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A number of years ago, when I was just starting out in college, I’d often find myself driving through McChord Air Force Base (now Joint Base Lewis McChord) in large part because
a) I could, and
b) there were SO many cool airplanes there.
One weekend they had an actual air show, with the Thunderbirds, and aerial demonstrations of guys jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, explosions, the whole works. It was great. I got to walk around the flight line and look at planes up close I’d only been able to look at from a distance, and in some cases, I was able to go out and either touch them or actually, the most fun, sitting in the cockpit of a military airplane, and pretending to fly it, you know, just like you do when you’re a kid.
So later that week, after the airshow was over in reality, but I was still reliving it in my mind, I happened to go over to McChord, and look out at that very same flight line, and of all things, found an F-4 Phantom in the very last spot on the left. This is a plane that sucks down more gas in a minute than your car does all year. Speaking of cars, I parked mine in a legal zone (no, really) and was just drawn to the Phantom.
I walked over toward it, with my hands behind my back – I wanted to be sure that if anyone did see me and had this feeling like I shouldn’t be there, that my hands were in a very obvious spot of not being able to do anything…
The plane was facing away from me, and I walked around it clockwise, starting on the left side and working my way around. I looked at, but didn’t touch those elevators that were angled down so sharply.
I walked further, hands still behind my back, and ducked under the wingtip, which is angled up ever so slightly.
I looked into the engine intakes, imagining how much air they must have sucked in as those big J-79 engines spooled up.
I couldn’t see into the cockpit, but walked around the front of the plane – still careful not to touch anything, and made it back around the other side, and finally came to the gaping maw that was the back end of those engines. The F-4’s engines have what are called ‘afterburners’ – which means simply that if you have the jet engine running at full throttle, and the engine simply can’t put out more thrust, you start pumping buckets of fuel into the hot exhaust – where it – well, it doesn’t ‘explode’ – but all those pictures you see of military planes with 20-30 foot flames out the back? That’s what happens when you hit the afterburners. It can easily double the thrust of an engine.
Now the J-79 engine was weird, in a way… It was the one engine the military had that, surgeon general’s warning or not, they simply couldn’t get to stop smoking. If it was idling, it was fine. If it was in full afterburner, it was fine. If it was anywhere in between, it smoked.
It was like leaving a big arrow penciled into the sky saying, “Hi! Here I am!” All you had to do was look up and follow the pencil mark. At the end, sure as anything, there’d be an F-4.
It made camouflage and stealth kind of a moot point.
But those engines, oh gosh – I’d seen what they could do in real life. I was in a KC-135 tanker, shooting pictures of one being refueled somewhere over Missouri. The plane, call sign “Misty 42”, was in the pre-connect position 50 feet behind us. Gus, the boom operator (the boom being the big pipe that did the refueling) called out on the radio “Misty 42, forward 50” – as in “come forward 50 feet” – and this 60,000 pound plane that was parked back there behind us, just shot forward those 50 feet and then stopped like he was anchored there – right where Gus could top it off. And when Misty 42 was finished, I saw something I’d only seen in movies – the pilot banked hard left, pulled hard on the stick, peeled off, and was gone.
So when those engines were running, they would just leave this layer of soot in the sky, and, coming back down from the sky and to that flight line, where I was standing with both hands behind my back, I was mesmerized by the business end of these huge jet engines, some of that soot I was talking about had been left inside the engines, creating a blackness so total it would make charcoal look white. It gave a totally new definition to the term “black hole” and I was wondering how much of a problem it would be to swipe a little soot off the engine of a Phantom.
This wondering caused curiosity to prevail over common sense.
…but not by much…
I unclasped my hands, and slowly, with my right pinkie, swiped it against the inside of that engine, to see if any of that blackness would actually come off. It didn’t seem to, I was looking at my pinkie, trying to figure it out, when
“Can I help you, sir?”
Uh oh…
One of the United States Air Force’s finest SP’s (Security Police) was standing there, in uniform, which was as complete as a military cop’s uniform could be…
“Uh, no, actually, I was just looking at the F-4 here”
“Did you know, sir, that you’re not allowed to be here?”
My gosh he was polite…
On the other hand, he could afford to be. He had Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson snug in a leather holster at his side to help him out, should he need it.
