I would love to hear some cold war stories

[Second Air Force]

I forgot another benefit to growing up during the sixties: Thunderbird Demonstrations with F-100s!

We also had an Oil Burner route not too far west of where I grew up and my dad and I watched a B-52 working low-level one day around 1970 or so.

S

[Tripehound]

In the early 50's in grade school in Dallas, Texas all childern were "issued" dog tags! I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade and couldn't imagine what they were for, but we had to wear them.

[Owen Miller]

The Cuban Missile Crisis has been mentioned several times.
Below is a link to some first hand stories of guys who were there...

http://www.vfp62.com/cuban.html

[Larry Wielgosz]

Where do I start. This could be a long one. I remembered all this but never put it all down in writing/typing. I was an aviation buff first at about the age of 7. Born in 1958. I eventually joined the USAF in 1976-1980 as a helicopter mechanic & worked & flew on H-3/H-53 Jolly Green Giants. I was stationed at Davis-Monthan AFB (D-M), AZ & Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan. I went temporary duty to Nellis AFB (Red Flag), Clark AB, Philippines & Osan AB, Korea. I was also in the CT Army National Guard (1983-1984) where I worked & flew on UH-1H Hueys & OH-6 Loaches. Also did a stint again in the USAF Reserves as a helo mechanic on H-3 helicopters at Luke AFB, AZ 1985-87. I still work with military helos.

What luck. An aircraft buff stationed next to the boneyard. I saw the boneyard everyday while going to work or looking out my dormitory (barracks) window. I have plenty of boneyard photos from the 1970s, 80,s 90s that I could make a book. Basically I watched most every aircraft the USAF and other branches had fly. It was post-Vietnam and the USAF was in transition. I saw older century series a/c and the newer types enter the system. I saw aircraft land and taxi into the boneyard/D-M flightline ramp. It was nearing the end of the radial engine days.

1968 - this was probably one of the best. Three Marine F-4 Phantoms beating up my hometown of Meriden, CT for about 10-15 minutes. They flew 500-1000 ft. over the city. Probably even lower than 500 ft.. I still have the newspaper article.

As a kid we occasionally visited a relative who lived near Westover AFB, MA when it was still an active base. I recall watching a B-52D coming in for a landing real low while in the relative's backyard. Trailing black smoke and all. It was real low.

Watching C-119s fly overhead.

Pease AFB, NH: airshow 1983 + or - a year. ANG F-4 from Michigan came up from behind the crowd. Very few saw it coming in, very low. It then pulled up at a good angle. The roar with afterburners on was trembling. Scared the cr#p out of everyone. I felt the heat from the engines & its exhaust blast sent two unattended squadron hot dog stands (wood framing) tumbling end over end.

WHILE IN MILITARY SERVICE, ITEMS THAT STAND OUT:

Watching Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ change over from A-7 to A-10s. Saw the 1st A-10 takeoff to permanently deploy to Europe.

Watched Kadena AB, Okinawa change over from F-4 Phantoms to F-15s. Watched the 1st F-15 land to be permanently stationed in the Pacific.

Casually & routinely waving to the F-4 pilots that were taxing past me when I walked to worked. I used to cut across a field and a taxi way to get to work. It was as common as waving to a neighbor who was daily driving to work. One of the F-4s was tail #463 that had 6 Vietnam Mig kills.

Watching four F-4s take off & form up as a package and then continue on their mission. Other a/c fighter types too.

Night afterburner takeoffs. Love that flame.

F-106s making a lot of takeoff noise at Davis-Monthan AFB. They had a detachment that sat alert to watch the southern border of the U.S. Those J-75 engines.

Watching numerous ANG F-100s taxi, takeoff, land while being deployed to AZ during the winter months. Also being under the flight path of F-100s that were based at Tucson International Airport. Talk about loud.

Watching the occasional U-2 takeoff. Loud (again J-75) and almost vertical.

Watching the SR-71 takeoff & land at Kadena AB. Takeoffs were the best. Just about everyone stopped to watch. Cars, people walking/working. Big orange drag chute on landing. Watching it in the landing pattern was strange. It did not look like a airplane. More like a spacecraft. I was on a intercom long cord launching a HH-53C Super Jolly and the pilots were going through the checklist when a SR-71 took off. All checklist action stopped and the pilots had to watch the SR continue on. I was inside a building when the building slightly shook and the roar continued. You did not see it but you knew it was the SR-71.

