One day an Air Force inspector was checking out the armament switches on one of our airplanes when suddenly all six fifty-caliber machine guns began firing out over the woods toward a German village. Fortunately, no civilians were hurt, but there were investigations, and the result was that special safety pins were inserted in the trigger mechanisms that kept them from firing. Each pin had a big red tag attached to it, and we could barely fly with all the crap on our control sticks. We bitched and moaned about it, then, lo and behold, those pins began disappearing. We'd climb in the cockpit and report them missing. Colonel Yeager finally called us together and said, "Hey, you guys, leave those pins alone. Regulations are regulations." But they kept disappearing until not one airplane in the squadron had a safety pin left. In fact, we almost forgot they ever existed.
One day, months later Chuck asked somebody to fetch something from his locker. There were all those missing pins, piled in our squadron commander's locker. He was the one who removed them all. Chuck was a free-wheeler, and the Air Force bureaucracy drove him nuts. He knew we had to live within the system and could not fight it head-on and win. But, damn, he knew how to resist.
Col. Fred Ascani commanded the entire wing. He was tough and strict, a real terror to work for. Ascani had been General Boyd's deputy, so Chuck knew him well. Even so, Ascani had bugaboos, and if anyone violated his rules, he lowered the boom. His biggest bugaboo was accidents. When he took over the wing the accident rate was atrocious, so he staked his career on a zero accident rate. Wreck an airplane and he'd wreck you. We flew into Pisa, Italy, one day and a guy in our squadron snapped the nose wheel off his Sabre while landing. Chuck called the squadron maintenance officer and gave him a list of parts that would be needed to bolt a fixed nose gear on the airplane, and they arrived in a C-47, while Chuck pounded out the air intake with a sledgehammer. The repairs took nearly a day, then Chuck flew that airplane back to Germany with the nose wheel down and bolted, a really tricky piece of flying. It was rolled into the back of a dark hangar, quickly repaired, and never reported.
But then I crashed.
I was flying alone, coming down to refuel outside of Paris on a beautiful Sunday morning. I was feeling real good and began doing rolls coming down. But my control stick stuck and I couldn't stop rolling. I got down to 1,400 feet, more afraid of Colonel Ascani than of dying. Finally I ejected. I was so low that I did only two swings in my chute before I landed in a tree.
Ascani went out of his mind. He roared in on Chuck: "What in hell was Hatch doing? Why was he rolling that airplane?"
Chuck said, "Hell, Colonel, he was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing. He was doing a clearing roll."
"A what?"
Chuck said, "That's right. Anytime we are descending, we do a roll to make sure we aren't letting down on top of another airplane. It's a safety precaution. All my people do it."
Chuck saved my precious ass. I had no business doing those rolls, and I could've been court-martialed, my career ruined. Ascani just said, "Yeah, well, I suppose…" That was the end of it.
There's nothing better on this earth than to be part of a fighter squadron. You really are close and sharing. By the time my three-year tour came to an end, I was one of the old heads, an element leader, one of the guys Chuck counted on. I extended my tour for another year. Four of us senior guys did that. Chuck was gone a lot of the time, and he needed us. He was the Air Force's showpiece in Europe, and they were always sending him off somewhere on special assignment. Ascani was not pleased, but there was nothing he could do about it. The British or French would request him through the State Department, asking that he be allowed to help evaluate one Of their new aircraft. The guy was a real celebrity and he was constantly traveling all over Europe to air shows and conferences. Wherever he went he was always bumping into somebody he knew-pilots, sportsmen, princes, name it. He would meet a person only once and remember him twenty years later- everything about him, too; I've seen him do it. He'd be requested to hunt pheasants in Portugal with some dignitary. General LeMay, the head of SAC, flew into Spain and sent for Chuck to show him off to the Spanish air force brass. Then the two of them went partridge hunting with Franco. I never saw Chuck hunt, but he once went out with General Gross, vice commander of the Twelfth Air Force, hunting German roebuck deer, which are no bigger than dogs. Gross took one or two shots and missed, but Chuck bagged that deer at six hundred yards. The general couldn't believe it. He said, "God almighty, Chuck, how in hell…"
The guy was unbelievable. Because of him our wing won all the USAF European gunnery meets. Ascani loved him for that. He was high man in air-to-air and air-to-ground every time. The other contestants shook in their boots having to confront Yeager. One gunnery mission he flew they were firing two guns, and one of his jammed. So, using one gun he scored 85 percent-some unheard of thing like that- and he won anyway. The Air Force maintained a huge gunnery facility at Wheelus in Tripoli, and we went down there for a month at a time, living in tents out on the desert, flying and shooting night and day. One time he flew in a day after we arrived, and I sat upstairs waiting for him. As soon as I spotted his Sabre, I bounced him. I came in right on his tail and then took off with full power before he could react. I said, "Welcome to Tripoli, Colonel Yeager." He laughed. "Goddamn, Jock, if I catch you I'll whip the black off of you." Those would be fighting words from anybody else. From him, I just said, "Well Colonel, you'll have to catch me first."
Being back with a fighter squadron was like coming home to the hollers of West Virginia-back among my own kind, who talked my language. At Hahn, we were only minutes of flying time away from possible combat with the Russians and their allies. We'd barely get our wheels up before reaching the East German border. Czechoslovakia was a half-hour flight. A week seldom passed in the 1950s when East German or Czech pilots didn't invade our air space and cause us to scramble to intercept. They knew our Sabres could never catch up with their MiGs before they scooted back over the border. Often they staged their sweeps to coincide with our end-of-the-day beer calls, but there was more to it than just harassment. They were testing our reaction time. We were constantly on alert and kept at maximum readiness.
My squadron commander during World War II really was "the old man." He was all of twenty-five, leading a bunch barely out of their teens who thought he was over the hill. Now, I was "the old man," a thirty-two-year-old married major, commanding pilots whose average age was thirty and who were also mostly married, living on base with their families. To win their confidence I had to perform up to expectations. Once they saw I was really good, they would follow my leadership-not just obey orders- because I had proved that I knew what I was talking about.
Any new squadron commander is in a tough spot. There's a lot to learn, and being untested he is watched like a hawk by both his subordinates and his superiors. There were plenty of squadron commanders who couldn't lead a group in silent prayer. I knew I'd be watched closer than most, and by the top brass, too, because pilots with big reputations were often more trouble than they were worth, pains in the ass who threw their weight around and bugged out every chance they got. I knew plenty of guys like that. During my early years at Wright Field as a maintenance officer, one of the big war aces began parking his Lincoln Continental convertible in my hangar when he went off to fly. Nobody was allowed to park a car in a hangar, but he ignored the rule. I had the air police tow his car away and enjoyed telling him I was the one who did it. So, I told the squadron "Hey, I'm here to have a good time. To me, a good time is flying with you guys. I'd rather do that than get laid." They laughed and got the message.