Around The World in 50 Years: The stories of a Pan American World Airways Aeronautical Engineer
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Around The World in 50 Years: The stories of a Pan American World Airways Aeronautical Engineer
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781477260159 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 08/22/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 262 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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AROUND THE WORLD IN 50 YEARS
THE STORIES OF A PAN AMERICAN WORLD AIRWAYS AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERBy VINCENT P. FLURY
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Vincent P. FluryAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-6016-6
Chapter One
Air Force
Basic Training
On January 3, 1951, I was sworn into the United States Air force in Miami, Florida. Unbeknownst to me, this same scenario had been repeated all over the USA. Thousands of other guys, like me, waited until after the Holidays to join up based on our family's strong requests as the Korean War was getting into full swing. The result of this great influx of personnel was a disaster. We were all sent to the Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas where the normal influx of new recruits was exceeded by over 1,000 percent. There were no uniforms for us. We had to live in whatever clothes we had arrived in for 24 hours a day. There were not sufficient quarters available for us to live in which resulted in a tent city being erected, mostly by the new recruits. We slept on cots with no bedding.
The normal personal inspections for health and hygiene resulted in many hundreds of us being lined up in a very large building, naked as jay-birds, for the standard venereal disease inspections followed by the delousing sprays. Since there were no towels or uniforms available, we had to put the same old clothes right back on after the delousing. We were still dripping wet with the bug spray.
In the previous three or four months before joining the Air Force, I had been working for an Advertisement Company erecting new Sign Boards to replace the hundreds of Sign Boards that had been destroyed in the Hurricane of 1950 in Miami, Florida, along the U.S. 1 Highway. My standard working uniform consisted of boots and Levis with no shirt. At the end of the day, I always had a clean shirt to put on to go home with. The result was that I had one of the darkest tans most people had ever seen, from the waist up, that is. Shortly after we had begun stripping down and lining up for the inspection and delousing, I noticed that there was a flurry of people coming over to the area that I was in and gawking at me. Finally I heard one of the guys say, "There he is. My God, he is half black and half white." The tan line around my waist had developed into a perfect circle and sure enough, I looked half white and half black. Our living conditions were atrocious. Imagine if one of our military Basic Training centers were overrun with new recruits today under these same conditions. The base would be inundated with reporters and our conditions would have made headline news. Most of us could have probably received a reprieve from our commitment due to what the press would surely have called "inhumane" conditions. Fortunately, we were not a coddled group of teenagers back then. We certainly did not like it, but we stayed the course.
Two weeks after we arrived at Lackland Air Force Base, 100 of us new recruits were rounded up, loaded onto C-82 Flying Box Cars, and flown to Pope Air Force Base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the home of the Army's 82nd Air Borne Division We were herded out of the planes and into formation on the tarmac in front of several paratrooper Drill Instructors. The chief DI had hash marks on his sleeve running from his elbow down to his wrist which indicated that he was a very, very old timer. As he stood in front of us I could swear that there were tears in his eyes as he gruffly shouted "you bunch of $#&*'s, you joined the Air Force to get away from me, didn't you!!! But God has sent you back to me to give me the pleasure of trying to make something out of nothing. Since there was no room for you $#&*'s in Texas, your Basic Training will be conducted here at Fort Bragg, using the basic Paratrooper program." From then on, it got worse ... a lot worse.
We were housed in the Air Force WAF's quarters which were located inside a wire fence enclosed compound at Fort Bragg. (Of course that only cemented the Drill Instructor's original name for us throughout the entire Fort Bragg Base). The barracks were specifically built for women so the "heads" were different from anything that we were used to. No urinals for one, and various other gadgets that we had no use for. Roll call was at 05:30 and the only way the guys on the second floor could make formation in time was to jump out of the window. That practice was deleted after a few twisted or broken ankles. Since I had been a boxer throughout my teen years, I was in very good shape and handled the regimen without any problems. However, there were a number of casualties but I have no recollection of how many.
The most vivid memory of that whole experience for me was the day that we were given the standard "one day leave". We were all bused into Fayetteville, NC to enjoy ourselves as we saw fit. Problem was, as we arrived at the bus station, there was what seemed like hundreds of Paratrooper recruits also on their "one day leave "who started leaping into the bus as the doors opened. A great free-for-all fight broke out within the confines of the bus. I was located near the back of the bus and had some very good shots at these guys as they had to operate within a limited space and I could effectively counter punch and finally had a chance to take out my own frustrations. Unfortunately most of the damage was done to my Air Force buddies and after the MP's dragged all of the Paratroopers off of the bus, we were driven immediately back to Fort Bragg without ever having seen the fair city of Fayetteville, NC.
