Getting Off the Ground

It was May, 1950.1 was on our tractor, cultivating six-inch-tall corn on a hot, humid afternoon. A cloud of fine dust followed me and the Allis Chalmers WD-45. High overhead, a four-engine transport, silhouetted against the blue sky, was leaving small contrails. As I looked up from beneath my dust cloud and saw the aircraft, I thought, "There's got to be a better way to make a living than bucking bales of hay to cattle and scooping corn to 200 head of hogs every day." Times change. I was looking for something different. People choose new and different careers.

There I was, a high school senior, about to graduate. The draft was after me. The Korean War was going on. I had to make a decision. Should I do my patriotic duty; enlist, go through basic training, and learn how to kill people with a rifle and bayonet? My other choice was to go to college, get an education, an ROTC commission, fly airplanes, fire rockets, and drop bombs on people from farther away. At least, you don't know who you're killing. It would be less personal that way. I chose the latter.

Iowa State College in Ames accepted my application. My major was Animal Husbandry. Besides the agricultural courses, I enrolled in the Air Force ROTC program. After the second week of classes, I cornered one of the instructors about flight school. The Air Force was in transition from pistons to jets. All commissions were administrative; applications for flight school were few and far between. A day or two later, I checked with the Army ROTC personnel. They offered commissions in Signal Corps (SigC), Engineers (Eng), and Artillery (Arty). Applications for flight school could be made anytime, once on active duty. They were more encouraging than the Air Force. The Army could use all the pilots they could get their hands on. Amateur radio was my latest hobby, in addition to building and flying model airplanes. The Signal Corps personnel welcomed me with open arms. I changed ROTC programs within a couple of days.

It was a long uphill battle; including a few campus uprisings in which I participated, not to mention the famous panty raids of the mid-1950s. On several occasions I was called before a department dean to explain my conduct.

Four years later, on June 10,1954, Jack V. O'Keefe received his Bachelor of Science degree. The following day, I received the gold bars as Second Lieutenant Signal Corps, United States Army Reserve, with orders to report to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, on September 10,1954, for the Basic Signal Officers' course.

After graduation I planned to work on a ranch in Montana for the summer. I'd be breaking and training stock horses, building fence, making hay, and irrigating alfalfa until it was time to report for active duty. During my senior year in college, I was on the acrobatic and rodeo teams. The only rodeo events I competed in were bareback bronco and Brahma bull riding. My investment for bull riding was a bull rope and pair of gloves. I borrowed spurs. I never made top prize money, but managed to make enough "ground money" to pay expenses without breaking any bones. I ate a lot of dirt in Iowa and Montana arenas. What's a little dirt, when you're having a great time trying to stay on a bronco or bull for eight seconds?

The summer passed quickly. I hated to leave Montana but duty called. I'd be in those blue skies sometime in the coming months, once in flight school.

The second day on active duty at Fort Monmouth, I applied for Army Flight school. A week later, I made a trip to McGuire Air Force Base for a physical. The physical took most of the day. I had the feeling that the Air Force really didn't think Army personnel should fly airplanes. Instead, we should be running around in the weeds with a rifle, making invasions through the surf, living in fox holes, getting shot at, and trying to squeeze our faces a little further into mother earth in order to keep our body parts together. I had other ideas. This country boy was off the tractor and the horses. One way or another, I was going to get into an airplane and fly.

December, 1954, rolled around and our class of forty officers completed the Signal Officers' Course. I had a month's temporary duty with the Aviation Section at the Monmouth County Airport. Whenever there was an empty seat in an airplane I was in it. This gave me the opportunity to ride in the Cessna L-19 Birddog, the DeHaviland L-20 Beaver, and get some "stick time." The Korean War was still going on, but it was beginning to taper off.

One Sunday morning in January, 1955, my 1939 Chevrolet shelled out the engine. It was sold for twenty-five dollars on the spot to the tow truck driver. I managed to get a ride with a couple of classmates to Des Moines, Iowa. My "collage adopted folks" picked me up. A day later I was the owner of a 1953 Ford. The next day I was on my way to Texas and flight school.

My orders were to report to San Marcos Air Force Base, San Marcos, Texas, on or before February 20, 1955.

Our initial class of would-be pilots numbered 148. The combat branches were the most numerous: Infantry, Artillery, and Armored. Then came a few Engineers and five Signal Corps officers. There was one lone Chemical Corps officer.

My roommate was Second Lieutenant Tom York, Artillery, an Economics major and Yale graduate from Boston. Tom had never met anyone from the midwest – especially someone who wore boots, a Stetson, and rode in rodeos – not to mention one who was dumb enough to ride Brahma bulls and bareback broncos. Tom was five feet, ten inches tall, and a handsome devil if ever I saw one. If I had half his looks, I'd have been in hog heaven. Sometime during the first night in our quarters, the subject got around to Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Roy's horse Trigger. Out of my mouth popped: "Trigger" York! He had been anointed!

