Introduction

First a word about my dear friend, and I use the term loosely, Jack Harvey, who is the hero of this book and of other forgotten writings that I have produced. He is a unique character who manages to get himself into some amazing adventures. Jack is in fact a more-than-average bungling idiot who has established a diverse following through luck and my writing, keeping him busy pursuing a never-ending string of misadventures. He also drinks far too much, which causes him to cloud his judgment in many facts and situations, often creating a black-and-white psychedelic experience with a foaming head. In addition, Jack is also extremely lazy. That is why I am the one who writes these classics of American Literature, pockets an appropriate percentage of the proceeds, and yes, does the majority of the hard work and thinking.

Someday, I will have to explain how a nice girl like me got involved with our hero. This is not a good time since Jack is here making one of his infrequent guest appearances. The buffoon is also in a slightly inebriated state reading this over my shoulder and laughing in agreement.

Secondly I, sorry Jack, we, do not want to confuse anyone; the following is a work of fiction. We are fictional characters, although some of the people or, more aptly, characters, in the following pages are real as are some of the events. Most fiction is based on some fact(s). When one writes about the sun rising in the east in a work of fiction, the description and the fact that the sun does indeed rise in the east if you are on this earth is non-fiction. We are, however, the ones who make the distinction between fiction and non-fiction difficult. Let’s take chicken eggs as an example.

For many years the latest study showed as published in, The Journal of...., that eggs were not good for you since they were high in cholesterol, which was bad for you. Now this according to, The Journal of... was fact or non-fiction. A number of years later this same publication was to say that eggs might actually be good for you since “the latest study shows....,” and this is fact or non-fiction, which makes the original study a non-fact or fiction. So what is fiction and what is non-fiction, or which egg came first? So again I want to emphasize that this is a work of fiction and that the facts will verify this.

Now that we have covered those two points, it is time to thank all of those who unknowingly in most cases helped put this book together. Thanks! And to our ever knowing editor (some people think he is actually the author), Mr. Van Horn, a very special word...

Hope you find this story as fascinating as I have.

The Brilliant, Wonderful, and Generally Beautiful Person – K.

 CHAPTER 1

May 24, 1967

Captain “Magoo” paced barefooted in his Skivves barking orders on the bridge of the good ship USS Liberty. A dashing figure he did cut and all the sailor men around him knew all he wanted was to get under way, to move, to “steam.” Magoo was a steamer, and he and his ship had gotten orders only moments before to get to sea and steam. There was no happier sailor than he.

Most of the rest of the crew had, under great adversity, joined in the effort to get to sea, even though many had only recently arrived back on the ship from shore leave looking and feeling their best. The crew, the sailors, are often called our good will ambassadors to the world. In fact, until moments earlier a pregnant lady was seen standing on the dock waiting to discuss with one of the sailors his last good will visit. The executive officer of the ship, Lieutenant Commander Phil Armstrong, was at this moment roaming the darkened streets of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, retrieving the last of his ship’s more enthusiastic, wayward ambassadors.

In less than three hours, Magoo and his crew took on fresh food, retrieved the wayward ones, got the ship ready for sea, and were steaming off to meet their destiny. No further mention is made regarding the captain’s attire and whether he changed uniforms prior to setting to sea on this historic occasion. But it can be assumed a happy sailor he must have been since his ship was to proceed, or “steam” at maximum speed all the way to Spain. By the way, the term “steam” originated with the steam engine and is often used in place of sail or sailing when referring to a mechanically-powered vessel. In reality, this vessel is actually powered by a steam turbine.

This would be an opportune time to discuss the captain’s fine vessel. The ship, a WWII Victory Ship, had been built in 1945 and christened the SS Simmons Victory. Have you ever thought of the religious parallel or connotations with the christening of a ship? Neither have I. Is a christening in this case also a baptism; are they one in the same? Anyway this mighty ship, a cargo vessel she was, went to war in WWII (as WWII is fondly called). She would also go to war or a police action in Korea.

Her duty done, she was, as with many great warriors, moth-balled and allowed to rust in some out-of-the-way backwater mooring. In early 1963, duty however called again, and she answered. Although her original construction had taken forty-two days, her new identity required twenty-two months. Those twenty-two months, for the record, did not make her any bigger or faster. Progress and technology are wonderful things.

