Captain Kenneth Maynard's Prophecy of Doom
Was it about to be fulfilled?

1950 - Fort Belvoir, Virginia

I was stationed at Fort Belvoir when I first heard about MATS (Military Air Transport Service).
This was a service of the US Air Force which lets military
personnel fly from one place to another at no charge.

You would go to an Air Force base and tell the dispatcher where you wanted to go,
and he/she would let you know if and when a plane was headed in that direction.
I wanted to go to Los Angeles to see my girlfriend.

Captain Kenneth Maynard stood up and leaned over his desk so his face was just inches from mine. "Don't do it!" he snapped as he pounded his desk for emphasis. "Stay away from those MATS flights! Go buy a ticket on a commercial airliner and get there alive. Those MATS pilots think they are God and can do no wrong!"

Before I could say anything about not having enough money, he continued, "Let me tell you what happened to me."

"I was about to get on one of those planes in Houston for a trip to San Francisco. But I was told the last seat had just been taken, and that I'd have to wait for the next flight. Well, about an hour later they announced another flight for Frisco."

"So I got on. Well, within an hour we could see we were heading into a lightning storm, so the pilot opted to go around it. This took us way off course and we arrived two hours late. But guess what we heard when we got there - the plane I missed had tried to go through the storm and didn't make it. It went down, killing everyone aboard."

"See why you shouldn't go up with one of those fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants cowboys?"

Well, I thanked him for the advice, and then headed for Bolling Air Force Base in DC to catch the next MATS flight going west. Not that Captain Maynard's words hadn't made an impression - they definitely had.

But I only had a few dollars to my name - and wanted to use my week's furlough to see my girlfriend in Los Angeles.

I'd been at Bolling for less than an hour when they announced a flight leaving for St. Louis. The plane turned out to be a specially outfitted C-36, which I heard was some General's private plane - and it was being flown to Saint Louis to pick him up. It was sumptuously appointed to carry about a dozen people in well upholstered luxury.

This was my very first time in an airplane and, not surprisingly, I was impressed! As I stretched out in the plush reclining seat, I was convinced that Capt. Maynard's close call was just a fluke, and that I'd be doing all my traveling this way as long as I was in the army.

But the comfortable trip to St. Louis was not to be repeated. There I had to wait two days for another plane headed west.

It was a B-25 "Billy Mitchell" bomber destined for Tinker AFB in Oklahoma, and there was room for one passenger to accompany the pilot, the copilot and someone called a flight sergeant.

There were no upholstered seats - just a couple of wooden benches behind the open door to the pilots' compartment - one each for the sergeant and myself. On either side of us there was a huge, noisy engine that powered the aircraft's twin propellers. The engine noise was so loud we had to shout to be heard.

But it was free and it was heading west.

Well, somewhere over Texas the skies began to darken and the airplane started to bump and bounce in a horrific way. Then it started to rain. And it wasn't just any rain - it was a lightning storm. I knew this because I could see lightning bouncing off the wings. And, of course, I was now remorsefully remembering what Capt. Maynard had said just a few days before.

Needless to say, I was scared to death. I even asked the flight sergeant if there was a parachute available. He said a 'chute wouldn't do any good in this kind of weather, but gave me one anyway. As I was trying to strap it on, the youthful copilot caught a glimpse and started to laugh.

"Whadda ya think," he shouted, "are our wings gonna stay on?" The senior pilot, whose face had become very grim, gave him a dirty look - but the kid was having too much fun teasing me to quit.

"If you decide to use that parachute, try not to get hit by lightning on the way down!" Then he started singing the Air Force song, emphasizing the part that goes, "We live in fame or go down in flame..." Then he laughed some more.

Well, the rest of us weren't laughing. The older pilot's knuckles had turned white and he was looking more serious by the moment. The flight sergeant looked as worried as I felt, and seemed not to hear me as I asked him how to open the bombbay so I could make a quick exit, should the need arise.

But the fact that I'm here to write about it says we made it safely through the storm. Nonetheless, when we landed I decided I'd had enough of MATS, and that I'd hitchhike the rest of the way to Los Angeles.

However, the ride I got turned out to be more dangerous than the B-25 flight.

But that's another story.

© Copyright 1997 Donald Ray Edrington