But anyway, here goes.

Basically, the military is very conservative, it operates by tried and true methods, which have worked for eons, in many cases since Caesars Legions, and nobody is about to change them. Individuality and initiative are out, conformity is in. You can’t beat the system, and there is no use to try. You will just make things miserable for yourself and others. But, once you have figured the system out, and make it work for you, the military can be a really comfortable place, and a great life.

It usually takes about six months to figure out how to work the system, and some never do. I mastered it in about two weeks, and in fact I worked it so well that I never put in a day of KP, an hour of guard duty, or had any other really disagreeable task, as long as I was in the military. And had a lot of fun as well, as I am sure that the following stories about my military career will illustrate.

Anyway, basic training was about as difficult as Boy Scout camp. Some rudimentary physical conditioning, combined with considerable classroom work on military subjects, and of course, the usual military make work BS. The rifle range though, was fun. There I became proficient enough on the M2 carbine, (a kind of World War II sub machine gun) to earn a sharpshooters rating. Knowing how to shoot this thing stood me in good stead later on, but I am getting ahead of myself again.

About halfway through, Pat came down to visit, and a friendly cousin in Oakland lent us their house and car for the weekend. Very considerate of them.

The normal drill in the Air Force at that time was to spend eight to twelve weeks in basic training, then go on to a service school for up to a year, where hopefully you learned a useful skill, and finally on to a productive assignment. This seemed to me like a non productive waste of manpower, and there were rumors that these schools were boring, as well as brimming with chickenshit discipline dispensed by frustrated World War II retread sergeants. But there was a war on and since the Air Force, in their wartime buildup, was really hard up for skilled manpower, there was a program called By Pass Specialist. The gist of this was, that if you could convince the powers that be that you had a critical skill, by passing a rather tough test, you could bypass the service school and go directly from basic training to a duty assignment.

I also had the option of becoming an Officer. I was offered a slot at Officers Candidate School, or OCS, as it was called, and would graduate as a “Ninety Day Wonder” second lieutenant. This didn’t seem like a great deal, trading three months of chickenshit training, to become an officer at the bottom of the totem pole. In those days, also, if you weren’t a pilot, you were going nowhere in the Air Force officer corps.

But this by pass specialist business looked good to me, and having been an experimental aircraft mechanic in civilian life, I was sure that I could pass that test standing on my head. But wait, hadn’t I joined the Air Force for adventure, and to have a little fun. But doing rudimentary maintenance on beat up WW II surplus airplanes (which is mostly what the Air Force had in those days) on the flight line in all kinds of weather, didn’t sound like either fun or adventure, so that was out. Casting about, I found that photographers were in demand, and I had dabbled in that field a bit. So in all my spare time for a week, I camped in the Base Library, soaking up everything I could on the subject of photography. I then took the Photo By Pass Test, cooled it, and was awarded an Air Force Specialty Code (AFSC) of Still Photographer. I then got orders assigning me as permanent party in the Base Photo organization at the same base. Talk about breaks.

I found that my new assignment was basically working for the Base Public Information Office, as a PIO Photographer, a job not unlike a civilian press photographer. In those days, as you probably remember from the movies, all press photographers primarily used those big Speed Graphic press cameras.

Now, I knew damn little about photography, and had never even seen a Speed Graphic, but I had better learn pretty quick, so this is how I did it.

Pat had joined me, and I asked for and was granted a week or so off to find living quarters. Almost as an afterthought, so it seemed to the boss, I asked to check out a Speed Graphic camera, some film, and the Speed Graphic tech manuals. This request was granted without comment, and away I went. We found quarters in short order, and while Pat worked on fixing the place up, I tackled the Speed Graphic. Although I had assured everyone that I was intimately familiar with this machine, as I mentioned earlier, I had never even seen one up close. It was a really complicated piece of apparatus, a far cry from today’s point and shoot cameras. It had two completely separate shutter systems, three different flash systems, three viewfinders, to be used in different circumstances, and three different film systems, (Sheet, roll, and film pack) .

