A captain from the alert hanger chewed on us for taking their fuel truck. While he chewed on me, I continued to fuel up the U-2. He demanded my name, rank and serial number; I responded courteously and professionally. Of course, I knew I wouldn't be around long enough for him to do anything beyond his chewing. One hour later we were airborne with no plans to return to the Philippine Islands. In the haste to depart, two or three of our crew members were left behind in the Philippines, but they were recovered on a later flight. Once airborne, we were given orders to go to Guam.
The KC-135 with all our equipment and gear then went to Guam. I rode in the boom operator's area and observed the flight over the ocean. Prior to landing on Guam, the pilot had to dump thousands of gallons of fuel out over the ocean in order to get to landing weight. We stayed there three weeks. One evening at midnight we got the word to load up and we departed the next morning, destination unknown to us. Colonel DesPortes, the 4080th SRW commander, was along on the flight and he made a big deal of opening the envelope that contained our orders. He announced we were going to Vietnam. Most of us had never heard of the country. By the time we arrived at Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam, I had been up for a full 24 hours without sleep.
I vividly remember the day we landed at Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam on March 5, 1964, my 29th birthday. I had always heard about the “outback” and I thought this was it. The support team normally landed ahead of the U-2s and would be issued a truck for Mobile Control; however, this “Follow Me” truck driver refused to give us his vehicle. So we explained to him what he would have to do. Because of the U-2’s bicycle gear configuration, the pilot holds a level position until the aircraft comes to a stop and one wing gently falls to the runway. We told the driver that the crew then goes to the high wing first to pull it down and insert the pogos. The first U-2 came in and the pilot dragged the wing the normal distance. Before we knew what he was doing, the “Follow Me” truck driver jumped out of the truck and raced toward the aircraft and grabbed under the skid to keep the wing up. Poor fellow, he absolutely fried his hand and to make matters much worse, there was tar embedded in the wound. I really felt sorry for the fellow but he just didn't listen to us.
James ‘Soup’ Campbell with ‘his’ U-2, static display at LAFB, 1990.
We got the bird parked and we were soon in for another surprise. Here came a bunch of Vietnamese GI's holding hands! Now that was sure different for us to see. We learned it was a custom of their culture. Then they tried to climb all over the aircraft, but we quickly stopped that.
After getting the planes bedded down, we got on the bus to go up to the Compound. On the way, we passed a little building which must have been a civilian house; a young woman, probably a teenager, came out, squatted down and peed right there with not the slightest bit of modesty as our bus passed in clear view. Being young and slightly immature, all the guys rushed to that side of the bus; I thought for sure that bus was going to turn over.
We finally got to the Compound and we were told to walk around the hut until we found an empty bed. I found one, but not in the same hut with the other guys from the 4080th. The next day we scouted around until we found an empty hut, put some beds in and proclaimed it ours. In the hut next to ours were some Vietnamese Army guys. They were sleeping two or three in a single bed; now that really was a bit too crowded. There was nothing in our hut to use for storage so a couple of us went in search of a locker. We walked through the rows of huts and came upon the transient officers’ hut. There was evidence of only three or four occupants. We found the locker we were looking for and away we went. For a long time, we were the envy of our hut with that locker.
We lived in huts, 12 men to a hut, with a Vietnamese maid assigned to each hut. For a box of Tide, a can of shoe polish and $5 a month, the maid kept the hut clean, did the laundry for all the residents, made beds and shined shoes. She would take the shoes to a long table outside the hut and gather around it with maids from other huts. They would start shining shoes and chattering away while they worked. It was a mystery how the maid could get the right shoes and clean laundry back to the right bed.
There was no place to get safe drinking water except at the mess hall. Our maid filled up liquor bottles with drinking water and brought an extra block of ice she managed to scrounge for us. During that first trip to Vietnam in 1964 the food was good, but in 1966, I returned on separate rations (paid for my own food) and the quality was not as good. There was no place to buy snacks except the BX, and there was always a long line when snacks were in stock and they sold out in a short time.
