LOWER THAN A SNAKE’S BELLY IN A WAGON RUT
Along the sunny Gulf Coast of Mississippi runs a VLA route (very low-level, high-speed flying) frequented by American military fliers for decades. Back in the early nineties, on a dock on Davis Bayou, with a cold St. Pauli Girl beer in my hand, I would sit with my face towards the southern sun and my feet dangling over the receding tidal waters brimming with shrimp and watch as pairs of A-7 Corsairs from the Oklahoma Air National Guard or RF-4Fs from Meridian Mississippi would thunder along the very edge of the horizon following this timeworn route. The “Sluffs” and “Rhinos” came from the Air Guard deployment camp at nearby Gulfport, where they would spend a week practicing being “deployed” at a base far from their home.
These weekend warrior guardsmen as well as regular force fighters would follow the barrier islands from west to east—Chandeleur Island, Ship Island, Cat Island, Horn Island. All uninhabited, all bereft of antennae, chimneys and tall trees. My best friend, Greg Williams, whose dock I was sitting on, was one of those Mississippi Air Guardsmen who had flown this route many times. Living across Biloxi Bay from these islands, he knew them like the back of his hand.
In those early days, he would take a lone Phantom and a back seater, and push himself down low over the Gulf side beaches, ripping from one island to the next heading east from Gulfport. As he came to the eastern end of Horn, the easternmost island, he would bank hard left and run like a scalded dog, low and north, to the wide estuary where the Pascagoula River dumped its brown water into the blue sound.
About a mile inland, Highway 90 crosses over the bayous and the snaking Pascagoula on a slender bridge. A few miles farther north, the four lanes of Interstate I-10 also leap over the two miles of marshland. For years, ass-kicking redneck pilots from Mississippi would approach the Highway 90 bridge from below, climbing to cross the bridge at extreme low level. Complaints from startled citizens in cars and trucks, who had nearly been blown from the road deck, caused the rules to change. All inbound fighters would be required to be at 1,500 feet as they crossed the bridges.
Williams, a long serving and proud recce pilot, and the only Voodoo-qualified, college-educated, shrimp boat captain from Bayou La Batre, Alabama to Boca Chica, Texas, had thousands of hours flying RF-101s and RF-4F Phantoms down where the crawdads live*. Flying low was his passion. His favourite thing to do, when flying in the mountains out west, was to run up the face of a mountain, roll inverted over the top, pull down the other side, roll wings level and toboggan the far side. He was used to it, he loved it, but he admitted once to me that he lived so long on the edge that, from time to time, he toppled over it.
One day in the late eighties, Major Williams and his back seater Major Bernie Cousins streaked at fifty feet down the Gulf side of Horn Island, scattering pelicans and egrets—“lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.” Nearing the island’s slender, curving eastern end, Williams rolled hard left, then level again, heading for the mouth of the Pascagoula. To his right he could see the massive Litton Shipyards; to his left, the small town of Gauthier, Mississippi shimmered in the summer heat. Approaching Pascagoula Bay, he climbed from 50 to 1,500 feet to clear the Highway 90 bridge at the authorized altitude. At 1,500 feet he streaked like an arrow north to I-10.
At the moment the I-10 bridge passed beneath his nose, Williams rolled inverted and snatched the stick back hard to dive for the deck. Flying aggressively for his entire military career, Williams realized immediately that he had pulled too hard and had “buried” the nose of the massive Southern Grey Rhino far past the right line for recovery. It was one of those “oh, shit” moments in a pilot’s flying career when he realizes that he has made a possible fatal mistake.
It was time to employ all his skill and all his physical strength to overcome his error. Instinctively, Williams released the stick, rolled 180 degrees and pulled as hard as he possibly could on the pole. There was nothing else to do but hold on and ride the Phantom out of the mess. Cousins, in the back, having no way to prepare for the manœuvre, blacked out immediately under the massive g-load. Pulling for all he was worth, Williams experienced tunnel vision as he grayed out. He never really saw anything on his periphery, describing the effect of tunnel vision as looking through a toilet paper tube.
