England AFB

1960-1961 So I go “back to the farm” A dairy farm outside Alexandria, La. I’m a pasture cowboy. Why do they call cowboys cowboys, they’re not cowboys they’re steerboys, I’m a real cowboy, Think longhorns are something, try herding Jerseys. Working 12 hours a day herding cows had even less appeal than it did when I left. Not a lot of openings for a guy whose experience is in blowing things up. Looked up my old buddies, shit, they’re still kids. Shit, this really sucks.

So after 6 months, back to the USAF. Wanted to change career fields from blowing things up. “Special Weapons?” I was asked “What’s that” “can’t say, it’s classified” Sure, why not? So I go to Lowry AFB in Dever where I was trained in fire control, (weapons control, radar etc. with a follow up course in “special weapons” Graduate and get my first assignment. England AFB in Alec. How lame is that.

Got inroduced to the F-100, We called it the lead sled because of it’s flat bottom and flight characteristics. It was a conspiracy between North American Novelty Company and Minneapolis Honeybucket. The picture shows it as I usually saw it. With the bays open. Under the “hood” was the weapons control, radar, yaw/roll and pitch gyros etc. It had 4 20mm cannon in the nose, the two inside ones were boresighted accurately. the two outside were worn barrels, scatter the pattern all over the place like a shotgun. The two bays behind the cockpit where where the ammo went. A case of beer would fit quite nicely in each, and it needed balance anyway. The -40 degree temp at 50,000 feet would chill them quite nicely. The picture on the right is the cockpit. The fire control system would project a reticle on the HUD (Heads Up Display). It’s basically a automatic gunsight that calculates the lead. This ain’t like shooting skeet, you have two targets trying to shoot each other down in three dimensions at 600 mph. It also had LABS (Low Altitude Bombing System) for “flinging” a nuke some 20 miles” Dropping a nuke from low altitude is pretty much a non-starter.

In the military they speak of mega-deaths not mega-tons. IE how many deaths a bomb will cause if dropped in a populated area. Creepy mindset. Here’s the first of an eleven part series on the mindst. Dr. Strangeglove It is difficult for people today to realize the psychotic levels achieved during the cold war. On several occasions we went on full alert, fully expecting to be “crispy crittered”. More from this mindset is on the beach. The ending scene from the classic movie of 1959, On the Beach. After a nuclear war, Australia is the last inhabitable place on Earth until the radiation comes. This shows the characters final goodbye’s before they die. The last minute shows a very depressing view of a deserted Melbourne. Look for Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins and Donna Anderson. We came real close folks, we almost bought the shithouse. I went to Australia later, OTB is a taboo subject.  Australian women wear what looked to be the standard panty, but they called them undies.

Got to wear white fatigues but had to clean them every day. Got to talk to psychiarists once a month, I don’t think they were worried about the bombs themselves, but I knew how to fuse them, and someone could tell what the target was if they knew how a bomb was fused. Making one is pretty simple, it’s the infrastructure that prevents proliferation. The psychologists were idiots. The would ask a series of questions from a form with yes no boxes for my answers. Pretty easy to see what they’re doing. They will give you a “speed bump”, a shocking question and you’re supposed to progressively get inured. For instance, “have you ever masturbated?” and you’re supposed to be shocked the first time the question is asked and progress to yes, hesitantly, then more at ease then still do, then wanna watch? Tried for a transfer, to no avail, so I started confiding to the idiot problems I was having with my family. That worked. Got transfered to Germany. For a prelog I was in Alec when the first gulf war started EAFB had the flying tigers squadron with A-10’s. When finished they transferred back to Cherry Point, NC and closed England . They didn’t even make an announcement, slimey bastards EAFB Nukes