By Don
It was not easy driving an old Nash with numerous deficiencies from Alameda to New Orleans. Both Christian and I missed having A/C. But I had a big ice chest which when opened made some cool air blow from the vent window. The oil consumption was so bad that I wound a wire and string from a major engine leak to a can bolted to the side of the engine block, which filled after 300 miles, after which I poured the reclaimed oil back into the crankcase. I replaced a radiator thermostat and had to flush the radiator in the very hot town of Bakersfield, and got a used tire in New Mexico where I also fixed a short in my tail lights.
The trick was to nurse the car to an auto parts store each evening, park, and lock it up. Chris and I would then walk to a nearby motel I found earlier and get a room. That way, in the morning after breakfast, out came the tool box and if a part was needed, I was right there at a parts store. Chris was usually chained in the shade and learned some new bad words.
We lost a windshield wiper in Texas but the driver’s side worked fine with the bad one removed and the bladeless arm raised up, swinging back and forth in the wind. There were bug hatches everywhere in Louisiana which required many stops to scrape and wash the cockpit window. We made it to NAS New Orleans on the west bank of the river. The actual place was south of the winding Mississippi River but it was called the “west bank” by locals.
I located a vet with quarters for dogs, dropped Chris there, and flew commercial to Oakland. In the morning, the Squareback and I left California again without any A/C. Northern California didn’t need A/C and the Squareback didn’t come with it in Seattle. This run to NOLA was a piece of cake. I found a realtor and bought a house on Comet Street on the west bank. Doris and the kids flew in and we were again in a motel waiting for our furniture shipment. This act of frequent moves is typical of Navy life as is the unfortunate business of having your kids being “the new kid in class.” Finally, we were in the Comet Street house and it was on to the new base and job. Oh, and we traded the Nash for a new VW Pop Top Camper which we later used on a trip to Disney World, and the Florida Keys, and came back via the west coast of Florida through a sleepy little town called Naples (where Jennifer later raised her own children).
Farewell award at NOLA
Since I was a reservist on active duty and now at a Reserve Naval Air Station, and since I was still restricted to pilot in command, I became...again...Base Legal Officer. In a few weeks, I drove to the NAS Pensacola Naval Hospital for a re-evaluation of my alleged asthma. By now, I was only occasionally wheezing. I went there with many bronchodilator pills hidden in my electric razor box. I played the perfect patient, took my hidden pills, and set up for the big test. It was a pulmonary function test where I had to blow into a tube until I was too weak to go any further. I had made friends with a Navy corpsman and told him I had to pass that test. He said he would make me pass it. When the time came, that corpsman yelled bloody murder at me like a Marine drill instructor. He called me every name in the book to keep me blowing in that tube. I passed and became a pilot again. I owe my remaining Navy salary and pension to that man’s assistance. He is as big a deal to me as Butch Voris was at PHL. Without him I would have been behind a desk for the rest of my Navy days.
On my initial arrival to my new legal office, I found it was just my legal yeoman and myself and the office had three phone lines. Every morning, one line was put on permanent hold. That set the tone for me with my legal yeoman. One of my jobs was to oversee the Navy guys that were prisoners. They were guys that went AWOL and were caught and sent to the nearest naval facility with a brig. Our brig was like a makeshift closet with a window. The CO instructed that prisoners were not to be transferred right away to a real brig but were instead to be held for at least a week or two to do common labor on the base. They would paint, cut grass and keep things shipshape for the CO, especially the vaunted golf course and the entryway to the main gate. I was also in charge of the main and back gate security.
My yeoman and I found ways to get the prisoners to a real brig as fast as we could so they could have their case promptly adjudicated. We did not tell anyone about this. Then there were prisoners that escaped into what surrounded Camp Swampy. The CO would rant a bit and tell me to get Helos up and find them. It reminded me of the WWII movie about US prisoners in Germany when the German Commandant proudly said…"No one has ever escaped from Stalag 17.” But William Holden did. The CO became somewhat of a laughing stock.