I studied that camera from all angles, took it apart and put it together again, and shot a few sheets of film, which I snuck into the photo lab and developed myself. Miraculously, most of these came out, and by the time I reported back for duty, I had a reasonable acquaintance with the camera. It was several weeks, though, before I would let anyone else develop my film, because when I developed it, I could discard all the bad shots, with no one being the wiser.

And so I started my Air Force career. Although the pay was lousy, I believe a total of $114.60 per month, which was difficult for two people to live on, the work was interesting. And for the next year, the ol’ Speed Graphic and I had a lot of fun, both on the base and around the Bay Area, documenting all sorts of exciting and sometimes mundane happenings, and generally keeping out of trouble.

But once in awile, I did get into a little trouble, as this next anecdote will tell.

In the course of our duties, we covered every sporting event on the Base, and most of the ones in the neighboring towns as well. These weren’t considered bad assignments, as the work was easy, the events were usually interesting to watch, and it was hard to screw up. I did, however manage to screw up once, big time, and that is the point of this story.

Seems I was covering a boxing match, I think that it was trainees vs. instructors, or some such thing. I was at ringside with the trusty Speed Graphic, and of course the General commanding the base was in the front row. Those days we used old fashioned flash bulbs for night work, and in this case I had a supply of Press 40s, a bulb that was about the size of a 150 watt light bulb, and filled with a wad of magnesium wool, about the size of a Brillo pad. The theory was that you pushed a button, which completed an electrical circuit to the bulb, which 20 milliseconds later would flash, just as a solenoid tripped the shutter open. Occasionally during this process, the bulb would explode, rather than flash, releasing a shower of burning magnesium. For this reason one was supposed to put a safety shield over the bulb, but nobody ever did. Anyway, this night we were just getting into the main event, the General was enjoying himself, and I was snapping away. Predictably, a bulb exploded and a large blob of burning magnesium barely missed the General and deposited itself in mid ring, at the feet of the boxers. Remember, this magnesium is the same stuff they used to fire bomb Japan, and it certainly did its work on the canvas in the ring. Eventually the excitement died down, and the firemen departed, but the match never did resume, and I didn’t get to document the excitement for the General’s album. Miraculously, I kept my job, but I always suspected that this incident might have had something to do with me getting transferred to Travis Air Force Base, in the Sacramento Delta, near Vallejo CA, a few weeks later.

The general watching the fight, just before the fun began

I landed in the Fifth Reconnaissance Technical Squadron in the Fifth Bomb Wing of the Strategic Air Command. This was an elite combat outfit at the height of the Korean War, and I was in the thick of the action. At that time General Curtis LeMay commanded the Strategic Air Command. Le May, by the way, was a genuine WW II war hero who had won his stars by developing and carrying out the B-29 campaign which fire bombed the Japanese into surrender. He was tough but fair. He always expected the most out of his troops, but in return, always treated them like professionals. For example, all KP and other menial tasks were performed by civilian contractors, and the living accommodations and other amenities were a cut above those prevalent elsewhere in the Air Force.

These are interesting pics of the reconnaissance version, the RB-36, which is the version we flew. The top one I pulled out of an airplane book. The bottom one I found in my archives. I know that the bottom one was taken by guys in our outfit, the 5th Strat Recon Wing. The top pic has to have been taken by our guys too, at the same time, because the tail numbers all match, and the RB-36 almost always flew alone, so a formation of three is very unusual.

The outfit was also equipped with the Convair B-36. This was a brand new first line bomber, and an awesome machine. About the size of a 747, it

weighed 410,000 lbs fully loaded. It had 6 Pratt and Whitney R4360 28 cylinder radial engines developing a total of 22,800 horsepower, plus 4 General Electric J-47 jets with another 21,000 pounds of thrust. It could carry a 43 ton bomb load, (which was more than an entire loaded WW II B-17 weighed) would fly 420 MPH, and had a service ceiling of 45,600 feet, although it could, on occasion, reach 60,000. It carried two crews for a total of 18 people and could remain airborne for 52 hours without refueling. Our guys would routinely fly from Travis to northern Norway, fly down the iron curtain to Turkey, taking pictures all the way, and then back across the Atlantic, to stop at a base in Maine for refueling, before returning to Travis.

Despite all the supposed glamour, my job, with one notable exception, turned out to be a routine production photo lab operation, but again I was able to figure out and beat the system. We’ll get into that in more detail, after I tell you about the exception.

