The Flyboy Podcast: Guest Randy Larsen

Aircraft flown: AH-1G Cobra, C-5, T-38, KC-135R, C-12, 707, 757, DC-9, Gulfstream, Learjet, and UH-1N

In this episode, Randy Larsen shares his extensive flying career, including combat missions in Vietnam, flying the C-5, the C-12, the T-38, and the iconic Air Force One, and surviving critical in-flight emergencies. This episode offers a deep dive into military aviation, aircraft operations, and the bravery of aviators.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the Flyboy Podcast, where we bring you just one thing: cool flying stories. I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with Randy Larson. Randy flew more than 400 combat missions in Vietnam in the AH-1 Golf Cobra helicopter with the Army. After Vietnam, he joined the Air Force, and over the next three decades flew into the T-38, the KC-135, the C-5, the C-12, and a wide range of civilian aircraft, including the 707, 757, DC-9, Gulf Streams, and Learjet, as well as the UH-1 and helicopter. He has more than 3,500 flight hours between his time in the Army, in the Air Force, and in civilian aircraft. He's also written a few books and made a few documentary films, including Blackhawk Down, The Untold Story. Randy, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Great pleasure to be with you today, Dave. I watched many of your episodes. They're super flying stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Well, thank you, Randy. I appreciate it. You flew 400 combat missions in Vietnam. Tell us about those missions.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Well, first of all, I flew 400 before I was old enough to buy a can of beer. When I came home in October 69, I had to wait six months to buy a can of beer in Indiana. But I was in A battery, 4th to 77th Aerial Rocket Artillery in the 101st Airborne Division. We flew three types of missions in the Cobra. First, what we call fire missions. Air Force to call them CAS, Close Air Support. We set two-minute alert, which was not an easy thing in a Cobra. We'd set 12 hours alert, we'd go pre-flight it, put every switch into the takeoff position except the battery, turned that off. When they yelled fire mission, that meant U.S. troops were in contact. And so our commander was real serious about two minutes at a hover, and that was not easy. In the Cobras that I flew, we had four XM19 pods, those same ones the Air Force carried on F-4s and F-100s. So we carried 76 2.75-inch folding fin aerial rockets. I fired thousands and thousands of those. 10-pound warheads that had about the explosive radius of a 105 Hallitzer round, and we carried 76 of them. Had a minigun in the turret, six rotating barrels, carried 5,000 rounds of 7.62 ammunition, and a 40 millimeter cannon, which was pretty much useless. It was it was it was slow. We called it the chunker, go dung, dunk, dunk. And it was very inaccurate. I never fired it close to friendlies. Still, 76 rockets and 5,030 cal rounds was pretty good. We would uh launch, and uh the NCO that yelled fire mission, uh, when we were running, he would just say north, west, or south. And I was up in I Corps that from Danang to the DMZ and from uh the ocean to uh Laos for these missions with the 101st. And so we would head in a cardinal direction, and then they would eventually uh give us an eight-digit grid coordinate, and we'd get close enough, and then the infantry would pop smoke. We did not have a FAC like the Air Force fighter guys did. We were kind of did that ourselves, but we only talked to forward observers who was an artillery officer assigned to an infantry unit. And so he was very experienced in adjusting us. And when I first got there and we first started flying, uh, they said, okay, 100 meters is as close as you can shoot. And the guys never go, man, if you're gonna be way out there, forget it. So then they finally let us start walking in, walking in. And there were times we would fire within 20 meters of friendlies, which I go, I know it was scary. And so people who haven't flown combat or close air support, they don't appreciate this as much. When people say, What was your greatest accomplishment in Vietnam? I say, I never killed and wounded a friendly. And because there were a lot of Cobra guys that can't say that because I mean you fire so close, and and those 2.75 rockets, you know, sometimes there's four nozzles, one of them wouldn't work, or maybe one of the fins wouldn't come out once you launch it, and you'd watch them and they'd go out in this big corkscrew, and you just go, you know, you're holding your breath or whatever. And there were times that we they kept when they get us into 20 meters, you're coming down so low on your rocket run that I have seen rockets hit the ground with the motor still burning and it wasn't even armed.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

