For many decades, the Navy conducted all its primary flight training at NAS Saufley outside Pensacola, FL in, depending on your age, Stearmans, SNJ’s, or T-34’s (piston-powered B’s, as I was in, and later turboprop C’s). In addition, Training Squadron ONE (VT-1) also conducted basic flight familiarization for the Basic Naval Flight Officer School run by VT-10 at NAS Pensacola. Student NFO’s would go out to Saufley for three weeks early in their training to find out if they could keep their brains functioning in an airplane in flight before any more money was invested in them. This involved ground training, three back-seat training flights (DR/pilotage nav, acro, and a check), all flown with a VT-1 instructor who was just happy to be in the front seat and fly the plane for a change.
When you walked out on the flight line at Saufley Field, you were looking at about 200 T-34’s parked all over the place in various stages of use, either running before/after flight, being preflighted, being worked on, you name it. The airplanes were assigned parking spaces in the order of the big number painted on their side. Of course, airplanes do break when being used that much, and the plane you were assigned on the original schedule was not always the plane you would actually fly. In addition, the schedule at Saufley was chock-full, with instructors flying 4-6 times a day, especially when the days are long in summer. Murphy’s Law being what it is, on those long days, instructors were always running behind and students often had to go to a plane and wait for an instructor or the instructor just ran to the next plane and called for the student to come out.
On the day in question, a student aviator (pilot) on about his fourth flight was hanging around the ready room when the Squadron Duty Officer told him that his instructor was running late, and the student should go to Yellow Sheets (maintenance control), get the book on the airplane he was flying, go to the plane, strap in, and wait for his instructor, which is just what he did. At the same time, a student NFO on his first flight was told that his instructor was running a bit late so the student should go out to his assigned aircraft where his instructor would be waiting in the aircraft which was just returning from another flight with another crew.
Unbeknownst to the SNFO, the returning aircraft was “down,” and was directed to the hangar for maintenance. His instructor got the word at Yellow Sheets while checking in from his previous flight, and went off down the other end of the flight line to the replacement aircraft. Meanwhile, the student pilot’s instructor was running even later, and the student pilot had climbed into his T-34 – in the spot next to the SNFO’s assigned plane. When the SNFO arrived at the spot he was told to go, he saw two things – an empty space where he had been told to go, and a T-34 with a pilot in the front seat and nobody in the back in the next space. “I guess I got the number wrong, or maybe the instructor just took the next plane,” he thought.
Now, those more experienced will realize that it doesn’t work like that – when your plane is broke, you don’t just grab the one next to it and fly, but this was his first flight, he was a bit nervous, and being an Officer Candidate rather than already commissioned as an Ensign, he really didn’t want to argue with what he thought was a Lieutenant (back then, Navy folks didn’t wear rank on their flight suits). And a Navy safety rule requires you to wear your helmet on the flight line to build the habit of wearing it on the carrier flight deck – an important safety precaution. Also, being a sunny day, both students’ visors were down, further obscuring identity. So when the student aviator saw someone in a green bag and helmet with the visor down come trotting out, look around, and then climb into the back seat of his plane, he didn’t think it could be anyone other than his instructor. And he, too, being an OC, didn’t feel like pestering a commissioned officer with details.
The two students got through the pre-start, taxi, and pre-takeoff checks just fine, although each was kind of wondering why the other was calling him “sir.” The pilot figured that the “instructor” was an unusually polite type, perhaps showing him what it was like to fly with a real crew under his command. The SNFO, on his very first flight in the Navy, figured it was just some sort of common courtesy among crewmembers.
All was well until at about 400 feet the SNFO said to the student pilot, “Heading to Point Alpha is 185 degrees magnetic.”
“Huh?” said the front-seater. “The acro area is northwest, sir.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the SNFO, “This is my NF-1 ride, not NF-2.”
“NF-1???” yelped the student pilot, “This a PT-4 flight!”
“PT-4 – that’s a pilot ride,” comes the reply from the back. “Aren’t you my instructor?”
“Aren’t you MY instructor?” asks the pilot.
“No, sir, I’m NFOC Jones, and this is my first flight.”
”I’m AOC Smith, and this is my fourth flight.”
“Oh, $%^&*(.”
“Saufley Tower, Sioux Falls 123, uhhh…we need to talk to the duty instructor…”
It is a credit to the quality of preflight training in the Navy that the duty instructor in the tower managed to talk them down safely. And VT-1 established a new rule prohibiting any future “meet me at the airplane” deals. But that’s how it happened one sunny day in the third week of May, 1973, in Pensacola, Florida, that a Navy aircraft took off without a rated aviation officer aboard.
