By Don
The first 9 months flying the T-2 was sort of a reversal of learning to fly the P-5. When I got to the big seaplanes, I had about 300 hours in jets and the P-5 was a piece of cake to fly. What was different was the seaplane had a 10 man crew and the plane commander managed the crew and the plane. I used to say one took the number of crew and multiplied that number times the number of engines (in this case the number was 20) and that was the screw up factor, 21 if you counted maintenance issues. Transitioning to the T-2 jet from the P-5 meant it was me and a student and a screw up factor of two, three if you counted maintenance issues. After all, in the long run it was the chiefs and sailors that maintained the planes that kept you alive.
T-2 at Meridian
Then I ran into a maintenance problem. On March 14, 1962, my student and I were shooting landings at an outlying field. I told him to pick up the landing gear and flaps and head for home. Whoops, we had a red light on the right main landing gear. We cycled the gear and tried again. No luck. It was hard to see from the back seat so I released my shoulder harness, leaned way forward, and looked out the canopy at the right wheel. It was twisted in such a way that it would not fit into the wheel well. I took the controls and headed home, climbing to about 8,000 feet to then pull back the power to conserve fuel. The wheel created right side drag and I had to fly a bit crooked, left wing down with a bit of right rudder to go straight.
We informed the tower and we were ordered to make a low pass so they could see the problem. I requested that the crash crew foam a runway so I could land with the wheels up. I was told to put the gear down and land on the left wheel and nose wheel and just “tick” the right well to make it align fore and aft. I declined, saying I had a 50-50 chance of that working and I did not like the odds. In the meantime a general recall called back about 60 other T-2’s out on training flights. If I pranged on the runway before they got back, where would they land?
We orbited while all the other planes landed on the two N-S runways. The tanker truck then laid foam on the east-west runway. This took time and I was watching my fuel gauge. The air conditioning control was in the front seat. I asked ENS Shannon to set it on full cold. He replied…”Mr Lidke, it has been on full cold for 20 minutes." Hmm…then what was that running down my back? Must be sweat. Oh well…I briefed Shannon on my ad libbed gear up cross wind landing plan for runway 28 and turned toward the runway, letting down.
The right side drag was greatly accentuated as I got slower and slower in airspeed. I keep countering this by constantly lowering my left wing into the cross wind and standing on the right rudder. I touched down gear up, in the foam, on centerline while fully cross controlled, full left stick, full right rudder. We stopped in the foam after sliding a little sideways. Shannon opened the canopy and we stepped onto the wing and as I stepped down into the foam, slipped and fell. As I got up, I noticed hundreds of spectators watching from the hangar roof. Gee, and I wanted to look so cool?
When I got back to the ready room, I called Doris to tell her I had a landing problem but I was okay. The local radio station paid a few bucks for newsworthy tips and she might be listening. The CO of the squadron insisted I had let the student land in a skid and I denied it. He knew I had been a seaplane pilot and did not like some of the pilots that D.C. sent to him.
A week later I was transferred to the base as a ground school instructor. A week after that I was at base operations for some reason when a pilot got off a helicopter that picked him up at the outlying field. He saw me and shouted, “Don’t worry Don, I found my scissors bolt.” The same thing happened to him on a landing roll out and he skidded to a stop. He went back up the runway and found a bolt from his plane that when fastened, kept the wheel lined up fore and aft. The squadron found about 20 or so planes with over torqued scissors bolts and grounded every plane to get checked. I was absolved. But I was now a ground school instructor teaching classes about the T-2 aircraft. They did minimum repairs and the plane flew again in about two weeks.
I found the Commander and boss of the Training Department to be a first class jerk. He always had to look good and he always had to be made to look good. He was Trumpian ahead of his time. I was ordered to send a sailor to pluck a dandelion outside his window. He was a nut about that lawn. A missing rubber tip on a classroom pointer was a crisis.
He ordered me to make sure the department Christmas tree was set up and trimmed ahead of all other departments. I sent a sailor into the woods to cut a tree down and set it up for trimming. He complied. Then the Base CO sent an edict that no trees would be cut down for Christmas. I directed a very sharp sailor to check that the CDR was not looking, grab the untrimmed tree and race it out the back door and into a drainage ditch far away. Another sailor was ordered to immediately sweep up any needles in the building entryway and dispose of them.
By now, I had orders to Adak, Alaska. Doris was pregnant and would soon be flying to New Jersey with Jennifer. I would be driving with Christian doggie to Seattle FFT to Adak. But first, I had an idea.
El Supremo now wanted flowers to be planted around the Training Department sign at the front of the building facing the Admin building and the base CO’s office. Anything to look good. I had the troops prepare the soil as would a good cow college graduate. Then I planted various plants in rows around the GD sign. I told the troops they were to water those plants as if their lives depended on it. About two weeks later there were many young sprouts showing from the seeds and mounds. I had told my troops what was up and that they were to keep watering. Later, after flying to NJ and then back to MS and my VW, I took about four days to drive to Seattle. All the way I had a big smile on my face, thinking how the wax beans, corn and other veggies would be saluting the sun next to his sign.……Grandpaw