I am sure I spent most of my AF flying career between a pair of R-2800 engines. First at Vance AFB, OK then at Laon for a couple of years. After Laon I was recruited to fly B-26’s again in Thailand for six months and also flew the CAT modified C-46 with an improved R-2800 and Hamilton Standard props and many other mods that made it a very reliable airplane.

At Command and Staff College they discovered that I had never attended ” Jet up Grade training” that is after I already had well over 1,000 hrs of jet time. The lady in the form 5 section asked for a waver and it was granted. At Hanscom Field I checked out in the T-29 and in relatively short time was sent to T-29 instructors school at Waco, Texas. Not long after that I was appointed chief pilot for the T-29 fleet of about five airplanes,but my main job was supposed to be a staff officer in the Ops section of the Air Base Group. I ended up being one of the General’s pilots, we had several of them, I supervised our weekend missions of getting the many navigators their four hours for flight pay each month. Our normal training mission was Hanscom to Bermuda to Charleston, SC then back home. Almost 12 hours of flying. You can imagine when a week end overlapped two months, we were all flying. It soon became apparent, we had too many T-29 pilots that had to have an instructor fly with them, flying was not their quest, it was in some other specialty. I simply did not have enough talent to wet nurse all those that liked the flying pay but were not willing or not able to stay up with the required flying skills. I sent a suggestion up through channels almost begging the AF to wave monthly flight requirements for certain groups of pilots and navigators.

I cited that it would be cheaper to retrain them than to continue keeping fleets of trainer aircraft, maintenance facilities and personal and instructors all over the place just to satisfy the four hour per
month rule which certainly could not grantee proficiency any way. It took a year or two but eventually the AF adopted my suggestion. I never got an attaboy, but knowing they finally woke up to the fact that they could save bunches of money and retire a bunch of airplanes especially assigned for that purpose, is enough vindication.

From there I went to Panama, again I became a General’s pilot and instructor in the C-131D (Convair 340) a really nice airplane and the flying was in a word “Exotic”. The best hotels, perfect service and
embassy taking care of all the details, it was the best of the best. In all my time flying between R-2800’s I only had two glitches that ever occurred and they did not require me to shut an engine down. On our way to Brazil we developed some back firing at higher power settings on one engine, but at lower manifold pressures it ran fine. It first showed up taking off in Venesuala, then again on take off from Paramaribo I think that is in the old Dutch Gianna, but this time we had to reduce the power more than befor, meaning it was getting worse. We elected to continue because there was no maintenance capability befor Sao Palo, Brazil where one of the Brazilian Airlines operated Convairs.

Their engine people diagnosed that it was a failing seal between the crankcase and the blower section. They said they could do the repair but doing it on the airplane was really time consuming and they would prefer removing the engine and working on it in their shop but they did not have an extra engine stand just then. Our engine shop in Panama had a better idea, they would fly one of our spare engines down in a C-130, change the engine out and let us know when it was ready. I sent a letter to my aunt and uncle, who lived in Sao Palo, telling them that I had been there but didn’t have time to call them, we went home the next morning, on the next flight out. I promised that if I got to go get the airplane we would get together one way or another. In a week or so we got word that the airplane was ready. It took a few days to find seats on the embassy flight for our crew and when we got there our flight mechanic didn’t accept the airplane, he wanted to tweek it a bit before he accepted it. That took a day or two and I spent all the time I could with my aunt and uncle. They spoiled me as they always had, bless them both.

The other incident was a failure of the high blower solenoid, we were at 26,000 ft above the pass in the Andes between Argentina and Lima , Peru. The pass could be navigated at 18,000 ft if VFR and we had just broken out so I elected to continue on, but slowly descending. In less than 30 minutes the ground had fallen away and we were able to come out of high blower on the other engine and just went on to Lima. I had gone to the back of the airplane and informed the General and his wife of my decision and I was sure that everything would be just fine. Mrs Clisby would never fly with any other pilot after that.

There are many more tales I can tell of flying in South and Central America but I will save those for another day. Thank you all for urging on to tell more of my stories. Telling these stories is almost as much fun as living them… I get the experience at least twice. Bob