Navy primary flight training—the instructor had it coming

Second Lieutenant Arnold Reiner

Marine Corps recruitment brochures in the early ’60s described three pilot training pipelines:  jets, transports and helicopters. But my goal was to fly the airliners that, as a child, I watched climbing out from La Guardia Airport over our Bronx apartment. With no money for flight instruction, my plan was for the military to pay for the training. Like a kid in a candy store choosing among the goodies, I reasoned that when the time came to select, I would opt for the transports. So, at age 19, college bound and oblivious to world realities and the needs of the service, I joined the Corps. Four years later, in July 1964, as a newly commissioned second lieutenant, I walked out to the Saufley Field flight line with my parachute and new navy flight gear for my first T-34B flight.

Navy flight training was like a courtship. Students and the Navy have expectations. Students decide if the rigor, risks, and just plain flying, are what they want to pursue. And the Navy takes a hard look at a student’s demonstrated ability before spending time and lots of money training an aviator. The sorting out mostly happened in primary T-34 training at Saufley Field a few miles north of Pensacola in Training Squadron One, or VT-1 as it’s known in the Navy. Several weeks of ground school on aerodynamics, aircraft systems, basic navigation, meteorology and water survival preceded flight training.

In about 35 fast-paced, mostly dual flight hours, students were graded on how they assimilated training and put aerodynamic theory to practice, progressing from basic control to spins and aerobatics. We were grouped in sections of about 15 to 20 student pilots. Marines had their own section, Flight 18, which was staffed by marine aviators from fighter/attack and helicopter squadrons. It was their way of immersing junior lieutenants and aviation cadets (known as Marcads), in the manners and ways of the Corps.

The world had changed from 1960 when I signed up. By the summer of ’64, when I reported for training, America’s Vietnam War buildup was under way and the Marine Corps needed aviators to support the troops. So with flight 18 filled to capacity, I was sent with a few other marines to Flight 13, staffed with Navy pilots mostly from patrol and transport squadrons.

The Navy’s primary trainer was the T-34B. It was a beefed up, militarized version of the Beechcraft Bonanza with a narrowed fuselage and conventional tail, seating two pilots in tandem cockpits with controls and indicators configured similarly to tactical aircraft of the period.

The Navy’s primary trainer was the T-34B.

Instrument panel of the T-34B

With its 225-hp engine and constant speed prop, 240 knot maximum indicated airspeed, and built for positive 6 and negative 3Gs, it was both highly maneuverable and forgiving with no nasty characteristics that could get neophyte students in trouble. Because of its diminutive stance, naval aviators dubbed it the “teeny weenie.”

I showed up early for the first afternoon launch, stopping by the hangar gedunk (pronounced gee-dunk, the sailor’s term for snack bar) to wolf down a cheese omelet chased with a chocolate shake. No point in going hungry on my first introductory flight where according to the syllabus, basic flight controls would be demonstrated.

My instructor was Navy Lieutenant Morris, a no-nonsense, lanky, sandy-haired fellow in his late 20’s finishing up his service commitment. He didn’t smile once during our preflight briefing and expressed no interest when I mentioned that I had a little time in Piper Cubs and Cessna 140’s . His job was simply to put me through the primary flight syllabus or eject me like a spent shell casing if I didn’t measure up. The Navy didn’t waste time and money on marginal or unmotivated students and a goodly percentage of the “attrites,” as the Navy called them, occurred in the T-34 primary flight phase where the “not aeronautically adapted” were “speedy boarded” out or quit on their own and ordered elsewhere.

On the first flight, the syllabus specified taxiing and flight control demonstrations with an overview of departure and arrival routes and the training area bordered by the Gulf of Mexico on the south, Mobile Bay on the west, and Perdido Bay to the east.

Saufley T-34B Arrival Pattern

The arrival traffic pattern was unlike any civilian airport. With scores of planes arriving and departing en masse, Saufley’s was like a spiraling beehive, with T-34s entering a circular pattern in trail at 1,200 feet, letting down to 800 feet abeam the runway, and finally entering the downwind leg at 500 feet.