At zero feet, the sagging Phantom blew swamp water, mudbugs* and sea grass out from behind as she staggered upward in the humid air and climbed for the heavens. He had overstressed the jet and his own body and very nearly killed himself and his back seater. When I spoke to him about it the other day, he said, “You know, I got complacent and I am not proud of that, it was one time I almost lost it.” It takes a good pilot to admit it, and learn. To this day, Williams says that if you look carefully, you will find two deep parallel grooves in the muddy bottom where he dragged his burner cans though that bayou.
Williams’ story of joy, error, terror and redemption illustrates all that is found in low-level flight in any aircraft—the extreme sensation of speed, a breathtaking sense of your own powerful abilities, the risks of complacency and deadly danger waiting only feet away for the pilot who makes a fatal mistake.
There are two types of flying that are for the skilled and the experienced only—aerobatics and low-level. A show of aerobatics is a beautiful thing indeed, poetry in motion. If aerobatics are ballet, then low-level flying is slam dancing—violent, aggressive and heart stopping. Firewall the throttles of a Phantom and drag a cranked wingtip through the mesquite at the bottom of some gulch in the high Colorado Desert and you have a YouTube video gone viral.
Despite all the risks associated with the practice, it is in fact a safe and critically important skill when practiced by military fliers. The British Ministry of Defence lists some of the key benefits of training their RAF fliers at low level:
Is an essential skill that provides aircrew with one of the best chances of survival
Is a highly demanding skill which can only be maintained through continuous and realistic training
Is conducted with the safety of people on the ground, our aircrew, and other airspace users as the overriding concern
Is rigorously controlled and continuously monitored
Has reduced since 1988—the total number of sorties by a third and those by jets by more than half
Over the past five years I have been sent links to hundreds of low-level flying videos… and only four aerobatic ones… and they were all model airplanes flying in a gymnasium. That tells you a lot about the visceral appeal of the low-level flight. There is no fighter pilot alive in North America who has not used the old saw “I feel the need for speed.” Blowing through Mach 1.5 at 30,000 feet, you are indeed fast. You would only know it…, but never feel it. You want to feel speed? Slow down and get down, way down where the trees rise above you, where men crap their pants when you pass, and the dust and water spray mark your passing.
In the world’s best film ever, Dr. Strangelove, George C. Scott’s character, General Buck Turgidson, when asked if the rogue B-52 can get through the Soviet defences, spreads his arms like wings and proudly expounds in the War Room “If the pilot’s good, see. I mean, if he’s really… sharp, he can barrel that baby in so low… you oughta see it sometime, it’s a sight. A big plane, like a ’52, vroom! There’s jet exhaust, flyin’ chickens in the barnyard!” Right on Buck!
For the past few years, I have dumped any good shots of low-level that I came across on the web into a folder on my hard drive, never knowing what to do with them. Last week, my great friend Ian Coristine sent me an e-mail with a collection of low-level photos someone had put together. Many were already in my folder. So, here finally are the contents of my folder, in tribute to my friends Greg “Hard Deck” Williams, whose aggressive attitude once made him engage a pair of A-10s in ACM (Air Combat Manoeuvring) with his Moonie (and win) and Ian Coristine, who never felt he was flying unless his floats swished in the long grass in a morning sunrise.
* Crayfish, crawfish, crawdads
They loved to fly low in World War Two
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There is often a price to pay
The Strange Case of Donald Scratch
“Sgt. Scratch was born in Saskatchewan, 7 July 1919, and enlisted in the RCAF in Edmonton, as R60973 AC2 on 20 July 1940. He earned his wings as a Sergeant Pilot and flew with that rank for a long time. He flew Liberators from Gander, Newfoundland, as a co-pilot on anti-submarine patrols. Scratch was good at his job and was eventually raised to commissioned rank. On two separate occasions, Scratch stole multi-engine bombers and engaged in lengthy low-level and dangerous flying.” Jerry Vernon explains:
“Scratch had injured his leg in a previous Bolingbroke accident, and the powers-that-be felt he did not have enough strength in the leg to control the rudders on a Liberator if he lost an engine. For that reason, both at Gander and at Boundary Bay, they would not give him a captain’s qualification, which is what pissed him off.
