The Pinnacle: A Memoir

By H.W. Bingaman

In Bingaman’s stellar memoir, his boyish obsession with flight blossoms into a grueling but rewarding career in the U.S. military, leading him into the uncertainties of war. Bingaman returns to his Iowa roots in this collection of anecdotes, reminiscences and close calls among fighter pilots and their peers. Recounting first his time in England as an American airman in a NATO squadron, the narrative covers his time in Oregon, the Midwest and Vietnam, detailing the operations—particularly the idiosyncrasies and frustrations—of military programs and the officers that oversaw them. Well-paced and written in economical prose, Bingaman’s retelling of his past is at once richly personal and broadly historical, sacrificing neither breadth nor depth to convey specific bits of information as well as the zeitgeist of the time. A sensitive, astute contribution to the history of the armed forces. —Kirkus Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483401126

Book preview

THE

PINNACLE

A MEMOIR

H. W. BINGAMAN

Copyright © 2013 H. W. Bingaman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-0111-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-0113-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-0112-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013915427

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 11/18/2014

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1950S: The Nato Years

Chapter 1   A Spitting Image

Chapter 2   Mushrooms And Little Feet

Chapter 3   The Wagon Train

Chapter 4   The Voodoo

Chapter 5   Pitch Up

1960S:    Air Defense

Chapter 6   Aircraft Maintenance

Chapter 7   The Trail To Oregon

Chapter 8   Maintenance & Managers

Chapter 9   Sawyer Air Force Base

Chapter 10   Prelude To Combat

Chapter 11   Thailand

Chapter 12   The Pinnacle

Chapter 13   Homecoming

Chapter 14   Hamilton Field

Chapter 15   Farewell To Wings

Images

Reminiscence

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Grandfather Harry Bingaman and Hal the fledgling, 1932.

To Josie who managed the home front and kept us a family. In our sixtieth year we’re the same team that took our vows in 1953. To my daughters Juli and Lori, my delights in life: you’ll always be two little worlds of affection and good sense. And to Mike, my son: Mother Nature was always your friend. With her you brightened every sky and made a positive world for us all.

My favorite memories are six nomadic trips, our first and best on leaving Chanute in 1961. Packed in the gray sedan, towing a black Volks, we braved the blizzard on a wild, snowy night. That story became my family treasure. When times were difficult, in England, the far north, and the Far East, we were part of a destiny that was decreed at Chanute when President John Kennedy proposed a Peace Corps—ask what you can do for your country—and presented a new theme of freedom, committing us in foreign lands and extreme domains. Many military families experienced cruel loss.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Inaugural Address, John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961.

And to my mates in the line of operations: We polished the LABS tactic for a nuclear penetration of Eastern Europe; one-way flights were left unspoken, blessedly unused. Then came the Red River, with Rolling Thunder, a time like never before.

If you don’t venture on sullen skies

you never come to sun kissed valleys.

If your palms have never been moist,

your heart has never thrilled.

If you have never been afraid,

you have never been courageous

Gill Robb Wilson, The Airman’s World, 1957

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Two mentors helped me return to the Pinnacle:

Mrs. MaryAnn L. Diorio, PhD, a published author, businesswoman, and translator of three languages, interpreted a fourth jargon: mine. As an apprentice and friend I’m in great obligation for her sincerity in clarifying the path through an old darkness.

Mr. Jacksel Broughton, Colonel, USAF retired, holder of the Air Force Cross, two Silver Stars, and four Distinguished Flying Crosses. His 216 missions over Korea and North Vietnam are documented in Thud Ridge, Going Downtown, and a memoir, Rupert Red Two. Jack’s books tell of an air war, Rolling Thunder, and the air boss who inspired penetrators of Red River Valley. Seldom has an American combat chief published a work of the magnitude and clarity fitting Air University curriculum. Officers will long refer to the Broughton archives when going in harm’s way and judging leadership. As a wing mate in conflict I’ve rejoined him in the chronicles for his profound insight.

