"So this is how it ends...." I said out loud into my oxygen mask.
They never prepare you for this kind of stuff. When I entered the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M in August 1944 I had no idea that I would find myself over this godforsaken peninsula in the middle of winter just six short years later.
The drills, the checklists, the flight instructor screaming at you to "Do it again!" all went out the window when the stuff hit the fan in the cockpit.
Through the oily grime on the windshield of my Sabre I could see the horizon spinning as if I was on some kind of bizarre merry-go-round. The instruments were useless. Spinning dials of disinformation did me no good and the red and amber dummy lights didn't help either.
I remember walking the .50s across the tail of the MiG. I remember the 'puff' of flame and the sudden black cloud of turbine oil spraying across the nose of my plane. The MiG had 'departed controlled flight' in front of me, causing me to kick the rudder hard left and go nose low to keep from eating Russian metal.
When I firewalled the J47 to bug out before his buddies showed up, it let out a cough and then a BANG! My stomach had sunk as I felt the sickening pull of deceleration. It all happened so fast that I didn't realize I was pushing the left pedal through the floor until the wing dropped. My head was in the cockpit trying to figure out where the hell my power went and why all these lights were flashing angrily at me.
I strained to read the altimeter which indicated that I had busted 27,000 with the help of the devil's gravity.
After what seemed like an eternity my nose started to wobble up and down across the spinning horizon. If I could just get the nose down a little more....
As I fell through 18,000 the death spiral turned into a lazy wobble. Normally the sight of snow covered terrain would terrify me but I screamed for joy as I tried desperately for an air start.
Nothing...
The wind rushing over the creaking metal was deafening. I yanked my mask off and pulled back with as much strength as I could muster.
Around 10,000 feet with my nose low and my airspeed increasing I finally got a rumble out of the J-47. I felt the blood draining from my face as I pulled out of the bottom of the parabola.
In a few minutes I could see the long runway of home through the oil streaks. The adrenaline had started to exit my system, making me more nauseated than any neg G maneuver I had ever experienced.
Early the next morning my crew chief stood on a ladder in the frozen air of the quonset hut. He was painting a red star under my newly polished windscreen.
It was the hardest star I had ever earned.
Over the years the furballs ran together in my mind. F-100s and F-4s were used interchangeably when recounting my tales over and over to my grandson. I am sure he thought PaPa was just getting senile.
I won many knifefights over that peninsula. Some I chose to forget. Some just disappeared from my mind.
No matter what happened, though, I would never, ever forget Number Five.
