on, and he would see why. We had written in the remarks section 'Flight of two AA-l's.' The technician was incredulous. He, like most general aviation people, thought of formation flying as two or more planes separated by a couple of city blocks of airspace at a minimum.
'No, no. You can't do that,' he responded.
We assured him we could.
'How you gonna see each other?' he demanded.
We explained how we proposed to do it and assured him that we regularly did it in the military.
He finally accepted that we were serious but, doubting that our plan was legal, he phoned the Kansas City Air Route Traffic Control Center and informed them of the suicidal request he had received. He came back to the counter and removed his glasses.
'The center says the military does it all the time but they had never seen civilians do it. They said they don't know of any rules against it. So I guess I can't stop you if this is what you want to do.'
A few minutes later we were taxiing out together under a 300-foot cloud ceiling, and Dave took our clearance from the tower.
'Grumman 5713 Lima Flight is cleared to Greenwood, Mississippi, as filed, maintain five thousand, squawk 0133.'
The tower controller seemed to understand that we were a flight of two, but after giving us takeoff clearance, he was aghast when we taxied onto the runway together.
'One three Lima, are you taking off in formation?' he queried.
'Yeah, that's how we filed' was Dave's response.
He told us to stand by. Obviously, more phone calls were being made as legalities were being checked and our sanity was being questioned, but a minute later he came back up.
'OK, one three Lima flight, you're cleared for takeoff. Maintain runway heading. Good luck.'
We launched into the murk with me on the wing. I could easily see his dark blue plane in the clouds, and I stayed glued to his wing for almost an hour until we broke into the clear. But still there was a solid undercast beneath us. A little while later we flew over a hole that looked to be a few acres in size, through which we could see the green Mississippi woodlands below. Out ahead of us there was little sign that the undercast was breaking up as we neared our refueling stop at Greenwood, so we canceled instrument flight rules with the center.
We were then on our own, but visual flight rules required that we remain clear of all clouds. Dave was cautious. He radioed me that the hole looked so small that he didn't know how we were going to descend through it and maintain cloud clearance. I knew he was assuming that we would use a normal shallow descent profile that would put us back into the cloud deck before we descended through the hole, but that's not what I intended. I was a fighter pilot; I knew how to get through the hole.
I told him to follow me and broke away from his wing. I rolled the Yankee nearly inverted, closed the throttle, pulled the nose down and dove through the hole as if in a dive-bomb attack. He followed. Luckily no one was cruising along under the cloud deck near the hole. But I didn't think anything of it. Such maneuvers were normal for me but not for him. When we landed he was ecstatic about it, and he laughed about it often as time went by.
A few days later we were out skirmishing over Lake Tuscaloosa. The two Yankees rolled and dove, unnoticed, I'm sure, among the scattered cumulus high above the bass boats and skiers. It really wasn't much of a match. I was pulling a high side 'yo-yo' maneuver to gain a tracking solution on him when he decided to reverse his direction of turn. It was a reckless move. I unloaded the G-pressure on my Yankee and reversed my turn in unison with him, rolling out with a perfect lead on his plane. I smiled and pressed the mike button, uttering the three words that told Dave he was beaten.
'GUNS, GUNS, GUNS.'
Dave knew far more than I about aerodynamics, flight theory, and suchhe had an aerospace engineering degreebut he simply had no experience in air combat science. He rolled out of his breaking turn, and after a minute of silent straight flight, he keyed his radio.
'How'd you do that?'
Later, over Mountain Dew, I explained it, as he nodded in pensive analysis.
A couple of years later, Dave had succeeded in finding his coveted fighter job: an F-106. The '106, or 'six pack,' was said to be the Cadillac of the fighters, definitely the prettiest fighter plane ever made, and unlike the ponderous brown and green tactical fighter that I flew, it was designed to defend the homeland against bomber attack.
Later in its years, during dissimilar air combat training, the Six proved to be very adept at preying on other fighters, as well. This was Dave's big break, and he proceeded to make up for lost time.
