Typhoon Tales (Episode 1)

Kadena AB, Okinawa - the area around "radar hill." (Google Maps)

Long, long ago, shortly after the last Ice Age, I was a young(ish) airman, stationed on the island of Okinawa. It was my very first "real" Air Force assignment (everything prior to this was training) and, truth be told, I was not happy to be there. In true military fashion I had volunteered for Germany and received an assignment to Thailand.

Furious I was, foolish I later felt when one of my instructors told me a few things about Thailand. Seems it was an assignment to look forward to. However comma...

Seems that the military was "drawing down" in Southeast Asia, the war was (for us anyway) over. Saigon had fallen on the 30th of April, 1975. Exactly 13 days before I reported for my very first day of active duty.

So the American F-4 Phantoms at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base were to be sent away. The maintenance folks, aircrew, support folks, everybody was leaving Udorn with the jets. Of course, in the infinite wisdom of the Air Force, all those awaiting orders to go to Udorn would be going someplace else with them. As if they were already at Udorn. After all, Udorn was closing down.

Where were a lot of those jets and personnel going? Why to Okinawa. So let's send those slated for Udorn to Kadena. Wonderful.

I went from pissed off, to happy (approaching ecstatic) back to pissed off. All in the space of a few weeks. A buddy of mine from back home and I drove from Denver to Vermont for Christmas of 1975 (a story which will be told here, someday) and as we were crossing the windswept icy wastes of Kansas (for such it was in mid-December back then, probably still is) we heard on the radio the announcement of the very last F-4 to leave Udorn. With sound and everything.

The sound of those two J79s coming over the air waves was not much comfort to me. Though the same sound would thrill me no end in years to come. But I was young(ish) and truth be told, not all that bright in many things in those days of yore.

Eventually. one bleak February day in 1976, I left the frozen snow-drifted hills and fields of Vermont and was deposited at Naha, Okinawa, in the middle of the night, on the other side of the world. Where I waited many hours for transport to my home for the next few months. That barracks you see outlined in yellow in the opening photo.

I say for a few months because at some time in the near future we would all be moved to another barracks adjacent to radar hill. A barracks identical in layout to the one above but no longer there. Seems there have been many changes on the base since I left in 1978. Of course, much has changed everywhere since 1978, hasn't it?

Life in the barracks was not all that bad. We were one man to a room (or woman but in those days the ladies had their own barracks, no co-ed facilities in those days), we had a big refrigerator, desk and chair and a rack (aka "bed") one each. I swear my rack was from World War I. But I could have been wrong.

Now Juvat, in his most recent post, talked about the typhoon evacuations we were subject to during typhoon season. Which runs mostly from May to October, thereabouts. I'm not a meteorologist though I did have a semester in college. Which means I can spell meteorologist if you spot me the "meteor" and the "ologist."

But (wait for it) I digress...

Normally when a typhoon was announced it was every man for himself, chaos reigned as people fought over beer in the package store and...

No, that was a movie I watched a few nights ago. And it was about zombies, not typhoons. But again, I (drum roll please) digress...

First thing to take care of was the aircraft. In those days we had two squadrons of F-4Ds, one squadron of F-4Cs and a squadron of RF-4Cs. According to my source for these kind of things, the squadrons when I was there were -

• 12th Tactical Fighter Squadron (F-4Ds)
• 44th Tactical Fighter Squadron (F-4Ds)
• 67th Tactical Fighter Squadron (F-4Cs)
• 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (RF-4Cs)

I didn't work on the reconnaissance birds, just the fighters. It was enough to keep a number of fine young Americans busy, 24/7 and 365 (366) as they say. Myself being one.

Now as Juvat told you, some of the birds would fly off to the north, some would stay home. Those for which we had room and those which were (for one reason or another) not flyable. There were always a few of those around. Hangar queens we called them (but not around their crew chiefs, remember this story gentle reader?)

Now getting some of those birds into the hangars was interesting. Of course, there were never enough crew chiefs around to marshal the aircraft, outside the hangars they would be operating tractors pulling jets with tow bars. Once in the hangar, human strength would be used to jockey aircraft into every little space available. One time, some genius decided that our shop people (from WCS) would "help" marshal aircraft as part of typhoon preparations.

Some of these guys spent their entire lives in the shop, never venturing onto the flight line where the jets roared and wrench turners did their thing. No, the shop guys were all about radar mock-ups, test equipment and air conditioning. Not for them the sweaty world of the flight line. Except this one time.

Before going further we need a picture.

Source

Now the picture is of the tail area of the mighty Phantom. I call your attention to that protuberance circled in yellow on the left. That is the hind-most piece of the mighty Rhino. It is called a dump mast. There are three on the Phantom, that one circled in yellow and one on each wing (the left one is in the orange square, barely discernable.)

These dump masts are used by our intrepid air crews when they are returning home. Now an aircraft is a finicky thing, they don't like being landed when they are too heavy. One thing which can help an aircraft get down to landing weight is to dump excess fuel. Through those dump masts.

Now keep three things in mind for this next bit:

1. Inexperienced non-flight line types helping move jets
2. The dump mast on the tail sticks out
3. Dump masts are used to dump jet fuel

So there you have it, let's see what happens next.

So Airman First Class (A1C) Schmuckatelli is told off to "watch the tail of this bird as we swing it into place" - A1C Schmuckatelli is (I remind you) a "shop guy," a "mock-up weenie," a fellow little exposed to actual aircraft.

So he is intently watching the tail of one F-4 as it approaches the tail of a second F-4. Me and a select few others are moving other crap around in order to fit more jets into the hangar. As we are doing this we hear Schmuckatelli yelling, "you're good, keep coming, you're good" then a loud sound of metal tearing metal.

"Oh shit, oh dear!" we all exclaim in unison as we see where once there were two fine and perfect F-4 dump masts on two fine and semi-perfect F-4s (if they were perfect they would be "up north") there are now one twisted and sad looking dump mast and on the other bird a hole. Yes, a hole where the dump mast used to be.

Remember number 3 above? Yes, dump masts are used to dump fuel. There is a valve inside which is opened to dump the fuel. What happens if you tear the dump mast off? Well, if the valve goes as well as the dump mast, there ain't nothing to prevent the taxpayer funded JP-4 jet fuel from issuing forth from the jet. Leastwise that's how it was explained to me.

So A1C Schmuckatelli had broken two F-4s and caused jet fuel to issue forth onto the floor of a hangar packed with jets and other metal things. Some of those metal things were in the process of being moved. Dragged in some cases. Dragging metal things on concrete can cause sparks. We were in the presence of "this is not good, this could end badly." (Truth be told, the more I thought about this incident, I'm not sure how much fuel, if any, was spilled. I may be remembering this wrong and confusing this with another incident where fuel was spilled, lots of fuel. Call it artistic license and it's my story and this is how I choose to tell it. Others may remember it differently.)

Fortunately we did have adult supervision on scene in the form of grizzled old sergeants who had "been there, done that," they immediately shooed most of us out of the hangar and quickly got the leaking fuel situation under control.

The effort to patch up the jets, clean up the spilled fuel and continue to move jets into the hangar was accomplished. Took a little longer than usual, was messier than usual but it got done.

Cost the taxpayer a pretty penny I'm sure. The upside was that we WCS weenies were never invited to play in any reindeer games aircraft marshaling efforts ever again. We didn't really mind. After all, we'd rather be hunkered down in the barracks, drinking beer, playing pinochle and waiting for the typhoon.

It's what we did when we were young.

I'm not sure whatever happened to Schmuckatelli. Didn't think to ask.

There's some things you're better off not knowing.

If you catch my meaning.