1975 And The War Was Over

In 1975 the military had started making cutbacks due to reduced budgets.  One of our C-118's (DC-6) developed some corrosion on the main wing spar and there was no money to fix it so I arranged to have the wings removed and towed down Highway 90 to Lackland AFB.  We put the wings back on it and it is still on permanent display.  

Rumor had it that all of the piston powered airplanes were going away and with them 3000 pilots would suddenly be commanders of missile silos and Officers Clubs.  I had very extensive security clearance and I was a readily available asset to the Air Force's branch of the NSA.  They needed computer officers badly, so I took an aptitude test and I guess I scored high enough and I soon found myself at computer programming school.  I had no computer experience before that and did not know what the word "Software" meant.  When I got back from training I enrolled in UTSA and started taking computer science courses and then continued on towards a Masters Degree in Math and Computer Science.

I was committed to the USAF until February 1977 and I wanted to stay in San Antonio.  All the above made that possible.  

At the time there were over 120 computer programmers in the building where I worked.  Security was exceptionally tight and I found myself in the most secure area.  We were behind many locked doors and down in the basement with lead lined walls and no windows.  No stray electronic signals could leak out of our area.  This was a leading edge project and extremely interesting.  There were four programmers on the project and the other three were extremely bright.  Two of them had been enlisted men that went on to college and came back as officers... they had been Chinese linguists before... they were not Chinese. The third guy was an absolute genius.  He had his first college degree at 19... from Tennessee.  He started teaching Computer Science at Tennessee at that time and finished his Masters in Math at the age of 21.  He immediately followed that with a Masters in Computer Science at John Hopkins.  The Air Force in all it's wisdom had him working as a Communications Officer before this... nothing to do with computers.  

We were soon tasked with choosing a computer system with the aid of some electrical engineers and the final users of the system.  Our system would be completely mobile and could operate on land, sea or in the air.  Our computer system arrived before the specs for the programming was ready to go... so we played for about a month or so.  We got really familiar with the system by sharing ideas and discoveries.  At the time there was a bar room video game out called "Tanks"... so we wrote our own version of Tanks...  Our Tank was a Cadillac...  so to speak.  

By the time we got the specs for the programs we were to write, we all knew how to program in machine language... or... Ones and Zeros.  We learned the very basics of the computer's architecture including the timing of the functions.  Our resident genius was ready to write our own operating system.  It was fascinating to working right at the fore front of the computer science field and with these men.

We finally got our specs and I was assigned three things.  

1. Write a program to display a map of the world. 
2. Write a program to display real time tracking data on aircraft
3. Create a data link and format for intelligence message and tracking information.

While all this was going on I was still flying.  I was required to fly 100 hours per year and I flew out of Randolph AFB... just the other side of town.

We flew VIP's and the Burn Team out of Brooks in a T-39 Sabreliner.

 Flying VIP's and the Burn Team meant we might go anywhere in the country but it was mostly back to Washington DC for me...  back through those never ending lines of thunderstorms.  There is no doubt in my mind that some fighter pilot General ordered these airplanes.  They flew great and were very maneuverable.

But the airplane was ill equipped.  

• No autopilot
• No Thrust reverser's to help you stop
• No radar to see those lines of thunderstorms!

Additionally, the airplane seemed to want to go off the runway. The main landing gear were too close together and that made the airplanes kind of tippy... technical term there...  So they put really big brakes on the airplanes, but no anti-skid... and the problem got worse.  There were two kinds of pilots in this unit:

1. The kind that have gone off the runway
2. The kind that were going to go off the runway

100 hours of flying per year was enough to keep a pilot of a jet just barely proficient... and I resembled that remark.  

I showed up for one of my check rides and after the examiner asked two questions... and I couldn't answer correctly... he sent me home to study more... a rude awaking.

Flying was being pushed out of my daily activities as I burned the candle at both ends.  I would show up for my job early and leave late and often go straight to class at UTSA.  I would sometimes stay until midnight when the computer center closed.  

Soon I was finished with all my initial computer courses and deep into the masters program and I loved it.  It was problem solving to me.  The biggest program I wrote was a university class registration system.  

Back at work I finally found a map source... the NSA.  They would give me the map database but not the program that displayed it.  It took a month of looking at huge stack of ones and zeros to find a pattern and understand how the map worked.  Then... after about a month of programming I finally saw the "Boot of Italy" show up on my computer screen.  That was a major milestone.  I always looked for Italy because that was the easiest place to recognize on a map, in my view.   I was working on the data link and tracking data display when Kimberly was born.