ATTENTION: © Copyright The Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech ...
ATTENTION: © Copyright The Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University. “Fair use” criteria of
Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for
educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of the Vietnam
Archive at Texas Tech University. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial
purposes without written authorization from the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University. All
materials cited must be attributed to the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University.
Vietnam Archive
Oral History Project
Interview with Frank Bonansinga
Conducted by Stephen Maxner
April 16, 2001
Transcribed by Tammi Mikel and Reccia Jobe
NOTE: Text included in brackets [ ] is information that was added by the narrator after reviewing the
original transcript. Therefore, this information is not included in the audio version of the interview.
Steve Maxner: This is Steve Maxner, conducting an interview with Mr. Frank
Bonansinga on the 10th of April, 2001, at approximately 12 noon Lubbock time. I am in
Lubbock, Texas and Mr. Bonansinga, why don’t you tell us where you are?
Frank Bonansinga: I’m in Indio Hills, California which is about 15 miles outside of Palm
Springs up at around 1000 feet and looking out and I can see Palm Springs about 25 miles away.
SM: Why don’t we begin today by talking a little bit about your early life, in particular
when and where you were born, and where you grew up?
FB: I was born the 28th of July, 1928. My dad was a full-blooded Italian, born in this
country, and my mother was Norwegian and I was born in Sioux City, Iowa and spent five years
there. My mother kept a baby book and I read it and it said that, “He looks up at airplanes and
giggles and laughs,” and that sort of thing, so there must have been something there. As a baby,
my mother’s aunt used to take me out to watch the barn stormers. I don’t remember this but it
was done quite often and apparently this could have had something to do with my early desire to
fly because that’s all I ever wanted to do. I read Big Little books which was the forerunner of
the comic book about Tailspin Tommy and listened to the radio all the time as a boy growing up,
that sort of thing.
SM: Were there any radio programs that had an emphasis on flying?
FB: Yes, Jimmy Allen was one, Tailspin Tommy and Jimmy Allen. I remember listening
to that, and then when we moved during the Depression we moved from Sioux City out to Los
Angeles in 1935. I remember my folks taking me to the [Orphium] Theater to see Jimmy Allen
who was a young radio star and I saw him in person, and then shortly thereafter on April 21,
1935 - the reason I know that is I have a picture of me, it’s Easter Sunday - and I had my first
airplane ride in an open cockpit, and I’m sitting in the front seat with the goggles and helmet on
with my Aunt Letha and I remember that flight quite well. I was not yet seven, and of course
that was a joy.
SM: What year was this again?
FB: That was April 21st, 1935. It was just before my seventh birthday and I got to go
up…I believe they let me go up twice and I didn’t fly again until I was in high school. My folks
took me to…we got to go see the Cleveland Air Races that were held in Los Angeles in 1935 or
’36 and I remember the parachutes and the races and the racers. It was a pylon race, and of
course that was quite impressive, but probably the biggest single event as a child about aviation
had to do in 1936 or ’37, I can’t remember exactly when, Jimmy Doolittle who was vice
president of Shell Oil Company flew into the parking lot there at the corner of Fairfax where the
Gilmore Stadium, [auto, midget cars] racing stadium, used to be and there was a big auditorium
there called the Pan Pacific Auditorium and they opened up a huge hanger and the planes went in
there and there was an exhibit, and my mother was working there and my dad and mother,
somehow, someway, I got to meet Jimmy Doolittle and he gave me his picture, autographed
picture, and signed it, and gave me a penlight. In fact I’m looking at his picture right now. It’s
on the side of the wall in my…where I’m in this room. That was a very big thing to me and of
course later when he bombed Tokyo in April of 1942 and I told all the kids at school I knew him,
they didn’t quite believe me.
SM: Did you bring your picture in to show them?
FB: Oh no, no, I didn’t have it. I mean, I was at boarding school then and the picture
was at home.
SM: Do you remember if he had any words of encouragement for you?
FB: I really don’t. He did, of course, but he wouldn’t remember me. He just signed an
autograph, a nice letter sized autograph with him sitting on the cockpit in his flight suit and
helmet and goggles and of course later on in life I became an experimental test pilot and he was
an honorary member and I wrote him and thanked him very much for his influence and got a nice
letter back.
SM: Very nice.
FB: Oh, one thing I probably should mention is my dad took me to see Hell’s Angels, the
Howard Hughes million dollar movie which a million dollars back then was an awful lot of
money, and I remember that movie quite well, that and Tarzan are the first two movies I
remember. Of course there were a lot of serials about flying that we kids, we all saw every
Saturday, World War I dogfights and that sort of thing and Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon was
just…we all loved it, but it was impossible. Nothing like that could happen, of course, and
heroes, besides Jimmy Doolittle of course, and Charles Lindbergh and that sort of thing. So, I
had everything and my dream was to fly as a little boy.
SM: When you said you went away for boarding school, was this for your high school
years?
FB: No, we moved to New Orleans. We spent two years in Los Angeles, and then my
dad got a job in New Orleans in 1937 I believe it was, and we moved to New Orleans, and my
mom and dad split up and I ended up going to the Christian Brothers Boy’s School called St.
Paul’s in Covington, Louisiana and that’s where I went to school and loved it and graduated
from there in 1945. While I was there, they had…I was a member of what they called the Civil
Air Patrol, the CAP they called it and we wore a little uniform, wore khakis. I remember we
carved out balsa wood, we carved out models of planes for the Army Air Corps it was called
then and the Navy for identification type thing. I got to fly once in an Army L-19 I believe it
was when I was at St. Paul’s. All kids, all of us, used to build model airplanes out of balsa wood,
rubber band powered, and that was a lot of fun. After we got tired of them we’d stick a match
into them and let them go off the side of the building and crash. That was the way it was, you
know, you crashed and burned! The only other movie, two other flying movies I really
remember was “Dawn Patrol” which was a World War I movie with Errol Flynn and Ralph
Bone, and then of course “Test Pilot” was another movie I liked a lot and I remember. My
parents both smoked, everybody smoked back in those days, nobody really thought much about
it, and right before the war started they were smoking Wings cigarettes and they’d smoke those
Wings cigarettes and I’d get the pictures. In fact, I’ve got 91 separate individual pictures of
aircraft that are really a…I don’t know how much of a collector’s item they are, but to me they’re
wonderful.
SM: These came with the packs of cigarettes?
FB: One per pack of cigarettes, and so I’ve got them. That is pretty much my early life.
I was just an average student, real good in history, and I graduated when I was 16 because in
those days when I first went to grade school in Louisiana and lots of places down south they only
had seven grades in grade school so I went to high school as a 13 year old and graduated when I
was 16. So, I waited until my 17th birthday in July of ’45 to join the…to fly.
SM: That’s when you volunteered to join the Navy?
FB: Yes, I wanted to become an Army Air Corps pilot like Lindbergh and Rickenbocker
and Jimmy Doolittle, but when I went down to the federal building on my birthday, the only
program that was open was the Naval Aviator V-5 program and of course I wanted to fly, didn’t
make an awful lot of difference. I didn’t know anybody in the Navy or know anything about it
but I took the test that day and fortunately passed.
SM: Well, was history your favorite subject in school?
FB: I guess it was. I was for some reason very good. I won the history medal and that’s
about the only thing I won. I did win the high hurdles at St. Paul’s which is amazing, I won the
state high hurdles so I had a four year scholarship to go to LSU but I didn’t. I went to Tulane.
Typing was the best thing I ever…most useful thing, other than obviously reading, writing, and
arithmetic. The fact that I took typing as a senior in high school, I’m really grateful for that
because that has really paid off in life, especially now with a computer.
SM: Was track and field the only sport you engaged in?
FB: I was pretty good as…I was 5’10” and ¾ and weighed 135 pounds which is really
skinny. I put on a pound a year for the last 60 years so I weigh about 200 pounds. But,
fortunately I have a very long body and short legs, and that’s why it’s so amazing I won the high
hurdles. No, I was a good…my best sport was basketball. I was a very good basketball player
considering. I learned to do a jump shot and I’d heard about it and I was the first one to do a
jump shot back then [at St. Paul’s] and I was very good. In football at this little school, at the
school I went to I was only 16 in my class all boys and I used to tell them I was fifth in my class.
Of course I never told them out of 16 of us, but I was good in football. I made right end, they
called it end then, and I only caught one pass in my senior year for a touchdown, but I got to play
both offense and defense and that’s the way it was back then. Then, we didn’t have baseball so
football, basketball, and track I lettered in. In fact, I even lettered in track my first year as a
freshman which was…I was fast, but not that fast!
SM: What do you remember most about growing up during the Depression years?
FB: Well the Depression, we didn’t think anything of it other than the fact that I can
remember an awful lot of things. We used to call them bums, that’s what you used to call people
that came around, and they’d put like a little X on the house, and I remember they came to our
house often because momma would always give them a sandwich or something. Things were
tough, but we learned to do things for ourselves, like we made our own toys. I made my own
kites and flew them and I made, as I told you, model airplanes. We carved tops. We walked to
the movies and I think the boys, I got a job when I was a little kid in California selling Liberty
Magazines. I remember they were a nickel. The kids, I think they had to become much more
reliant, self reliant, when things were tough. That’s what I remember. I do remember my mom
and dad and my grandparents talking about the day Roosevelt closed the banks. They called it a
bank holiday. But, I certainly think in the long run we were most fortunate to grow up in the
depression when you come right down to it. We learned to…I think we had to fend for ourselves
and money wasn’t the most important thing, it was working to have a job. That’s the way I felt
all my life. I never did really fly for money, never even thought about it.
SM: Well you mentioned earlier that your mother would give hobos or bums sandwiches
and there was an X that was marked on your house?
FB: I’m not going to say there was an X but we had heard that they would mark an X for
something that needed something to eat.
SM: In other words, it was known amongst the small community of hobos or bums or
whatever you want to call them?
FB: No, no, this is just every now and then somebody would come by the house. It was
just a normal thing in those days. One thing I think I should mention, in California which was
really something, I just thought of it, too; when my dad would buy gas, I remember he’d stop,
there was a filling station next to what they called La Brea Tar Pits in California, in Los Angeles,
and this filling station had a World War I bomber parked in its lot and my dad would stop there
so I could go up and play inside it.
SM: It was open so anybody could go in?
FB: Oh yeah.
SM: Let’s see, and then when you graduated from high school and waited a year, what
did you do during that year? Is that when you sold Liberty Magazines?
FB: No, I sold Liberty’s when I was about six or seven years old. During World War II
and vacation I worked as a machinist. My uncle, my mom’s brother, Lloyd D. Hardy up in
Sioux City, he had General Motors car dealership and of course they all closed during the war so
they went into making parts for the military and his particular plant/office made reamers for .75
millimeter shells, which a reamer is the tool that goes on the inside of the shell and reams it out
so they can put the explosives in. So, we were making reamers and I went up there two summers
and I was making .25 cents an hour the first year and I think I made a few dollars more, but it
was a lot of money then, and I’d learned how to run a lathe and weld and use internal cylindrical
grinders, so I loved it and I saved a few dollars. So, we worked. You got to work in those days
and there was no such things as laws or anything like that. Then just before I graduated in May
of ’45 and I wouldn’t be 17 until July 28th so in that period I worked as a helper in New Orleans
for a refrigeration company and I was just a “go-for”. I just carried this toolbox around but we
went on…the Navy ships out of Algiers would sail down the Mississippi and out to the South
Pacific and their scuttlebutts, or water fountains as they’re called in the Navy, would need to be
serviced along with all the ones down in the engine room where it was over 100 degrees all the
time, it was a continuous thing, and then sometimes you went on…those were destroyers and
ships like that, and sometimes we went on the concrete Kaiser ships and they were hot, hot, hot.
So, we had a full time job repairing these refrigeration units with freon and that sort of thing.
That’s what I did until I went…until I was old enough and my mother signed for me so I could
become a Naval aviator because I was underage.
SM: What did she think about you wanting to become a Naval aviator?
FB: I really didn’t care what I was in. I wanted to be, like I said, an Army Air Corps
pilot because of Rickenbocker, Lindbergh, and Doolittle, but I was glad to get into anything so I
could fly.
SM: I mean your mom, what did she think?
FB: Oh no, she didn’t…she knew I was an airplane nut. I mean, my mom and dad both
knew it and there was no problem there. They signed and I went into the [Navy]…I waited to be
called and incidentally two college students took the exams with me and they both failed. I had
picked up a book, a large type manual that cost a couple bucks back then and studied it for two
months to help pass the test and I’m sure that helped, too, because the tests were very
comprehensive in the words and English and mathematics and physics and that sort of thing, so
I’m sure that helped me. And, of course passing the physical I had no problem. I was light. I
only weighed 135 pounds, but skinny of course, but a lot of us were skinny then. I noticed on my
physical they put down “build” and they put down “athletic” and I thought, “Wow!”
SM: What month in 1945 was this when you went down…
FB: On my birthday, the 28th of July, and about two weeks later why the bomb dropped
and the war was over. So, I figured when World War II was over they wouldn’t want me
anymore and I really wasn’t that worried. I was kind of disappointed, I know that sounds awful,
but I wanted to be a military…I wanted to learn to fly, so I couldn’t believe it, I got orders. In
those days they had a big sign that says, “Join the Navy, and see the world,” and where did they
send me? They sent me a mile from my house to Tulane. So, I got on a streetcar and went to
Tulane and we were in uniform. I was an apprentice seaman, B-5, along with 600 others, and we
lived in the gym, in a basketball gymnasium, a whole bunch of us. The food was good, plenty to
eat, and I went to college there and made it through; it wasn’t easy. I played a lot of bridge and
was playing basketball and playing track and wasn’t getting the best grades, but I passed it. I
made it through college so that I was sent to pre-flight in June of 1947.
SM: What did you major in in college?
FB: We didn’t major in anything. We had a two year arts and science class, and I did
take meteorology which I liked and astronomy. They had an observatory. Those two things I
really liked, and of course I did well in mechanical drawing because I’d just had it at St. Paul’s
and it was identical to the course I took. But, I had to get through the…Tulane was not easy, and
like I said, I was just an average student.
SM: Was there any subject that you did enjoy? Was it history again?
FB: Oh yeah, history, but I don’t remember if we had…I guess we did have a history
course. Of course I loved the meteorology and the astronomy. I did pretty well in English and I
did good in math. My physics I had trouble with at Tulane, you had to pass that. That’s about it
I guess.
SM: When you finished at Tulane you went into the Navy. Where did you go to pre-
flight?
FB: There’s one thing that I probably should mention, in fact, I have to mention, is while
we were at Tulane our second year…I mean our first year, they sent Larry Nichols and I and
another sailor down to Miami, [?] Miami during summer vacation. We were still wearing…still
on active duty making $50 bucks a month, but that was a lot of money, and we got down to
[NAS], Miami to do what they called tarmac duty and what that really meant was we just went
out and we were around the planes. They were F-6s, [Corsair’s], TBMs, SB2Cs, World War II
planes, and we were there for about six weeks, and it was a lot of fun just being around the
planes and doing menial jobs. We’d bus back over to [NAS] Miami. One afternoon while we
were riding back in the bus and we looked up and saw a balloon, looked like a weather balloon
drifting through the afternoon cumulus clouds and we didn’t think anything more about it. We
got back to OPA-LOCK A and we were out by the pool just a few minutes later and this Corsair
came over, F-4U Corsair, it came over and it was normal. They used to buzz. It was advanced
training and it was probably figured it was one of the new pilots, training pilots. We watched
him and he turned and then he came back around again real low over the pool and we watched
him and then he headed down towards the hangers and crashed. It was a huge orange cloud of
black smoke and we ran down there and it was right after secure, so fortunately the line
crewmen, most everyone had left just 15 minutes before. But, the plane had crashed and made a
very large crater close to the parked planes and then their engine had separated and went into the
hanger, and fortunately only one person was killed and very few were injured. What had
happened, this plane flew back to the base by itself and circled the base. The pilot had bailed
out, he got into an inverted spin in Corsair which was really bad, it’s tough to get out of, and the
balloon we saw was his parachute. This plane had flown back by itself because the engine had
not been cut, pulled out, flew back to the base, circled the base, and you know that a couple of
years later I saw that drawn on Believe It or Not by Ripley, and of course I believe it; I saw it.
SM: Well you mentioned the fact that the engine was not cut off. Was it supposed to
have been cut off?
FB: Well it would have been a smart thing to do but when you’re upside down and
spinning and you can’t get out of something I can see how it would happen. It would just be like
some people wouldn’t think about perhaps turning the engine off if there as a fire in the front of
their car. It might be a very good idea to shut the engine down because that might stop the fuel
pump. Yeah, you should…it would have been a good idea for him to have done that obviously.
But, you never know. Maybe it would have crashed into somebody’s house. That’s why I
never…I very seldom second guess people when they have accidents. Oh, I did learn to fly at
Tulane.
SM: This is where you took private lessons, correct, on the GI bill?
FB: Yes, what I was going to tell you was this; right after this happened they sent all of
us in 1946 after this tarmac duty…what they did was they discharged all of us. They sent us to
discharge centers all over the United States where they had the V-5 and V-12 students,
engineering students in V-12 and the V-5 were the Navy pilot students. Well we went up to
Jacksonville and got mustered out and they said, “We’re going to send you back to college as
civilians but you’ll be on inactive duty. You’ll be in the Navy, but on inactive duty and you’ll
still get your $50 bucks a month, so we did. Well when we got back to go to Tulane, I was living
at home, and I saw this ad in the paper. Somehow I found out there was a flying service called
the Crescent City Flying Service giving instructions in a Cub, Cubs, for so much an hour; it was
$8 bucks dual and $6 solo, but they said, “GI Bill students apply,” and I thought, “Now wait a
minute,” and I went down there and I said, “Look, I’ve only been…I’m just 17 going on 18.” I
said, “I been in the Navy a year, am I a veteran?” and they said, “Yeah, you’re a veteran. You
can learn to fly under the GI bill,” so I did. I went out and I had an instructor named Joe
Bonamo who’d been a Navy pilot and an ex-airline pilot and he taught me how to fly in the Cub.
SM: This was a tail dragger?
FB: Yeah, a little piper cub, tail dragger, nothing in it but a little coffee grinder, no gas
gauge. You turn the prop by hand to start it. He’d start it; I’d sit in the front and he’d start it. As
a matter of fact, I soloed on April 26th, 1946, and about 14 days later was All Saint’s Day,
November the 1st, 1946.
SM: And was that your first cross country experience?
FB: Yes, that was my first cross country and Joe, Joe’s married to a gal, French lady, and
her father lived down in a place called Chevane which is southwest Louisiana bayou country. It
was about an hour flight in the cub down there, and Joe said, “Well let’s go flying today,” and I
said, “Yeah, sure!” I was ready. I had to get my cross country. So, we flew down there and
then when we got down there it was a field, looked like a cow pasture, and he said, “I’ll take it,”
and I said, “Okay, you got it!” I was glad because I didn’t want to land on that little place. So he
landed it, no problem, we taxied in and there were a whole bunch of folks there waiting, standing
around, and Joe’s father in law, and this one man came up to Joe after we shut down and we got
out and he says, “Man, last time a plane came down here, crash!” and Joe said…nodded his
head, and he said, “Hey, would you watch this plane for me, keep the cows away from it? We’re
going fishing for a couple of hours, and I’ll give you a buck when we get back,” and he said,
“Sure!” So, Joe’s father in law and I went in his truck and went fishing and caught some fish,
bass, and had something to eat, and about three hours later we came back and this man was there
and he said to Joe and me, he said, “Man, last time a plane came down here, crash!” So Joe gave
him a dollar and we got in the plane and I started it and Joe got in the back and he said, “Frank,
I’ll show you a carrier take off,” and I said, “Okay,” and we waved to the local Cajuns and Joe’s
father in law and we taxied there and the cows are watching and the Cajuns are watching and we
start taking off and bouncing down and we never made it; we crashed. We went right into the
trees at the end, but we didn’t get hurt. The plane was demolished, I mean it was ripped, but
neither one of us got hurt. We got a bump on the knee and a couple of scratches, and Joe says to
me, “Hey, you should have had your feet on the brakes!” and I said, “No, I was just watching
and waiting and hoping,” and then here come the Cajuns and they’re running, and the first guy,
it’s the same guy, he says, “Man, I told you so, man, I told you so!”