A swimming pool was under construction by Vietnamese workers when we arrived at Bien Hoa. To say their construction methods were primitive was an understatement. Instead of digging the hole with heavy equipment, there were a number of people out there using a hoe and short handle shovel to put dirt in a five gallon bucket. The bucket was then carried off by another worker, dumped and returned for another load of dirt. One day I saw that they had a small cement mixer on the edge of the hole and watched as it toppled over the edge into the hole. There was a lot of chattering and hand motions as they tried to figure out what to do next. The completed pool was finished a couple months after we arrived. I seriously doubt it would have passed any US construction inspections.
I was at Bien Hoa over 100 days before I had a day off. We reported for work at 3:30 a.m. and finished the day when the aircraft was finally bedded down by about 6:00 or 8:00 p.m. Even with all those inconveniences, that was by far the best TDY that I ever had and I did quite a few.
I remember writing letters to Linda, then my fiancé, from Vietnam. I would write a big “O” every few words; the “O” marked each time I heard gunfire or mortar shelling explosions. I didn't count the O's until I finished the letter and I saw that every two to four words were followed by a big O. I finally explained to Linda at the end of the letter about the O's.
The U-2 could not land in a crosswind. If an aircraft could not land at Laughlin, their alternate destination was Altus, Oklahoma. We then would gather a crew from Laughlin and fly to Altus in a C-123 to recover the U-2 and get it ready to turn around and fly back to Laughlin. On one particular flight to Altus, we had flown from Laughlin in the very early hours of the day and we finally launched the U-2 for its return flight. It was mid-morning and we had not even stopped long enough to have a snack, much less breakfast. We asked the bus driver that was taking us to the C-123 to make a stop at the convenience store for us to buy some drinks and snacks. A bunch of the guys came back to the bus with 6-packs of beer. Once we took off in the C-123, the ground crew gathered in a circle in the back of the plane and started having “breakfast.” There was then the problem of eliminating the evidence before we arrived back at Laughlin. Fortunately, there was a small hole in the door that allowed someone to reach through to the outside. The opening was just big enough to toss those cans through; we left a trail of cans raining across Texas. The Navigator came running back to tell us to scatter because we had too much weight in the tail of the aircraft.
James ‘Soup’ Campbell (left) on Thanksgiving Day, 1961, Laughlin AFB.
I remember one particular U-2 incident while I was TDY at Barksdale AFB that had a rather humorous exchange with a local resident, although the pilot who lived through it might have a different opinion.
It was in 1967. U-2 #708 flew to 45,000 feet altitude when it experienced an explosion. The pilot ejected safely and free floated from 45,000 to 10,000. During that free fall, he got into a spin, but managed to pull his chute at 10,000 feet. He landed in a rural area around Pineville, Louisiana, and disconnected himself from his chute. He began walking down a nearby road still dressed in his pressure suit. A car drove toward him but sped on when the driver got a good look at the pilot in his other-worldly looking gear. The pilot finally came to a mobile home and knocked on the door. A young woman opened the door, looked at her visitor and immediately slammed and locked the door. He yelled through the door, explained who he was and ask
ed her to call Barksdale AFB. After a few minutes, the young woman returned and spoke to him through the door. She said, “Barksdale said they wouldn't accept the charges!” The pilot pleaded again, “Ma'am, if you will just call, I'll give you the money back for the call.”
Once we were notified of the accident, I was requested to accompany a Major from our unit to go to the crash site. Barksdale was responsible for the accident investigation, but most of the investigators had never seen a U-2 and weren't too sure what to do. I knew before we arrived at the site that my job was to get to the aircraft and remove the TOP SECRET communication box. There were a lot of people just standing around waiting for instructions. I went directly to the aircraft, removed the outside panel and took the communication box. I headed back in the direction I came from. On the road I saw a pickup truck and I asked the driver for a ride to the nearby store where I met up with the Major again. I showed him the box and he said, “Let's go. We got what we came for.”
