Military History 22: Retirement

 

The Vietnam war was in progress in 1965. I began to feel vulnerable for assignment to that area. Since I had been actively involved in WWII and Korea, I didn't feel the need to help in Vietnam. We figured up my active duty time and decided to apply for retirement as of January 1, 1966. December 31st to be my last day of active duty. Once that decision was made another big one was staring us in the face. Where would we retire to? The Air Force would move our furniture to any suitable place in the world. After proper consideration we said take us to Spokane. That was just about as far away from Crawford County, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky as we could get and stay in the good old USA.

We Bought a new Buick as a retirement present. We loaded the car and the kids. We left our camping trailer parked on the base to be towed away at a later date. The Colonel had asked if I wanted a full scale retirement ceremony with a parade. I declined and told him we would just slip quietly away. I was required to sign out on the 31st. Since we were always in a hurry we left on December 30th. I found a pay phone someplace in Arizona on the 31st, called the officer of the day and asked him to sign me out. He did. We traveled to Spokane via southern California where our daughter Sandi was living. After a delightful visit we continued to Spokane to make our home as civilians after more than fifteen years of active duty.

 

 Blue Spruce Motel. Our first home upon return to Spokane.

 

We still feel good about the decision to serve the last two and one half years as a non-commissioned officer and retire as captain. As of December 1986, at this writing, we have received retirement pay every month for 21 years. I have been subject to recall to active duty all those 21 years but since I will soon be 70 years old the likelihood of recall is very remote. Two comments, first, do what you think is right and accept the consequences without whimpering. Second, the older I get the more sure I am that we are where we are because of the decisions we make.

[Lee Reasor lived to the age of 87. After he passed away in 2004 his wife Wanda continued to receive retirement pay and benefits until she passed in 2012 at the age of 90.]

 

 

 

Grandsons

Military History 21: Denver

 

We arrived safely in Denver in the fall of 1963. I was sworn in as a sergeant and assigned as an Air Force instructor. Programmed learning principles were at their peak at this time. Also the Air Force was running very low on Electronic Technicians. At time of enlistment, inductees were given a written test. The results of this test was divided into four areas of duty, clerical, mechanical, electronics, and ?. If an inductee scored 90 points on electronics he was qualified for electronics training. Practically no one was scoring 90.

My assignment with one other sergeant was to develop a program text to solve this shortage. We did this very thing. We guaranteed that 90% of the trainees would score 90% on the final test currently being used. WE didn't require an entry score of 90 either. An entry score of 40 was sufficient. Less time was needed for training. A few men completed training and were assigned as technicians. The supervisors reported that they were above average technicians.

Much to everyone's surprise I was promoted to Staff Sergeant in a few months. We had decided on our way to Denver that even though our new income was going to be much reduced that we would at least buy a comfortable house. We found a nice home in Aurora, paid $1000 and took over the payments. When we left two and one half years later we took $500 and let someone else have the house.

Military History 20: Texas

 

From BYU I was transferred back to good old San Antonio, Texas. Back at Randolph AFB I instructed Air Force instructors how to teach. The Air Force had too many captains. There were two options for those captains not promoted on schedule. One was to take a lump sum of cash and leave the service. The other was to take the grade of sergeant [Lee says in his personal history he took the lower rank of Airman. That's how I remember it], serve out the time for retirement and retire as a captain. Wanda and I elected to take the sergeant grade and stay for retirement. I was discharged as a captain at Randolph, drove to Denver and enlisted as a sergeant. This had all been prearranged.

We left Texas with five children. When we got several miles down the road they started singing a Primary song "If the Way Be Full of Trial, Weary Not." They had a book and sang all four verses.

 

 

Taj Mahal, Randolph AFB

 

Captain Reasor's Residence, Mickey Speaking

Military History 19: BYU AFROTC

 

After two and one half years of B-52's the Air Force issued a directive allowing crew members to ask for voluntary grounding. I applied. My superior signed the request and said I would never be allowed to stay on active duty if I was grounded. Much to his surprise my request was approved and I was sent to Brigham Young University as an AFROTC instructor.

I had been competing with college graduates all this time and now with only a high school diploma I became an assistant professor of Air Science. The only faculty member listed in the BYU catalog with no college degree.

It was a wonderful, fulfilling experience to teach leadership training and navigation to college juniors and seniors. This was only a three year assignment. I earned a Bachelor in Science degree in Business Management during those years while teaching full time.

