David Cormack USAF, C-7A, 1968-1969
{ Date Of Hire By Western Airlines: 10/30/1967 }
Introducing Dave Cormack requires that I start with my arrival at Williams AFB, Arizona, for Air Force Pilot Training. It definitely got off to a strange start. In early February 1967 I flew from San Francisco to Phoenix and was directed to a telephone in the airport where I was to call and request transportation to the base. As a newly minted 2nd lieutenant I tried to look like I knew what I was doing but it was all new to me. I was told to look for a blue Air Force bus that would pick me up at a stop outside baggage claim. When I got on that bus I truly felt that my Air Force experience, and along with it my pipeline to Vietnam, had started.
Arriving at the base housing office I was given a room assignment in the BOQ where I met my first roommate. His name escapes me but when we met he told me he was going to SIE from the program (self-initiated elimination)—he was going to quit as we were all going to be sent to Vietnam as cannon fodder and be killed. Well—so much for my first day on active duty.
The next morning I reported to the in-processing for our class while my “roommate” went to wherever one goes to SIE, and was long gone when I returned to my room at the end of the day. In his place I met Dave Cormack who I’m happy to say has been a friend for 50 years. Everyone joked about the missing first roommate, thinking he had probably been sent to Minot AFB, North Dakota, to be the club officer, a liaison with the officer’s wives club, and would have four years to contemplate the error of his decision. However, that was not the case. Some 15 months later as Dave and I arrived at Clark AFB, Philippines, to attend Jungle Survival School, we walked right into roommate #1. He was working in the Clark Aerial Port as officer in charge of manifesting passengers on the MAC charter flights.
Dave Cormack and I served in the same squadron at Cam Ranh Bay and even flew home together at the end of our 12 month tour. After a year of pilot training, survival school at Fairchild AFB, Washington, Caribou training school at Sewart AFB, Tennessee, and a year in Vietnam, Dave and I had spent nearly 2 ½ years together. It was quite a ride and encompassed a series of experiences that shaped both of our lives.
Dave’s Air Force career after Vietnam is quite a story in itself and his post retirement job with Boeing at the Kennedy Space Center was fascinating. Without the Air Force Caribou Association we never would have kept in touch and would surely have lost track of each other. This is the reason I always ask veterans if they have attended reunions after Vietnam. My annual Caribou Association reunion is a constant reminder of my good fortune and of the bond my Vietnam experience created with a wonderful group of men, Dave Cormack being at the top of that list.
Here is his story.
In September 2016 I attended the Air Force C-7A Caribou Association reunion in Washington D.C. One of the main reasons I went to the reunion was to see my pilot training roommate Bruce Cowee. Bruce and I were not only roommates but we ended up going to Vietnam together and were assigned to the same squadron flying the C-7A. We also attended the same survival school class, C-7A training, and flew to Vietnam together on a Northwest Airlines MAC Charter flight out of Travis AFB, California, in May 1968. It actually was a short stop at Clark AFB, Philippines, to attend Jungle Survival School, then on to Vietnam.
At the reunion Bruce gave me a copy of his book Vietnam to Western Airlines. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it and have been impressed with the stories and the experiences of the individuals who submitted them. Bruce asked if I would submit a story for his third volume of the book. I was a little hesitant as my experience as a “trash hauler” flying the C-7A in Vietnam seemed mundane compared to most of the stories in his book, but having known Bruce for 50 years, and having taken a different career path than his after Vietnam, I agreed to write a story. I have had a wonderful career, both my 30 years on active duty in the Air Force and my retirement position working for Boeing at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Florida. I hope my story will be of interest to the reader.
My interest in flying started at a very early age. I was an Air Force brat. My father was a chaplain in the Army Air Corp and was in Europe during WWII when I was born. I was 18 months old before he saw me. After WWII my father left the service and was the minister of a Baptist church in Omaha, Nebraska, but when the Korean conflict began, he was asked to return to active duty in what was now the Air Force, beginning a career as an Air Force chaplain and making me an Air Force brat.
