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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Battle
2. My Early Years
3. Pilot Training
4. Off to War
5. A Small Event Called D-day
6. The Heat of Many Battles
7. Victories—at Last!
8. Mustangs and Mayhem
9. R&R, Second Tour, and Home
10. Going Home
11. Life in the Fast Lane
12. Exchange with the RAF 1948
13. F-86s at March Field, the Pitts, and Stewart
14. Landstuhl to Libya
15. Pentagon to Shaw
16. The Phantom and the War
17. Bolo
18. Rolling Thunder
19. The Ending Battle
20. The Painful Way Home
21. The Academy
22. IG and Out
23. Final Landing
Index
Advance Praise for Fighter Pilot
Copyright
To the warriors who go forth to find and defeat our nation’s enemies, those I’ve shared the skies with, those I’ve known over the years, and those who hopefully will follow the tradition in years to come: American fighter pilots
Acknowledgments
I had the great joy and privilege of living with my father as he neared the end of his life. He spoke often about his unfinished memoirs and was adamant that no one would put words in his mouth. When I promised to compile his writings and complete his book, he pointed that famous Robin Olds lecture finger at me and asked if I knew what I was getting into. I innocently replied, “Of course!” Silly me. During the final weeks of his illness, I gathered multiple boxes of diaries, military documents, films, letters, interviews, articles, and photographs and brought them to a workspace around his old green leather recliner in the living room. We sat for hours on end talking about his life, what it had all meant to him, what he hoped he had given to the people who had given so much to him. To the stack of his written memoirs he added tales of events that he hadn’t committed to paper. I took notes, asked questions, labeled photographs, and reminded him his favorite jokes wouldn’t make it into print. We laughed a lot. The day after finally admitting he was tired, he died peacefully in my arms. There are no words to describe what a gift my father was to my life and what an honor it is to carry out his last orders.
Friends from all over the world rallied to Robin’s side during his last months, and these same wonderful people continued as my guardian angels through the long year it took me to finish his memoirs. I am grateful to all of them. Without question, my deepest love and thanks go to Thomas Rex Ingram. His unwavering love, support, and belief in me enabled this book to be written. My father said Rex would have made a hell of a fighter pilot. He was right.
Offers of assistance and guidance came from dozens of people as I wove my way through the chronological events of Robin’s incredible life. Right from the start, I knew I’d need expert help and was lucky beyond belief to find Ed Rasimus. Ed patiently kept me in formation and on target. Mission accomplished. For stories of Robin’s childhood through West Point, Uncle Fred Olds, Margaret McNeil, and my dad’s lifelong best friend, Benjamin B. Cassiday, provided invaluable insight. Woody Woodward introduced my father to my mother back in his P-80 days and I’m certain spared me half the stories. My sister Susan helped me reconstruct our lives as air force brats, my daughter Jennifer helped me whip boxes of loose papers into chronological order, Morgan Olds Hundley filled in gaps, Kate Sheldon assisted with transcription, and Candi Garrison held me together on weekly hikes. What a team!
General Bill Kirk was my go-to guy for Wheelus through Vietnam. J. B. Stone, Bob Pardo, Doc Broadway, Ruby Gilmore, Gerald Finton, Dave Waldrop, Joe Kittinger, and many others from 81st TFW, the 8th Tac Fighter Wing, and the River Rats kept me on track through Vietnam. Enduring thanks and admiration to each of them. Air Force Academy stories were contributed by Ed Eberhart, H. Ownby, John Young, Fred Strauss, Mike Dunn, Darrell Whitcomb, and Nino Balducci. May your high jinks remind USAFA cadets that all work and no play do not an air force officer make.
This manuscript would not have been possible without reading through many historic reports, biographies, squadron logs, magazine and newspaper articles, interviews, official reports, books, letters, meeting transcripts, speeches, and tributes to Robin written through the years by the likes of Walter Boyne, Bob Titus, J. B. Stone, Barrett Tillman, Scrappy Johnson, Lars Anderson, Ted Sturm, Mark Berent, Ralph Wetterhahn, Bob Ettinger, Ron Catton, Mike Faber, Lou Drendel, and so many, many more. What an education I’ve had. Special thanks go to History Channel producer Cynthia Harrison for capturing Robin’s antics just in time, to General Bob “Earthquake” Titus for proofing and commenting along the way, and to the able staff of St. Martin’s Press, especially Marc Resnick, for bringing my father’s story back where he wanted it—with his fellow fighter pilots.
