As soon as RTU had scared him to death, the Air Force shipped Lieutenant Sommers to his base of assignment. He was there for just long enough to set his bags down. He was thrown on the next available cattle car, a charter airliner, headed for Guam.
The air carrier deposited the young man at the base, a taxi took him to the squadron, and the operations officer informed him that he was happy to have him aboard and that he was late already.
Usually, even in times of war, the squadron was able to give a new man, especially one as new as Justin, time to settle in. But the war, and especially Andersen’s part of the war, had suddenly intensified. Every man was needed yesterday.
The major apologized but directed Lieutenant Sommers to grab his flying gear and meet a bus in front of the squadron. His dollar ride was going to be a doozy!
The bus took the dazed lieutenant to the flight line. He was amazed by the activity. Everywhere were trucks, buses, cars, bomb wagons. In the midst of it all, B-52s were taxiing, taking off, and landing. He drove past row after row of bombers. They were separated from each other by three-sided boxes made of steel and filled with dirt. They were called revetments and had a very special purpose. The military found out on December 7, 1941, that parking aircraft close together was not a great idea. The Japanese learned, to their delight, that they didn’t have to hit every aircraft on the ground. Just hitting one on either end of a line led to a very deadly chain reaction. The explosion of one plane caused the explosion of the next, and that caused the next to go up, and so on right down the line. Revetments were invented to stop the possible chain reaction. At first glance it would seem that the steel-reinforced bunkers were meant to prevent damage. The actual purpose was not to protect aircraft and crew but to contain the damage to a single aircraft.
The bus drove down the taxiway separating the two long runways. The driver glanced at a sheet of paper and pulled to a stop in front of a B-52 levered into one of the revetments.
“Here you are, L.T., Charlie Fifty-four.”
The driver indicated the number on the revetment. The lieutenant stepped off the bus and was immediately accosted by a captain in a flying suit.
“Hi, I’m Chip Barnes. You must be Sommers. You’re late. We have to mount up right now and get started. I’ll be your instructor. Denney Hodges is the radar and he’s got all the mission paperwork with him. Jump on up and I’ll throw your gear in. We got to get buttoned up right now.”
Justin just gaped wide-eyed at the verbal barrage from the captain. He was barely able to nod at what he thought must be the appropriate places. Before he knew it he was in the nav station ejection seat and strapping in for a flight. His first mission with a real crew was going to be a real honest-to-goodness war mission. No time to learn.
A few minutes later the big bomber lumbered out of the revetment and headed for the runway. On the way out they passed the bus that had brought Justin to his plane. The driver waved out the window, but the bomber proceeded without notice. The driver shrugged and headed for the next pickup.
Well, I tried, thought the driver. Maybe the kid won’t need his helmet this time.
In the haste to get Justin aboard, a very important piece of his personal safety gear had been forgotten. A crew flight helmet is never referred to as a crash helmet, but every flyer knows what it’s there for.
In SAC the worst thing for a navigator is to be behind the airplane. In school they told him, “you’ve got to stay ahead of the aircraft. You’ve got to anticipate, plan ahead, always stay one step in front.”
Here, now, on a real flight, in a real war, Justin felt like he was so far behind that he was probably still back in the parking stub. He sweated in the cellar of the big, black bomber. Paper flew and pencils broke. He and the senior nav, the radar navigator in the seat next to him, strived to keep the big bomber on course in spite of capricious winds and last-minute changes. Justin wrestled with the time control. Everything had to be controlled to the second or they wouldn’t have to worry about enemy gunners. They would run into a friendly who was on time and end up in a monumental aluminum shower.
They were in-country and on the bomb run before Justin had time to breathe. His instructor had given quiet instructions and whispered words of encouragement up to this point. Now he was strapped into his seat as the hostile threats made flying more and more dangerous.
The B-52 is one of the few two-storied airplanes in the Air Force. The pilot, copilot, and electronic warfare officer were on the top story, striving to dodge the antiaircraft fire and flaming SAMs or surface-to-air missiles.
Down below, in a windowless room illuminated only by the orange glow of the radar, the nav team prepared to deliver the bomb load. Justin glanced at the radar nav. The RN was an old head, used to the stress of battle. He was refining his aiming and quietly readying the equipment that would deliver over fifty tons of high explosive on the target. The gunner, in his private cockpit in the tail of the aircraft, was calling out SAMs being launched. His voice did not betray the anxiety he must be feeling.
They reached the initial point. Now all the energy of the crew would be directed to putting the bombs on the target. The RN assumed control of the aircraft. Every move of his tracking handle moved the giant bomber closer to the target. Justin counted down the seconds. “Five, four, three, two, one, hack.” The bomb lights flashed, the aircraft jumped slightly and its weight suddenly decreased.
“Two’s clean, breaking away,” said the copilot over the radio.
The mighty bomber executed a sweeping turn to the left, away from the target and the enemy.