Oh, the rebuilt SS Simmons Victory actually did take on a new identity; she was now the USS Liberty. This was done to confuse people since Liberty Ships were another type of cargo ship built in WWII, which should not be confused with the superior Victory Ships. Unless of course a change of name might help in a mission as an electronic-collection platform/spy/spook ship under the guise of a naval research vessel.

There were seven other similar ships in the navy, which I presume also had different names than those with which they were born or christened by, if you know what I mean – if you are even a little confused it shows that all the money spent actually achieved its goal. And did this require another christening? Or was the first one sufficient and just a bit of paper work required?

The Liberty was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, and her “research” would be centered along the west coast of Africa between Dakar, Senegal, and Cape Town, South Africa. What she was listening for (that was her prime mission, listening) at this time can only be guessed at.

Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be nice if there were more listeners in the world. Most of the countries on this coast of Africa were newly independent and not yet embroiled to the degree they would become in east-west power politics. Angola and its trials and tribulations were to occur in the 1970s. Modern tribal wars of mass genocide covered by the mass media were still years in the future, as they were also to be in what was considered the white civilized world of southeastern Europe. Apartheid was still someone else’s problem and no one knew how to spell AIDS yet. The shore leave at ports such as Monrovia, Luanda, Abidjan and Las Palmas up in the Canary Islands was still old-fashioned fun with penicillin considered a wonder drug that could cure almost any malady.

Oh, for those simple days when we assumed that our tax dollars were being spent wisely in the continuing effort to win victory in the Cold War. And the Cold War had been so good for the country up to the quagmire of Vietnam. It had given the government and military another reason to grow. It got the general population to focus on the bad guys, the Communists, the Reds. The Reds, or red, menace were very obliging at being bad, of being violent, of being, well, undemocratic and obviously against everything any right-thinking person held dear.

It was the great game, and God knows we like games, particularly one of the earliest types – races. We had the arms race and the space race. There were always war games or exercises. The score was kept in terms of countries and spheres of influence.

The Cold War had sides just like a real war. There were the allies, the good guys, our side, the West. You could look at it as the West Team. The Communist states were the bad guys, the other side, the East Team. And than there were the neutral countries that were not on any team but their own.

Oh, to be a neutral country and dine off the “good will” and tribute of both sides. Allegiance could be sold to the highest bidder and the beauty of it was that it could be sold again and again if a country’s leadership were not total dullards. Whole bureaucracies were created just to keep score in this game with no beginning, no periods or innings, and hopefully for these groups, no end. Other bureaucracies were established to gather information both for and on the scorekeepers.

With that in mind, it is easy to understand why the simple act of steaming in your Skivves could be so welcome.

A Friday Morning Approximately 8:50AM, Winter 1999

Jack could not help but think of all that money just sitting there as he drove past the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. At any given time there were four to five thousand military aircraft parked out in the desert awaiting regeneration. Regeneration could mean return to service in an emergency, sale to an ally, stripped for replacement parts or simply turned into scrap metal. Something dealing with practicality made the types of planes that had been used in actual combat seem more interesting, perhaps in a twisted sort of way. At least they had performed the function for which they were designed – or had they?

The real mission that was always talked about was deterrence; in that regard, in conventional terms they had all failed. Anyway it was a “wow” kind of a place. There are billions of dollars of stuff parked out there and only a fence between you and it. Boneyard was an appropriate description, for like a cemetery, there was very little life in the place. And the planes were lined up in neat rows like tombstones.

The fence was sufficient to discourage just about anyone from trying to haul off any of the moth-balled military aircraft. Few people have backyards that would properly support the display of a huge B52 bomber as lawn art, although most people know someone who would love to paint one pink for just that purpose.

Time really was the ultimate protection. Time brought about technical obsolescence, and few people covet obsolescence any more than they do old age.

Tucson was chosen for storing all of these planes for two very special reasons. First, it has a great warm and dry climate, so things just don’t oxidize (rust) very much. Secondly, Tucson has this real special ground or soil that is baked very hard by the sun. Planes can be parked on it without creating an asphalt or concrete parking lot, which is normally required. One does not want one’s planes sinking into the ground. This unique soil, is called caliche and has in fact been compared to cement. It does not absorb water very well and is formed from calcium carbonate and some other mineral salts which include lime.

