F-16 Ride (January 1992)

(Skipping ahead a few decades from the last post…)

After all the official things at Ramstein, they took me down to the flight line, outfitted me with a flight suit, boots, gloves, helmet, mask, etc. and then proceeded to brief me on what to do if I had to do to eject out of the F-16 in which I was about to ride. The way in which they spoke of this possibility almost resulted in my declining to actually participate in the flight. I was actually listening to how I was to be flung out of the aircraft, being told that if the chute didn't open correctly I was to reach in my pocket and get a knife to cut up to four of the lines, or I was to reach up and pull some red threads that would accomplish some similar feat. Then, assuming the chute opened right, or that I had fixed it, I was to prepare to land in high-power electric lines where I should just hang and be sure not to touch anything that would ground me and end my misery. Or, if I didn't make the power lines, maybe it would be the autobahn – in which case I was to get off in a hurry. Or, maybe I would get hung up in a tree. Of course, I had a survival package that was to make sure people found me. Drink water first, I was advised. Then, stop the beeper from beeping, get the radio and speak to somebody. And, of course, I had to understand how to set off flares – red for dark and orange for daytime. If for some reason I was blind, the red flares had little bumps on them, I could feel them. But then, the preferred signaling device was really not the flares at all, but some sort of device I was to fire but loading into it some things resembling shot gun shells, then fire by pulling down and spring with my thumb and releasing it. Then, if I weren't already questioning why I was there, they took me out to a model and demonstrated how to climb into the jet fighter. There is no way to climb into the jet. Somehow you are expected to get your butt on the edge in the proper position and then slide into the cockpit. But the thing they forgot was my legs. My butt might slide into the cockpit okay, but my legs were attached and none too flexible.

By now I am committed. So out to the aircraft we go. There we "preflight" this monster called an F-16, which by now looks a great deal like the end of my mortal existence. They even take pictures so as to document my final moments on earth. Somehow, I get into the back seat. I have to look around to make sure I know where the 100% oxygen and the hot mike switches are located and how to turn on the HUD display on my TV screen – a replication of what the pilot sees up front. All of this done, I recheck the position of my two barf bags. They are still right where I put them, tucked in the belt line of my G-suit. At this point in time, I know I have made a mistake. But the pilot has started the engine and is going through his checklist, I waited, and waited, and waited. One can live several lifetimes while waiting for completion of that checklist. Finally, the canopy is lowered and I am trapped. We taxi out to a mid-point on the runway, where we undergo another visual check by a couple of airmen. As we taxi further, I am aware that the suspension on this aircraft allows us to bounce a bit. I know I am going to barf. At the end of the runway, we wait again. I watch two F-16s land and wish I was in one of them.

The pilot says we will lift off at about 150 knots. We start down the runway on the takeoff roll. We are at 150 knots before I am totally comfortable with the fact we are moving. Off we go. At this point, I know my fate is in the Lord's hands. I lean back against the rear of the seat. I can't see anything. It is raining. For 12,000 feet I can't see anything. I hear the pilot telling somebody—maybe God – that we'll have to cancel the low-level portion of the mission. What a shame! Between 12,000 and 18,000 feet we find an area "in the trough" (whatever that is) where he is going to show me what a great aircraft the F-16 is. Okay. This is kind of fun. Suddenly, with no warning, my legs and lower half is being squeezed. My cheeks are caressing my chest, and I want out. "Five G's", the pilot says. “Oh,” I think, “great.” Could we possibly stay straight and level, I am in the midst of thinking when the pilot says, "how about an aileron roll?" I assume I will have a moment to consider that but the next thing I know I am upside down. Since there are clouds below me and clouds above me, I am not sure which way I am. They say one should look at the instruments. I am still trying not to barf. "Okay," he says, "you fly it." Roger that. I am now in control and we are not going to do anything funny. But I am told to turn right, to climb, and to push the throttle forward. "You are doing .9 Mach", he says. Yeah, I am in a hurry to get out of here, I think. He takes the stick back. Well, it really isn't a stick. It is not even where a stick is supposed to be. And it doesn't move like a stick. It is just an arrogant piece of metal that sticks up in a position at the end of your right arm, if you rest it on the side. But it is a smart piece of metal or whatever that senses the pressure I apply. (I had enough sense not to apply too much pressure)

