Sky Spy, Memoirs of a U-2 Pilot

by Jim Carter

  Back in India, when the discussion turned to Thai women and the possibility of picking up some killer STD strain, there was something to think about. Of course, Irv was a bareback guy (no condom). Shaky made a strong case for safety. He even had pictures from medical journals to prove his point. He had my attention.

  We flew into U-Tapao, Thailand on a Thursday afternoon and were not scheduled to leave until Sunday morning. The airplanes were in rough shape after six weeks in India. These two days would give the mechanics enough time to prep the planes for the rest of the journey.

  The Pattaya Beach area, northwest of the U-Tapao Air Base, was a famous R&R spot for US airmen and that’s where we went. The main drag reminded me of a combination of two party places I had been: Bourbon Street in New Orleans and The Strip in Las Vegas. An endless throng of people moving down the street lined on both sides with bars, massage parlors, eateries and brothels. Everything was ablaze with neon lights. Party girls handed out flyers advertising everything from “special” massage to .59-cent beer. Through it all, the faint odor of urine and vomit made this fantasyland all too real.

  It seemed like a paradise for the lonely, overworked crewmember. We rolled into Pattiya Beach like Patton’s army. It was a true adult’s Disneyland but instead of riding Space Mountain we toured Yun’s Steam and Cream.

  Irv led the charge. To say he went berserk was putting it mildly. His problem was there were too many girls to choose from and most of them were gorgeous, and available. Irv’s philosophy was to ask every girl he met to fuck. And I’m not sugarcoating his phrasing. That’s what he said: “Hey Honey, wanna fuck?” Of course, using that line on a street full of brothels will get you the right answer every time. Irv would stop at a likely candidate, negotiate a price and get ready to go but then he’d see one across the street who looked better so he’d break from one and sprint to the other. This happened five or six times before he finally committed to one, and off he went. I didn’t see him again until the next morning. The rest of us moved from bar to bar trying to maximize our fun before we had to move on.

  Waking up the next morning at the BOQ was a truly awful experience. We had spent the night bar hopping and howling at the moon (at least I think that’s what I was howling at). We climbed into our beds just before dawn and, mercifully, had no real duties the next day. Somehow we overcame our massive hangovers and started to feel human again by the end of the day. Ah Youth! If I tried something like that today, they’d be hanging a toe tag on me.

  Yakota Air Base, Japan, located about 50 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, was the next stop on our journey home. This was an important stop to all of us, especially the young guys. Our older crewmembers had been all over the world and they already had real stereo equipment. We, on the other hand, hadn’t been anywhere and had none. This was soon to change.

  Japan was the stereo equipment capital of the world and we landed right in the middle of it. The Base Exchange (BX) stocked every major manufacturer’s line of stereo equipment and we got a military discount. I was in heaven. I’d been dreaming of getting a real stereo ever since I left college. I dreamed about stereos like Ralphie dreamed of BB guns. Most of my Instructors in pilot training were Southeast Asia vets and came home from their tours with top of the line stereos. So I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to buy. We certainly hadn’t spent any of our paychecks in India so we were ready to buy. I wound up with two sets of speakers (one big, one small); a turntable, a receiver, and a reel-to-reel tape deck, all for $500.

  We were able to spend an extra day at Yakota and that was a good thing because we were able to find places to store the stereo equipment along with the cases of wine, guitars, sitars, globe bars, and room screens. The cargo holds of the airplanes now resembled an international furniture bazaar. Since we had three aircraft and six crews, the non-flying crew was stuck in the back with the furniture. The C-130 had webbed seating, which was snapped into position along both sides of the fuselage. The webbed seating was tolerable for a while but soon became uncomfortable. The trick was to claim a nice, flat equipment pallet and layer it with as many blankets as you could find. With all the stuff we were carrying home, space was tight.

