Warbird Information Exchange

This is from my dear friend Col John A Smith USAF Ret.

He and Charlie were pals during WWII. They worked on the Nuremberg trials and all in all had a good time.


"Okay, I'll tell you a story - a true story - that doesn't involve E&E or AE.

Experience is the curse of the maturation process, youse guys. Born to a military aviator's family on the morn of modern flight (1926) and before Lindberg had crossed the Atlantic, I and my siblings have “lived in interesting times.” I’ve had to run at 110% RPM to just keep my brother in sight, and we both know that causes an over-heated engine.

Aye, ‘twas I who experienced the Japanese shelling of Santa Barbara, the relocation of my Japanese classmates to Tule Lake, the anti-aircraft fire over Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley - prompting my parents to send my sister and me to the family lodge in Boulder Bay, Big Bear Lake, California for a year before moving to Rochester, New York. And ‘twas I who went from abalones, to police reporting, to Hershey bars and frauleins, to Mustangs, to Korea, to jets, to carriers, to Vietnam (which I won't much touch upon), to publishing and more. C’est moi, c’est moi who was a radio operator/gunner on B-24s and then spent 3 years in post-war Germany with U.S. Military Government, and c’est moi who returned disillusioned and saddened by it all to go back to school and Stanford.

Here’s a story you haven’t heard, but which I tell now for your amusement. It involves me and Charles Francis Fisher, the now retired Chief Test Pilot for Boeing, Wichita who became famous for flying and landing a B-52C with the entire vertical stabilizer torn off by shear winds. Charlie and I were enlisted men together in Germany and were inseparable. Had been since we were Aviation Cadets in the same class in 1944. We both spoke German and a few other languages, so the world was pretty much our oyster, in 1945 post-war Germany. I was a Sergeant, Charlie a Corporal, and we were on detached service to the little town of Neustadt-an-der-Aisch, 47 km north of Nurnberg on N-8, doing the background investigation of Julius Streicher, Der Gauleiter von Franken. We had returned to Nurnberg on a Saturday in January, 1946 to get our jeep repaired, but the Mil Gov motor pool in Furth was unable to give us a replacement to take back to Neustadt, and we really didn’t want to spend the night in Nurnberg. (Nurnberg was about 85% destroyed, and still so unrestored that the stench of decaying human bodies was enough to gag a maggot.)

What to do? We wandered down to the Hauptbahnhof to see if there might be something headed north to Frankfurt or Berlin, but nothing stirred in the ruins of what had once been a magnificent railway station. We knew where the rail lines went from Nurnberg, knew where the switching stations were, and knew the train had to go through Neustadt-an-der-Aisch to go to Wurzburg and anywhere north. We had seen trains on that section of rails almost every day for several months. What we did not know was that it was one of the first post-war runs of the Orient Express. There was this Reichsbahn engine with about 8 cars behind it, sitting there and just slowly chugging to itself, when Charlie said, “I can run that *&^%ing engine.”

Ya see, Charlie is from Emporium, Pennsylvania, and before entering the Air Corps had worked one Summer as a Fireman on the old Nickle Plate Railway, so he knew which valves to turn and which levers to push. I knew which end of a shovel to grab and where to stuff the coal, so we were in business!

Charlie hopped up into the cab, looked over the hardware, then told me to “Git your butt up here – we’re on our way.” And we were!

47KM went pretty fast, and with a cold wind blowing through the cabin, Charlie and I were just about frozen solid when we began recognizing topography and landmarks around Neustadt-an-der-Aisch. “When we gonna get off, Charlie?” I shouted over engine noise. “Pretty soon,” Charlie said, just a chugging right along.

We knew there was a large caserne on the southern edge of Neustadt, occupied by the 19th Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and had showered there quite often. It was easily visible from the railway tracks, and when Charlie saw it a few minutes later he pulled back on the levers and started slowing down. The snow was about a foot or so deep, and it was about a half mile from the railway tracks to the caserne, up on a hill. Charlie maneuvered that choo-choo train to a stand of trees running at right angle to the track, then shut everything down. “Okay, let’s haul butt!”

We worked our way through the woods, then across an open field to get to the caserne. All the while I could hear that engine doing its “chu-chu-chuuu,” looking back once to see several German civilians gathered alongside the engine.