On the first occasion, they were concerned that he was going to fly the aircraft down to New York City, but he thought better of it, and returned to base. He later told classmates at Boundary Bay that had been his intention. He had taken a Liberator without authority at 0345 hrs on 20 Jul 44, and “for 3 hours and 10 minutes engaged in an exhibition of dangerous low flying over the aerodrome and vicinity.” He told the Court of Inquiry that, after 3 years of operational flying on the East Coast, he was determined to participate in another theatre of war.
I suppose that qualified pilots were in such demand that they allowed him to re-enlist as a Sgt. Pilot less than 3 weeks after being dismissed by General Court Martial. Former CPAir PR head Jim McKeachie, a member of the Quarter Century in Aviation Club and 801 Wing, Air Force Assn. of Canada, was on the same course as Don Scratch at Boundary Bay, and had dinner with him in the mess that night before the event here. McKeachie then went off on a leave pass and was not on base the next morning when the Mitchell escapade took place… however, Jim does have his own version of the story, which I have heard from him several times!!
Scratch began a 6-week course at No. 5 OTU as a Mitchell 2nd Pilot and was due to graduate on 11 Dec 44. His Flight Commander regarded him highly and stated in evidence that “He was a very keen, average pilot. He was neat in his appearance and had a pleasant personality. He was very quiet and generally well-liked.”
Apparently Scratch wasn’t normally a heavy drinker, but got drunk that night before attempting to steal a Liberator and then stealing the Mitchell. Others in his barrackroom stated that they had never seen him drunk… but the Bar Steward testified that he had sold him between 12 and 18 bottles of beer that night!! He attempted to persuade a WD to come with him, but she wisely refused. There is no mention in the file of the Liberator hitting a bridge… the file says it was bogged down in the mud, and a 2/3 full mickey of Jamaica Rum was found dropped down between the pilot seats, with Scratch’s fingerprint on it.
The Court of Inquiry notes that he had been drinking beer in the Mess and did not occupy his quarters that night. At 0200, he visited the Stn. Signal Section and offered a drink to the WD on duty.
He did not fly down to Seattle, but the RCAF were afraid that he would, and the P-40s had instructions to shoot him down if he crossed the border, which he did not do. Otherwise, if he stayed inside Canada, they were to stick with him and try to force him to land. He did not fly down Granville St. downtown below the level of the building… as far as I am concerned, it would be physically impossible to do with a Mitchell!! However, per statements from the CO, it sounds like he did fly over parts of the city.
He did fly around and “visit” several of the RCAF stations in the area, possibly Pat Bay and I think Abbotsford for sure… the Court of Inquiry file only mentions Abbotsford and an extensive beat-up of Boundary Bay. In fact, as a kid during WW II, I lived on 176th St., several miles due West of the Abbotsford Airport, and one morning a Mitchell came over our farmhouse at chimney-top level, and I have suspected it may have been Scratch. However, the date seems to rule it out, unless I was back visiting with my grandparents at the time. I moved into Vancouver in the summer of 1944 and I don’t know when my grandfather sold the farm, as he was living over near Cloverdale by the summer of 1945, as I recall being there when VJ-Day occurred.
I have seen a photo of him buzzing the CO’s morning parade at Boundary Bay, well below tower and hangar height. It is in the C of I file in Ottawa, which as I recall also contains some newspaper clippings.
The C of I file says that he beat up Boundary Bay from about 0600 to 0700, then headed for Abbotsford. He then returned and beat up the buildings, runways and parked aircraft at Boundary Bay, incredibly missing some objects by inches. At one point, he flew the entire length of the tarmac between the line of parked aircraft and the hangar, with his props inches off the ground. He could be seen in the cockpit without headphones on, so he could not hear tower transmissions to him… the CO had gone to the tower at 0630 and taken personal charge of the situation.
The Court of Inquiry decided that, even if he had been drunk when he started out, after several hours of flying and strenuously throwing the aircraft around, he was probably cold sober by the time he crashed.