“Watch it, Two. You got a SAM coming up at you.” The call from the number three aircraft in the cell alerted the pilot. He racked the control column to the left, increasing the bank at the same time he hit the throttles. The missile streaked toward the escaping aircraft.
Down below, the nav team was thrown about by the tight bank. The RN watched his pointed dividers float into the air. He grabbed at them and leaned way over to follow them as they headed for the floor. Justin turned to watch him try to retrieve his tools.
The SAM didn’t hit the aircraft. It missed. But even its miss was terrible. The enemy soldier had guessed at the altitude of the bomber and set a proximity fuse. His guess was nearly perfect. The weapon detonated very close to the nose of the aircraft on the left side of the fuselage.
The RN was leaning over, trying to catch his dividers. The explosion took out his panels where just a few minutes ago he had put in the settings for the bombs. He missed the wave of concussion and the flying pieces of his instruments. He was untouched. Justin wasn’t so lucky. He barely had time to see the metal panels flying toward him like lawn mower blades.
The instructor watched in horror from the IN seat. Maybe if Justin had been wearing his helmet, he might have been saved. Maybe it wouldn’t have made much difference. The exploding panels ended Justin Sommers’ short career as a B-52 navigator. The young warrior was decapitated neatly by the panels he had spent the last year learning to use.
But that’s not the end of our story. It’s only the beginning.
The war in Vietnam and the war activity on Guam didn’t slow down. They intensified. But as the activity reached a fever pitch, another activity intensified also. Its effects were slow to advance but relentless.
A load crew arrived at Charlie Fifty-four in the predawn hours of a Sunday not many days after the ill-fated flight of Justin Sommers.
As the crew prepared the bombs for loading the load chief looked around for the ground crew chief. The young airman should have met them at the plane, but he was nowhere to be found. They finally found him huddled in the corner of the adjacent revetment. He was shivering and holding his arms tightly to his body as if the weather had suddenly taken a turn toward winter. But winter in Guam rarely got below seventy-five degrees and this was the middle of summer.
The load chief was finally able to pry some words of explanation out of the young airman. But what he heard left hi
m more confused than ever.
The airman had been dropped off at the aircraft around midnight to start preflight alone. When he jumped off the bus he noticed a helmet bag near the power cart and had assumed that someone had forgotten it. He picked it up, felt the familiar shape of a helmet inside, and climbed up in the airplane to leave it on board. The inside of the bomber was dark except for the light from outside that shined up the hatch.
The airman was startled to see the shape of a crew member sitting in the navigator’s seat. The officer was in shadow but it looked like he was doing some paperwork. He was doing paperwork in almost total darkness. The airman just stood on the hatch steps in confusion, trying to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The shape turned toward him and reached for the helmet in his hand. As it moved into the dim light from the hatch the airman was horrified to see that the body ended above the shoulders. He could clearly see the lieutenant’s bars on the flight suit, but there was no head!
The airman dropped the bag and fled from the aircraft. He had been huddled in the corner of the neighboring revetment for hours.
The airman was carted off to the hospital. He was listed as a case of battle fatigue. The long hours had just gotten the better of him. He rotated back to the States early. The load crew found no helmet bag anywhere around the aircraft. And they certainly found no headless lieutenant.
The next incident at Charlie Fifty-four took place after a flight. The B-52 had landed with a hung weapon in the bomb bay. A load team was called to safely remove the weapon. The crew was just departing the area as the team arrived. The chief sent one of his men to open the big bomb bay doors with the cables in the aft wheel well. As they swung open, he lit his flashlight and ducked under the doors to inspect the bomb.
He walked to the back of the bomb bay and lifted his flash to look at the weapon. His light stopped, though, on an object hanging from the catwalk above the bomb bay. As he moved closer for a better look he realized it was a booted foot. He raised the light to find a leg then a torso in a flight suit. He stood with his mouth open in confusion. Suddenly the figure leaned into the light. The head was missing.
The crew chief dropped his light and ran. He forgot that he was under a bomber. He tripped on an object on the ground. He just had time to see what he had tripped on before his head connected with the bomb bay door. It was a helmet, in a helmet bag.
The unconscious crew chief was taken to the hospital. His injuries were judged minor until he came around and started to babble about the headless lieutenant. The doctors decided to reconsider the seriousness of his injury.
In the meantime the stories about the haunted revetment started to gain ground. After a while the rumored occurrences got to be so numerous that no one wanted to work there. Even air crews were starting to refuse to park there. It came to a head when a load crew pulled up to a bomber with a load of Mark 82 five-hundred-pound bombs to load. As the truck slowed to halt the bomb doors suddenly slammed shut.
The crew didn’t even stop the truck. They just returned to the hangar and refused to go near the aircraft until it was moved from Charlie Fifty-four. No other crew could be found who would take the job, either.
It is the position of the Air Force that things such as ghosts and goblins do not exist. They have no basis in fact and are, therefore, not officially recognized. It is also a fact that from that day on, even with the ramp as crowded as it was, the Air Force never again used Charlie Fifty-four as a parking space for a B-52.