Anyway, he says he has the aircraft. I am both sad and pleased. Pleased because I didn't get a great kick out of flying this piece of whatever at .9 Mach through the air. Sad, because I know he is going to show me more about his wonderful aircraft. After finding my stomach co-located with my toenails one moment and at my hairline the next, I pleaded for time out to toss my cookies. "Are you okay sir?” he asked. I know that secretly he is delighted that he has made me airsick. I have turned off my mike as a courtesy to him so he won't hear the retching sounds. I should have left it on; he wouldn't have had to ask. Wiping the residual of nasty stuff off my mouth with the cloth part of my flying gloves, I gingerly put my mask back on and wait for his next question. "Are you still with me sir?" “Yeah, I'm hanging in there,” I lie. "Okay," he says, "let me show you how the air to air radar works." I see some unintelligible squiggles on the left TV screen. "False target," he says. Just then, the radar somehow decides it is now a false target but another aircraft some 20 miles away. Then I see something absolutely without any redeeming virtue. "This is the air to ground mode," he says, “really fantastic, can you see the river outline?" I look, but what I really want to do is barf "Yeah, I say, really great!" That was a mistake, now I was supposed to watch that terrible radar screen through several additional maneuvers. "Let me show you how the F-16 accelerates." Before I can say "don't" we have slowed down to about 200 knots. I am aware of my throttle moving forward. I hear him say something about milpower. I am thrust backwards, again. Finally, I hear something about it being time to go home. Finally! So we enter the clouds. All the way back to base, I can see absolutely nothing. I can't look at instruments because they mean nothing to me and besides, I don't really relish the thought of grabbing for my second and last barf bag. I don't talk much on the way back. He talks to himself and someone else. "Three thousand pounds fuel," I hear him say. "Engine not on fire, gear down with lights, etc. etc." I feel us touch terra firma – not quite; we bounce thirty feet into the air and remain suspended there for an eternity. Finally another touch, a few smaller bounces, and we are rolling down the runway. "Not exactly a great landing," he says. "What matters is that we are on the ground," I say. I don't, repeat don't, want to try another landing to see if we can improve. We taxi back to the parking area. I rip off my mask and grab my reserve barf bag. This time, I keep it a secret, but barf until my innards hurt like mad, and then some more.

"How was the flight?" the ground crew asks. "Wonderful," I lie.

I still have the problem of managing two barf bags, a helmet, and me. So I go through the process of unplugging me to the aircraft. I forget the oxygen hose. I try to get out and can't. My hands are full. Where to I put everything in order to unplug that blinkin’ hose? Somehow, I get unplugged, try to get my butt in the same general position I had used to get in. That doesn't work. So I resort to the famous roll technique, with luck I don't roll all the way out and am finally able to climb down the ladder. "Great Flight," I feel compelled to repeat.

After repeating this giant lie several more times to the wing commander, flight commander, DCS-Ops (a two star) and assorted others, I am taken to a C-12 from Heidelberg which had come to pick me up. "Scheiße," I say to myself, "how am I going to keep from barfing again in this thing?" But somehow, I make it. At supper, nothing tastes good, even though I am hungry. I go to bed early and sleep well.

Expanding Horizons

My religious heritage of being a Mormon stretches back generations in both my mother's and my father's families. On my father’s side, my great-grandfather, Ole Hansen, joined the church in Denmark in the 1860s, came to Utah because of the church, and then returned to Denmark as a missionary. On my mother’s side it was my great-grandfather, David Buttars, who joined the church in Scotland and then immigrated to Utah. I grew up participating in all the church activities, accepting them as a normal, practical part of life. In fact, I viewed those who didn't do the same with a degree of suspicion.

Being always older in spirit and maturity than my chronological age, I chose friends who were normally two to three years older than I. This was partly from choice and partly from availability. Often these friends did not share my background, religious or otherwise. From a couple of these friends, I learned the fine art of smoking. First it was tansy weeds. Then it progressed through dried horse manure to coffee grounds, and finally cigarettes (later as a teenager, even cigars). This experimentation, however, came to an abrupt halt when an overdose of real tobacco from smoking a cigar while pheasant hunting made me violently ill. My mother, sensing I was ill, asked what was wrong and I mumbled in reply something about having eaten poisoned wheat.