In memoriam: Jack Broughton of Thud Ridge, went West on 24th October, 2014.

PROLOGUE

Greenfield is a farm town on the Great Plains where Jackson Street homes still line a leafy tunnel to the fields at town’s edge. An old family photo shows a comely woman standing on a porch—a dilemma unknown. Perhaps it’s the unpaved street or a pail of water from a well behind the house; maybe an oil lamp needs filling for the night. The picture was taken in 1930, in the Great Depression, and it shows the house where I was born. I often wonder who she was.

Primitive autos in Greenfield and biplanes at Des Moines, forty miles east, are unseen. Trains were high-tech; they were the prime movers, with distant whistles enticing young people off the farm and out of the village. But as a boy in the fields, I went to the sound of airplanes.

Nancy and I were siblings, leftovers of a family, with a frail old woman to listen to our questions: where did we belong? Where was our mother? The old woman answered each night at prayers, ‘She’s in heaven, and you belong with me. Grandma Emma embodied a mother we never knew, through the Great Depression, a Second World War, and cruelties that could have claimed us, as they did our father in his search for happiness. Through times of trauma she counseled patience, determination, and faith in little things.

Nancy became a devoted wife and mother of four, embodying the essence of what once had been ours. Like my sis, I yearned for adulthood. One day I would defy gravity and soar like a bird, but I never imagined the flash and boom of a sound barrier or a zoom-climb into the stratosphere. My dreams in later years came with discoveries by bold men with eyes on horizons visible only to them. When their visions came to me they held exuberance, often pathos, and always interludes in reflection. But the day of the Pinnacle was a judgment day, a few haunting seconds of raging commitment.

Pitch-Up

It began with a yo-yo—two on one. Seven miles above England the fighter pitched vertical, snapped inverted and as Great Britain swiveled below, I began to fall. The sleek Voodoo entered its notorious incipient spin: nose down, swishing side to side. Suddenly it was nose up again, sliding in reverse to a twin-engine chorus of stalled engine compressors and pressure relief valves chuffing smoke. Three miles down, tumbling in a swirling confusion of land and sky, I struggled with a monster defiant of normal corrections.

The yo-yo was a dogfight and officially taboo, maybe ending my career. After falling eighteen thousand feet, Voodoo submitted to a grudging control, dangling from an emergency drag chute. She had bared her claws and shown her snarl.

1950S:

THE NATO YEARS

CHAPTER 1

A SPITTING IMAGE

Manhattan skyline disappeared in the wake as we lunged into the Gulf Stream at forty knots. It would be a five-day voyage to England, and it was my first foreign posting.

I was seated in the forward lounge watching cocktail stewards finesse the surge and roll when a bar steward surprised me: Compliments of the gentleman on your left, sir!

It was the beginning of a mystery, unresolved for thirty years. Surprises began early in the morning, at Fort Hamilton’ Embarkation Center. Our scheduled freighter slog became a luxury cruise, thanks to the convenience of government contract. The adventure began with grand emotion as we glided by the Lady Liberty and Verrazano Narrows. In short minutes we hit the Atlantic swells, where my wife and little daughters chose to snuggle in our cabin. But for me the giant ship was high technology, seemingly at flying speed. I jumped topside to watch the fastest ocean liner in the world: SS United States.

After half a mile’s walk around the promenade, I had stopped in the forward lounge for refreshment and the spectacle of stewards pampering in high fashion. Etched glass dividers screened the lounge from a cozy bar, which looked inviting. I perched at the end of a dozen members of the gentry.

I had doubts about my appearance in my travel blazer, shirt, tie, gabardines, and plain black shoes. I was a strange mix among trendies in three-piece suits and handmade wingtips—hardly my crowd, more like a Hollywood spoof. But I enjoyed a circus, and I was at center ring.

The lounge and ballroom windows revealed the high sea spray I’d gawked at from the promenade. The ship consisted of fifty thousand tons of aluminum and steel, with a quarter million horses powering four massive propellers. It was cleaving huge swells like a mill pond. I was excited and tipped my glass to thank the gentleman on my left, who introduced himself.