SM: How long was this field?
FB: Oh, it was short. I couldn’t…it was a short field. Obviously it was not long enough.
They put me…he put me on a bus, a Greyhound bus and I rode back and he stayed with the plane
with his father in law and on the way back is when I started thinking, I said, “Man, that could
have been serious!” I’m making a carrier, getting a demo carrier takeoff, and I’ve already
crashed and I haven’t even been on the carrier! But, it ended up okay. Joe didn’t get in any
trouble. They got a new Piper Cub out of it. I ended up less than a month later getting my
private pilot’s license and I got 60 hours of flying out of it thanks to the GI bill. I always thought
they were going to come and get me for sure and send me to Leavenworth because I knew I was
breaking the law. How could I be a veteran? But, there was never any problem. I don’t know if
it helped me or not, but it sure was a lot of fun.
SM: Now the flying that you did there with this pilot, Navy pilot, did he pass on
information about…he mentioned the carrier take off, but other lessons and information?
FB: Yeah, what he taught me most…well, in those days we learned spins. We had to
learn spins and full stalls and all that stuff, and I did everything, but one of the things that he
taught me that I remember real well was short field landings. Of course that’s basically what
you’re doing on a carrier is making a real short field landing. Also, he made me keep a good log
book. We had to buy a log book and he showed me how he wanted me to keep it, and over my
years I had 14,000 hours and 8,000 landings and a whole bunch of flights, and one of the reasons
I have been able to recall a lot of things is because I kept pretty good logs, records, in the back of
every mark section about crashes and being shot at and all kinds of things. So, I’ve got these
seven log books that have helped. Joe was a fine man, good pilot, and I have to thank him. You
always remember your first teacher.
SM: Do you remember about how much you were charged per hour?
FB: They charged $8 dual and $6 solo in those days to fly. I’ve got some of the old
sectional of charts and they were .25 cents back then and now they’re…my goodness, 2.50 or I
don’t know how much. I have no idea how much sectionals are, but flying was
considerably…everything was considerably less. Just think about it; I smoked back then,
cigarettes. We got a carton of cigarettes for $2 dollars, and now I think they pay over $2
dollars…I quit smoking in ’67, but cigarettes are horribly expensive, so everything was less
expensive then.
SM: Let’s see, what were the biggest differences in terms of your flying experience and
your training between getting a civilian pilots license and flying with your first instructor Joe,
and then going into the Navy flight program?
FB: Well, let’s face it, the Piper Cub might have weighed 1000 pounds if that. It had a
65 horsepower engine, and when I went through flight training after pre-flight, I got to basic and
we were flying SNJs which is a…I think it had a 650 horsepower engine. So, it was 10 times
more powerful and it was a bigger, heavier airplane, had a machine gun in it which we used for
training, and the gear came up in it and we did spins and stalls and acrobats. So, the plane was
bigger and then of course in the Navy the syllabus for flying was we had instrument flying, we
had all sorts of things, formation flying, and eventually we landed the SNJ aboard the carrier. In
those days you had to make six carrier landings to get on to go to basic [Advanced]. I did learn
how to do complete spins and stalls and the spins had to be…you had to come out exactly on
heading and that helped a lot. But flying is flying; once you learn to fly, it’s like riding a bicycle,
you never forget. Flying is basically very simple, it’s very simple. It’s when things go wrong,
that’s when it counts.
SM: So was that training you received from Joe in spins and stalls, was that particularly
helpful for you?
FB: I think it was, but I don’t know because a majority of the Navy pilots and military
pilots that went to flight school and got through, they didn’t know how to fly. They learned from
their instructor in flight school. I’m not going to say it helped; I don’t think it hurt any, but it
sure was fun. I’m glad I did it. I’d do it over again.
SM: Well why don’t we go ahead and discuss your introduction into Navy, and in
particular into pre-flight. What were your first impressions?
FB: In June of 1947 I got orders to pre-flight and took a train from New Orleans to
Chicago. My grandpa and my aunt lived in Chicago so I spent the night with them. Then I got
on a train that went to Ottumowa, Iowa and went over to our pre-flight. I’m still an a pprentice
seaman, I’m in 18 and when we got there - when I got there, I was by myself – when I got there
along with the other folks that were there in my pre-flight class that was called 1247, the 12th
class of 1947, they said we’d have a new program and you have to become a Midshipman, a
flying Midshipman. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I’d never heard of it, none of us
had. It was a new program. They got ride of the V-5 apprentice seaman Naval aviation cadets
and they swore us in as midshipmen, USN, 3rd class midshipmen, USN, and then right after that
they closed the base and we all got in R4-Ds, same as a DC-3 and flew to Pensacola and started
pre-flight the first of July. I can tell you about pre-flight if you’d like to know about that.
SM: Sure.
FB: Well pre-flight basically is a two phase thing; it’s education and physical, and you
have to pass them both. The educational end of it was you take things like navigation, both
regular chart board navigation I’ll call it, it’s where you have to figure out how to meet a ship
and navigate using a chart board and looking at the sea and estimating winds and that sort of
thing, and celestial navigation which we had to learn how to take stars [and moon fixes] and use
a sexton and that sort of thing. You had to pass that. That was 16 weeks and that was a must
pass. Then, blinker and code you had to pass. That was where you’d learn Morse Code and
blinker giving Morse Code and you had to pass that. We had metallurgy which was important
and we had armament or gunnery, learning about bombs and rockets, and we had engines and
power plants, and this was before the jet engines. This was learning the reciprocal engines. We
had essentials of Naval science, that sort of thing. I’m probably forgetting a couple of others, but
we did that for 16 weeks. Every day we would have PT or physical training and when we first
went in they gave us a test where you had to…obstacle course, you had to run this obstacle
course in so many minutes and it entailed – you’ve probably seen it – with the tires and swinging
and running and then hitting like a hand board, hand ball back board to go over this board and
jump down and make it. You didn’t fail, but they timed you and then when you completed you
had to do better than that. Also what they did physically was we played just about every sport
you can think of; soccer, and basketball. Gymnastics was something I’d never done and it was
very difficult because I didn’t have any upper body strength; the parallel bars and the swings,
you know, the ring swings, I forget what you call it, but that sort of thing, and the trampoline,
and jumping on that. But, the thing you had to pass positively was swimming, and in our class of
about 35 guys there were several that couldn’t swim. You had to be able to swim on top of the
water and underwater. On top of the water you had to be able to swim for an hour, stay up
afloat, or swim around so many laps, I can’t remember how much it was, but you had to stay up
an hour or swim the laps, and then you had to be able to swim the pool underwater without any
part of your body…your rump, for instance, could not break surface. You had to be able to swim
underwater for very good reasons. Then the other part of the swimming training was called the
Dilbert Dunker. Dilbert Dunker was a mock cockpit up on a rail that slid down and went into the
water upside down and you got strapped in that in your swimming suit and they’d release this
from a pretty good angle and it would crash into the water and flip upside down and you had to
unstrap yourself and get out, and you had to pass that. So, pre-flight was 16 weeks, and when we
fouled up, if we didn’t make our bed right or sack right or if we did anything wrong in
inspections then we had demerits and we had to walk around for an hour, two hours, five hours,
depending on how many demerits it was, with a rifle on our shoulder and of course I got a couple
of those for not making my sack up right. It had to be perfect, and my wife said I never learned
yet.
SM: I’m curious…I’m sorry, go ahead?
FB: I was just going to say I never learned!
SM: Okay [laughs]. A couple of quick questions; first, what did they cover in
metallurgy, do you remember?
FB: Oh, metallurgy was the study of the properties and strengths of metals and how
metal fatigued and this sort of thing, and of course it would come into play in my life within a
year.
SM: In what ways in particular?
FB: In flight training, in advanced, and we studied…that’s what that covered.
SM: You mentioned that it would come into play later; what ways in particular were
important in terms of the metallurgical training you received?
FB: Well, I’d be jumping ahead; after basic flight training, which I could cover now and
then get into what happened…
SM: Why don’t we wait? Another question about your pre-flight training; the celestial
navigation, and how important was your previous astronomy training in that?
FB: It was good because I appreciated and I knew some of the constellations and I
thought that astronomy – and still do – think it’s just a fascinating subject. It’s unfortunate in a
way because the celestial navigational end of it was mainly for multi-engine pilots, Navy pilots
in particular that flew on long flights over water where you would have to take star shots and
moon shots and get your exact position on a chart, and of course as a Naval…I became a carrier
pilot, and we didn’t do celestial nav. You had enough problems just using your chart board and
getting back to the carrier type of thing. So, I never did use my Morse Code [Celestial Nav]…I
used my Morse Code, excuse me, I never used the blinker or celestial nav that we had to learn in
pre-flight.
SM: Do you think it was a waste of your time to learn it?
FB: No, there was nothing a waste of time that we did. Incidentally, I meant to tell you
about the pre-flight test; at the end of pre-flight, at the 16 weeks, you had to go back and take this
obstacle course and step test again. The step test was one where you went up and stepped up on
a board to the count of the metronome or beat and you had to do it and your physical…you had
to do that. A lot of guys got sick and up-chucked. It was really strenuous. The obstacle course
you had to do again and do it faster and better than you did before, and I mention this because
one of my roommates, Carl Tenefoss, real nice guy from Virginia, Carl, he passed everything
fine but he was just a little bit heavier than the rest of us and Carl couldn’t get over…didn’t make
his obstacle course, so he washed out. So, he was the only one in our class that washed out,
didn’t make it through pre-flight. We had several of the others, a little bit over half washed out
in flight training, in basic and flight training, but Carl was the only one that washed out because
of the obstacle course [in preflight].
SM: Once you finished your pre-flight, you went on to flight training?
FB: Yes, there was a pool, there was an awful back log. The Navy was closing up bases
and I don’t know why, but whereas the Air Force [Air Corp] stopped pilot training, in fact one of
my classmates Freddy Englart went in [the Air Corp]. His dad was a pilot and had got killed
flying, but Freddy wanted to fly and he went into the Army Air Corps and he was a little older
than I was, so when he graduated he went right into the Army Air Corps and they closed his
program down so he never did get to flight training. But, the Navy kept theirs open. So, I was
fortunate that I got to go to flight school. So what happened, excuse me for…but what happened
is this pool took place, so after November the 1st, which is funny, November the 1st is the day I
graduated from pre-flight which was one year earlier I had been in that plane crash down at
Chevane with Joe. So from November the 1st to February we had a pool and I remember I
volunteered along with Art Berry who was a classmate of mine, and we volunteered to go into a
pressure chamber and go up like twice a day for two weeks. What they did was we got in this
chamber, and there were about six of us, five or six of us, and we’d go up from sea level to
20,000 feet in two minutes or [10,000 feet] a minute, real fast climb, and then we’d stay up there
and exercise for half an hour and do all sorts of tests and then come down, and then we’d go
back and do it in the afternoon, and we did this as a program to see what it would be like for jet
pilots to go up and do this, and there was no problem. There was no effects at all that I can
remember. Both Art and I later ended up flying jets, and they promised us that we’d get a couple
days…a weekend pass, and we never got it. So, I should have never…that taught me about
volunteering! One other thing we did during that pool was a bunch of us made up a basketball
team named the Jets, a bunch of midshipmen, and nobody was…I think the tallest one was Stan
Van Leer in my class, he was about 6’1”, maybe less than that, but we got together and the
Marines ran our pre-flight and basic [training]. They were in charge of us, and so we drummed
up this team and we said, “Well, we’ll call them the Jets,” because that sounded great, and we
went to the Marines and said, “How about letting us be the midshipmen team for the base,” and
they said, “No, we’re not really interested in sponsoring you,” and we said, “Okay,” and went on
our own, went out and bought our uniforms, and we won the whole thing, we beat out
everybody. We won, and we won three great, big, huge trophies, and I’ve got a picture of us
with those trophies. Well, we took turns keeping the trophies in our rooms. There were two men
to a barracks there and about a week after we had them the Marines confiscated our trophies and
says, “You can’t have these trophies, you can’t keep these in your rooms!” so they put them in
theirs [office]. So, there were no Marines…we had no big great love for the Marines, but it
didn’t make any difference because we couldn’t take them with us anyway. That was kind of
funny.
SM: That is funny! Now the basic flight training, where was that?
FB: That was at Cory Field. That started for me on Valentine’s Day, 14 February, 1948,
and we went to Cory Field which is a little field there in Pensacola and we flew SNJs and my
first instructor was a Marine Lieutenant Red Halligan and I remember him, real nice gent, and I
flew the SNJ and went through the syllabus, and April…let’s see, about a month later I soloed on
a grass field called Eight Able up in Alabama and went through my basic flight training at Cory.
We learned instruments. In fact, the only down I got, I got a down in instruments once for
whatever reason, but I went up and flew again, but Cory Field we learned night flying and night
flying was kind of funny and kind of fun. My first instructor was a chief named Bledsoe and I
remember he took me up, and he says, “This is how you do it,” and he showed me a landing, and
then I went around and was flying and while I was flying it and landing I could feel him on the
controls and he was flying it, too. So, he got out and says, “You got it!” and I thought, “Wow,
man, I don’t know what I’m doing!” So I took off in that SNJ at night and got up there and flew
around and came back and landed it fortunately with no problem, but we learned night flying
there. That’s one thing we certainly didn’t…I didn’t learn to do in a piper cub was night flying,
and of course I ended up being a night pilot, to make a long story short. But that first night
landing was something else because I could feel the chief. He was flying it, he was landing it,
not me. From there we went to Saufley Field which was a bigger base up a little bit north, in
north Pensacola and there we did formation flying and we did gunnery and more night flying,
cross country, and the big thing we did was carrier landings. But, I was very good in gunnery. I
got 10% hits which I know doesn’t sound like much but I think 12% I got and I figure that’s the
only reason they stuck me into Corsair [F4U] because nobody else in our group got fighters.
But, we had to learn to land on the carrier and he went out and landed the SNJ on the Wright,
USS Wright, and made six okay landings, and then that was the end of basic. It was August 1st
or the end of July 1948.
SM: Now the carrier landings that you guys did, were they complete stops or did you just
touch…
FB: The old carriers, the old kind of carriers. The regular aircraft carrier was just a little
kind of a small runway and it had a bunch of wires strung across and it had a tail hook and you
grabbed it and if you didn’t grab it, why you crashed into a fence or a barrier. A barrier was a
large – very large – high bunch of cables strung across the deck to keep the landing plane from
crashing into the planes that had landed. As soon as the plane landed, why the men on the deck,
flight deck, hookmen, would go out and pick the hook up after you were drawn back. See, the
hook would catch the wire and then you’d stop and then they’d bring you back enough so that
the hook men could pick the hook up and then you’d taxi forward real fast and then they’d raise
[lowered] the fences or barriers. So what you did is you landed and you had X number of wires.
Let’s say it’s 12 wires and the first eight or nine wires, depending upon the wind of course, the
more wind you had the better it was, you’d land and if you got one of the late wires and it
looked like you were going to crash into the fence, if you had a wire, a lot of times the barrier
operator would drop the barrier so your prop wouldn’t get it and that happened quite a bit. So
basically, that’s what a carrier landing was; you came around, you got a cut or a wave off, [both
were]mandatory. If the LS, landing signal officer, gave you a wave off, why you took it. You
wrapped it up to the left and added power and went around and tried again. If he gave you a cut,
you had to take it and land, and just you had to make a good landing, and that’s what a carrier
landing was then. There was no [canted or angled] of deck, no touch and goes [then].
SM: And were people frequently or infrequently running into that barrier?
FB: Well it happened, it happened often, especially in flight training it could happen, but
it happened on the fleet, too. There was an old saying then that there were those who had
barriers, and there were those who were going to get barriers, and eventually everybody did;
well, not everybody, there were some gents that never got any. In fact, I know several of my
friends never got any. I did. I went and got Corsairs in advance and of course I got a fence in
my fourth landing on a Corsair on the Cabot and of course it was very embarrassing. Of course
guys got fences then.
SM: What happened when you hit the fence?
FB: Oh, when I was flying the Corsair in advance I came around and got a cut and
thought I made a good landing but I bounced and my hook didn’t catch the wires and I flew right
into the barrier and it tipped it over and crumpled the tail and it was on April Fool’s Day, and
that’s right; I was the fool! But, they just sent me back. I’m getting ahead because I was going
to tell you about Corsairs when I got…
SM: Yes.
FB: I went to advanced training in Jacksonville. I got sent over there to an ATU-4 which
was an F-4U Corsair advanced training and attack. Even though it was a fighter, we flew it as an
attack aircraft. I got to fly the Corsair and learn to fly it over there. It was quite an airplane
because it was a big jump from a 650 to 2000 horsepower engine, and of course only one
cockpit, so you had to get in it and fly it, and my first takeoff, like everybody else, you added the
power and took off and we took off with the canopy open and I can remember I didn’t want to let
go of anything to crank the canopy closed or pick up the gear or anything. Most every brand
new student pilot, you’d see him take off on his first take off from Jackson and he’d be climbing
up and the gear would be down, and the gear would be down! We went over to Doctor’s Field
[Inlet A Field] just south of Jacksonville on the river there, the St. John’s and the river there
called Doctor Inlet, and went over there at Doctor’s Inlet and made some touch and go landings
and then came back and landed, and it was a thrill. It was really something for a kid, we were
just kids flying those Navy fighters. I’ve got to tell you one story about at Tulane, speaking of
the Corsair, I just remembered and really it’s kind of funny; we went to…right after we started
our school Notre Dame was playing Tulane at the Sugar Bowl Stadium which was Tulane’s
stadium, open end stadium at that time. It still had about 60,000 people. We sat there and it was
a sunny afternoon and Tulane was beating Notre Dame seven to nothing at the half and I mean
people…it was just a huge upset because Tulane was nothing and Notre Dame had a tremendous
football team back in 1945. Well, at the half time, unannounced, and nobody knew this was
going to happen, just as the half ended and the teams left the field, an F-4U came in through the
open end of the field, right over the top of the goalpost, and in single file there were about 16 of
them, one right after the other, and they came over and they pulled up and rolled, and
everybody’s going crazy. They came around again and the next time around they came over and
did the same thing and my dad was at home in New Orleans and listening to the game, and Bill
Stern was a famous radio announcer, was announcing the game and this is what he said, he said,
“Here come them Navy planes again, and they’re coming in and he’s rolling, and he’s pulling up,
and he’s dropping a steamer, and here comes another one and he’s dropping a streamer!” Well
what was happening was out on the field, here was completely…nobody on the field, and the
Corsair’s come in and they’re dropping out toilet paper and it’s unrolling and [Monk Simon],
little Monk Simon, the coach at Tulane’s son is out there trying to catch these streamers and it
was the funniest thing, and I mean it was beautiful! That field was littered with that toilet paper!
Bill Stern was calling them streamers. I’m telling you, we were just…it was fantastic, and of
course the game ended and it was like Notre Dame 35, Tulane 7. It was anti-climatic after seeing
those Corsairs and it was funny because that’s what I would fly, the Corsair.
SM: Now were you given a choice after you finished your basic flight school?