The class was assigned instructors alphabetically. My flying partner was Second Lieutenant Donald Osborn, Infantry, a graduate of the University of Illinois, from Streator, Illinois. Our instructor was First Lieutenant Elroy Logan, USAF, who had been plowed back from F-100s and was now instructing would-be Army Aviators in fabric covered airplanes, sometimes called rag-wing airplanes among pilots. He was not a happy camper.

Ground school or academics were in the morning; flying in the afternoons. It was reversed each week. Our primary trainer aircraft was the Piper Super Cub, or L-21, for the next 100 hours.

Tom and I were the two top guns. Then came the day when everyone had about eight hours of dual instruction. The opportunity to be the First to solo in the class looked good. Somehow, Trigger's instructor squeezed into the line of Super Cubs, and soloed him a minute before me. I was upset. When my instructor saw what happened, he jumped out of the back seat and told me, "O'Keefe, get your ass out on the runway." I took off right after Trigger. Trigger and I were in the air at the same time. It was more of a contest between instructors – to see which would solo a student First – rather than competition between students. That was March 14, 1955. My total flight time was eight hours and three minutes. For some reason, I won't forget that day as long as I live. We celebrated at the Officers' Club that night.

Then came the fun stuff: steep turns, lazy eights, chandelles, two-turn precision spins, spins over the top, cross country, night flying, night cross country, and so it went. Near the end of Phase II, we were doing "spot landings." It was a game of points. You had to land within a 200 foot area. If you landed short of, or past the markers, you got negative points. If you had to go-around, that was worth a minus ten. It was like starting at 100 and taking off points. For some reason, the guy in front of me kept dragging out his Final approach. He landed long, but still within designated area. I managed to land just within the approach limits. I got a little close to the guy in front of me. It was too close, as far as the class commander, an Air Force Captain type, was concerned. As I rolled off the runway and opened the door he screamed, "Lieutenant, park that goddamn airplane, and report to me immediately." Several minutes later, I was standing tall being read the riot act. I got a pink slip and was grounded. He scheduled me for a check ride with him on Saturday morning. I thought, "Oh shit, there goes my flying career." That night, Trigger and I went over all the numbers on the airplane, maneuver entry speed, altitudes and training area boundaries. Sometime the next day we ran through a blindfold cockpit check. My ass was on the line!

On Saturday morning, at 0800 hours, I reported to the flight line, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I even washed and pressed my flight suit. The walk-around inspection went well. Cockpit starting, "S" taxiing down the taxiway, and the before takeoff check lists went okay. I made a normal take off, traffic pattern exit, climbs and climbing turns to 4000 feet. He wanted the entire training syllabus to date, in sequence, without hesitation between maneuvers. Man, I was really working at it. The most humiliating thought was to have some Air Force Captain wash me out of the program. Everything went well until he asked me to land at an auxiliary field. It was a great approach, except against the local traffic pattern on the downwind leg. Fortunately, I saw my error in time and rolled the airplane almost ninety degrees to avoid an oncoming aircraft. The cotton-picker set me up! Until now, I thought I had it wired. Not so. I was on thin ice. The landing was made without further incident. On the following takeoff he said, "O'Keefe, forget the climbing turns. Go up to 4000 and level off." Oh shit, now what? I thought. After level off, he said those famous words of the flight instructor. "I've got it. Let me show you a couple of things, Lieutenant," he continued. He showed me rolls, loops, split S's, strafing runs and how to make deflection shots. The Super Cub was near its red line on the strafing runs. "Let me take you through one or two," he said. I thought to myself, hell, I'm game for anything now. It might be my last airplane ride. I might as well enjoy it. We played around for nearly Fifteen minutes. Then he said, "Okay, O'Keefe, take me home, and I want a wheel landing on the crosswind runway." He's going to get one last shot at me if he can. Never can trust those Air Force types, I thought to myself. After we landed and taxied to the tiedown area, he said, "I'll see you in the Monday morning formation. Oh, by the way, have you ever considered flying fighters?"

So much for my check ride with the class commander. I was glad to be back in the program. It took me years to figure what he was after. In a very subtle way, I think he wanted me to resign my commission in the Army and get into Air Force fighters. I'll never know.

