Kirk “KB” Clark USAF, F-100D, 1967-1968
{ Date Of Hire By Western Airlines: 10/28/1968 }
KB Clark wrote The Shootdown of Jim Pollak (Part II) for Vietnam to Western Airlines. I have learned that he left out a lot of personal information, plus, the photos that he swore he didn’t have turned up after the book was already in print. I had a choice: either have a photo section for all the missing photos or ask KB to write another short story about his Vietnam tour and let me include the missing photos and a little more background information about him. I know KB’s family, friends, and other readers would not want to pass up another great story from him, so I asked and he graciously agreed to write a second chapter.
Here’s the “Oh, by the way,” missing background information on KB Clark. The title of this chapter includes the number 361. That refers to the number of missions that KB flew in the F-100 in his one year tour in Vietnam. (Now it’s nice to know that out of 365 days he took 4 days off, or more than likely he flew two or more missions on several days. In any case, that’s a lot of missions in twelve months!) According to the Air Force Super Sabre Society, that is the largest number of F-100 missions flown in a one year tour in Vietnam by any Air Force pilot. Then there is the matter of the three bailouts from aircraft in KB’s Air Force career – two from the F-100 and one from an A-7 while he was flying with the Colorado Air National Guard (at night, just to make it a bit more exciting). Maybe not a record, but close to it. KB wanted to be sure I knew that although there were three bailouts there were only two ejections as the ejection seat failed to fire on one of them. It was an F-100 and the canopy blew off in the proper sequence but the ejection seat failed to fire. He unfastened his seat belt and shoulder harness and popped out of the airplane, which was pulling heavy negative G forces on its trip earthward.
Now here is KB Clark’s second story. This story takes place on his way to Vietnam, at Wheelus Air Base, Libya, where the desert gunnery and bombing range was used by F-100 and F-105 pilots as they prepared, among other things, for deployment to the war zone. KB titled this story, The Last Liberation, And 361.
My first operational assignment in the Air Force took me to the 493rd TFS, 48th TFW at RAF Station Lakenheath in the UK. I was flying the F-100 Super Sabre. At Lakenheath we were able to accomplish most of our mission locally in spite of the notoriously bad weather in England. Low ceilings and poor visibility made instrument departures, instrument approaches, and GCAs (ground controlled radar approaches) the norm. We were able to work around most weather problems but our gunnery training required clear skies, sunshine, and a place where civilians on the ground wouldn’t be a factor. These were the primary reasons Wheelus AB, Libya, existed.
Located just east of Tripoli on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, Wheelus was a base where we could fly weapons delivery missions on controlled ranges in the desert in a very sparsely populated area. Libya is mostly sand and so is Wheelus. For the units that were there for gunnery training, poured concrete dormitory-like quarters had been constructed. A squadron would be assigned one wing of a building so the pilots of a unit were billeted together, usually two to a room. There was plenty of sand in our rooms too!
After working all day at Wheelus, we would usually go to the Officers’ Club for dinner and a couple of beers. In the O-Club bar there was situated a large model of an F-105 that must have been 6-7 feet in length, nose to tail. This model was displayed in front of the bar mirrors and above the bar cabinets, and was mounted on a pipe that went up the model’s tailpipe. The model just slid onto the pipe and was held in place with a single bolt through the model’s afterburner eyelids and the pipe. The model was mounted in an approximate attitude of 20-30 degrees nose high and 70-80 degrees of left bank.
It was a beautiful model but it was an F-105 model, not an F-100 model. On any given day there were about 10 times more F-100 pilots than F-105 pilots at Wheelus for gunnery training, so we Hun jocks felt there should be a big F-100 model behind the bar too. But if no F-100 model, then no F-105 model either.
On my last TDY to Wheelus, which was in late 1966 or early 1967, and after a full day of work, my squadron mates and I went to the club for dinner and then retired to the bar for a beer or two. There behind the bar was the F-105, silently mocking us F-100 pilots. After a few drinks we left the club, went back to our quarters, and gathered in the squadron social room to chat some more. Our discussion centered on the F-105 model and the need to liberate it from the O-Club.