As an extra bonus, it is also low in acidic properties, cutting down further on deterioration. After hearing about this stuff, you want to bring some home and put it someplace. There is a downside (there seems to always be a downside, but if you treat it right sometimes you can ignore it); the sun does dry out rubber tires and such, and the plane’s interiors have to be protected by materials applied to most of the openings. Now this is probably a bit more than you really wanted to know, but I like it that way, plus I believe it gives the story more purpose.

Then there was the reason why the base stayed there. The one no one really wanted to address as Davis-Monthan rapidly became surrounded by Tucson’s growing sprawl. Jack thought he knew the reason, and it had been confirmed over a few beers with some of the locals. So given those circumstances it had to be true, right? We all know the credibility of beer-related conversations. The theory – that’s good, let’s call it a theory – is based on what has over the last few decades actually begun to make our world a better place. Is that not hard to believe, the world actually improving?

Now honestly, when the first planes were pulled into the desert and hydraulic lines, brake systems and engine lubricants were drained, not to mention fuel systems purged, was this done with our present standards of pollution controls? There were no standards and little or no knowledge of the long-term dangers of these materials. Lead-based paints were the norm and if they chipped and flaked onto the ground, so what. It was nearly a generation before the Surgeon General stopped smoking and asbestos was still one of those great materials for all kinds of things. So a bit of these fluids drained onto the desert floor sure wouldn’t hurt anything. Don’t imagine they would like to check the soil too carefully now along with the salvager’s land around the base.

Things really do change come to think of it. Wonder if anyone ever sued the United States government for encouraging the use of tobacco? They should be in court right next to the cigarette companies. I have actually seen the evidence for myself in a museum display. There in a display of old military field rations were cigarettes provided at no cost, packed right in with the meals. Hey guys, smoke up on US. And how about the Red Cross? Didn’t they hand out smokes to the troops or pack them in their care packages? How much are you responsible for when you didn’t know any better? Better not ask a lawyer that one or the rest of the story might never get related and I do ramble on, don’t I? Oh, now where were we?

Jack had been on a tour of the Boneyard a couple years ago, and it was really pretty neat. The Air Force loaded you on a bus that should have been moth-balled before most of the planes that were there. A very well spoken non-com gave a good running dissertation of what they were seeing on their hour-and-a-quarter tour of the base and the graveyard. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base itself is a very interesting active facility. It is the headquarters of the Twelfth Air Force, and home to a number of active squadrons, including several A10 squadrons. They also have a lot of winter visitors in the form of Air Force reserve groups from cold climates who want to train and play golf in a more hospitable environment.

And for you trivia folks, Davis-Monthan is not a person’s name, it belongs to two people. Samuel H. Davis and Oscar Monthan were both from Tucson and were both Army Air Corps officers in the early years of military aviation. The Army Air Corps became the Army Air Force in WWII and eventually after that war became what is today the United States Air Force. So these two guys shared the fate of dying in military accidents, and having this Air Force facility named after them.

The base got its start when the US government purchased the land from the state government in 1923. During good old WWII the base was used for heavy bomber training. In 1946, they started storing aircraft there that they thought might be needed at a future date. One more little fact: at the end of WWII, 34,000 military aircraft were brought back from the war and most of them were scrapped.

With all that said, the Graveyard attracts a lot of visitors every year. Officially, the Graveyard is the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center, or AMARC, which is under the direction of the Air Force Material Command. Why they just don’t call it the Airplane Graveyard or Plane Junkyard is beyond me; it describes its function just as well as the official name and to my way of thinking sure would be a hell of a lot easier to remember. In fact it would be a memorable name. Or we could do like the government and title it AJUNK for Aircraft Junk. A person could remember it really easily instead of that other name.

So AJUNK’s or AMARC’s mission, and you always have to have a mission, “is to support our customers’ Storage, Regeneration, Reclamation and Disposal needs... in war and peace.” AMARC’s customers include all of the armed forces of the United States along with some other government service-oriented departments. Some of these other service-oriented departments might at first not seem to be what you would think of as the obvious ones. For example, with all the high-profile forest fires in recent years, it is nice to know that the planes you see dumping fire retardant materials on the fires are often recycled AMARC planes.

