Page 26 - May21T

The “Dingman boys” with me on the left.
Michigan countryside. If you lived in Southwest Michigan in the early 70s and one morning found some T.P. on your farm animals, oak trees or TV antenna, sorry about that; it must have been some hooligan.
Training is like fighting a gorilla.
You don’t stop when you’re tired.
You stop when the gorilla is tired.
“Except for the military airplanes you have flown with me in all of them.”
I sold that little, two-seat airplane that I bought when I worked at the paper mill. It was too difficult to move from base to base after I joined the Air Force. And for a long time, I didn’t fly anything but military jets. You were glad when I joined the Air Force – you figured it was better than fac- tory work, especially since I lost part of a finger and some of my hearing while working in factories. You were proud that I advanced from enlisted to an Air Force officer. Until that is, you learned I was going to pilot training and then on to the F-16. Once again, you worried about me and airplanes. This time, a stronger and faster air- plane – one with a gun, missiles and bombs, but only one engine. It did have an ejection seat, but I don’t think that gave you much comfort. You came out to the airport with dozens of friends and family when I flew one into the Air National Guard base in Battle Creek. You bragged and took pictures; your son was a fighter pi- lot. I fought the training gorilla, and yes, mom, it was dangerous, but I was careful and did a really good job. When the Air Force asked me to man a command post in Germany, I left the military in order to keep flying airplanes. My buddies were leaving too. We all went to the airlines.
You must have been accustomed to the worry because you seemed to take it in stride. Maybe you thought that I’d be flying something less risky – until 9/11, that is. I’m sorry to worry you
the memory of being properly scared that helps develop judgment. And its judgment that keeps pilots alive – and I certainly scared myself a few times.
TP (Tee Pee)
Thanks, mom, for running inter- ference. You protected us but didn’t shelter us. I’m sure there are times you saved us from others, from situ- ations and from ourselves. Perhaps even from school officials and our sheriff during one particular high school football game. There was just one student in our small town known for f lying little airplanes, and every- one knew that it was the older, long- haired Dingman boy. And I probably didn’t get away with the football game
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caper like I thought. It was a night- time bombing mission of our high school. We dropped 30-some rolls of TP (toilet paper) on, but mostly around, the school’s football field. We knew that, like tail-end Charlie, if we attempted two passes, we would catch flack. So, we made up a feeder slide for the little window of the Chero- kee 140 in order to drop the load in just one pass; and we flew high – too high. Bombing accuracy is all about winds aloft and TOF (time of fall). But I wouldn’t learn such things until years later in the F-16. Because of this lack of understanding, it was not so much as around the football field and school that the TP landed, as it was the proximate area of the surrounding