Getting Off the Ground

It was May, 1950.1 was on our tractor, cultivating six-inch-tall corn on a hot, humid afternoon. A cloud of fine dust followed me and the Allis Chalmers WD-45. High overhead, a four-engine transport, silhouetted against the blue sky, was leaving small contrails. As I looked up from beneath my dust cloud and saw the aircraft, I thought, "There's got to be a better way to make a living than bucking bales of hay to cattle and scooping corn to 200 head of hogs every day." Times change. I was looking for something different. People choose new and different careers.

There I was, a high school senior, about to graduate. The draft was after me. The Korean War was going on. I had to make a decision. Should I do my patriotic duty; enlist, go through basic training, and learn how to kill people with a rifle and bayonet? My other choice was to go to college, get an education, an ROTC commission, fly airplanes, fire rockets, and drop bombs on people from farther away. At least, you don't know who you're killing. It would be less personal that way. I chose the latter.

Iowa State College in Ames accepted my application. My major was Animal Husbandry. Besides the agricultural courses, I enrolled in the Air Force ROTC program. After the second week of classes, I cornered one of the instructors about flight school. The Air Force was in transition from pistons to jets. All commissions were administrative; applications for flight school were few and far between. A day or two later, I checked with the Army ROTC personnel. They offered commissions in Signal Corps (SigC), Engineers (Eng), and Artillery (Arty). Applications for flight school could be made anytime, once on active duty. They were more encouraging than the Air Force. The Army could use all the pilots they could get their hands on. Amateur radio was my latest hobby, in addition to building and flying model airplanes. The Signal Corps personnel welcomed me with open arms. I changed ROTC programs within a couple of days.

It was a long uphill battle; including a few campus uprisings in which I participated, not to mention the famous panty raids of the mid-1950s. On several occasions I was called before a department dean to explain my conduct.

Four years later, on June 10,1954, Jack V. O'Keefe received his Bachelor of Science degree. The following day, I received the gold bars as Second Lieutenant Signal Corps, United States Army Reserve, with orders to report to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, on September 10,1954, for the Basic Signal Officers' course.

After graduation I planned to work on a ranch in Montana for the summer. I'd be breaking and training stock horses, building fence, making hay, and irrigating alfalfa until it was time to report for active duty. During my senior year in college, I was on the acrobatic and rodeo teams. The only rodeo events I competed in were bareback bronco and Brahma bull riding. My investment for bull riding was a bull rope and pair of gloves. I borrowed spurs. I never made top prize money, but managed to make enough "ground money" to pay expenses without breaking any bones. I ate a lot of dirt in Iowa and Montana arenas. What's a little dirt, when you're having a great time trying to stay on a bronco or bull for eight seconds?

The summer passed quickly. I hated to leave Montana but duty called. I'd be in those blue skies sometime in the coming months, once in flight school.

The second day on active duty at Fort Monmouth, I applied for Army Flight school. A week later, I made a trip to McGuire Air Force Base for a physical. The physical took most of the day. I had the feeling that the Air Force really didn't think Army personnel should fly airplanes. Instead, we should be running around in the weeds with a rifle, making invasions through the surf, living in fox holes, getting shot at, and trying to squeeze our faces a little further into mother earth in order to keep our body parts together. I had other ideas. This country boy was off the tractor and the horses. One way or another, I was going to get into an airplane and fly.

December, 1954, rolled around and our class of forty officers completed the Signal Officers' Course. I had a month's temporary duty with the Aviation Section at the Monmouth County Airport. Whenever there was an empty seat in an airplane I was in it. This gave me the opportunity to ride in the Cessna L-19 Birddog, the DeHaviland L-20 Beaver, and get some "stick time." The Korean War was still going on, but it was beginning to taper off.

One Sunday morning in January, 1955, my 1939 Chevrolet shelled out the engine. It was sold for twenty-five dollars on the spot to the tow truck driver. I managed to get a ride with a couple of classmates to Des Moines, Iowa. My "collage adopted folks" picked me up. A day later I was the owner of a 1953 Ford. The next day I was on my way to Texas and flight school.

My orders were to report to San Marcos Air Force Base, San Marcos, Texas, on or before February 20, 1955.

Our initial class of would-be pilots numbered 148. The combat branches were the most numerous: Infantry, Artillery, and Armored. Then came a few Engineers and five Signal Corps officers. There was one lone Chemical Corps officer.

My roommate was Second Lieutenant Tom York, Artillery, an Economics major and Yale graduate from Boston. Tom had never met anyone from the midwest – especially someone who wore boots, a Stetson, and rode in rodeos – not to mention one who was dumb enough to ride Brahma bulls and bareback broncos. Tom was five feet, ten inches tall, and a handsome devil if ever I saw one. If I had half his looks, I'd have been in hog heaven. Sometime during the first night in our quarters, the subject got around to Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Roy's horse Trigger. Out of my mouth popped: "Trigger" York! He had been anointed!

The class was assigned instructors alphabetically. My flying partner was Second Lieutenant Donald Osborn, Infantry, a graduate of the University of Illinois, from Streator, Illinois. Our instructor was First Lieutenant Elroy Logan, USAF, who had been plowed back from F-100s and was now instructing would-be Army Aviators in fabric covered airplanes, sometimes called rag-wing airplanes among pilots. He was not a happy camper.

Ground school or academics were in the morning; flying in the afternoons. It was reversed each week. Our primary trainer aircraft was the Piper Super Cub, or L-21, for the next 100 hours.

Tom and I were the two top guns. Then came the day when everyone had about eight hours of dual instruction. The opportunity to be the First to solo in the class looked good. Somehow, Trigger's instructor squeezed into the line of Super Cubs, and soloed him a minute before me. I was upset. When my instructor saw what happened, he jumped out of the back seat and told me, "O'Keefe, get your ass out on the runway." I took off right after Trigger. Trigger and I were in the air at the...