[SOC] Fw: Old Aviators and Old Airplanes.....Great Story!

[Fred Jensen]

Bob Krueger wrote:

> 
>  Old Aviators and Old Airplanes.....
> 
> This is a good little story about a vivid memory of a P-51 and its pilot by 
> a fellow who was 12 years old in Canada in 1967. You may know a few others 
> who would appreciate it.

In May of 1963 while a 23-yr old US Air Force Lieutenant communications 
officer stationed at Galena AFS Alaska [on the Yukon River, just below 
the Arctic Circle], a flight of 4 B-25's arrived and parked at the far 
end of the ramp.  They had been converted to fire tankers to fight the 
wild fires that sometimes got started by lightning.  I found out they 
would spend the summer with us.  The rumble the B-25's made while 
landing was like nothing I had ever heard.

The control tower and radar troops worked for me, and the next day, I 
got a call on the intercom in my office from my tower chief sergeant. 
He said to get my butt up to the tower, there was going to be a real 
show. The wood tower was on the corner of an very large WW2 wooden 
hanger and had a catwalk around it.  The duty controller was talking 
with a pilot when I got to the tower cab, and he cleared an aircraft for 
a high-speed low pass followed by an approach and landing.

We all went out onto the catwalk, and in less than a minute, a speck low 
in the sky off the approach end of the runway began growing, and in a 
heartbeat, a fluorescent pink P-51 roared across the field at about 50 
feet and snapped a barrel roll directly opposite the tower.  He 
continued on and was back to a speck as quickly as he had grown.  If I 
thought the sound of the bombers was distinctive, the P-51 was simply 
awesome, and made the sound of the F-102's and F-106's just crummy noise.

It turned out that the guy who owned the fleet of B-25's [16 in all at 4 
bases] flew around checking on his crews in the P-51.  We saw him maybe 
3 or 4 more times over the summer, each time with a little show for us. 
  I'm colorblind and the pink was lost on me, but I can still hear the 
sound when I think about it.

73 and Happy Holidays to all

Fred K6DGW