Trigger York was scheduled to be married in Boston one week before primary was completed. We were instructed not to travel more than 200 miles from San Marcos Air Force Base on weekends. The wedding date had been set many months before. If worse came to worse, I would cover for him in the event anything happened. I drove Trigger to San Antonio on Friday afternoon, and put him on a Braniff Airlines flight to Boston. He was married on Saturday afternoon, and returned to San Antonio on Sunday. I picked up Trigger and his new bride, Ann, at the airport. Fortunately, all went well. The newlyweds settled into a small rental motel room in San Marcos for the next week.

When June came, more than half the class had washed out. Of the original 148 would-be pilots, only sixty-eight had orders to the Army Aviation School at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

It was back to the real world. The comfortable, one-story Air Force quarters, Officers' Mess, Officers' Club, and the Texas beauties were gone forever. It was back to two-story barracks, student officer chow lines, and lines just about everywhere you went.

Now came the serious stuff. We were soloed in the Cessna L-19 in three flying periods. It would be our primary flying machine for most of our aviator careers. My instructor, Mr. Holzaphel, was a civilian on contract to the Army. It was one on one. We got along great.

Then came the short field strips, unimproved grass strips, road strips, roads with turns, the famous unimproved "S" strip, route reconnaissance, message drop (which amounted to a legal buzz job), message pick-up, and contour flying. Of all the training, I really liked adjusting artillery best. After a couple days of working with the artillery, often called "cannon cockers," several of us got hot with those 105 Howitzers. We'd call, "Fire for effect," on the third round and blow the hell out of our designated target on the artillery range. One or two of our instructors were impressed.

Every military assignment has its social adventures, Panama City, Florida, an hour-and-a-half drive from Fort Rucker, was where most of us spent our weekends. It was a great place to meet women and party long into the night. Some of us got lucky once in a while. Then, there were other guys who got lucky all the time.

When September, 1955, arrived, only fifty aviators received their wings. A little more than one-third of the original class survived. Trigger washed out during the short field phase. It was sad to watch him struggle through the flying evaluation boards. It had been nine hard months, many hours of academics, 201:30 hours of flying, and a lot of sweat. The second most important day that most pilots remember is graduation from flight school – receiving those wings. I was an Army Aviator!

Sagebrush, 1955

Upon completion of flight school I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, 82nd Aviation Company, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Ten days later, I reported in and went through the usual routine of getting the paperwork completed.

One week later, the division was on the road to "Exercise Sagebrush" at Camp Polk, Louisiana. It was to be the largest combined military exercise between the United States Air Force and Army ground forces since World War II.

The military doesn't change much in some respects. The newest and most junior officers in the outfit get dubious assignments such as convoy duty and courtesy patrols on Saturday nights. A new Second Lieutenant like myself was no exception. My assignment was to ride with the Flight Operations Sergeant, Master Sergeant Wilson, in a jeep with its trailer to Louisiana. Only four officers were in the convoy: the company Executive Officer (XO), Captain Morse; Motor Officer, First Lieutenant Jim Sterns; Mess Officer, First Lieutenant Adam Bridgeforth; and me, with no assigned duties at that time. The Company Commander and other senior pilots flew to the maneuver area.

The 82nd Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps rolled onto the North Carolina highways before dawn one day the last week of September. Our first night's stop was Fort Jackson, South Carolina. As we pulled into the bivouac area after dark, the vehicles stirred up hugh clouds of dust. One of our three-quarter-ton trucks rammed our trailer from the rear, almost throwing me out of the jeep. Master Sergeant Wilson was thrown against the steering wheel, where he sustained a minor chest injury. Then came the accident report, and who did what to whom and when. This was only the first day on the road. We had another week to go before we'd arrive at Camp Polk. Motor maintenance worked all night to straighten the jeep's frame and repair the trailer. I didn't see Master Sergeant Wilson until December, back at Fort Bragg.

Corporal Willie Hicks, Operations Clerk, was my new driver. The convoy stopped at Camp Gordon, Georgia, on the second night. By now, many of our vehicles were having engine problems. What can you expect? Some vehicles never leave the motor pool but once or twice a year.

The third night was spent at Eglin Air Force Base near Crestview, Florida. As each day passed, motor maintenance personnel were spending most of their time repairing our trucks alongside the highway. Several trucks had to be towed until the night's stop.

As the convoy rolled out the following morning, two or three vehicles broke down in rapid succession. The XO called me on the radio and told me to fall out of the convoy and pick up the stragglers. He said something about a place in Louisiana called Ragley Farm. I was to meet the main body of the convoy there in four days. I had no route map, no information on radio frequencies or call signs. My only piece of navigation material was a State of Louisiana highway map, and we were still in Florida.

From this point on the day went to hell. The long haul for the two-and-one-half ton trucks was taking its toll. By midday, I had my own convoy that consisted of seven or eight trucks, a half dozen Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO's), and twenty or so enlisted men. The 1000 gallon aviation fuel truck had to be towed.