After that the stories of the headless lieutenant quieted down, at least in number. But the revetment continued to cause troubles. Numerous times a helmet bag was noticed sitting in the empty parking space. No one ever went to retrieve it, though. And many supervisors of flying were sent out to turn off the lights in the revetment. No one had turned them on but they were burning brightly. And usually the officer would drive all the way to the back wall, turn off the switch, and then see the lights come on by themselves as he drove away.
Whatever the truth of the matter is, the Air Force still does not believe in ghosts. But it doesn’t believe in a revetment called Charlie Fifty-four anymore either.
THE SIMULATED SPIRIT
A simulator is a great place to learn about flying and about the intricacies of modern aircraft. After twenty years of flying on B-52s, I actually learned more about the old “Buff” by teaching in the simulator. But I never in my wildest imaginings dreamed that I’d learn something about the supernatural from this electronic marvel.
Some environments are the exact opposite of what is usually required for a haunting. They are too modern, too sterile, too new, for any self-respecting spirit to call home. Scientific and technical, they appear to be almost ghost-proof.
That is certainly the case with the Weapons System Trainer at Minot Air Force Base. It is a marvelously conceived flight simulator for the training of B-52H crew members. Modern and advanced, it is the total antithesis of anything supernatural.
Many years ago the Air Force learned the value of demonstration in instruction. It’s much easier to get a lesson across by showing than by telling. It was a lesson that applied especially to aviation. Showing was the best way to teach fledgling pilots. But it was very costly and often impractical to try to demonstrate everything in an aircraft. There just weren’t enough air frames or instructor pilots available.
To save money, and time, they came up with the idea of flight simulators. They could be flown and crashed without too great a cost in machines and lives. The first machines were rudimentary, but as the technology of flight improved the simulators improved accordingly.
The WST was a sterling example of the advances of modern technology. Over two hundred software engineers had labored for years to write the reams of code necessary to give birth to the machine. The tasks of the simulator were so involved that fourteen mainframe computers labored in perfect unison to make it operate. Eleven monster disk drives fed the computer the code that took the place of jet fuel in the aircraft being simulated. More than two gigabytes of available memory were necessary to make the imitation of flight seem real. Designers had pored over maps and charts and satellite photos, reducing mountains and fields and streams and forests to ones and zeros arranged in particular computer language. When fed to the computers these ones and zeros were translated into a remarkably accurate picture of the land that the simulator flew over.
Every system of the gigantic bomber was duplicated in the simulator. It had to be accurate; it had to feel right.
Perched on six hydraulically driven legs, the flight station looked like a cross between a robot and a huge metal spider. The legs were articulated to allow for every twist and turn that the aircraft would make as it winged its way through the simulated sky. Immense pressure lines fed hydraulic blood to the beast. Computer-driven actuators snapped the station left and right, up and down in a frenzied mating dance that looked uncoordinated and strange to the outside observer.
But step inside the flight station and you have stepped onto the flight deck of the Boeing B-52H Super Strato-fortress. All those computers and all those disks and all that hydraulic fluid and all that power combine to make the illusion real. Sit in the ejection seat confronted by the rows and rows of glowing, moving, accurate dials and gauges. Look at the switches and knobs that you know must control the craft Strap into the pilot’s position and run the multiple throttle levers slightly forward to give more fuel to the eight powerful engines and hear them roar their hunger. The huge metal boxes that rested so awkwardly on the forehead of the mechanical arachnid now provide a panoramic view out the cockpit windows of the earth rushing by hundreds of feet below the racing bomber. Move the column to the side and feel the airplane bank and your world tilt into the turn. The mirage is truly miraculous.
The building that houses the WST is as complete and modern as the facility it was built to house. The bay where the flight station weaves and lurches and finally squats at rest on its silver legs is pristine. The walls shine with fresh e
arth tone paint and glow in the shadow-killing glare of halogen arc lights set into the three-story-high ceiling. Even the floors shine in their cleanliness. The miles of cable are hidden in tastefully appointed under-floor cable runs or wrapped neatly in bundles that attach like an umbilical cord to the belly of the monster.
The control facility, full of computer keyboards, oversize glowing display terminals, and silently professional technicians, is as subdued as the flight station bay is bright. It looks like the launching room of a space facility.
Even the offices of the technicians behind the control room are antiseptic and color coordinated.
The technicians who service this modern marvel expect things to go as planned. That doesn’t mean that everything will work all the time. They expect things to weaken, circuits to short, diodes to die, chips to flare, and binary coupling to come uncoupled. And they expect this to take place according to the mean-time-between-failure charts and graphs generated by other computers that understand these computers. They expect to be able to fix these failures with the parts ordered and maintained by still other computers.
Late in the night, when the last bomb run has been completed and the last missile has been launched and the last fighter has been avoided; when the last emergency has been solved and the last landing accomplished in spite of grievous battle damage and the last crew member has gone home, the technicians run their diagnostic programs and hunt for the expected problems. All the intelligence and scientific thought that went into this machine gives them the right to expect these things.
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