There were a lot of retired Air Force types on the tour Jack took, along with a number who had served their country years before in other branches of the military. The average age was probably over 60. And this for them was a chance to see a bit of their youth lined up in the desert sun. There were nearly a thousand F-4s from the USAF, Navy and Marines. These were state-of-the-art in Vietnam and a few were still flying in the Gulf War. The last of them had arrived here from reserve as well as active units, although some of our current allies still fly them.

Wonder if some of our former allies fly them? Think about this – you get a divorce from an ally but they get to keep the war toys. Well, some of them did pay for them, but what a miserable situation to be in. Shot by your own gun. Think of all the stuff left in Vietnam and yes, Cambodia. How about Iran? Did we ever give or sell stuff to Iraq when we liked them? And then Panama from good guy to bad guy to good guy again. Need we list all of our former friends who strayed or just plain got a better offer along the way.

This could get complicated if you were Russian, for example. All those people you armed and how few old friends are really still friends. And then you can add to their total all the old provinces of the Soviet Union, which are now independent countries.

Anyway, when Jack was on the tour, he heard one fella all choked up with emotion say, “That was mine, I flew it over Hanoi,” as he pointed to a huge bomber in the distance. The reason the guy knew it was his bomber, by the way, was the tail number, or at least that is what I figure. More about those numbers later.

I might not approve of war or the glorification of it, but what of the participants? Off the subject again and onto the soap box. If someone came up to you and said, “I want a few years of your time for which you will be paid a subsistence wage to make the world a better place to live. And in the course of this time you may be subjected to substandard living conditions and extreme mental and physical stress. You might have to kill or maim a few people and in return there is a very high probability that you might receive the same treatment. Remember, however, this is for the greater good of this and future generations.” Would you go? And how should we treat those who went, and those who were sacrificed in wars not of their making?

A little respect would be nice, for without their sacrifices to bring things back into equilibrium the world could today be a much colder and more frightening place. It is indeed sad when the honorees outnumber the honorers. For the more cynical of us, so many sacrifices with so little real progress of getting along in the world to show for them.

The massive B52s always seem to provide the most interest. There are still over a hundred of the Boeing monsters on active duty and some are now older than the pilots flying them. The most fascinating fact is that the pilots’ children might be able to fly them if they choose to follow their parent’s profession and the Air Force chooses to maintain them for their expected life span.

One of the additional responsibilities that AMARC has taken on is the guillotining of the old B52s that are covered under the SALT agreement. Yes, guillotining – using a massive piece of steel lifted by a crane and then dropped on the plane. This actually shears the airframe, guaranteeing that the plane can never be used again. The guillotining is repeated several times, giving an end result somewhat resembling being drawn and quartered. Being drawn and quartered, by the way, is one of the methods of execution that the guillotine replaced for humanitarian reasons. You must always be humane when executing someone, for we are so very civilized.

Oh, where were we in the story? I’m sorry, I do this all the time, get off on other things that is. Jack was driving by the graveyard and having a hard time focusing since he had stayed up and imbibed far too much red wine the night before. It was thinking about the Newport, Rhode Island, case that caused it all. What a strange set of circumstances that had been, and then its final resolution – wow. That was an excuse more than anything; red wine just plain did strange things to him.

Jack once told me that while seriously under the influence he had a revelation. It was a time when his life was at a crossroads. Now, in my opinion, Jack is someone whose mid-life crisis started at puberty and will hopefully subside with his first social security check. Crossroads, well, let’s think old narrow streets in the heart of a city plagued with gridlock or, better yet, a bowl of spaghetti. With this in mind, to have a revelation must have required some real serious influence. I wonder how many similar revelations have occurred through history and led to sainthood. St. Patrick, for example, comes to mind, but I’m not sure what his real claim to sainthood is.

The revelation took place in a solitary drunken stupor. Who else would want to be there? Jack said that all of a sudden there was peace, tranquility and solution with direction. Basking in the exhilarating light of this event, Jack fell into a deep sleep; he passed out.

Upon awakening the next morning, life, well, the hangover was horrific. Focusing on the vision of the toilet was a challenge, nearly insurmountable, literally and figuratively. The perception of the crossroads was if anything worsened. There was a vague memory of tranquility and solution, but the road there and the destination revealed was lost in millions of dead brain cells. Jack continued to look, but never has regained that clarity. At the end he even alluded to sobriety as the environment required for the final quest.

