Europe circa 1955

While assigned to 12^th Air Force, Combat Operations, we received word that the Libyan government was pressing to terminate our use of Wheelus Air Base and ranges. Col Robinson, Chief of Tactical Air Operations and I were directed to go to Wheelus and meet with the Base Commander to investigate the matter. We scheduled an 86thFighter Bomber Wing T-33 for the trip. We cleared to Rome, Champino Airport for refueling, then on to Wheelus. We flipped a coin and Robby flew the first leg. The weather was fair to southern Germany then turned sour over the Alps and beyond.

The only navigation gear we had on-board was our radio compass. It worked well until we passed Munich, then it became unreliable. We didn't know this until we were over northern Italy and the radio signals became unintelligible. We checked our flight plan, ground speed, and ETA's, and should be over the eastern side of Italy, away from the mountain chain, in the vicinity of Pisa. We tried to raise any ground station on VHF with no success. We were on top of the weather but the weather below was solid and black, with obvious heavy rain.

The radio compass was useless, just searching the area in random circles. Fuel was running low as we flew out our Rome ETA, so we elected to descend and look for a place to land, holding bail-out as the last resort. We entered the clouds at approximately 18,000 ft, into the heavy rain and turbulence. All was going well to just below 3,000 ft when I was looking out the left side of the aircraft at the rain and a very large rock passed mere feet beneath our left tip tank. I grabbed the controls, crammed on the power, and pulled the nose up to get away from the cummulo-granite. Robbie had his head in the instruments and didn’t see the mountain top.

Besides being a close shave, it was - at the same time - a wake-up call and a blessing since it did give us a "quick fix" on our relative position. I knew EXACTLY how high that rock was!  However, this is not a recommended technique, since it tends to make a mess out your flightsuit.

Robbie took the aircraft again after regaining his breath while I quickly checked our map and found "our mountain." But we had a another little problem - no fuel. We flew a new ETA, to clear the mountains, and again resumed our letdown, breaking out of the bottom of the clouds below a 1,000 ft ceiling, in a heavy squall. We were over a little town that was soaked with rain. The only level area was a small parking lot and some narrow winding roads. Visibility was lousy, maybe a half mile at best. We were turning south of the town when out of the rain appeared a small airport. We were burning fumes about this time and had little choice but to go for it. Robbie made a short, tight turn, dumped the gear and flaps and aimed at the nearest runway. It was short, but just enough because - with no fuel left - we were light and slow. The landing was successful and a relief.

The airport turned out to be a former Italian Navy airport, but no longer active as a navy base. There were a couple of Italian men at the operations building, I have no idea what they did there, but through sign language (typical Italian gestures), we communicated that we were out of fuel. They went inside to a telephone and called the nearest navy base, who sent a truck with a couple of 50 gal barrels of gasoline. Since beggars can't be choosers, this was okay by us. Fortunately, the J-33 engine will run on either jet fuel or gas, so this was a fine solution.

When the truck arrived, It was still raining hard, but the navy guys had brought a hand pump, a large funnel, and chamois skins to filter the fuel when pumping it into the aircraft tanks. This has the unique quality of allowing gas to penetrate the chamois-skins but not the water. See what you can learn if you go out of your way to look for it?

Anyway, we filled only the main tanks, since it was a short flight to Rome. We tried to pay for the fuel, but they wouldn't take our money. With the help of the operations guy we made a call to Champino and they gave us VFR clearance to Rome. We fired up the engine on the battery, and with a good light-off, checked the engine at higher power, which worked well. The take-off was no problem, even with the short runway. Since we were loaded with only internal fuel, the temperature was cool and it was still raining which adds to the engine's thrust.

Once airborne, we flew directly to Rome, arrived in short order, and landed without incident. We had an Air Force support detachment at Champino who were able to drain the gas from the main tanks and refill with JP fuel, and replace our broken radio compass receiver. With the aircraft serviced, we filed across the Med to Wheelus and departed. The remainder of the flight was uneventful with me in the front seat.

I find it interesting that, of the thousands of flights one makes in a career, how the ones that stand out aren't those that went particularly well, but the ones that almost ended it.