  Our loadmasters did a great job finding places for all of our treasures. In addition to our personal items, we carried extra tires, engine parts, cases of hydraulic fluid and oil. We carried all the hard to find equipment for a remote operation like Operation Bonny Jack.

  When it came time to leave Yakota and make the jump across the Pacific to Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, our airplanes were maxed out. We took as much fuel as we could carry for the long journey across. The flight to Elmendorf was long, boring, and blessedly uneventful. Looking back after 45 years as a pilot, those were my favorite flights, the boring ones.

  The best thing about Elmendorf was the bed. We were all so wrung out from the trip; it was heaven just to shower and sleep, and to be back in the USA.

  A long flight from Elmendorf to Pope awaited, but at this point we didn’t care. We knew we were going home. When we arrived at Pope, the welcome was overwhelming. The whole base turned out. The band played as our aircraft rolled to a stop in front of the bleachers where our families awaited. We had been gone for seven weeks but it had gone by in a flash.

  Now we had time to catch up with our families for the next few months. My daughter, Krista, had just celebrated her first birthday in June and the two-month separation brought about some big changes in her appearance. She started walking at 10 months and by the time I returned from India, she was zipping all over the place. With no regrets we said goodbye to Fort Bragg housing. We moved out of Fort Bragg housing and found a nice rental house in Spring Lake, a section of Fayetteville. Everyone was still paranoid about the band of crazed, hippie killers still on the loose waiting to strike at any time. Leaving Fort Bragg was not an option, we had to go.

  Chapter 7

  Another deployment loomed on the horizon. The C-130 community, like most military units, was gone from home frequently. Our “temporary duties” (TDYs) averaged three per year, with each trip lasting about six to eight weeks. This was hard on family life but we all knew what we were in for when we picked this line of work. We were all willing to do our duty. But that didn’t take the sting out of the separations.

  The next deployment took the whole squadron to England. Since the end of World War II, the United States has maintained several military bases throughout Europe. Many of these bases housed permanently based Fighter or Reconnaissance units. These units were kept in place to keep our former allies, the communists, from breaching post-war agreements. What the US didn’t have permanently in place was airlift capability. All these bases needed resupply and airlift and this was accomplished by regularly rotating the stateside C-130 outfits through Europe. Our turn to go was November of 1971.

  There were two rotation bases for the C-130: Mildenhall Air Base in Bury Saint Edmonds, England, and Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany. The preparation for a rotation starts at least a month prior to departure. For the aircrews all training requirements had to be up to date prior to leaving. Tests had to be taken, check rides flown, passports updated, shot records checked. All legal matters had to be finalized before leaving the US. The families would be on their own for the next two months and they had a network of mutual support to fill the gap during our trip. The maintenance troops had a full schedule of inspections and tests to perform prior to departure also. The more preventative maintenance done now, the more reliably the aircraft would perform overseas. Some of the remote locations we flew into were not places you’d want to experience a breakdown. So the theory was that an ounce of prevention would keep our asses out of trouble later.

  We sat through seemingly endless briefings on the European airspace system and its unique rules. Some of the European regulations were similar to the US but there were some important differences and we had to abide by their rules, no excuses accepted. Country borders had to be respected and navigating from one coun
try to another had to be precise.

  English is the universal language of aviation, and all controllers, regardless of country, were required to speak in English. That didn’t mean we understood them all the time. The controllers would switch back and forth from English to their native tongue depending on which aircraft they were talking to. Flying into Madrid, Spain for example, the controller would speak to us in English and then rapid fire some instructions to an Iberian airliner in Spanish. Sometimes when this happened, pilots would look at each other quizzically and say, “Was that for us?” The theory was, if it was important enough — and it was for ushe would call back.

  European countries are very particular about their borders. Transiting their airspace had to be done according to precise navigation and heaven help those who violated them. France, for example, wouldn’t let us fly over their airspace most of the time. Looking at a map of Europe, you could see how this could make navigating from say, the UK to Spain, or Denmark to Portugal, difficult. Another major European hot spot was Berlin. Before the Wall fell, navigating in and out of Berlin had to be done along three tight corridors. Straying out of these corridors meant risking a shoot down from a Russian fighter.

