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I was just curious? Whats everYones most memorable moment, whether it be on the line, in the back shop, off duty or whatever...

I guess I could start. my most memorable moment was sitting at my first assignment(PEASE) I was sitting in training and picked up AIR FORCE TIMES rag and was glancing through it. I found an article about a A-10 pilot that was killed doing an air show at RAF CHICKSANDS. I kept reading and thought to myself "Poor guy" but kept reading about how the guy was looked as some kind of hero for riding it into a nearby field, instead of the crowd. I get up and go to my next class, someone comes into the room and says I have an urgent call from home. I take the call and its my dad, he says my uncle was killed earlier this week doing an airshow in England.

A day I'll never forget, the day I lost my uncle.. COL THOMAS B. THOMPSON

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Mine would have to be watching #83-1164 from the 62nd FS buy the farm last April off the South end of the runway here at Luke. I couldn't believe my eyes.

There's been so many memorable moments, it's to hard narrow it down to just one. On my first deployment with the F-117's to Khamis Mushayt, we took 2 jets to Kuwait City for the Kuwaiti Air Force's 50th Anniversary Airshow. We had countless people tell us "Thank you" in one of the most sincere tones I've ever heard.

While refueling one night at Holloman, I watched as #84-0824 landed. Fuel line broke on the #1 eng and she went down the runway in a ball of fire from the rear of the canopy back. Pilot stopped her and slid down the nose unharmed.

Dec 16, 1998, was the day my aircraft, #84-1314, with the 61st, went down over Gila Bend. Every day at work I see the control stick hanging off my wall.

Also while with the 61st, I watched as #83-1141 came in with total brake failure. Missed the cable so the pilot punched. ACES II in action! Jet hopped over the road at the end of the runway, did a 180, and settled down facing the way in came.

April 7, 2006, was the day I received a phone call telling me one of my best friends, TSgt Juan Williams, was no longer with us. I have met many great people in my career, and had alot of friends, but there have been 5 I consider to be my best friends. Now I'm down to 4, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about him.

i knew Juan as well. we served in Korea in '98 out in the 80th. we caught up with each other again on the Thunderbirds. He is sorely missed. Along with another comrade SSgt Brad Coker who lost his life on December 8, 2005.

To many memories after 23 years, one of the best/worst was watching the final elephant walk of the F-111E's at Upper Heyford, England prior to the drawdown and the end of the Cold War.

Another memory was the return of Captain O'Grady to Aviano after being shot down in Bosnia. Even though IFF doesn't work in the OFF mode!

The most forefront of my memories would be when the Aviano jet got shot down during Allied Force. All that they would tell us (23rd at that time) was that a jet from where we were operating from (Aviano) went down. They wouldn't say whose it was. This was after my jet was an hour late in landing... I found out what relief was when we watched our four-ship taxi back into spot about five hours late. They had been patrolling and doing SEAD until the pilot was recovered.

Second to that, was watching on CNN right around that same time (sorry, the six months kind of blurred together!) as the rebels (or whatever they were called!) were dancing on the smoking remains of the F-117 that was shot down.

On a side note, the F-16 pilot that was shot down from Aviano later became the Wing Commander at Spangdahlem shortly after I returned here. He always seemed to have a different perspective on maintenance (for a pilot) to me...

One thing that sticks out in my head is seeing the F-22 go down at Nellis. I was just talking with my experditer when we saw the 22 take off and just started going crazy. We saw the plane punch out and he said "Holy &#$* the 22s going to crash" and for reasons that I can only atribute to being a human we started running towards the jet(we were by our AMU) then we stopped and CHUCKADOOM! As we stood there and I kid you not a small piece of the plane fell right between the two of us. Biggest fireball I've ever seen in my life.

Elite 2K Joined: May 13, 2004 Posts: 2945 Location: Utah

About the same thing I saw with an A-10 doing a practice Demo near the tower (LOLA area) back in 1981 (prior to the 4th of July celebrations and mini airshow that normally took place).

I was expediting then, driving to the tire shop, heard a loud whining sound (throttling up, power cycles), looked right and saw this A-10 trying to (what looked like a repositioning maneuver, trying to correct his turn and dive angle) when he "Cart Wheeled" in.

Huge, big fire ball, no chute (parts of the aircraft flying everywhere)...we knew he never made it out..that sucked, to watch that last few seconds of this poor guys life, knowing he possibly made the biggest mistake of his life.

I am sure if any of you were there around that time frame, you either heard about it or saw it....bad news for sure

I wanna thank all of you for your stories. I've noticed that most of them contain crashes, or some other tragedy.
With one exception:

Quote:

There's been so many memorable moments, it's to hard narrow it down to just one. On my first deployment with the F-117's to Khamis Mushayt, we took 2 jets to Kuwait City for the Kuwaiti Air Force's 50th Anniversary Airshow. We had countless people tell us "Thank you" in one of the most sincere tones I've ever heard.

