Here's another one of my late father's flying stories.

Like most of his graduating class, my parents got married the day after Dad graduated from Cadet training. They always lived off base, usually just in a room they rented in town.

By their second Christmas, my mother was still getting used to military life. She always worried about Dad when he was flying, but generally kept it to herself. Dad was out by himself on Christmas Eve in Southern California logging some cross-country time in an AT-6, when he had an engine failure. He was able to contact the tower at his home field and reported the emergency and his position, but dropped too low for further radio contact before he could receive an acknowledgement of his transmission. Although he didn’t know it, the tower only had received the first part of his message and had not heard his position. Dad was able to set the airplane down undamaged on the side of a small hill, and then sat there for a while trying to contact someone. He was unable to raise anyone on the radio, so after a couple of hours he climbed to the top of the hill to see how far he was from a road or something. In the distance he could make out a ranch, so he set off for it after leaving a message as to his direction of travel as per procedures.

In the meantime, some well-meaning yo-yo in the tower called my mother with the following message: "Lieutenant Chilcoat radioed that he was going down, but we haven't heard anything more from him yet." Not surprisingly my mother did not handle this very well. The person on the telephone was unable to supply any additional information, and hung up when he realized the effect his message had caused.

After a couple more hours of walking Dad reached the ranch and asked if he could call his base. "Sorry," was the answer, "we don't have a telephone." By now it was getting very late. Even though it was Christmas Eve, the rancher offered to give him a ride into town. Eventually, Dad found a telephone in town, called the field, and asked for someone to come and pick him up. By this time it was so late that Dad decided not to call home and worry my mother since, not knowing that she already knew he had had a forced landing, he didn’t want to wake her. No one in the tower thought to call Mom either, so she just sat at home and waited for someone to call.

Dad finally arrived back at the field early Christmas morning, filled out the required paperwork, and headed home. When he got there he found a nearly hysterical woman who had by now assumed that she was a brand new widow. It took the rest of Christmas morning to settle her down.

When he could, Dad headed back to field, fully intending to drop someone out of the tower on his head. Fortunately or unfortunately, almost everyone had gone home for Christmas and no one who was still there admitted to making the call to Mom. All Dad could do was yell and scream for a while and then just go home again. For a few days over the holidays he schemed of ways he could punish the tower personnel, but fortunately was transferred to another base shortly afterwards. Mom never fully adapted to army life, but they somehow stuck out life together for 56 more years.

Bob

Copyright Ó 1998 Robert T. Chilcoat

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