FB: Yes, we were given a choice and 99% of the guys put in for fighters. You had
fighters and then you had attack and then you had multi-engine land, multi-engine sea, and I put
in for fighters and then attack and then my last choice was multi-engine. I didn’t want to fly
multi-engine, so I was quite happy to get…I didn’t get fighters, I got attack, but the attack was to
fly the Corsair and it was basically a fighter, so I got what I wanted and went over and flew the
Corsair and went through the rockets and gunnery and all that bit. I was real good in rockets, I
was very good in rockets. I had several bull’s eyes and that sort of thing, but I wasn’t that
good…I couldn’t shoot my gunnery near as well in the F-4-U as I did in the SNJ. I think I got
6% [15%] hits in my air to air gunnery. But, in the middle of advanced, why the Navy closed
down Jacksonville and we all had to move to Texas and we had to ferry the planes from
Jacksonville to Corpus Christi, Texas, Caviness Field. The first stop was New Orleans. So, I
called my dad, and I said, “Dad, we’re going to be ferrying the Corsair to Texas and we’re going
to spend the night in New Orleans!” so he was out there when we landed and I landed on the
little bitty NAS New Orleans. It was a small strip then, out by the lake, Lake Ponchitran. The
longest runway was…oh, I don’t know, 3400-3500 feet long, but it was nothing to us because we
had learned how to plunk it down, and we landed there and spent the night and then went on. I
later ended up flying the FG-1Ds which were Goodyear Corsairs out at that little strip in New
Orleans. Dad got to see us land and then we went to the house and a bunch of us spent the night
at my house and then we went on to Cabinass the next day.
SM: And let’s see, were you going to talk about metallurgy in regard to your basic
flight?
FB: Say it again?
SM: Were you going to talk about metallurgy with regard to your basic flight program?
FB: Oh yeah, well at the end of the F-4U advanced training well we went back to…the
last flight, my last flight in advanced, I had a…I flew three flights that day. We got into a pool
there at Caviness because the runway wasn’t very good so we got delayed, but my last flight was
a night flight and I had flown three flights that day, and as I was coming around I smelled
electrical fire and I didn’t handle it well because when I landed I ground looped, and oh brother.
I figured, “I’ve had it!” But, they just sent me right on with the rest of the flight to Pensacola to
fly at what they called Advanced Carrier Qualifications in the Corsair. You had to make seven
landings in your aircraft and mine was the F-4U so I went on to Cabinass Field…I mean, to
Saufley and shot my carrier qualification flights. We went out on the Cabot to make our
landings the 1st of April that I mentioned before and on my fourth landing I got that fence. Well,
they sent me back, I had to go back, and make a couple of Field Carrier Landing Practices; they
call them FCLPs, to again go back out. Well on my first day back, on the 4th of April I’m out at
Allison Field, just north of Pensacola where we used to bounce right on [Perdido] Bay and my
second or third landing came around. You’re doing an FCLP landing, you’re about 300 feet
pattern above the ground, you come around, and you look for the LSO with his flags or paddles
and he waves you in. Well I got a cut and landed on the runway there and while I’m adding the
power making my touch and go I noticed I had the stick all the way over against my left leg to
keep the Corsair going down the runway. There was no wind to speak of, or the wind was right
down the runway so it wasn’t the wind doing it. I looked out and my right wing was split. In
fact, right at the Gull [Gull Flaps] I could see the ground through the passing by and I thought,
“Oh my Lord!” So I pushed the mic button, you know, and I said, “My wing’s split! My wing’s
split!” and the guy says, “What the hell you want me to do about it?” Of course there was
nothing he could do about it. So I took off and I got full power and then I throttled back, kept the
wheels and flaps down, and I’m flying the stick with my knees trying to put my parachute on.
We didn’t wear our parachute because we were too low to use it, so I thought, “Well, let me get
up high enough and I’ll bail out,” and I finally got my chute on, going straight ahead, and I got
up around 3-4-5,000 feet and the wing was still staying on so the TBM pilot, chief from the base
was there and he came up and took a look, flew wing on me, and he says, “Well let’s just you fly
it back to the base and land it,” so I did, and I kept it at 85 knots with the gear down and the
canopy open and I flew it back to Saufley and landed it and there was no problem. But, when I
landed, the wing as the lift…as we slowed down, the wing dropped down to the runway. I taxied
in, and it must have looked like some sick bird with the wing down! Well, three hours later I had
a board, accident board, so I went in there and the LSO and the maintenance officer said, “Well
obviously you made a hard landing, too hard [of a ] landings, it’s pilot error!” Of course I
thought to myself, “Well, I can understand the LSO saying that, but the maintenance officer, he
wasn’t even there, he didn’t see me land!” So anyway, the accident board people said, “Okay,
Midshipman Bonansinga, what have you got to say?” I figured, “Oh boy, here I’ve had two
accidents in the last three weeks, my butt’s a bun.” But, I had something up my sleeve; I said,
“Well I preflighted the plane this morning before I flew, and when I looked at the right oleo
strut,” the oleo is the metal part that the strut housed, “The oleo wheel strut, I noticed a crack
around it,” and I called the plane captain, crew chief plane captain of the Corsair over and I said,
“Hey, look at this. This crack goes all the way around this right strut!” He said, “Yeah,
maintenance okayed it,” and I said, “Okay, if maintenance says it’s okay, I’ll fly it.” Well when
they heard that they said, “Case dismissed, go fly. We don’t want to see you again, go fly.” So
three days later I went out and made my seven landings and that met…that’s what metallurgy
was all about. That plane had 65,000 or 60 some thousand FCLPs and landings on it and when
you land…make a carrier landing, especially in the Corsair, when you touched down it was a lot
of G’s, G force, so it accumulated and it had metal fatigue. I was told that was the first F-4U to
have metal fatigue and of course there were many more. There were others after that. But if I
hadn’t pre-flighted that plane, I might not have got through.
SM: Very lucky.
FB: Yes, I was. I was lucky throughout my whole flying experience.
SM: Did you happen to notice the look on the maintenance person’s face when you said
that?
FB: No, I didn’t, I’m sure…but the LSO and the maintenance chief, you know, I mean
obviously they asked me, “Did you make a hard landing?” and I said, “Of course I did, they’re
all hard landings!” The [G-Meter was too blocked] when you plopped it down. Yeah, that was
some day. There were…let’s see, I’m looking at a picture right now on the wall. There were 10
of us that got our wings.
SM: So by designation, you mean that’s when you became…
FB: That’s when I was designated a Naval aviator; in those days they called it “Heavier
than air,” it says on my certificate there, “Naval aviator Victor 26 Midshipman,” and my name,
“USN designated Victor 26, Naval aviator this day, heavier than air.”
SM: I guess the best place to go next is to discuss your assignments after you finished
your flight training.
FB: I went to VC-23, a night outfit, and then landed…
SM: How long did you stay there?
FB: Oh, I spent a long time there. It was 5 years. I spent two tours there. It’s the only
sea duty I had.
SM: What did you do during the Korean War?
FB: That’s where I was. I wanted to…I was there before the Korean War when…are we
on?
SM: Yes, sir, I’m recording.
FB: Oh, I see. Well I went to VC-33 after I got my wings and it was a TBM outfit, and I
was a midshipmen aviator and then became an ensign while I was there, and ended up flying off
the Roosevelt down at…made 12 daytime landings on it and then during that era there was a big
cutback so they decided to release a whole bunch of us former midshipmen aviators. They were
going to keep 60% of us but they only kept 10% so instead of being…so all of us but two in
our…we had 13 ex-midshipmen, former midshipmen pilots in the VC-33 of the 33 pilots, 32
pilots, but 13 were midshipmen. So when they decided to give us our walking papers in June of
1950, why they sent the 11 of us to a ferry squadron to ferry aircraft from Norfolk to what we
called the graveyard in Litchfield Park. That’s where the Navy kept their planes on storage. So,
I got to fly a Bearcat from Norfolk over to Litchfield and that was fantastic. Then we ferried
some SNJs from Pensacola to Litchfield Park and then it came time for us to be released, and on
the 25th of June, 1950, why I was in dispersing pay off window getting my mustering out pay
when there at headquarters in Norfolk and the admiral, Admiral Felix B. Stump was the
commander of the Atlantic fleet, called Com Nav Air Land, and his orderly came down and said,
“Would all the midshipmen who are being released please follow me up to the admiral’s office,”
and we went up there and he said, “We just had a war start in Korea.” We didn’t know anything
about it and I guess very few did, but he said, “I don’t want you to be getting out of the Navy, we
need you, and those of you that will volunteer to stay in I’ll send you where you want to go,” so I
said, “I want to go back to my squadron,” and the other guys, all but one of them, we all went
back to VC-33 because they had moved from Norfolk flying TBMs up to Atlantic City to take
over the night attack flying at Able Dog or AD, Douglas AD which is a wonderful kind of a new
airplane, so we did. So, I stayed in during the Korean War going back up from Norfolk and
stayed in VC-33 and went up and flew the night version of the AD off the carriers at night.
That’s what I did during that period of time.
SM: And where were these carriers?
FB: Well they were in the Atlantic fleet but we volunteered to go and fly in Korea but
they only sent one of the former midshipmen, Jim Whyte went, and all the rest of us got sent to
the Mediterranean. Of course we were young and we didn’t know any better, and it was
probably best we didn’t go because some of the guys did get killed; Jim didn’t. So, I ended up
making my first Med cruise in 19…actually, I made a Guantanamo Bay cruise and then the Med
cruise in January of 1951. We went over in that part of the world during the [Korean] war.
SM: A couple of significant international political events that occur during this period in
addition to the Korean War, in particular the fall of China, and I was wondering if you remember
when that happened, if you were politically aware, and did you guys discuss those types of
things?
FB: Well of course I was aware. The Flying Tigers and Chung Kai Shek and Mrs.
Chung Kai Shek was a famous lady in her own right, pilot and everything, and I was well aware.
General Chenault was from Louisiana and the Flying Tigers and I knew about that. Other than
that, I really didn’t…other than what I remember as a boy seeing the pictures of the fall of
Shanghai I felt like the war between Japan and China was bad and that’s how we…of course we
got really drawn into the war, but other than that I wasn’t that concerned other than the fact that
about this time I did receive an offer, or a bunch of us found out that we could have gone to fly
Bearcats for the French in the French-Indonesian war and it would have been
considerably…going from like 300 bucks a month to 650 to fly with the…I didn’t, and I didn’t
know anybody that did, but it’s probably just as well I didn’t go because that was not a good
situation.
SM: Had you heard about outfits like Civil Air Transport?
FB: No, not at that time. No, I found out about that much later, after I left the Navy.
This period I’m talking about right now is 1950 and I stayed with VC-33 except for a short
period when I went up to Glenview and flew night…I flew F8Fs at day and F6F5 and night
fighters at night for the students at Glenview. I got out for a very short period and then went
right back to VC-33. I made two more Med cruises.
SM: What did you do during your Med cruise, your first one, and then subsequent
cruises, how were they different?
FB: Well the first Med cruise I was just a brand new Ensign and we only flew…I
remember we only made four night landings, one a month, and there was not very much fun to
fly at night anyway. It was very challenging. Very few people did it. So, if you flew enough,
you had confidence, and you did pretty good. I never had any more accidents after that one
fence I got, but flying at night was kind of tough. We didn’t fly much the first Med cruise, not
that much. That’s how they differed. The next cruise I made was two years later in 1953 on the
Tarawa and we flew a lot more then, and of course I was an older, [more] experienced pilot also
and the more you flew at night off the carrier the better, but they didn’t want that much night
flying because an awful lot of accidents happened at night with the straight deck carriers. So the
Navy didn’t get around to doing a lot of night flying until they got the canted deck carrier after I
got out.
SM: That allowed for a rapid acceleration if you miss a cable? What was the…
FB: A canted deck carrier, just picture this; a sheet of paper, a letterhead sheet of paper.
Well on the old style carriers you land right up the sheet of paper, and if you drew a line right
through the center of the sheet of paper, that’s where the barrier would be. Okay, well all the
planes that had landed would go up on the forward part of the ship, in the bow. To protect them,
they put these wires or fences across to protect them. On the canted deck carrier, they took a
piece of paper and the lower left had corner of the paper, if you held it up, they built an
extension, so now instead of landing right straight into the center of the letter paper you come in
and you land at an angle, at a cant and then there’s only four wires there to arrest you. It’s not
that long, but it’s long enough for you to stop. But, if your wire doesn’t catch the wires you keep
the power on and you just touch down. It’s like a touch and go, you just go around again. So,
that was the big difference, and then of course nowadays they have tankers so that if planes come
in and they need fuel, they get topped off so that they can keep…if they have some kind of a
problem they can continue to make the landings and then of course on the canted deck instead of
having a man dressed up in an LSO Christmas Tree suit that you can see with real bright paddles
the way we used to come in and get turn signals and high and low and all that, now they have a
meatball or a lens that is very bright, brilliant, and you can see it’s a glide slope, and they set it
for each plane. As you come in you don’t make a circular approach like we did. Now you come
in and you make kind of a straight in approach and you fly the glide slope right down to
touchdown and then if you don’t get a wire you just keep your power on. You take the power
off, now, when you feel the tug of the wire. But, if you don’t get the tug of the wire you just go
around, so that was a big difference.
SM: And I guess that’s what I was trying to emphasize, the fact that at night you’re more
prone to miss the cable and hit the fence? Was that the primary accident they were worried
about?
FB: The only difference between day and night is at night you can’t see what you’re
doing, and when you can’t see what you’re doing just imagine driving down the center of a road
without any headlights and you’ve just got barely enough, maybe a beam of flashlights to try to
drive your car down the center of the center line. Think about doing that versus driving in the
daytime, and that’ll give you some idea of what it was like. But, you’ve got depth perception to
boot. When you come in you have to just learn how to land because they didn’t light up the
decks hardly at all. They were still using World War II lights out tactics.
SM: What were the most important differences between your Med cruises, or were there
any significant differences?
FB: No, just the fact that we seemed to…as I got more experienced, why it got easier and
we got to fly more, even on the old [?] decks. I went from the AD-5 then which was a single
placed night attack radar counter measure plane. My last cruise was on the AD-4, the [wide
bodied] side by side. They called it the same plane, but it really wasn’t. The crewmen, the two
crewmen we carried instead of riding down in the belly of the plane like we did on the original
Douglas Skyraider, the five in, one sat next to you and one sat behind us. It was much better for
the crewmen because it is very claustrophobic for them to have ridden in the inside of the plane.
I rode back there a few times, even came off the ship once in the back. I know what it’s like, it
wasn’t easy for them. But, it wasn’t the same airplane; it had a very wide windshield and the
same engine and everything but it was slower and it handled a little more difficulty. But, it was
basically the same.
SM: And you stayed in the Navy at this point until 1955?
FB: Yes, I stayed in. I went up, all in the same squadron, I went from midshipman to a
full lieutenant in the same squadron which was unusual, and then my last [cruise] I decided if I
didn’t make regular [Navy] I didn’t want to stay in because in those days at that time if you
didn’t make lieutenant commander then you got riffed out and I would have been in my 30s and
at that time I figured that was old, and here I was 27 years old and I’d been in the Navy 10 years
and I said, “Well if I don’t make regular I’ll get out,” and I didn’t make it. So, on my last cruise,
I found I didn’t make it so my last landing on the VC-33 was my 300th in the squadron, which
was a lot then, a lot of landings then. That’s nothing now, but my last landing was my 300th in
VC-33 and I made that and then I came back to the States in August and in September of ’55 I
got out of the Navy.
SM: Did you already have something lined up?
FB: No, I had nothing lined up. I thought I’d try to go to work for the airlines and at that
time my wife and I were living up in…she was from Winchester, Massachusetts so I went up to
Boston and I couldn’t…I contacted American and United and Pan American, all of them, those
three mainly, and they all said they didn’t have anything open but they would maybe later on. As
I’d mentioned before, I’d been a…I’d learned how…machinist. I could weld, and run a drill
press, and that sort of thing. So, I went over to Raytheon headquarters in Newton, Massachusetts
to get a job to tide me over as a machinist. I figured I could get that. So, I filled out an
application and I was waiting for the gentleman to interview me and he called me into his office
and just as he offered…we shook hands and we sat down, and the phone rang and he was talking
and he said, “Yeah, I have one. Yes, as a matter of fact I have a man right now sitting in front of
me,” and so he says, “Yeah, I’ll send them over.” And he says, “That was our chief pilot.” Well
I didn’t even know Raytheon had an airplane, any airplanes, because I was just going there to get
a job as a machinist. So I went over to Hanscom Field, Bedford, Mass, and met George Bottjer
who had been a Navy pilot in World War II, got the Navy Cross as a matter of fact, real nice guy,
former baseball player, too; he was drafted by the Yankees but war intervened. Well George
interviewed me and to make a long story short two months later after he flew down to Atlantic
City and talked to my skipper in an F3D I got hired. Incidentally I did check out in a jet at VC-
33. I got to fly it maybe 100 hours.
SM: What jet was that?
FB: Oh, that’s a jet, the old Navy F3D Sky Knight and my skipper said, “Hey Frank, go
fly that thing,” we had a bunch of them and I said, “I don’t want to fly that,” and he says, “Look,
go fly it!” so “Yes, sir,” and I went and flew it, and once I got in it and flew it they couldn’t get
me out of it. I said, “My God, this is so simple! This is stupid simple!” All you did is light the
fire and add the throttles and go; no torque, no gas gauges to worry about, and no trim tabs, you
don’t have to keep fighting the trim on it, and they had an auto-pilot and an ADF. It even had a
cigarette lighter and a rug. It had a needle that pointed at the radio stations, called ADF,
automatic direct…I flew up from 1946 to 1953 when I flew an F3D, all that time – and at that
time I probably had close to 2500 hour - I had never…the only think we had done, we had flown
all IFR instrument flight rules, everything, with nothing but what we called a coffee grinder, just
a low frequency radio riding the beam, listening to “Ns and As”. You’ve heard that, ride the
beam? Well that’s all that is, is radio beams. It was like four arms, north, south, east, and west,
more or less, and NANA sectors [Morse Code] and where they meet together they make a beam
sound that you just listened in your ear and you fly right across the United States and when it
came time to land we’d land on the beam or make a GCA approach. So to have an ADF, to have
a needle pointed was like going to heaven. And the thing cruised about 350 knots, and gee, it
had long legs. I once flew it from Tinker Field [in Tulsa] to Atlantic City nonstop at night and
I’d been out to see my mother who was on the west coast at that time and I came back and I was
by myself, landed at Tinker Field in Tulsa I believe, and this Air Force meteorologist said, “If
you level off up around 30 or 40,000 you’ll feel a bump up there. When you feel this bump,” he
said, “Level off. It’ll take you all the way home just about.” He was right on the money. When
I got home and got back that night I had had 100 knot tailwind all the way. When I went to the
bar the next day or that night or whatever and I was telling the guys, I said, “Can you believe
that? 100 knot tailwind?” It was just unheard of. So, I got to fly that F3D quite a bit. I got
about 100 hours in the Navy, and then I flew it for 600 test work for Raytheon because Raytheon
was electronic flight tests.
SM: Just out of curiosity, why did it have a cigarette lighter?
FB: It’s crazy, it’s crazy; it had a rug, it even had an auto pilot. I guess if they flew low
enough where they didn’t have to wear their oxygen masks, you could smoke. I never did. I did
smoke in the AD, we all smoked. That was automatic. The skipper, we’d take off in formation
there at Norfolk in TBMs, there’s a great big MAT [a large black top; landing and T.O.area]. In
those days we’d take off in formation, the whole squadron, 16 of us, and then we even landed in
formation once, but the first thing we did after we got our gear up, flying wing, the skipper, he’d
get his gear up and then he’d take out a smoke and smoke and the guys that smoked, they’d all
take out their smokes and smoke. It was crazy.
SM: Did these aircraft have ash trays?
