by Phil Rowe
My flying career ended just where it began. That's hardly progress. Yet the facts cannot be denied. It was in the early 1950's that I trained as a navigator in the then-new Convair T-29 twin-prop transport. And that's the exact same plane that I flew when my flying career came to an end 21 years later.
In the intervening years I was fortunate to have flown in a variety of propeller and jet-powered airplanes. I flew in bombers, jet fighters and numerous transports variously as a celestial navigator, radar bombardier, electronic warfare officer and photo reconnaissance system operator. I flew in single engine airplanes and in some with eight. They included subsonic, supersonic, high altitude and knap-of-the-earth low-level birds. In all I managed to log qualified aircrew time in over 30 types and models. It was great fun, often extremely challenging and even dangerous at times. Many flights were of short duration, but more than two dozen were 24 hours or longer. Over 4000 hours in my logbook is certainly not a record, but it includes many wonderful memories.
It all began in Air Training Command at Ellington Field, Texas. There as an aviation cadet I learned the art and practices of aerial navigation. That continued at James Connally Air Force Base near Waco. It was in T-29's that I learned the techniques of radar navigation and bombing, mastering the Q-24 system. In fact I stayed at Waco upon graduation to be an instructor, teaching the Q-24 to hundreds of fellow navigators and several classes of pilots sent to learn navigation skills.
When I later embarked on my career-capping adventures in research and development at Wright Field, Ohio, the T-29 was among the available airplanes in which I flew to meet flying time requirements and maintain navigational proficiency. I again served as an instructor and flight examiner in the T-29, until they finally decided the a colonel no longer needed to keep such skills current. Of course by then the T-29 was no longer new and neither was I. We both showed our ages.
Over the years the complexity and capabilities of navigational equipment increased greatly. Analog computers gave way to more accurate and easier-to-operate digital systems. Radar scope resolution and precision became almost photographic, making target location and aiming more effective. Simple gravity bombs were upgraded to become smart bombs that could be guided to targets with pin-point accuracy. And the world of electronic warfare became so sophisticated that the wizardry of air defensive systems was almost staggering. Great strides in the capabilities of the navigator's tool kit were truly impressive.
Do I regret that I ended my flying career so tamely, rather than adding yet another advanced airplane to my logbook entries? Sure, but I have nothing to complain about. I traded my aircrew role for one even more exciting. I worked for four years on the B-1 bomber as an avionics engineer and later in support of flight test. And my last assignment was as Director of Engineering in the Air Force's R&D office for the fantastic E-3A (AWACS). A whole new world of challenges replaced my flying career from T-29 to T-29.