Aviation, Fast and Loose

By C. Bernard Bambury

A chilling statistic highlighting the “fast and loose” approach to mid-century military aviation, records the approximately 15,000 WWII era training deaths experienced by U.S. forces in aviation mishaps alone. Retired Marine Corps aviator D.K. Tooker artfully illustrates the shocking danger and ever-present uncertainty faced by these military aviators in his book: “The Second Luckiest Pilot.” Tooker recounts a collection of tales experienced by himself and his fellow aviators throughout WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. The book’s title is a humoristic (and perhaps fatalistic) approach to the fast and loose flying performed by Tooker and his fellow air jocks. In 1963, Tooker experienced his jet fighter’s total disintegration at 40,000 feet. An incredibly lucky pilot, he escaped his plane’s destruction and parachuted safely to the ocean below. The very next day, a fellow naval aviator experienced the same catastrophic in-flight malfunctions, at the same altitude, plummeting into the same stretch of ocean. Surviving the fall, albeit, entirely without the luxury of a parachute, he naturally became “The Luckiest Pilot.” Fast and loose.

Most of Tooker’s tales are lighthearted, but some inevitably involve tragedy. Though tragedy witnessing unconditional bravery performed by the unlucky pilot’s fellow aviators in their efforts to save their doomed brothers. Like Korean War Navy pilot Lieutenant (jg) Tom Hudner, who purposely crash lands his fighter jet in front of an advancing enemy to render aid to a fellow pilot fatally pinned inside the smoking wreck of his own shot down warbird. (A selfless act admonishing accusations of entrenched bias in the U.S. Navy. The stricken pilot, very much alive, but with his legs crushed under a buckled fuselage, facing certain torture at the hands of the callous North Koreans, was Ensign Jesse Brown of Mississippi, the U.S. Navy’s first black aviator.)

Perhaps the most absurd, and unbelievable tale, is titled: “The Ripcord, MacSweeny.” In 1946, Aviation Cadet John MacSweeny was gifted with the sobriquet “Iwo Jima MacSweeny” after making an offhand quip following an oft repeated screening of the John Wayne film: “Sands of Iwo Jima.” Being a few years older than the average cadet, a bit pudgy, balding, and unassuming, MacSweeny’s remark, “Boy, it was a lot tougher on that island when I was there,” was overheard and believed by others outside his small flight group. With only a few weeks in the U.S. Navy, “Iwo Jima MacSweeny” was born. (“I’d prefer not to talk about it,” was his stoic reply to all curious queries.)  Legend and myth invariably comingle. While “Iwo Jima MacSweeny” was pure myth, the story of Aviation Cadet MacSweeny’s first training flight, was to become the stuff of legend.

Snugly seated behind his flight instructor, in an austere yellow N2S Stearman, an open-cockpit, flight-trainer biplane, nicknamed the “Yellow Peril,” “Iwo” (shortened for brevity by his admirers) awaited takeoff and his first ever encounter with flight. A few minutes into his inaugural flight on a bright, crisp winter morning, with all going well, Iwo gave the pilot a thumbs up when asked if he was game for some rolling acrobatics. “MacSweeny put both hands on the left side of the cockpit to hold on. As the plane continued its rolling motion to the left, he decided to improve his grip by moving both hands to the right side.”

The Navy investigation that eventually followed concluded that in this quick movement from left to right to change his grip, MacSweeny unlatched his safety belt, the only thing securing him to the seat of his soon upside down, 4,000 foot high, open-cockpit airplane. “He let go and reached across the cockpit for better support. All he got was air! Suddenly, “Iwo Jima” MacSweeny was alone in space, without an airplane.” His confusion was paramount, and he astutely noticed the ground was rapidly getting clearer and closer. His instructor watched him freefall for a full 10 to 15 seconds before losing sight of him and never saw his parachute deploy.  “‘The ripcord, MacSweeny, the ripcord!’ Iwo reminded himself. ‘Now where, exactly, was the ripcord?’”

By the time he found and pulled it, it should have been too late. The parachute deployed about a full second before he impacted, feet first, into a deep, muddy snowdrift. Buried up to his goggles in slushy mud, directly underneath a set of high-tension powerlines he incredibly threaded perfectly, MacSweeny was sure his stricken instructor had seen him waving and unhurt (he had not). After many searching passes, the plane ran low of fuel, and Iwo watched it fly off.  Confident of eventual rescue, he commenced an arduous escape from his life-saving quagmire.

Once on his feet, removing his muddy flight suit, he looked surprisingly tucked in, unsullied and undamaged. As best he could, he folded and repacked his parachute, and began following the dirt road under the powerlines he fell through, until a farmer on a tractor gave him a ride to the highway, where he caught a bus back to the base.  (All the while, offering no explanation of his predicament, since none was asked of him).  The Marine Sergeant at the base’s front gate eyed him suspiciously. But Iwo had all the right identifications, and again, he was not asked to explain himself (Green Air Cadets were generally detested and wholly ignored by the entire training cadre).

After getting screamed at by the parachute riggers for getting his parachute so muddy (again, no requests for an explanation), he approached the now frantic office of the chief flight instructor to report in and cancel any need for his pickup. On the phone and trying to find out what the heck happened to one of his missing flight cadets, the chief flight instructor officiously told MacSweeny to get the hell out. An increasingly sullen Iwo washed the last of the mud from his face and made his way to the cadet “ready room,” where flight cadets played cards and awaited their own calls to the tarmac.

At this point, he did not bother to explain his morning to the fellow cadets. Naturally, nobody asked. And while playing a game of bridge did not appeal to him at the moment, a buddy piped up: “Hey, Iwo, how about taking my hand? I’ve got to get dressed for my hop.” Soon he was sitting, apparently untroubled, at the card table. About five hands into a most bizarre game of bridge, MacSweeny looked up right into the staring, incredulous eyes of his very disheveled looking flight instructor. An unbelievable moment in time. “Confusion reigned supreme. His instructor’s emotions ran the gamut from extreme joy to anger, then from frustration to curiosity, before finally settling on relief. He had never been more thankful to see anyone in his life. The flight instructor’s fourteen months of combat in the South Pacific were a lark compared to the events of this day.” Aviation, fast and loose.