Being at various Air Force bases I developed a fascination for airplanes. I was about 10 years old and remember after chapel services at Mitchell AFB, New York, going through the pews and collecting all the bulletins that had been left after the service. I would fold the old bulletins into paper airplanes and fly them from the balcony in the back of the chapel. At times the paper airplanes would get stuck on the exposed beams and on the chandeliers. The airmen that were chaplain assistants didn’t appreciate this as they would have to get tall ladders to get them down, pretty much ending my flying career in the chapel.
My father received an assignment to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1957 when I was 12 years old and our family flew there on a MATS (Military Air Transport Service) C-121 (Lockheed Constellation). It was 33 hours of flying time from Charleston AFB, South Carolina, to Dhahran Air Base. While at Dhahran I used to go down to the flight line and look at the aircraft, and since there was not much security back then, my best friend and I were free to walk anywhere on the flight line. There were T-34s and F-86s that were used for training Saudi pilots, and there were also some C-47s and C-54s assigned to base flight. Our family got to take several trips on the base flight aircraft and on these flights I remember being able to go to the cockpit and watch the pilots. It was back then I knew I wanted to be a pilot.
While I got to see a lot of interesting places and meet a lot of interesting people as an Air Force brat, one of the negative things was that I attended ten different schools by the time I graduated from high school. My dad’s last assignment was Eglin AFB, Florida, and we moved there when I was a senior, giving it the dubious distinction of being my third high school. There were several interesting Air Force brats at Eglin. One was Dick Covey who went on to the Air Force Academy and later became an Astronaut, and another was a neighbor by the name of Lt. Col. Henry John Dutchendorf. He was a B-58 Hustler pilot and holder of three speed records in that aircraft, but he will be remembered for a son who had some musical talent. He had changed his name to John Denver and had already left home when we were neighbors with his parents, but he came home at Christmas and put on a show at the Eglin Officers Club for the young people on base.
After graduating from high school I headed off to Florida State University where I graduated and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant through Air Force ROTC in December 1966. Then it was off to pilot training at Williams AFB, Arizona, reporting on 1 February 1967, which was my 22nd birthday. It was there I met my classmate and roommate in the BOQ, Bruce Cowee. We graduated and got our wings in February 1968 and got the same assignment to Vietnam, to fly the C-7A Caribou with the 458th TAS (tactical airlift squadron) at Cam Ranh Bay AB. With the same assignment we were able to provide each other moral support as we went to survival school at Fairchild AFB, Washington, and C-7 training at Sewart AFB, Tennessee. We also left Travis AFB on the same MAC charter flight bound for Clark AFB to complete jungle survival training.
At Clark there were more aircrew members than survival school training slots available so we ended up spending two weeks to complete a four day training course. Clark had a nice Officers Club so it was not a bad place to hang out, plus this time all counted towards our one year tour in Southeast Asia. It was rainy season at Clark so we were bused to Subic Bay Naval Base for training. Jungle survival was an interesting experience but what I remember most was the bus trip back to Clark from Subic Bay. There were two bus-loads of students and the Filipino drivers decided to race. We were on a dirt road and the buses kicked up so much dust that we were IFR (instrument flight rules) and if you were in the trailing bus you couldn’t see anything but a cloud of dust. There were several lead changes with the buses passing each other, and I know we were lucky to make it back alive.
The Caribou turned out to be a very good assignment. It was similar to being a bush pilot as we flew in and out of short fields that were mostly unimproved. Many had dirt or sod surfaces while some had PSP (pierced steel planking), laid over the dirt. We flew nearly every other day so it was an outstanding flying experience. I ended up with almost 1000 hours of combat time and had over 160 missions and over 1600 sorties. Many times we flew 10 or more sorties in a day but it only counted as one mission. On one mission I flew 16 sorties from Ban Me Thuot to Duc Lap SF (Special Forces) Camp when it was in desperate need of resupply.
While most of the missions were fairly routine there were a few that were very exciting. On one of my early missions we were directed to fly a tactical emergency resupply mission to Song Be SF Camp. The camp had been under attack, and being very new in country I did not know what to expect and was apprehensive as to what we might encounter. I expected to see heavy fighting at the camp and when we landed the Army SF troops were wearing flak jackets and helmets, but I didn’t see any fighting going on. Several months later I flew into Song Be and a C-7 that landed a few minutes after me picked up 22 hits of small arms fire on final approach. Fortunately nothing happened to my aircraft.
