I again rejoined the Air Base Group and flew the T 33’s and the L-20. My real duties were still to oversee the many craft shops, we now call them MWR (Moral, Welfare, And Recreation) by then there were so many participants eager to help that I didn’t have to do much. I pretty much used the L-20 to take those with enough pull to Stuttgart to pick up their new Porches and Mercedes to take home. I also picked up some after delivering their cars to the shipping ports. Every flight was fun, people excited about buying a car of their dreams or shipping a car that they thought they could make a profit on. Being among happy people is pleasant to say the least.

The Brussels Worlds Fair was going on at the time and we couldn’t get landing rights but they did grant over flight rights so I made many aerial show and tells to the Worlds Fair and back, on one day I remember making three trips, the weather was perfect and on the last flight we landed long after dark. But every one had been fun. I tried to give all the Nurses in the hospital a ride in the T-33, only a few refused, almost all used the sick sack. But they all said they enjoyed the ride anyhow. Think about it, your in the Air Force, you have a chance to ride in a Jet and you can tell your children and grandchildren about it. No I didn’t do any maneuvers that might upset them, it was just a strange environment for them that they couldn’t adjust that rapidly.

Giving rides to those least expecting to be invited was one of my great pleasures. A few that just happened to be on the ramp when I had an empty seat were surprised when I stopped and invited them to join me. In the T-33 they had to have a helmet and parachute and a briefing on the use of the ejection seat. That did not take too long and we would be off. I was until I had to give up flying a ride giver I would rent a Cub or a Champ and shoot few landings, each time watching for onlookers, when one or more, usually a family showed up I would park, invite the youngest to go around the pattern and then the rest of the family would usually follow suit. Giving young ones their first aviation experience is really a big thrill.

Now, all airports except the grass airstrips must be fenced and access is severely limited, what a shame, the government has cut off contact between the curious on lookers and the flyers that still have the same desire to share their love of flying. I wonder if our country will ever get back to where we have any thing near the freedoms we once enjoyed and the free interchange of ideas or information about aviation. I recently read that air lines are having a hard time finding qualified pilots, like wise, scads of air traffic controllers are retiring and qualified replacements are few.

Nelly and I eventually got orders to go the 4926th Test Squadron at Kirkland AFB, NM. A great assignment. Nelly learned to like Mexican food and Robin was born there, I started a glider club and generally enjoyed learning about the west and desert living, we had a great time. Since above ground atomic tests had been suspended before we got there, There was not much air sampling to do. Eventually the AEC came up with the World wide fallout study. We where sent to all parts of the globe chasing the isotopes that had been generated by Atomic and Nuclear blasts that had been set off in the past. I got to go to Australia for nine weeks flying south/ north tracts taking core samples along with two other B-57’s and two U-2’s at higher altitudes. The Aussies really treated us like royalty and we got to see a lot of their country, their beer is great but I never got to like mutton. Stan Moore and I even got in some glider flying while there.

As it turned out the southern hemisphere was relatively clear of nuclear debris, no nuclear devices had been detonated in the Southern hemisphere yet. But in the northern hemisphere the fall out from the bombs and tests was largely in western New Mexico where the jet stream comes south and then abruptly turns east north east. Interesting because that is where we mined the ore to make the bombs in the first place.

Apparently this study generated enough interest in high places that the Air Force modified 20 B-57’s into WB-57s that were purposely built for air sampling. They had almost 120 ft of wing span a much larger fin and rudder and much more powerful engines, so powerful that the pilots did not use full power for take off or climb, they only used the extra power at the higher altitudes.

Years later when Nelly and I were in Panama, we were invited to join the French Ambassador and his wife to attend a dinner aboard the French warship “Oregone” we did not know about it then but it later turned out it was carrying a nuclear device which the French tested later in the south Pacific some where near Tahiti. We got word that the French were going to conduct an atomic/nuclear test and almost like magic those long wing WB-57’s showed up in Panama and then went on to Mendosa, Argentina where they intercepted the nuclear debris cloud some where in the South Pacific.

I never learned what they learned about the French device, but I did read in one of the scientific magazines later that the French scientists had stuck with the tradition of putting a rare earth module in the device so that the debris was traceable. I know that this has got too long to keep your attention but there are just so many memories I couldn’t stop. So I will now. Bob PS there is so much more to tell.