At 7:30 A.M. on a Monday morning the quiet was ripped apart as the wing started its training schedule. Four Phantoms cranked their engines in unison, the first go of the day. Within two hours the 45th would launch sixteen aircraft; then a period of relative quiet would descend over the base until the early afternoon when another sixteen would be launched.
The action started the previous evening as Maintenance confirmed which aircraft would be launched. The section chief on the flight line had his people check each bird, insuring each one was fully mission capable and serviced. Two of the birds had maintenance problems: one had a slow fuel leak from a wing fuel-cell; another’s LOX bottle was found to be at its lower limits. The chief had the LOX bottle replaced with a fully charged bottle and called for a fuels specialist to fix the leak. It would be an all-night repair job.
By 4:00 A.M. the first four Phantoms stood ready when the crew chiefs, the pilot who would be the flight lead on the mission and the squadron duty officer reported in. The two crew chiefs on each Phantom pulled a detailed preflight inspection, ending the preflight by removing most of the safety pins, down locks on the main gear and intake covers from the engines. Two crew chiefs sacked out in a van near their bird, five had time to get breakfast and one cleaned the canopies of his bird and made a note in the maintenance forms to have the light brown star under the left front canopy repainted.
While the crew chiefs were preparing their birds the flight-lead planned his mission. At 5:30 A.M. the other seven members of his flight reported for the briefing. For the next hour the flight lead went over every aspect of the coming mission, covering exactly what he wanted from each pilot and wizzo. At 6:30 he concluded his briefing and his flight hurried into the Life Support section to put on their equipment and make a last pit stop. They gathered around the front counter where the duty officer gave them a last-minute briefing on field conditions, the active runway and any special notices. At 7:00 the crews stepped to their fighters, where they would meet the crew chiefs, make their own inspection of the birds, strap in, start engines and taxi to make an 8:00 A.M. takeoff.
On that first morning of flying, the wing was composed of 4156 active duty personnel, of which 2237 were assigned to maintenance; seventy-two F-4E aircraft divided between the three squadrons, of which thirty-four were fully mission capable; three flying squadrons of thirty-eight pilots and thirty-six wizzos each; various support units comprising the remainder of the wing — and J. Stanley Morris, who walked into the command post and told the controller on duty to change the wing’s rating on the Combat Status Report to a one.
Doc Landis would try to break away from his office for a few hours every day and meet Thunder for some impromptu training on the care and feeding of the F-4. The schedulers got to know the Doc as he tried to cadge as many rides as possible, and Thunder soon learned that the funny-looking, pear-shaped man had a quick intellect, an excellent memory, superb eye-hand coordination and a high tolerance to Gs. He also never complained and made quick progress in using the radar.
In many ways Doc Landis’ progress toward becoming a WSO paralleled the wing’s training program. He started out by becoming familiar with the local training area: learning how to find the base, what areas to avoid, and how Eastern Radar, the local air traffic control, managed the airspace. From there he progressed to the gunnery ranges. He loved it. He even enjoyed riding Big Ugly down the chute at 450 knots as the altimeter rapidly unwound. He could put his faith in the ability of the pilot in the front seat. He told his wife, “I know that I can keep us out of trouble on the range. Besides, it satisfies my basic kamikaze instincts.”
Radar bomb deliveries were a delight for the doctor. The sweat would pour off him as he worked the radar, acquiring the target. Once he had the target broken out on the scope he would drive the radar cursors over it and activate the system. After a few fumbling attempts and one extremely long bomb — the British range controller told him that he was supposed to bomb the island and not France, even though he thought it was a fine gesture — Doc turned into a right-on bombardier who won as many bets as he lost.
But it was when he experienced dogfighting for the first time that Doc Landis came to know what fighters were all about. He needed every bit of his intellect and experience to follow the three-dimensional form of combat. His keen eyesight often got the first visual sighting, the tallyho, in the first critical opening of the most engagements, and pilots liked having him in their pit.
On his third air-to-air ride he was paired with Mike Fairly and the squadron commander explained that it was never called dogfighting, it was air-to-air or air-combat tactics, ACT. They were still climbing out when their opponent, another F-4 from the 379th, developed a minor electrical problem and returned to base. Rather than recover with the disabled F-4 Fairly took his bird out over the North Sea to give Doc a flying lesson and burn off gas. They had just cleared the coast when two RAF Tornados from the nearby Honington base jumped them and the fight was on. It should have been an easy thing for the swing-wing Tornados, but Fairly took the fight into the vertical and played the sun to his advantage. He refused to disengage and dragged the fight lower and lower toward the sea so that never once did the Tornados bring their sights to bear on the F-4. Finally the Tornado leader rocked his wings and flew straight and level Fairly joined up on the two RAF fighters and the lead gave him a thumbs-up sign. The three flew a tight formation back to the coast.
Fairly told Doc Landis that what they had been doing was illegal as hell and Morris would have their asses if he found out they were rat-racing with the Blokes. Doc didn’t care. That night, he went home and pulled Mrs. Landis into bed for an all-nighter. “The movie director Sam Peckinpah was right,” he told her. “Fighting and fucking is what it’s all about. Everything else is a surrogate.”
“My hero,” she said. “Now cut the crap, Doctor, and stop acting like an overaged teenager.” She deadpanned when she said it, but there was nothing dead about what they did together that night.
Afterward she wondered if he and Sam might not have been right. Keep flying, darling…
That Saturday night the Fairlys and Landises had dinner at the Tudenham Mill near Mildenhall. Over coffee in the lounge Fairly quizzed the doctor about leaving his successful practice in the States to join the Air Force and losing his mind over the F-4. “I don’t really know why I did it,” the doctor said. “Maybe I simply got bored with my patients. I can’t tell you why I like flying Big Ugly so much. Maybe the challenge. In medicine a challenge means the patient’s life is on the line. In flying, it’s your own life you’re betting.”
“He’s a teenager that grew old, never up,” his wife announced.
The major in charge of the command post, Vernon Yaru-Lau, hated going to Morris’ daily stand-up briefing. Every morning the commander of each unit on the base had to keep standing while a series of slides summarizing the previous day’s activity, the planned schedule for the day and the current status of critical resources on the base was flashed on the screen. Every wing in the Air Force had a similar meeting each morning.
When Yaru-Lau had tried to explain that the slide summarizing the wing’s combat status was wrong Morris had silenced him with “I know the combat status of my wing; you don’t.”
“Royally pissed,” to quote his sergeant, the major called the Inspector General’s office at Third Air Force and filed an anonymous complaint — the wing’s Combat Status Report was highly inflated.
The next day two lieutenant colonels from the IG appeared in Morris’ office to tell him they were conducting a no-notice inspection of the command post. Morris’ secretary told them that Morris and the wing’s vice-commander were at a conference in Germany and wouldn’t be back until the next day. The two IG officers shrugged and went to the command post, where Yaru-Lau laid out the problem for them. “Colonel Morris has directed that I report our combat status as a one. But we’re only flying enough tactical training sorties to rate a five, maybe a four. Also, Maintenance is only keeping enough aircraft fixed and flying to rate a three.”
The two lieutenant colonels reviewed the sortie and maintenance rates, drafted a one-page report and forwarded it to the Pentagon and Third Air Force. No one told Morris when he returned that two officers from the IG had spent an hour in his command post while he was away. What he didn’t know could hurt him… they hoped.