A Pilot’S Story: An Autobiography of a Pilot

By Don Volz

This is my storythe story of a pilot who flew airplanes for some thirty-seven years: ten years in the United States Air Force, primarily in jet fighters, and then twenty-seven years flying commercial jet airliners. I was inspired to write this story after reading the autobiography, a few years ago, of Gen. Chuck Yeagerhe being the world-renowned test pilot, World War II fighter ace, and first man to break the sound barrier in the Bell X-1.

My story is the story of an average pilot, an average guy who survived several close calls, had many interesting experiences along the way, and often wondered, Am I still here because I was especially good or because I was especially lucky? I think the answer is definitely a combination of the two, just as Yeager says or implies in his book. With him, it may have been a larger contribution of skill, but as he said, The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day. I have to echo that comment.

While flying around the country with American Airlines, during hours of complete boredom (as we say), we pilots often traded our war stories of our flying (and other) experiences. I often thought that I had many tales that were similar to some of Yeagers and that I should put my experiences down on paper, even if it would only be my family who might read it. So this, then, is my story, my life, primarily, as it revolved around my aviating experiences over some thirty-seven years, from the viewpoint of a pilot who has no particular claim to fame but who has survived to fly another day. One of the best descriptions of a flying career says: You start out with a big bag of luck and an empty bag of experience; you want to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck! I guess I have done that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466949850

Book preview

© Copyright 2012 Don Volz.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or

otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Cover Photo:

Author getting ready to fly his North American F-100C fighter

of the 461st Fighter Day Squadron, Hahn Air Base., Germany, 1958.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4984-3 (sc)

978-1-4669-4985-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012914069

Trafford rev. 08/20/2012

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North America & international

toll-free: 1 888 232 4444 (USA & Canada)

phone: [phone] . tfax: 812 355 4082.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1

The Formative Years

Chapter 2

USAF Pilot Training: 1956–1958

Chapter 3

The Good Life (Germany): 1958–1961

Chapter 4

McClellan Air Force Base: 1961–1966

Chapter 5

Nineteen Years to Captain: 1966–1985

Chapter 6

The Airline Captain: 1985-1992

Postscript

Dedication

A%20Pilot%27s%20Story%20Pic%20%23%2025%20Dedication.tif

I am dedicating this book to my loyal and dedicated wife, Kay, and our three lovely children. Kay was with me all the way (and always got up to fix me breakfast before I went out to fly) and kept the home fires burning. The kiddoes (Susan, Kathy & John) were there through most of this story. This is a picture of my family taken in 1996 with Susan (Peters), John, Kay, Kathy (Mardirossian) and your truly. I hope you enjoyed my story. DHV

Introduction

This is my story—the story of a pilot who flew airplanes for some thirty-seven years: ten years in the United States Air Force, primarily in jet fighters, and then twenty-seven years flying commercial jet airliners. I was inspired to write this story after reading the autobiography, a few years ago, of Gen. Chuck Yeager—he being the world-renowned test pilot, World War II fighter ace, and first man to break the sound barrier in the Bell X-1.

My story is the story of an average pilot, an average guy who survived several close calls, had many interesting experiences along the way, and often wondered, Am I still here because I was especially good or because I was especially lucky? I think the answer is definitely a combination of the two, just as Yeager says or implies in his book. With him, it may have been a larger contribution of skill, but as he said, The secret of my success is that I always managed to live to fly another day. I have to echo that comment.

While flying around the country with American Airlines, during hours of complete boredom (as we say), we pilots often traded our war stories of our flying (and other) experiences. I often thought that I had many tales that were similar to some of Yeager’s and that I should put my experiences down on paper, even if it would only be my family who might read it. So this, then, is my story; my life, primarily, as it revolved around my aviating experiences over some thirty-seven years, from the viewpoint of a pilot who has no particular claim to fame but who has survived to fly another day. One of the best descriptions of a flying career says: You start out with a big bag of luck and an empty bag of experience; you want to fill the bag of experience before you empty the bag of luck! I guess I have done that.