And we should clarify for our listeners a 2.75-inch rocket, we're referring to the diameter of the missile of the rocket tube.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

They're about five and a half feet off. Yeah, they're about five. Now, those were first used by Germans against B-17s in World War II, that type of rocket. Ballistic, you know, not guided or anything. And then the Air Force used them on F-89s. If some of your listeners may remember that airplane, uh in air-to-air mode, they had PD point detonated, had to hit something. They also had the VT fuse, which we eventually got. I didn't like the VT fuse because it would go off two meters above the triple canopy jungle and kind of useless. So we like the PD fuse, uh point detonated. But yeah, so those rockets have been around for a long time. I got so low a couple minigun passes that when we found the bullet holes when we got home, they were probably from my own 30 Calvin. There's rocks down there, and you get them up. So that means you're going too low. But so anyway, that's we would fire, and that was a great, very satisfying mission. They were never boring because when they yelled fire mission, American troops were in a gunfight. The second one is a combat assault. This is when you would have large numbers of, saw the movie We Were Soldiers, and then they come in on the combat assault, usually in staggered trail. It could be as many as eight, I've seen, depending on the size of the landing zone, sometimes only two or three. But so in a big one, you got them coming in. The artillery tubes are firing 10 to 12 minutes before the first helicopter lands and prepping the landing zone. And they would prep like three or four in that area, so the bad guys didn't really kind of know where we were coming. The last shell out of an artillery tube was uh white phosphorus. We call it Willie. And that was nice. That'd be an airburst. Now you know, okay, there's no more shells coming in, so it's safe for me. The helicopters, the Hueys, would be down at about 100 feet or less coming in. Sometimes they couldn't even see the LZ, so we'd be up here kind of saying, okay, 20 left, 20 right, or whatever. And then the rocket selector would go one pair, two, four, whatever, up to 19 pair with one push of the gum button. We'd set it on 19 pair, we'd be at 180 knots, and you'd hold it down, and in four seconds, you would fire 76 rockets. So one cobra on one side of the LZ into the tree line, another cobra over here, dump 76 rockets, you'd go from about 180 knots to 100, and then peel off. The Helios would come in, and then there'd be another flight of two cobras up high that instantly would go into the fire mission role or close air support. The third mission that we flew, about probably a quarter of the missions I flew, combat missions in Vietnam, were in sport of SOG. And there's a lot of books out there now on SOG. When I first got Greece. I'm sorry, SOG? Yeah, SOG. Well, okay. So in like 66 and 67, it was called Studies and Observations Group. And then someone said, okay, that's not a very good cover thing. So they just went special operations group. Then by the time I got there, we had to sign documents saying we wouldn't talk about what we were doing for 10 years. So we are now past that limitation. There's lots of books out there now. So these were six-man Green Berry teams that we would put into almost always into Laos. There was just a couple in the North Vietnam. Almost all of them were into Laos. And they were looking for the Ho Chi Minh Trail, trying to really figure out where all the little branches were and everything. It's not like there's not one big superhighway. There's all kinds of little, there's foot trails, truck trails, whatever. They were never supposed to get in contact. They were just supposed to be there three to five days, observe, and come out. Most of the time they got found. Then they would, their code word on the radio was prairie fire, which meant emergency extraction. And those were always under heavy fire for those on the ground than us. I loved this mission though, because we were so it was, everybody was so professional and good. And it would be three Hueys, UH-1s. Only one would insert the team. All six guys would be on that. The other two were for picking up downed air crews. Two Cobras, two A1Es. Now I know you're an A10 driver, but I'll tell you what, the A1E was the greatest close air vehicle ever. Man, they could carry so much and they could stay on station forever and they could take all kinds of hits and still keep flying. And then the O2, a Covey forward air controller, and he had the mission commander on board, who was usually a Green Beret major. He made all the decisions.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

My understanding is that there were a whole lot of A-1 Sky Rider pilots who actually contributed to and made recommendations for the design of the A-10 as a result of the lessons learned from Vietnam.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