FB: No, no.
SM: How about the F3D?
FB: Yeah, the F3D did as I remember it. It was crazy.
SM: Well so this is you’re a test pilot for Raytheon and…
FB: I was called an engineering pilot. I was hired as an engineering - excuse me, I have
to get a drink of water – an engineering test pilot, a transportation pilot, and I started out there in
December…November of ’55 and I flew the Bonanza and they had an F6 Hellcat and I flew that
and the F3D and the twin beach which I’d flown in the Navy and I did a lot of transportation
work just to start but then they started funneling me into the test program for the HAWK
[Missle; H- homing, A-all the, W-way, K-killer] and the Sparrow. Both were radar homing
missiles that they used a different principle, a doppler, FMCW homing principle, and I got in
onto that.
SM: Are these considered harm missiles?
FB: No, that was later.
SM: They’re not anti-radiation?
FB: Yeah, I did a lot of that work too but it was much later. Basically I started out with
Raytheon just flying target and that sort of thing but then I got into flying the radar missile fire
control system work and the F3H Demon and later the F4H and I did a lot of work in the F4D
Douglas Sky Raider [Skyray] before the Phantom showed up. I got to do a lot of research and
development test work mainly in electronics and some structural flight tests related to the
sparrow missile tests at Raytheon.
SM: How did this compare to flying in the Navy?
FB: Well it was entirely different. In the Navy I dropped bombs and rockets and did
counter measures work and flew off the carrier mainly and then whereas now the work that I did
was in an engineering test work manner that required me to fly specifically in projects that were
determined by engineers where they had projects where we were trying to prove a system or
learn something, whether it was sticking a missile under a wing called captive flight where you
pretended like you were being shot and they telemeter the information, relay that information of
the missile back to the engineer’s engineering offices, or they would send me up and have me
evaluate a specific radar against other targets and see how well I could fly the plane and simulate
launching a missile and this is basically the kind of work we did with the fighter types and of
course then we had the infrared type where we would go to Cape Canaveral and Vandenburg and
out at White Sands and get signature studies of missiles, ICBMs and that sort of thing. I did an
awful lot of that, too.
SM: When you were flying for Raytheon, the Hawk missile system and things like that,
how much were you gathering data or was there equipment on board that was collecting the
information necessary for the study?
FB: Yeah, in some cases yes, like for instance, the infrared type, you can’t telemeter
infrared signals, or we didn’t do any of that. That was all onboard recording. The air to air
intercept and the fusing work that we did with the Sparrow and the Hawk that was onboard
recorder and also telemetering information that the missile would see and the radars were seeing,
those were parameters that were successfully able to be sent back or telemetered back to a
recorder; but the infrared, no, that was onboard recording. An engineer usually flew with me in
an F3D when we did infrared signature studies, but when I flew the…a lot of my older work in
the F4D was single seater and the F3H demon was single and that was all telemetered stuff. I
hope that answers your question.
SM: Yes, sir, it does. Could you explain what telemetering is, because that’s not…
FB: You’re just taking information that’s recorded that’s sent into a radio and the radio’s
transferring it back to a receiver on the ground or in the air, and then there it’s recorded so that
the engineer or engineers can see…they know how to tell what’s happening by looking at the
information as it comes back on a series of disks or dials, and it’s also recorded and they know
how to extrapolate and determine just what’s happening, and it’s according to time so they can
tell exactly what’s happening at a certain time in the flight test. That’s what telemetering is.
SM: So basically when you would get into one of these aircraft to go conduct one of
these tests, you’d have a pretty rigorous and established flight plan that you would have to
follow?
FB: In general, yes. We would brief before we took off and I was given a certain job to
do for each flight and I had a little knee pad – in fact I’ve still got it to this day, issued by
Douglas in 1950 – and I had a stop watch I stuck on there because I had to do some timing and I
would write down the information that I was called upon to note, and follow, and then of course
you’ve got to remember we’re talking over the radio, too. We’re in communications with flight
tests. It’s like one day they had me up on the F3H demon flight in 1959. It was June I believe,
June of ’59, or maybe it was ’60, whatever, but they had me out over conducting a structural
flight test with the sparrow III under the wing of the F3H and the last thing I was supposed to do,
I was out over the Atlantic at high speed and I was coming back towards Bedford, which
Bedford’s just out of Boston inland about maybe 25 miles and I was coming in over Cape Ann
which funnels down by right into…right past Boston. You go by Gloster and Beverly and that
sort of thing, and I was about…I had to do this fast high Q test, high Q means high
structural…high speed at low altitude, so at 5000 feet I was doing over 500 knots. I was keeping
it under Mach 1 so I wouldn’t cause any damage [to houses, glass windows with a sonic boom at
Mach 1], and I was coming back to land so I was real low on fuel in the demon and my engine
quit, it flamed out, and I tried to relight it which is usually pretty simple to do but I couldn’t get it
running. The engine RPM went down from maybe 96% down to just dying on down, so I called
Raytheon radio, I was in contact with them and I said, “I’ve got a flame out, I’ve got trouble, and
I’m going over to emergency frequency,” and I got off the radio and I was over Beverly, about
20 miles outside of Boston at 5,000 feet but I was going so fast and I was light on fuel, and I
could see…it was in the afternoon and I could see Boston Harbor there, it was right off my left
wingtip, and the water was just glassy, I mean it was calm, and I said, “Well, I’m going to stick it
on the water, I’m not going to eject.” I didn’t want to, I was afraid maybe in the back of my
mind the plane was going to go into somebody’s house or something because it would keep
going at that speed, no telling where it would go, so I got all set. I stuck down what I call a Ram
Air Turbine [RAT], like a little propeller that has it’s own little hydraulic system so I could still
fly the plane, otherwise if it didn’t have that I couldn’t have flown it because it’s not like a cub or
World War II plane. You don’t fly…there’s no more cables in there, it’s hydraulics, so I was
going to stick it in there and at the last minute why all of a sudden I look up and I say, “Man,
there’s Logan Airport, Boston Logan,” and I said, “I think I can make that,” so I switched over
and told them at Raytheon, “KD6,” that was the call sign for Raytheon, I said, “KD6, I’m going
over to Logan. I’m going to try to make it.” So I called Logan and I said, “This is Navy 586,
F3H about five miles out, I’ve got a flame out. I think I can make 2-2 Right [Runway 22-R;220
degrees or southwest runway]. Looks like you’ve got an airliner on the end of it getting ready to
take off. You get him off the end of that runway, and I’d appreciate it,” and they said, “Roger,
you’re…” so they called the airliner and he got off the runway and I fortunately made it. I
touched down about 220 knots and plunked it on the end and I got it stopped and I didn’t blow a
tire. I was proud of that, I didn’t blow any tires; good tires and good brakes, no drag chute and
no tail hook. They came out and put the fire out. I had a fire in the engine, and my boss came
over [flew over from Bedford] and he was really pleased that nothing had happened to his
airplane, and of course he was happy that nothing happened to me too, but as long as nothing
happened to the airplane nothing happened to me. Well, come to find out, the other part of the
story as they say, the rest of the story, two days later we got a message from the Navy, because
it’s a Navy [McDonald] built aircraft, that you should not fly the F3H with the Allison J71
engine in or around clouds because it’ll flame out if it’s around clouds and moisture. Well they
were absolutely right, it was just two days late telling me! So, they stuck a new engine in it and
we flew later. We flew it, we got rid of it, but they had that problem. That was one of my lucky
days.
SM: You identified yourself to the Logan tower as Navy. Were you still considered a
Navy pilot?
FB: No, that’s a call sign.
SM: Oh, okay.
FB: My call sign is Navy 586. That was the last three digits of the bureau number,
132586, and you just identify yourself. You don’t say, “This is Frank Bonansinga.”
SM: I know that.
FB: You just like when I flew the F-86, you just say it’s Saber 586 [O4A].
SM: I didn’t know if Navy at the beginning of it meant Navy aircraft.
FB: It does, it means a Navy, that’s right, it’s Navy plane. When you say Navy, then that
identifies the plane. Some pilot…I could have said, “This is Navy Demon,” but whenever I
called I just would give the bureau number.
SM: Now were there any other interesting flights that you were on when you were an
engineering pilot? Some of those things happened?
FB: I had too many. I don’t know how much you want me to talk, but…
SM: Just the ones that stand out as maybe being important, especially maybe things that
helped you later on as a pilot when you were flying for Air America.
FB: I had one kind of interesting flight one day in the F3D. I was up around 35,000 and
all of a sudden the left windshield blew out, canopy blew out, and I didn’t know what happened.
All of a sudden my mask went straight out and I went from 70…a comfortable 60 to 70 in the
cockpit to 70 below zero and I couldn’t see anything it was real white, like a cloud had formed in
the cockpit and I didn’t know what happened, and then I looked to the left and I said, “Boy it’s
clear over there,” and I looked out and my God, I had no…the whole left canopy had blown out,
so it was in the winter and I just chopped the throttle and put the speed brakes out and dropped
down to low altitude. It was over Delaware and I flew it back to Boston and I was cold, and I
landed no problem, but some farmer must have found a big piece of canopy in his farm yard but
we never heard anymore about it. The only reason that that’s similar is because one time my co-
pilot and I, Dave Waters at Air America, were flying over the PDJ and we had a similar type
smoke but it wasn’t from a cloud, it was from our Niked battery that was ready to blow up. All
of a sudden the cabin got full of this white smoke and it was so thick we couldn’t even see the
instruments in front of us and we couldn’t breathe but fortunately we had our oxygen masks and
we both put them on, and we landed without any…well, we did have a problem. I can tell you
that now, or I can tell you that later.
SM: Let’s talk about that when we get to your Air America experiences. How about
your time…let’s see, while you were working for Raytheon you also went to White Sands, is that
correct?
FB: Oh yeah, in fact I was at White Sands the day Kennedy was assassinated. I was
flying and I landed and we had some projects there and my last project I was flying a Navy F4D,
that’s a Sky Ray, Delta Wing Sky Ray, and we were doing a high altitude, 50,000 foot flight.
That’s as high as we could legally fly without using a pressure suit. You had to get on down fast
then, but this plane would operate beautifully between 40 and 50,000 feet. It had a wonderful
Pratt and Whitney J57. I was doing some measurement, night measures, it was a nighttime
project and I was flying, as I say, very high altitude, and I was taking pictures and taking
radiometric infrared measurements of a missile being intercepted by another missile and that was
quite an interesting…at that time it was classified secret, and I got to get real up close and
personal with a night intercept when it hit and as the missile reentered why the whole sky lit up.
That was the last project I had at Raytheon. It was quite interesting. I had a lot of very
interesting projects at Raytheon. One was funny; one time they sent us, sent an engineer and I
down to Cape Canaveral to track an outgoing ICBM at night this engineer and I and the plane
captain, we went down to NAS Sanford which is now where Disney Land East is, there was an
air station there then, and we went in there and I landed this F3D with the engineer and went up
to see the commanding officer of the base and he said, “What are you doing here?” and I said,
“I’m out here on orders from inspector of Naval material, 1st Naval district in Boston for
Raytheon, and we have a flight test we’re going to make,” and he says, “Well what are you
doing?” and I said, “I can’t tell you. It’s classified. All I would appreciate is a place to park the
plane and some fuel and a starting unit, and if you have a spare bed in the BOQ for us that’d be
fine.” They were not very happy with me because we’re civilians and I’m flying a Navy built
aircraft and I wouldn’t tell him what we were doing, but it worked, and we took off and midnight
the next night or the night after we went up and I joined up, I mean I was by myself, I didn’t join
up with anybody, I went up and got back of about 50-60 miles west of Cape Canaveral and
listened to the countdown and we were driving in at 35,000 and we’re all set waiting for the
thing to lift off and then we track it, and all of a sudden the countdown is five, four, three, two,
and then boom! The midnight, black midnight, turns to daylight just for an instant. The missile
blew up on the pad and I mean it blew up and it lit up and my engineer says to me, “Is that a
hold?” No hold, I’d already dumped the brakes and pulled back the throttle and was going down
back to land at Sanford. But, finally we got everything. We went up and chased one the next
day in the daytime and we left. The commanding officer and the exec, they probably figured
why we were there but I never told them.
SM: What were the…were there any particular lessons or skills that you took away from
your time at Raytheon that were helpful later on as a pilot for Air America?
FB: I don’t know, I can’t really say there was one specific thing. I flew for them for 10
years at Raytheon, and when I left there just before my 37th birthday I’d done a lot of interesting
flying and a lot of ferried…took the planes back and forth between Boston and Point Magu and
so I became a better aviator. I learned…I got to fly with one man who was named Larry
Hayward who is quite a fine man and a good pilot and one time we took a hot missile from
Boston, Bedford, down to White Sands and I was with him one night and I was…right after I
was hired I was flying co-pilot for him and I remember we landed at Lexington, Kentucky and
gassed up. It was ten o’clock at night or so, we flew all night to get it there, and when we started
taking off Larry chopped the throttle and we stopped, and I couldn’t see anything…I couldn’t
figure it out, and we taxied back in, and then we had a very thin coat of ram ice on the wings,
and Larry said, “You don’t ever take off with ram ice or any ice.” So we got the ice and took
off, and boy he was right; he knew what he was talking about. I only iced up once in my life and
that was at Raytheon, but it was not on takeoff, but I iced up in the B-26 once. I flew our B-26
out to Boeing with a part for the Hustler radar that we were involved in and on the way back this
Invader, B-26 Invader that we were flying, it didn’t have any…it was a World War II invader, it
didn’t have any boots on it or anything, just prop de-icing. We were over the Rockies at about
14-15,000 feet on oxygen coming home and we were doing about 200, 210 indicated up around
15,000 because the B-26 already moved out and all of a sudden I looked down and my airspeed
was down around 170 knots. I’d lost 50 knots. We were in the clouds, [?] and all of a sudden
why we iced up and we had such a big load of ice there was nothing I could do but fly the
airplane and hope that we didn’t spin in and we came…we just descended, and we came out
below the clouds in between the mountains in the valley. It wasn’t our time to go, but boy, we
got a load of ice like I’ve never seen before since and that’s the only time that I ever really got
bad, bad icing. Just to show you, a little bit of [rime] ice, a little bit of thin ice on a wing can also
be just as bad as a big load, you see?
SM: Why, just because it disrupts the flow of air?
FB: The flow of air, yes. You see, a wing, a propeller, a wing, the same thing; it’s a
pressure, it’s a pressure-physics thing, the wind or the air takes less time, it builds up less time to
go over the bottom and the top and consequently there’s less pressure, so that’s where you get
your lift. There’s less pressure on the top than the bottom. The propeller is the same way, so
that’s why you go forward.
SM: Now I’m glad you said that, propeller. I meant to ask you earlier; when you were
making your decision about when you first went into the Navy and finished your basic flight and
were going to advanced flight, was there an option to fly helicopters at that point?
FB: An option to what? I’m sorry.
SM: To go helicopters.
FB: No, there were no helicopters then…
SM: In the Navy?
FB: …in the Navy, or they were just experimental. But, when I went to my first Med
cruise [1951], one of my classmates, Willie Wirt, Bill Wirt, he was the Ensign chopper pilot on
the Roosevelt, and he ended up being the chief chopper pilot on the Roosevelt because the
lieutenant chopper pilot that was in charge of our chopper on the way over, he got into…had a
problem trying to make an emergency landing and couldn’t. It took him an hour to do it. He was
sent back to the States and Bill took over as an ensign and I got to ride with him when we’d
fly…when he’d fly in the daytime. They never flew at night then, so I got to ride with Bill in the
choppers. I just never liked choppers. They’re wonderful, but when they crash, there’s nothing
left of them usually and also they shook too much! I didn’t like them. God Bless Air America
and all the chopper pilots that flew them, they’re fine folks, but I just never liked them.
SM: And you never actually did fly one?
FB: Oh I flew one, I flew one at Air America. I went off [?], and sure, I flew it, but I
never flew it by myself. They asked me, they invited me and wanted me to go in it and I just…it
was never my cup of tea.
SM: Well, is there anything else that you want to talk about with regard to your time at
Raytheon or White Sands?
FB: No, not really. I don’t think it’s pertinent, or any more is pertinent to my work at
Air America
SM: Well how about just in the sense of aviation history? Was there anything?
FB: Oh well, yeah, one time…this is just my own personal history. One time I picked up
a Phantom. I checked out in a Phantom. I was the 36th pilot to fly it in November of 1959, and
you just got in the plane and flew it at that time. It was just like when I checked out in
everything; there were no simulators, no nothing, it was no big deal, and besides, jets are so
simple. Anyway, I got to fly the F-4H it was called then, F-4H, one F, the fifth one built, and on
my first flight I almost went super sonic just taking off; the thing just went up like a rocket. We
didn’t have any…we didn’t have ABS brakes on the first ones, like you do on cars now. We
didn’t even have it on that then. I think I went through one set of tires the first flight trying to
use the brakes until I could learn to use them, and then after that I got good. One time I had to
go pick up I think the tenth F-4 at the factory at St. Louis and I brought it back and I told my
boss George, George Bottjer, I said, “I’m going to try to set the world speed record going from
St. Louis to Boston,” just unofficially of course because I had two big drop tanks and I figured,
“Well, I can run it just under the number, just under Mach 1,” because you don’t want to go over
Mach 1 because it causes too much of a sonic boom, so I said, “I’ll run it just under the number
and try to get a tail wind,” so I took off. I think it took me an hour and 18 minutes to Boston, but
it was just kept between…it was nothing official or anything, but that was some flight. I’d call
down and I’d tell Cleveland Center, “This is Navy…” whatever my number was, I forget,
“Estimating such-and-such a place in ten minutes,” and they’d come back and say, “Say again?
Say that again? Repeat. What did you say?” and I’d say, “I’m estimating air in ten minutes.”
Ordinarily it would take 20 minutes, but the thing was really moving out. Also, I took it up to
Mach…over Mach 2 on a couple of flights. One time I had to do a high altitude, high Q test and
I was by myself and I took off and flew down to…had to do this over the water like I told you,
and so we didn’t want to make sonic booms then because it could break windows and plaster and
all that, so I took off and I headed down towards Otis Air Force Base which is by Hyannis where
Kennedy was from then, just so you’ll know where I’m talking about, down in there, and I took
off and by that time I got up to 35-40,000 and went into burner and both engines and finally got
it accelerated above Mach 2 and they’re telling me to read all this information back and I went
from right off of Cape Cod down there to up by NAS Brunswick-Maine in less than six minutes.
It was 125 miles in five minutes, nautical miles that is, and then of course then I had to turn it
back to Bedford and land because I was almost out of fuel because when you’re going that fast in
the F-4, or most of the jets, your gas is going…you can see the needle going down so fast you
can believe it. So, the whole flight was 30 minutes and I landed with maybe 1500 pounds of
fuel, which is not much, whereas your super sonic, like the SST, the Concord, it has engines that
are more efficient, more fuel efficient; the faster it goes, the higher it goes, which is hard to
understand, but it’s true. It’s not true with what we flew.
SM: No. Now how smooth was that ride, going up over Mach 2?
FB: Oh, you don’t even…it’s…no, you just see the gauge, you can’t believe the gauges.
It’s no shake, no nothing. Sometimes we’d have a cloud go over the canopy as a shock wave. If
it’s just right you can see wing tip [vortice]. I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about.
SM: Yes, I do.
FB: Okay, shock wave, if it’s just right moisture will condense and whether it was F-3H
or even the F-8…any plane that goes above Mach 1, why you can get a bump or a little cloud
across the canopy, but after you go past Mach 1, it’s smooth.
SM: When you mention a cloud going over the canopy, is that kind of like a ring that
surrounds the whole aircraft or is it just on top?
