Camaraderie

I stumbled upon some old audio cassette tapes Saturday morning. Bob had recorded several of his missions while flying out of Korat, Thailand in 1971/72,, and here they were, right in my hand. Each labeled with date and mission in his perfect printing. One was a Mayday call response (was the person saved?), one a Search and Rescue (SAR) mission, where he conveniently noted "SAR successful". Three others missions to places I can't pronounce. So the questions began - Do I listen? Can I listen? What should I do with them? Would information from the Mayday mission or the SAR mission fill in a blank for anyone?

Thanks to all the notations on the tapes, I was able to cross reference the dates with the "rest of the story" from his old Navigator log books from that time -- pilot in command, time spent in the air, take-off point, destination. A bit of "google-ing" later, and I had phone numbers and contact information for folks who may have in interest in the tapes. First I spoke to the FAC Association, tthe group to whom the Mayday call pilot belonged. Their president, was gracious, engaging, and so interested. We both wondered if the pilot in trouble had been rescued. After he said he wanted each of the tapes, he suggested that the Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH, might also be interested in them.

Yesterday I emailed the Red River Valley Fighter Pilots Association. Those fabulous Wild Weasels. They were so quick to respond, with kind words about Bob, and further contact points for me. Next thing I knew, I had an email from Bob's front-seater during the Mayday response mission. Such a nice email. He wanted that tape, and remembered "meeting the safely rescued pilot a day or two later" -- (hooray for the positive conclusion to that story!).

So today, I sat in the little Z car, and plunked in each of the cassettes. Voices - some clear, some garbled, lots of static and, mostly, unfamiliar noises. All of which, I'm sure, will be perfectly understandable to military pilots, but all of which sound to me like the garbled meal order playback through a bad McDonald's drive-thru speaker. I then took the tapes in to have them all transferred to CD. I'll keep the originals (and one CD for technological posterity) and send other CDs out to those to whom they seem important.

What continues to be so heartwarming to me is the incredible sense of comaraderie, still these many years later, that is embraced by the airmen who shared those harrowing, yet exhilarating times together. They, like Bob, all loved their airplanes and their flying.