Twilight Zone Phone Call

One Saturday in the summer of 1976 I was assigned as Operations Duty Officer at Tinker AFB, OK. This usually was a pointless job that primarily consisted of meeting transient aircraft that had an O-5 or above on board and saying "Welcome to Tinker AFB." But on that Saturday we had aircraft inbound for a large airshow on Sunday, so it was rather more interesting.

USAF aircraft were coming in from all over the place. This included what must have been just about the last F-100 in service - and it looked it. But the Confederate Air Force also was sending vintage aircraft, mainly ones that had been at airshows further north and were heading back to Texas. Some P-51's, a F6F, and a P-39 were inbound from the northwest, while a B-17 "Texas Raider" and the B-29 "Fifi" were coming in from Wright Patterson AFB. The original plan was for the group to rendezvous north of Oklahoma City, join up, and fly around the city before landing at Tinker. But the fighters landed at Offutt AFB to refuel for some reason and that threw the schedule off, aside from really surprising the folks at Offutt.

The rendezvous was no longer possible; the bombers would get there hours ahead of the fighters, so the Tinker base operations folks called Oklahoma City Approach Control to get them to relay a message to the bombers. That phone call went like this:

"Hello, this is Tinker base operations, can you you relay a message to some aircraft that are inbound? Okay, good. The aircraft are a B-29 and a B-17. No, not C! I said BEEE TWENTY NINE and BEEE SEVENTEEN! That's right! All right, tell them not to rendezvous with the P-51's and the other fighters, to just come straight here to Tinker. Yes! That is what I said. Do not wait for the fighter escort and just come on to the base."

I was unable to hear what Ok City Approach Control was saying but I strongly suspect that, "Who is this, really? You know this line is for official business only!" was their reply at least once.

Anyway the bombers made it. The B-17 just landed, but the B-29 buzzed the area several times before landing. This brought people from everywhere. Tinker AFB had an long association with the B-29 since WWII and many of the people who worked on them were still around.

And it was a great airshow!

I would have loved to have seen the face of the person at other end of the line.

One Saturday in 2016 I was volunteering at the local Humane Society and the CAF B-29 'Fifi" came flying by. I mentioned this on a non-aviation website and one responder said that there were very few B-29's around and that I probably saw a B-25. My response was that the difference between a B-25 and a B-29 was easy to determine, being about the same as that between a steam locomotive and a Toyota Prius.

One of the best things about serving at Carswell AFB was the amount of transients we got year 'round. Our airshows featured the usual suspects, but additionally we'd get a boatload of "training" flights fly in every Friday, from all branches. That increased during football season, for some odd reason

Us firefighters would break out the TO-105E-9 on any a/c and go over it for our own training/fam purposes. Saw a lot of interesting aircraft up-close that way.

I was told that years before I got there, Tinker AFB was a popular destination for weekend training flights. The Officers Club was in an old wooden house, but it was not far from the flight line. And even more importantly, young ladies from surrounding communities were allowed to enter the base on Friday nights. Both the aircrew and the girls responded enthusiastically to such rendezvous opportunities.

But by the time I got there, the old O Club had been torn down, a new club had been built some distance from the flight line, a modern but uninspired facility with all the charm and originality of a branch bank in a small town. They'd also put a stop to that nonsense of having the civilian female population visit, too, and insisted on coat and ties rather than flight suits after 1700. In fact, even civilians who worked on the base were prevented from entering through the gate nearest the O Club on weekends.

And the senior leadership at the base could not figure out why none of the young officers wanted to join the O Club.

MIflyer said:

I was told that years before I got there, Tinker AFB was a popular destination for weekend training flights. The Officers Club was in an old wooden house, but it was not far from the flight line. And even more importantly, young ladies from surrounding communities were allowed to enter the base on Friday nights. Both the aircrew and the girls responded enthusiastically to such rendezvous opportunities.

But by the time I got there, the old O Club had been torn down, a new club had been built some distance from the flight line, a modern but uninspired facility with all the charm and originality of a branch bank in a small town. They'd also put a stop to that nonsense of having the civilian female population visit, too, and insisted on coat and ties rather than flight suits after 1700. In fact, even civilians who worked on the base were prevented from entering through the gate nearest the O Club on weekends.

And the senior leadership at the base could not figure out why none of the young officers wanted to join the O Club.

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I'm sure our main draw, aside from the Dallas Cowboys games, was our BOQ, which had been recently (at that time, less than five years before) been renovated into some lush quarters, and were used for housing transient aircrew on a space-A basis. I got to look into them on occasion when a butterbar burnt his popcorn and set off the fire alarm.

Man, compared to my barracks-room, they were sheer luxury.

MIflyer said:

One Saturday in the summer of 1976 I was assigned as Operations Duty Officer at Tinker AFB, OK...

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Good stuff!