FB: I don’t know, I really can’t tell you. I’ve seen pictures of it since then, a couple
recently as a matter of fact, they’re beautiful. You’re busy; when you’re doing something,
you’re busy really. There’s some things you just can’t enjoy. You just know that there’s a bump
or a cloud or something. It would be hard for me to explain it to you. I can explain…for
instance, like one time I saw the aurora when I was up on a cruise above the Arctic Circle on the
Midway one night, while I was up in the Sky Ray [Skyraider] or the AD-4N flying off the
Midway and all of a sudden we saw – I mean I saw, and my crewmen saw, and from the back –
the aurora, and it was the most spectacular northern lights I’d ever seen. It looked like pipe
organs, huge pipe organs dancing up and down, changing colors and it was spectacular. Now
that I had time to see and look at because I wasn’t busy. It was just nighttime and I was on my
mission, whatever it was, I guess it was a radar mission.
SM: Now for Raytheon, and I understand that you can’t talk about this type of stuff, but I
was curious, did you do many tests for intelligence gathering equipment on various platforms,
signals or photo reconnaissance?
FB: No, I didn’t do any of that. I did photo…I did reconnaissance and that kind of stuff
in the Navy in the AD when we’d take off and when we were over off of the border there north
of Greece and back after World War II. The squadron I was in had counter measures equipment
in the back of the AD-4Q Sky Raider and we’d take off and one time I remember we launched a
whole air group towards the border and got them to turn on the radars and we got recorded all the
information which is exactly what’s been going on and done for some time, and that’s probably
what happens over in China right now with the EP3 type of thing. Collections of intelligence
would go on forever as long as we’re around. Sure, I did that, but not with Raytheon.
SM: You didn’t test equipment, that was all.
FB: Oh you mean test the equipment for that?
SM: Right.
FB: No, to my knowledge, no, I never did anything with that type of equipment.
SM: By 1965, in 1965, you left Raytheon…
FB: No, 1965.
SM: Yeah, 1965.
FB: Oh, okay.
SM: You left Raytheon and joined up with Air America.
FB: Can I stop right now just for a minute?
SM: Oh of course. Let me go ahead and pause it. Thank you very much. This will end
the first interview with Frank Bonansinga. This is Steve Maxner continuing the interview with
Mr. Frank Bonansinga on the 16th of April 2001 at approximately 9:15 Lubbock time. Sir, why
don’t you go ahead and begin by discussing the incident involving the cowling falling off of the
aircraft you were flying.
FB: Okay. I had left the Navy and got a job with Raytheon in 1955 and a couple of
months later, I was flying as target for a radar evaluation flight at about 10,000 feet in a F-6F
Hellcat. And all of the sudden, the cowling ripped off and came back and covered the cockpit,
covered the canopy so that I couldn’t see out ahead. I could just look to the side. I was out about
25, 30 miles from Bedford and the engine started, it cooled down immediately and started cutting
out. It was in February, if I remember correctly, so it was quite cold up there at that time, even at
altitude, of course. The engine was missing and cutting out so I headed back to Hanscomb Field
and kept it running by pushing the RPM way up and trying to make it run as hot as I could
without going too fast because I didn’t want the cowling to rip off completely and might take off
the tail. I finally got it back and dropped down and since I couldn’t see out to make a regular
landing, I came in and I made like a carrier landing. I came in over the tower. I came in right
over the field and came around low and I kept looking out the left side of the cockpit in a turn,
had the gear and flaps down, canopy open, of course, and brought it around and made what we
call a FCLP, Field Carrier landing and took my own cut and landed and taxied in. It was no
problem, but when I got in, it’s interesting. I’d been in the Navy for ten years, but at Raytheon,
when I got back, the mechanic, the plane captain, he was fired on the spot because he had not
hooked up that cowling properly. That was a memorable little flight.
SM: Yes sir. There was no permanent damage to the aircraft?
FB: No. They just replaced the cowling and had to get a new cowling and that was it.
SM: When that kind of incident happens, is there anyway that you’re trained to deal with
that prior to it, or it happens, you make a split second decision and that’s it?
FB: Well, it’s pretty hard to train for that. No. Its just one of those things that happens.
You do what you do. That’s one thing about flying. Flying is basically really very simple,
probably easier than driving a car or riding a bicycle. Once you learn it, you never forget. The
only thing that’s bad about it is when things go wrong. You can’t get out.
SM: Was there anything else that you remember that you wanted to talk about with
regard to your flying before you transitioned to Air America?
FB: Not really.
SM: Okay. Well, you went to Air America in 1965 and I was curious, what did you
understand was happening in Southeast Asia, prior to actually joining Air America?
FB: Not anymore than what everyone was reading about in the paper; the incident with
the destroyers. Of course, I was familiar with the fact that French Indochina, that they were
having a problem there for years because the French influence in Saigon, Vietnam, and
Cambodia and Laos where the second languages in all those countries was French. The French,
you had Michelin rubber and you had the French coffee and tea plantation owners. Many of the
rice farmers in all the countries was French. We knew, I knew from my history that Ho Chi Minh
actually helped us against the Japanese, so when he became communist and turned to
Communism, why we supported the French. That’s about really what I knew about the build up.
I got checked out in the F-86 by an Air Force fellow by the name of Art McNay at Hanscom
field. He flew with me the same day I flew it. Later he became an airline pilot. He told me about
CAT. Of course, I knew about CAT from World War I, excuse me, World War II when they
were an offshoot of the Flying Tigers. When Art told me about CAT needing some pilots or
whatever, at one time, I sent in a resume to Washington. I must have got the address from Art, so
I had sent that in. That’s about how it happened and I thought no more about it. That was several
years before. I was down at Holloman, flying an F-4D Sky Ray on a project for Raytheon, a
night project. I got a telephone call from Washington from Mr. Dawson. What had happened is
he had sent a telegram to my house, to my home and of course, I was TDY at Holloman, there at
Alamogordo. He said, “Give me a call.” So I called his number and I told him I received a
telegram from him but there was no way I could come to Washington for an interview because I
was in the middle of a project for Raytheon. He said, “Don’t worry about that,” he said, “Why
don’t you call me tomorrow,” he said, “and I’ll talk to you.” So I did and we talked on the
phone. He did all the talking. He’d talk and he’d tell me about basically what the pay was, some
of the things that they did, what they flew and that sort of thing. Then he’s stop and say, “Are
you still interested?” I’d say, “Yes.” And he’d keep going. After about 30 minutes, he hired me. I
said, “Okay,” I said, “The only thing is I can’t,” this was in April, I said, “I can’t come until my
project’s over because I’ve got to complete it.” He said, “No problem.” That’s basically how it
started. Of course, they sent me the tickets and I had to go get shots, all kinds of shots. They sent
me all kinds of literature, told me about the schools that were available and that sort of thing.
There’s a lot of things he didn’t and couldn’t say because there were two, really two sides of Air
America. One was transportation and cargo work and the other was kind of a classified portion. I
found that out later.
SM: When you said the classified portion, you’re referring to the support provided to the
CIA case officers on the ground in Laos and the intelligence?
FB: Well, there were just some missions. You’ve got to remember this. The Pacific
Corporation, which was actually part of the Central Intelligence Agency, ran CAT and later Air
America and Air Asia. Air America, the United States had to have and still does, has to have
somebody, has to have a service available to be able to do things immediately. Some things, you
just don’t fly around in Air Force One or Air Force planes or military planes. You sometime
have to do things that are on the QT. That’s the way it works in our country and probably other
countries. You don’t go around telling everybody what you’re doing if you want to still be king
of the hill and not get attacked like we did in World War II. That’s basically it. Of course, there’s
some things we did at Air America that are still classified to the point where it won’t be talked
about. It’s just like, for instance, right now nobody really knows the true story on JFK.
Somebody does, but they’re not telling for years. That’s the way it should be, at least in my
opinion. I find nothing wrong with that.
SM: Just out of curiosity, just in case people who read this or listen to this in the future
are curious, are you referring to one of the most recent studies that was just published by a
European think tank or something concerning the second gunman, there had to be a second
gunman?
FB: No, I’m not really familiar with that, but I personally don’t believe the Warren report
myself.
SM: The Warren Commission.
FB: I was at Holloman the day that happened. I was flying and F-4D and landed and I
couldn’t believe it.
SM: Why do you think the government hasn’t been forthright with regard to the
assassination of the President?
FB: Excuse me, I’m having a little trouble hearing you.
SM: Oh certainly. I’m sorry. Why do you think the U.S. government has not been
forthright and truthful about the assassination of President Kennedy?
FB: I’m not saying that they’re not. All I’m saying is the report that they have has not been
divulged to the public. I understand there’s some time frame thing where it will be down the line.
Perhaps, I don’t know, 10, 20 years, long after I’m gone, I’m sure, that it will be told for whatever
reasons. I don’t understand or pretend to understand some of it. I may not agree with it or I may
agree with it. I just don’t believe personally, that one man, that that man, Oswald did that by
himself. In fact, he may not have done it at all. But, that’s just my opinion.
SM: Well, back to your introduction to Air America. I’m curious, when you were talking
on the phone with Mr. Dawson, correct?
FB: Yes.
SM: Did he tell you what aircraft you’d be flying, what types of missions?
FB: No. No, he did not. He just mentioned some of the planes. There was a Beech craft
and there was all kinds of planes; the Helio and various aircraft. DC-3s and C-123s. Of course, I
hadn’t flown. I had been a single engine, mainly a carrier pilot. The only thing I had flown rather
big was a Douglas B-26, I flew quite a bit at Raytheon. I was not a multi- engine pilot, but that
didn’t seem to bother them at all. They were more interested I think, in ex-military and that type
of thing. I do know this. During the time I was finishing up my project at Holloman, when I flew
the F-4D back to Bedford at Handscomb field outside of Boston, I was told by my boss, by the
people that the FBI had been there and had been asking questions and checking security
clearance. Even though I had had a topsecret clearance in the Navy, whenever you go from one
outfit to another that has anything to do with the government where there might be some
classified work, they check you out again. That didn’t surprise me that that happened.
SM: Was there anything in particular that you thought you might want to do as an Air
America pilot?
FB: I was rather, in a way, I really didn’t know, but I was expecting that I possibly might
be doing something to do with – I had flown the Sky Raider and I had flown Bear Cats and that
sort of thing and the B-26- in case they were involved, in case they were doing any of that type
of work. I was kind of hoping I would get to do something to use my training as an attack pilot or
a fighter pilot, if you will. I really wasn’t surprised when I got to Taipei. I left on the first of July
1965 and I flew over on a Pan American 707 and we ended up going to Tokyo and spent the
night and then we got on the CAT 880 Convair, beautiful plane. It belonged to CAT and flew us
to Taipei. I was assigned while I was in Taipei. They saw I had quite a bit of time in the twin
Beech, the C-45, in the Navy so I was sent to Saigon. I got sent down to Bangkok first. There
was a ground school in Bangkok at the CAT building on Pat Pong road across from Max’s bar.
That’s where we all went. I went to ground school there for a week or ten days and went through
various training. Jungle survival training was one, a little bit of that. We studied. I think I had
some ground school in the C-45 that Air America called the ten two for 10,200 pound gross
limit. Called them 10-2s. Then an Apache and some various aircraft. On the 16th of July I hopped
on a Caravel [French], Air Vietnam Caravel and went into Saigon. I remember as we got in
there just at dusk, I looked out the window and there’s a B-45 making a straffing attack right off
the wing on the airport. I said, “Wow.” We landed and nobody met me. I couldn’t believe it. I
was by myself. In Tokyo they met us and in Taipei they met us. In Bangkok, I got met. When I
got to Saigon, nobody was there. I went through Customs and the whole bit and by now, it was
dark. I didn’t know what to do, so I got a taxi. I said, “Well, I’ll just go down town and start from
zero the next morning.” On the way out in this taxi, I happened to look out at the airport and I
saw a C-46 with great big Air America on the side of it. I said, “Stop!” I paid him, I got out of
the taxi and I had my bags in my hand and I went to this gate and the guard there, he let me
through and I walked through the planes and up the ramp to this building. It was dark by then.
That’s how I made my entrance that day. The next morning, Jim Russell took me up in a Beech
craft and gave me a ride, put me in the left seat and had me fly it. Of course, it was no problem
flying it. He put me into the twin Beech program and for the next week, I flew with Captains all
over the country. They wanted to make me a captain in a week and I asked Jim, I told Jim and
the acting chief pilot, Harry Hudson from Tachikawa. We used to call him, lovingly, Tache Fats.
He was an ex CAT pilot. I said, “Do you mind if I have a few more days. I really don’t know the
country.” Believe it or not, we went into a lot of different strips all over the country and it was
kind of tough learning them. They said, “Yeah. We’ll give you a couple of days.” Well, they
gave me two more days. On the 26 I took a check ride and on the 27thth, I became a captain. I
really didn’t know the country all that well. I thought I’d done some flying until I went with Air
America, because I flew like 17 straight days. The next day, when I made captain, I went out and
had a 17 leg flight, 17 landings, flew about six hours. We’d take off early in the morning and
we’d come back at sunset or maybe after dark. I lost ten pounds in the first six weeks I was there.
We didn’t eat. We’d get up real early. I was staying at the Majestic Hotel down on the Saigon
river and they’d pick me up [in Air America’s VW minibus] and we’d go out, pre-flight the plane
and see what we were doing and go through a flight information center debriefing and then go
get in the plane. At that time, lots of times, you did your own refueling out of barrels, hand
pumped. There was no place to get anything to eat. I remember, we didn’t have any uniforms
when I first got there. There were about 35 pilots when I got there and everybody was busy. You
didn’t eat lunch, so when we got back at night you went home and went back to the hotel and ate
and crawled into the sack and did it again the next morning. I didn’t have a day off until I think,
about the first of August and I went right back flying again another week. I had like, 70 hours the
first 14 days at Air America in July. I hadn’t flown that much since I had been in the Navy ten
years before. That was my introduction.
SM: Let me take a step back real quick. I was curious about the jungle training you
received and how long that was.
FB: It was a minor thing. You’re talking about survival if you happen to go down into a
jungle or that type of area, how you would have to probably eat things like worms and snakes
and spiders and whatever you could eat. You maybe take a little bite of something and see if it
made you sick and if it didn’t, you ate it. The same old bit we’d had like I was a Navy pilot. Why
you never want to get caught. You want to evade and if you do get caught, you try to escape. It’s
called escape and evasion. It was a brief course like that.
SM: Did they have a mock POW camp set up for you?
FB: Pardon me.
SM: Did they have a mock POW camp?
FB: No, no. This was all in the classroom.
SM: Just out of curiosity, you were trained initially at a CAT base. What did you think
were the difference between CAT and Air America?
FB: Civil Air Transport was originally, Civil Air Transport was an off shoot of the Flying
Tigers that happened after the Chinese took over China and CAT, Civil Air Transport, moved to
Tainan in Taiwan or Formosa. CAT was funded originally by the OSS, but then when the CIA
came into the OSS, it was restructured after World War II and that came into effect. You still had
to have people and aircraft to do various things in that part of the world, so CAT also had an
airline and it also had pilots and planes doing covert, special work. When the Korean War came
about, you’ve got an off shoot of Air America involved later and that became more of the special
work. They were the same thing. It’s just like a name change. CAT, basically, was the airline
until Civil Air Transport in Taipei had an accident and the aircraft was destroyed and pretty
much the airline went out of business.
SM: What were your first impressions upon arriving in Saigon, just in terms of the
physical aspects of that country, the smells?
FB: I grew up in New Orleans after we moved [from Los Angles]. I mentioned earlier
that we moved to New Orleans and it was really similar. The French influence, the architecture,
high ceilings and the climate was almost identical. The Saigon River looked like the Mississippi.
You had roaches and you had the whole bit and it rained everyday. It was hot. It was very
similar, quite similar to New Orleans and the Bayou country. For instance, the Delta in southeast
Asia was similar to the Bayou country in southern Louisiana. There was a lot of similarity in that
respect. That I can tell you. The architecture and a lot of the food, the French food.
SM: You mentioned earlier, you’d go back to the hotel and eat dinner. Was that like a
hotel restaurant that served western food?
FB: I’d just have it brought up to my room. No. It was all French. I started eating a lot of
the local food. I didn’t really care too much for the Vietnamese food. I really didn’t learn to like
it in the two years I was there, although I did learn to like the Thai food. Of course, Chinese
food, I always liked. But the Vietnamese have a different type of menu and I certainly didn’t do
it. I’ll tell you what, when I had a day off, we had a pass to go to the officer’s hotel. I can’t
remember the name of it, but we’d go up on the top deck. It was about a five-story building. Up
on the top, they had a restaurant and they had a bar and slot machines and pin-ball machines and
it was cool up there, cooler. I used to like to go up there and have a hamburger. If I had a Sunday
off, I’d go up there and have brunch, have a morning brunch. That was pretty good food, most
enjoyable.
SM: I was curious about the C-45. What was its role in terms of the types of missions that
you used the C-45 for, the areas where you were flying into, and stuff like that?
FB: The C-45 was the work horse. We had more of those than anything. We flew it
basically, by ourselves. It was a lot of work because you had to not only find the places and land
and I might mention on my first day out, I went into a place called Gocong which was down in
the Delta and it had a 1,500 foot strip that was about 70 foot wide. It was just like landing on a
carrier. I remember it was a dirt strip. I remember the people, they had a big fence, like a
railroad, up and down, stopping to carve things to keep them from going on. I guess it was a
pathway from one place to another. The C-45, if you landed it like a tail dragger, like a regular
airplane, not a tricycle, and if you kept the yoke back in your lap and you brought it in, you could
land that C-45 in a really short strip. So that’s what we did. We went in, we took in cargo, small
cargo type things, but mainly people from the Embassy or from USAID or military folks and go
into these various strips throughout south Vietnam and we’d cover from way down in the
southern part by Rac Gia all the way up to the north to Dong Ha. From flying one end to the
other in a Beech craft will take you three hours. South Vietnam itself was quite large, long. We
went into various. We had courier flights where we’d make these drop offs. Various packages,
papers. We had other flights that were special flights for an individual that we might have to take
them to one specific location and sit there and wait for them type of thing. Then one time I took
all the seats out and I must have loaded the back of the cabin of that C-45 with, oh it must have
been 50 cases of beer. It was chock a block full of beer and I took it up to a team, to a bunch of
Army guys that were in the middle of the II Corps northwest of Pleiku and landed up there. Boy,
were they glad to see me. They were really glad to see all that beer. You never knew what you
were taking.
SM: In terms of the events that occurred while you were flying these particular missions,
you mentioned before the interview, that at one point, it was in August, the door of your C-45
opened. Why don’t you go ahead and describe that incident?
FB: It was in August. It was about less than about two weeks after I made captain.
Making captain meant going from like $650 a month to $1000 a month then, base pay. It was
besides making money, you got to do your flying instead of riding co-pilot. What happened is I
had a flight up by Da Nang to a place called Quang Tri and after I left off the passenger, I was
supposed to go back to Da Nang and fly and then come back and pick him up. When I let him
out of the plane and I pulled the air stair door up, apparently I didn’t latch it properly, secure it. I
turned it, but it probably didn’t lock properly. After I took off, I got airborne and the door flew
open and I was by myself as I mentioned. It was quite bumpy that day and I tried to trim the
plane up and go in the back and close it, but I couldn’t. It would have been disastrous. I was
locked into having to take it back to Da Nang and land it. I landed it and I figured, well, I’m back
to co-pilot, because if you had an accident, you got demoted to co-pilot. I landed it and somehow
it just barely, it didn’t drag down and it didn’t hurt it enough to cause in any damage. What little
damage it was, we fixed it with a two by four and I reported it and they said, “Never mind, keep
flying.” That was that. Right after that, I see in my log books that I’m looking at here, it says, 31
August 10-2 number 9073 Zulu, Bill Mauser who was a brand new hire chopper pilot, ex Air
Force was with me and I ran out of oil, the left engine ran out of oil and I had to make a single
engine landing at Saigon. Things like that happened. I had some interesting ferry flights, too. I go
to do that. I could tell you about that.