To my “brothers” Tom and Joe Abbott, Fred and Candi Garrison, Mike and Linda Curzon, I. J. and Carol Fisher, Jack and Anita McEncroe, Ron and Alice Lewis, Jack and Marit Perkins, Verne and Nancy Lundquist, Ron “Sluggo” Torgler, and the whole Aspenosium gang for taking good care of the old man of the mountain, an enormous THANK YOU. And to Tony “E. T.” Murphy for pulling off the greatest missing-man formation anyone has ever seen, deepest thanks for taking Robin back up into the wild blue.
Lead is gone on the wings of love.
Christina Olds
December 2008
Preface
There is only one witness to a life. That is the person who lived it. No one else will ever know the totality of that life. A wife may bond completely with her spouse, but she sees only those portions of the man that they’ve shared. A family may think they know their siblings, but the thoughts within are the individual’s alone. Close friends can sit comfortably in silence with each other, but the events past and the experiences outside the friendship can be understood only by the man himself. We show many different faces to the people around us.
Biographers inevitably fail if their objective is to tell the story of the whole man. We are fortunate in this instance because this isn’t a biography. This is the chronicle of a life in the words of the man himself. Many of us knew Robin. Some knew him in childhood, some as classmates, others as military superiors or subordinates, still others as friends. Each saw a facet of the life, but without the writings and insights of Robin himself there would be no picture of the whole man.
I spoke with Robin several years ago, and we discussed his obligation to get his story from his own personal perspective into a book. I asked him if I could help him—edit his story, ghostwrite it if necessary, or simply help him to get it to a publisher. He was getting older and his story couldn’t die with him. His reply to my overture was classic Robin.
“I’ve already written it. It’s taken care of. I’ve done it already.” Somehow I harbored doubts about that. I asked him if I could read it and help him to get it ready for publication. He confirmed my suspicions when he replied that it wasn’t quite ready for that yet. To punctuate the conversation he gave me “the glare,” which told me I’d best tread carefully, friend or not. “Nobody’s going to put words in my mouth, either.”
No doesn’t always mean no, and the story was too important to let languish. Every time I enc
ountered him, I brought up the book again. I spoke with other close friends of his, Bob Titus, Bill Sparks, Les Pritchard, Jack McEncroe, Stan Goldstein, about his memoir. Jack said he had seen parts of it, at least rough notes. He described it as a jumble of bits and pieces, scattered here and there, jotted down over the years. I asked him to prevail upon Robin to get it moving. The whole group agreed with me, but Robin continued to procrastinate. The story went that even Gen. Chuck Horner had come to Steamboat with Tom Clancy to try to convince Robin to let the famed author help him. It never came to pass.
When Robin fell ill it looked as though this book would never happen. During his final months his daughter Christina stayed with him, and he sought her pledge that she would follow through on the project. He left her an extensive collection of writings, photos, documents, and memorabilia to pave the way. He shared days with her telling her tales of his life, and when he left us, we had all that was necessary to bring this book together.
It was my very distinct honor to be able to help with this work. I hope we’ve done the man justice, and I hope that his wisdom and experience can offer us all some insight into how a great man lived a remarkable life.
Ed Rasimus
December 2008
1
Battle
I couldn’t help but feel the excitement. My 479th Fighter Group was the lead, out in front of the two bomber groups and not tied to close escort or stuck at the back of the bomber stream hoping to sweep up the leftovers. Hub Zemke had gotten us where I knew we belonged, at the cutting edge. As a new flight commander, I was ready. I had two kills and wanted more. The weather was good, the sky was clear, we were at altitude and had gone into Zemke’s fan formation, so we had a good chunk of the sky under our control. All we needed now was for Jerry to show up. There was no good reason why he wouldn’t.
