Historic Air Force Songs

Itazuke Tower

(Tune of "Wabash Cannonball")

"Itazuke Tower, this is Air Force 801,
I'm turning on the downwind leg, my prop has overrun;
My coolant's overheated, the gauge says 1-2-1,
You'd better get the crash crew out and get them on the run."

"Listen, Air Force 801, this is Itazuke Tower,
I cannot call the crash crew out, this is their coffee hour;
You're not cleared in the pattern, now that is plain to see,
So take it once around again, you're not a VIP."

"Itazuke Tower, this is Air Force 801,
I'm turning on my final, I'm running on one lung,
I'm gonna land this Mustang no matter what you say,
I'm gonna get my charts squared up before that Judgment Day."

"Now listen Air Force 801, this is Itazuke Tower,
We'd like to let you in right now, but we haven't got the power,
We'll send a note through channels and wait for the reply,
Until we get permission back, just chase around the sky."

"Itazuke Tower, this is Air Force 801,
I'm up in Pilot's Heaven and my flying days are done;
I'm sorry that I blew up, I couldn't make the grade,
I guess I should have waited till the landing was okayed."

Let's Have a Party

Parties make the world go round
World go round, world go round
Parties make the world go round
Let's have a party.

Now, we're gonna tear down the bar in the Officers' Club (Boo)
We're gona build us a new bar (Yay)
It's only gonna be one foot wide (Boo)
But it's gonna be a mile long (Yay)
There's gonna be no bartenders at our bar (Boo)
There's only gonna be barmaids (Yay)
Our barmaids will wear long dresses (Boo)
Made out of cellophane (Yay)
You can't take our barmaids to your bunks (Boo)
They take you to their bunks (Yay)
You can't sleep with our barmaids (Boo)
They don't let you sleep (Yay)
Soda's gonna be ten bucks a glass (Boo)
Whiskey free (Yay)
Only one to each pilot (Boo)
Served in buckets (Yay)
We're gonna throw all the beer in the river (Boo)
And then we'll all go swimming (Yay)
Now no girls are allowed in the USO hall (Boo)
With their clothes on (Yay)
There'll be no lovin' on the dance floor (Boo)
And no dancing on the lovin' floor (Yay)

Glory Flying Regulations

(Tune of "Glory, Glory Hallejulia")

Hap Arnold built a fighting team that sang a fighting song,
About the wild blue yonder and the days when men were strong.
But now we're regulated 'cause we don't know right from wrong,
The Force is shot to hell...

CHORUS:
Glory flying regulations
Have them read at all the stations
Burn the ass of those that break them
The Force is shot to hell.

Once they flew B-26s through a hell of flak,
and bloody dying pilots gave their lives to bring 'em back,
Now they're playing ping-pong in the operations shack,
The Force is shot to hell...

I've seen them in their T-Bolts when their eyes were dancing flame,
I've seen their screaming power drive that blasted Goering's name;
But now they fly like sissies and they hang their heads in shame;
The Force is shot to hell...

Now one day I buzzed an airfield with another happy chap,
We flew a hot formation with my wingtip on his lap,
So they passed a new directive and we'll have no more of that,
The Force is shot to hell...

So now mine eyes are dim with tears for happy days of old,
We loved to take our chances for our hearts were young and bold,
From now on we have no choice but live to be quite old,
The Force is shot to hell...

The Last Flight of Covey 87, Captain Steve Bennett, USAF, 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron, Medal of Honor Winner

Near Quang Tri, a US Air Force OV-10 Bronco was in the thick of the action. Capt. Steve Bennett, a forward air controller from Danang, was directing American close air support fighters. His backseater, Marine Capt. Mike Brown, was laying the firepower from naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Two decades earlier, the French had known this strip from Quang Tri to Hud as the "Street Without Joy." The American flyers called it "SAM-7 Alley" because of the proliferation of that Soviet-built missile. It was deadly, especially against low and slow aircraft.

Just at dusk, Bennett got an emergency call. A mile away, several hundred North Vietnamese were massing to strike a South Vietnamese platoon. Could the Bronco help? If not, the platoon would surely be overrun.

No fighters were close enough to get there fast enough. And with the platoon between the enemy and the sea, it was too risky to try the flat shooting naval guns.

That left one choice. Steve Bennett put his OV-1O into a power dive and attacked with his 7.62-mm machine guns. He was going down into the SAM-7's prime shooting gallery, and he knew it. After he'd made four strafing passes, the North Vietnamese began to fall back. Bennett attacked a fifth time to keep them from regrouping, and on that pass, his luck ran out. The OV-10 reeled as a SAM-7 came up from behind, hit the left engine, and exploded. Shrapnel tore holes in the canopy. The left landing gear hung down like a lame leg, and the small airplane was afire.