While I am at it, talking about Jack, there is some further clarification required here. My old buddy is not a super hero, not even close. In fact he is a self-described coward. Now that might be a bit harsh and exaggerated. He does always come through, although often with more than a bit of hesitation. Along with this is the basic fact that he is not possessed of any super human or even above-average physical powers. He is, however, gifted with a superb set of survival instincts, including one for flight when a good fight may even seem appropriate.

I will stay with the Jack up-close-and-personal part a little longer. He is an average looking guy, particularly when you take into account he is the hero or at least the main character in this story. No, he doesn’t have sparkling movie star eyes; they are OK blue and very often, no, too often, bloodshot which also matches his often-ruddy complexion from well, you know. He is not a physically powerful looking person, but rather tall with just a little extra weight around the middle, generally what you would call thin yet neither wiry nor muscular. We are talking middle age with very thinning hair and a full beard, both with a slight majority of gray. Top that off with eternally dirty glasses and you have a rough idea of what this guy looks like. Descriptions like this are for some reason necessary in a book to complete the word picture, but why I am not sure. Sometimes I think it would be better to leave such things to the reader’s imagination, and they could come up with their own appropriate description.

With all that said and a couple of cups of coffee, Jack had been determined to go out to the Pima Air and Space Museum first thing in the morning. Getting there first thing in the morning had its advantages for a photographer because you had fewer people getting in your way and your pictures.

Jack really loves taking pictures, and at times can be really good at it; plus he has some interesting thoughts about photography. He says that it is not that photographers see more than others, but they look harder. His theory is that they go back again and again to a subject that interests them until they really see all of its facets, and it is amazing what is seen the second time that you didn’t see the first.

And going back again and again has nothing to do with time. It could be several trips of a great distance over a period of years or walking around a subject a number of times and seeing it differently with each view or visit. I myself have done this with some object that interests me and it does raise one’s awareness. And it can get really intense when you are dealing with animate objects.

The Pima Air and Space Museum is one of the few dividends you can derive from the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan. In fact, it is right across the street and for a few dollars you can get a close-up view of examples of the aircraft stored at AMARC, and those that were scrapped before a majority of us citizens were born. Jack finds these machines absolutely fascinating, spending many mornings when he winters in Tucson wandering around the extensive grounds. Guys think it is a guy thing and maybe to most it is, but I would go and take a look. Jack is easily entertained, though, and I don’t think I could handle going out there all the time even if I was into photography.

There are over 200 planes on display; some of them unique in the fact that they were prototypes and you may be looking at the only example of a massive machine that cost millions to build and then there were no buyers. That must be very frustrating, like giving a party, and no one shows up. Working on a complex flying system for years and no one wants what you have created.

Back to the museum, it all started when a bunch of military and civilian aircraft enthusiasts got together in 1967. They got Pima County to arrange for some land, the United States Government to donate some planes, and then formed a non-profit corporation to run the thing.

That thing is now the largest privately financed aircraft museum there is. It officially opened in 1976 with 75 aircraft and since then has grown in both number of aircraft and facilities. Most aircraft are displayed outside, but hangar construction is an ongoing program. The museum is also where tours of the Boneyard now originate, unlike the one Jack took several years ago.

The museum also has a second site, which we will discuss later. This is the end of the travel log for this chapter; we hope you have enjoyed our presentation. Feel free at this time to get up and walk around and about, get a drink or snack, and take a bathroom break if required. And then read on.

Just a Tad Earlier at the Pima Air and Space Museum

Wulfe Focke was about to introduce to the world this story’s main character, which leads to the reason the story is being told. So how does a guy with a name like Wulfe get this honor (or blame as the case may be)? From his name you may have guessed that Wulfe is German, and he was born there in 1942.

Wulfe was a very lucky little guy from birth. As the Fatherland was going down the shitter at the end of WWII (deservedly so), his dad was gainfully employed as a fueling technician in the German rocket development program. His specialty was liquid fueling of the V2 rocket, which was eventually fired at England in large numbers toward the end of the war. And the end of the war is what made Wulfe a lucky little German.