My name is Sampson. I noticed your lapel pin. Isn’t that a fighter?

We shook hands, and I thanked him. Yes, an F84F built by Republic—out on Long Island.

He knew of Republic Aviation; the P-47 fighter was their legendary Thunderbolt, called the Jug, famed as a fighter bomber in the World War II fighter sweeps opening the invasion of Normandy.

The man turned away, staring in the etched-glass panels, and then back to me. He smiled, pointing at my lapel again. Our second-war chaps left their top jacket button open. I suppose it’s a fighter pilot custom… My son was a fighter pilot in The Battle of Britain. I listened, chilled in World War II, dedication, and camaraderie. My last base at Langley Field had a heritage of that wartime spirit—oh, those spirits! I wished to have been a part of that old group.

Mr. Sampson looked to be over sixty years of age, ruddy and distinguished in a crisp white shirt, regimental tie, and tweed suit. The gleaming brown wingtips perched on his bar chair suggested affluence, but I noticed as we shook hands that his were like those of a worker, a farming man.

When he asked, I told him my assignment. I’ll be flying with an American NATO squadron in the UK. He turned again, staring in the glass panels for longer this time, and I thought our conversation was over. Was it apprehension? We were passing Andrea Doria’s grave, an Italian liner that had sunk the previous summer of ’56 after collision with the Swedish liner Stockholm; late that night we’d be far north near the Titanic’s grave. Were they problems?

The lounge crowd was growing louder, arguing the Cold War: The Soviets were pilfering nuclear secrets. In November Red tanks had invaded Hungary, and before that Premier Khrushchev had incited a crisis in Suez. Fat little Nikita in his bluster continued to terrify the Western world.

Mr. Sampson faced me again. Forgive me, but I must ask how you feel about NATO and North America defending Europe again—juggling arms against the Soviets! Do you agree to this atomic saber rattling after what we’ve done for them, the English and Europeans? He was asking for justification of the Cold War, then in its second decade, and I felt like a disciple replying that NATO would check communism. I had taken an oath to defend free world values, as his generation had done against the Nazis. I’m committed by tradition.

He turned away again and moments passed—this time in soberness. His eyes were filling with tears! Grief warped the old gentleman’s face, and I looked away. I sipped my drink in silence until he composed himself and spoke. Do you have plans for dinner? If not, would you join me?

I felt mystified. His was sure to be first-class dining while mine was military casual. I knew my family preferred privacy and rest. After accepting his offer, I left to arrange their room service, all the time wondering about his parting disclosure: I must tell you: My son was shot down in the battle for Britain. He was over the Channel, flying a Spitfire. I know he jumped out, but the German followed him down, shooting at him! My gift to Europe’s tradition of war was machine-gunned. He was hanging in his parachute! It was seventeen years ago.

I arrived at the first-class dining room to a hum of conversation. A gay Strauss waltz drifted out from a splendidly opulent grand piano. A maître-d in tuxedo approached—a special sight I’d never seen before. He’d anticipated me.

Good evening. You’ll be the lieutenant Mr. Samson is expecting. This way, sir. He turned in cadence with Strauss, sauntering among elaborate settings in the most beautiful dining room I’d ever seen. I towed along, averting the stares of people accustomed to grandness. We came to a broad window table where there was a silver-clipped white card reading, Reserved. Mr. Sampson. The maître-d turned out a chair, smiling. Enjoy yourself, sir.

Mr. Sampson hadn’t appeared, so I edged near the window to watch massive waves flash by in darkness. From sixty feet down, a gentle rise and ebb was conveyed into the vast room. The shimmering candelabra, crystal, and soft lighting were astonishing. Mr. Strauss was familiar, but all else was a mirage.

A tall waiter in black uniform appeared, and he spoke very correctly. "Good evening, Lieutenant. My name is Jason. Welcome to first-class dining on the SS United States. Mr. Sampson will be here shortly. Would you like a cocktail?"

