The boss conducts the standard briefing items for a pair of two ship takeoffs, rejoin, and four ship cruise to Calgary. At the end of the brief, he asks if anyone has questions. I ask if he would like a run down on the pre planned flyover events. He brushes me off once again and asks for the photo packet. I hand him one and he says, “Let’s step to the jets”. As the three of us follow the boss down the hall to life support, we are rolling our eyes in amazement. This has the makings of a gross act of buffoonery.
We preflight our jets, strap on, start up, taxi out to EOR (End of Runway) inspection, take the runway, and blast off for Calgary. We arrive early in the vicinity of the pre planned holding point and start a timing orbit. We are in a four ship fingertip formation. It’s apparent by the less than stable formation flying platform the other three of us are having to fly with, lead is studying the packet I handed to him in the pre flight briefing. I can tell he is getting behind on the timing because we’re weren’t flying the exact tracks and airspeed that were planned. We are going to arrive late if he doesn’t get us moving, and soon. About that time, he turns us up track toward the Stampede grounds, sort of. I’m flying the #2 position on his left wing. #3 and 4 are on his right wing. The three of us are working much harder than necessary to hold position because of the erratic lead platform. I can tell by ground references that we are getting close to the Stampede grounds as the Elbow River comes into view. A quick glance at the clock reveals that we are late. We should have already started the left hand turn across the east boundary of the Stampede grounds. Unexpectedly and unannounced by lead, there’s a fairly hard nose up pull accompanied by an aggressive roll to the left, and then an aggressive nose down push. As the slack in my shoulder harness straps floats about in front of my face during the unloaded pushover, I can see #3 and 4 bobbing up and down in an equally challenging attempt to maintain position on lead. I don’t dare risk a glance to the left to see where on the ground we are actually flying over.
The formations starts to stabilize as we fly toward the airport for landing. Lead switches us to a four ship echelon formation to fly up initial.
We pitch out with five second spacing between jets and circle to land. After landing, we taxi to the same FBO the Major and I parked at two weeks earlier. The sight four F-106s pirouetting into the FBO ramp was drawing a lot of onlookers. We shut down, climbed down, and gave the fuelers our load requirements. We put the jets to bed, grabbed our overnight bags from the weapons bays, and proceeded to our waiting limo.
The ride to the Stampede grounds was quiet. The three of us were silently steaming at the buffoonery we had just been a part of. Humiliation and embarrassment hardly describes what we were feeling. Arriving at the Stampede, Miss PA was waiting for us and was she POed! The boss lead the four of us to her waiting group and did the introductions. As soon as she could disengage from him, she made a bee line to my face. Who is this guy? How could you guys screw this up so bad? Why were you so high? Why were you so slow? Why were you so late overhead? All these questions in rapid fire without taking a breath, she finally stopped talking. I explained what happened five days ago and why she saw what she saw. She begrudging understood. Her utter disappointment was obvious.
Now, the boss comes back over from working the crowd. Miss PA says let’s head for the stage and get you guys introduced. The boss says “No, we can’t go on stage in our flights suits. That’s not appropriate”. She nearly went nuclear on him. Instead, she did an about face and left the immediate area muttering continuously. About that time, our Air Division Commander, a USAF Brigadier General, strolled through the assembled back stage crowd dressed in his formal Class A uniform, wearing a large white cowboy hat!
The best laid plans........
By the way, we didn’t get invited back the next year.