Alexandria, LA
Following basic I was transferred, against my will, to the 48th Fighter-Bomber Wing at Alexandria Air Force Base in Alexandria, LA for training as an Aircraft and Engine Mechanic. I was told that the written promise of the Air Force recruiter in Miami that I would go to Gunnery School to become an Aerial Gunner "must have gotten lost in Lackland some place" That became the first instance of what every ex G.I. has learned from his service experience. The routine starts with the place that you are leaving from. You are told "don't worry about it, just follow orders and when you get to the place that you are being transferred to, they will straighten it all out." Once you arrive at your destination, you are then told, "you should have straightened that out while you were back there, I cannot do anything about it now, it is too late." And so it was that I started my career in Aviation lamenting the fact that I could not become an Aerial Gunner. Little did I realize that those forks in the road that I was so unhappy about would eventually lead me onto the road of spending some 50 years of my life in the Aeronautical field during the most opportune and exciting times in all of history. It was what I call the hyperbolic age of travel.
If you were to plot a graph of the traveling speed of man over the last 2,000 years, you would use a graph like this: The X (horizontal) axis denoting a calendar beginning with the time of Jesus Christ and increasing to the right as you go out the X axis. The Y (vertical) axis denoting speed in Miles per Hour beginning at zero and increasing as you go up the Y axis. The plotted line that you would see would be a very long, almost flat line going out along the X axis and almost laying on the X-axis line itself for over 1,900 years as man's speed barely increased from his walking to the use of animals such as Donkeys and Horses. Then this straight line would increase again but very slightly as the automobile and trains began to arrive. With the advent of the airplane in the early 1900's and later the rockets, man's speed began increasing at a hyperbolic rate (an upward curve caused by the vertical increased speed rate being faster than the horizontal time increase rate). At the time that I was born in 1931, the speed of man was still in the flat stages of its development. Not only have I lived to see this phenomenal increase in our travel capability, but I was fortunate enough to have become an integral part of the group of people who worked in and helped develop the Aeronautical field of aviation and rockets. I saw us break the sound barrier. Later we were at the Cape to watched Apollo 11 blast off and a couple of days after that, we saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon on TV. There was even Supersonic Airline travel available aboard the Concorde which I had the pleasure of flying in. And it all came about because I did not get my wish to become an Aerial Gunner. My career turned out to be one of the most exciting and gratifying lives that one could ask for. "Be careful of what you wish for, it might come true!" was very apropos for me.
The 48th Fighter-Bomber Wing in Alexandria, LA consisted of three groups of 25 F-86 aircraft each along with the pilots who flew the planes and the Maintenance personnel who conducted Line Maintenance functions. The fourth group was the Base Maintenance group which handled all of the routine and heavy maintenance including engine changes for all of the aircraft at the base. Luckily, I was assigned to the Base Maintenance group which would provide me with more in depth knowledge of the rigors of Jet Aircraft and Engine maintenance requirements.
The first year consisted mostly of training and repetitive hands-on functions to become familiar with our F-86 Aircraft. We had one recovery mission that I remember well, where one of our Aircraft lost an engine over Texas and made an emergency dead stick landing at an abandoned Air Base in Victoria, Texas. We loaded a replacement engine along with our engine change tools onto a flatbed and a service truck. Four of us mechanics jumped into a Jeep and drove convoy style to Victoria, Texas, a distance of about 300 miles on a Saturday. We located the Base and Aircraft and since it was getting dark, we decided to start the Engine change and run up in the morning. We reported our ETR (Estimated Time of Release) to our home base and the pilot was scheduled for his arrival at the same time.
We located a motel not far away and secured our lodgings and then asked about finding a restaurant. We were directed to a café not far away and 5 of us got into the jeep and found the café which was next to what looked like a big barn. We could hear country music and the noise of people having a good time. After eating our dinner we went into the barn and discovered that we could join in the festivities for a minimal "cover charge" and drinks were also "available." Of course we joined right in. Being born and raised in New England before moving to Miami, FL, I had never seen country dancing but it did not look that difficult so I asked a young lady if she would like to dance and she said yes. We started going around in circles and joining in with the entire group which was going around in one large circle. As we talked and introduced ourselves she noted in her southern drawl that I had an "accent" and asked where I was from. When I replied, "Massachusetts," she stopped dead in her tracks, and then blurted out, "why you're a damn Yankee!" She walked off the dance floor and left me standing there completely at a loss as to what to do next. I had never been exposed to the still lingering southern abhorrence for the Union people but fortunately my buddy, Tom Collins from North Carolina, recognized the potential problems immediately. He came out to the dance floor and quickly guided me back to our table. Without a word being said, everyone at our table got up as we approached the table and we all walked out of the barn, got into our Jeep, and took off down the road with Tom driving. We soon realized that we were going in the wrong direction. Tom made some turns and got us back around the barn without going directly past it and we arrived safely back at our Motel. The next morning we replaced the engine and accomplished the Engine run-up and check out with no items. The pilot took off about 11:00 am
France / Germany
The entire "Fighting 48th" was transferred to Chaumont, France in the spring of 1952. We were loaded onto ships in New Orleans, and sailed down the west side of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico and then rounded the Florida peninsular and followed the Gulfstream north. This route brought us near my home, Miami, Fl., before we headed eastward across the Atlantic Ocean towards France. Being so close to Miami that we could see the Hotels on Miami Beach before heading across the ocean was a bitter-sweet occasions for me.... so close and yet, so far!
