A DAY TO REMEMBER FOREVER

Some days live in your memory forever. This was one of them.

Back just before I finally got the courage to bail out of my old life and end up here in Los Angeles, I gave a bunch of models to the museum at then-Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento. The museum director asked me what they could give me in return. Nonchalant, I pointed up at a pair of T-37s that had just taken off and said, “How about a ride in one of those?” He replied, “I’ll see.” I put no stock in that, the Air Force doesn’t give away rides, and promptly forgot about it for six weeks until I got a call one day at work from the Mather Public Affairs Office. “We have you scheduled for a T-37 flight next Wednesday, but you need to come out and go through training. Could you be out here tomorrow afternoon?” Could I!? “Yes!” I hung up and went and told my boss I was taking the afternoon off tomorrow. Fortunately, I’d done a bunch of overtime recently and had a bunch of compensatory time off available. I also told him I wouldn’t be in next Wednesday.

First things first, I got fitted for a flight suit and helmet, and was taught how to get into a parachute harness. The training involved learning how to get out of the airplane in an emergency. They had a nifty cockpit set up in a room, you sat in the ejection seat and got ejected and learned how to “step out” when the parachute automatically deployed. I hoped this was More Information I Would Never Need.

0500 came early the next Wednesday, but I set a world’s record for showering, dressing, a cup of coffee and outta there with my camera bag. “Reverse commuting” out to Mather was easy. I got introduced to Colonel Russ Johnson, the squadron commander, who was going to fly lead, and to Captain Bob Williams, who was flying the airplane I was in. We were suited up and ready to go by 0645 and were stepping off the crew bus onto the flight line at 0700.

The T-37 is a small, simple, twin engine basic trainer. They first entered the inventory back in around 1957 and got the nickname “Tweety bird” for the high-pitched screech of the twin engines (designed a long time before airport noise regulations, when such noise was called “the sound of freedom” to anyone who complained).They finally departed the inventory in the 90s. There was an armed version made that was used for ground support in Vietnam. These particular airplanes and this squadron were part of the Air Force Navigator’s Training School at Mather. We were going to do what was called an “Introduction to Mountain Flying” mission, up over the Sierra Nevada, flying as far south as Yosemite, and back up the Central Valley to Sacramento. We’d be gone about 90 minutes.

Strapped in we started up and took off in formation. The Mather runway was built for B-52s, so there was plenty of room for us.

The first thing I had to do was ask them to loosen up the formation; they were tucked in so close I couldn’t get the Colonel’s whole airplane into the frame, shooting with a 55mm lens.

The rest of the flight was “playing in the clouds”, looping rolling, running through canyons.

We finally ended up in the Tuolemne River Canyon...

And then we pulled up and banked around...

And there was El Capitan, seen from “God’s point of view.”

And the entire Yosemite Valley, 2,000 feet below.

On the way back, we chased each other. At one moment, when we were poised above the lead T-37, Bob said “If he was a MiG, I’d have him cold,” as he did a wingover and swooped down on its tail. I was immediately reminded all this fun had an ultimately-deadly purpose.

Too soon the trip was over. But it’s such an indelible memory, I can replay it minute by minute any time.

I’ll never forget Colonel Johnson’s comment as we climbed out of the cockpits and headed for the crew bus. “Another day I’m gonna have to back up to the pay window.”

The flight became “Navigating Can Be Fun, Too,” published in Air Force Magazine in 1981, my first professional aviation article.

The editors at Air Force liked it so much they commissioned me to do an article a year later about the Wild Weasels, which involved a flight in the back seat of an F-4 Phantom up into the Red Flag range at Nellis AFB in Nevada for a “combat mission.” The. Best. Rollercoaster. Ride. Ever. And they PAID ME to do that! (I followed the Colonel’s example and backed up to the pay window)

A story for another time.

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