The United States was extremely interested in German missiles and welcomed a number of German scientists into the country after the war to learn about their missile program. The United States Military also brought over a number of German missiles to play with. It was great to have the missiles along with the scientists, but they needed the fuel guy to pump highly, flammable juice into the missiles to make them go. Scientists don’t do this well, they have a habit of forgetting to put out their cigarettes when they… well anyway… Wulfe’s dad with wife and young child were brought to America, and that’s why Wulfe was a lucky little German. The senior Focke enjoyed a long career in fueling rockets and his family avoided the hardships of post-war Germany, although young Wulfe did suffer somewhat from his name growing up.

Now you would think a responsible parent would just change the child’s name. Maybe it was a family thing or name, a way to maintain roots. However, look at what some parents do to small children, that appears cute at the time for an infant, but is an albatross-like name in adulthood. Examples would usually be appropriate at this time, but by repeating the most horrid, in the opinion of this writer, would only add to the trauma of those labeled with such names.

Wulfe, like his father, liked things that went up into the sky. He loved airplanes. He had spent his life with planes that he really didn’t care to fly in. They were fast, dangerous, and to many exciting. After 30 years as a flight engineer in the USAF, including two tours at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, he retired. He then got a part-time job at the Pima Museum restoring planes, which not so many years ago he had maintained for flight and combat.

This Friday morning found Wulfe working on an F-4, probably his all-time favorite plane. In the last few years, F-4s had been arriving at Davis-Monthan in increasing numbers. The museum now had three, one each of the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force types. This had been a very exciting week for Wulfe. He had started Monday after barely sleeping Sunday night removing the cocoon from a F-4C USAF fighter-bomber. I can understand that; I often lie awake nights thinking about playing with old fighter-bombers, (again, must be a guy thing).

By the way, the cocoon is the material they put on the plane in storage to further slow down deterioration. Besides being one of his favorite planes, Wulfe was considered an expert on the F-4; he was to supervise the complete restoration.

He had first been trained on F-4Bs at MacDill AFB in 1963. The Bs were the Navy version, and the USAF had borrowed some to get started until their C version was ready. He had been a pup of 24 then and a new father. Now he has three grandchildren, each with one-syllable “American” names.

This would probably be a good time for a gal to show off a little bit about what she knew and found out about the Phantom F-4. The first F-4 flew in 1958 and originally was built for the Navy to fly off aircraft carrier decks. By the way, I’m still looking to see who we can give proper credit to for naming the aircraft the Phantom. It was Robert McNamara. No, he didn’t name the plane; but he did, as Secretary of Defense in the ’60s, and one of the main characters who brought us the Vietnam War, back the use of this plane by all the combat flying branches of the military.

This was rather unique, everyone using the same plane, but McNamara came to government from Ford Motor Company and uniformity encouraged mass production and lower cost. The F-4 became in effect the go-anywhere, do-anything plane, for the era that spanned parts of four decades.

This plane with its “F” designation was big, sturdy, loud, and belched a lot of exhaust smoke when the pedal was put to metal, so to speak. It can fly up to 1500 miles per hour or over two times the speed of sound, and can go up 62,000 feet, or close to 12 miles, above the earth. It carried two crew members seated front and back. The back seat’s responsibility differed according to the branch of service flying the plane.

The F-4 could carry close to 20,000 pounds of weapons under its fuselage in all kinds of packages to accomplish its mission in combat to rain death and destruction upon the enemies of whomever was flying it. I use the term whomever because over the years we sold this baby to lots of other countries. It was a real moneymaker for McDonnell Douglas. Anyway, a girl could just go on and on about this really neat old killing machine.

Back to the story, here was Wulfe at the Pima Air Museum, young again at heart with an early F-4C to restore. This one most likely had seen combat, maybe even in 1965 when he did his first tour in Vietnam. He had known this specific F-4C since it appeared at Davis-Monthan during his tour of duty there after Vietnam over 30 years ago.

Each day, Wulfe worked at carefully removing the Spraylat cocooning and making notes as he went. This was no ordinary F-4C when it came to its preservation at AMARC. It was one of four that had arrived at Davis-Monthan in the fall of 1967. They had been trucked in, the fuselage already with a coat of Spraylat on it. The wings came in separately and been reattached.

The story was that these planes had been used in stress-related flight tests and were no longer considered air worthy. They were to be a part of an experimental long-term preservation project. Normally the planes were Spraylated and either brought back to serviceable condition periodically or stripped for parts. In this case, they were to be sealed and the coating never removed, but just renewed periodically to prevent any breaks.