We always had one alert aircraft for our squadron but it very rarely got scrambled. There was one occasion, however, when I was on the alert crew and we were scrambled. It was a night alert and that was very unusual, as it meant it was a high priority mission. We did not normally fly at night as most of the fields we served were unlighted and outside the security of the Army camps. An Army unit at Ban Me Thuot City had been attacked and there were numerous casualties that need to be medevaced. We flew to Nha Trang to pick up a medevac team and then flew to Ban Me Thuot City airport. We usually flew into Ban Me Thuot East which had a 3000 foot paved runway, but Ban Me Thuot City was a small airfield with a 1500 foot sod runway located in the middle of the city. The field was not lighted and none of the crew had ever landed there before. We had difficulty finding the field in the dark but eventually identified it after jeeps were positioned at the approach end of the runway with their lights on. The airfield was not well defined in the dark and there were trees and buildings along both sides of the runway. That made it especially challenging at night but we landed safely, picked-up a dozen wounded Army troops, and flew them back to Nha Trang for proper medical attention.
Another mission I vividly remember was to An Loc, a base north of Tay Ninh City near the Cambodian border. The base had been under attack and the troops were desperately in need of resupply. On this particular mission An Loc was very HOT as enemy troops were in close proximity to the field and were firing rockets at the base. It was necessary for us to have a TOT (time on target) to provide us with fighter coverage for our approach and landing at the base. There was a combat control team on the ground to coordinate the traffic and they were functioning like a control tower because of the sheer volume of traffic. We were scheduled for two resupply sorties into An Loc that day.
Completing our second sortie we departed An Loc after dropping off a load of ammunition and supplies, and called Hilda (call sign for the Airlift Command Post in Saigon) to report our status. Hilda asked if we had picked up the combat control team as we were the last mission scheduled to An Loc that day. We told Hilda “no” as it had not been on our mission plan to pick them up. Hilda directed us to go back and pick up the combat control team and their equipment. We completed a 180 degree turn and headed back to the field, but shortly after turning around we received another call from Hilda telling us we could not go back without a new TOT. We were directed to return to Bien Hoa to refuel and wait until a new TOT could be coordinated.
The combat control team consisted of three team members with a jeep and a trailer full of radios. We were told by Hilda that we would just be picking up the 3 team members and that the jeep and trailer would remain at An Loc. Back at Bien Hoa we loaded enough fuel to pick up the 3 team members, drop them off in Saigon, and then return to Cam Ranh Bay. After receiving a new TOT we flew back to An Loc and discovered that the combat control team leader had a different plan. He wanted me to take the jeep and the trailer, but we didn’t have the payload capacity because of the amount of fuel on board. He decided that he would send the other two members of his team along with the radio trailer and that he would remain behind at An Loc with the jeep.
We loaded the trailer and the two combat control team members but were unable to contact Hilda on the ground, so after we got airborne I called and told them that we had two members and the trailer. The controller at Hilda was upset and said I needed to get the team leader out of there as a major attack was expected that night. We returned to An Loc for a fourth time and this time without any fighter coverage. After we landed to pick up the team leader the base came under a rocket and mortar attack. Needless to say, we quickly picked him up and made an immediate departure as the rockets were impacting near the runway. We took the team back to Saigon and then returned to Cam Ranh Bay after permission was granted for an extended duty day, as we had been on duty for over 12 hours. The next day I received a phone call from someone at the Airlift Command Post in Saigon who was going to give me an ass chewing, but fortunately they thanked me for a job well done after I explained what had happened.
One of our more unpleasant missions was to fly into one of the remote Army camps to pick up body bags and fly them to Bien Hoa or Saigon to the mortuary. I can remember thinking that some poor mother, wife, or family member hadn’t even been notified that their son or husband had been killed. None of us liked to fly these missions. On one of my last flights in Vietnam I heard calls on guard frequency that two army helicopters had a mid-air collision and there were causalities. One of the calls was to bring body bags. Situations like this brought one back to the reality of the war.