That exception was a notable trip to Okinawa, on deployment with a B-36 Combat wing. But let me tell you about it.

The B-36 being such a heavy airplane, with high wheel loadings, and requiring a very long runway, there were only a few airports in the world where it could land. Also although it could carry a lot of weight, it could not haul a lot of bombs at extreme range, because most of the allowed weight was devoted to the fuel required to get the airplane to the target and back. So a doctrine was developed that in the event of trouble, the airplanes would be staged, along with support staff, including a complete working photo lab, to a suitable forward airbase, and the combat missions would be flown from there. Naturally, us guys, on the sharp end of the stick, got to put this theory into practice.

What this boiled down to for us photo guys, was that we had a complete photo lab, with all supplies, prepacked and ready to load into airplanes. Additionally, all key personnel, including me, were theoretically on 2 hour alert. This meant that when the alarm went off you headed for the base, with clothes packed, then loaded all the stuff on airplanes, and within 8 hours were in the air, flying to some godforsaken place like Okinawa or Greenland, for an indeterminate stay. Or more often, you went through all this drill, then they said it was only practice, and you did the whole bit in reverse, and went home.

Also, since we didn't know where were going to land, or when, for that matter, the medics decreed that we must have current shots for every dread disease which might occur anywhere in the world. Needless to say, our arms looked like we were junkies, and were perpetually hurting from all the shots.

I remember particularly, the time we ended up in Okinawa. You can read all about this trip, if you are so inclined, in my story "Wings Over the Pacific" in the book 'Airplanes 'Round the World, on this same web site.

But I was going to explain how I beat the photo lab routine, so here goes.

Since General LeMay thought that continuing education was a good thing, and because he was also an inveterate sport car racer, both racing and college were legitimate excused from duty activities. After I figured this out I immediately enrolled full time at the local college, which incidentally was free for active duty military personnel, and became a sometime member of a local civilian stock car racing team. Then, in my spare time, I had a job at the local Shell station. This incidentally, was one of the most informal jobs I ever had. I could close the station when I felt like it, and take whatever I figured the boss owed me out of the till. All this activity, though, kept me so busy, that I rarely made it to the Base, except to pick up my paycheck. The stock car, which incidentally was a Nash Lafayette, with a big modified Nash Ambassador engine, also did pretty well. We came in seventh in the Bay Cities Racing Association, out of about 250 cars.

At this time, the television show Dragnet, playing at 7:30 PM, was all the rage, and I was supposedly working evening shift, starting at about 5:00 PM. On the few nights I which did actually work at the base, and could not get home in time to watch Dragnet, I felt that I was really being put upon.

Life was good in California. A new baby, LaRene, had come along, my Corporal’s pay was now $156 per month and I had figured out how to escape the boring photo lab routine, (Remember what I said about working the system) LaRene, incidentally was the only member of our family born outside Washington State, and the only true Californian. Our family at that point consisted of John, Pat, and daughter LaRene. Also there was a small cat named Tonto (Stupid in Spanish), and a Labrador dog named Otnot. (Tonto spelled backward.) We lived in a tiny apartment in a public housing project which was about eighty percent occupied by GIs.

So, life went on. I had graduated from the college, so that reason to goof off was no longer valid. It was also beginning to look like I was going to spend my entire service time in California, without a Hell of a lot of excitement. And most importantly, the war was finally over.

So wasn’t the war being over a good thing? Not necessarily, but let me explain. In wartime, the military is totally focused on winning the war, and everything else is secondary. Comes peacetime and things change drastically, and not always for the better. The officer corps collectively draws a deep breath, looks around to see what is really happening, and comes to the conclusion that while engaged in winning the war, military discipline has gotten pretty lax. Usually, unfortunately, they are perilously close to being right. This being the case, and the officers having nothing better to do, they direct most of their time and effort toward shaping up the troops. This may be good for discipline, but is usually hell on morale, and in my case, spit and polish, along with chickenshit regulations, was not what I had signed on for. Maybe I was seen to be dissatisfied, because one day, like a bolt out of the blue, orders came down assigning me to Germany.