It was like my introduction to a jet fighter. Should I indulge before the main man arrived? Here were silver spoons as big as ladles, plates the size of hubcaps. I imagined the crystal was Waterford, and the starched napkins were like hand towels. I guessed I could have a drink.

Jason took my order, passed it to a steward, and then acquainted me. "You may be interested to know that Mr. Sampson was on our maiden voyage in 1952. I’ve served him each trip—before the war too, on the Cunard Line. We were Queen Mary in those days. Polite, Mr. Sampson is, travels this way every year since the war." Jason said no more. I wondered if he had been hinting for me to tread softly on the old man’s constitution. Had he perceived an aggressive instinct on my part? I wondered if I displayed brashness. I hoped not.

In a few minutes Mr. Sampson arrived, greeting old acquaintances at their tables, and the staff. He came to Jason with a warm greeting. He was confident and stately. His suit and vest were charcoal black, above a fresh white shirt and paisley tie. Now he wore gleaming black shoes. I had freshened up but still wore the travel blazer, a clean shirt, and the gabardines. But his rugged nature put me at ease: Tell me about your parents and school. And how did you learn to fly?

I described the farm, my soloing in a fabric-covered tail-dragger out of the Iowa hayfields, my two years at Drake University until the Korean War started, and then my military flight training in the South and Southwest. Mr. Sampson spoke of himself only when I asked. He worked as a winemaker near Toronto, and he sailed to England each year and then on to Europe, visiting his son’s grave in Normandy. Finally he’d go to Lourdes. I understood it to be a pilgrimage. Last of all, he toured the French vineyards for cuttings before returning to Canada. Each trip was the same.

He spoke of his son once, when I asked. "He trained in Canada before leaving for England in ’39. In the Battle of Brittan he flew Hurricanes and Spitfires. I never saw him again.

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The dinner was excellent, but I have no recall of a single delicacy—only Mr. Sampson’s remark, Eat up. Enjoy yourself, boy. In Blighty they’ll boil everything.

In that first night at sea I already pictured the end of our five-day miracle. I’d been told previously of a sparse existence waiting in England. Dining had been a complete luxury, engaging in a pleasant exchange while wondering of a long Cold War ahead. I expressed gratitude, and in return I received overwhelming graciousness. He stared at me across the table. I wish I were going with you. At my age I value memories. That’s what matters now.

Near dinner’s end, he nodded to the pianist across the room, as if to an old confidant. The pianist returned the gesture, shifted smoothly to something classic—a reflective piece. It was something special for Sampson. I knew nothing of the wondrous sound, and he knew my dilemma. It’s Hayden. We played it in the evenings before the war—my wife at the piano, my son on the violin. Many times I wished I had asked the piece’s name. It would be a long time till I heard it again.

The evening was an enigma: Sampson was a fine old man to wonder over in quiet times. It ended as he gave me his card inscribed with the number of the Dorchester hotel, the finest in London. He’d be there a week. Bring your family down for a visit. I want to meet them.

The five days spent traveling to England were playtimes topped with four nights of privacy. Our convenience of government contract cabin was windowless, with four tidy bunks, a toilet, a shower, and elbow space aplenty. It offered first-class togetherness, and we wished only for a porthole. During the daytime we walked the promenade and attended shipboard attractions. We took evening meals in the privacy of our cabin. It was a week unmindful of my coming regimentation in a NATO squadron.

Each night before sleep I listened to the hum of massive shafts turning four eighteen-foot props that I’d seen on an engine room visit. It was a time to treasure family. I was far different, yet the same as, my great-grandfather in 1855, age nineteen, sailing around the Horn. He was alone, wet, and cold, pitching and rolling all the way to a foreign place called California.

Our welcome to RAF Station Shepards Grove, East Anglia, was the cold English rain and the realization of Britain’s economic exhaustion and rationing. Twelve years after the Second World War, England was bankrupt and mired in crises: The Berlin airlift, the Soviets’ plundering of Hungary, and the war in the Suez as the United Arab Republic, led by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, agitated the Middle East. Britain still maintained troops in Cold War Europe.