Another rather negative influence came from a fellow four to five years older than I who had been in a reformatory when I first met him, went back again, and finally ended up in the state penitentiary. He and another friend introduced me to a small bottle with the words "Old Grand Dad" written on it. The first taste burned, choked, and generally destroyed my gullet. It was during this period in my life that we'd “borrow” an old rusty ten-gauge shotgun that hung in the old shop on the Connor place that was kitty cornered across the street from our house, and a quarter mile east. We’d gather the shells that accompanied the gun and then we’d go shoot frogs along the creek. The shotgun would fall apart each time after we'd fire it and we'd have to reassemble it before it could be fired again. But that was mild compared with the kick it routinely administered to our shoulders as we took turns.

I was full of distasteful pranks. For example, we would capture frogs, push dandelions up their butts and blow them up with air from our lungs so that when we placed them back in the water they could not swim; their little legs would flail without effect and they would only float. Another was to catch sparrows, put a little turpentine on their hindparts and watch them fly acrobatics. Robbing birds’ nests, killing magpies in order to sell their heads for three cents each, and a variety of other reprehensible deeds could also be added to my rap sheet. One of the worst beatings I ever received was the result of staying out in a terrific rainstorm robbing birds’ nests until one o’clock in the morning. Richly deserved, I might add. 

This was also an era of skinny dipping in the old swimming hole where I had initially learned to swim. My brother, Wayne, took me out to where it was over my head and told me to swim. I swam and that was it, no fancy lessons, just the necessity of the moment.

Despite all these hijinks, I attended all my various church meetings throughout my youth. At age twelve, I was ordained a Deacon, later I became a Teacher, and then a Priest in the Aaronic Priesthood. Dates and other pertinent data are a matter of record, so I'll not dwell on them here. Suffice it to say, that even while advancing through these Priesthood offices, I was significantly less than perfect as I struggled with finding out who I was, sampled the evils of the world, and attempted to carve out independence from my parents.

Going to church led to my participation in the Boy Scouts. I advanced normally through the rank of Life Scout, and then redirected my efforts toward girls. I have always regretted I didn't put forth the extra effort it would have required to become an Eagle Scout, but at the time it seemed unimportant and my parents did not push me. I did enjoy two trips to the Teton Peaks Council Boy Scout Camp up on the Idaho side of the Teton Peaks where the scenery was breath-taking. The thing I remember best is putting a live water snake in another scout's sleeping bag; he didn't find it until months later when he wanted to use the bag again and found the dead snake, by that time causing a dreadful stench.

It was also during this period that I developed blood poisoning from a scratch on my left hand, received while playing a game of pick-up basketball. By the time we discovered the infection, my left arm was badly swollen with a black line running up its underside. The doctor insisted I be rushed to the hospital. Once there, the doctor lanced the swelling where it appeared worst, stuck in his finger to open the wound, and began administering penicillin. For years, this was the only scar on my body.

The onslaught of the teenage years brought problems and repeated efforts to be everything, try everything, experience everything, and still to stay within the bounds of the church's teachings. Of course, the contradictions were too great and therefore it was the church's teachings that often gave way to experience. While attending to my church responsibilities, I would still manage to do exactly what the church didn't want. For example, I often slipped away from  Young Men’s meetings, then called Mutual Improvement Association or MIA, on Tuesday evenings to rendezvous with friends and see how many bottles of beer we could drink in an evening. My personal record was sixteen, but that is qualified because I threw up after the first eight. Somehow, my friends and I all managed to get poured into our beds at night and recover sufficiently the following day to allay any suspicions our parents may have had, but didn't voice. 

Among my friends at that time, all from Lincoln, were Kenneth and Dean Prestwich, Gene Mortensen, Bill Blake, and Gary Huskinson. Except for Dean and Bill, some tentative connection with the others survived into the 1990s. Gene Mortensen later served in the mission field with me.  One of my most consistent boyhood friends was Marion Cook, who was a neighbor, but also nearly two years older than I was. We both belonged to the school band. He played the baritone, and I played the trumpet. This musical sharing gave impetus to a friendship that lasted through school until he departed on a mission to Japan.