So, I took a thirty day leave, packed wife daughter, dog and cat into the car and took off for North Dakota, where Pat had decided to stay with her folks for the duration. After getting them settled in, I headed for New York, where after the usual processing, I boarded a troopship bound for Bremerhaven Germany.

Now this ship was an old WW II Liberty ship. The kind that Henry Kaiser used to put out in five days, but converted to carry troops. Its ancient reciprocating steam engine was capable of a bare 9 knots, and it pitched, yawed, and rolled all at once in any kind of a sea. Sailing on it through North Atlantic storms in the dead of winter, like we did, was kind of like riding a mechanical bull in a Texas saloon. In the troop quarters, the bunks were four high, troops were packed in like sardines, and most of the guys were seasick. So this was definitely not a place where you wanted to spend much time. Everyone, of course, was assigned some kind of a stupid make work job, mostly, I think, to take their mind off their physical troubles. Checking things out, I decided that the two best jobs were probably Chaplain’s assistant, or KP pusher. Chaplain’s assistant was out, as I had already spent too much time in that environment, but KP pusher did have possibilities. First off, nobody in his right mind wanted anything to do with KP, so there was no competition for the job, and second, it wasn’t really KP at all. Basically it consisted of checking on the poor troops assigned to KP, and keeping an eye out to see that they didn’t screw off too much. Since I was an Air Force Corporal, and the KPs were for the most part doggie privates, the job was a natural. Another important consideration was that the galley was at the exact center of the ship, thus minimizing the pitch, roll and yaw problem. Also the place was warm, there were lots of cozy storerooms in which to sack out, and the food, particularly that cooked in the kitchen serving the officers, was great. So I got through the sea voyage without too much physical or mental discomfort. That incidentally was my last troopship ride. By the time I came back from Germany this mode of transport had been phased out completely, and I flew home in style.

Anyway, upon my arrival in Germany, I literally fell into the most interesting and exciting job that I have had anytime in my life. (And I have had more than my share of interesting and exciting jobs.) I ended up becoming a field intelligence agent, a real life spy at the height of the cold war.

This was during the four power’s occupation of Germany, and needless to say, intelligence activity at that time was really confused, with a whole alphabet soup of agencies, civil and military, running their own agents, investigators, police and whatever. If there was any coordination of any of this activity, it was not obvious to the everyday working agents, particularly in our outfit.

So, for the next two years, I was a real life Intelligence Agent. It’s really tough, however, to write about this activity for a couple of reasons. First, most of the really good stuff comes under the “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” category, and nobody would believe it anyway. Also most of the activity was classified, and some of it still is to this day. Besides, whose imagination would be fertile enough to make up improbable yarns like these?

The spy business has been glamorized by innumerable books in the James Bond image, and perhaps some such agents do or did exist. In my experience, however, the business, and the agent's job, tends to be 90% boredom, 9% excitement, and 1% sheer terror.

I am, however writing my own book, describing some of the zanier aspects of the intelligence business, but without giving away any state secrets. It is broadly based on my own experiences, so in reading it, if it ever gets fiished, you get an idea of what things were like.

You can get just a teeny feel of what things were like by reading some heavily edited stories, under the "Life in Postwar Germany" heading in my book, Livin' 'Round the World, on this web site. Otherwise, about all I can say about this period was that I had a lot of fun, enough adventure to last several lifetimes, and used up 27 or so of my nine lives in the process.

And I almost forgot, everything was not work. During this time I also attended the Winter Olympics in Italy, and Pat and I traveled extensively for pleasure, both on the Continent, and in Britain. Not to mention my almost constant travel in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland while on the job. And believe it or not, Pat and I traveled on $10 to $15 dollars per day

So, after about two years of this cloak and dagger stuff, my enlistment is almost up and comes the dreaded time of decision. I have to decide what to do next. Stay in the military, transfer full time into some spook outfit, join the Foreign Service, or try my hand at being a civilian.

There was some pressure to stay in, since by this time I was a Sergeant with three certified specialties. Field Intelligence Specialist, Photographer, and German Linguist.