Bennett veered south toward an emergency landing field. The last thing he wanted to do was ditch in the Gulf of Tonkin. He knew that the cockpit area was likely to break up on impact and that no pilot had ever survived an OV-10 ditching.

The fire continued to spread. The pilot of an escort aircraft warned Bennett that he and Brown had better punch out. As they prepared to do so, Brown looked over his shoulder. His parachute lay shredded by fragments from the explosion.

Bennett had a good parachute, but he couldn't go out alone. The airplane was in a "command ejection" mode. After a fatal ground accident with ejection seats, it had been decided that when Marine spotters--who had not had the same training as the FACs--were in the back seat, the OV-1O would be configured for the pilot automatically to eject the backseater first, then himself. And now Brown had no parachute.

Even had the OV-10 been in a different mode, Bennett's ejecting alone would likely have been fatal to Brown. It would have left him in an aircraft without a pilot, and he would have been severely burned by the rocket motors on the pilot's ejection seat as it passed.

Momentarily, there was hope. The fire subsided. Da Nang was only 25 minutes away. North of Hue the fire fanned up and began spreading. No choice now but to crash-land in the water.

The OV-10 dug in hard, cartwheeled, and flipped over on its top, nose down in the water. Submerged, Brown struggled free of his straps, went out the side of the canopy, and paddled to the surface. He tried to reach Bennett, but the OV-10 was sinking fast. Bennett, trapped in his broken cockpit, sank with it. They recovered his body the next day.

On Aug. 8, 1974, Mrs. Linda Bennett accepted the Medal of Honor presented posthumously to her husband, Capt. Steven L. Bennett, for his actions in SAM-7 Alley and off the Tonkin coast.

Steve Bennett had made his decisions consciously: to press the attack on the North Vietnamese despite the known danger to his small aircraft--and then to ride the crippled aircraft into the sea so his backseater would have a chance to live, even though it meant leaving almost no chance for himself. He knew the odds. There just wasn't any other way.

Air Power

MARTIN B-26G "MARAUDER"

The Martin B-26 Marauder was one of the most controversial American combat aircraft of the Second World War. It was primarily used in Europe, and was in fact numerically the most important USAAF medium bomber used in that theatre of action. However, on four occasions, investigation boards had met to decide if the development and production of the Marauder should continue. The Marauder survived all attempts to remove it from service, and by 1944, the B-26s of the US 9th Air Force had the lowest loss rate on operational missions of any American aircraft in the European theatre, reaching a point less than one half of one percent.

Despite its high landing speed of 130 mph, which remained essentially unchanged throughout the entire production career of the B-26 in spite of numerous modifications made to reduce it, the Marauder had no really vicious flying characteristics and its single-engine performance was actually fairly good. Although at one time the B-26 was considered so dangerous an aircraft that aircrews tried to avoid getting assigned to Marauder-equipped units and civilian ferry crews actually refused to fly B-26s, it turned out that the Marauder could be safely flown if crews were adequately trained and knew what they were doing. It nevertheless did demand somewhat of a higher standard of training from its crews than did its stablemate, the B-25 Mitchell. However, once mastered, the B-26 offered a level of operational immunity to its crews unmatched by any other aircraft in its class.

A total of 5157 B-26 Marauders were built. Although on paper the B-26 was a more advanced aircraft than its stablemate, the North American B-25 Mitchell, it was built in much fewer numbers because it was more expensive to manufacture and had a higher accident rate.

One of the most commonly-asked questions is the difference between the Martin B-26 Marauder and the Douglas B-26 Invader. They were two completely different aircraft and had been designed to completely different requirements. The Douglas B-26 Invader had been originally been designated A-26, and was a twin-engined attack bomber intended as a successor to the Douglas A-20 Havoc. In 1948, the newly-independent Air Force decided to eliminate the A-for-Attack series letter as a separate designation, and the A-26 Invader was redesignated B-26, in the bomber series. There was no danger of confusion with the Martin B-26 Marauder, since this aircraft was by that time no longer in service with the US Air Force.

The history of the Martin Marauder dates back to early 1939. Both the North American B-25 Mitchell and the Martin B-26 Marauder owe their origin to the same Army Air Corps specification. On March 11, 1939, the Air Corps issued Proposal No. 39-640 for the design of a new medium bomber. According to the requirements listed in the specification, a bombload of 3000 pounds was to be carried over a range of 2000 miles at a top speed of over 300 mph and at a service ceiling exceeding 20,000 feet. The crew was to be five and armament was to consist of four 0.30-inch machine guns. The proposal called for either the Pratt & Whitney R-2800, the Wright R-2600, or the Wright R-3350 radial engine.