  We were very much aware of our individual responsibility for following our flight plan and keeping on track. The consequences could be severe. If, for example, our aircraft strayed off course and the controller wrote up a violation, it could have international complications. Countries could ban all military aircraft from their airspace for something we had done. When this type of incident happened, it usually required the head of USAFE (US Air Forces Europe), or even the State Department, to get involved in order to get our clearance reinstated.

  Naturally, all this shit ran downhill until it reached the squadron commander who padded this giant, rolling ball and pushed it down the hill on top of the offending crew, squashing them like bugs. The offending crew could face anything from a nuclear ass chewing to being grounded.

  The deadline for our departure to Mildenhall was fast approaching. Doreen and Krista were going to spend a month at her Mom’s in Philadelphia. Once they were safely in place there, I was ready to go.

  Our proposed route was now familiar to me. The first stop was Lajes, Azores. I even knew what kind of wine to buy this time. Prior to leaving Pope, Irv had been briefed on his behavior by the Squadron Commander, Lt Col Shumer. Irv was extremely well behaved for our overnight in Lajes. I personally thought that he was saving all his energy for England. Time would prove me correct.

  Mildenhall was a great base. It was small but all the essentials were there. Our home for the next two months was the Bachelor Officer Quarters (BOQ). These rooms were recently refurbished and we each had our own room with a nice bed, small refrigerator, private shower and plenty of storage (just in case we picked up some souvenirs). Right down the street was the Officers Club, our hangout location after every mission. The street in front of our BOQ ran to the front gate, and once through that, England awaited us.

  Adjusting to Europe took a bit of time for me. Everything in the US was so large, roomy and pretty new. In England, all was shrunken down. Their houses were tiny, the streets narrow, the cars small and they drove on the wrong side of the road.

  Since these C-130 rotations were ongoing, there were a dozen or so cars that were sold by the current squadron to the newcomers. None of these “Rote” cars would be found on the showroom floor. They all ran and were mostly reliable but all had issues.

  My buds and I were going for style points so we opted for the big Jaguar. This car looked good but that was all. It had an on-going fuel leak that simply would not stay plugged and the fact that the gas gauge was not reliable meant even a normal journey became exciting. Toss a few beers into the mix, a steering wheel on the right, driving on the left while navigating a roundabout in the rain at night; well, you get the picture. It was an adventure.

  And then there was the Lucas electrical system. Anyone who has ever owned an older English car: MG, TR-6, Jaguar, knows what I mean. Lucas, an English company, made the wiring on these cars. Their product was totally unreliable. You’d be riding down a country lane at night and hit a bump and all your lights would go out, both headlights and interior. Hit another bump and the headlights came back on. Another bump and now the interior lights worked. And so it went. Needless to say we all carried flashlights and kept spare ones in the car, along with the spare gas can.

  The area around the base was a treasure trove for a history buff like myself. I spent many hours in the town of Ely where there is a magnificent cathedral built by the Benedictine community in 970 A.D. The original founder of Ely cathedral was St. Etheldreda who had quite an unusual marital arrangement. She married at an early age to Tondberht, but she remained a virgin. When her very understanding husband died, she retired to the Isle of Ely, her dowry. In 660, for political reasons, she married Egfrith, the young king of Northumbria who was then only 15 years old. He too, surprisingly agreed that she remain a virgin. Twelve years later, however, Egfrith figured he had waited long enough and demanded his marital rights. The queen refused, so Egfrith offered bribes, to no avail. The queen left him and became a nun. She might have thought about this 15 years earlier and saved this guy a lot of sleepless nights — just sayin’. She founded a monastery in Ely in 673 that became the basis for the Benedictine community.