We compared notes often. His mission and mine were acutely different. Dave was a liberal political thinker. The politics and tactics of the recently ended Viet Nam war was always a hot subject with us, and such discussions led him to remark that he could never drop bombs on folks, innocent or not. But he loved to vow, with a squinty- eyed grinas if it would be great funthat if a Soviet bomber ever threatened his mother or anyone else's, he wouldn't hesitate to 'hose the sons-a-bitches down.'
Once again, we were home on leave when I called him one morning and explained that I was flying my brother to Jasper and would return to attack the VOR at eleven o'clock. The VOR was an unmanned navigation station with a distinctive antenna that resembled a great inverted ice cream cone. It was a challenge to air combat, of course. No more needed to be said. But he allowed as how he planned to go water skiing and had no time for such games. I knew it was a smoke screen.
At about 10:45 a.m. as I approached Lake Tuscaloosa I tuned my radio to the control tower frequency and, sure enough, heard Grumman 5713L receive takeoff clearance. The cork had been sucked under, as I suspected. My juices started to flow. I retuned my radio to 122.75, the civil air-to-air common frequency, and dropped down low. I maneuvered to approach the station from the east. He wouldn't expect that, since the route down from Jasper was from the north. I began weaving left and right, with each turn 'checking six': looking behind for signs of Dave's blue Yankee. He was not to be seen; the plan was working.
With the target almost in sight, it seemed I had a clear shot. Then with about a mile left and a good head of speed, I popped up to a thousand feet and began a left roll to bring my nose to bear on the station. As I rolled out in a shallow dive, my headphones erupted with his triumphant shouts.
'GUNS, GUNS, GUNS, YOU TURKEY!'
It was I who had taken the bait. Expecting him, and still I had been ambushed. It was indeed a turkey shoot. I needed to get back into this fight quickly, needed to salvage some dignity. I ignored his guns call and pulled up, broke hard and checked six. There was Dave about a thousand feet back, his nose pulling a deadly lead on me. I had fallen for the oldest trick in the proverbial book, allowing him to attack from out of the sun. I was aghast at my stupidity. But I pressed the fight, turning, breaking, rolling, yo-yoing to gain an inside advantage, all to no avail. He wouldn't be shaken loose. Then I began to realize that the playing field was more than even. Dave now thoroughly understood fighter tactics and spiced his performance with application of a superior understanding of his Yankee's aerodynamic characteristics. Countering my every maneuver, he zoomed higher, dove faster, and turned fighter than I could. I simply couldn't match him.
Cleanly whipped, I finally declared Mountain Dew time, and we recovered in a formation overhead pattern, to the delight of the weekend airport bums. We taxied the two petite Grummans onto the ramp and shut down, and Dave waited gleefully while I jumped out of the cockpit and vaulted over the leading edge of the wing, as Grumman pilots are disposed to do. Dave leaned against his Yankee with a smirky grin looking like the cartoon coyote gorged on roadrunner. We exchanged a few irrelevant clipped sentences, each waiting for the other to make the first comment about the fight. But then he unlatched his cowling and showed me the new 150 horsepower engine that had replaced the stock 108 horsepower, which is of course what I had. He was charitable enough to attribute his performance to the extra power, but I knew that I would never be equal to his skills, engines aside.
The years went by, and we all left the active duty Air Force. Gene eventually landed his dream job with Delta Airlines, and Dave became an instant Boeing 737 captain with an upstart no-frills airline called People Express (PEX). He joined a Guard unit but served only a couple of years.
Although he was flying his beloved F-106, Dave was unhappy in the New Jersey Air Guard. I never knew exactly why. He complained of the same things that he did on active duty ('too much paperwork, too much bullshit'), which puzzled me. I was in a Guard unit also and was very happy with it. I knew it was radically different from the active Air Force. He just didn't fit the military mold, I figured. But Dave had always been profoundly