“Sir, see, there’s this red line here on the pavement…”
He was right… there was indeed a red line on the pavement…
“Sir, you’re not supposed to cross that line.”
“Really?”
“Did you see the signs painted on the ground, sir?”
“No – I mean, I was just here the other day…”
“Sir, that was for the air show. See here?”
…and he walked me over to where one of the signs was indeed painted in a big white rectangle on the ground.
“They’re painted on the ground every 100 feet.”
And I’d parked my car beside the hangar, and walked right out there, between two of the signs, totally oblivious to the signs, and totally focused on the F-4…
“Sir, can you read the line in red there, near the bottom?”
I started reading the stenciled letters on the pavement.
“Sir, do you understand what that means?”
And things suddenly became very clear. That line there meant that Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson didn’t necessarily have to stay in their little leather holster, they could have come out to back up the Security Police officer and no one would have batted an eye.
“Yes sir, I do.”
He escorted me back to my car, realizing that I was just a young kid not much younger than he was, likely just as much of an airplane nut as he was, but I was driving a little red Saab (1967 model 96, 3 cylinder, two stroke, and a 4 speed transmission, on the column, for those of you who are curious) at the time, all by myself, and he was driving a blue Air Force police cruiser, with his pals Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson quietly squeezed into the front seat with him.
I was a little more careful from there on out, but I still considered McChord my home away from home.
…
Fast forward 21 years. I’d gotten married, had the wonderful privilege of becoming a father, and lo and behold, there was another air show at McChord AFB. I took my son to see the show, and this time I got to the McChord AFB air show in a little blue Saab (1968 model 96, Deluxe, with a V-4 engine, and a 4 speed transmission, on the column, for those of you who are curious), and this time, I wasn’t alone.
We watched, and heard the Thunderbirds tear the sky apart again – watched the aerial drops, the explosions, all the cool stuff, it was great – and then as we were walking through the displays – I realized I’d been there before. Not just on McChord AFB, but as I looked around, wondering why the hangars looked familiar, and why the tower looked so familiar, not just individually, but collectively, I felt this incredible feeling of déjà vu, suddenly I realized I was standing on the spot – THE VERY SPOT where that F-4, the SP, and Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson had been those many years earlier.
I’d told my son the story you just read more than once, to the point where he could do the little swipe with his pinkie just exactly like I did it, and I knew, I just knew, I had to show him that spot, and take a picture of the sign on the ground, with the red letters, and the red line on it.
And I did…
Sure enough… it was still there.
I got the shot of him with the sign in the story I’d told him so many times.
…
Fast forward again – to the year 2010, I’d done a presentation in Tucson, and found that after the presentation, we had a few hours to do some touristy things, and given the fact that I am an airplane nut, and that the last time we’d been in Tucson I’d only been able to drive past it, the Pima Air Museum was definitely on our list. It has hundreds of airplanes, and in the few hours we had, we tried to see as many as we could. We walked past some, paused for a moment at others.
And then I saw an F-4 and stopped cold.
A Phantom.
“Michael! This is it! This is the kind of plane I was talking about!” –
…and I did the little pinkie swipe with my right hand.
He knew exactly what I meant, and before I could do anything or even stop him, he’d gone to the back of the plane, and I suddenly knew what the SP had seen those many years ago.
Without me saying another word, Michael had not only gone to the back of that Phantom – but gone to the right engine, and with his left hand still held firmly in the small of his back, like I’d done when I was the very same age, he took his pinkie, and swiped a little soot off the engine of a Phantom.
And no one stopped him.
© Tom Roush, 2010
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The picture at the end of this story was shot in Grad School – Ohio University, sometime around 1988 or so.
I had a friend and classmate, Johnny Crawford, a wonderful shooter from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, who was truly a lot of fun to be with – but he had this one habit that just got to me after awhile… it was his pension for saying, “Tom, you ain’t lived till you’ve…” – and then fill in the blank with something that he’d done and he knew I hadn’t.
Understand, he wasn’t gloating, he wasn’t being mean, he was just telling me how cool it was to have been able to do something he had done, and, in his eyes, I hadn’t lived till I’d done one of those things.
