Presque Isle air base was then the home of an air defense interceptor squadron, part of the Air Defense Command's string of bases along the U.S.-Canadian border to protect us from Soviet bomber attack.

As we landed, down a long runway recently plowed, we were amazed at the height of the snowbanks piled up along both sides of the runway and the several taxiways. At the ends of the runway too were huge banks of snow, well over 25 feet high. It was like descending into a trough, for after touchdown you couldn't see a thing off to the sides.

It felt good to get inside the Base operations building, where it was warm. Even though the sun shone brightly, it didn't feel like a good say to stay out of doors.

Our stay was not to be long, as we had other places to stop on our return flight to Texas, but it was to be long enough for us to witness a strange aircraft accident.

We heard from the dispatcher that an F-89 Scorpion two-seat, twin-engine interceptor was coming in for landing. Those radar-equipped fighters were the latest and greatest of the time, so I just had to go outside to watch him land. In those days I was even more of an "airplane nut" than I am now.

In order to get a good look at the landing F-89, several of us climbed atop a huge snowbank. From that perch we could see the length of the runway, and the approaching interceptor off to our left. There was a thin glaze of ice on the runway, but that hadn't bothered our landing.

The F-89 dropped lower and lower, as it apprached the touchdown point. The landing was especially smooth, but to my inexpert eye appeared awfully fast.

The plane zipped past us and down the long runway. And then it suddenly disapeared. The F-89 slammed into the big snowbank at the end of the runway and burried itself completely. No bang, no cloud of smoke and anything. It just disappeared into that big pile of snow. Was that a normal landing?

We later discovered that the pilot reports loss of brakes, and had no choice but to slam into the snowbank. From our vantage point we could not see that the plane had emerged on the other side of the snow and the crew easily got out after opening the big plexiglass canopy. The only other problem they had was struggling through the deep snow to get to the plowed runway, where fire and rescue crews picked them up.