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I am posting this today in Memory of Dick Rutan, Vietnam fighter pilot who flew 325 missions as a forward air controller as well as one of the two pilots who flew the "Voyager" around the world non stop and non refueled.
Flight of the Rubber Chicken
This is story that took 20+ years to reach its conclusion, but I’ll try to tell it a bit faster than that.
The Arizona Wing of the Confederate Airforce was attending an Airshow in Kingman Arizona with their Flagship plane, a B-17G Flying Fortress named Sentimental Journey, it was the first show in almost a year as the B-17 had been down for almost a year while we did some major restoration and repairs. While it was down, gutted the fuselage of every piece of wire, paint stripped the inside from nose to tail, reskinned the top of the fuselage from the nose to the radio room, installed the top turret mounting ring, and replaced the tail gunners’ section, as well as installing the K mounts for the waist guns, which is where this story takes place…
In any group there are all sorts of people, and we had a practical joker by the name Bob Burns, and Bob loved to tease our load master Bill Neagle, and one way he would do it was to hide a large rubber chicken somewhere in the B-17 while we were in the air. After they had arrived in Kingman, Bill found the chicken, and let it be known that if he found that darn chicken in the plane again, who ever brought it on board would be walking home, starting from several thousand feet in the air. Which is where I was dragged into what was to happen...
Not long after we had taken off, Bill went fwd and I was left to figure out what to do with the chicken. Then I saw it, the empty K mount for the Right waist window, I stuffed the head and neck of the chicken into the mount until the head was outside the plane. The pilots of the Blue Longez and Pitts could see someone in the window and then something yellow come out of the mount. Not long after this was accomplished, Bill came back from the flight deck and saw me holding the legs of the rubber chicken as if it was a 50cal machine gun. all Bill did was shake his head and returned to the flight deck. After we had landed, I spotted the 2 pilots walking toward the B-17 to figure out what it was they saw. I grabbed the K mount and turned it to the pilots and grabbed the legs and proceeded to shoot them with the Rubber Chicken, both laughed, shook their heads and walked away.
In December 1986, a strange plane named Voyager, took off from Edwards AFB and completed what was called the Last Great Firsts in Aviation, a non-stop, non-refueled flight around the world, and I bet you are wondering, how does a flight around the world tie into a story involving a rubber chicken….
Not long after Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager landed Voyager back at Edwards AFB a book was written about the building and flying the Voyager. Early in the book Dick talks about flying his Blue Long Eze at airshows to raise funds to build what was to become Voyager. When I read that, I remembered a certain flight over Kingman involving a B-17, a Blue Pitts and a Blue Long Eze and of course a large rubber chicken. I found my photos from that day and there it was, a photo of a Blue Long Eze that I had taken from the waist gunners window of the B-17, I took those photos and put them in my copy of Voyager.
Jump forward to August 2000, in Oshkosh, WI. On the last day of Airshow, Mark Berent was interviewing Dick Rutan about his time flying F-100s as a Misty FAC over Vietnam and it was also the last interview for that stage for the event, so there was a small crowd. I packed my copy of Voyager, hoping to get it signed and maybe finish a story that was so long in the making…
After listening to Mark and Dick talking about their experiences as Misty's,The allotted time was up and the workers wanted to get the stage broke down, but we were not done, do Mark, Dick, Myself and Lacy Parker, one of the Crew Chiefs of Cactus Squadron, went outside to continue the conversation. After a while, I got to ask Dick the question that I had been waiting years to ask, I asked Dick if flew a Wake Up Kingman Flight with a B-17 at the Kingman Airshow that he mentioned in Voyager, Dick replied that yes, he flew a flight with the B-17 along with a Pitts, I then asked him if there was anything unusual about the flight, he thought about for a bit and then smiled and said yes, “there was a Rubber Chicken stuffed into the waist gun mount”, I smiled and said that was me with the Rubber Chicken and presented him with the photos from that day. We all had a good laugh at the story that took decades to finish. Oh, I did get my Copy of Voyager signed as well as my Logbook.
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Matt Gunsch, A&P, IA, Warbird maint and restorations
Jack, You have Debauched my sloth !!!!!!
We tried voting with the Ballot box, When do we start voting from the Ammo box, and am I allowed only one vote ?
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