Well one day he says, “Tom, you ain’t lived till you’ve shot F-15’s bein’ refueled.” – now of course I knew that he wasn’t talking about F-15’s being refueled on the ground, he was talking about that complicated aerial ballet that means you’ve got two airplanes flying around 250 – 300 mph within about 40 feet of each other, pumping highly refined kerosene from one to another at a rate of about 6,500 pounds a minute. This is enough fuel in one minute to run your average family car for a year.
Uh… Yeah…
Eventually I got a little tired of never having lived – so I needed to figure out where I could find a refueling base, because that’s where I’d need to go to get onto a KC-135 refueling plane to take that shot that was going to ensure that I lived. I went to the library, and checked out a book about the military, and it gave me the location of all the bases in the United States. And funny thing, but there was a base with a KC-135 wing 68 miles away.
Hmmm…
Now anyone who knows me knows I am just plain dangerous with a telephone. My wife says I can talk to anyone, and sometime I just end up sweet talking my way into things that even I end up baffled at once everything’s all said and done. She once complained that I could get into a 20 minute conversation with a telephone operator. (I did, actually, he used to be an air traffic controller when Reagan was presi – well, that’s not important right now). So about 3 telephone calls later, I’m on the phone with the PAO (public affairs officer) of Rickenbacker Air National Guard base, in Columbus, Ohio. I explain to him that I’m a grad student in photojournalism at Ohio University and that I’m working on a story on the Air National Guard (partially true) and was wondering if there was any chance of getting up on a refueling mission to take some pictures. So – after talking about that and security and stuff for a bit, he suddenly said, “How’s next Tuesday?”
Next…
What!? –
It had to be harder than this…
It just had to be.
Nope. Tuesday it was…
Plane took off at 10:00. We’d be refueling some Missouri Air National Guard F-4 fighters who were on a training mission. I had to be there 2 hours earlier, which meant I had to leave an hour before that, and so on. I borrowed a car from a friend and found the airbase, talked my way into see the right people, made the right introductions, signed the right paperwork, and out the door I went, still completely baffled… It just had to be harder than this…
One of the things to understand about military planes is that they are generally not built for comfort, so the plane was loud. This being an Air National Guard plane – the same folks had flown this same plane for years, so to them it wasn’t much different than you or I driving down to the store to get a quart of milk. However, they’re going a little faster, they have 4 engines pushing them along, and the store’s a lot further away. At one point the navigator did some calculating, and noticed that if we continued at the rate we were going, we would be late to meet the planes we were to refuel, and since we were the only gas station around, us being late could easily mean those flying jet fighters would fly about as well as crowbars, and that’s not good. So he saw we were going 300 mph, and told the pilot to bump it up to 330. The pilot reached up and wrapped his hands around the 4 throttles and – well, ‘bumped’ them up a bit. I had no idea a plane that big, could accelerate that fast at that speed. I was watching the airspeed indicator, and we went from 300 to 330 in a blink. I was very glad I’d been holding onto something when he did it or I would have ended up in the back of the plane.
We got to the refueling zone – and I was told that the way the refueling is done, is that the pilots of the tanker, and the pilots of the planes needing the fuel fly directly at each other, the tanker flying 1000 feet higher. When they get close, they both head in the same direction – so, say the tanker I’m in is flying east. The planes needing the fuel are flying west, toward each other, and at a given point, everyone heads north, so that the F-4’s are below and behind the tanker. Our call sign was Pearl 07. Theirs were Misty 41 and 42.
The weird thing, for lack of a better word, about all this is that it was happening in three dimensions. I mean, if you’re here on the ground, and you point to something, your arm is generally parallel to the ground or close to it, because whatever you’re pointing at is usually on that same ground, or close to it. When I saw these planes – I was in the back of the tanker, looking out the back – and they were swooping in from the right, and they were off to the right, and down. Not just ‘over’ but ‘down’. One of the planes was leaving what looked like a white smoke trail, and I heard over the radio, “Pearl 07, Misty 41, I’ve got a fuel leak, returning to base…”
I don’t know about you, but a fuel leak you can see at 300 miles an hour must be a pretty significant fuel leak… He left.