They were just the most amazing, amazing pilots. And the aircraft. They could carry more externally than B-17 could internally. I mean, and then sometimes on those prairie fires, we're out there in triple canopy jungle, and there's no way to find an LZ. And so they would have strings, we called them, which they were not penetrators like Jolly Greens had. These were just ropes that they'd put an ammo can with rocks in it, and there'd be some 100 foot long and some 150 foot long. They'd drop them down, the guys would go through with the ammo can with the rocks, they'd get through the triple canopy, the guys would sit on that and they'd pull them out, and they'd have to come all the way back at 30 knots. They couldn't really go much faster. And so those missions were always pretty exciting. Yeah, that was the three primary missions that we flew.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

So looking back, what was the moment you first knew you wanted to become a pilot? This is why.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

The really good here's my dad. This is him and his three brothers. This is from the little hometown newspaper in December of 1944. Said, send a Christmas card to one of the Larson boys. It was Uncle Ed was wounded in the Philippines, Uncle Alfie was uh he fought in Okinawa, and my dad and Uncle Bob, uh, they're both cruise chiefs in the Army Air Corps. They always always talk about airplanes, and and it was a Larson thing to do, join the military in time of war. You know, and so but uh from second or third grade on, I wanted to do it. And then in 1962, I just finished mowing the yard, and my dad walked up to me and said, You want to go see Air Force One? He didn't say President Kennedy. He said, Air Force One's coming into Indianapolis. So we get in a car, drive over there. We're on this like balcony out from the airport back in the days when you'd go anywhere in the airport. And in those days, the VIP compartment was in the rear of the 707. Okay, and the president came out the back stairwell. I swear, David, I don't remember seeing President Kennedy because all I was doing was trying to look in the window where the pilot was. That was Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Albertazi. I think at that point I said, I'm gonna be an Air Force pilot. And I started flying. I soloed when I was 16, got my private license when I was 17, commercial and instrument rating when I was a senior in high school. But then I'm talking to the Air Force and the Navy and Marine recruiters, and they're going, you gotta have two years of college to go to pilot training. Well, this was '67. There's a war on. Of course, then the Army recruiter said, I'll send you to pilot training. So I joined the Army.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Do you still remember your first solo, your first day solo, your first night solo?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yep, I I remember my instructor, uh Tuffy Grable. He had been a P-51 instructor in World War II. And uh he was nearing the end of his aviation career. But I remember when he filled out my logbook, he said you'll always remember this day, 101065. And uh I still have a special drink every day for that. And uh, but yeah, so Piper Colt, little two-seat uh plane, and uh about 30 minutes around the pattern. I I remember that, but the one I remember the most, I've heard you ask several people this one about my first night solo.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

That was in the army in a TH-55, a little two-seat helicopter. I mean, there's just room for two people. The only instruments we had airspeed, altimeter, magnetic compass, and turn ball needle, turn ball. Turn needle.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Turn needle, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

There was no artificial and that kind of stuff. And this was West Texas. It was really dark. I don't know how we survived those. I guess we were young, crazy, but yes, I remember my night solo more than any other solo, I think.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

So, what's the worst weather you've flown through to land an airplane?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

I would say walks off at Travis Air Force Base. So walks off is uh, what is that? Ceiling indefinite visibility zero. We're flying from Dover to Travis, uh, end of a long mission in Europe and Africa. And those are always the missions where you have the least fuel, because you know, overseas you get a lot more extra fuel to carry reserve, but stateside, right? You know, it's just the standard thing that anybody had. And so the weather's supposed to be good, and we're getting arriving at Travis at about seven in the morning, the sun had just come up, and they're saying, Well, we got some ground fault. I'd never had this. Uh I had probably 1,800 hours flying time by then, but I'd never seen this. We're on final approach at 10 miles, you can see everything, the strobes and the vassie and all the lights in the runway at Travis. And but as we're crossing the threshold at 50 feet, the co-pilot's calling 50 feet, 40 feet, and what was about 30 feet we went into the fog, and I didn't realize what happened. You can see down through the fog, but when I got to about somewhere between 20 and 30 feet, I could hardly see the windshield wipers. I'm just going, uh okay, we don't have a lot of extra fuel. So, you know, my my technique was in the C5, it's a real easy airplane to land, even though your butt's like 60 feet above the runway when the aft main touched down. I would just at about 20 feet, I'd just hit the uh trim and just trim it back and ease and back the throttles. And so I go, okay, there's no wind. I got the got those uh flight director bars centered, and just you know, just hold everything. Did I think I just did a walk-soff landing? That was definitely the worst weather landing.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