The C of I ruled that it was not a suicide, as some thought it was. He had flown the aircraft for several hours, up to the point that the fuel should have been exhausted. Mitchell HD343 had taken off at approximately 0454 hrs from the unlit runway and flew around for 5 hrs and 15 minutes until crashing at 1010 hrs, after about 5 hrs and 15–20 minutes flying. The Court felt that, as he pulled the aircraft up sharply, one of the engines was starved of fuel and cut out or faltered, thus causing a wingover and the aircraft dove vertically into Tilbury Island, not far from the present Deas Island highway tunnel and the Deas Island Park. I wonder if there is still any trace of the large water-filled crater that is shown in photos?
It had been calculated that the aircraft would run out of fuel about 0930, but it did not crash until 1010 hrs, so that lends some credence to the theory about it running out of fuel.
The Court had considered several possibilities…
A: Pure accident, ie: loss of control at high-speed. No.
B: Failure of fuel supply to lower engine when wings of aircraft were vertical in last pull-up. With one engine running and the other cutting out, the aircraft would have done a wingover and dived towards the ground. The aircraft was at high-speed and flying at 800–1,000 ft. at the time and the Court felt it would have been impossible to pull out. This was the accepted findings of the Court.
C: Loss of control due to physical exhaustion… no sleep that night, heavy drinking, 5 hours of violent aerobatic manœuvres, etc. could have resulted in a physical collapse. No.
D: Suicide. No evidence that he was suicidal, so “No” again.
Insanity. No. He had been examined by RCAF shrinks and the Court had no alternative but to find him sane.
However, the remarks of the CO suggested that Scratch must have been suffering from some sort of mental depression or an inferiority complex. He felt that the flying was so dangerous that no-one in a balanced state of mind would fly that way for such a long period. The CO and several experienced pilots felt that a pilot in a balanced state of mind would have frightened himself so badly that he would have quickly stopped flying this way.
No. 5 OTU operated out of both Boundary Bay and Abbotsford. In general, Mitchells were used at Boundary Bay and Liberators at Abbotsford, and the basic 4 or 5 man crew trained first on the Mitchells and then were joined by the Air Gunners at Abbotsford on Liberators for further work-up. There wouldn’t normally have been many (or any) Liberators at Boundary Bay, but there apparently was at least one there that day. 5 OTU used the Boundary Bay-based Kittyhawks for “Fighter Affiliation Training” for the Liberator Air Gunners, so perhaps that is why one would have been at Boundary Bay.”
Filmmakers love low-level flying!
Sun-baked boredom causes low-levelitis
But forest, buildings and mountains make it more exciting
Bombers do it
Rhinos LOVE to do it
Low Flying for a Living
The Mach Loop—Low-Level Nirvana
No story about low-level flying can be considered complete or authoritative without mention of and photographs from the world-famous “Mach Loop” in Wales. This low-level training route through the mountains and Dinas Pass of Wales, known as LFA7 (Low Fly Area-7) to the RAF, is a fighter pilot’s wet dream and a photographer’s mecca. Located in Wales, the Mach Loop is formed by valleys which run between Dolgellau (pronounced ’Dol-geth-lie’) in the north, Tal-y-llyn in the west, Machynlleth (pronounced ‘Mah-hunth-leth’) in the south and Dinas Mawddwy in the east. This route is regularly used by the RAF, USAF and, occasionally, other foreign air forces for low-level training. Approximately 21 miles in length, it takes a fast mover like a Eurofighter Typhoon II about 4 minutes to make the complete loop.
It’s a long hike for aviation photographers, and the published schedules are not always reliable, but many are rewarded by absolutely breathtaking scenery, heart pounding and chest compressing flybys and some of the most stunning photographs available anywhere on the planet. I highly recommend you take a look at some of the videos available on YouTube, but as we are in the second dimension only, English aviation photographer and enthusiast Tim Croton has generously allowed us to use a few of his many images from the “Loop” to illustrate exactly what is in store if you should go.
Even airliners do it
A beach makes a good low-level venue
The Navy loves to do it
I am a retired USAF pilot who also flew for AA for 17 years. I was an OV-10 Forward Air Controller in Vietnam and got into the B-52 in the second half of my career.