Since D-day, we had been taking the war to Hitler. It was payback time for the indiscriminate abuse he had rained on Britain. We were going deeper and deeper into Germany, and it felt good. With Zemke at the helm, the 479th was finally getting on the short list for the good missions from 8th Air Force. Strafing trains and supply convoys was fine. Bombing the occasional bridge or supply area was necessary. But it was air combat that we wanted. Bombers drop bombs. Fighter pilots fight. It was simply the way it was meant to be.
We hadn’t expected any reaction over the North Sea, and we didn’t see much going in over Holland. As the force turned southeastward, I edged Blue Flight out just a bit farther to the left. The flanks were the place to see the enemy first. With the 479th across the front of the bomber groups, and the 434th spread to the left, my flight was the farthest left of the leaders. I’d briefed my guys that we would edge away a bit to give ourselves every chance of first engagement. I looked over my left shoulder for Hollister, my wingman. He was forward of where he usually flew, and that wasn’t a bad thing. He could always fall back during a fight, but it was damned hard to get back forward once you lagged.
It was cold at 28,000 feet, but I could feel my back damp with sweat against my flight jacket. I flexed my hands on the yoke and checked once again that my gun sight was up, my guns were armed, and my belts were tight. I pushed the vent for the puny cockpit heater down toward my knees. I didn’t want a blast of warm air fogging the canopy at the wrong moment in a battle. I scanned the horizon, looking for contrails or telltale dots that simply didn’t belong there. It was quiet. The only aircraft to be seen were the scattered fork-tails ahead of the spears of contrails from the bomber formations.
I checked Hollister again and caught the back of his head as he peered intently to the north. His wing rolled up slightly with the effort of his straining in the cockpit. It was good. He was doing his job. Radio discipline was good so far. Three squadrons on one frequency were never easy to deal with. It only got worse when the enemy showed up. Critical calls were hard to distinguish, call signs went out the window, knowing who was saying what was impossible. Fear, adrenaline, excitement, whatever. So far, so good.
The engines don’t ever purr. They’ve got a rhythm, a beat that signals the minor differences in props and rpm and mixture. When it’s constant and steady, you feel relaxed. When it is loud or too fast or too slow, it jangles the nerves. If it changes suddenly it stabs you instantly into action. It screams that something needs attention right now. The single-engine guys don’t know about that pulse, but in the Lightning, you live with it all of the time. There’s a continual tweaking, fiddling with the throttle quadrant, watching the gauges, adjusting the props to get just the right resonance between the pair. It’s sort of like a team of high-stepping gaited horses staying on the right tempo. My left hand stays near the throttle quadrant, dancing a slow waltz between the power levers while my ears tell me what is getting better or worse. My eyes stay on the horizon.
There’s always something that needs doing. The bomber guys have a committee to tell them what, when, and where. They’ve got manuals and checklists, and a cast of supporting actors to read them aloud and double-check that it all gets tended to. The fighter pilot is driver, navigator, gunner, bombardier, and flight engineer wrapped into one tense, high-strung package. If he’s good, he covers it all. If he isn’t, he misses some things. I’ve been pretty good, so far. I haven’t missed the major things, and the minor ones haven’t killed me. If I’m doing it right, I’ll keep getting better. If I’m not, I won’t be able to worry about it.
The radio crackles. Has someone seen something? There’s no call to follow. Nothing. Just a crackle. I look back to my right and see that we’ve widened out spacing on Zemke’s Bison Squadron. It doesn’t bother me. I want to be out here on the edge of the package. I want to see the enemy first. Is that something? Are those aircraft out there coming from the east? I raise my goggles and check the canopy for smudges. One, two, four—there are more!
A dozen things happen at once. I push the props and mixture forward. The engines surge. I pull the yoke and roll left, climbing over Hollister’s position. The radio starts to speak and the first word I hear is “Blue…” I know it’s one of my guys and I know what he’s going to say. These are my bogeys on our side of the formation, and I don’t want to share. I mash on the TRANSMIT button, and the squeal of the two transmissions covers the rest. Hollister is inside my turn and drops below me. The rest of the group are now alerted, and they want to know what’s going on.