With all the airplanes you've flown, what's the what's the worst in-flight emergency you've ever experienced?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

That was over the North Pacific at night. So I had a lot of civilian time. I had seven, eight hundred hours in T-38 IP, and then and and I was young aircraft commander in a C5, and I I was confident in the C five and flying it and whatever, but I didn't have a lot of overwater experience. Most of the guys that went to C5 school had flown 141s first.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

I'm kind of in a C5 is a very big airplane, the largest airplane in the Air Force inventory.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

In the Air Force, yeah. Yeah, it's it's uh 732,000 pounds. I think it was about the heaviest takeoff weight I ever had. Yeah, 28 wheels in a landing gear. It's an amazing airplane. So anyway, we're four out, we're going to Yakota to Travis, okay. Tokyo to north of San Francisco. We're about four hours out, it's nighttime, and we're up at flight level 330, about 33,000 feet. And I'm taking a break. I've been in the left seat since uh takeoff. I'm going in the back, I'm talking to some guys, I'm getting me something to drink, and all of a sudden the engineer comes kind of running down. The crew rest compartment is, and he says, Sir, you better get up here. And as I'm starting to walk forward, I see the guy in the right seat tee handle the left engine. Okay, so when you T-handle an engine, I mean, you know, it shuts off the fuel and the hydraulics and the oil and everything. And okay, it'd have been nice if they've got me up there first. But so I get in the seat strapped in, and really two experienced engineers and a very experienced navigator, I'm very lucky with that. The engineer says the oil in number three just went to zero. And so I I recommend we get it shut down quickly. So we did. So then what you do in a big four-engine airplane, different than I see what you do in fighters, is that you uh set maximum continuous thrust on three of the throttles, and then you hit um mock hold on the autopilot. So it just slowly starts descending, so it holds the 0.77 Mach. C5 is a little bit slower than the airliners. I think they're closer to 7.9 or whatever, but 7.7, so you're just slowly drifting down until the airplane gets to an altitude that it can hold the mock number. And that for us that night was about 25,000 feet. Well, no big deal. I still got three engines, right? We now we knew that Shimia, somewhere off to our left, was when we took off from Tokyo, it was And Shimia's in Alaska, right in the middle. Yeah, well, the Lucian chain out there, yeah. And it's it's not a place you ever want to go unless it's a really bad emerger. And when we took off, it was walks off with 50 knot lines. It was just awful. Typical Shimia weather. So, okay, well, we got three engines, we're doing good. But then as we're getting into the clouds, we're we're hearing this noise, and we're building rhyme ice like I have never seen in my life. In the C5, the pilot and the co-pilot both have these uh spotlights down here you can pull out so you can shine them on the leading edge and the engine the cells. And I mean, we are building ice like crazy. This is not good because eventually it's going to change your aerodynamics, change your way, it changes so many things. We're going, so now we're talking. And and we were really good about crew resource management of C5, and we're all talking about okay, who's got the right idea here? So, one idea was we could go lower and maybe get out of the clouds, but you can't get pie reps from anybody here. You're over the North Pacific and no weather stations or anything. So, okay, well, how low will we have to go? And and then the navigator's gone, if we go too low, we don't have enough fuel. We burn more fuel, lower altitude, right? The engineer said, well, we could restart three and climb back up above the clouds. And we all remembered in Altus at school, they said General Electric had actually actually tested one of these high bypass turbofan engines. They ran it 24 hours without oil and it didn't cease. Then we were always that's kind of our last option because man, you could get an uncontained failure, maybe take out number four engine, damage your wing. We said, We're not that scared yet, but we're getting scared because then in helicopters, you control the pitch with the collective here, and we go up and down. And in helicopters, we used to say we're running out of pitch, power, and ideas. Well, that night over the North Pacific, I was running out of pitch power and ideas in the C5, and and we're going, I don't know. You know, should we? I don't know. And the navigators go, I don't think we can go lower, sir. And then boom, all of a sudden we break out of the clouds. And I mean, even though we had the cockpit lights on, it was so dark you could see and go, oh, thank God. Wow. So then we found out Navigator said, okay, so we're, I think we're about four hours from Elmendorf and Alaska. And by the way, it's uh 20 degrees and blowing snow, and we're four hours uh to Hawaii and it's 72 degrees and clear. Guess where we went? So when I got back to Travis, I'd talk and do we had guys there with 10,000 hours C5 time, initial cadre guys. I'm going, hey, I'm a rookie. Well, what should I have done? And I never did find one of the old veterans that said, not much you could have done. People asked me how I survived 400 missions in Vietnam. I used to say, about 30% skill and 70% luck. Well, that night in the C5 over the North Pacific, it was 100% luck. Because if those clouds hadn't ended, I had no clue. So that was my work. I've had a few in-flight emergencies. That was by far the worst. Had it not been for the luck of the clouds stopping, I wouldn't be sitting here doing this interview, I don't think. Oh, and by the way, all the ice took out all of our radios. We were Nardo. After about 15 minutes in the cloud, you know, the ice builds up on all your antennas and the wire antennas and everything. No radio to tell anybody or to ask advice.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

