Other than that one moment, the flight was a piece of cake. Not one problem. We landed at the Azores, refueled, and headed for Spain, twelve hundred miles away. All eighteen landed safely a couple of hours later at the big SAC base at Moron, near the southern coast, the first perfect deployment of a TAC fighter squadron. It was a long day of flying, but we weren't too tired to keep from having a helluva party that night. The TAC command center in Washington tried to phone congratulations, but the SAC switchboard in Spain couldn't find us.
We stayed in Spain four months providing air defense for the SAC B-47 bombers that had also deployed from their base in Arkansas. Mixing my guys with those SAC pilots was fun to watch. My pilots were ten feet tall after that deployment, and they were aggressive jocks. We all wore our red scarves and took real pride in our squadron. The SAC crews came limping into Spain looking as if they had crawled all the way. I hadn't seen such low morale this side of a prison camp. We offered to give them rides in our fighters to perk them up, but they got sick riding in back. The "Colonel Bogey" song was on the jukebox at the officers' club, and we sang our own words: "SAC, it makes the grass grow green." The base commander was a SAC bird colonel who didn't know what in hell to do with us. I was in charge of my squadron and took my orders from TAC. I got away with murder.
Gibraltar, Tangier, Seville, and Malaga were easy half-hour flights on weekends. My guys loved life and never got homesick. We had our Sidewinder missiles with us over there, and I worked out a deal with the gunnery range commander in Tripoli, where they were firing Matador ground-to-ground missiles that sometimes got away from them. We flew down and chased out-of-control missiles, hammering them with our Sidewinders-really good practice.
TAC was delighted with our performance and perfect deployments. We were singled out as a show squadron, and other TAC commanders visited us at George to be briefed on our deployment procedures, especially in the maintenance section. I felt damned good and never would have imagined that my days as a TAC squadron commander were numbered, or that I was about to get clobbered and barely escape court-martial.
In the winter of 1959, we were ordered to deploy to Aviano, Italy. We flew from California to England Air Force Base, Louisiana, refueled, and took off again at two in the morning. We hit our first set of tankers off the North Carolina coast, then two more sets before arriving back at Moron, in Spain, around five in the afternoon-an eleven-hour flight. All eighteen Super Sabres deployed perfectly. We spent the night at Moron, a Saturday night, and were scheduled to fly into Italy the next morning. Having spent four months at Moron the year before, my guys knew where to go to unwind. When I drove back on the base at seven the next morning, I found TAC Maj. Gen. Karl Truesdell waiting to see me. He had flown all night from Texas to personally congratulate us on another perfect deployment, but stood around in the cold dawn talking to himself because all of my pilots were in town. An hour before the briefing for our flight to Aviano, they all showed up in their flying suits. The general couldn't believe they could live that way, but that's how it was.
We took off on time for Aviano. The weather turned bad over France and Germany and got worse as we started our approach into Aviano in six hundred feet of overcast and heavy rain. It wasn't a good situation; the Super Sabre is a tough airplane to land under perfect conditions, but the weather was miserable all over Italy and Europe. It was Sunday morning, and the only base radar operators on duty were Italian air force guys who could barely speak English. Either their radar wasn't working or they didn't know how to operate it properly, so we let down using a low-frequency radio beacon. Christ, it got hairy. I came in under the clouds only to look a cliff in the eye, and turned just in time. The guys were following me down, locked in tight, and I was sure I was going to lose some people.
I had never been to Aviano, didn't know the terrain, but we finally found the field by the grace of God, and I landed furious at the controllers' poor performance. If it hadn't been for experienced night leaders in each of our three elements, we would probably have killed some pilots. I found the base commander, a bird colonel, and really lit into him for having those Italian operators in the tower. His excuse was he thought we had our own cockpit weather radar, as did the last squadron of F-l00s to deploy to Aviano, and could make our own let-down. So we got off on the wrong foot. The next day he came down to the flight line and asked if he could fly with the squadron. I was still steaming. I said, "You aren't going to fly with my squadron because that's the way it is. He turned purple and stomped off.
Our first weekend in Aviano, Col. Pete Everest flew up from North Africa, where he was in charge of the gunnery range. I hadn't seen Pete since Edwards so we had a squadron party in his honor. We started at the club on base at five in the afternoon, and by eight we were feeling no pain. Pete and I and a few others drove in a staff car to a restaurant in Pordenone. We had trouble finding the place, the streets were narrow and winding, and we busted a headlight and dented the fender. When we got back to the club around eleven, the party was still in full swing. The guys who were still standing were outnumbered by the guys who weren't. The jukebox was turned over and some wine bottles were broken. I took the club manager aside and paid for the damage. I figured one of my mechanics could do some body work on the staff car, and I would pay for a new headlight and that would be the end of it. Man, was I wrong.
By the time I woke up the next morning, I had more to worry about than a hangover. The base commander had laid for me and had me nailed. He had called his superior, the commanding general of the Seventeenth Air Force, in Germany, to complain that we had wrecked his club, and he wanted me out of there. I went to see him. "Colonel," I said, "we paid for all the damage." He said, "I don't care. You're getting out of here." I had been nasty to him, and he was paying me back in spades by ruining my career. I just looked that guy in the eye, thinking, "You rotten, petty son of a bitch." I was mad at myself too. I should've known to watch my ass around a guy like that. He had me dead to rights, and I felt sick.
I tried calling the commanding general of the Seventeenth, hoping to tell my side of the story. I had reason to hope he would want to help me out because he was Russ Spicer, my old wing commander in the Second World War, who was shot down the same day I was, when he came down too low to light his pipe. But General Spicer refused to take my call. Instead, I received a terse wire from TAC headquarters back in the States. It was signed by Gen. Frank F. Everest, no relation to Pete, unfortunately. It said: "Assign command of your squadron to your deputy and report to me immediately." I had heard that General Everest was a terror, and I was really scared. I told Pete Everest, "Jesus, my career is wiped out." He felt terrible, but tried to put the best light on things when he saw how upset I was. I was being relieved of command and ordered home. Pete said, "Well, hell, it was only a fighter pilots' party. General Everest knows all about them. He'll probably just chew your ass and send you back here." I said to Pete, "If they only wanted to chew me out ol' Russ Spicer could have done that." The guys in the squadron were in a state of shock so was I. All of them thought I'd come back, but the base commander set them straight. He told them, "Yeager is through."