At some point in the conversation I realized it was my destiny to liberate the model. Understanding this, and knowing that I would need the stealth of a cat burglar for this to be a successful operation, I went to my room and dressed in my Air Force-issue green thermal underwear. It looked like those uniforms the Chi-Coms wore during the Korean War, with all that stitching and with a quilt-like appearance. I then walked to the O-Club which was now closed as the hour was late.
I tried the door that we used to enter the club (double doors actually) and it was unlocked so I walked in and went to the F-105 model. I removed the nut from the bolt and the bolt from the pipe and eyelids. I slid the model off the pipe and discovered it was very heavy. The sound of breaking glass could be heard as I inadvertently knocked glasses off the countertops. I grabbed the model in a bear-hug (it was taller than I was) and walked towards the exit, hit the double doors, knocking them open, and then I retraced my steps to our dorm (for want of a better description of our concrete blockhouse). I leaned the model up against the dorm building, close to the door, and went in to give my squadron mates the good news. After telling them that the model had been liberated, some followed me outside to take a look while others mysteriously disappeared.
We talked about what we should do with our prize for quite some time until finally a security police car pulled up and the security policeman wanted to know about the F-105 model currently leaning against the building. Major Skip Sedgwick, hoping to keep a lid on this, repeatedly implored the security police “not to make a federal case out of this.” After the police had their information, we dispersed to our rooms. My roommate, Don Hutchinson, was already in bed and asleep, so I hopped into bed and immediately fell asleep.
The bedroom door flew open with a crash, the lights snapped on, and Don, still asleep but with eyes wide open, sat straight up in bed. Our squadron operations officer, Major Bert Freeman, stormed into the room, pulled the sheet and blanket off me and said, “Get up KB, you’ve got a meeting with Colonel Evans at 0700.” The time was 0655. (This is the same William Evans of whom Joe Thomas rightly speaks so highly in his story in Volume 2, Chapter 15.)
Colonel Evans was the DCO (Deputy Commander of Operations) for the wing at Wheelus. I thought I would be meeting him solo but when I entered his waiting room, Captain Jim “Andy” Anderson and Captain Hal Hermes were there too. They told me that they had also heard the call to liberate the model but had decided the best way to get into the club was through the roof, just like real cat burglars would do. They were on the roof when the Security Police inquired of them as to what they were doing up there.
We met with Colonel Evans and talked about last night for a while. He told us he would give the situation some thought before deciding on our punishment, but first I was required to return the F-105 model to the club. When I went to return it I was amazed at how much heavier it was than it was the night before, but I did get it back to the club. I was told that I was responsible for paying for the broken glasses and the damage to the doors that I caused when exiting the O-Club, but I never did get a bill for that.
That night’s activities generated a flood of phone calls and messages between the “head sheds” at Lakenheath and Wheelus. Initially, someone wanted our scalps as an example for others, but the Lakenheath brass went to bat for us and several squadron personnel worked closely with Colonel Evans to defuse the situation. Lt. Colonel George “Big Kahuna” Kertez, among others, was observed regularly making the trek from the 493rd operations building to the Wheelus Wing Command Post.
So over the course of the next two weeks, our punishment went from publicly stripping us of our rank to be immediately followed by meeting a firing squad, to life imprisonment at hard labor, to be assigned to walk daily guard duty on the Defense Early Warning Line above the Arctic Circle, to a court martial, to an Article 15, to finally, “Oh hell, just send them to Vietnam.”
Which they did—and thus ends the story of the last liberation of the Wheelus Officers’ Club F-105 model. As a post script, Colonel Evans was sent from Wheelus to Tuy Hoa AB in Vietnam to be the commander of the 31st TFW. On Friday, 29 December 1967, six months after the model caper, Colonel Evans was awarding me my first Air Medal at Tuy Hoa and said, “KB, back at Wheelus who would have guessed I would be doing this?”
I would like to dedicate this short story to:
Colonel William Evans who retired as an Air Force 4-star general and who saved 3 junior officers’ butts.
Captain Jim “Flyfoot” Anderson, fellow cat burglar who died much too young. Jim’s full name, to differentiate him from all the Jim Andersons in the Air Force: James Wilber Anderson III, USAFA ’60, the second class to graduate from the Air Force Academy.
Captain Hal “Bugsy” Hermes, fellow cat burglar who retired as an Air Force 2-star general.