SM: I’m just curious, real quick about this engine running out of oil. If an engine, an
aircraft engine ran out of oil, did it seize?
FB: Oh yeah. It would seize. So if you happen to be watching your instruments, it’s just
like in your car. If you shut your engine down before the oil can’t do its job. The oil can still,
there’s enough lubrication in there, you’ll save your engine. You shut down the engine and
you’re driving your car. The same thing in an airplane. If you happen to see the oil gauge
pressure going down and you feather the engine and shut it down, provided you got another
engine, you can fly that thing on one engine, get it back and land it and save the engine. That’s
what happened with me. That’s one thing you have to learn in flying is what they call an
instrument scan. You really look at your instruments almost all the time. You’re looking out, you
look at your instruments, you’re looking out, you look at your instruments. I had an MGB and
that happened to me a couple of years ago. I looked down and saw my oil pressure go down and
stopped it and sure enough, the oil line had broken. I just fixed the line and stuck some oil in it,
otherwise, it would have been good-bye engine. That’s how that works.
SM: I was curious. You mentioned how easy it was to land a C-45 on a short runway.
Was it a STOL capable aircraft, Short Takeoff and Landing?
FB: No. The way we were taught to land, the way I learned to land in SNB and all tail
draggers is you come in and you make a three-point landing. That’s how you land on a carrier.
That’s the way we landed a Beech craft. That’s the way I was taught. We could take it in and
plunk it down. Of course, you can always land it on the wheels on a 10,000 foot strip. There’s no
problem. That’s the way to do. At Saigon, you didn’t want to hold up traffic. You wanted to get
on and in and out. When you needed to land in a short, short strip, the Beech craft was very
good. The only bad thing about the Beech was it had a tendency to ground loop in a crosswind if
you didn’t get the yoke back in your lap and if you didn’t pay attention to your “knitting”, it’d
ground loop on you. That happened to a bunch of guys, of course. I was fortunate I had my
training and it paid off. I guess that’s why I got stuck and assigned to the C-45.
SM: When you were first active in country, how much interaction did you have with the
Vietnamese people, Vietnamese civilians and anybody else?
FB: I thought they were really neat folks. I remember we used to call the policemen white
mice. I remember one day- I didn’t have a car or anything- I got a ride with one in the back of his
little motorcycle. He took me to town or I don’t know. I thought the Vietnamese people were
very nice. I flew a lot of them back. I remember there were two Vietnamese ladies, gals, young
ladies that worked at one U.S. agency in Nha Trang which was east over on the South China Sea,
maybe a 45 minute flight from Saigon. One night, it was right after we came back. I mean, soon
after I’d been made captain and I was bringing them back, just those two employees from Nha
Trang and we were up around 7, 8,000 feet coming in over a radio station called Alpha Charlie, I
think it was. It was just a beacon. All of a sudden, we were getting some ground fire, anti aircraft
fire coming by and they said, “Oh, look! Fireworks! Look at the fireworks.” They didn’t know
what it was.
SM: Were there any particular rules about your interactions with the Vietnamese people,
in terms of the Air America corporate policy?
FB: I never heard of any. We had many of them working for us. We never had any as our
pilots working for us, but I’m sure we had mechanics and they worked with us right away. No, I
never heard of anything like that.
SM: You mentioned just a moment ago that you started some ferry flights and I see in
your log it was 16 September that you were on your first ferry flight. Why don’t you go ahead
and discuss what those were?
FB: Okay. Air Asia, which was a huge company in Tianan, Formosa, or Taiwan, was an
overhaul and repair base where planes came in for Air America and CAT and also it had a
contract to the U.S. military to do O&R on the military aircraft. When a plane was purchased and
needed, and of course the expansion was tremendous in July in the summer of 1965. Like I say,
there were 35 pilots when I got there and when I left a year and a half later, there were 235
pilots. The number of planes went say like from 25 to 100 or more planes. These planes would
come into the O&R at Air Asia and be modified and painted and the whole bit and they’d have to
have somebody go up there and test fly it and then fly it back from Tianan across to Hong Kong
and then down to Da Nang and from Da Nang to Saigon. It was an all day trip. I got sent up in
my first flight, I see here it was on the 16th of September, pick up a 6154 Uniform, a C-45. I flew
it back by myself and I RONed in Hong Kong which, ordinarily, they didn’t want you to do that,
but I did the first time. I really enjoyed it. It was a wonderful flight. I was by myself and I got to
make another one and on that flight is really interesting. We usually took off about 8:00, 7, 8:00
in the morning and I looked down and I was going down south and cutting across [the South
China Sea] into Hong Kong and it was sort of overcast, clouds, and I looked down through the
clouds and I saw these thousands, hundreds, maybe a thousand junks as far as I could see. I had
flown over and they had come out obviously from Hong Kong and it was a spectacular sight. I
just wished I had a camera. It was the only time I ever saw that. It was really spectacular.
SM: It was shortly after your first ferry flight that you were shot at, the first time you
were shot at that you knew of.
FB: The first time I was shot at was with the tracers, but the first time I was hit was. The
first time I was shot at was with the two Embassy passengers, but the first time I was hit, the only
time I was hit was on a Sunday. I remember Roger Vikre was flying with me and we had five
passengers and we were looking for a place called Bak Liu and the weather was bad. We were
both looking, couldn’t find it. Next thing, somebody came up and said, “Hey, I think we’re
getting shot at.” I said, “Okay.” We couldn’t find it, so we went home and sure enough we had a
hole through the tail. That was the only time I was hit and got my plane hit, but many others,
they got hit and shot down.
SM: That was the only time you were ever hit?
FB: Yeah. It’s the only time I was hit by enemy ground fire or anti aircraft fire an I was
fired at many, many, many times, especially when we were flying in Laos. That’s a little bit later
in the interview.
SM: But even when you were in Laos, you never got hit?
FB: Never. No, I never got hit once.
SM: That is amazing. Now, you mentioned during your time in flying out of Vietnam,
there was at one point you were shot at by what you thought was a kid.
FB: Oh yeah. This one time I was flying out of Da Nang and I went up and went into
Dong Ha which is right on the border, the demarcation [zone between North and South
Vietnam]. I took off out of Dong Ha and Dong Ha was inland not too far from the ocean. So, I
head on over to the ocean and then come down offshore. As I went over the beach, I happened to
look down. It looked like a young kid was there. I thought he was waving at me at first. He was
shooting at me. I could see the flash from the rifle. That little son of a gun. He didn’t hit me
though. That was something.
SM: Did you have any particular expectations concerning what you would encounter
when you arrived in Vietnam?
FB: No. I really didn’t. I wasn’t shocked or anything. I’ll tell you what, when I first got to
Taipei, one of the Air America pilots had taken off out of Saigon and possibly hit and killed and
shot down and that was the day I arrived in Taipei. I was aware of the fact. One of the pilots that
came over with me, he was assigned to fly Helio Couriers up in Vientaine and I remember he
just turned around and went home. I was kind of hoping I would get to go to Vientaine but they
sent me to Saigon. I was still young then. I was still pretty much jingoistic. I was always for the
country.
SM: Do you know why the helio courier pilot went home?
FB: He probably really didn’t really want to go up there. They were getting shot at pretty
regular and they were flying into some really tough strips. The people that flew the choppers, the
H-34 pilots and the STAL pilots, mainly Helio Couriers then, the Porter was just coming in.
They went into some pretty tough places. A lot of people don’t realize, the war in Laos was bad
or worse in many ways than it was in Vietnam and Cambodia.
SM: Were you surprised at all, or did you understand what was going on on the ground in
Vietnam or did you think you understood?
FB: Oh yeah. I could see. Certainly. Oh yes. There’s no doubt. It was pretty tough to
fight. You can’t tell a good guy from a bad guy because the North Vietnamese and the South
Vietnamese look alike. You can’t go by looks, but we were trying to, what we thought was
provide them with a backing so they would not become communistic. Okay, that’s about the size
of that one. That’s what I can tell you that we did. I’m sure I must have carried an awful lot of
VCs on R&R up to Da Lat because that was the R&R center of South Vietnam. But they got in
the plane and you couldn’t tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy. I have one story
about that. Da Lat was up in the mountains. There’s only a couple of times in my life I thought I
had bought the farm and one of them was in Da Lat. We had to go into Da Lat and it was like a
Shangri La type place and it was in the middle of the mountains. This one particular morning, it
was really socked in. The only way we could get in is there was a radio station and we’d shoot an
ADF approach into it. The weather was, the clouds were right down in the mountains. This
customer I had on board, he said he had to get there. I said, “Boy, it’s going to be tough.” He
said, “I really got to make this meeting.” And I let him talk me into it and I made the approach
and just thank God there were no rocks in those clouds because that’s where a lot of guys got
killed is flying through clouds and there’s rocks in them, a mountain. That Da Lat was a
wonderful place. I remember I loved artichokes, still do, and that’s one of the few places where
they grew artichokes in Vietnam. Tiny little things, though. It was a beautiful place.
SM: When you say you were flying a customer into Da Lat, are you talking about the
same kind of customer as they usually had?
FB: Yeah. CIA. We called them customer.
SM: So that relationship existed in Saigon, as well.
FB: Oh, sure. I flew around several of the, Bill Hart and a whole bunch of folks. You’re
aware of things like that.
SM: When you were flying people like that and when you were not flying, if you were
just hanging around talking with people like Bill Hart or other customers…
FB: No, no. I don’t hang around and talk with people I fly with.
SM: You never really were able to have conversations with them. Okay. How about with
other Air America pilots?
FB: Oh, certainly.
SM: Did you guys talk about the political situation much, that is what was going on in
Vietnam?
FB: No more than you and I would talk about what’s going on right now. No. I can’t
relate to that.
SM: How about just in terms of intelligence briefings, where there might be heavy fire? I
assume that type of activity was pretty common.
FB: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Of course. The FIC, Flight Information Center folks are like your
intelligence officers in the military where they would say, “okay,” before you go fly every
morning. You’d say, “well, I got a flight up to Dong Ha or Quang Tri or Qui Nhon” or whatever,
or Bac Lu, one of the many hundreds of places and you’d go in there and there’d be a big chart
on the wall and there’d be marks where there was ground fire or heavy artillery or maybe the
field has problems. Maybe you don’t want to go in or there was fire, they had a fire fight close by
or they might tell you, “Okay, before you land here, you want to come in and circle down right
over the field.” That sort of thing. We were briefed. Sometimes you don’t get all the information
because they can’t know everything.
SM: That information was probably extremely helpful in terms of you avoiding ground
fire?
FB: Oh, sure. I’m sure it helped a lot.
SM: Were you consistently debriefed after every mission so that you could provide the
same information?
FB: You would if you had something to say. You would go back to FIC and say, “So and
so and so and so.” One time I was flying later on up in Laos. I had to report whenever we got
some heavy AA fire, you’d go back and say that’s where you got it. The next people that were
going up that way would know about it.
SM: While you were flying out of Saigon, did you participate in a lot of special missions?
FB: No. I dropped some leaflets one flight and I took the head man for the CIA in Ban
Me Thout where they had a big affair for the Montagnard people from Cambodia and from
Vietnam. I remember Ambassador Lodge was there and I flew some Congressmen around.
That’s not even special. I wasn’t involved in anything out of the ordinary, I would say.
SM: Now, did you make rice drops and stuff like that, too.
FB: Pardon me. Night drops? No.
SM: No. Rice, rice drops.
FB: Oh no. No, no. There were not drops in the C-45. The rice drops, if there were any,
had to be in the DC-3 and the Caribou and the C-46 out of Saigon. I’m sure that those folks did it.
I didn’t. I just wasn’t that aware of what they were doing that much.
SM: Before you left Saigon, you did start your training in the Volpar, is that correct?
FB: Yes. They had a new aircraft at Air Asia that was, they called it a Volpar
modification and two other gents, Lucky Waller and Paul Brousard and I were sent up to Tainan
to take instruction in the new turbo prop conversion at Tainan. We were checked out by the chief
pilot at Volpar, Dick Hanson and Air America check pilot, former Navy pilot, Rocky Myer. We
had about three days. It took three days. We went down to Kao Chung, which was just south of
Tainan and learned to land it and take it off and the whole bit. After, I think I had six, seven,
hours, whatever, I was given a line check by a Don Kosteff [Air America’s chief check pilot] at
Tainan. I got checked out in a Volpar called 95 Charlie. That was the beginning of what ended
up being the aircraft I flew the most. I flew over 5,000 hours in it. So I ended up flying that until,
pretty much until I left the company. It was quite a fine airplane because it made a twin Beech
into a tricycle landing gear plane. I’ll tell you just a little bit about that Volpar conversion. They
took out the Pratt & Whitney piston engines, propellers and they put in Garrett turbo engines.
Garrett originally was not meant for an airplane, it was a starting a generator type engine but it
became a wonderful engine. They stuck more fuel in the tanks and they made a nose gear in the
nose and what it did is it made the aircraft easier to land and take off. It gave it a little more,
about ten to 15 knots increased in speed and longer endurance, as I mentioned, and basically the
same cabin. You could still carry up to about 10 people in it. It had reversible full feathering
propellers, Hartzell propellers which was good, although, it wasn’t, you couldn’t land it quite as
short as a twin Beech. I found out later I could by bringing it in real slow and then sticking it on
the end of the runway and then going to full reverse. It could land on a short strip.
SM: The speed increase was only 10 to 15 knots faster.
FB: That was just normal cruise. You could cruise it at 170, 180, close to 200 knots
versus the twin Beech was 165, 170 [true out] knots.
SM: How about the power of the aircraft in terms of climbing capability and stuff like
that?
FB: It was good. It had good power. The later Century Series engines were better than the
first ones. We were pretty much a test area. I lost a couple of engines in the Volpar. Basically, it
was a pretty good airplane.
SM: How many engines do you recall, do you remember that you lost, just out of
curiosity that were that first generation of Volpar?
FB: Well, I remember I lost one with Clarence Beverly once up by Qui Nhon. I
remember we took it down and landed it. We had a full load of people and we landed at Nha
Trang and later on when I went to Thailand, I lost several. I think I only lost one engine I can
remember in Saigon in ’66 before I went up to Thailand in ’67.
SM: Before you went to Thailand, I think it was in March, you spent some time in Tainan
instructing officers for the Volpar. Is that correct?
FB: Yes. In March of ’67, there was a project in Thailand and they wanted a pilot to go
up and instruct them and I ended up being sent up there to check out these new pilots. It was
Marsh and Graham, Burrows, Stevens. I’m looking at my log book. VanHeusen, Matt Hoff,
Cory, Gibson, Ray Hunt, [Dick] Rodgers, and another fellow named Rodgers, Ray Rodgers. I
ended up giving them instruction to be co-pilots, first officers on a high altitude relay project that
was scheduled. I went up and did that for a few days and then a couple of new planes for the
project, they asked me to ferry one from Tianan to Udorn, non stop from Tianan to Berl and then
from Berl down to Udorn which is only about a 20 minute flight. I did that. That’s how I ended
up going to work for Jim Rhyne in Udorn.
SM: This was in March.
FB: As a matter of fact, the ferry flight was the 13th of March. I ferried 77 Zulu and Matt
Hoff flew co-pilot with me. When I landed at Udorn that afternoon, it was a long flight, I met
Jim Rhyne. We shook hands and I said, “Boy, I sure would like to join your project.” I didn’t
even know what it was, but I knew I wanted to get out of Saigon. I didn’t particularly care for
that. The flying was fine, but I just thought I would like to get into something I thought would be
better. We shook hands and I went over to the bar, Club Rendezvous bar. That was the name of
our bar, nice place to eat. It had a bar. I was having a beer and next thing I know, Jim Rhyne
came over and tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You’re mine.” And I was. He got me
transferred in less than an hour. He had made a call, obviously to somewhere. I started flying. I
didn’t go back to Saigon for a month. Finally, I went back and picked up all my clothes and took
care of my apartment and then came back. I was working for Jim Rhyne in special projects there
at Udorn, which was basically the biggest chopper base in the world, the free world. There was
just a few fixed wing pilots and special projects and that’s where I went to work.
SM: This special project you were assigned to, this was the high altitude relay project?
FB: Well, the special projects, one of the projects that they had was the HARP, or High
Altitude Relay Project that I was training the co-pilots for and that’s what I first ended up flying.
We based out of Udorn and it was staged out of Savannakhet which is right on the river, just
across the river from Thailand and Laos. Savannakhet had about a 4,000 foot strip. That’s where
we flew our High Altitude Relay Project, which was quite an interesting project. I’ll tell you
about it. What it was, is we’d load up the Volpar with as much as two tons of fuel. It was way
over grossed. It had a special FAA clearance. We’d take off, in general, we’d split it up into two
flights. We just had one orbit point. It was out towards Ho Chi Minh trail. It was half way in
between and we were relaying signals from the ground to a receiver station over probably at
Nakhon Phanom. I really don’t know where the relay station was. We’d climb up, take off say
around 4:30 and climb up to 10,000 and then cruise climb up to 17 or 18,000 and relay these
messages. Around midnight, another plane, Volpar would relieve the first one until 7:00 in the
morning. It was that type of a mission. Every now and then, you had an all-nighter. You flew 14-
hour flights. You’d take off at five and land at seven the next morning. I had several of those. In
fact, I had three in a row one month. I had 42 hours by the 3rd of the month. That’s basically what
we did on the High Altitude Relay Project, relaying information from ground troops, hidden
ground folks about the quantity and number of trucks and that sort of thing that were going down
the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Saigon.
SM: Did you know if this was part of what they called ‘Road Watch’?
FB: Certainly. That’s what led into everything that I did because after a while, very
shortly after I got there, I was notified by Jim Rhyne that he wanted me to fly a B-26 which
delighted me. I really enjoyed flying the Raytheon B-26. They had two of them. One test and one
transportation. That’s how I went into that project.
SM: Before we talk about the B-26, a couple of quick things about your Volpar HARP
missions. What was the number of crew on board for those missions?
FB: We had two pilots on the Volpar all-nighters, a pilot and co-pilot. There were no auto
pilots, so we hand flew it. We had to wear oxygen. The tanks in the back, it had a 600 gallon
tank and it reeked of fuel that wasn’t perfectly vented. We’d take a sandwich along and we had a
little john in the back, a little port-a-potty. I can remember flying a couple of nights where I
never got out of the seat, not once. You saw the war, you saw the Namrod B-26s from NKP, Na
Khon Phanom would be over there working and you could see them working and see the anti
aircraft fire coming up at them. They got shot at a lot and they lost some. We could see all that.
We never had any problem at altitude. We weren’t right there, but we could see many nights. We
were vectored on radar and we stayed in like a square orbit, doing our job.
SM: What altitude, typically, did you fly those HARP missions?
FB: We’d start out around 10,000 and cruise climb as were burned down fuel because we
were so heavy and as we lightened we kept climbing up and by the end of the night, we’d be up
around 17, 18, 19,000 feet, hardly using much fuel. The reason you do that is to save fuel. We
always got back with plenty of fuel. I never wanted to tell them I could fly longer, though.
SM: How would the relays actually be handled? Was it by you and the co-pilot or was it
automatic?
FB: No. It was an automatic, an automatic relaying device that went through a special
radio and we could hear a little jingle, “Hunting we will go, hunting we will go,” that popped
through our earphones each time a message went through. We had no idea what the message
was. It was coded.
SM: Fascinating. So instead of you hearing nothing or hearing static, you’d hear a jingle,
“Hunting we will go.”
FB: Just a little Hunting every time a message went through our plane, we heard it.