The next surprise came on sign-in: I would depart that weekend to Morocco, North Africa, for nuclear bomb recertification, and there could be no London visit. My call of apology to the Dorchester found Mr. Sampson hushed in acceptance, as dignified as on the ship. I said I would ring again the next morning before leaving for Africa. But the next morning he was gone.

My service years in the United Kingdom passed as moments of truth. In 1958, US Marines hit the beach in Beirut. In those same early hours in July, NATO squadrons loaded nuclear to attack Eastern Europe. It was a Red-Alert facedown of the Soviets’ itch to acquire Lebanon. US President Dwight Eisenhower parried Khrushchev while in England we manned cockpits through the night at two minutes to launch. As Nikita watched, he remembered General Eisenhower, supreme commander of World War II. His lust for Lebanon faded with sunrise.

The following month our Shepards Grove squadron dispatched to Munich, Germany, training Luftwaffe pilots in jet fighters. Nikita’s view of a new German fighter capability would become an inducement to pause for a more naïve American leadership. And in 1962, John F. Kennedy appeared to be Nikita’s pawn for the Cuban missile venture.

By then we mates of Shepards Grove had returned Stateside, loaded for another facedown, this time with atomic rockets in defense of our own homeland. In the years following Nikita’s Cuban venture, the death of President Kennedy brought American politics into ever more challenged and self-contradicting leadership. The best and brightest of Washington DC legislated the Great Society and orchestrated war in Vietnam with naive attempts at conciliation, in complete ignorance of Vietnam’s survival culture. It was a society immune to peace lobbies. Communism would modify only by dominance as Washington dissolved in public contempt.

With the Cold War’s end came my retirement to university pursuits and an academic career, a vocation aborted in its beginning for budgetary woes. I returned to aviation. A second career, of five years, began with an oil baron, a wildcat driller in a high-risk business. Then came the best and brightest of the American corporate world. I was flying international bankers to foreign or domestic venues, frequently New York. Eventually there came an evening of enigma.

Late one night at Sixty-Ninth and Madison, I sat in the dining lounge of the Hotel Westbury while a piano played to a mingling crowd. Outside, a windblown rain rushed up the avenue, dousing windows and awnings. Theatergoers hurried in, shaking off their coats.

A fashionable couple was seated at a table near me. We introduced ourselves, enjoyed the music, and exchanged thoughts as minutes passed. When the old enigma began haunting, the piano was playing that melody of thirty years ago, the night on the SS United States. Words failed me as I thought of Mr. Sampson. The polished man next to me, unaware of my difficulty, asked about the war (he had seen my lapel pin). Had I been in the Southeast Asia war? Yes.

Grief flooded me; I felt stricken. Floundering for a diversion, I asked him to name the music. But he was unsure, confused. His elegant lady sensed my difficulty; she knew instantly. It’s Hayden’s ‘Serenade for Strings and Piano.’ I was recalling terrible events and turned to the rain-streaked windows, like Mr. Sampson retreating in tragedy. A fine wing mate, my first combat squadron commander, was shot from the sky. And a month later the second one went down. Both were compassionate, intelligent men. I realized I had never accepted the loss. As for Sampson on the magnificent ship, there had been no closure for me seventeen years ago.

Further talk was impossible. I needed isolation. The pianist continued the beautiful Hayden piece as I mumbled apologies and retreated to my room, thinking of the losses, the month between shoot-downs, like so many others, and that evening on the SS United States.

In later years I had thought sporadically of Mr. Sampson; his image always came at night, personifying perfect dignity and accompanied by the beautiful Hayden melody. For the first time in years I remembered my call to the Dorchester before I went to Morocco. There had been the operator’s referral to the concierge, whose response was posh, very old British: Ah, yes, Mr. Samson. Left early this year, he did. Gone to Normandy Cemetery—son’s buried there, y’ know. Strange mood Mr. Sampson was this year. He said he’d met a young man this last voyage—called ‘im the spittin’ image of his son.

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Bingamans