Requests for proposals were widely circulated throughout the industry. Proposals were received from Martin, Douglas, Stearman, and North American. The proposal of the Glenn L. Martin company of Middle River, Maryland (near Baltimore) was assigned the company designation of Model 179. Martin assigned 26-year-old aeronautical engineer Peyton M. Magruder as Project Engineer for the Model 179. Magruder and his team chose a low-drag profile fuselage with a circular cross section. Since the Army wanted a high maximum speed but hadn't specified any limitation on landing speed, the team selected a high-mounted wing with a wingspan of only 65 feet. Its small area gave a wing loading of more than 50 pounds per square foot. The wing was shoulder-mounted to leave the central fuselage free for bomb stowage. The wings were unusual in possessing no fillets. The engines were to be a pair of 1850 hp Pratt & Whitney R-2800-5 Double Wasp air-cooled radials, which were the most powerful engines available at the time. Two-speed mechanical superchargers were installed in order to maintain engine power up to medium altitudes, and ejector exhausts vented on each side of the closely-cowled nacelles. The engines drove four-bladed 13 foot 6 inch Curtiss Electric propellers. Large spinners were fitted to the propellers, and root cuffs were added to aid in engine cooling.

The armament included a flexible 0.30-inch machine gun installed in the tip of a transparent nose cone and operated by the bombardier. Two 0.50-inch machine guns were installed in a Martin-designed dorsal turret located behind the bomb bay just ahead of the tail. This was the first power-operated turret to be fitted to an American bomber. Another 0.30-inch flexible machine gun was installed in a manually-operated tunnel position cut into the lower rear fuselage. There was a 0.50-inch manually-operated machine gun installed in a pointed tail cone. The tail gunner had enough room to sit in an upright position, unlike the prone position that had been provided in the early B-25.

There were two bomb bays, fore and aft. The bomb bay doors were unusual in being split in tandem, the forward pair folding in half when opened and the aft set being hinged normally to open outward. Two 2000-lb bombs could be carried in the main bomb bay, but up to 4800 pounds of smaller bombs could be carried if the aft bay was used as well.

Detailed design of the Model 179 was completed by June of 1939. On July 5, 1939, the Model 179 was submitted to a Wright Field Board. The Martin design was rated the highest of those submitted, and on August 10, 1939, the Army issued a contract for 201 Model 179s under the designation B-26. This contract was finally approved on September 10. At the same time, the competing North American NA-62 was issued a contract for 184 examples under the designation B-25. Since the design had been ordered "off the drawing board", there was no XB-26 as such.

Although the first B-26 had yet to fly, orders for 139 B-26As with self-sealing tanks and armor were issued on September 16. Further orders for 719 B-26Bs on September 28, 1940 brought the total B-26 order to 1131 aircraft.

Early wind tunnel test models of the B-26 had featured a twin tail, which designers thought would provide better aerodynamic control. This was dropped in favor of a single fin and rudder so that the tail gunner would have a better field of view.

The B-26 had a semi-monocoque aluminum alloy fuselage fabricated in three sections. The fuselage had four main longerons, transverse circular frames, and longitudinal stringers covered by a metal skin. The mid section with the bomb bays was built integrally with the wing section. The retractable tricycle landing gear was hydraulically actuated. The nose wheel pivoted 90 degrees to retract into the nose section, and the main wheels folded backwards into the engine nacelles. The tail fins were of smooth stressed skin cantilever structure. The elevators were covered with metal skin, but the rudder was fabric covered.

The first B-26 (c/n 1226, USAAF serial 40-1361) took off on its maiden flight on November 25, 1940, with chief engineer and test pilot William K. Ebel at the controls. The first B-26 initially flew without any armament fitted.

The first 113 hours of flight testing went fairly well, and there were few modifications needed. However, a slight rudder overbalance required that the direction of travel of the trim tabs be reversed.

Since there was no prototype, the first few production aircraft were used for test purposes. On February 22, 1941, the first four B-26s were accepted by the USAAF. The first to use the B-26 was the 22nd Bombardment Group (Medium) based at Langley Field, Virginia, which had previously operated Douglas B-18s.

A series of failures of the front wheel strut resulted in a delay in bringing the B-26 to full operational status. Although the forward landing gear strut was strengthened in an attempt to correct this problem, the true cause was an improper weight distribution. The manufacturer had been forced to deliver the first few B-26s without guns, and had trimmed them for delivery flights by carefully loading service tools and spare parts as ballast. When the Army took the planes over, they removed the ballast without replacement and the resultant forward movement of the center of gravity had multiplied the loads on the nose wheel, causing the accidents. The installations of the guns corrected the problem.

SPECIFICATIONS
Span: 71 ft. 0 in.
Length: 58 ft. 6 in.
Height: 20 ft. 3 in.
Weight: 37,000 lbs. loaded
Armament: Eleven .50-cal. machine guns; 4,000 lbs. of bombs
Engines: Two Pratt & Whitney R-2800s of 2,000 hp. ea.
Cost: $227,000

PERFORMANCE
Maximum speed: 285 mph.
Cruising speed: 190 mph.
Range: 1,100 miles
Service Ceiling: 19,800 ft.

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