Brigham Young University Catalog

AFROTC Cadets

Spokesman Review: Witnesses Recall B-52 Collision

From:  https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2008/sep/07/witnesses-recall-b-52-collision/

 

By Jim Camden jimc@spokesman.com(509) 879-7461

Helen Hodsdon was getting dinner that evening 50 years ago when her husband, Ed, yelled to come outside of their house in Airway Heights.

There were two B-52s in the sky, and Ed Hodsdon, a gunner on the big bombers stationed at nearby Fairchild Air Force Base, knew something wasn’t right.

Down Sunset Highway at the Shell station, Joe Martella looked up from the gas pump where he was filling a customer’s car and had the same feeling. Two B-52s in the sky wasn’t unusual – the nation’s newest bombers had been at Fairchild for more than a year, and they routinely practiced landings and takeoffs on the base runway.

But Martella, who’d been an anti-aircraft gunner in the Army a few years earlier, was sure the two planes were dangerously close.

He ran into the office where the station’s owner, his uncle Mike Anderson, and some other people were. “I yelled, ‘Get the hell out, and run.’ They looked at me like I was crazy.”

Then there was an explosion. The planes became “nothing but a ball of fire,” Helen Hodsdon said.

On that late summer evening, a half-century ago on Monday, two big bombers collided in the skies over Airway Heights, causing one of Fairchild’s worst accidents and raining pieces of the giant planes down on what was then a community of about 200 residents.

Lea Ziegler, then a 15-year-old high school student, heard the explosion and jumped off his back porch, where he’d been working on a model airplane engine. He looked up to see two bombers careening toward the ground.

“It was like slow motion,” Ziegler said recently. “One had flipped over … the other was just coming down.”

The wing of one bomber had sliced off the cockpit of the other, and the severed front portion of that plane – with crew members still in it – landed near the highway not far from the small city hall building and caught fire. The intact plane was tilting toward the Buckhorn Tavern but kept tilting and crashed in the field behind it.

Martella, Anderson and others at the service station ran when the planes exploded. Anderson would tell The Spokesman-Review the next morning his legs had charley horses from running so fast.

The heat was intense, Martella recalled recently. “You could feel it on your back; it was that close.”

A piece of landing gear sheared off the Shell station sign, near where Martella had parked his new car. The landing gear hit near the car, flipped over it and stuck in the other side. The windshield broke, and the car was splattered with hydraulic fuel.

Other pieces, some as large as the bombers’ tail sections, landed in surrounding wheat and barley fields. Pieces of metal and ball bearings showered roofs in the community, Helen Hodsdon said.

The two planes were carrying a total of 16 men for their practice missions. Four parachuted or fell into the fields after the midair collision. The other 12 were killed either by the collision or when the planes, or their severed parts, hit the ground and burned. Jet fuel ignited. Magnesium parts flared.

Fire crews from the base and surrounding communities responded to the calls. So did the State Patrol and other law enforcement officers, who directed traffic and controlled the crowds.

One of those who parachuted was badly burned and died later that night in the base hospital, but three – Capt. David Birdsell, a pilot; Lt. Walter Maguire, an electronic weapons officer; and Staff Sgt. Lowell Younger, a tail gunner – survived.

The Rev. Howard Lanphear, of the Airway Heights Community Church, was among the first to reach Younger, who was walking across the field with his helmet in one hand and oxygen mask in the other. Lanphear told a newspaper reporter that Younger apparently hit his head in ejecting but didn’t complain of any injury or pain, saying merely, “I thought that tail cone would never let go.”

Ziegler looked up to see a life raft, thrown from one of the planes, inflated on his roof.

“It was about the size of a small pool,” he said, and would be great for taking on the water with his buddies. About that time, he saw someone in an Air Force uniform climb up on the roof, pull down the raft and haul it away.

The Air Force would later put out a call to residents and spectators to please not pick up plane parts as souvenirs because they were needed for the investigation. Base personnel walked across the fields, practically arm in arm, looking for parts, Hodsdon said.

About two months later, a panel of investigators announced its conclusion: Basic flight procedures hadn’t been followed. The two bombers were practicing landing and takeoff maneuvers that included using instrument rules for parts of their flights and visual rules for other parts. The B-52 closer to the runway had just switched off its instrument maneuvers the B-52 farther away had not yet switched on its instruments. The control tower didn’t pick up the more distant B-52 until it was about three miles from the runway, when the closer bomber was on its final approach. The tower ordered the first plane to go up and to the right – a standard breakaway maneuver – while the closer one should have followed procedures to go down and to the left, to land. Instead, both planes pulled up and to the right, and into each other. The official report never explained why the plane closer to the runway didn’t follow standard procedures, The Spokesman-Review noted when it was released in November 1958.

