GreyEagle8414

If a cargo plane starts her engines, I can tell you everything about that plane. I know, I probably flew it or one very similar. It's been 60 years since the end of the Airlift, and if I hear a plane in the sky, sometimes I'll stop and think about how impossible it really was sometimes. All that cargo. All those people. We didn't care. We had a job to do and we did it. Air Force can deliver anything.

That would probably be either my Bronze Star or the Berlin Airlift ribbon. I'm especially proud of my small role in helping to save the city of Berlin.

1) best piece of advice about life? Live it. When I first enlisted, I was almost kicked out of flight school before it even started because I wore eyeglasses. The common knowledge at the time was if you had to wear eyeglasses, you couldn't read the instruments. Myself and 19 other cadets worked hard to stay in. Eventually the requirements changed. Young people, the world isn't going to give you anything. I know that's the way it seems, but you're only hurting yourself to believe it. Go and work hard and make your own success. Who knows? If the 20 of us hadn't petitioned to get the rules changed, it might have stayed that way for years and years.

2) Too many. I have flown in the Arctic where vital parts of my plane froze up and I had zero visibility. Once, on a training plane, the engine seized and the propeller stopped as I was waiting to take off. No one was hurt, but it would have been a quick trip down had I been airborne. I have made navigational errors and flown over countries and into airspace I had no business being near. During the Airlift itself, Russian fighters would circle. 3) I once had the honor of flying a famous explorer who had turned into a statesman to a meeting. My co-pilot was eating sardines and the stench filled the cockpit right as soon as the statesman came into the cockpit to chat for a few minutes. He took a whiff of those sardines and never came back. 4)I don't know. There's a lot that's wrong with today, but the older I get, the more I realize, there's always a lot wrong. But a lot of things right too.

I don't think I was ever in any real danger during the War. I'm a little ashamed to say that during the D-Day landings, I was on a troop train in Texas. I was a trainer for most of the war, training other pilots.

That being told, there's been a time or two I thought I made my final take-off. Everything always turned out alright.

In today's Air Force it would be an 0-6, Colonel. However, when I enlisted, I did so in the Army Air Corps. The Air Force didn't exist until September of 1947.

Becoming a General is one of the hardest things to do and it requires mostly politics and playing games. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to wine and dine with the Pentagon officers or Congress. I was an Airman first and foremost. I only got promoted to full bird colonel after my retirement.