Watching the last two USAF Reserve C-121 land and taxi in to the boneyard.

Watching KC-97s land & taxing in to retire in the boneyard. Watching Guam based B-52Ds do the same - 2 a/c on a Tuesday & Thursday for about a month or more. Got to go inside of one.

Flying from Kadena AB, Okinawa to Clark AB, Philippines on a HH-53C Super Jolly. Aerial Refueling twice. Approx. 8 hours of flight. Flew on the HC-130 refueling the same helos on the return flight back to Kadena AB. Clark airbase was full of F-4s. War game: Cope Thunder was in-progress.

Flying from Kadena AB, Okinawa to Osan AB, Korea & return on a HH-53c Super Jolly. Aerial Refueling twice. Approx. 8 hours of flight. War game: Cope Jade

Watching radial engine aircraft: T-28, C-1, S-2, HU-16 Coast Guard, C-7, KC-97, C-121, C-123, C-131, C-117D Marines.

Watching an O-2 unit operate knowing that some day some of them would become privately owned warbirds. Boy how I wanted to grab one. Later the unit transitioned to OA-37s.

Watching: F-86 (private company under gov't contract), F-100, F-102(drone conversion), F-104 (Germany trained in AZ), F-105, F-106, F-111, F-4, F-5,F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18, A-37, A-3, A-4, A-6, A-7, A-10, B-57, B-52, P-3, T-33, T-34, T-38, T-39, T-43, C-9, C-130, C-141, C-5 (flew on all 4 cargo types), KC-135, C-140, OV-1, OV-10, numerous helicopter types. Like I mentioned - just about everything in the inventory. Some working their way out of the inventory.

I had a blast. I took numerous photos. Probably a couple of thousand. I went from a state with almost no military to full blown military aviation and back to a state with almost no military aviation. I miss taking those pictures. What fun. I consider myself lucky that I still work with military helicopters.

Larry

[Nathan]

Hi Larry,

I sent you a PM.

[67N20]

I remember my parents stocking up on food during the Cuban missile crisis and seeing a few bomb shelters in my town of 10,000 (La Marque, Texas). Seeing C119's from Ellington flying. Also F102's or 106's out of Ellington.
Flying on Seaboard World Airways to Vietnam and refuelung in Guam and seeing the B52's there. At Cu Chi where I was stationed we had C,D, and H model Huey's in our unit (116th Aviation Company-Assault Helicopter). Across the runway from our unit was a detachment of Air Force OV10 Broncos. 25th Inf. Division had Huey's and Cobras to the left of us and had a Dust Off unit to the right. Landing at the Cu Chi airstrip regularly were C7 Caribous and C1213's with an occasional C130.
Once the runway was buzzed by a VNAF Skyraider. Leaving Vietnam from Ben Hoa airbase saw some F100's getting ready to go out on a mission. Back home in La Marque would see that Ellington had transitioned from the delta wing fighters to F4's and later to F16s. Now they have Predators (Except for the Collings A4 and F4) and some Apaches and visiting fighters.

[Jack Cook]

Adak was COLD

[Nathan]

I forgot another benefit to growing up during the sixties: Thunderbird Demonstrations with F-100s!

We also had an Oil Burner route not too far west of where I grew up and my dad and I watched a B-52 working low-level one day around 1970 or so.

S

You got that right. There is some great youtube videos of the F-100 Thunderbirds. OMFG did they fly! One base commnader wanted them to break the barrier but the lead Thunderbird pilot told them that would break windows. So the base commander made everyone's house within 10 miles to tape up their windows! Thats dedication!!