Chapter 1

The Formative Years

I was born on January 2, 1933, in Detroit, Michigan, and named Donald Harold Volz. My father’s name was Harold (most of his friends and acquaintances called him Scoop or Scoopy), and my mother was Lorena, whose maiden name was Spring, an English derivation of a Swede/Finn name. My father’s parents were German from the Southern Württemberg area of Germany, and both of my mother’s parents were Swedes. When I was about three years old, my family moved to Saginaw, a small industrial and rural town about eighty miles north and a bit west of Detroit, and this is where I grew up and spent my early years. I imagine I had a relatively average childhood, but I was known around the neighborhood and among the family as being rather mischievous and into many things—perhaps in the manner of Chuck Yeager’s young life. As an only child, I may have been used to getting my own way or at least trying to.

I don’t imagine I was the easiest child that parents had to endure. I always seemed to want to do things in what I thought was the right or best way. Maybe I had the opinion that there were two ways of doing things: the right way or the wrong way, or should that be my way or the wrong way? It seemed I always wanted to find what I thought was the most logical, rational way to do things, and because of this, I suppose many people considered me a perfectionist, but I’m sure I was far from perfect in many of the things I did. This trait may have been instilled in me by my father, who often tried to show me how to do things properly. But he didn’t have the most patience, and I probably wasn’t the best student to work with.

As I said, I sometimes had the reputation around the neighborhood for being rather mischievous. I don’t know if I would say a troublemaker, but in some ways, trouble did seem to follow me around at times, probably due to my actions as well as anything. For instance, we had moved to Saginaw when I was about three years old, and I can recall an incident when I was perhaps four or five. My mother had taken me with her to visit some friends who had a son about my age. These people lived two to three miles from our house, and there were some railroad tracks going by the friend’s neighborhood. There were also some tracks near our house. I guess I knew or assumed that these were the tracks of the same railroad. Several days later, I decided to go and visit my new friend (without telling my mother, of course), so I set out to follow the tracks to his house. I was right, and the tracks led to his neighborhood, and I found his house. However, my mother became frantic, not knowing where I was; I don’t remember how she found out, whether I walked home or my friend’s mother called her, but I was having a good old time while my mother was getting gray.

A few years later, we had moved to a house just outside of the city limits. It was an older farmhouse in a subdivision that was one of the first in the state, and I went to a four-room country school about a mile and a half away. My dad usually drove me to school, but I usually walked home, past an area that we called the swamp (which it was) and through some backyards when I went the back way, rather than by the main road. Of course, going the back way was more fun, even though I sometimes came home soaking wet after falling off a raft that we used to cross the swamp. One time during school recess or lunch, I heard some of the kids hollering and making a big commotion about something, so I went over to see what was going on. Well, they had trapped a little ground mole in the corner of the school building. I was always sort of an animal lover, and I was afraid they were going to harm it, so I said, No, don’t hurt it. Let me catch it. It was chilly weather, and I had some mittens with me, so I put them on, got my lunchbox, and caught the little critter and put him in it. (It was the old black model with the rounded top with thermos bottle.) I guess I was intending to let it go on my way home past the swamp. This was after lunch, so I put the lunchbox in the place where we kept them in the classroom and promptly forgot all about the mole. After school, I picked up the lunchbox and trudged merrily on home, walked in the door, put the lunchbox on the kitchen table, and went up to my room, probably without a care in the world. A short time later, I heard a bloodcurdling scream from my mother, and I raced downstairs to see what had happened. There in the kitchen, standing on a chair, was my mother, the lunchbox was on the floor open, and the little mole was scampering around in fear of its life. I can just picture the scare my mother got as she opened the lunchbox, and there was this critter with its little beady eyes looking at her, and she most likely thought it was a rat—more gray hairs for my poor mom.

Then there was the time a few years later, at this same house, when I was maybe eight or nine years old, there was a detached garage or barn with four or five stalls for vehicles. The owner kept an old Ford tractor and some other equipment in