I finished my SEA tour in May 1969 and received an assignment to EC and KC-135s at Grissom AFB, Indiana. While I was interested in going to the airlines, and even applied, in 1972 the airlines would not even interview you until you had separated from the service. My wife, who was also an Air Force brat, liked my military career and the idea of a paycheck every month. With the uncertainty of getting an airline job, I decided I was going to make the Air Force a career. After Grissom AFB I was assigned as an EC/KC-135 flight examiner for Strategic Air Command. My next assignment was to the Air Force Military Personnel Center where I worked in the department that handled pilot assignments. That was my ticket out of -135s and into FB-111s. I joke that I flew one of the slowest aircraft in the AF inventory, the C-7A, and one of the fastest, the FB-111A.
The FB-111 was an exciting aircraft to fly. Our mission was low level bombing. We had terrain following radar and flew our training missions as low as 200 feet at 480 knots. On Red Flag missions (simulating a wartime flying environment) on the Nevada training ranges we were able to fly super-sonic at 200 feet. Using the terrain following radar at night and in the weather was always exciting. While in FB-111s at Pease AFB, New Hampshire, I progressed from squadron pilot to squadron commander. As an interesting note, one of the navigators in my squadron was Dale Brown who became a famous author writing “Flight of the Old Dog” as well as a number of other best sellers. One of the characters in his books was a “Colonel Ormack”. Just drop the “C” off my last name “Cormack”.
After FB-111s I was assigned to the B-1 program for one year and then went to Air War College. After AWC it was back to FB-111s on the senior staff at Plattsburgh AFB, New York. Plattsburgh had three FB-111 squadrons and two KC-135 squadrons. When Desert Shield/Desert Storm kicked off in August 1990 our KC -135s were deployed to Saudi Arabia as the lead unit for a tanker wing. I deployed to Saudi Arabia as the wing commander.
It was over 20 years and many assignments after Vietnam that I found myself in Saudi Arabia for Desert Storm. When I went to Vietnam as a second lieutenant we considered lieutenant colonels and colonels old farts. I went to Saudi Arabia as a colonel (an old fart) and was privileged to serve as the Wing Commander of the 1703rd Air Refueling Wing during Desert Storm. We were at King Khaled International Airport (KKIA) at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and I was the senior military officer responsible for approximately 4000 military personnel. In addition to the Air Force personnel in the Air Refueling Wing there were several US Army units, French flying and ground units, and medical units from US and allied services. KKIA was set up as a large medical center and was readied to handle the mass casualties that were anticipated because of the fear that the Iraqis would use chemical and biological weapons.
There were a number of challenges created by being at an international airport and not at a military base. We had to negotiate everything we had at KKIA with Saudi airport officials. A lot of our people were housed in the dormitories that had been built for the workers who constructed KKIA, and many more of our people were housed in tents. We also had a number of female military members, and this created additional housing challenges. There were quite a few female KC-135 crew members and the Saudis did not like the idea that we had women driving vehicles and flying airplanes. KKIA was the main commercial airport for Riyadh and there were many commercial flights going in and out until the war started. I was responsible for 50 KC-135s that had been pre-positioned before the war started and had to be parked in a very limited area. We ended up parking most of the tankers one behind the other on a 12,000 foot parallel taxiway. It was not an ideal situation as we were worried the Iraqis could attack the base and easily take out most of our aircraft.
One of the first tasks I had when we arrived at KKIA was to set up a base/airport-wide warning system with sirens and an intercom system. KKIA was a huge compound that consisted of the airport complex and living areas that were a couple of miles from the airfield. KKIA had its own electrical generating plant and utilities and was about 20 miles from the city of Riyadh. As such the airport was on its own electrical grid and we were totally dependent on the Saudis and third country nationals to keep these facilities operational.
I will never forget the night the war kicked off. At KKIA we did not have CNN or any other televised news media, so we were listening to a short wave radio at 3 AM and heard the news media state that the war had started. We had launched some of our tankers five hours before the designated hour the war was to start, and the tankers had to fly to a base in the southern part of the Saudi peninsula to rendezvous with and refuel F-117 stealth fighters. While the tankers flew in fairly safe refueling tracks we did send tankers approximately 90 miles into Iraq on the first and second nights of the “shock and awe” bombing Bagdad, as the F-117s needed the fuel to reach their targets.
