Tom L's stories flying the Skyraider

[skyking1]

My friend Tom has been gone several years now. He had stories as a young naval aviator in the Skyraider in Korea.
The best one started out with a cigar box. He opened it up and there was a piece of steel casting from a bomb, and the end of the push-pull tube to one of the ailerons.
The casting had some rubber fused to it, and also the head of one of the rivets that matched up with the push pull tube.
He was on a mission during the bitter cold winter, and he took his bombing run just a little too low. The chunk of casting was from the fuse end of the bomb, and it came back to meet him. he figured the frozen ground had something to do with it.
It went through the skin and just skipped off the tube near the middle of the plane. He felt a severe impact on the stick from that. Then it half-penetrated the center fuel bladder, which defeated the self sealing feature. He was losing fuel fast as it just got it back to the ship.
The maintenance chief who worked on it gathered up those parts for him and chewed him out for breaking his plane, but had to be pleased he brought it back at all. I can think of not much worse than losing roll control down low and it was that close a thing.

 

[skyking1]

The scrape on the tube was pretty dramatic, and it had sheared the button head of the rivet off the tube in passing. You could hold them together and deduce the direction of the impact. I hope his family treasures it or did something with that shoebox. His house was sold and everyrhing gone when I heard of his passing.
After Korea he stayed in military aviation. His last gig was director of maintenance for the Air America fleet in SE Asia. More good stories he could not really tell me.
He would nibble around it but no details.
He spent his retirement years buying up basket early Bonanzas and rebuilding them. He was quite good at it.