We made it to the caserne and to the CQ’s desk, where we picked up a couple of towels and headed for the showers. The CQ didn’t even look up or ask us to sign in. We came out of the showers draped in nothing but our towels, our uniforms hung on hooks in a locker room off the shower room. There were3 Landpolizei talking excitedly with the CQ and looking for “Zwei verruckte oder betrunkene Amerikanische soldaten, die einen Zug gestohlen haben”?

The CQ asked Charlie, “You guys seen any drunks around here?”

”Nope,” Charlie answered. “Haven’t seen any drunks in the showers.” He turned to me: “Are we missing anybody?’ "

Part 2.

Charles Francis (Chuck) Fisher, from Emporium, Pennsylvania, and I were classmates in Aviation Cadets in 1943-44, were in England when the war ended and were in US Mil Gov in Germany from 1945-'48; came back to the States together in '48, bought Harleys in Elizabeth, NJ and rode them from NJ to California in 3 1/2 days. He moved into our home in San Mateo, California, we went to college together, saw another war coming up and both re-enlisted in USAF Aviation Cadets in 1950, graduating from pilot training just in time for the Korean War.

We both wound up in fighters, I in Tactical Air Command after a tour in Korea, Charlie in Air Defense Command and a tour on Okinawa that had some, uh, complications that prompted him to leave the Air Force and go to work as a production test pilot for Boeing. We'll not speak of the complications, other than to say Charlie looked like and thought he was Errol Flynn in Air Force blue.

I used to run into Charlie every now and then, but lost track of him several years ago. We've moved around all over the world and now have no idea where he is. nor he where we are. But I have mentioned his amazing feat of flying and landing a B52H with the entire vertical stabilizer torn away by shear winds, so I'm going to mention it again because (1) some of you asked for it, and (2) because it sounds so impossible. Okay, here we go:

B-52H-170-BW S/N 61-0023 From a famous series of photographs taken after severe turbulence sheared off most of the vertical stabilizer. The aircraft had been specially instrumented for air turbulence research after some operational B-52s were lost. The tail was lost after a severe and sustained burst (+5 seconds) of clear air turbulence violently buffeted the aircraft. The Boeing test crew (Pilot - Chuck Fisher & Copilot - Dick Curry) nursed to aircraft to Blytheville AFB, Arkansas and landed safely. Also note the (inert) AGM-28 Hound Dog missiles still attached to the wing pylons. The dotted line shows the normal outline of the vertical stabilizer and rudder.

And now, the story as Charlie told it to me in 1973.

Chuck's B52H had an entirely Boeing test crew aboard a fully instrumented bird, instrumented specifically for testing and measuring CAT and shear winds along the old Oil Can Low Level Route that started somewhere in the Texas Panhandle and run West all the way to Area-51 in Nevada. They were at 1500' AGL, doing about 350 KIAS, when the Navigator came up on the intercom to tell Charlie they were picking up a cross wind that was suddenly getting serious... "30 Knots ... 40 Knots .... SEVENTY KNOTS! ... " and shortly after that the vertical stabilizer separated from the aircraft.

Chuck told me the shear wind stood the B-52 on its left wingtip and he instantly realized he had no rudder control, no aileron control, and no hydraulic system. "I taught myself how to fly in about 15 seconds!"

Either instinctively, intuitively, or both, Chuck immediately applied Differential Power to control the big aluminum overcast. Differential Power means using the throttles to apply greater or less thrust to either the left or right wing engines; so, with the left wing down, Chuck applied full power to the left wing engines and reduced the power of the right wing engines. The rudder useless, the ailerons useless, the only control he had over the aicraft was in the throttles under his right hand.

By the time he had the beast under control and in roughly straight-and-level flight, they were down to <300'. Acceleration would cause the bird to climb, deceleration to descend; increased left thrust/decreased right thrust to make it turn right, the opposite to make it turn left.

When his heartbeat slowed down enough for him to hear over the rush of blood in his ears, he called Boeing-Wichita, his home base where he was Chief of Bomber Test, and explained the situation. To end the conversation, Chuck asked, "What do I get if I can put this mother back on the ground in one piece?" The answer was, "To keep your job."

