Sled Driver

pride, and dedication of those people right there with me. They never got to fly the
airplane, but I know that many of them loved her as much as I did.
Flying operational missions out of Beale usually meant keeping strange hours. My
neighbors wondered about me when I left for the base at two o'clock in the
morning. The people in the Marysville-Yuba City area, though, seemed to take pride
in knowing that the world's fastest jet resided at 1their' Air Force base. They
appreciated knowing I couldn't tell them details of where I was flying or what I was
doing. They enjoyed the intrigue. On several occasions I stopped at the local 711 for
an orange juice on my way to work, sometimes after midnight. The same man
worked the graveyard shift, and he'd look up and smile. I'd say 1Good morning' as I
walked to the refrigerated case. In the beginning, he was eager to tell me that he
had a good idea what I was doing, and he wished me good luck. Above all, he did not
want me to reveal anything to him. I never could say much, because he did most of
the talking. Sometimes, his assessment of my mission routing was surprisingly
accurate. Later on, I'd come in and he'd say, 11SO, just going to work" On these
mornings we had an unspoken camaraderie; the two of us shared a few moments of
the early morning hours. It gave him pleasure to insist I not pay for the juice.
WEATH ER
Our training at Beale prepared us for what we would be doing overseas, with one
exception: weather. The central valley of northern California did not approximate
the weather patterns of either Okinawa or England. Beale spoiled us with clear days
and rare storm systems. Okinawa weather also could be wonderful at times, but it
was unpredictable. Another factor complicated the weather equation; a small island
in the Pacific didn't leave a pilot with many options for diverting someplace else if
the weather got bad. England was more predictable; the weather was lousy all the
time. After a few weeks in sunny California, I would find myself sitting in English fog
on an icy runway, preparing to launch into murky weather seldom seen at Beale.
Some days while taxiing out of the hangar in England, I had a tough time seeing
the mobile car through the fog. Experienced crews were tested time and time again,
as they launched on missions in poor weather conditions. Weather rarely stopped
our missions.
Flying high up in the stratosphere and managing complex systems produced enough
tension for most, but sometimes the first few minutes of the flight were filled with the
most excruciating tension of the day. I sat through a weather briefing one day in Okinawa
that described a violent storm system. I was amazed at the fury nature could generate