  All the churches in the area, especially Ely Cathedral, had beautiful brass plaques fashioned by medieval craftsmen. We used these plaques to make brass rubbings. One made a rubbing by laying a sheet of paper over the brass and rubbing the paper with various colored crayons. The image produced, if properly done, could be mounted and framed. By the mid 1970s the authorities decided that you could no longer rub the original brasses since careless tourists were wearing them away. Luckily, I got to do a couple of originals before the crackdown.

  We flew on a regular basis and none of it was boring for me because it was all new. One trip that appeared regularly on the schedule was called a “Turkey Trot.” The US Air Force and Army had several operational bases in Turkey. This changed with the Turkey-Cypriot War in 1974. When this war broke out all but two bases, Incirlik and Izmir, were dramatically reduced. These outlying bases still had a small American presence and regularly needed resupply. A regular Turkey Trot had us hauling a load of engine parts or construction equipment non-stop from Mildenhall to Incirlik Air Base, near Adana, in southern Turkey.

  The aircraft would be unloaded and we proceeded to our respective Q’s and spent the night. The next two days were spent resupplying some of the smaller, remote stations like Diyarbakir, Mardin, Elazig, and Batman. When I saw that Batman Turkey was one of our destinations I was more than a little curious. Were these Turks really big fans of the American comic book hero or was something else going on here? A little research revealed that Batman was originally a unit of mass in the old Ottoman Empire and that’s where the town got its name. But even with this new knowledge, I thought it would be cool to say I lived in Batman, Turkey.

  Flying into these places was never a problem as long as the weather was good. When low ceilings or dust storms rolled in, getting on the ground was not a sure thing. While our aircraft had all of the modern instrumentation required to land in the weather, the ground facilities didn’t always work like they were supposed to work. Flying into Diyarbakir one dark and stormy night, we set ourselves up for an Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach. The ILS is a very precise system giving both azimuth and glide slope information bringing you right to the end of the runway. When flown as published, you would break out of the weather, see the runway, and be able to land safely. On one particular night, the weather was not cooperating. Low ceilings, with heavy rain amid thunderstorms covered the entire terminal area. Pilots don’t intentionally fly into thunderstorms; we go around them. The C-130 had a decent radar so we had a good picture of the heavy weather. We saw that we would be able to fly an approach to the landing runway and keep clear of the weather. However
, we wouldn’t see the runway until we got below 400 feet. Most ILS approaches have descent minimums of 200 feet and half-mile visibility. If the ceiling is less than 200 feet or the visibility is less than half a mile, you couldn’t legally fly the approach. Your options in such a situation would be to enter a holding pattern somewhere until the weather got better or divert somewhere with better weather. Under the circumstances we had 200 feet to play with.

  We set up our approach, tuned and identified the ILS frequency. Each ILS has its own unique frequency and Morse code identifier. We turned the airplane onto final approach and waited for the glideslope to start down. As we started down the glideslope all looked good. We had only come down the glideslope about 300 feet when both needles, azimuth and glideslope, went to full-scale deflection. This dictated we do an immediate go-around, which we did. We then tried to set up for another approach. But now, even the ILS Morse code identifier was not working. The weather was not improving so we had no choice but to head back to Incirlik. We let the air traffic controllers know we had lost the ILS signal and they promised to look into it. The next morning, under sunny skies, we went back to Diyarbakir and made an uneventful landing. We found out from the Operations Officer that a goat had disabled the ILS. Tracing the power lines to the ILS transmitter, they found the main power cable had been chewed through, so much for modern technology.

  When we returned to Incirlik that afternoon, we were surprised to learn that we had been kicked out of our BOQs and would have to spend the night at a hotel in the nearby town of Adana. A group of USAFE VIPs was touring the area and had priority for our BOQ rooms. I was not thrilled with this news. Incirlik was not on our list of favorite bases but it was better than Adana. In fact, Adana was what we in the Air Force refer to as a “shithole.”