For several days after the crash, Sunset Highway was closed and traffic routed past the Hodsdons’ home on 13th Street. Ed died in 2007, but Helen still lives in the same Airway Heights home they had when she was a young Air Force wife.

Although uniformed personnel had scoured the crash sites, Ziegler said, he and his friends went out and picked up small pieces of aluminum. They found about 80 pounds, he recalled.

“I bet if you walk through those fields you’d still find pieces of metal,” said Ziegler, who lives in Spokane.

Two survivors, Younger and Maguire, eventually were transferred to other bases. Birdsell, who fell some 200 feet to the ground when his parachute didn’t open, spent more than a year and a half in the hospital. He eventually left the Air Force, went back to college, earned a degree and became a teacher. He taught for 22 years at local high schools. When he retired from teaching in 1986, he told a Spokesman-Review reporter he had no memory of the crash.

“I don’t even remember leaving home to go fly,” he said at the time. Birdsell died in 1994.

Martella said he saw Birdsell from time to time and knew his body was full of screws and wires from being pieced back together after the crash. But Birdsell never complained, and the only sign of his injuries was that one of his legs was shorter than the other, so he wore a built-up shoe. Martella stayed in Airway Heights, owned a tavern on Sunset Highway for years and eventually was elected mayor.

Fifty years later, the B-52s are gone from Fairchild – they left in 1994 as part of an Air Force reorganization – and apparently no one remains who remembers that crash. The base averaged about one crash a year in the first decade it served as a home for nuclear-equipped bombers, although the 1958 incident was one of the biggest for the entire Strategic Air Command.

Mililtary History 18: Fairchild Crash

 

The whole crew was required to fly pilot proficiency training mission at least monthly. I had no duties on this type of flight. After a few of these missions I asked to be excused from our next flight. No one had ever been excused before but I was.

I came home in the late afternoon but Wanda was not home. The announcement came over the radio that 2 B-52's had a mid-air collision near the base with 13 crew members killed and 2 alive. I was thought to be one of the dead. Wanda was relieved to see me when she got home. It was my crew and only the co-pilot lived.

 [The pilot of one of the planes was wearing Lee's dog tags, which caused some confusion in identifying the body. Lee accompanied the pilot's casket, by train, to his home in California.] 

From:  www.historylink.org/File/8561

 

On September 8, 1958, two giant U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses collide while making routine landings at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane. Thirteen airmen are killed and three are injured. The incident is the worst disaster in the history of the Strategic Air Command's B-52 bomber operations.

The B-52 Bomber

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress was America’s first long-range, swept-wing heavy bomber. Introduced in 1954, it replaced the World War II era Boeing B-29 Superfortress and was primarily designed to carry nuclear weapons. Prior to the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the B-52s, flown by the U.S. Air Force, Strategic Air Command, were the country’s first line of defense against surprise attacks during the Cold War. The Stratofortress, a large aircraft, 159 feet long with a 185-foot wingspan, was powered by eight Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines. At cruising speed of 650 m.p.h. and an altitude of more than 50,000 feet, the aircraft could carry 35 tons of bombs approximately 9,000 miles without refueling.

B-52s were used extensively during the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and over Afghanistan in 2001. The bomber typically carried a six-man crew consisting of an aircraft commander/pilot, copilot, radar navigator, navigator, electronics warfare officer, and tail gunner. But on training and proficiency flights, they often carried a more crewmen.

The Accident

At approximately 6:20 p.m. on Monday, September 8, 1958, two Boeing B-52D Stratofortresses, No 60-661 and No. 60-681, from the 92nd Bomb Wing, 327th Bomb Squadron, were returning to Fairchild Air Force Base (AFB), after having spent the day on routine training missions, and were making practice landing approaches to Runway 23 when they collided. Aircraft 661, under the supervision of the control tower, was flying VFR (visual flight rules) on the downwind leg of the normal rectangular landing approach pattern. Aircraft 681, under the guidance of a radar ground control approach unit, was practicing an ILS (instrument landing systems) approach in preparation for Spokane’s murky winter weather.