We’re closing fast, and I radio to Bison Lead that we’ve got a formation at our eleven o’clock and we’re checking them. It’s more than a formation! It’s a damned armada. I’ve got forty, maybe fifty Me-109s and Focke-Wulf 190s ahead of us. As we get closer, the number keeps growing. The whole damned Luftwaffe is in front of me!
The guns, the sight, the engines, the radios, the flight … where’s my flight? There’s Hollister. I knew he’d hang on. Where’s the element? Where’s the damned element? They’ve lost us. Fuel! I’ve still got the drop tanks. I check that Hollister is clear and jettison the tanks. There’s a pair of trailing Messerschmitts ahead. They haven’t seen us. I’ll have the first one before he knows we’re here. Is this as good as life gets? I’ve got more than fifty enemy aircraft in front of me, and my wingman and I are the only ones here! I sure feel sorry for those bastards.
The sight reticle is full of gray-green aircraft. My finger wraps around the firing toggle. My right engine coughs, sputters, and quits. A split second and forty heartbeats—then the second one follows suit. Both engines are dead … silence … awww, shit!
2
My Early Years
My first memories are of sounds: the clang of a halyard on a flagpole, Liberty engines warming up on the flight line before dawn, my father singing with his Air Corps friends in the living room below. By the time I was five, I could name an airplane by the sound of its engine on takeoff or landing. My father sat with me on the front steps of our house at Langley Field, made me close my eyes and name them one by one. P-1s, P-5s, DH-4s, old Keystone bombers, P-6s through P-36s, all seared sounds of
aviation into my heart.
At night I hid in my pajamas at the top of the stairs listening to laughter, tales of flying, and songs with incomprehensible words and unforgettable melodies floating up from the living room. I sat for hours on Saturday mornings watching P-12s in a Lufbery over the field pull up into a loop, then dive back through the circle again. My father brought glasses of lemonade and we watched together. He and his pursuit pilot buddies were gods to me, men of steel in planes of wood and cloth. I had to be a fighter pilot.
I was born in Honolulu at Luke Field Hospital on July 14, 1922, to Army Air Corps Captain Robert Olds and Eloise Wichman Olds. My mother came from a line of Hawaii landowners, my father from Virginians traced back to the Revolution, including Regiment Captain Return Jonathan Meigs, George Washington’s aide-de-camp. Dad had been a pursuit pilot during the war in France before his assignment to Hawaii. When we returned to Washington he became aide to General Billy Mitchell, then moved to Langley, first as student, then as instructor and director of the Air Corps Tactical School.
When I was four, my mother died. I remember asking my father if she was in heaven with all the airplanes. He said yes. My father married again briefly after Mom’s death, divorced, then gave us two baby brothers, Fred and Sterling, when he married Helen Sterling in 1933. I grew up surrounded by an extended family of loving adults in comfortable surroundings in Virginia.
There was always my father. He was a tough disciplinarian, a tender caretaker, an unquestioned leader, and a laughter-filled friend. People gravitated to him. My days were shaped by his intense energy and eagerness. He taught me to be tough yet a gentleman. Manners and courtesy were paramount. He took me for my first flight in an open-cockpit plane when I was eight.
The pulp-fiction heroes of G-8 and His Battle Aces were also the real men that moved through my daily life. My father’s Air Corps buddies were famed pilots of the Great War. They were often joined by other aviation leaders of that period: Hap Arnold, Tooey Spaatz, Ira Eaker, Fiorello La Guardia, Harold George, Frank Andrews, Bob Williams, Ernst Udet, Roscoe Turner, Edward Mannock, Elliott White Springs, Jimmy Mattern, Beirne Lay, and more. All gathered in our home. I got to meet Eddie Rickenbacker but was too awed to say anything. The gatherings started with tales of flying and progressed to passionate discussions of current events and dreams for the future. They invariably ended in song, led by my father at the piano and Tooey Spaatz on guitar. The brotherhood of pilots impressed me as much as the thrill of flying itself.
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