Its touching to see the side of you guys that have gone through so much and still see the goodness in others. Makes me think there just may be hope for mankind after all.
Thanx to all that submitted their strories.
Salute

Elite 2K Joined: May 13, 2004 Posts: 2945 Location: Utah

On a personal note - I felt like I was dreaming and did not want to wake up was the day I was told I would be meeting the President of the United States as One of the Twelve Outstanding Airmen of the United States Air Force 1987.

At that time in my Air Force career it was President Ronald Reagan representing our nation, as I stepped before him and saluted in the Oval Office, I really felt I was standing before a great man, a great American, I was star struck then as I am now by the whole event.

For me, other than being able to help rescue eight members (pilots) and ground troops in Vietnam back in 1971, it was the most rewarding events to ever happen to me, they mean more to me then anything I have done or been part of - I will never forget any of it or my time in the USAF, it was an amazing adventure - I am very grateful for them all.

Elite 2K Joined: May 13, 2004 Posts: 2945 Location: Utah

Expat58 - I can relate to that, I spent 16 years in USAFE collectively, I lost count of the number of "walks" I launched or took part in during all those years and assignments.

What a feeling that must have been for you, realizing, time just stood still and an era pasted all at the same time - gives me goose bumps thinking of it for you.

The USAF as many of us knew ended there and a new USAF began - different enemies and taskings - strange isn't it, different but yet similar in nature.

My God, all those 'exercises" practicing for what never happened - Thank God we never had to go down that path.

But it made many of us (who we are, what we became) and gave us a better understanding of life in general and politics globally.

What a moment you had, I left Europe in 1995 and never thought about that event as you did above, it made me think about it and them all, the folks we lost, the folks we met and worked with for years on end...amazing is an understatement at best.

Good for you to appreciate that moment and thank you and all the others for serving and giving me a moment to reflect on a lifetime shared by many.

I could retell the story when I watched the F-4 crashed with it's left wing folded.

I could tell you stories about razing Hell in Spain.

I could tell you stories about friends who would stand by you no matter what.

But you wanted to most memorable.

It's this one...

The weather was very bad that day. The first sortie was recalled and we were able to refuel only two aircraft before fueling went on weather hold as well.

Capt. Mike Crandall was off station that day , but he and his wingman "snuck in " under the weather. I was expediting that day and picked him up at the airplane. He asked about our jet (84-1292). I told him that it was in the garage (phase inspection). As I dropped him off at ops he said "Remind me about nose art when I get back." Those were the last words I heard Mike say.

Back in ops, LtCol. Rick Huss told Mike that Capt. Bob McCormack still needed to be upgraded to flight lead and Mike volunteered to take him up. Bob was to fly 1395 and Mike 1401 the only two aircraft refueled.

On start up Bob had hydraulical indication problems and we fixed them. Mike was in the other flight so I didn't know he was flying.

The aircraft were configured without external fuel tanks so their flight time was less than a hour. After an hour passed, we figured they "weathered in" at some other bases as it was common. After 90 minutes I was radioed to meet with my supervisor. He asked for me to quietly get the maintenance forms for 395. Fearing the worst I asked him if the aircraft was lost. he said "Just get the forms and don't discuss anything with anyone."

The aircraft had collided. Bob was thrown (not ejected) out of the jet. He landed in a farmer's field with a broken back. A farmer's daughter (yes this is true) picked him up in the family car as he was walking toward the farm house. He phoned in the base to report the collision.

The squadron was monitoring the SAR net, listening to the search effort. There were two beepers going off. In the other room, Capt. Karl Gruner was listening to German radio hoping for a news report. When Bob phoned, they then began looking for Mike. It was then that German news reported that two F-16's had in fact collided, resulting one pilot dead and one severly injured. That is how we found out that Mike was dead. The Polizei had found his body, he had had a good chute but he died in the collision.

I went home not knowing that. Knowing two jets were down, I prayed the crew chief prayer that all pilots were safe. The next morning I read in the Stars and Stripes, that Captain Michael A. Crandall had died the night before.

I sat in my stairwell and cried .

Mike was my pilot and my friend. He is buried at the Academy. Every now and then I see cadets serving at Nellis AFB. If I get a chance to talk I tell them that when they are struggling and don't think they can hack it, to visit Mike. We lost many, many friends during the Cold War. Let no one forget that there was and still is great valor on "routine training missions".

We miss you Mikey.

http://www.f16viper.org/memory.htm

My most memorable moment would be my first deployment when the 181st deployed to Kadena AB. (first ANG unit to goto PACAF)

The day we sent the jets home A/C 85-1552 had a CSD/Main Gen fail.

We worked our asses off for 4 hours to get the A/C back to flying status as we had to rebuild instead of R2 the main generator. Because our crap was all packed up on the KC-10.

We got the jet airborne and as the pilot flew past the area we were working out of he waivered his wings to us.

