James Stuart....

indeed

by Cabg Patch - 2017-01-31 14:56:41

My first duty station in the Air Force was Edwards AFB in the mohave desert (Calif). That base was quite the place for a young military guy with so many things going on due to the vast desert surrounding the base. I got to watch the 747 (commercial) and C5 (USAF cargo plane) being tested there before they went into production and use. Saw the SR71 and it's clone YF12 spy planes. Funny they would cover the cockpit as soon as it landed out on the runway yet during base open house they would allow visitors to climb up and look into the cockpit...military intelligence indeed.

Got to see some incredible crashes let me tell you. Saw one of our planes (F106 delta dart) drop out of the sky when they tried firing a vulcan cannon from the nose (the exhaust gas from the gannon choked the engine out). The flying wing that crashed and was used in the opening sequence of the 6 million dollar man series actually happened there, but a year before my time. 

Used to go into the desert and watch movie studios filming TV programs such as the rat patrol.

And most notably, saw Jimmy Stuart numerous times. He was a frequent visitor to the base. and I can say that in all my years in the USAF, I never saw the military react the way they did when General Stuart was expected. Even when the US President came to a base there wasn't the sense of reverence and love.  The man was highly revered by the military and I heard a number of stories about his escapades. Never got to meet him personally but wish I had. A great American...we could use a few now.

Hi Patch........

by Tattoo Man1 - 2017-01-31 15:17:21

Thank you for an absolutely delightful contribution...its just fabulous to get this kind of 'first hand' observation.

I'm thinking that Don might have something to say on this subject.....??

All the best ,Patch !..TM.

I'm trying to remember the difference...

by donr - 2017-02-02 10:25:31

...Between Stuart & Stewart in Scottish/English history.  Anybody ever notice that his film credits were ALWAYS "James," NOT Jimmy?  I did not, & I have seen nearly every film he was in. BTW:  That film was released in  the MID-SUMMER in the US - not well rec'd by critics.  It was yrs later that it became a Christmas classic.  Now it appears to be losing its hold on people, to be replaced by round-faced Ralphie in "A Christmas story."

Tatt - you made me do something I have never thought to do - Google Jimmy Stewart (See, I violated his druthers on name preference) to find out if he was really rated to fly the B-52!  By golly, he appareently was!  He also flew B-24's more than B-17's & I have always associated him w/ the 17.  As a man I once worked for said "90% of everything we know to be true is really false!".  Fortunately, into that ten percent truth is the reputation of Stewart as a humble leader of men.  I promise you that when men are facing the wrong end of a tracer bullet, they do not care what the fame of their leader is outside combat, they care whether or not he will make the decisions that will keep them alive.  Stewart did just that as an officer in Uncle Sam's Army Air Corps - that's why he rose from private to colonel in a very few short years. 

He was a natural as a pilot & kept his Air Force Reserve life separate from his film-making life.  I tried to find out how many flight hours he had, & the type aircraft he had them in, but was unsuccessful.  As a successful Air Force leader, he satisfies Pres Eisenhower's criteria about dogs - "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but rather the size of the fight in the dog."  He had somewhere less than 3,000 USAF flight hours - confirmed by the wings he wore in his retirement photo, but he apparently was rated to fly a whole bunch of rather large, nasty aircraft.

Particularly telling is the reporting by a certain USAF Capt named Amos, who piloted a B-52 hosting Stewart on a mission from Guam to Viet Nam in 1966 - it took over 12 hours.  The plane developed an apparently disastrous failure in its wing flap positioning necessary for landing.  Stewart, though qualified to fly the plane, sat & kept quiet, letting the man who had the most experience (AND was the aircraft commander) fly the plane & face the problem.  That's one mark of a great leader.

P.S:  I have used my "Edit" capability twice on this comment.

Don