In addition to refueling the F-117s we had several missions that flew deep into Iraq to rescue fighter and bomber aircraft that were critically low on fuel. It was a big worry for me as the tankers had no capability of detecting if they were being targeted or if a missile was being launched at them. Another issue I had to wrestle with was the number of female crew members and the total lack of guidance on females in combat. Our female crew members were not given any special consideration on mission assignment and all crew members were treated the same. There were female crew members who flew missions into Iraq and I always worried about one of those aircraft being shot down. Even though the Air Force had issued no guidance on this, I knew my head would be on the sacrificial chopping block if something bad happened. Fortunately it did not.
During the war we had 30 Iraqi Scud Missile attacks in the Riyadh area. There was an Army Patriot missile battalion located at KKIA and I watched as the Patriots launched and as they intercepted and destroyed Scud missiles right over our heads. Our biggest concern was the possibility that there were chemical or biological agents in the warheads so we always had to put on our chemical protection suits when we had Scud attack warnings.
KKIA had a 10 million gallon fuel storage capacity on the field but as there wasn’t a pipe line from the refineries, all the fuel was trucked in by Saudi drivers. When the war started the Saudi drivers quit driving (what a surprise) and our 10 million gallon supply of fuel dropped quickly to about 2.5 million gallons as we started to fly our missions. Since we were the largest tanker wing supporting Desert Storm it was critical to have enough fuel to support the Air Tasking Order so we had to get GI drivers to deliver the fuel.
There were 50 KC-135s and 75 crews in the 1703rd ARW, and although our aircraft and crews came from many different units, from both stateside and overseas bases, we successfully became one cohesive unit. During the 6 1/2 weeks of the air war the wing flew 2485 sorties, logged 12,567 hours, and refueled 10,626 receiver aircraft offloading 120,619,000 pounds of fuel. Our crew members flew almost every day during this period and it was a major accomplishment that all this flying was carried out safely with no accidents. It was a total team effort from operations, maintenance, security, logistics, medical, and every function supporting an Air Force wing.
Probably the most difficult aspect was that many of the people in the unit deployed to Saudi in August 1990 and the war did not start until January 1991. That 5 month period of waiting for something to happen was difficult as no one knew how long they would be in Saudi. It was not like Vietnam where we knew our tour would be one year.
I missed Bob Hope when he visited Cam Ranh Bay for the USO Christmas show in 1968, as I was on R&R with my wife in Hawaii. However, 22 years later he came to visit our wing at KKIA on Christmas-eve 1990. It was a bitter sweet day for me as December 24th was my father’s birthday and he had passed away about 6 months earlier. Also, I had fond memories of the time our family had lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Bob Hope was there with his wife Dolores, Johnny Bench, and country music singer Aaron Tippin. Bob didn’t have the usual bevy of beautiful women with him as this was Saudi and it was forbidden. (I found it interesting how the beautiful women could fly with Bob by helicopter to remote and dangerous camps in Vietnam but not into Saudi. We wouldn’t want to offend the unemployed Saudi fuel truck drivers.) I met Bob when he arrived and introduced him to our troops. The USO show was great and a real morale booster—everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. Also during my time as Wing Commander at KKIA I had the opportunity to meet and host General Norman Schwarzkopf, Air Force General John Chain, and Air Force Chief of Staff, General Merrill McPeak.
After retiring from the Air Force in 1996 I was fortunate to get a job with Boeing supporting the International Space Station program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Our group assembled and tested solar arrays, pressurized modules, and the majority of the components that make up the space station. It was fascinating to interact with the astronauts when they came to view the hardware as we walked them through their responsibilities of maintaining those components in space. It was always thrilling to watch shuttle launches and recoveries. Something that many people don’t realize is that if conditions are right they can view the space station as it passes over every 90 minutes. I still enjoy watching it fly over.
Over the years that Dave worked at the Kennedy Space Center he asked me to come and watch a shuttle launch. Unfortunately I was never able to work that out but I did see one from a distance when I was on an Orlando layover with Delta. We were several miles away in front of our hotel when the ground literally shook and we watched the shuttle rise into the clear Florida sky with the flame from the solid fuel rocket motors extending at least twice the length of the rocket. Awesome!
Today we have to hitch hike with the Russians to get to the International Space Station while NASA spent eight years studying “climate change.” I’m not sure I understand all that but it is definitely a story for another day.
Thank you Dave, for your service to our country and for being a part of this wonderful project.