As my next A/C was a 4 engined C-54 or DC-4, sometimes I flew into small local airports where a cajun police chief would hand over an AWOL sailor The first thing I did was lock him to an aft seat with leg irons. I once had a sailor jump out of the plane while taxiing toward base ops at Pensacola. Bad form indeed. Another time, I had to form up six side boys in a quarterdeck formation and have a bosun's mate pipe an Admiral aboard. This was not done ashore, only on a ship. But this CO was weird. So I scrambled to put the show together inside of fifteen minutes as the Admiral was due shortly. I caught a kid in dress blues checking in with the Officer of the Day. He was a raw recruit and did not know about this formation but I grabbed him and took him out to the sidewalk in front of the building and told him to do whatever the others did. Another I hastily found was a new prisoner in not so good dress blues. How weird was that? Here comes the Admiral. What sport. It was not a place for the faint hearted or anyone without a sense of humor.
Another time, someone stole one of the six shell-like prop pieces between which VIPs walked upon arrival. I was hard pressed to play Inspector Clouseau and get it back. Then I was directed to fly to Jacksonville and go aboard a ship to get a brass case from a 3”50 shell and have the woodshop make a replacement fake shell. This also required some woodwork on a lathe and further delay. Not my job, sir. Talk to the civilians at the base wood shop. SIR. But the CO kept calling the base wood shop complaining that his wooden shell had priority. Now all the civilians were laughing.
After Hurricane Camille, while people around Gulfport and Biloxi were looking for bodies, he directed me to gather all the prisoners and clean up the golf course. Doris had spent Camille on the third floor of the concrete BOQ with the kids and Christian. I had hurrivaced a C-54 to Navy Dallas. I knew they had come to the base as Camille’s 200 mph winds passes over Pilot town and headed up the Mississippi. At the last minute, it veered a bit east and hit Gulfport. We then flew a C-54 loaded with DPT serum and other medical supplies to Gulfport. Initially the southern governors would not allow federal aid to their states. The old segregation and the bad feds story. My old squadron at Alameda, CA actually flew supplies in to Gulfport MS two days ahead of us. But the golf course was spotless. Now figure out what was actually humorous and what was so sad and stupid. Shades of Beetle Bailey and Gomer Pyle.
The C-54 was designed around 1940 and was MacArthur’s command A/C in 1942. I flew it in 1968 through April of 1971. We did not have to practice a required engine failure in flight every 90 days because we had actual ones that often. But as bad as that plane was to fly, being in a thunderstorm was peace and quiet compared to working for those idiots on the ground. On the good side, I managed a trip to Rota and Cadiz, Spain from which Columbus departed on two trips. It was great to stand on the docks and envision such an historic event.
But back to my next job, the VR or transport program. We also had Friday night and Sunday night airlift pick ups of reservists at six different airports along the Gulf coast. I eventually became the Reserve Transport (VR) manager and had four C-54s that were used every weekend for three different VR squadrons in training flights. An example of a reservist is a man who owns a tire shop in Alabama, drives to Pensacola after work on Friday, is picked up and taken to NOLA to fly/work at a reserve squadron on the weekend, and is returned to Pensacola Sunday night. Those men were great. When the Korean war started, the first jets supporting the ground forces were flown by reservists that were called up. Too bad the base was manned in part by clowns, some of them senior clowns.
The Lafayette incident.
The most exciting night flight was when a friend of mine let a recruiting officer sit in the pilots seat and land his C-54 at Lafayette, LA. He skidded and ran off the runway, stopping only when great balls of honeysuckle rolled up ahead of the main mounts and stopped the plane right next to a road that was a lovers lane. Before they did the checklist and turned off the landing lights, a couple was seen hurriedly driving away. No one was hurt in the accident — don’t know about the couple. As the duty officer, I had to call the CO at 9 PM and report. I held the phone way out from my ear so everyone at operations could hear. They heard it all. What sport. I went with 2 other C-54s with work crews to pull the plane back onto the runway and fly it home with the landing gear down.
But now it was hopefully back to a more normal US Navy, or so I thought. After Kent and Jennifer’s segregated school experience, which I will leave to Doris, we were glad to leave NOLA and go to Bellevue, Nebraska. I would become one of three pilots and a crew that flew an Admiral around the U.S. in a familiar plane. The C-131 Convair type from Alameda. So it was time to pack up and repeat the process as Doris flew to NJ and I drove to the Omaha area to Offuttt Air Force Base…..Grandpaw
In the first photo, we see General Douglas MacArthur getting off his C-54 in Australia, 1942. In the second photo, we see LCDR Don Lidke getting off his C-54 in New Orleans, 1968:
