Hey! Airforce!

 Those of you following “Steve Canyon” in the drex files funny pages, may have recalled an authoritative Air Force voice speak up. We were all impressed with Johann Barley-Mitchell. “Canyon” Producer John Ellis knows Johann better than anyone.

 

When I met my dear friend Johann Mitchell at the 1976 “August Party” Star Trek Convention at the University of Maryland…I had just moved to the Washington DC area to seek work as a commercial artist…I had no idea that several close friends of mine had already met her. When she and I showed up to meet them several weeks later, they shouted out in unison IT’S THE MOTORCYCLE GIRL! From the accompanying photo (taken about the time I met her) you can get an idea why. Yes that was her motorcycle. She also had an MGB-GT that she let me drive once in a while. Johann turned out to be probably the most fearless woman I’ve ever known…strike that, fearless PERSON I’ve ever known…and to quote Doug Drexler “a trailblazer”.  She taught me much of what I needed to become a functioning professional commercial artist (noting that I was previously an art student of C.C.Beck and Helen Drake, but that’s another story).  Beautiful, talented and with an infectious laugh, Johann has done more excellent AND interesting things than any of you know…including her time in the US Air Force…but Doug is going to try to remedy that:

(Left) After basic, Johann was reassigned the Charleston AFB, S.C. (Right) In Charleston, she discovered the base’s Aero Club, which changed her life in more ways than one. The photographer, Ralph Mitchell, would eventually ask Johann to marry him.

I decided I wanted to see the world, and wanted to do it in relative safety, so I joined the Air Force, an endeavor that was held up for a while due to my recruiter looking at my test scores, and sending them back because he was sure a girl couldn’t possibly get those scores. All my scores were high enough to pass, and you only have to pass two parts to get into the military, but my lowest score was administrative, and my high scores (almost perfect and perfect) were in mechanical, electronic and general (spatial relationships, etc.).

 When we got to the part of basic training where they decided what they were going to have each person do. I did manage to find out from the person who was trying to place me that they needed draftsmen desperately, but he kept telling me that I couldn’t be a draftsman because I would have to go to Fort Belvoir for training, and they didn’t (at that time) have facilities for women. I kept telling him that I didn’t need training because I was already a draftsman. Eventually, I convinced him to let me take a by-passed-specialist test, which I passed with a perfect score. I think that it’s possible I was the first woman ever to be assigned as a draftsman in the US military.

Charleston Air Force Base. Charleston’s mission is to fly and provide airlift of troops and passengers, military equipment, cargo, and aeromedical equipment and supplies world-wide in support of tasking by Air Mobility Comman and unified combatant commanders.

After basic, I was assigned to Headquarters Squadron at Charleston AFB, where I was startled to find that, due the spelling of my first name, and my AFSC (a number which says what you do) that they had a room ready for me in the men’s barracks. There was some hasty reshuffling, and they assigned me a room in the WAF barracks instead. My Mom said it was a shame because the men’s barracks probably would have been a lot more fun. The first few weeks were lonely, because I didn’t really know anyone on base, and there seemed to be nothing to do. Late in the Fall, I got a BIG package from home, which contained lots of Christmas presents. The only time I could pick it up was at lunch time, and I didn’t have time to take it back to the barracks, so I stuck it in the back of a closet at my duty station. This was fine until later in the afternoon, when I had to go to the ladies room. I came back to find out that the guys I worked with had opened all my Christmas presents! They were strewn all over my drawing board!

Before joining the Air Force, Johann worked as a draftsman on the BMEWS project. The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) became the first operational missile detection radar. The BMEWS system would provide long-range, immediate warning of a missile attack over the polar region utilizing stations in the northern hemisphere. (Right) technicians inspect the interior of the emitters protective cover.

I needed a security clearance to work there, and mine came through instantly. When we turned in the papers, the guy who accepted them told us not to even check back with him for a month, because it takes a while for the paperwork to be processed, and he didn’t want people pestering him. Two weeks after we submitted the paperwork, he called my NCOIC and demanded to know why we hadn’t come and picked up the completed clearance papers because they’d been sitting there for about two weeks. I kept telling them that I already had a security clearance, but they insisted that I didn’t. Right after my clearance came through, the papers that had been chasing me through the post office finally showed up, and I got the papers to sign to terminate my previous clearance. I showed my coworkers the paperwork to prove that I’d already had a clearance, and they still insisted that I couldn’t possibly have had one! I told them all about working on the BMEWS project, along with all the information that wasn’t classified, and they didn’t believe me. Right after that, someone showed up to tell us that we needed to report to the base movie theater after lunch for a special briefing. The special briefing turned out to be all the information about the BMEWS project that I had just told everybody about, including photos of the “golf ball” in Moorestown, NJ, which was the prototype for the project, and which was right down the road from where I went to high school.

Johann’s first experience flying was in the Charelston AFB Aero Club’s Cessna 150. Cessna 150s produced before 1964, such as this 1962 Cessna 150B, similar to Johann’s 36 Echo, had square fins and no rear window. Dealing with propwash from a gargantuan C-130 could be treacherous.

Then I found out about the Aero Club, and my life changed. I immediately joined, and was one of the few enlisted personnel in the club, and got to meet all the high-ranking officers on the base, which was in unintended, but serendipitous effect. I think there were a total of three enlisted personnel from the base in the club, plus one from a nearby Navy base. The rest were all officers, and mostly higher-ranking, and none of them stood on ceremony. My instructor for most of my lessons was Capt. Carl Whitemore, and he and I became friends. The first thing I did was ground school, and Whit taught most of that. One night, after ground school, he wanted to fly for a bit, and asked me if I wanted to go along. We checked out a Cessna 150 and went flying over Charleston at night at Christmas time. It was a bright, clear night, and the stars were out. All of Charleston was also lit up with Christmas lights, and it was truly magical! Whit didn’t care about actually piloting the plane himself, so after takeoff, he let me fly for the first time. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life, floating with stars and lights everywhere I looked in the dark. We did some lazy eights and other gentle aerobatics. Words fail me. Everybody in my family seems to have at least one thing  that they can do without having to learn. I was lucky enough to have more than one. But one of them was flying. Once Whit turned the plane over to me, it was just effortless and fun!

(Above) In the “Operation Jettison” episode of “Steve Canyon”,  Steve must fly a crippled and low on fuel C-130 across the Pacific.  During Johann’s time at Charleston AFB, 130′s came and went with regularity.  She learne quick to keep her head on a pivot.

Whit was my instructor for my first official flight as a student (well, actually, he logged that first flight for me so I would get the hours), and he walked me through the preflight check list and made sure I was doing it all correctly, prompted me when I needed it about getting in touch with the tower on the radio and then told me to take off! I said “But this is my first lesson.” He told me I’d handled the plane competently in my previous flight, and I should take off, and he told me what to do as I did it, step by step. Now, you have to realize that the commercial airport for Charleston, and the AFB airport were the same one. At the time, it was the third busiest airport on the East coast, and we had commercial passenger planes flying in and out alongside C-130s, C-124s, and F-101s, not to mention small craft like the little Cessna I was flying a lot of the time.

(Below) The C-124 was also another jumbo transport Johann learned to show respect for. The  C-124, the Air Force’s long-range airlifter that performed yeoman service through two wars and nearly 25 years, the C-124, nicknamed “Old Shakey,” was a major redesign of the C-74 Globemaster that was developed at the end of World War II. The C-124 used the same wings, tail, and engines as the C-74.

This was not something you could ignore in a small plane. One of the other students came in one day right behind a commercial turbo-prop, which was what the tower told him to do. Well the prop wash from the previous plane caught that little Cessna, and rotated it completely around it’s central axis while he was trying to land! He was quick-thinking enough to go sideways to the edge of the runway to get out of the prop wash, and was OK. I heard a very exciting account of it later that day! It was very usual for the tower to say something like “Cessna 36 Echo, could you make that landing quick? We have an F-101 coming in right behind you!” It’s really startling the first time, though.

(Below) Sharing the sky over Chaleston, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo was initiated as an escort fighter for SAC. Short combat radius defeated that option, however the size of the airplane later gave it a long life as a nuclear air-to-air missile platform for air defense.

 

One day, Whit was with me when I landed, and as soon as we touched down, there were fire trucks headed toward us from every direction. The troops in the tower all knew the call numbers of the Aero Club planes that were specifically for students, so they knew I didn’t have my ticket yet. Whit took the radio away from me and said “Charleston Tower, this is 36 Echo, I know she’s learning to fly, but her landing was really quite good. We don’t need all this.” The tower came back with “36 Echo, there‘s a commercial airliner coming in right behind you with no landing gear. We have to foam the runway. Could you make an early turn-off and get out of the way? You have permission to move faster than usual.” Whit acknowledged this and took control. We MOVED! I told him that he shouldn’t be flying on the taxiway. He insisted that if you had at least one wheel on the ground you were not flying! We may have had one wheel on the ground, but we were flying. Just very close to the ground. I think he always wanted to do that.

(Below) Air Force crash trucks and runway foaming operations. Johann learned to get out of the way.

One of the other student pilots, Al Mitchell called me one day to tell me about his “first aircraft accident.” I was all upset. Then I found out that his first aircraft accident was trying to open the window in flight (who does something like that?) and having the window shut on his finger. A couple of weeks later, he tried to tell me about his second aircraft accident. I scoff at him. Well, it turns out that ground control directed him to taxi behind a C-130. He asked the tower if it was running up (C-130s weren’t usually near the Aero Club ramp unless they were getting ready for take-off), but ground control insisted that they were NOT running up. Al taxied behind them, and it turned out that they were running up. The prop wash picked up his plane and dumped it on the right wing and the propeller. We had to have that wing reconstructed and the engine rebuilt. I didn’t believe him until I walked down to the Aero Club and saw the wing sticking up on the end.

(Below) A C-130 jettisons a tank from its belly. That line coming from the front of the tank is attached to a drogue parachute, pulling the tank out of the transport.

One of my most exciting adventures happened while taxiing out one day near where the previous accident happened. Ground control gave me taxi instructions that involved going all the way around the airport. I asked them if the C-130 that was sitting out there was running up, and they answered, “No, they’re having a broken arrow.” I asked Whit what a broken arrow was because I’d never heard of it before. He told me it was a nuclear accident. I said “You mean it’s a drill for a nuclear accident, don’t you?” He said, “No, the tower just said they’re having a real nuclear accident!” I didn’t take him seriously at first because we’d already had some war games on the base, where we got “bombed” by sacks of flour, among other things. We’d had a lot of interesting drills. But apparently, this one wasn’t a drill. I was appalled! Living on an Air Force base was so much fun!

At some point in the past, they had expanded the airport by the simple expedient of building a whole, new, bigger airport right next to the one that was in use. This new airport was a combination of the Charleston Airport, and also the AFB airport. The old runways and taxiways were taken over by the AFB, and used as roads. For instance, the WAF barracks (where I lived) was at the end of the old East-West runway. It was also right under the current landing pattern. I eventually got so good at identifying types of aircraft just from the sound of their engines that I could not only tell the difference between a C-130, C-124, F-101, commercial aircraft, and light planes. Sometimes I could even identify a specific light plane. I can remember sitting bolt upright in bed, wakened from a sound sleep saying “That’s 43 Romeo!” as it flew overhead.

(Above) The erstwhile T-34 similar to those operated by the Charleston Air Force Base Aero Club. The Beechcraft T-34 Mentor is a propeller-driven, single-engined, military trainer aircraft derived from the the Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza. The The earlier versions of the T-34, dating from around the late 1940s to the 1950s, were piston-engined. These were eventually succeeded by the upgraded T-34C Turbo-Mentor, powered by a turboprop engine. The T-34 remains in service almost six decades after it was first designed.

Another fun experience happened one day when I was walking down to the Aero Club. I was just walking along, minding my own business, and one of the Aero Club T-34s came taxiing up. The canopy popped, and my friend, Gordy Dixon stuck his head out and asked if I wanted a lift. He was about to fly up over Lake Moultrie to do some aerobatics, and he asked if I wanted to come along. Well, who could say no to that?

One day, I was shooting touch-and-gos at John’s Island, which was a small airport that was close, and very convenient for students to practice landing and taking off, and Whit told me to come to a complete stop after the next landing. I did, and he hopped out of the plane. I said, “Come on, Whit, my landings aren’t that bad.” He said that they were actually quite good, and I should make three take offs and landings and then stop. I took off, landed, kept on going and took off again. Then I let out a whoop of pure joy! I’ve talked to a lot of pilots, and all of them said the same thing. They were gripping the yoke in terror during their first take off and landing, but after that second one, they all let out a loud whoop of total happiness!

We got back to Charleston, and I landed and taxied back to the Aero Club ramp and noticed that there were several people there. When I got out of the plane, four guys grabbed me, each grabbing an arm or leg, lifted me off the ground, and another one pulled the back of my shirt out and cut off the shirt tail. They tacked it up on the bulletin board. I found out that it’s a traditional thing to do with pilots after their first solo flight. For the next week, people were walking into the Aero Club trailer, looking at the bulletin board, and saying “Oh, Johann soloed!”

One of the other enlisted personnel in the club was Al Mitchell. We both joined at about the same time, and he wanted to meet me, so he asked me if he could take my picture for the base newspaper for an article about the Aero Club. I said yes, and that was the photo that appeared not only in the base newspaper, but in my hometown newspaper. And that’s how I met him. Al worked for the Information Office. Among other things, they wrote and took pictures for the base newspaper, and also made arrangements for various events that happened on the base. One of those events was the air show that happened in 1963 at Charleston. And Al was one of the people who organized it. Al had already seen samples of my photography, and knew that he couldn’t be everywhere to take photos, so he asked me to hang out with him and take photos when he couldn’t.

It was one of the most fun days of my life!

The day started off when we taxied the Aero Club planes over to the Air Force ramp. I was in one of the Cessna 150s, Gabe and Al were next with a Cessna 170 and a Cessna 172, and Gordy taxied one of the T-34s. There was an airman out on the ramp directing us to tie-down areas for our respective planes. The poor airman almost had a heart attack when I hopped out wearing sneakers, shorts and a short sleeved shirt!

(Above) the cargo capacity of the C-124 is mindboggling. You can load 5000 passengers into this plane and she’ll still clear the treeline.

 I stood guard over the Cessna 150 for a couple of hours during the day while the crowd was allowed to actually get in the plane. They wanted someone from the Aero Club present to make sure that there was no vandalism. After a couple of hours, I was relieved. Then it was out on the taxiways to take photos of the demonstration of how they use choppers to fight fires (and I was allowed to get up-close), and demonstrations of stuff like the cargo capacity of a C-124. It went kind of like circus clowns swarming out of a tiny car, only in reverse. First they loaded about 5,000 men into the plane and then took off. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Shaky (C-124) take off. They’re SO huge, and they have tiny, stubby, little wings, and they lumber down the longest runway, and you wonder if they’re going to overshoot, but the wheels lift off right at the end of the runway, and they gain a whole five feet of altitude, and then ten, and you start to fear for the trees. They’re like the little engine that could. They always seem to make it, but they make you wonder every time. Being on the perimeter road when one takes off is always exciting. After more than two football fields of distance to gain altitude, they’re so high that they’ll actually miss hitting a standard car. But I guarantee everybody in the car will duck because it’ll be so low! Then they demonstrated what happens when you put Jet Assisted Take Off (JATO) bottles on a C-130. This was really fun! It starts it’s take-off roll down the runway, and then they hit the JATO bottles, and it just goes straight UP!

 (Below) Watch a JATO assisted C-130  go straight up!

 

 

Then they had the F-101s taking off in formation and coming back to give the crowd a double sonic boom!And I got to watch all of this from the taxiway, not from the nice, safe distance the rest of the crowd had to observe. Oh, and they had some DC-3s, too! I love Goony Birds! And they taxied up right where I was. One of the best airframes ever. Unlike the Constellations. I was with a mechanic one day when a Connie flew over. He looked up and said reverently, “There goes about a million spare parts, all flying together in formation!”

Then they came to one of the highlights of the air show. We were lucky enough to have Bevo Howard with us to perform. At that point, I think Bevo had been world champion stunt pilot for 9 years. I was with the group that was involved in helping with his finale. He pulled up and parked his plane right next to us, and I got to stand right next to it and take pictures of him. Bevo was really happy that day because it was his son’s 16th birthday, and he had taken his private pilot’s exam earlier that day and passed. Bevo explained the trick we were going to help him with, and paced everything out and got us all in position. The trick was that he had two 16 foot poles with red crepe paper streamers between them at the top, and 3 to 5 feet lower, and he would fly over, upside down and pick up the streamers. The poles needed people to hold guy wires to keep them in place, so it took a few people to do. He helped us get the poles up, and got everybody holding guy wires, etc. I told him I would be taking photos, and asked where the best place to stand would be. He took me over to the side, but still nearby, and grabbed me by the shoulders and moved me into exactly the right place.

(Below) Reknowned stunt pilot Bevo William performing the stunt Johann participated in. She got the surprise of her life!

At that point, they announced him, he got in the plane and took off. He did his whole show, and then got ready for the finale. He did a practice run, and he came RIGHT OVER MY HEAD, inverted, low enough to pick up the streamers. By the time he went over me, I was flat on the ground! I know he did it deliberately, too! He was low enough that he would have hit me if I hadn’t been on the ground. Then he did it for real, and picked up the lower streamer with the prop, and the upper streamer with the landing gear! We cleaned up the poles and other gear, and our part in the show was over. At that point, we had to get back behind the barriers with everyone else to watch the Thunderbirds, although I managed to get right down front.

After it was all over, Al walked back to the barracks with me and asked me to marry him.

WHAT A DAY!

I never complained as much as I did when I was in the Air Force, and I never had so much fun!