Observations on aviation-related topics in the news.
Tom, a friend from Pennsylvania, thought I would enjoy this story from Pittsburgh City Paper:
And I did. It’s a cool story and new to me. In 1956, an old WWII bomber ran out of fuel and ditched in the Monongaha River. Several witnesses saw it and tried to rescue the six crew members, two of whom drowned in the nearly freezing water. The bomber sank and was never found despite many attempts over the years. Of course, there are plenty of conspiracy theories. Since the flight took off from Nellis AFB in Nevada, some believe it was carrying alien artifacts from Area 51. Others say it was carrying components for nuclear bombs. Still others say the USAF secretly fished the wreckage out of the river in the middle of the night. Still others say Howard Hugues was on board.
The conspiracy theories are fueled by the fact that parts of the official USAF Accident report are redacted. That alone shows that the Air Force must have been up to something shady, right?
This is what I replied to Tom:
Tom, I hadn’t heard that story. Thanks for sending me the article. I don’t think the deletions in the accident report were because there was anything mysterious about the plane or its cargo. I think the reason certain sentences were redacted was to spare the feelings of the surviving family members (and to make it harder for them to sue). In any case, when this accident occurred in 1956, the USAF was flying jet bombers. WWII B-25s were long obsolete and were only used for training. Most had already been scrapped, and the few that remained ended up in the scrap yard.
There are many lost aircraft that have never been found, but I have to say I’m surprised no one has found this one, given all the enthusiasts who have searched for it over the years!
As for the connection between Nellis AFB and Area 51: Nellis is a huge base north of Las Vegas whose activities are fully visible to anyone driving by. Area 51 is 100 NM to the north within the boundaries of the Nellis Ranges, restricted areas closed to the public. Area 51 itself is a restricted area within a restricted area, closed to anyone who doesn’t work there. The closest I got was when I flew Red Flag exercises at Nellis, at about 25 NM, close enough to see the airfield on the dry lake bed in the middle, but not close enough to make out any details. People who work there are flown in from Las Vegas, where they live, aboard white-painted 737s operated by a private contractor and using the call sign Janet. A good friend of mine was an F-15 instructor pilot at the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis. After retiring, he began working for that contractor, flying worker bees between McCarren Field in Las Vegas and Groom Lake in Area 51. He lasted about a year, got tired of the same old thing, and left the company to take a job with Southwest.
The Callsign history is not like the others:
Military leaders request call signs every few years. But generally they are after the use of tactical call signs and personal nicknames, whether on name tags or over the air (on radio calls, etc.). This time, however, they were annoyed by a computer-generated aircraft call sign, as they want to use us.
For example, when I was flying at Kadena, the 44th Fighter Squadron Vampires assigned the call signs “Bat” and “Vampire” to individual aircraft and F-15 flights. Both pilots and controllers used these call signs – “Vampire 21 hold short,” “Bat 01, climb to 15,000 and hold,” “Vampire 11, traffic 12 o’clock, ten miles,” and so on. Periodically, a senior chief of staff would issue an order banning the use of unit call signs and instructing us to use randomly generated alphanumeric call signs from a list sent daily to flying units. One day you might be BORON 01, the next IDICK 69.
Oops, maybe you shouldn’t use one with DICK and 69 in it. Which is what happened here. If I had even thought about it (actually, I never did until now), I would have assumed there were filters in place to keep offensive or inappropriate callsigns out of these daily lists. Obviously not! The article, which is worth reading, mentions other callsign scandals, including KC-135 tankers operating as “Titties” and “Boobies” and a B-1B bomber operating as “Fuck0107,” which I honestly don’t believe.
But as I said at the beginning, the generals and admirals are usually after tactical callsigns like Skid (my own) or my old squadron mates Jugs, Ripple, Bag and Peeper.
A story just occurred to me. When I was flying in the Netherlands, our sister F-15 unit in Germany, Bitburg AB, was home to the Bulldogs of the 22nd Fighter Wing. There, it was tradition that whenever a 22nd Fighter Wing flight took off, Eifel Control would ask, “Is there a Bulldog in the air?” to which the flight controller would reply, “You bet.” One day, an Air Training Command general was flying a T-39 into Bitburg and heard one of these conversations on the radio. The next day, U.S. Air Forces Europe issued a command-wide Be-No (meaning “there must be no…”), and the tradition was banned.
I cannot say whether our colleagues in Bitburg ignored the new order as soon as the general left. What I can say, however, is that although I have experienced several bans on tactical call signs – in USAFE, TAC and PACAF – none of my commanders or squadron mates ever paid any attention to them.
I vividly remember my experiences in USAF Survival Training and wrote about it in the blog. So when I saw this storyforwarded by another friend, I read it with interest.
This is not a big surprise. I have often thought that civilians would pay good money for the kind of training I received at the USAF Survival School. That is where this former instructor learned his trade. Evidently, he came to the same conclusion and put it into action. As for the Christian-nationalist connection, it is, as real estate agents say, location, location, location. The SERE School (the Survival School’s new name) is located at Fairchild AFB in Eastern Washington, just outside of Idaho.
One more interesting note: the former US Air Force officers who advised the Bush/Cheney administration on torture and waterboarding after 9/11 were instructors at Fairchild when I was there in the 1970s, so this kind of thing has a long history.
— back to the Air-Minded Index