In the early days, the U-2 was involved in air sampling over Guam, Alaska, Panama, Hawaii, Australia and England to test for radiation. The device used to capture the air for testing consisted of basketball-size balls installed in the Q Bay. The balls were metal wrapped in wire and pressurized with outside air. Following each sampling flight, the balls were shipped to a lab for testing. The ball racks used during those flights from the 1950’s to 1968 had gone back into storage until we learned that France was going to set off some test bombs, so the US started air sampling again. Out came the ball racks, but we needed the special cords to tie down the racks. Lockheed put in a rush order to make the special 6-foot long extension cords needed. Then there was a lot of test hopping when one aircraft crashed in 1968. One of the colonels told me to get the cables off the crashed aircraft, so off I went again with tools to remove the cables. I knew the rules about removing evidence from a crash site, but I had a ranking officer directing me to do it. When the chopper came back to get us, I was stopped by a different colonel who said I could not take those cables. I then reported to the first colonel about the location of the cables and he said he would take care of it.
When I was single, I volunteered to go TDY and enjoyed the traveling. After I married, I knew there was an Air Force policy that would not send a man TDY if his wife was pregnant. I was called about a TDY back to Barksdale but reported that my wife, Linda, was pregnant with our first child. Sgt. Ross took my place on that TDY. Then I was told about a TDY to Argentina for air sampling and I did go on that one because I knew I would be back before our son was born. So, I got the balls and cables ready for another mission in Argentina.
We flew night missions from a civilian airport in Mendoza, Argentina. All the crew wore civilian clothes and nobody there knew we were military. The ground crew had left the hangar after the aircraft took off; we knew it would be seven or eight hours before it returned. Being the Crew Chief, I was required to stay until the aircraft returned. I ran the night shift and I was there with a couple other guys when the phone rang. When I answered, there was a burst of Spanish and the words, “May Day, May Day”. I couldn't understand anything except the words “May Day” so I quickly got in touch with our commander who contacted airport officials. We learned that a pilot had reported a loss of electrical power; however, he survived.
Line Chief Wayne Smith and I were sent to California for training when the U-2 engine was upgraded from the Pratt and Whitney J57 engine to the J75 model. The upgrade increased the thrust from 10,500 to 17,500 pounds. We went to Lockheed to learn about the proposed modifications. However, our attendance at that training had the stipulation that once we returned to the Wing, we would volunteer for Vietnam. So once again, off I went to Vietnam.
There was a huge infestation of rats on the base and I learned that plague was still a very active disease in Vietnam. We had received inoculations for the plague prior to departure from the US. The disease, we were told, was spread by fleas carried on the rats and the fleas needed a warm body to thrive. So if the rat died, the fleas went in search of another host, which could be a human. Rats were not poisoned because the theory was that if the fleas then left the rats, we would be at risk.
In the huts, rats walked on the overhead beams like they owned the place, and I guess maybe they did. I had nailed a box to the wall with a few things I wanted to protect from the vermin, such as writing paper and cigarettes. One day I saw something go into the box and I quickly slapped a writing tablet against it. The rat poked its head out of the box and made a hasty retreat right over Wayne as he slept in the next bunk. Wayne never woke up and the rat kept going.
I created a rattrap from a C-130 water separator; it was cone-shaped with the pointed end cut out. I wired it to a 10-inch board and placed a beer can in the homemade trap. The rat climbed inside the can and could not retreat. The Soup Trap reduced the rat population in our area by at least half.
L. Mendel Rivers was a powerful member of the US House of Representatives from South Carolina and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in the 1960’s. His nephew was a member of our outfit when we went to Argentina. We were told there was a very dangerous bug in the country called “Achuga.” If we were bitten, the bug could cause heart damage years later. One day Rivers’ nephew came in with a nastylooking bug in a bottle and asked if this was the bug that was so dangerous. He reported that he was bitten by that same bug. No one really knew what the Achuga looked like. Rivers’ nephew got the brushoff by a lot of people. Finally, he invoked the name of L. Mendel Rivers and he was immediately sent downtown for medical treatment. As it turned out, the bug he found was not the dreaded Achuga, but Rivers’ nephew still got quick response to his question.