So, what's the strangest runway surface you've ever landed on?

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Two of them, I guess. We used to fly uh VIPs like Ambassador John Gunther Dean when I was in Thailand. I flew the C-12, I was assistant air attache. Great assignment. I actually worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency, but as a part-time job, I had a C-12, and I got a thousand hours in a part-time job in four years there, and it was great. Used to fly to Han Hoi and uh go up and work on POW MIA issues and stuff. But we used to go out along the Cambodian border. There was a Thai army runway out there, and congressional delegations would want to go out and find out about the refugees and whatever. Ambassador Dean went out there a lot. We went out there and that was a nice little 5,000-foot paved runway. But on this particular mission, I remember when I Ambassador Dean had told me he wanted to do it a couple days beforehand. He said, Yeah, we're going to take off about 1700 in the evening, and then we're going to fly over, and you're going to take me into this little grass strip that's a little bit farther up north and even closer to the border. And I go, huh. I hadn't landed on the grass strip since back in Indiana when I was in high school. But a C 12's great airplane for it. It's got landing gear made for it. And so I said, Okay, but the only problem was he really got delayed. And it was just about dark when we took off. One of the Thai uh officers came and said, No problem, they're putting out smudge spots for you. Smudge pots, just all these cans. It's got, I don't know, kerosene or something in them, or 84. That was landing at night, grass strip, smudge pots. That was uh interesting landing that I survived. And uh the only other one that I I thought about this this morning, the uh hadn't thought about this in a long time, Nakam Phenom, up in Northeast Thailand, was where all the Air Force special ops used to work out of the Sandys, the A1s, the Jolly Greens, and everything. Everybody called it NKP. It had been closed for years. And somebody, I don't remember who it was, some visiting dignitary wanted me to fly him up there. And the big, huge Air Force runway, but hadn't been used in years, so we make kind of a low pass down there. There's buffalo dung all over it. Whoa, this is gonna be interesting. Yeah, it was, it was. We we survived that that one was probably trickier than the grass strip at night, and this was daylight. But I tell you the C-12, those thousand hours, that was really great flying there. Got to go as far west as Bangladesh, went to Burma quite a bit, Hanoi, Saigon once. Oh, down to Kualapur in Malaysia. Great fly.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

I don't think I've ever heard anybody describe having to dodge buffalo dung on the runway. That's a first.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

I got lucky because when we started taxiing, we realized how much we really had to move around, and you can't really do that in a flare, but we just got lucky, but there was there was a lot. Didn't have that in A-10s, did you?

