Minuteman
1958 – 1959
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| Minuteman Missile in Silo |
While
I was still on a two-week vacation following my return from Eniwetok I was
calle back to the plant for a new urgent assignment. Boeing was going to bid for a new and secret
program, the minuteman solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile designed
to deliver nuclear weapons from the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I knew from nothing about rockets (few at
Boeing then did) but was assigned to help write the test section of the
proposal.
This,
too, resulted in absences from home.
Much of our work was done at the top secret Space Technology
Laboratories in Los Angeles—a “think tank” so secret that a visitor without
clearance bade had to have an escort to go to the men’s room!
We
struggled with the test proposal, learning about rockets and nuclear weapons as
we went (one reason that I was selected was that, at least, I had seen many
nuclear explosions.) When the proposal
was complete I happily went back to my job in Flight Test Operations. My comment was, “Boy, we don’t know diddly
about rockets at Boeing. We have all the
chance of a snowball in hell of getting that
contract!”
I
could not have been more wrong. Boeing
got the contract and the next thing I knew—over my protests because I wanted to
stay with my beloved airplanes—I was drafted into the original Minuteman
organization. (A man named “Tee” Wilson,
whom I had known since Wichita Flight Test, was to help develop the test plan
for Minuteman and the hardened underground “silos” in which the missiles would
be based.
The
original Minuteman organization was chaotic to say the least. We were fumbling in the dark and often more
than one group would be off to STL to discuss the same problem. Finally, I had enough. In early 1959 I called my old boss, B.T. Johnson,
who by then was Chief of Flight Test Operations in Seattle, and begged him for
a job back in Flight Test. My call was timely. He needed a replacement for his Chief of
Military Operations in Flight Test because Bel Whithead was transferring to the
new Aero-Space Division. All I had to do
was get released from Minuteman.
In
the next Minuteman staff meeting I listened to the usual bickering between department
heads and confusion in coordination until I was disgusted. I stood up, slapped my folder shut, and said,
“Gentlemen, in my humble opinion I do not believe the Minuteman manager has one
idea what we really contracted for!” (It was well that the Minuteman manager was
not at that particular meeting. Tee
Wilson went on to make the Minuteman contract one of the largest and most
lucrative for Boeing and became president of the company then chairman of the
board for years.)
I
stalked out of that staff meeting and straight to my immediate boss’ officer
where I asked for a release. I believe I
told him, “Look, Minuteman is simply an artillery shell a rocket motor strapped
to its butt. If I wanted to be in the
artillery, I would have joined the damned Army!
I want to go back to airplanes where I belong!” He signed a release and I reported back to
Flight Test the next day where I became Chief of Military Operations.
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| The juxtaposition of 1960s models and the missiles is so telling of the era. |
It
was sometime during the early sixties that an association developed that exists
to this day. There was a bond between
those of us who had shared the years of B-47 testing in Wichita that was, if
anything, stronger than the kinship I always felt for my Navy shipmates in
VP-11. We often said that we all had the same sort of mental screw loose or we
would not have been in the flight test business. As I mentioned before, we worked hard and we
played hard.
After
I returned to Seattle, I became close friends with one of the old Wichita hands
who became as close as a brother—B.A “Smitty” Smith. He taught me to fish for salmon, we
backpacked together in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, golfed together,
and were on the bowling team.
We
also loved playing poker. One time we
agreed that we should form a regular poker group. We recruited six other kindred souls and
formed what we called the “F.I.C.M.P.G.A.”—the “Fukawe Indian Chowder,
Marching, Poker, and Golf Association.”
There could be only eight Fukawe Indian chiefs because that is a full
poker table. The others Clare Adriance,
Howard Burnite, George Hair, Howard Montgomery, Al Mathy, and (although he had
not spent time with us in Wichita) Herb Tollisen.
It
was Smitty who created the name for our group and also the name for the
rotating trophy that the winner of a Fukawe
poker game is stuck with until he has a poker game and passes it
along. It is the “Dratsab”—and you find
the meaning of Dratsab if you spell it backwards!
Although
at this writing two of our Fukawe chiefs have passed on to that great golf
course in the sky (both Smitty and Howard Burnite passed away in 1989) and George
Hair is in failing health, the Fukawes still meet for “council meetings” even
though the table is down to five. We
have tried inviting substitutes, however, there can never be another Fukawe
Chief who shared all those long years with us.
I suppose the descendants of the last surviving Fukawe chief will
inherit the Dratsab.
By
the early 1960s the Boeing 707 became a great commercial success and the
airlines were into the jet age. Flight
Test Operations had two organizations, Commercial and Military. Military Operations was winding down. I was responsible for only two airplanes—the prototype
of the 707, the 367-80, and completion of testing of the military version of
the 707, the KC-135.
It
was a good job for a year then I had to make a decision. My old friend, B.T. Johnson, had gone on to Vandenberg
AFB. He had been replaced by one Bryan
Mahon as Chief of Flight Test Operations.
Bryan and I got along by the simple expedient of my visiting his office
only for staff meetings and he seldom came near Military Operations.
The
decision I had to make was what happened next in my career. Military Operations was stagnating and would
soon be finished. The only Flight Test
job that would be a promotion would be that of Chief of Flight Test Operations
and Bryan Mahon seemed determined to make it a lifetime job.
I
had acquaintances in Preliminary Design with whom I worked on the proposal for
the Air Force C-131 (which we lost to Lockheed.) They urged me to get out of a stagnating
position in Flight Test, come to Preliminary Design for a couple of years for a
“retreading” in engineering design, then take off into one of Boeing’s new
airplane programs. The new airplane
coming along was the 727-medium haul tri-jet.
They felt that it was going to be a real winner.
It
was a difficult decision. I had by then
been in Flight Test for nearly ten years.
Finally I decided that I was getting stereotyped which would be restrictive
in the future. One day I walked into
Bryan Mahon’s office and stated that I would like a release from Flight Test to
accept a job that had been offered in Preliminary Design.
The
short conversation is still reasonably clear in my memory. Bryan professed to be shocked, “You don’t
want to leave Flight Test, Con. Man, you
are part of the framework around here—one of the “old-timers”. What sort of offer would it take for you to
stay on?”
I
looked him right in the eye. “Bryan, if
I stay in Flight Test, there is only one job I want next—and I will get it—yours! The release from Flight Test was on my desk
the next morning, signed by Bryan and Dix Loesch who was then Chief of Flight
Test.