Joseph (Joe) Chapman
Joe is the son of Glenn R. Chapman (see “It Took a Dedicated Team”)
Tucson, Arizona
Dad's Epilogue Thing
The U-2 Dragon Lady program was, and still is, one of the most prestigious units in the Air Force. In 1994, after seven years of bouncing around in A-10 units as a “crewdawg,” I had the privilege of being assigned to the U-2 Periodic Inspection Dock in the 9th Maintenance Squadron at Beale AFB, California. For some guys, this would have been just another assignment to an aircraft maintenance outfit. For me, it was more than that.
About three decades earlier, my dad had been a member of the pioneering unit I was bound for. So I had a little bit of the living history of the unit that began with the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing (Light) in 1957, later morphed into the 100th Strategic Wing and eventually evolved into today's 9th Recon Wing. Pretty cool. So that's where my story begins.
Anyone who has been involved in Air Force maintenance knows that our Technical Orders (TO) change frequently. Most of the changes come about when maintainers develop faster or easier methods to perform a given task. Throughout the relatively short history of the USAF, one common denominator has always been present—the desire to get the job done in the fastest time possible with the least amount of work. This phenomenon is known in aircraft maintenance circles as the “shortcut,” and is the root cause of a large number of the dreaded TO changes.
Every maintainer I have ever known has asked the burning question: “Who the hell decided to put the ____ behind the ____? What were they thinking? Damn engineers!” However, there are two sides to everything. While I've heard the “damn engineers” comment on procedures numerous times, usually between a few expletives, I've also heard some rather surprising comments. For example, “Who was the brilliant individual who came up with this idea? Now there is some ingenuity.”
Invariably when a maintainer performs a task day in and day out, in addition to just plain getting good at the job, he'll usually come up with subtle deviations that make the job easier. Less time on the job equates to more time at the club, or anywhere that isn't in the shop. Some of the methods and procedures will eventually find their way into a TO or locally designed checklist, while others are handed down through time from one maintainer to another. S
o, here are a couple of my favorite examples of how the maintainers of yesterday have influenced those of us who have come along since, and some who have yet to meet the elderly but graceful machine known as the Dragon Lady.
Things aren't always as they seem, but sometimes they are!
Since the U-2 was originally the brainchild of her designer, Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, it seems only right that my examples begin with him. In the mid-fifties the CIA and the USAF needed a new intelligence-gathering platform. The wish list went out and the contractors began vying for the opportunity to be the winner of the latest lucrative government contract. Lockheed Aircraft Company's “Skunk Works” unit was awarded the contract, and the rest is history, or is it? In the interest of keeping costs down, Kelly had the foresight of using an already existing airframe for the basis of his design. Looking at a U-2 from various angles, the many similarities between the “Deuce” and the F-104 Starfighter would be obvious. The similarity arises because that is exactly how the CL-282 first began. It is better known to us today as the U-2A.
Some of the similarities are blatant, while others are more obscure. One of the obvious examples is the canopy of the early production U-2 mirrors the one installed on the F-104. In fact, the identification tag on the part itself is identical for both aircraft.
Because my Dad was a 4080th SRW Dragon, I found myself talking to him on the telephone about the Deuce on a regular basis. He'd ask me questions like, “Hey, do they still have ____ in the engine bay over by the ___?” Armed with my newly acquired knowledge from Dad, I'd set out to find out if “____ was still in the engine bay over by the ___.” Sometimes I'd learn that the part wasn't installed anymore. However, more often than not, I'd learn that not only was it still used, but it was still in its original location.
Remembering the Dragon Lady: The U-2 Spy Plane: Memoirs of the Men Who Made the Legend Page 27