Growing Up

My youth pretty well centered itself around the family, school, and church. From the second grade through high school, I attended school in the same building in Ammon, Idaho. As a rule, there was one class for each grade consisting of about 30 kids. The fifth grade stands out in my memory because my sister Eula was born in September 1945, I began to play the trumpet, and my interest in sports was awakened. The latter was largely due to the fact that my older brother, Wayne, had gained a reputation and a lot of attention as a fine basketball player. The fact that his name appeared in the Post Register (still being printed in Idaho Falls) spurred me on to attempt to secure the same recognition. Eventually, I succeeded.

The seventh and eighth grades were much alike. I was somewhat of an undisciplined ruffian in the seventh grade and was force-fed lessons on the rights of others in the eighth. During the seventh grade, the teacher, Olin Jeppson, (unbeknown to us) suffered from a severe illness that eventually took his life. I'm sure we hastened his demise with frequent truancy, ill-conceived pranks, and general deviltry. The eighth grade teacher, T.V. Hanks, took us on as a challenge making sure we understood that he was not going to be driven to an early grave. In short, he taught me personally a great deal about life. I remember with great clarity one incident where I thought I was about to crowd into a line waiting for a drink at the water fountain. He grabbed me by the hair and threw me a considerable distance down the hall with the admonition that I had no more right to that water fountain than did the six or so people standing in front of me. This and other lessons stuck with me from that time on.

High school was an exciting time filled with sports, music and all sorts of activities. The first two years it was Ammon High School. During the last two it was Bonneville High School, as we consolidated with Iona and Ucon high schools to form a county school from which I graduated in 1953.

Coach Norvel, “Nog” Hansen

Looking back, I see sports as the most important thing at that time. Most particularly, it was basketball that held my enthusiasm. As a sophomore (remember, I was the youngest in my class) I was on the varsity team, continued through my junior year, and finally made the big time as a starter in my senior year. Strangely enough, however, it was in football and track that I made the bigger splash. I had not been able to play football at all during my junior year having been (falsely, I believe) diagnosed as having rheumatic fever. But as a senior, I was captain of the football team, played fullback and linebacker, and was chosen a member of the state all-star team. In track, I was undefeated in the 440 yard run until the state meet when I came in third. Running was, nonetheless, punishment and I always literally ran my guts out as I threw up after every race. At track meets, I would run the 100 yard dash, sometimes the 220, always the 440, as well as a second 440 as the anchor on the mile relay team. I also played second base and pitched on the school's baseball team, becoming the high school's first four-sport letterman. Upon graduation, I received the school's highest sports honor, the Babe Ruth Sportsmanship Award, as well as special awards in football and track.

It is my impression that my parents seldom showed great interest in what I was doing at school. As far as I remember, neither ever came to a football game in which I played. The reason was quite simple. The games were played on Friday afternoons, and Dad could not take time off from his work on the farm. I do remember one time that Dad came to watch me play in a basketball tournament held in the Idaho Falls High School gymnasium. We were playing against Rigby. I played my heart out and managed to score twenty-three points. Dad told me after the game how proud he had been of me. This is a moment in time that has stuck with me.

My mother always left me with the impression that if I didn't play my trumpet, I couldn't participate in sports. Therefore, I was always a member of the school band with an ego sufficiently large to force me to practice so I could be first chair. I grew to love it also. The high point of my trumpet-playing career, at least that which I remember most clearly, was playing Sugar Blues in a large musical extravaganza put on by the high school. I think my parents both attended this affair; in mother's mind music was important. My senior year, a small dance orchestra was formed with my cousin Terry Hansen; people even paid us to play at weddings and other dances. I also joined the choir as another diversion and soon learned to love singing.

My high school years were also occupied with other activities, including the Future Farmers of America (FFA) and whatever else would increase the size of an ever-growing ego. I was Idaho State secretary for a time. When the election was held, my supporters argued that they had to have someone whose handwriting was legible. Mine qualified.

This account would hardly be complete were I to ignore my first great teenage love whom I met when I was a junior. Joan Holladay, apart from frequent quarrels, was my steady girlfriend for the next three years. It was an intense relationship of enormous emotion that I shall never forget. Attendance at different colleges and a combination of other factors associated with it caused a drifting apart which resulted in an immense wound to my immature heart when she married someone else. I note, however, that in seeing her a time or two in our subsequent lives, I have come to understand the great blessing of having married Faith.