Misty 42 came closer – into what they call the pre connect area in the back of the plane, and just stayed there for a bit – I was amazed at how big the thing was, and had the widest lens I had on my camera (a Nikkor 24mm ) – I was framing the shot when Gus (the boom operator) said, “Misty 42, forward 50” – meaning he needed to come forward 50 feet to get into the area where the boom could connect. Now I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting much acceleration out of that plane – I mean the plane can go twice the speed of sound, for crying out loud – but when he came forward that 50 feet, it was like he’d been shot out of a cannon, and then he stopped, parked right where he needed to be. Somewhere in there, just before he hooked up I reflexively squeezed off a shot, and that was the only shot I got that was worth anything – after that he was just too close.
He took 3,000 pounds of fuel, I don’t know why I remember that. He wasn’t there very long, and then, since Misty 41 had already left, Misty 42 peeled off in ways I’ve only seen in movies – and there just isn’t a comparison to seeing it in real life, as opposed to seeing it on a screen, where, no matter how much they try to show the three dimensions of what’s happening up there, it’s still a two dimensional screen. It just doesn’t cut it. It was so, incredibly, cool.
We turned back east and headed back over Illinois, Indiana, bits and pieces of Kentucky, and finally made it down out of the wonderful sunlight, down through the clouds, and into a rainy Ohio afternoon.
We debriefed, I headed back toward Athens in my borrowed car with an exhaust leak, and stopped at a Burger King on the way to get a late lunch while I had the color film developed next door. What I didn’t know is that this particular film developing process didn’t use fresh chemicals for each batch of film. They used them until the film didn’t come out good anymore, and then changed the chemicals.
Guess whose film was the last one through that batch of chemistry? The prints just didn’t look quite right. It turned out that the film, though developed, was simply not printable in color, the three colors (cyan, magenta and yellow) didn’t develop at the same rate – and there just wasn’t a way to color balance all of the colors at the same time. After a lot of thought and frustration (considering what I’d gone through to get this picture) I ended up out of pure frustration printing it in black and white.
This, surprisingly, was a dang good idea…
Of course, by now it had been a long day, lots of driving, lots of flying, and because of the car, lots of carbon monoxide, and now I had to go to the darkroom on campus to print the pictures. Of course, it was always a social event because there were 50 enlargers in the darkroom, and everyone was working on their own images, and every now and then, you’d go out into a finishing area and look at them in white light instead of the orange safelights, to see what the thing really looked like, wash it off, spot correct dust, etc…
…and, if you had a particularly good one, you might find yourself examining it a little longer out there where other people could see it, if you know what I mean…
One of the things in that original image was that there was this huge black area in the bottom right of the picture, part of the inside of the plane that that wide lens caught. I was trying to figure out how to make the picture work without cropping too much, and yet that black area just sucked your eye right down there when one of my classmates walked up and saw the picture.
“Wow! Cool picture! Who take that?” (he was from China, and this is how he talked)
“I did.”
“No, Tom, you not take that picture, don’t joke… Who take that picture?”
“Seriously, I did.”
He could see I wasn’t joking – honestly, by that time, I was too tired to joke.
“Okay, fine… Where you take that picture?”
… but I wasn’t too tired to string him along a little and mess with him…
“Missouri.” (understand, Missouri is three states west of Ohio, easily a day’s drive)
“Missouri? No, Tom… You joking again. Where you take the picture?”
“Okay, I’ll be more specific… 26,000 feet above Fredericktown, Missouri.”
There was a look of consternation on his face, and finally resignation as he realized I wasn’t kidding.
“Okay Tom, you not joking this time… When you take the picture?”
- This one was like feeding a straight line to a comedian, and the only thing I could do was the last thing he’d expect.
I looked at my watch.
His eyes got real big, then he just threw up his hands and gave up. The thing is, at the time he asked the question, I’d taken the picture about 6 hours ago – so the most logical thing to do was to look at my watch and find out how to answer his question.
I was so hoping Johnny would come by so I could tell him I’d lived. He did, later – but the reaction from my classmate was the best.
That said, below is the shot of Misty 42.
Misty 42 – an F-4 flown my the Missouri Air National Guard. Photo by Tom Roush – from an Ohio Air National Guard KC-135.
PS – years later – I got back in touch with him and sent him this story.
His response: “Tom, you have Lived!“
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