At specified points along the way, we’d set engine power, prop pitch, open the canopy, and lower the landing gear and flaps. A little rhyme was passed down among T-34 students, “flop-chop-prop-one ten drop,” reminding them of when and where to configure. I’m guessing that rhyme could roll off the tongues of naval aviators long after they’ve ceased flying. Yet, with all the procedures, kneeboard checklists, and rhymes, the Navy knew that mistakes, especially in a population of student pilots, were inevitable. So to prevent gear-up landings, a runway duty officer (RDO) sat by the runway with a flare gun and would fire it ahead of any hapless pilot lined up on final approach with the wheels up.

Before the flight, I stopped by the parachute loft, drew a parachute and preflighted it by opening the back flap to assure all the release pins were properly set. Then with the parachute slung over  my shoulder, in a bright new orange flight suit, steel toe flight boots, calf skin leather flight gloves (before the age of Nomex) stuffed in a breast pocket, and carrying a helmet bag with a shiny new white helmet, boom mic, kneeboard and checklist pad, I headed out to preflight the plane.

There was no confusing who was the instructor and student. Morris’ flight suit was a washed out orange, his boots were dinged up and scuffed, his helmet bag frayed, and paint had long been worn off his beat up kneeboard. Even though he wasn’t much older than me, in my mind he was an “old salt” with fleet experience, lots of carrier traps, a temperament that would stop a clock, and only interested in performance. Yet, with my taildragger light plane time, I reasoned a first flight to the training area and some turns and climbs was a piece of cake.

The plane’s mechanic, known as a plane captain, was up on the wing and helped me settle into the cockpit. Students were expected to have T-34 preflight, cockpit set up, and engine start procedures down pat before the first flight. We could practice in a cockpit procedures trainer next to the briefing area. I went about setting up the cockpit beginning with the flight controls, trim tabs, fuel control, mixture, prop and mags, for the engine start. Checking in on the interphone with Morris in the aft cockpit, I could tell he wasn’t pleased with the somewhat less than crisp execution of all these steps.

With Morris at the controls, we taxied out and took off. This would be a memorable flight for both of us! It was a typical Pensacola mid-July, early afternoon day, with temperatures at about 90 degrees and humid, with cumulus cloud bases around 3,500 feet and tops bubbling thousands of feet higher.

Passing west of Perdido Bay, around 4000 feet, Morris began an exaggerated flight control demonstration. He explained roll control by snapping the stick left and right, causing my helmet to nearly strike the canopy. Then, to define pitch control, he sharply shoved the stick forward to about minus 1G, and hauled it back to about plus 2Gs. At about that point, straight ahead, a towering cumulus cell loomed up. We could have banked steeply right or left to avoid it but Morris chose a different path.

Just before entering the towering cell, Morris rolled inverted and pulled back hard, entering a near vertical dive. I was looking straight down at Alabama’s open farmlands. Then he rolled sharply upright, pulling about 2Gs, skimming the cloud’s underside. He kept pulling, and using the excess speed built up in the dive, we climbed steeply into the clear on the other side of the cell.

I felt a sudden sweat, followed by the partially digested egg omelet and chocolate shake bursting from my mouth, clogging my boom mike and spraying onto the instrument panel. Instinctively, I covered my mouth with both hands, succeeding only in covering my leather flight gloves as well. Meanwhile in the aft cockpit, Morris saw and smelled what happened and yelled into the inter phone system (ICS) for me to open the canopy. With a vomit covered glove I grabbed the canopy handle, hauling it back and opening both cockpits to streaming fresh air. And then things got worse!

In a vain effort to clear vomit off my gloves, I stuck my hands out into the airstream, blowing the mess back onto Morris’s face and visor. He muttered a profanity over the ICS and declared: “We’re going back!” Unable to speak through a clogged boom mic, and with nothing to say anyway, I just sat quietly.

The Navy knew some students would get motion sickness and provided all of us with paper vomit bags. Apprehensive students kept the bag handy, but with my time in Cubs and Cessnas, I never considered the possibility and had zipped the bag in my flight suit’s knee pocket.