Sometimes there were a bunch and sometimes there weren’t very many, but most of the time,
there was a lot. Let’s face it. That’s how they supplied all the troops was down that trail.
Everything that the Air Force and everybody tried to do to stop it, they couldn’t.
SM: That’s an interesting perspective.
FB: That’s a lot of what it was all about right there, what we did.
SM: So based on your understanding of the amount of traffic, it was almost a futile effort
to try to stop it.
FB: Well, it proved that. It proved to be futile. We did not stop resupplying of the Viet
Cong from North Vietnam. We did not. Boy, we tried. I ended up, as I told you, I ended up going
into the B-26 and I’d like to take a stop now.
SM: I’m sorry. It’s been a little while. Just a moment. [take break] Could you give an
approximate number to the number of HARP missions that you flew?
FB: Maybe 20.
SM: As you said earlier, for a majority of them, there was quite a bit of radio traffic that
you were relaying.
FB: Yeah. There was traffic almost every flight, some more than others.
SM: Since you were flying at such altitude, did you ever get shot at that you knew of?
FB: No, never.
SM: Were you ever warned or given briefing before one of these missions that the North
Vietnamese might have a more powerful AAA threat in an area and so you’d have to stay away
from it?
FB: No. We had a north station orbit covering and then we had a southern station vector
orbit point later on down South off of Pakse north or Savarravan. Neither orbit that I ever heard
of any anti aircraft fire.
SM: Did you fly any other special missions or special types of missions before you
transitioned over to the B-26?
FB: No, just that.
SM: Just the HARP missions. Why don’t you go ahead and describe the B-26 transition
and what your primary missions were flying the B-26s?
FB: In the end of May, a B-26 showed up on the ramp, a 598, a blue aircraft. Very
unusual unmarked configuration. It had a ramp in the back. It had been modified at Marina in
Arizona and flown over from there. The B-26 was modified with a Terrain Following Radar
[TFR], the same radar that the F-111 had. It was a fantastic radar that you could get right down
on the deck and hand fly it or couple it to the autopilot and it would fly you between the
mountain tops or the peaks or whatever. In the back, as I mentioned, it had a built in cargo ramp,
a small one. We only carried two pallets, two drop loads in the back of the 26 and it would drop
out. As far as the aircraft modifications, we had two tip tanks and we had reversible full
feathering props. The back of the plane was similar to the On Mark that I flew at Raytheon in as
much as the cabin door was the same and you had to kind of get down on you hands and knees to
crawl into the main spar. The entrance between the cabin and the cockpit was not the greatest
thing. You couldn’t stand up to get in. You had to get down on your hands and knees and crawl
up to the cockpit if you understand what I’m saying. It had two sets of controls. The co-pilot flew
with you. It was behind the captain, left seat. There was a little bench for the navigator. The
fourth crewman was a kicker, what we called the kicker. He pushed the load out when we got
over a [drop] zone. Basically, that’s what the plane came for; to make low level night drops to
resupply the people that were counting the troops and trucks and bicycles and everything going
down the road. They had to be out there and they were behind enemy lines, so to speak, and they
had to be resupplied with food and whatever else they needed; ammunition, radio. That’s what
the mission was. Apparently, I got picked for it because I had flown the B-26 and I took flight
training from Don Gearke. He checked me out in it and I flew with Berl King an awful lot and I
flew a flight with Gene Hughy. One night, Berl and I were out by Savannakhet practicing night
drops to a little base there when all of a sudden we started getting shot at. Tracers came
whooping by so we left and came back. After we landed, Berl and I went over to the bar, Club
Rendezvous bar, and found out that our troops had gone out and taken care of all the people that
were trying to come in and were shooting at us. That’s the only time I remember getting any
ground fire. That was on a practice drop. I got checked out on that B-26 and made some flights.
We’d load up at AB-1 cargo ramp there across from Air America in Udorn and get briefed. We’d
have to find the drop zone which was usually a very small, open area, where they’d leave out a
series like a T or an X. We’d go over it one time and if we didn’t see it, that was it. You didn’t
make a second pass. It compromised them and also we could pick up ground fire. The B-26
dropped, unfortunately, at a high drop speed, at 140 knots. This is because the single engine
speed, instead of 121, like in a regular B-26 invader, it was higher because it was a heavier
aircraft. The single engine speed is the speed at which one engine will keep the aircraft flying.
Consequently, dropping in the B-26 was difficult because it had kind of a tough nose to see out
of; something like flying the Corsair or the F-4U Cosair carrier. You had to keep it in a turn to
see out. Well, the same thing was with what we call the Blue Goose. The Blue Goose, you had to
kind of skid it, turn it, and come in that way to see the DZ. It didn’t prove as practical. It didn’t
get the job done, so they just went back to the regular night drop aircraft, the DC-3, the Caribou
and the C-123 and later, perhaps, the Otters. I don’t know. Everybody didn’t know everything
and yet there was still a need to know and there was a lot of things that I didn’t know what went
on.
SM: Do you know why they tried to introduce the B-26 into this type of operation? Since
the other aircraft were working well enough, why did they go to this? Do you know?
FB: I have no idea. They probably thought it would be a good idea to be able to get in
and get out and not get shot at near as much as the other aircraft who came in and didn’t have the
Train Following Radar [TFR].
SM: Did the B-26 have automatic pilot?
FB: Oh, yeah, but I almost never used it. I actually hand flew it.
SM: But this is unlike most of the other aircraft as we talked about before and that you
mentioned earlier, the Volpars did not.
FB: No. None of the C-45s or Volpars had autopilot. They were taken out if they had
them at all installed. The C-45s and Navy SNBs and some of them had autopilots at Tainan, at
Air Asia, apparently they were removed. It was just one less piece of equipment to have to
maintain. They weren’t the best in the west although, later on I bought, after I left Air America, I
bought a twin Beech E18S and it had a fine autopilot. It worked nice.
SM: I’m curious, especially in the Volpar, when you were flying all nighters, it would
seem to me that having an autopilot might be a really nice feature on an aircraft even though it
might add to the maintenance.
FB: Well, we had two pilots. So when I didn’t fly, he flew it. It was no problem.
SM: I take it you did take shifts like that.
FB: Oh, sure.
SM: What did you use primarily to stay awake and alert for a 12-hour night mission like
that or did you use anything?
FB: It was no problem staying alert. Every now and then you’d take a quick practice nap.
You didn’t nap but you’d close your eyes and listen to the radio. I had a low freq radio and I
could pick up Manila and Voice of America every now and then. We’d listen to the ball scores or
the news or something like that, but in general, the vectoring and the whole bit, none of us had
any problems staying awake. You’ve got to remember I was younger then, too.
SM: Now, you mentioned listening to the radio in terms of broadcast radio. Was that
pretty consistent while you were flying?
FB: Always, even in the Navy, you had a coffee grinder, low freq range receiver. You’d
go to the end of it, right at 550 and usually there was a radio station somewhere down there. I can
remember when I was a Navy pilot flying up over Yankee stadium at 10,000 feet in the ‘50s. I
listened to a Yankee game on a low freq radio station one time when I had to kill some time,
looking down there. Of course, I couldn’t see. The field looked like the size of a postage stamp,
but I was listening to the game and supposedly watching it. Listening to the radio and flying at
the same time is no problem. It’s not like in a car where you got to using cell phones where you
have to have you hands on the wheel and try to talk at the same time. It just isn’t a safe practice.
But, flying, we had a head set and you could listen and pilots learn to do that.
SM: For those Volpar missions, how cold would it get in the airplane?
FB: It got cold. We had no heater. It also got wet. When we did get rain, the rain always
came through the windshield and yes, it was cold.
SM: It came through the windshield?
FB: We dressed warmly because you lose approximately three degrees per thousand feet
as you go up. You go up 10,000 feet, there’s 30 degrees.
SM: The rain would come in through the windshield?
FB: That was pretty much standard. They did their best.
SM: Not a whole lot or just a little or was it a lot?
FB: Enough to wet up you flight suit. Whenever they got a heavy rain, it just came in.
SM: I would imagine, some of the weather there in Laos and Thailand and Vietnam, there
would be significant tropical storm activity, the lightning and stuff like that.
FB: The weather in that part of the world on a comparative basis is much less violent.
Storms, for instance, the United States is one of the few countries that has tornadoes. Also, the
thunderstorms in the United States, I can remember flying an F-4 and I couldn’t get over the top
of it up around 45,000, that sort of thing, whereas in southeast Asia, a cumulonimbus or
thunderstorm seldom got up to 30,000 feet. You didn’t have the same kind of weather. You get
more of a monsoon, much more of a rainy type thing. You don’t have the violent frontal mixes of
warm air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico and then your cold arctic air coming down through
Canada meeting and causing, if I can explain this to you, what makes severe weather,
thunderstorms and tornadoes. That part of the world, it was really in general, we hardly ever
missed any flights because of weather. It was amazing. When it rained, it seemed, in general, it
rained at night and stopped raining at sunrise. You get your cumulus afternoon clouds.
SM: You mentioned earlier that the Volpar was outfitted with an extra fuel tank and
everything else and it was, you mentioned that it was, I guess, was a special exception to the
FAA regulations and whatnot concerning that particular aircraft. Were FAA regulations a
consisting concern for Air America and the…?
FB: Oh, sure. The FAA regulations were abided by and waivers whenever anything out
of the ordinary, for instance, we had to get an over gross waiver to fly the Volpar because it was
AN registered aircraft. Any aircraft that has an AN number is U.S. registered and has to abide by
various rules. If the Air America didn’t want to do that, then they could have got X experimental
type licenses or, in some cases, they could have got them licensed outside of the United States
because Air America did have some aircraft that were registered in China and Taiwan and also in
Laos and I think we even had some French registered planes. Not any of the C-45s or Volpars
that I flew. Every airplane that I flew for Air America had a USN registration.
SM: When you finished flying the B-26s you had a number of engine failures. I was
curious if that might have contributed also to the decision to get out of the B-26 resupply drop.
FB: You mean the customer and the company, getting out of it, their reason?
SM: Yes.
FB: It was not my reason.
SM: No.
FB: I don’t know. It could have been. I wasn’t consulted. I don’t know. All I know is that
the experiment wasn’t successful and as far as the engine failures went, I’m sure it might have
had some contributory factor. I certainly enjoyed flying it.
SM: You went from the B-26 back to the Volpar, but for a different mission, correct?
FB: Yes. What happened was from March until October, I guess my last flight was the 7th
of October 1967 and it was a night drop on the trail. Terry Luther was flying co-pilot with me
and Ray Fine was the navigator and Cliff Hamilton was the kicker that night. That was the last
flight. We hit the DZ. But then on the 24th of October, there was about a 17-day period there
where I didn’t fly it although I did most of the flying in it. On the 24th of October, I see in my log
book, it says, “flew 42 Zulu with Berl King.” It was first of the photo mission. I flew co-pilot
with Berl and went up on my first mission with him in the Volpar and it was 42 Zulu and we’d
take off out of Udorn about 8:30 and get up and we’d be briefed for various missions, mostly
almost all of it in Laos. It was like between a six, seven, as much as eight hour flight. Most of
your photographs were taken, the best time would be, obviously between nine and three when
the sun is kind of overhead.
SM: That last B-26 resupply night drop that you did, do you know what you were
dropping?
FB: No. We never knew what we dropped. We didn’t talk to the people on the ground.
There was no communications with them. We were just given a DZ, a location and we briefed
and we had one or two pallets. Sometimes we dropped one at one place and then we’d go to
another drop zone and drop the other, but in general, you just dropped one at each DZ. It could
have been food, it could have been hard rice, which is ammo. It could have been Playboy
magazines. I don’t know what it was. Clothes, medicine.
SM: For the photo reconnaissance flights that you flew starting in October and I guess
that probably was what you did for pretty much the remainder of your time?
FB: Yes. That’s basically what I did. I flew 569 photo reconnaissance missions between
October of 1967 and my last flight was in March of 1973. That’s basically what I did. There
were some other missions, but they were what we call Mickey Mouse and that was not for this
interview.
SM: When you were flying the photo reconnaissance missions, were they principally out
of Udorn?
FB: They were all out of Udorn.
SM: They were. Okay.
FB: Yes. You see, the Air Force was a joint Thai- U.S. military base. They had one
10,000 foot strip. When I got there, they had F-101 Voodoo photo reconnaissance aircraft doing
this kind of work so there was a huge photo lab there, an Air Force photo lab, so it worked
perfectly for us to do photo work. You probably question, you say, “Why would Air America in
a Volpar be doing photo reconnaissance work when you’ve got F-101s and you’ve got F-8U
crusaders doing it off of carriers and you have Air Force 101s and then you also have U-2s and
that sort of thing. Why use us?” Well it was very simple. We, the photo recce pilots, and there
were only two or three of us, didn’t rotate. We didn’t go back home after a year. We did it day in
and day out. We flew everyday. The plane flew everyday and when it was down for
maintenance, they got a backup plane, 71 Charlie and it had the holes cut in the back for the
cameras, so it was a continuous effort. We got better pictures, believe it or not, than the people
with the fancy cameras with our World War II Fairchilds and one RC-8 camera. We had about
six cameras. Well, four for sure. We got better pictures. That’s why we had the mission.
SM: Were the pictures better because of the speed you were flying or the altitude?
FB: No. It was because we could find the targets. It’s a question of finding. When you
have something to photograph, let’s say it’s a road. Well, a road, that’s easy. Once you find the
road, you follow it. You make sure your wings are level each time the camera clicks and you
overlap. The reason you overlap your pictures is so you get a 3D presentation. As long as you
have two pictures and they overlap, it’s just like your eye. The photo technician who looks at it,
he looks at it through a special glass and then it makes a three dimensional picture. All the
pictures are black and white, they’re not color. We could find places in the middle of nowhere
that the other pilots couldn’t find because we got to know the country like the back of our hand.
Even then, I can remember not finding a place. In the jungle, sometimes it’s tough to find
something. We flew at about 7,000-7,500 feet above the ground. We flew slow, about 140 knots.
We were slow and we got shot at a lot. There was no doubt about it. When you have to fly
straight and level, you’re an easy target. But, I never got hit. We had an awful lot of anti aircraft
fire and every now and then, Dave Waters who flew an awful lot with me as co-pilot, first
officer, he’d say, “Oh. They’re coming up our rear end.” Then you’d break off.
SM: The triple A that you would receive typically, what was it?
FB: I don’t know. You can’t hardly tell. Just explosions in the air. Usually it was 37mm
and it could have been 100, but most of it I imagine was 37 or a comparable type explosives. At
night, you could see the tracers and that helped. But in the daytime, you couldn’t see the tracers,
you just saw the air bursts. The worst I ever saw was one time Gene Thomason and I had a
mission and we were fragged to go up in the northwestern part of Laos and there was a brand
new bridge up there coming off over one of the rivers. I can’t remember which one it was. It
wasn’t the Mekong. They told us to go up there and this one particular day, instead of flying at
out normal 10, 11,000 feet, they said, “We suggest you go up to 15, 16,000.” I should have
known something was funny because it took us an hour to get up there. I remember just clear as a
bell. Gene reached over and turned on the inner velomiter that takes the pictures and I just rolled
in and was just starting to make the run when all of the sudden, we got pretty heavy triple A. In
fact, it was above us, below us, right, left. It was all around us. The only pictures they got that
day was pictures of the horizon as I left. They never sent us back there. Whoever it was, they
were really proud of that bridge, their brand new bridge. They had it protected. But, in general,
we just got, I would just say normal, getting shot at anti aircraft in the daytime.
SM: The log that you provided for me in the email, you mentioned just some of the triple
A that you received throughout 1968-1969, again this was a period where you were flying, I
would imagine, just about everyday.
FB: I’d fly maybe half the month. I’d probably fly between 10 and 15 missions a month.
It varied. We split it up. You got to figure, I flew, what, 569 missions over not quite six years.
It’s not quite a hundred missions a year. Remember, I’d go home for a month every year. You’d
have a little R&R, scheduled time off, STO, and go out and relax and go to Bangkok or I’d go
play golf with Berl. We’d go down to Singapore, whatever.
SM: That’s what you typically did with your R&R time? You’d just stay in the area?
FB: No. No, I didn’t stay in the area.
SM: No, I mean in Southeast Asia.
FB: Oh yeah. Usually, Hong Kong was great. I’d go over to Hong Kong and watch some
English TV. In fact, I saw The Graduate there once. Fly over, spend the day and there was a
place called the San Francisco Steak House, stay on this Chinese side and it was a wonderful
restaurant. I’d go have two meals there, eat a lot of steak and salad and watch TV. It was a good
shopping city, too, then, of course. That’s what R&R. That’s really what it was, just get away
from it all.
SM: What would you do for entertainment in Thailand?
FB: Oh, we drank. We went to the bar. When we came back, shoot and talk and play
darts and have our beers and eat, go hit the sack. I played a lot of chess. I played chess then. I
guess that’s about it. I had my own little typewriter. I’d type letters back. There was TV, but it
was Thai TV. I do remember the day that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. We got to see
that. They piped that in. I remember that quite well.
SM: What did you think?
FB: I thought it was fantastic. He was a former flying midshipman like me, too.
SM: What about, again radio, the use of radio for entertainment purposes?
FB: Oh, yeah. I had a high freq radio and I listened to a lot of news radio on Armed
Forces radio and that sort of thing. In fact, to this day, I still listen to the radio quite a bit. I enjoy
radio, ESPN. I even have the short wave, but of course, I don’t listen to that anymore. I like
radio.
SM: When you were in Thailand, could you pick up Radio Hanoi?
FB: No. I never tried.
SM: You mentioned that you would go home for month long vacations, leave time, you’d
go back to the U.S. for that?
FB: Oh, yeah, sure. I’d go back and see my kids. My wife and kids never came over. My
first wife, Joyce, never. They visited. The kids came over but they didn’t go to school although
Air America had pretty good schools at Udorn and in Vientiane and of course, at Udorn, I know.
They had very good schools. It was accredited and an awful lot of kids went to grade school and
high school. But, sure. I’d go back and see my parents and my first wife and I who were
separated and my three children.
SM: When you would go back to the U.S., what did you think about what was happening
there, especially as the war lasted into 1966,67, 68 and on and the antiwar protests were getting
more volatile and stuff like that. What did you think about all that?
FB: I didn’t particularly, I wasn’t sympathetic to them. I understood their dislike of the
war. I didn’t particularly care for it. I know that we were unpopular. Air America people were
unpopular and the troops were unpopular. It was just a Yankee go home feeling that was back in
the States. I didn’t let it bother me. I knew it was there.
SM: Did you yourself ever question what the United States was trying to accomplish in
Southeast Asia?
FB: Not really. I questioned how. I questioned the fact that we couldn’t win the war
because of the politics involved. After World War II, it just became impossible to try to win a
war it looked like to me. I can remember one time out on a recce mission, I found a bunch of
trucks going down, I think it was highway 9 in Laos and I found them. I called up on UHF and
told the High Altitude Relay control aircraft that I’d found some trucks. He went about the
business of trying to get a strike out there, but by the time it went through all the red tape
rigmarole, it was too late. Everything had to be cleared. You just couldn’t go out.
SM: So, the rules of engagement.
FB: The rules of engagement, as far as I was concerned, were very constipating to try to
win a war.
SM: When you say that it was too late once they got all their clearances and everything,
what had happened to those trucks?
FB: They went under cover. They were in an area along the road coming down from Sam
Neua, which is up north, which was a bad place. It seems like I got more anti aircraft fire up at
Sam Nuea than any place except out on Chinese Road. The trucks were coming down and
usually they didn’t go in the daytime. They just went at night. But these guys were going down
the road in the daytime. A convoy of maybe 15, 20 trucks. I watched them and finally they got
out of this area where I could see them and they finally got back into the jungle cover and that
was the end of that.