So, what is this Spraylat? Spraylat is a plastic coating sprayed onto certain aircraft surfaces, to keep dirt, sand and foreign matter out of the aircraft. Its white color and composition also keeps the interior of the aircraft cooler than if nothing was applied. This protects things like rubber, electronic components, and the other stuff in the plane. Remember, somewhere I said we would get back to this, and being true to my word, here we are.

This F-4 really was sort of a time capsule to be opened sometime in the future and the condition studied. It had never been opened; none of the four that arrived together had ever been opened. There was some question about whatever became of the long-term storage test. The new commander of AMARC was curious about what happened, too. After making a series of inquires, no one seemed to know or care.

Now for the scary part. Without any guidance from above, which is tricky in the Air Force, our new commander made an executive decision. Donate one of the planes to the museum, which the folks at the museum were happy to get. It was original equipment, a 32-year-old plane. It had no upgrades basically from the day it was built and should be complete. It was known that the museum had a first-class operation with a first-class F-4 guy in Wulfe, who would be delegated to document the condition of the aircraft in detail as he removed the cocoon.

So Wulfe worked alone surrounded by other projects and people in the restoration hangar at the museum. The initial removal of the cocoon was done with precision not normally associated with this type of work. And the taxpayer didn’t foot the bill for the findings of a test that no one seemed to remember.

The Spraylat had been carefully removed from sections of the fuselage and engines when Wulfe Focke started to come up with a very large question about the aircraft he was working on. This was a really, really big question. That was Thursday, and dictated his actions first thing Friday morning.

Wulfe would open the cockpit next. And it was with no little excitement that he started work on this very early Friday morning. Again, it had been sealed and covered for over 30 years. Removing the cocoon was not that difficult, but each step was done deliberately and notations were made periodically.

The front fixed window glass of two side panels and a center panel came first. The first side panel actually only revealed part of the instrument panel. Next was the center panel, which would allow Wulfe to look directly into the cockpit and straight back to the pilot’s seat. As soon as it was peeled off, Wulfe took a flashlight to look in and get his first real view of the condition of the cockpit.

That’s when Wulfe’s heart skipped a beat or two. There was something inside the cockpit, in the pilot’s seat. It was a nondescript shape, like a large bag. It appeared to be strapped into the seat. His first thought was that it was probably part of the experiment.

Something else had been stored in his little time capsule to measure the deterioration. Well, now the curiosity was building and it was time to break the material sealing the forward canopy over the pilot’s seat and open it. This was accomplished in short order and upon opening the canopy Wulfe was greeted by the realization that in the pilot’s seat was strapped what appeared to be a body bag. He knew exactly what it was; he had seen too many bodies stuffed in them in Vietnam. But what was it doing here?

In the back of his mind he was still thinking that it had something to do with the preservation. He called over a couple of the other guys to look at it, and before they could object Wulfe started to unzip the bag. Some idiot had put a mannequin in the bag for God knows why when the plane was stored so many years ago.

Maybe unknown to Wulfe and long forgotten by others, it was part of the original tests on the cocooning process. Or, as he could imagine, a practical joke by some warped mind back in the late sixties. For a fleeting moment he even thought of a couple of old cohorts who might be nutty enough to do something like this.

There was a head and he reached out and touched it; he actually went and touched it. Later he said it was sort of automatic, he had to touch it to see what it was. Until he did he still thought it could be a mannequin. It was so well preserved, to Wulfe (the only one close enough to really see anything) it just looked real dried up and dehydrated in the opened dark of its bag. Later when it was fully brought into the light of day, so to speak, it was really a bit worse than that.

Out of its dark bag, it was said to be pretty wrinkled and looked more like a mannequin from a horror show. But that morning, initially to the bystanders, it was not much more than a dark shadow of a head in a barely opened bag. There was no horrid smell, just real musty-like. Yet now the taste of bile was in Wulfe’s mouth, and a feeling of nausea just before the retching starts.

Somehow though, it took a few moments, he recovered and then the cursing started. First it was just a whisper but quickly grew louder and louder with every expletive in English and a few his father taught him in German. It soon ran its course and he stopped and looked around him. The entire restoration hangar work force was converging on the scene. The first two bystanders just stood there dumbstruck. All work had stopped, as 20 or more people gathered around him and the F-4 to see what the hell was wrong. It was so horribly wrong, finding a body that could not be restored.