They had all the data tapes from the flight, all the poop about what went on that caused the vertical stabilizer to go AWOL, and Chuck didn't want to lose or waste it. He had the Navigator clamp onto all the tape cans in his lap, then eject from the B-52 near a military installation. (Chuck never was one for jumping out of perfectly good airplanes ... or even semi-good airplanes)

It was a long detour, but it was decided Blytheville, Arkansas was the best place for Chuck to try to plant the beast: Weather good, mostly level terrain, room for a long, flat approach, mostly unpopulated, and all the Crash & Rescue he'd ever need -- if he got to Blytheville.

Chuck eased the BUF down to 2,000 feet while eyeballing their air-ground radar for setting up a VERY long straight-in final approach. Finally, straightened away at about 50 miles, he nursed the B-52 along until he figured he had to jump the last big hurdle and try to get the landing gear and flaps down, not knowing what that would do to what little controlability he had left. The gear went down pneumatically and didn't cause much of a problem, but the flaps were a whole different story! Landing flaps are (1) a Drag items that (2) changes angle of attack, forcing the nose down or, conversely, forcing the pilot to raise the nose of the aircraft and add power to control the rate of descent.

After trying to lower a little flaps, and having to fight like hell to keep precious altitude, Chuck decided to make a No Flaps landing, meaning he would be considerably faster when the landing gear kissed concrete.

Cutting to the chase, Chuck made it all the way to Blytheville, managed the final approach and planked the B-52 on the first 1,000 feet if runway, completing what most of think was the most incredidamnable feat of airmanship ever performed.
What Chuck did was repeated about 20 years later when a United Airlines DC-10 piloted by a Captain Haynes almost made it to a safe landing at Sioux City, Iowa. Captain Haynes and his crew, augmented by a DC-10 instructor pilot who was aboard as a passenger, were able to navigate to the municipal airport at Sioux City, Iowa, U.S., where the aircraft was crash-landed approximately 45 minutes after the hydraulic failure. Of the 285 passengers and 11 crew members aboard, 174 passengers and 10 crew members survived.

That the aircraft was controlled at all and that there were any survivors in these unusual circumstances was recognised by the industry as an example of extraordinary airmanship by the crew. Among many other accolades, Captain Haynes and his crew were awarded the Flight Safety Foundation President's Special Commendation for Extraordinary Professionalism and Valour during the Foundation's 42nd International Air Safety Seminar in Athens, Greece, during November 1989, the first formal international recognition of their accomplishment.

Chuck Fisher's award for extraordinary airmanship was to keep his job with Boeing Aircraft, Wichita. Back about 1964, I had an assignment from Hq. TAC, to go to Wichita and be the TAC airborne observer of the B-52 Max Bombing capability development. I flew a half-dozen missions with Chuck in the left seat, me in the right, dropping many tons of iron on Smokey Hill Bombing Range. Chuck even developed and hand-made a mechanical bomb sight for estimating release point for carpet bombing, the so-called Toothpick missions flown in Vietnam the VC hated so much.


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Good story Tony, thanks.

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

Cool stories, thanks for sharing.

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Aviation Illustration Website
http://shepartstudio.com/illustration/

Great details and thanks for sharing!

Anyone know the post-incident story of that B-52? Did Boeing ship a new fin and AOG team to fix'erup on the spot? Was there other structural damage elsewhere in the plane? Did it continue on until its twilight years? Is it still in service? I got to do the CSRL "rail mod" on a half dozen of the H's. A truly great airframe, I always looked forward to going to work when assigned to that program.

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Searching for B-29A-55-BN 44-61966 photo and history!

Here is a link to an in-flight shot of the 52....um....something missing back there! She apparently was fixed and flew on till 2008, she is on the ground at AMARG awaiting her fate, at least that is what a bit of Googling has turned up.

http://www.456fis.org/THE%20B-52/b52h-5.jpg

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Aviation Illustration Website
http://shepartstudio.com/illustration/

Since the B-52 had no ailerons, only spoilers and he lost the rudder, he picked up the down wing the only way he could....,,Differential power. Interesting story. Thanks.

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It's what you learn after you think you know it all, that counts.

Of all the B-52H airframes out there, that one should be preserved in a museum somewhere. That's an even better story than the F-106 at NMUSAF.
Chris