This pressure intensified, one day, when a Colonel showed up, asking me to consider my future. What a sight. I was in rumpled German civvies, complete with Beretta in shoulder holster, lounging in a chair with my feet on the table, while this scrubbed and pressed Colonel seriously tried to convince me what a good deal I would get by hanging in with them. At the same time, some pretty senior guys in other intelligence agencies were also giving my partner and me a pitch to join them.

Finally my partner succumbed to the pressure and joined another agency, where he enjoyed a long and distinguished career. I finally decided that being an agent, while interesting and even exciting at times, was really a career with no future, and the military didn’t seem to have much long range potential either, so I decided to try civilian life.

So I went back to the world, reunited with my family, and got a real job. And from then on, I had to get my spy thrills by reading James Bond books.

However , I was still committed to the Reserve for four more years. But since there wasn’t much doing in the way of wars, I went on inactive status, and after a year or so of this, the Air Force and I tired of each other, I guess, and they gave me an honorable discharge.


Incidentally, during my time in the military, we made several lifelong friends, but let me tell you about some of them.

The first was George Banschbach, a single sergeant who lived on the base in California, but came by our house from time to time for some of the good beer. And maybe some home cooking. Anyway, I met up with him again in Seattle, right after I got out of the military, and we, and also his new wife, Joanne, became lifelong friends. Even today, when we summer in Edmonds, we frequently meet them for dinner, and George and I play golf every week or so.

The other good buddy was Don Treder, a sergeant in our outfit at Travis, who with his wife Eileen, also lived in our housing project. Don was a lifer, or long term career man, having transferred to the Air Force from the Navy right after WW II. Even after I left the military Don and my paths crossed fairly often, as he was assigned to Minuteman, and we would get together from time to time. When he finally retired, I got him a good tech job at Boeing, which unfortunately he was unable to hold, having been too long in the military. I would hear from him, from time to time though, when he needed a loan, and he finally settled in Spokane. We then saw each other every six months or so, until just a few years ago, when due to deteriorating health, and lack of money, he was forced to move in with a daughter back east somewhere,

As for the guys in the Intelligence world, Gene, who is a Russian, and was my real life partner for almost two years, went on to a long and interesting career in another agency, finally marrying a Russian national who he met in a hard currency bar in Moscow. He is now retired and lives in New York City. I still see Gene when I am in New York, and we talk on the phone every couple of months. I did have some official contact with him when he was working, but that is a story for another time. Two other ex agents, with whom I remain in contact are Alfonso, who lives in northern new Mexico, and William, an Indonesian Dutchman, William now lives in Tennessee, and we maintain an e mail correspondence.

In October 2005, Gene called me. He wanted to rehash the old times, which really didn’t interest me all that much. Anyway he started talking about a car wreck in the old days. About midway in his reminisces, I broke in to remark that in my recollection, every time we wrecked a car (and there were several), he was driving. Gene took instant offense, and then went into great detail as to how that wreck was not his fault. So, fast forward to January 2006. Gene called again. The car wreck thing must have been really bugging him, because he reviewed all of our accidents, most of which I had forgotten about, explaining in detail, in each case, why even though driving, he was not responsible.

In the summer of 2002, while escorting a bike hike through the South, I met William for dinner and drinks in Columbia, South Carolina. My son Whalen and son in law Hugh joined us for part of the evening, and got an earful of spy stories, and tales of other assorted high jinks. One interesting story related how we somehow got William’s American 1949 Ford convertible at the head of a parade honoring the then German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. The punch line was when the car hit something, and William in his somewhat stilted English, exclaimed, “I believe that we have just driven over someone”. William had entered the intelligence business from the US Air Force, and since he was not 21, we convinced him that he was an Air Boy, not an Airman. The story we told about him reporting to the Station Chief as Airboy William, got a lot of laughs from my boys.

William also visited us in Edmonds in the summer of 2007. I remember this visit particularly, because, one morning he was repeating a particularly hair raising tale in the railroad station waiting room. After he had caught his train, a bystander wandered over and asked me what that was all about. I told him to ignore the whole thing, as my friend was under the influence. At 8:30 in the morning!!!

I tried, without success, to get a fiftieth anniversary reunion going at the old location in Germany. But it seems that everyone is either broke, dead, or not interested.

PALM DESERT CA FEB 2008