My commitment to the Air Force was up in February, 1977 and I could get out if I wanted to. I wanted to finish up my software and make sure it was well documented so someone could understand it easily and make changes as needed. Having done all that I was ready to make a change and I was coming up for re-assignment.
If I stayed in the USAF my first choice assignment was at Travis AFB in Sacramento, California... Flying C-141's... big cargo planes all around the world. If I took that assignment I would be committed for another 3 years. March of 1978 was my deadline for getting out.
The Air Force sent me orders to Sacramento flying the C-5. That was my second choice... I didn't want to fly that behemoth... it was brand new and had lots of problems. It was an easy decision to turn that assignment down and opt to get out of the service. Then the personnel center called me and offered me a C-141... my first choice... I turned that down too. Then they sweetened the pot by offering me a job at Wing HQ in Sacramento after flying for 3 years so we could stay there for 6 years instead of 3. I turned that down too. They said that is your last chance ... are you sure... "Yes I was."
A week later they called me and offered me an F-16... and I was shocked. It was the newest fighter and it had just gone operational. It was a hot assignment. I asked if I could think about it and they said yes. I called Martha and told her about it and she said; "Do what you want to do!" What a woman... so darned smart... I turned it down.
The F-16 picked up the nick name... "Lawn Dart"... it was capable of pulling more G's than the pilots body could withstand and the pilots would pass out... and some would crash... like a lawn dart.
So... I made a smart decision... :-) work part-time... for the Air Force Reserve as a pilot in a C-141. We moved to Redlands, California... a cute little town in East LA... near Palm Springs. The reason for taking the C-141 job was 85% of the pilots there were also airline pilots... great connections. Hiring was going nuts because de-regulation was about to begin.
The C-141 job was a worldwide job. I flew the Pacific. Since I didn't have a real job they flew me like crazy. 10 and 14 day trips were the norm. We were fortunate to have friends in the same Squadron and Martha and the kids fit in pretty quick... and I was gone.
I probably landed on every island in the Pacific that a US military jet was allowed to land. By far my most favorite spot was New Zealand. The people were nice and the country was beautiful. We all bought butter, cheese and filet mignons. We would put the beef and butter in an unpressurized storage compartment in the wheel wells and it would be frozen solid at -55 degrees C. The cheese we kept on ice in the cabin. It was fun coming back through customs with stuff like that.
One of my favorite trips was a 14 day South Pacific trip. We spent some time in Christchurch, New Zealand and spent a few days in Sidney, Australia. Sidney seem just like being in USA. We flew into the Australian Outback to Woomera and Alice Springs. Talk about desolate. I brought t-shirts home for the girls that said; "I've been everywhere, Even Woomera". Woomera and Alice Springs were an important part of our missile and satellite tracking system.
On one trip to New Zealand we really didn't want to leave but it was time to go home. Our radar wasn't working well and we would taxi out to leave and test the radar out near the runway and it wouldn't work. It was a 16 hour flight to Hawaii and there were a lot of thunderstorms on the way there. We taxied back in they put another radar unit in and the same thing happened. On the third try they sent a mechanic with us to test the radar... we had to test it out in an open area because of the radiation it emitted... and the mechanic pronounced the radar fixed. We had a little argument and in the end we were pressured to take the aircraft. The radar didn't work in the air but we pressed on anyway. At one point the storms were so bad we almost diverted to Pago Pago in American Samoa... but the weather looked worse that way. It was a nasty flight and we all were exhausted. We had an augmented crew (extra crew members) and we had a 24 duty day... we used all 24 hours of our duty day due to the long ground delay for the radar.
I believe this was the only time I ever relinquished my seat in the cockpit to take a nap. The only bunk available was the top bunk and I couldn't lay sideways because there wasn't enough room for my shoulders... I tried laying on my back but my nose was just a few inches from the ceiling. I chose to head back to the cargo bay and sleep on a lumpy pallet of some kind of cargo.
I had one emergency in the C-141 and it was with my old college roommate Dave. We departed the LA area for Hawaii and were coming up on our ETP (equal time point) when electrical smelling smoke started billowing out from the floor around our feet. There was an electronics compartment right below the cockpit and something was going wrong in there. Dave got up and took and engineer with him to see how bad it was and I declared a "Mayday". That is the only time in my career that I ever uttered the words "Mayday, Mayday". I turned the airplane around and descended to a lower altitude to prepare for depressurizing the airplane and depriving any fire of oxygen. Dave and the engineer were able to see the problem and managed to get into the electronics compartment and disconnect the power to the unit. We continued on back home without further problems. The Pacific seems really big when you have an electrical fire.
On to the airlines...
Prior to de-regulation all airline routes and fares required government approval... hard to believe now days. Regulation is one of the reasons airline pay got as high as it did back then... every contract you got was the highest paid in the industry, until the next airline got their new contract and they were the highest paid. Airline management would just go the government and say we need to raise the fares and all fares got raised... there was no competition... all fares were the same. People still dressed up to fly back then.
Five months after we moved to California I was hired by Braniff International Airlines... the third largest airline... and by far the most fun place to work.
The interview process back then included:
- Preliminary interview
- Flight logbook review
- Stanine test ... Psychological and math
- Polygraph test... lie detector
If you did good the process continued:
- More tests
- Physical
- Another interview
I had barely made it back home to California when Braniff called and asked; "How soon can you be here?"
We put the house on the market and I packed my VW bug and drove to training in Dallas.
We bought and moved into our California house on July 4th weekend 1978 and sold and moved back to San Antonio by Christmas. Incredibly we made money on our house in that short period.
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