When the pilot of bomber 681 dropped below the glide path on final approach, he was told to pull up, execute a right turn, and go around. “After being advised by the control tower of what the other B-52 was doing, 661 radioed back, ‘Roger tower, tell him to turn the other way’ and the latter (661) then banked to the right” (Gero). Several seconds later, the two giant B-52’s collided above Airway Heights and busy Sunset Highway (U.S. Highway 2), some five miles west of Spokane and two-and-a-half miles northeast of Fairchild AFB. The planes plummeted to the ground from a height of approximately 1,000 feet, disintegrating and burning as they fell.

Seconds after the B-52s collided, six crewmen managed to eject from the planes, their bright orange and white parachutes opening automatically. Hundreds of pieces of the disintegrating aircraft rained down, hitting buildings and dropping on roads. Some pieces landed as far as two miles south of Sunset Highway. The nose section of one B-52 landed only 15 yards from the highway, near Airway Heights City Hall. The bomber that crashed farthest from Sunset Highway landed in a stubbled wheat field owned by the mayor of Airway Heights, Carl Lundstrom. Luckily, nobody on the ground was injured by the crash and damage to property in Airway Heights was minimal.

On the Ground

As debris fell from the sky, Michael Anderson, owner of Airway Heights Shell service station, his attendant, Joseph Martella, and two customers, along with several people from the Baghdad Inn, a nearby tavern, ran for cover in a nearby ditch. A 200-pound piece of the landing gear demolished Anderson’s large Shell sign, sailed between the gas pumps and came to rest on the shoulder of the highway. Martella, an eyewitness, said: “They were both banking and it looked to me like the wing of one plane hit the other behind the cockpit and just about cut it in two” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

Since the B-52s were carrying equipment and documents classified Top Secret, Air Force security officers had the Washington State Patrol and Spokane County Sheriff’s Department block all roadways surrounding the crash site to all but authorized personnel. Newspaper reporters and photographers were temporarily banned from the area, but the Fairchild’s Public Information Office fed them information as it became available. The good news was that the bombers were not carrying nuclear weapons.

Fire fighting and rescue equipment from Fairchild AFB and Spokane rushed into the area. Although some larger pieces of the wreckage were burning, the fires were mostly confined to areas where thousands of gallons of jet fuel had spilled. The firefighters had to drive through the bumpy, open fields and extinguish the fires before they could attempt rescuing any crewmen trapped inside the wreckage.

Rescuing Survivors

Of the six crewmen who managed to eject from the aircraft, four were found alive in the fields and rushed to Fairchild AFB Hospital. Captain Ernest C. Marker, aircraft commander and pilot of 60-661, suffered third-degree burns and died later at the hospital. Captain David Birdsell, copilot of 60-681, was hospitalized with internal injuries and burns. Second Lieutenant Walter N. Maguire, electronics warfare officer of 60-681, and Staff Sergeant Lowell W. Younger, tail gunner of 60-681, were thrown clear of the falling bombers and parachuted to safety. The men were held overnight in the hospital and then released after being treated for minor injuries.

Rescue worker and firefighters worked throughout the night, trying to locate the bodies of the other 12 victims. Some had fallen from the aircraft and were found lying in the open fields and others had died trapped inside the burning wreckage. As bodies were recovered, ambulances took them to the morgue at Fairchild AFB Hospital for identification.

Salvaging and Investigating

On Tuesday morning, September 9, the Air Force brought in heavy cranes to lift the nose sections onto flatbed trucks. After ordinance experts crawled through the wreckage, disarming ejector seats mechanisms and destruction devices attached to classified equipment, the pieces were taken to Fairchild AFB for a detailed inspection of the flight instruments.

Meanwhile, Major General Archie J. Old, Commander of the 15th Air Force, arrived at Fairchild from March AFB, California, to take charge of the investigation. Air Force experts and accident investigators worked throughout the day in the Airway Heights area, looking for eyewitness to the collision and studying the wreckage. An accident investigations board was convened, headed by Colonel Roy D. Wathen, 92nd Bomb Wing, Chief of Operations, to study the evidence and determine the causes of the accident.

The Memorial Service

On Wednesday, September 10, the Air Force held a memorial service for the 13 victims of the tragedy in hangar 2020 at Fairchild AFB. Those who drove to Fairchild had to pass the wreckage of the B-52s, clearly visible from Sunset Highway. Upon entering the base, the attendees passed by the crumpled nose sections of the B-52s sitting on the tarmac, grim reminders of the hazards of the profession. More than 4,000 persons, mostly servicemen in uniform, attended the service.

