Synopsis
The stories in “Into the Sun” tell of events that occurred during
my 21-year career in the United States Air Force.
A song heard by chance on the radio creates a melancholy mood that recalls the human costs of the war in Vietnam. Then I begin to sense the presence of comrades not seen for years and somehow we seem to fly together once again – back over those oceans we knew so well, above Iceland and Europe and back into the warm skies above The Plain of Jars. I recall a day when a refueling mission over Laos turned into a brave attempt to rescue a shot-down navigator and bring him back to the green, green grass of home. From there, the reverie pulls me back into those Good Old Days when we all were young - even the Air Force itself, was only seven years old.
We didn’t start from scratch. The old Army Air Corps had given us a fine heritage. We had good people and equipment, but there were problems too. Many of the airplanes did not fit together well, and our new missions were different from anything ever done before. Our higher ranking leaders were mostly graduates from West Point and Annapolis, given to fine living, golf, bridge and dining well. The rest of the force suspected these old gentlemen still missed the horses and battleships of their youth and most of those who piloted the aircraft back then were really farmers and merchants conscripted to fight in Germany and Japan, who had gotten out but been called back to fight again in Korea; now they didn’t know whether to stay in or get out again. They were not professional military officers and neither were we, we young new lieutenants coming in to replace them. We also came into the military because of the draft but we brought with us baccalaureate degrees and campus queens.
That’s where this book begins – back in a time of jerrybuilt contraptions; clever, patchwork, on-the-job “engineering”, and brilliant new ways of doing everything. Wise old guys, who had been farmers once, and could now fly like wizards by the seat of their pants, and we restless young men of the “takeover Generation” who were sharp and smart but still looking for a schoolbook solution to every problem, together we comprised the famous “wrecking crews” who flew the KB-50s, the Tactical Air Command refueling tankers. Many of those missions now seem like a Saturday serial at the old movie house, each featuring some miraculous last-minute escape from catastrophe to end with happy landings and missions amazingly accomplished, and with happy toasts at the Officers’ Club bar.
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The next part of the book takes an abrupt turn and talks about life on an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile crew, You can find out about the magic “cardboard trainer”, some problems that NObody ever suspected could happen, you will participate in an actual launch of a Titan II from Vandenberg AFB, in California, and hear what the Commander of the Strategic Air Command personally told me in secret - that’s in this book too.
Here also you what it was really like to live on an air force base, including a few stories about the madness which slowly displaced reality in the frozen wind-fields of North Dakota on those long winter nights. We never forgot the night we launched part of the B-52 force against the USSR. You can find out about that too, including some more personal things we never talk about when we are around civilians.
Almost all military careers take a detour into the wilderness of staff duty. That doesn’t mean life gets dull or you don’t get shot at, it’s just that those who shoot at you wear the same uniform you do and they don’t shoot bullets, and life can take amazing detours, including a courts-martial (not mine!) and a telephone call from the FBI which leads to a search for a fabled “death ray machine”.
Then the book returns again to aerial refueling. These missions were very different. They were quiet, calm and professional, flown by the Strategic Air Command with the KC-135’s and B-52’s, manned by the professional descendants of the old “Wrecking Crews”.
The remainder of the book is dedicated to the war in Southeast Asia. Part of these tales deal with flying, and part tell about “everyday” life in that unreal world where the funny things seemed to become sad and sad things sometimes turned funny. It also deals with the great personal tragedies we all experienced when we left our families to go to war on the other side of the planet, and then the national tragedy which played out as we came back to the place we had called “home” when we left, but which sometimes now seemed more foreign and hostile than Vietnam.
There are 348 pages, 61 chapters, 60 black and white photographs, and some sketches and hand-drawn maps.
