Ron Dick flying his T-33 through the Grand Canyon

[the330thbg]

Sadly, he went tango uniform in late 2008!

[wendovertom]

Ha - love the quip at the end of the article that Ron fully supported the National Parks and would fully approve of the restrictions in place now - not saying they should not be, it just strikes me as funny.

Tom P.

[Robbie Stuart]

If I was the guy in the back, I think I would have wet myself.
This isn't canyon flying but its pretty good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXO16bTySHQ

[airnutz]

I'm sure that the military buzz jobs didn't help either.

Probably not, things like a flight of C-119's going single file down the Canyon emerging on lake Meade or
a B-58 blasting down "Main Street" on the deck and blowing out the townies windows in Muleshoe, Texas
eventually would take a toll on public patience.

[Larry Kraus]

Ron Dick was definitely a fine person.I met him briefly in the early 1980's when he was at Sequioa Field getting ready to ferry what had been TBM Inc./Butler Aircraft's B-17 Tanker 65 to the RAF Museum near London.He eventually ferried the airplane across the Atlantic with TBM's Director of Maintenance (and B-17 pilot) Kenny Stubbs as co-pilot and an RAF navigator on board.The day that I happened to be at the hangar,all of the maintenance guys were busy getting 65 ready so Ron Dick volunteered to go to town and collect the lunches that had been ordered for the crew.One of the mechanics said "Gee,that's the first time that I've ever sent an Air Vice Marshall after hamburgers!"

Here are few pictures of Tanker 65 (B-17G-95DL 44-83868/PB-1W BuNo 77233) before it was more or less restored to original condition.These shots were taken at Sequioa Field in 1982 or 1983.

[wendovertom]

yeah - but knowing now what the future holds, what would you not give to be there when that B-58 came thundering by!!

Tom P.

[Django]

Pretty amazing.

[GaryD]

"Just a couple of miles upstream of Lake Mead there is a cable that goes accross the river. When you look up on the cliff there is still pieces of wreckage from a F-86 that hit the cable in the late 50s. Don"
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I asked one of Ron's fellow flying instructors what he could tell me about the Grand Canyon flights and he mentioned that cable:

He said they were "low enough to throw up spray in the Grand Canyon and had to avoid the old cable that at one time moved a gondola or some such across part of it. We decided that, if we met aircraft coming toward us in the Canyon, we would maintain our altitude because the normal tendency would be to pull up. Later, at the Nellis Bar we asked the local pilots what they would do in such a circumstance. They said that they would maintain altitude because an opposing aircraft would likely pull up!!!"

Hmmm.....

[the330thbg]

A friend (retired USAF Pilot) of my brothers flew a similar route through the canyon.., this is his email:

"I went through the F-100 RTU at Luke AFB just outside Phoenix in 1967 on my way to Viet Nam. We had a low level training flight that took off out of Luke, went North around Mt.
Humphries in Flagstaff, over (and sometimes down) the Canyon, and then South back into the desert to hit a target in our big gunnery range near Hila Bend along the US/Mexico
border and then back to land at Luke.
All this would take about 2 hours! It was a great low level as the topography would go through such dramatic changes.
The old F-100 was a good low level bird as it had a stable and smooth ride down on the deck.

Gib"