In his memorial address, Major Jack Moses, base chaplain, extolled the virtues of the airmen who risked their lives daily in the cause of freedom. “We know it is worth every sacrifice as we think of the 10 wives and 23 children and other relatives of the crews who lost their lives” (Spokane Daily Chronicle).

Tragic and Avoidable

In the column “Command Lines” that appeared in the base newspaper, Fairchild Times, Colonel Donald E. Hillman, 92nd Bomb Wing Commander, wrote:

“This accident was caused by a series of errors that compounded to a point where correction was impossible. At several points during these final moments, a correction could have been made and the collision averted. But the compounding of errors continued and the point of recall was gone forever. All of us are deeply aware of our great loss in the recent crash of two of our aircraft. In terms of monetary value, the planes alone represented a $16,000,000 investment. The loss of so many fine men cannot be measured in any terms. The tragic part is that it was absolutely avoidable” (Spokane Daily Chronicle).

The incident remains the worst disaster in the history of the Strategic Air Command’s B-52 bomber operations.

Survivors

• Birdsell, David, Captain, Spokane, Washington (copilot/60-681)
• Maguire, Walter N., Second Lieutenant, Spokane, Washington (electronics warfare officer/60-661)
• Younger, Lowell W., Staff Sergeant, Stockton, California (tail gunner/60-681)

Killed

• Archer, David G., Staff Sergeant, Spokane, Washington
• Black, John R., First Lieutenant, St. Petersburg, Florida
• Cork, John M., First Lieutenant, Page City, Kansas
• Creo, Andrew B., Lieutenant Colonel, Spokane, Washington (327th Bomb Squadron Commander)
• Crump, Homer W., Captain, Monterey, California
• Frazier, Reginald, First Lieutenant, Spokane, Washington
• George, Roy L., Captain, Cisco, Texas
• Held, Theodore, Major, Reedsburg, Wisconsin
• Limburg, Gerald M., First Lieutenant, East Amherst, New Jersey
• Marker, Ernest C., Captain, Spokane, Washington (commander/pilot/60-661
• Moore, Aubrey R., Staff Sergeant, Birmingham, Alabama
• Snow, Russell H., Captain, San Antonio, Texas
• Staples, Donald R. Captain, Turner, Montana

 

 

 

 

 

Military History 17: The Cold War

 

Orders were issued stating that all old-time navigators would go to upgrading school. I kept saying that I didn't need to go but I went anyway. The school was at Sacramento, California for six months. We went from there to Kessler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi for six more months. Then we moved to Merced, California for B-52 crew assignment then on to Fairchild AFB, Spokane, Washington. The distance between wing-tip to wing-tip on the B-52 is farther than the Wright Brothers first flight. It was a monster. With airborne refueling it could fly as long as the crew could stand it.

We were given targets inside Russia in the event of war. We had fuel enough to reach the target and maybe get out of Russia. After that we were on our own. My job on the crew was to protect our bomber from enemy fighters and ground fire by disabling their radar. The title was Electronic Counter-Measure Officer.

Earlier we had studied escape and evasion for Korea. Korea is a rather small place. At this time we studied escape and evasion of Russia, a seemingly impossible task.

 

 A small section of Lee's Japan and South China Sea silk escape and evasion map

 

 

 

 California 

Spokane, Washington

 

 

 

 

B-52 Stratofortress

Military History 16: Home

 

We had left family and country behind six and one half months earlier so it was just glorious to be reunited with my lovely family in October 1952. Wanda never looked more beautiful. We loaded the kids in the car and headed for Indiana/Kentucky by the way of Utah and Wisconsin.

The second night home we made reservations at the Brown Hotel in Louisville. We left the kids with Grandpa Rube and Grandma Edna and started to have a few days just the two of us. We got out of bed about 10 AM the next morning, gathered up the kids and took them along.

The new assignment was with a refueling squadron at Barksdale AFB, Shreveport, Louisiana. Now we were going to fly in an airborne filling station. After the B-29, the KC-97 tanker was a Cadillac. Three or four of us were promoted to captain at the same time. The CO announced that he would take $20 from each of us to buy drinks for a party. I told him in front of everyone that I would rather not furnish booze for my friends to get drunk on. He accepted my request and said he would buy soft drinks with my contribution.

We soon became one of the number one crews and spent time in check riding with other crews. 

 

 

 

Brown Hotel, Louisville, KY

 

 

KC-97

 

 

Airborne Filling Station

 

 

Captain Reasor

Valerie, Cheryl, Kay, and Sandi