Morris turned east, descending toward Saufley’s spiraling traffic pattern and radioed ahead to alert maintenance that an airsickness incident had occurred. Our plane captain was on the ramp to meet us with rags and buckets of disinfectant. Morris hopped out and headed off to clean up and I went about sopping up my mess. If the same thing happened on the next flight, I’d be headed for a speedy board and orders to Marine Corps Infantry Officer Basic School in Quantico to be a grunt marine.

For flight number two with Morris I skipped lunch at the gedunk. and with my barf bag at the ready and protruding from my flight suit knee pocket, we took off. My breakfast, consumed hours earlier, stayed down and the period progressed satisfactorily with “average” grades. The Navy had four grading criteria, above average, average, below average and unsatisfactory. An unsatisfactory grade was also known as a “down.” Depending on the “needs of the service “ and stage of flight training, a down grade could cause an extra instructional period to be ordered or a student might be speedy boarded out of the flight program.

At the end of T-34 primary training the above average, average and below average grades were tallied and students were ranked and assigned to the next phase of training which for marines was either the T-2 jet or T-28 prop and eventually helicopter pipeline. Top students mostly got their choice depending on the needs of the moment. But by then, girding up for war, the Corps needed mostly helicopter pilots to flesh out squadrons so most of us went on to T-28s to complete the fixed wing syllabus before dual qualifying in helicopters.

As the hours progressed toward soloing, Morris, impressed with consistently smooth landings, even offered compliments. Landings, at least for me, were simple compared to the kite-like gust sensitivity of the Cubs and other tail dragger I flew as a teenager. The tricycle gear T-34, at nearly two and a half times the wing loading of a Cub and similar planes, was much more stable on approach and in the flare and a breeze to touch down smoothly on its two main landing gear.

Aerobatics was the final T-34 dual/solo training phase, exploring the teeny weeny’s entire flight envelope. Anyone who bothered to look up from the farms, corn fields and cotton fields east of Mobile Bay could watch students meld aerodynamic theory with stick and rudder practice. Loops, barrel rolls, half cuban eights, spins and simulated dead stick approaches to open fields and low altitude wave-offs were common sights.

One exercise Morris seemed to particularly enjoy was recovering from extreme low speed, actually “no-speed, ” unusual attitudes. A student’s properly demonstrated recovery showed that he understood that the rudder was the last control surface to lose effectiveness and the first to return, followed by the ailerons and elevator in that order. Morris would pitch to about 110 degrees, pull off the power and, as airspeed bled to zero, he’d declare: “You got it!”

Dropping like an inverted dart tail first, Morris, from his aft cockpit perch exclaimed,“Wheeeee!” Pitched nearly straight up with no ground reference, we were taught to tilt our heads back looking for the nearest horizon and push in full rudder in that direction. Dropping hundreds of feet and banked about 90 degrees, the nose sliced down through the horizon and airspeed built quickly. I rolled wings level then brought the nose up to the horizon and pushed the power up. It was Morris’s high point of the flight.

A few flights later, with a total of 32.7 hours, 26.4 dual and 6.3 solo, my T-34 mentor days were over. I had orders to T-28 training to learn the purely military disciplines of fixed wing flying like formation and carrier qualification. By then Morris and I had come into kind of friendly sync and he’d talk of his hopes of getting on with TWA.

We never discussed my first instructional hop on that steamy, July day when his overzealous flight control demonstration caused me to lose my lunch. But in my view, then and now, he had it coming.

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Arnold Reiner

Arnie grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and has a BS degree in journalism from the University of Bridgeport. After serving four years as a Marine Corps helicopter pilot, he joined Pan Am in 1968 and later was a captain on the Boeing 727 and Airbus A310 with additional responsibilities as the Director of Flight Safety. He joined Delta Air Lines in 1991 in conjunction with the sale of Pan Am’s European routes and retired as a Boeing 727 captain in 2000. Type ratings include the DC-3, Boeing 707, 727, Airbus A310 and several helicopters. His memoir of CH-46 Vietnam flying experiences, 46 Driver, is available from Bluewater Press and Amazon. He lives with his wife in Pensacola, Florida.

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