[Tailspin]

These are from some notes I made after the CMC was more or less over. After the peak of the crisis, we were cautioned not to publicly discuss orally or in written form any of our own or our Wing's actions which had occurred during the actual crisis. A couple of weeks later, when the situation somewhat returned to normal, our crew was pulling a week of alert duty so I scribbled down a few reflections of incidents as best I could recall them. My purpose was just to have a few written words to pass on to my parents to let them know how serious the situation had been.
At the time I was a single, twenty five year old First Lieutenant serving as a co-pilot on a Select crew based a Whiteman AFB, MO. (SAC had crews designated at three levels of experience and ability. In order of increasing proficiency the crews were designated as Combat Ready [R], Select [S], and Lead [L]). The more important and difficult targets were awarded to the L crews.
Our crew had just returned from a month of TDY (temporary duty) in Spain and was scheduled the next week to go on a week of alert duty at our alert facility at Whiteman. Sometime during the early days in October, 1962, the crews began hearing rumors of threatening activity in Cuba. However, even while giving the crews on alert duty their daily briefing, our intel officers remained tight lipped, so the majority of us dismissed the info as just latrine rumors. On October 14th, U-2 photos showed definite signs that the Russkies were building Medium Range missile sites at three locations in Cuba. These missiles could be armed with nuke warheads and had a range of about 2,200 n.m., which put most of the continental US within their range. We heard there were high level meetings in D.C. and that the JCS were pusing for an all-out attack, including an invasion of Cuba. During this time, I believe SAC went from DEFCON 4 (DEFense CONdition) to DEFCON 3. All leaves were cancelled, the base was "locked down", and all crews not already on alert were given contingecy targets. All available aircraft were fully armed and loaded to the EWO (Emergency War Order) configuration. As I recall, none of these targets were in Cuba; SAC was in standby mode to attack the USSR in case Russia retaliated from our proposed attack on Cuba. My understanding was that the air campaign against Cuba was to be handled primarily by TAC of the Air Force and Navy and Marine air. I remember quite vividly when several crews and planes were dispered to large civilian airports. That occurred on October 19th and was the first and only time in the US that fully armed nuclear bombers were based at civilian airports. Our crew and two other crews were sent to Lambert Field in St. Louis. We were put up in a section of the Missouri Air Guard's facility. Other crews were sent to Minneapolis and another civilian field whose location I don't remember, possibly Tulsa. We were basically a fully operational composite squation, with emphasis on APs to guard the planes and weapons; also comunications specialists so we could receive the all important "GO CODE" if it should be necessary to launch.
At that time I think the rest of the Armed Forces were still at DEFCON 4, but on the 22nd, when Kennedy implemented the quarantine of Cuba, all the forces went to D3. The next day, the 23rd, SAC went to DEFCON 2 which I think to this day is still the only time any branch of the Armed Forces went to that level. Things were getting serious!
On the 27th of October the fit really hit the shan. Rudy Anderson was shot down and KIA in a U-2 over Cuba, (he was the first to receive the Air Force Cross), a reccy F-8 was badly hit but made it back to Homestead, AFB, and another U-2 out of Alaska strayed over Russian territory and almost caused a confrontaion between MiGs and F-102s. As Hubert Humphrey used to say, "we were gravely concerned". Fortunately, cool heads prevailed and the situation gradually improved and cooled down. However, SAC didn't return from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 3 until November 15th, so things were still a little terse. During that time our crew pulled a week of alert at Minneapolis-St. Paul. By this time, due to the planes not flying, maintenance write-ups were increasing. I can't say enough in gratitude for our mechanics. They did an outstanding job under some very miserable conditions. In spite of the mechanics best efforts, after the crisis was over, sometime in December a flight of three of us departed for our overseas alert base at Fairford RAF, England. Due to the aircraft setting so ground alert, none of the the three of us made it to England without diverting to a base for some major repairs. Those were indeed very scary times.

[ZRX61]

Two fully-loaded USAF Phantoms went screaming over the house at probably 100 feet, super-sonic, down the valley and up the side of the opposite mountain! The sonic boom broke every window in the house and garage and scare the living daylights out of all of us!

About '74 I was playing hooky from school & was walking across a wheat field. I saw something in my periphery & turned to look in that direction. RAF Phantom at about 20ft going like a bat outta hell jinked a bit & turned straight towards me. At this point there was no sound, only a visible shockwave in the wheat. Then it hit me & knocked me on my ass in a cloud of wheat & heat followed immediately by the noise.
I was partially deaf for about 2 days