I was the Ops Officer for the 37th BMS, 28th BMW, at Ellsworth AFB in 1979, during the Iranian Hostage crisis. We were surprised with a no-notice Operational Readiness Inspection from SAC Headquarters in early Dec 79. During the prep for that ORI mission, we were halted in our tracks and told to prepare for a deployment to Guam. Six hours after that notice, the first KC-135s were airborne and three hours after that the first three B-52H’s deployed.\
We ended up sending a Squadron’s worth of B-52H’s to Guam -- a mixture of crews from the 77th BMS and the 37th. The deploying crews were led by the 28th BMW Vice Commander, Col Wayne Lambert, and the 37th BMS Commander, LTC Jim Dillon and 77th BMS/DO, Major Bill McCabe.
LTC Bob Murphy, 77th BMS/CC, and I stayed behind with the remaining crews who flew that ORI mission.
At Guam, the deployed crews immediately began training in the conventional missions they were not proficient in -- sea surveillance, mine laying, and conventional “iron bomb” missions. The B-52s stationed at Guam permanently were the “D” model, and while those crews were specifically trained to do conventional missions, their B-52’s did not have the range to get all the way into the Indian Ocean/Persian Gulf. Previously, the B-52H crews at Ellsworth only had a nuclear mission, so for most of them, this was new (we did have a few older members who had flown conventional missions during the Vietnam War.)
This effort went on for approximately a month until all the crews were trained. Then the majority of the crews returned to Ellsworth, and a small staff, led by Major McCabe, stayed with four of the Ellsworth crews. Around the first of the year, I led two more B-52’s as we deployed with staff to relieve Major McCabe and two of the deployed crews. We continued his work in formalizing the training program and started training the new crews.
After being there about a week, we were tasked by the JCS to fly a mission deep into the Indian Ocean/Persian Gulf to surveil the Soviet Fleet. At this time, the US 7th Fleet was in the area, being shadowed by the Soviets, and their Bear bombers, launching from Afghanistan, were harassing our carriers. The JCS evidently wanted to show the Soviets AND the Iranians that our strategic airpower could reach them that far out.
Our small staff, with some assistance from the local staff, planned this mission overnight and launched early the next day. Since the Soviets always maintained an intelligence gathering trawler off the coast of Guam, these two B-52Hs launched in darkness, filed as KC-135s to Diego Garcia, complete with bogus KC-135 crew lists on the ICAO flight plan. Gunners were instructed to leave their radar off, and radar navigators were instructed to use frequencies that KC-135s would use.
The Airborne Commander was Captain Wally Herzog (copied on this message), who was the most experienced pilot available from the local crews. An instructor pilot in the B-52D, he had been the person leading the conventional qualification of the B-52H crews. The two crews, one from the 37th BMS and one from the 77th BMS faced a total of five air refuelings and 30 hours, 30 min of flight time (These missions eventually earned the name “Winchester” missions due to the 30–30 time.) After refueling with tankers based in Diego Garcia, these B-52s flew “due regard” (i.e. no flight plan) into the Persian Gulf.
At any rate, this deception was successful. The crews made contact with the US Navy and were vectored to the Soviet fleet. On their first pass, the Soviet crew were on deck waving, at first assuming the aircraft were their BEAR bombers. On the second pass, not one member of the Soviet navy was to be seen.
The BUFFS then went over and did a flyby for the US Navy, and returned to Guam. The following week, two crews from the 319th BMS at Grand Forks AFB, ND deployed to Guam and we returned the two crews who had flown the original mission. We then flew a second “Winchester” mission with those 319th crews. After that success, I returned to Ellsworth as we were relieved by two more 319th crews and staff." Doug Aitken
Young and Bored in Gabon
French Air Force-trained fighter pilot Jacques Borne had a military flying career spanning three decades. He was able to continue flying as a fighter pilot from 1960 up until 1990 by contracting out his services as a mercenary with the Gabonese Air Force in the former French colony. At the end of his time in Gabon, Borne had accumulated 1,047.5 hours in the Douglas AD-1 Skyraider, and by these photos supplied by his son Frédéric, a lot of them were close to the ground. It seems from the photos of his time in Gabon that he and his fellow pilots occupied their time by getting down low… really, really low. The benefit of this amusement was to build exceptional skills in low-level flying.