Damn that typhoon longwang

My most memorable moment was (sadly) the last maintenance I ever performed on an F-16 as an Active Duty Avionics troop. I had a week left to go before I separated and I wanted to ride the launch truck one more time before I got out. We had a redball for speedbrakes and figured out quickly that it was a bad throttle grip. We had no spare, and everybody was ready for a ground abort. Overcome with emotion at the realization that this was my last day on the flightline, and that none of the young pups in the truck seemed to give a crap that we were going to miss a sortie, I announced that we were going to change this throttle grip and save the sortie. I knew that we had a spare in FOM, so I took my buddy Mikey Weisenberger and a toolbox and pushed a stand up to the aircraft. The pilot asked what we were going to do, since he only had a twenty-minute window before he missed his range time. When I told him, he didn't believe me, but climbed out of the cockpit to watch. I told him not to go too far and explained that he would be doing the op checks for the grip on engine start. All the youngsters on the truck just knew that the old TSgt was never going to get the job done on time, and this just spurred me on further. I threw down a big white rag over the left console and got to work. I called out the tools and Mikey handed them to me like a nurse handing instruments to a surgeon. From the time I threw the FOD cover down until the time I picked it up and inventoried the tools was exactly twelve minutes and sixteen seconds. The pilot climbed in and cranked up, and though he was a couple of minutes late for his range time, he made his window and we saved the sortie. Mikey gave me the high five and a couple of days later at roll call the pilot gave us both an "attaboy" certificate that the 524 at Cannon had made up. It was a satisfying end to my USAF career, and a great way to go out.

You might wonder why I didn't ask one of the young pups to help me out...quite frankly, I didn't feel like arguing with them about whether or not we could get the job done in time. I couldn't waste time listening to some guy who doesn't know $#&* or care ask why we had to try when we couldn't possibly do it. Mikey was an old F-111 troop who had cross-trained to F-16 and I could depend on him.

The other thing that made my last job cool was the fact that I used a special tool that I invented to change the throttle grip. Those of you who have changed grips probably know what I am talking about, it's the tool that you slide into the spring and chrome liner to get everything lined up and the spring pre-loaded correctly. I submitted the idea for that tool on an AF Form 1000 in 1985, and it was approved for local use. Two years later, it appeared to stay in the 94GS as a special tool. I still have my copy of the AF Form 1000.

So for that last job, I came full circle from the beginning of my AF career to the end...and reminded the youngsters once again that we old guys can still get the job done, mostly because we haven't been trained to fail. And of course, it wasn't the end of my F-16 career, which is twenty-six years now and going strong with no end in sight.

Best Regards,

I have two most memorable moments and one quite memorable moment. My first most memorable moment was back in 1972 when I was at Minot AFB working a rare day shift in the 5th FIS Spittin' Kittens as an F-106 Instrument weenie. We had a jet do an FCF and we went down to the departure end of the 13,200 ft long runway to watch the show as he took off. The pilot, Maj Leland Wolford, took off, sucked the gear up, and then leveled the jet off in full A/B. As he passed us he was at 400+ knots and pulled the jet straight up. There is no sight quite like that of a clean F-106 ("Six" in Sixer jargon) coming straight at you. You see nothing but a black droopy nose and two huge intakes and one really huge blast of heat waves out the back. Quite impressive! I still remember the tail number--59-0019.
My second moment--I was in the VaANG by then, 1977, installing the instrument panel in one of our F-105Ds when an IFE sounded. Of course, the vultures (me included) gathered to view the carnage. One of our jets had flown through three trees and a telephone pole at a weapons demo at Ft. Bragg and was still flying! The pilot landed normally, and taxied back into his parking place, as luck would have it, right next to my jet. I had a front-row seat as the pilot, Bob Glover (the name tag on his flight suit said "G-lover".....), got out, surveyed the damage, and damn near passed out right there. The trees had peeled the noses of both wing tanks back clear to the pylons, punched a hole in one trailing-edge flap, dented the other, sliced 10-inch wide gouges in both horizontal stabs clean back to the spar, and deposited phone wires in the gouges. G-lover said the jet flew normally. Said he got target fixation. The Thud had to be the meanest, toughest brute of a jet ever built. Made a believer out of me that day.

On a humorous note, at the F-16 Avionics conference at Ogden UT in 2003 or 04, we had a demo at the 419th of the new laser boresight equipment that someone was trying to sell the Air Force. It looked quite promising but there was this one guy in civvies who thought it was a bunch of hooey and was quite eloquent in expressing his opinion. Of course, I thought that was hilarious, since this guy was none other than Lockheed's own Joe Sambor who is known throught the pointyhead world as the guru on optical boresighting. Thanks a lot, Joe--I got quite a kick out of you that day! Your articles on boresighting helped me considerably and enabled me to teach a very abstract concept to some quite inexperienced rookies.

To those who have ever boresighted an F-16: You ain't seen nothing yet. You ought to boresight an A-7 sometime. You could boresight that jet, take the rack off it, reinstall it, and everything would be out of tolerance!!

SixerViper Out

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Most memorable moments?