By Jim Murray

It was a cool damp March morning on the Plattsburgh flight line. It was going on 04:00 and all was calm, the morning's flyers were about ready. I was driving Red 2 with three other crew chiefs that were taking a break. I had just come back from catching an F-106 that Job Control asked us to catch as we had no one else around to do it. Awesome jet, it was slightly foggy and the F-106 looked like a predator of the night cutting through the fog. When that jet shut down it's engine, it made the most awesome sound when it ran down to a stop.

The guys wanted to see it so I said "What the hell!". We got down by it and got out to look around and what did we find? A drag chute. So one of my guys grabbed it for a keep sake and said "That jet don't need it for take-off!". We agreed about that but we didn't think about the landing. So we got back in the truck and went down to the trim pad as we had a jet down there and we were most of the way down that end anyway.

We checked out the jet on thr trim pad and found out that it was Tango Uniform (Tit's Up- dead on it's back). That was 680249's norm. So we started our way back to teh flight line. I came up with a great idea. Let's play F-106! So I told my chute rigger to rig that bad boy to the tow hook in the back of Red 2. I asked the guys "How fast do you think we have to go to get a good chute?". We cam up with 40-45 mph so off I went and when we got up to 45 mph I gave the order to deploy the chute. "Boy did it deploy!". It opened with a crack and the trcuk kept going, we did not slow down at all. But the rear bumper sure came to a noisy halt about 150 feet behind us.

We all said "Holly S#$%" at about the same time and teh things that went through my head like it was great to be a Sergeant. Nothing like an Article 15 to screw you out of stripes and money. So I came up with another great idea. I asked my chute rigger and safety wire specialist to get the bumper back on the mighty Red 2 for a mission. A mission to save the great F-106 combat team from a hard landing. So the bumper was on the truck and we were on our way.

We got back to the line and parked by the AGE equipment between the two flight shacks that were used by Red Section and White Section. OMS Super was over there parked and facing us doing paper work. We had a plan and I hoped it would all work out. After about 10 minutes, we had our chance. White 1 called White 2 to get a mule and wouldn't you know it, we were right by one. I gave White 2 a call and said I was right by one and would help them out as they had a few broke jets and Red Section was sitting good. Teamwork! We backed up and hooked it up. Prior to moving, I called over to OMS Super to have him move back a little. He looked up just in time to see Red 2 get in the six by that mule with the stuck brakes. You can never trust that AGE equipment. That morning, we all learned one thing! We should have played a different game!