We arrived in La Havre, France, amid many of the still rusting hulks of American ships that had been sunk just outside of the harbor during the invasion of Europe in World War II. It was a grim reminder of the sacrifices made by the thousands of American G.I.'s. We were greeted at the docks by hundreds of French Communist who were shouting "U.S. Go Home" as they waved placards and displayed their graffiti with similar messages. Imagine, all those sacrifices just a few years ago, and already these people were spiting on us! This greeting, combined with the Salvation Army's greetings as we came down the gang planks with coffee and doughnuts, if we could pay for it, was indelibly registered in my mind.
We had an all night train ride from La Havre via Paris to Chaumont, France. When we arrived we learned that our new Air Base was an abandoned German Fighter Aircraft Base located about 225 Kilometers south east of Paris. It had never been used since the Germans made a hasty retreat. An advance group of supply and base personnel had erected eight man tents for us to live in along with a temporary Mess Hall and First Aid station. All the comforts of home! A prefabricated hangar had also been erected adjacent to the Taxiway. I had to learn how to be a welder as we laid a PSP (Perforated Steel Planking) base on the ground providing a temporary tarmac from the Taxiway to our Hanger for our Aircraft to use. When we were ready, our F-86 Fighter-Bombers began arriving and I can tell you, it felt good to have our birds back again.
After a while, we got used to living in the Mud Hole. In late September, 1952, our outfit was quickly transferred to the Furstundfeldbruck air base in Germany to cover around-the-clock patrols of East Germany during the height of the "Cold War". We were scheduled to stay there for three months. Living at that German Air Base made us realize that our Chaumont Air Base must be the worst Air Base in USAFE (U. S. Air Forces in Europe).
The "Fursty" Air base had been the headquarters of Herman Goering, the commanding General of the German Air Force. The base had been repaired and cleaned up following the American Bombing raids and to us, it was like moving into heaven. Since we had never figured out how to remove the stains of the Chaumont mud from our fatigues and brogans, we did not meet the desired military crisp and proper dress code which was evident in the "Fursty" based group. We definitely looked like some of those guys in the MASH television show. We were also a very informal group regarding the relationship between the pilots and the mechanics. There was none of the usual saluting every time we crossed paths. We were more of a team than a military organization. We were a close knit group and we never slacked off from our twelve hours on and twelve hours off routine. We met every deadline.
The first week or so was tough as we were being dressed down quite often for not being of "good military bearing." It was not long, however, before our Wing had surpassed the home base Wing in sorties and on-time performance. They began to give us "Mud Hens" some slack and our three month stint became much more enjoyable. Furstundfeldbruck was just outside of Munich and fortunately we were there for the Oktoberfest. During that period, the required sorties gradually slowed down and we had a chance to enjoy some of the German social life. Munich will always be close to my heart as that was the place where I learned to drink beer. Back in those days, the smoked fish and sausages to munch on while you drank beer were free and plentiful. And the "ump-pah-pah" bands were almost continuous.
The majority of us were a bit disappointed when our ninety day mission came to a close. Going back "home" to our Chaumont, France base lacked the usual heart-warming homecoming feeling. We continued to live in our 8 man tents for well over two years before we were finally moved into newly built Barracks. Our hospital was a series of MASH tents. Our "Rec Center" was a Beer Hall Tent (in which I once lost my stripes for starting a fight that ended up bringing the whole tent down on everybody. I got the stripes back at the rate of one stripe a month.)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from AROUND THE WORLD IN 50 YEARS by VINCENT P. FLURY Copyright © 2012 by Vincent P. Flury. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword....................xiPrologue....................xv
Acknowledgements....................xvii
Chapter 1....................1
Air Force....................1
Chapter 2....................19
University of Miami / Pan Am Co-operative Student....................19
Chapter 3....................24
Pan American Engineering....................24
Chapter 4....................46
Africa....................46
Chapter 5....................98
Saudi Arabia....................98
Chapter 6....................110
Yemen....................110
Chapter 7....................164
New York/Miami....................164
Chapter 8....................171
Airbus Industrie....................171
Chapter 9....................205
Flury Consulting....................205
Epilogue....................237
Appendix....................241
Life Goes On at Eighty....................241