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More Anecdotes
The
Drag Chute is on the Runway
in the Middle of Heathrow Airport!
by
John Davis (B-66B Bomb Squadron Crew Chief at Sculthorpe, England)
I told my assistant to remove the extra drag chute from the utility rack in
the bomb bay and to secure it in the communication compartment. The aircraft carried
an extra chute in case the aircraft landed at another base in Europe. The flight
crew arrived and performed the usual walk around and everything seemed normal.
We launched the aircraft on the mission which was somewhere around four to six
hours... I'm not sure. About two hours or so after launch, the flight chief came
out to where I was working and asked me where the extra chute was located? Thinking
the aircraft had landed at another base, I responded it was in the communications
compartment. He looked at me and stated, "It is on the runway in the middle
of Heathrow Airport!" Needless to say, I was stunned and could hardly believe
what I had heard. I turned to my assistant, and asked him the same question and
if he had put the chute in the communications compartment. Obviously he had failed
to comply with my directive. He responded, he forgotten to do as I had directed
and the chute, by number assigned to my aircraft, was located on the runway at
Heathrow Airport, London, England. The flight crew was on an RBS mission and was
using Heathrow as a simulated target... opened the bomb bay doors and out went
the drag chute. We were very lucky that it did not hit someone or another aircraft
on the ground. I can laugh about that today, but it was no laughing matter when
it happened. I thought you might enjoy the humor in this story. I will
put on my thinking cap
and I have a crew photo that I will locate and e-mail
to you. I recall the day to day operations and the many hours which we worked
on the aircraft. There is so much to say, but I am not really sure it would be
of much interest since it only involves the work of a crew chief and supporting
personnel.
The
Nature of ECM Types by Gus Seefluth
We
all know that ECM types have always been a little odd, compared with the airplane
drivers, without whom we’d never get off the ground. Good pilots are a precious
commodity and there’s a reason why they usually become the commanders. So we shouldn’t
complain too much. Also, flyers in the field rarely get to learn the big picture.
SAC had its problems developing an EW capability and so did TAC
and the Theaters. For some of that, I refer you to the History of US Electronic
Warfare by Alfred Price. Volume II has quite a bit about the Wexval tests and
the B-66, including the Brown cradle. It also covers the QRC-160 jammer pod, for
which I was the project engineer at W-PAFB during development and flight test.
TAC had always been a fighter pilots command, with a different philosophy
from the bombers and transports. The attitude of “Kick the tires, light the fires
and the first one off is the leader” became obsolete when the airplane missions
changed. And the change was painful. I had nothing to do
with the development of the B-66 but did recognize its potential if people would
use it properly. Somebody (I wish I knew who) was very smart in building an airplane
with good electrical power and some usable space. My first
exposure to tactical air was in January, 1958, when I was assigned to the 42nd
TRS, 10th TRW at Spang, my first overseas tour since I got out of POW camp in
1945. I’d been teaching EW to senior officers in the Staff Course at Keesler AFB
for several years and was up-to-date on the tactics and threats. A few months
after I arrived, the Wing sent me to a B-66 conference in California, where I
made some contacts in the Air Material Command. I soon checked out in the RB-66C
as Raven 4, and realized that we were just boring holes in the air, with no real
mission, in spite of what the books said. An opportunity came to volunteer for
a short time in the Wing Plans section to help with an exercise, and I managed
to get a slot approved as Wing EW officer. Then I rewrote the ECM Annex to the
NATO War Plan and got it approved by a couple of friends in USAFE, placing responsibility
for EW on the 10th TRW, the only outfit in the theater with any usable capability.
By this time, I knew the B-66 capability and the potential of 10 TRW. I
heard that Bill Keels was coming in and managed to get him assigned to our Recce
Tech, so we could build an Electronic Order of Battle. I’d met Keels when he was
a Sergeant in Admin for the Staff Course at Keesler and helped talk him into getting
commissioned. My friends in USAFE helped to task the Wing with specific missions
and we built the EOB up until we could schedule missions for specific targets.
Colonel Kemp gave me a free hand, with just the warning, “Gus, Don’t you get us
into trouble!” I briefed the fighter outfits on EW and made them aware of our
capabilities. At about this time, I made a trip to Adana, where we were intercepted
and took the C-model nearly to the Mach. I decided the tail guns were of less
value than the tail cone, so I proposed that we get rid of the guns and gain 35
knots airspeed. Colonel Kemp agreed after a cone equipped airplane won the photo
competition. An opportunity came to configure the RB-66Bs
with jammers. I spent a long time trying to make some sense out of the wiring
diagrams, but our excellent maintenance people, including Tom Sumpter, got it
done. About this time, we had to move to England and the C-models went to Chelveston,
while I went to Alconbury. But we had a systematic recon program which the 42nd
TRS kept up and we could run recon/jamming exercises against the RAF, the Navy
and others. I managed to bring the EW Staff Course instructors to Europe to teach
our people and the USAFE staff about EW. I realized that
USAFE needed the equivalent of the SAC Blue Cradle if the weapon carriers were
going to survive to their targets. I used our EOB to build up our jamming capability
and was able to get the Brown Cradle B-66Bs reassigned from the 47th Bomb Wing
at Sculthorpe to the 10th TRW. But we had to give up some other airplanes when
Colonel Kemp refused to have more than 99 airplanes in our Wing. By the way, the
47th BW didn’t dump those cradle airplanes - I specifically requested them, along
with their EW officer, Bill Reynolds. I proposed an alert force to be forward
based on the continent to cover the weapon carriers in the initial attacks and
requested Furstenfeldbrook, so the crews could get to Munich,but that was denied
because the Luftwaffe had just taken that base and we couldn’t put our classified
airplanes there, so we got Toul instead. We ran some impressive exercises against
the RAF with those airplanes, including blanking out the entire British force.
Then I got orders for SAC which I managed to get cancelled, so I could get to
Wright-Patt. At W-PAFB, I was assigned to ASNPVD, the ECM
branch, as the Project Engineer on the QRC-160 jammer, which was just getting
on contract with GE in Utica, NY. I traveled to McDonnell Aircraft to see the
RF-110 (which became the RF-4C). It looked good so I selected that airplane as
the target carrier for the pods. It had no pylons and no provision for external
stores but it seemed to be a good design. We designed a family of pods, with ground
support equipment. We tried to get an A/N nomenclature but had to stay under the
QRC program. TAC gave us little or no support in terms of demand so we could not
get high priorities. They did not like external stores, which I understood, but
we knew they had to have electronic defenses and there was absolutely no internal
space or power in the F-100s. That airplane had no wiring or cockpit space so
we were limited to 3 wires and about 2 inches of panel space for our control panel.
We also had to develop the QRC-160-7 pylon to mount the pod. Our flight test airplane
was an F-100 and our pilot was Captain Ed White, the first Astronaut to fly outside
the capsule. Unfortunately, he died in the Apollo fire. We finally delivered the
first pods to TAC and heard that they’d jettisoned them in flight. We got on contract
with GE for about 200 pods. I was reassigned from the pod
program to take over the group developing chaff, flares and rockets. I was happy
to hear that the pods did well in SE Asia once TAC accepted them. That’s where
the rest of the story is. It’s too bad that they didn’t have proper parts &
maintenance support but they were QRC which meant contractor support, since TAC
would not support our requests for conventional nomenclature. Sorry
to be so long-winded but maybe this will help clarify the stories. Take Care,
Gus Seefluth
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