SM: Were there other instances where you came across either large convoys of trucks or
large movements of personnel and stuff like that where you could see it?
FB: No. Not really. No. That was the one time I really remember was of that convoy.
SM: How much would you know about what was on the ground when you were going to
go fly a photo recon mission? Were you just given a briefing of where you were supposed to fly,
I guess, the specific grid or wherever you were supposed to fly the mission over, or were you
told what to look for in terms of a specific land feature or man made feature or whatever,
bridges, roads?
FB: In general, you’re briefed for either to go up and follow, as I mentioned, to follow a
specific route or road and assess maybe battle damage or try to see something, or maybe, to go
up and map mosaic a specific area for maybe what could have been anything in there; a training
sight or prisoner of war or whatever area. Then you just went back and forth over an area and
mapped it. In general, we were just given a chart and on the chart was marked with a box that we
were to fly exactly in or a road area and the road would be marked with grease pencil all the way
through the whole area, that we were to follow it. Sometimes this took half an hour to an hour to
do. If we had to mosaic an area, it could take all day. One of our targets, one of our missions was
to go up and do the Golden Triangle where all the opium was growing where we had to go up
and try to ascertain what was going on up there. That Golden Triangle area, which is the corner
of Burma in Laos and China, it would take all day to map that. One day I was sent out to find, in
that area, right real close to the Burmese border, what we thought was a refinery, refining for the
opium. I found it. It was a beautiful white building. I remember it well. It was unbelievable, in
the middle of the jungles and I mean it was like seeing a castle in the middle of the ocean. It was
white and there were hardly any windows and that’s about the only really unusual target type
thing that I did find that I was told to go look for.
SM: Do you know what happened to it?
FB: No. I don’t know anything more about it. I have no idea.
SM: When you would do a mosaic, that would be, basically, you were kind of mapping
an area, correct?
FB: Yeah. You’re taking pictures, making a run back and forth, back and forth so that
you cover the whole area but you overlap. Each pass overlaps a little bit of the picture of the one
before for the reason so the photo interpreters are able to look at and get a three dimensional
view of what you’re looking at. If you just take a picture and look at it, you don’t get 3D.
SM: Once you finished a recce mission, you’d go back, unload the film, and turn it in and
that was the last of it?
FB: Yeah. When we got back, we landed and the photo tech would get all the film and
take the film over to the Air Force photo lab to get it developed immediately and we went to
debrief where the photo interpreters were working, which was a little building close by. We went
there and debriefed.
SM: Would you see any of the photographs that you took?
FB: Oh, sure! In fact, I’ve still got a picture of the golf course I took where I first learned
to play golf. I used to see a lot of my work and I’d see when I fouled up. You can’t lie. They
know whether you’re doing the job or not. You can come back and say, “I got it,” and they look
at the pictures and say, “No, you didn’t.” In general, we got what we were sent out to take.
SM: That must have been helpful to be part of that debriefing so that, again, as you were
continuously flying missions, you could incorporate whatever lessons from mistakes that you
could.
FB: Yeah. I guess you could. I don’t really think that the debriefing was that much
helpful. You just learned by doing it over and over. There was not that much.
SM: You mentioned that the film would actually be developed at the Air Force lab, but
was the product, that is, the photographs themselves, was that ever used by the Air Force or was
it only in house?
FB: Oh sure. It was used by the carrier planes and it was sent out to the perhaps, target.
They’d use it for target strikes at various places. The pictures were sent out to the users, being the
Air Force and the Navy. I know for a fact, I was told that.
SM: How about internal use?
FB: Internally? I don’t know. No. There was no need for it as far as I know of, ever. Not
in Air America.
SM: Were there any other particular missions, that is, as you were flying the photo
reconnaissance missions that you recall?
FB: Well, one mission, Dave Waters and I were out on the PDJ, that was the Plain of
Jars. Known for these famous, huge 10, 13 foot jars, huge jars. They don’t know why they were
ever out there. There was a plain off of Long Chiang, 20 alternate, which was a secret base
where we had a strip in the middle of the mountains. Just to the east of that was the Plain De
Jars. That was basically controlled by the Lao, the enemy. We did an awful lot of mapping out
there. One day, I was out there going back an forth doing whatever we were fragged to do and all
of the sudden, the cockpit filled up with smoke and it was a real heavy, thick smoke and we
couldn’t breathe. It was poisonous type. So we both grabbed out masks, oxygen masks and put
them on. I turned off the battery generators to see if that was it. I had Dave put his parachute on.
We carried parachutes, we didn’t wear them. I had Dave put his parachute on and get ready to
bail out and of course he didn’t want any part of that. I can’t blame him but I didn’t know what
was going to happen. Finally, we opened the sliding hatches and we got the smoke out and I
called up and made a call that 42 Zulu, we had a problem over PDJ and are going to have to go
off the air that we had smoke in the cockpit and thought I had an electrical fire and that was it. A
fellow by the name of Don Henthorn, he heard me and he got the message and I told him I was
heading for the Alternate. We did. It was only maybe 20 minutes away, 10, 15 minutes at the
most. We headed down to land there and just as I saw – there’s only one way into the Alternate.
One way in, you land it in and you took off the opposite direction. Just as I’m getting ready to
land, there on the runway, we see a crashed T-28 that the Laos used for a fighter bomber. There
were people running all around it. It was about a thousand. 20 Alternate was maybe 4,000 foot
long, maybe a little longer, 4,500. But this crashed plane was about 1,500 feet. It was in the first
third of the runway. I couldn’t land in front of it safely so I said, “Well, we’re going to land.”
There’s no radio, no nothing. So I slowed it way down and put the gear and flaps down and came
right over the top of them. I know it scared them and I plunked it down and we stopped okay. We
taxied. We didn’t hurt anybody, thank goodness. I taxied into the ramp there and Stan Wilson
who is a mech there who had been over at Savannakhet on the Volpars, he met us. I shut down
and told him what happened. He went and looked in the wheel well and the battery, the Nicad
battery had melted. It was almost ready to blow up, perhaps. The voltage regulator on the Volpar
had failed and so the generators were just overcharging the Nicad and what happened is all the
fumes, the toxic fumes, were coming up through the wheel well and the main spar into the cabin.
So it actually, perhaps, saved us that that smoke came in or we might have been in bad shape.
That was my carrier landing at the Alternate. One of my bosses, Jim Glaren, later told me he
witnessed that and saw it.
SM: This is the same Jim Glaren, he worked for the CIA, is that correct?
FB: Yeah.
SM: And he’s been very active in helping get the CIA unit citation, I think.
FG: I don’t know much about that. I’m going to the reunion. But, I wouldn’t be a bit
surprised. I used to fly Jim around and his boss Pat Landry an awful lot. I know Jim. Sure. In
fact, every time I did any writing about the B-26 or anything, I always cleared it through Jim
Glaren and Jim Rhyne.
SM: That is writing that was…
FB: I helped some publishers write books. One Swedish gent wrote one on the B-26s. I
gave him some information. I wrote some articles, helped some people write some articles.
SM: And you also have one on the Air America site.
FB: Yes. That was for Air America. The B-26.
SM: When you were flying, at what point were you flying when Jim Rhyne was shot?
FB: I was over the PDJ that day. It was the same area, doing photo mapping. It was in the
middle of the afternoon, 1:00 or so when I heard Bob Main flying 71 Charlie, BTB like 420.
What had happened was a couple of days before, one of our C-123s got shot down, missing. I
remember Jim came, I was over at the bar and Jim came over and tapped me on the shoulder and
said, “Let’s go.” I went with him. We went up and looked for them in one of the planes. A few
days later, Jim Rhyne and Bobby Harrell, the chief kicker, they had a bunch of leaflets printed up
in Lao offering a reward for the plane and the pilots of that C-123. So, they had taken the back
door, the back cargo hatch off of 71 Charlie and Jim and Billy Hester were dumping out the
leaflets over in this area in Laos about 75 miles from us when they got hit. We think by 100mm.
Just one round and I heard Bob give a “may day” and when I heard it, I made a decision to join
up with him even though he was 75, 80 miles away. I two-blocked it, put it up to 100% and just
picked up a heading figuring he would be heading back to Udorn. Fortunately, I hit it just right
on the money because I found him. There he was so I joined up and it was an awful sight. I was
really scared for them. Of course, I didn’t know Jim Rhyne got hurt, but I did when I joined up
because I could see Jim on the floor and Bobby holding him in the back of the plane, I thought,
“Oh, God please. Slow down Bob. I know you’re in a hurry to get Jim back,” but I was afraid
that either the tail would come off or the plane would break up because the 100mm did an awful
job. Fortunately, he was able to get it back okay and I called up and took care of all the
communications for that and he landed and we got Jim to the hospital and saved his life, but he
lost his leg. Bobby didn’t get hurt, of course, Bob didn’t get hit. It was a funny thing. I ferried 71
Charlie later as a Swiss aircraft to Switzerland after I left Air America. The 71 Charlie, I flew it
an awful lot, but that’s what happened that day with Jim.
SM: While you were there, did many pilots get injured, many other pilots?
FB: Oh, Lord yes. There were many got killed. Mainly chopper pilots and an awful lot of
fixed wing pilots. It’s just too many to even count. It’s just an awful lot of people got not only
injured. Berl, my buddy Berl King, he got a round right through the hand flying in a single
engine. I think it was a helio courier. We had people get shot in the foot and the hand. The same
thing as Saigon. There were an awful lot or people, a lot of men, lost their life. That’s probably
one of the reasons they’re going to have, I guess, a dedication. I went to the Air America
dedication in 1984 at Texas, at Dallas. They had a memorial. That was nice. I assume they’re
going to have one, a unit citation in Las Vegas coming up next month.
SM: Did you have a lot of calls while you were flying throughout Laos? Air Force pilots
or Navy pilots that were shot down, may days?
FB: Oh, sure. We could hear that. The choppers, the Air America choppers would go and
pick them up an awful lot in Laos. Oh, yes. Yes. 42 Zulu, because we flew high, we relayed an
awful lot. We relayed for the chopper pilots and the STOL pilots that were doing their work in
Lao. 42 Zulu or 71 Charlie, whoever was flying that day doing the photo work, we’d hear their
ops normal. There was a procedure in Air America that every 30 minutes you made a call to one
of the bases where there was an Air America radio station and give what was called an ops
normal. You gave your position and your identification and your position and any pertinent fact
that you wanted and then that would be relayed back to Udorn or Vientiane and they kept track
of these planes and that way in case somebody didn’t call in, they might be considered down and
we’d start looking for them. If that helps answer what you asked.
SM: Yes, sir. Absolutely. Looking at your flight log that you provided for me, you
mentioned specifically that in March of ’72, you were there at 20 Alternate, Lang Chiang when
they were expected to be overrun.
FB: Yes. What happened is they were catching an awful lot of incoming. It finally got to
the point where they were expecting to be overrun and so they decided to let us send up the
Volpars with a load of fuel and fly, not an all-nighter, but close to it- a 10 hour flight. I was up
on one mission one night when we started getting some anti aircraft fire. No big deal, just turn
away from it. But that same night we got a call from Moonbeam- I think was the call sign for the
C-130 or Commandship that was up over Lao, Air Force High Altitude Control craft saying that
MiGs were coming into the area, for everybody to leave the area. I didn’t. I said, “Well, I’ll stay
here and try to relay for them. I’ll just drop down to right over the top of the mountains,” because
I figured the MiG, he wouldn’t come down and get me because I would be in the ground clutter.
If he was stupid enough, foolish enough to try it, he might fly into a mountain top. I knew a little
bit, from my background, about the radar and knew that he couldn’t get us. We stayed in the
area. I stayed there and kept quiet and turned the lights off. Of course, I had the lights off
anyway. In about, I don’t know, 30 minutes or whatever, he finally left. It was no big deal.
SM: I would imagine there was a significant amount of traffic coming out of Long
Chiang then for that night, [the eleventh hour] relay mission you flew.
FB: No. As a matter fact, there was not a lot of traffic. You never flew at Long Chiang at
night. There’s no lights, number one. Every thing was done in the daylight. Number two, I saw
some incoming and that sort of thing, but as far as radio traffic is concerned, I can’t remember on
any of those missions, but I don’t really know. I can’t remember if it was an automatic relaying
device we had on. I think it was. I don’t think it went through the cockpit like it did on the HARP
project, so I can’t answer that.
SM: I was curious, did you encounter many MiGs?
FB: I didn’t even see them. That was a one-time deal. On some of the missions I had, we
had cover because when I would be going up by Sam Neua or doing something like that on a
special mission, they expected the MiGs to come after us and the F-4s would be out high cap for
us and we would know that they were up there to help us, but I never had to use them. Speaking
of the F-4s, one time, again I think it was Dave Waters and I were out on the PDJ and we were
up around 10,000 feet and the next thing I know, I look over the top of us and there’s a flight of
four F-4s. I used to fly the F-4s so I know them real well. They didn’t miss us. They were maybe
300 foot above us and obviously didn’t see us because they made a TACAN drop, which is an
instrument-like drop. On the count of mark they all dropped their bombs. We saw a whole bunch
of bombs go floating down in front of us. I was some kind of perturbed with the Air Force that
day because there was no warning of a TACAN drop on UHF and VHF. We heard and we
monitored that all the time.
SM: When you would encounter something like that would you go back and make a
report about it?
FB: I did. I didn’t make a big deal out of it but I did say that somebody fouled up
somewhere.
SM: Did you ever have other close encounters with other aircraft?
FB: No. I can’t say that I can remember anything. I remember watching a B-52 bomb
drop in Vietnam once. I was flying off the coast and I never saw the B-52, but I think they called
it an arc light. I heard the warning on the frequency, on emergency and looked off and saw the
fantastic bomb drop. One time, the Missouri was off shore. I remember that one. I was also
flying up. That time, I was headed up north by Quang Nhi or Quin Nhon, in that area when I saw
the big battleship out there and he was sending his 16 inchers inland. I could almost see them.
They were about the size of a Voltzwagen, the bomb. Boy, that was something else.
SM: I was curious if you knew during your photo Recce missions if you were supporting
at all Lam Son 719, if any of that activity?
FB: I’m not familiar with that.
SM: In the Tchepone area?
FB: I was in Tchepone an awful lot. We did an awful lot of work down the road. There
was a pipeline and supposedly a fuel line and that sort of stuff. We did a lot of work in Tchepone
area. I only got a little bit of fire over there.
SM: Were there any other missions or any other issues you’d like to discuss concerning
your time in Thailand and flying over Laos?
FB: Well, at one time, I did go out on the PDJ. We owned it for about three weeks. I
think it was in 1969, I took Ambassador Godly out there, U.S. Ambassador to Laos. We landed
on the PDJ. I remember seeing one of the jars being air lifted out of there. That was the only time
I ever landed on the PDJ. There were all kinds of planes crashed on it. That one time, that was in
November of, like I say, ’69.
SM: Why were they airlifting out one of the jars? Do you know?
FB: Obviously, somebody wanted it for their collection. I don’t know who it was for or
never heard about it. It took a sky crane to get it out. They weigh tons, a couple of tons. It’s huge.
SM: You left in March of ’73.
FB: Yeah. My last mission was March the 2nd of 1973. Berl King and I, he flew with me
and I flew with him on my first one and on my last one, he flew with me and then I left. That was
the end of my flying with Air America.
SM: Just before you left, there was, of course, the Christmas bombing campaign in
Christmas of ’72 and then the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January of ’73. What did you
hear about that and what did you think?
FB: I thought it was great. I thought it was the end of it and I thought it was all going to
be over. That’s why I figured it’s time I done what I felt was necessary. It looked to me like the
time to leave, so I left. They were talking about cutting the pay and I didn’t think they should cut
the pay. It was just talk, though. I don’t know whether they ever did or not. I didn’t like the idea
of that. Although I never went to work for them for the money. I never flew for money all my
life. It was for the love of flying, but still, on the other hand, you want to get paid what you think
you’re worth in whatever you do. So, that had some influence on me. Definitely when President
Nixon said and the Peace Accord was signed, I figured it was time for me to leave. As fate would
have it, Pat Thorson, who is a photo pilot, came later. He got shot and killed right after I left in
42 Zulu. Danny Thomas brought him home. He got a small arms fire right through the head and
died instantly. I’m not saying that could have been me because I don’t know every thing about it,
but it just shows you it did happen. Yes. We lost one photo pilot from small arms fire.
SM: How did you feel and what did you think when you left about the war in Vietnam
and Laos? Did you feel like you’d accomplished anything?
FB: No. I don’t really think. It looked to me like it was going to end à la Korea with
nothing accomplished and that’s what I felt the way it was when I left. I wasn’t surprised and I’m
never surprised anymore because that’s our philosophy of winning a war was much different
than when I was a young man, a boy, in World War II. All the wars we thought before, I thought
we won. Now, I don’t see where anybody wins. It’s a shame to get into wars. That’s the problem.
SM: Has your prospective about the war changed over the years at all? If so, how has it
changed the most?
FB: No. It’s just the way I always thought it was. I always thought we were right to go
over there and do what we did. We tried. We did our best. It didn’t work. Every thing remains
the same. I’m sorry that there was such a loss of life on both sides, but I can understand the
reason for the war. Just like I said, it’s just a shame it had to happen in the first place. Like a
friend of mine said, it’s a shame that we have the wars because the wars are usually started by
people who don’t fight the wars. They send others to fight them. Maybe if they had to go fight,
there would be no more war.
SM: You mentioned earlier, the pay issue. I forgot to ask you, while you were working in
Air America, do you recall any activity concerning unions or unionizing?
FB: Yes. There was. There was a union attempt and it was established and our pay went
up considerably. The Union for East Pilot Association I think it was called. For a couple of years.
You’ve got to remember there was a seniority system at Air America and it was usually on the
basis of your hiring date. The people that were hired earliest were the senior. They got choices to
fly various aircraft or transfer to various aircraft. In the case of the Volpar, special projects under
Jim Rhyne and even though Jim Rhyne left and became chief pilot at Vientiane, special projects
was still his personal, he was the head of it with Berl King acting for him. The union couldn’t
touch, for instance, me or Gene Thomason. Berl was very senior, but I wasn’t. There were many
people senior to me. They couldn’t come in and take me out because that was just part of the
deal. This was a sore subject with some but it was never mentioned to me face to face.
SM: What did you think of the union activity in general?
FB: I thought it was a very good idea. I think the union had a very good idea. I think
unions are good until they get to the point where they become abusive as the owners. It’s just
like in the only reason a union ever came about in the first place is because the owners were
possibly greedy and selfish. I’m not saying that the customer was greedy and selfish, but I do
think it’s possible either end where one side or the other gets too selfish, then it loses what it’s all
about. The unions we’d all know, or I hope most people realize, that if you have an owner who
takes care of his employees and they’re happy, there’s no need for a union.
SM: If you could go back and do it over again, would you change anything?
FB: Yeah. I’d just make sure the communications got back soon enough or give me some
rockets and bombs and I could have taken out the trucks.
SM: Is there anything else you’d like to talk about today?
FB: Not really. I’m just very proud that I was able to be a Naval Aviator and then test
pilot and then work for Air America. I was almost always working for Uncle Sam.
SM: Well, thank you very much. This will end the interview with Mr. Frank Bonansinga.
................
................
In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.
To fulfill the demand for quickly locating and searching documents.
It is intelligent file search solution for home and business.
Related searches
- texas tech high school online courses
- texas tech financial aid forms
- 1971 in the vietnam war
- battles in the vietnam war
- what ended the vietnam war
- why did america join the vietnam war
- texas tech online certificate programs
- 1965 in the vietnam war
- causes of the vietnam war
- texas tech university online degrees
- tuition at texas state university
- texas tech mph