SPEAKER_00 23:27

No, fortunately not. So are there any sorties you wish you could erase from your logbook?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Well, one I wish I could erase from my memories, but one of the earlier SOG missions, the special operations, and this was one of the very few that we flew to North Vietnam, or I flew to North Vietnam, the six-man team were they were so surrounded. And this was getting close to dusk, and I liked flying at dusk in the very bright sunlight. It was difficult to see the 30 caliber tracers, so you didn't quite always know who was shooting at you or where it was coming from. I I like flying at dusk because it was you could really see the muzzle flashes and the tracers so much better. They really knew where the bad guys were and what what you really had to watch for. But so this night I'd never seen, I think before then, then I was kind of new, and even since I'm not sure I ever seen that much. And the it was a prairie fire, emergency extraction, and the first Huey went in and he just got shot up. I can't how he got back to Quang Cree, I don't know. But he had a lot of bullet holes, and then the second guy tried to go in, and and it was just worse. And and we we were trying to put down suppressive fire, but there was just too many. They were just surrounded by too many NVA. And so it was not any of the helicopter pilots decision, it was the command and control, the the Green Bray Major in the Air Force O two that said, We're done. We're going back to Cwang Tree. And so we had to leave that six-man team, and they never got out. And that was that was tough. That was that was uh early on, I think that was December of 68, and um that that one was uh leaving that team out there, and you know, I mean, they're they're toast, they're surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of NDA. And I'm sure I know Covey, I know the uh I think that was Major Angel was his name, the the Greenberry. He made the right decision because he was a like third tour Vietnam and special ops and all that. And I'm just a 19-year-old W-1 cobra pilot. And he made the right decision, but it was tough. That was one of the first really, really tough decisions I saw. So that one, that one's not one of my favorite ones, but then of course, the one I would say the mission that I think was most rewarding and everything, and it's most you'd like to remember, is another SOG mission, but it was in Laos, and it was in August of 69, and now I'm a pretty seasoned veteran. I'm actually 20 years old now, and and a flight team lead, and it was another prairie fire, and we had to bring them out on strings. And I mean, it was it was a hell of a gunfight, and those and those green gray, they were so good. They they would run, and they knew that they had it all planned out that if they got ambushed and everything, and they got detected, they they would run, and they already had these things set up where they would run so far, and then they'd get behind some cover rocks or whatever, and they had the claymores already set up, and boom, and that that stopped the NBA and then they could run again, and so we're launching and we're getting out there trying to get to them, and we hear them, and God, they're yeah, really on the radio, and they're breathing so hard and everything. You hear all the automatic weapons firing, the explosions, and everything. And they had a place that they thought that it was pretty good for the drop to strings. We couldn't land, or the Hueys couldn't land, but they got in there and the the guys got on the strings, and it was uh I think it was it was four on the first helicopter and two guys on the second one, and they got them out, and I mean, and it's it's just great because because we knew exactly where they were as they're running there popping smoke, and we knew everybody east of the smoke were bad guys. So we were just boom, we got the guys out on the strings and got back. I mean, that was that was I mean, we I did a number of string, but never under that much fire, and to get those guys out, and and then that night the compound for the the SOG guys was pretty close to ours where we were there at Camp Eagle. Sitting there drinking beer with those guys that night was dead. That that that that that's one uh I'll keep forever. But those are the bravest guys I have ever known. And four or five days later they'd be going back out there on those missions. And I was scared to death going out there to Cobra. And these guys are going on the ground and staying there three to five days.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

But yep, they were the best. Now I understand the coolest thing you've ever done in an airplane was in a T-38. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Okay, so you're talking about Indiana Farm Boy that started out in a two-seat little Piper Colt and then helicopters and whatever. But that first time I taxied out at Reese Air Force Base for a solo in the T-38. Man, that was yeah, that was there's there's nothing quite like that. If I ever win the lottery, I'm gonna buy me a T-38, I think. I guarantee I couldn't take 7.3 G's anymore. That I always say the most fun I ever had in a flight suit was in T-38, and that is absolutely the truth.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

That great airplane. A great airplane. Yep. So when you talk to young people who say they're interested in learning to fly, what advice do you give them?

SPEAKER_01 28:54

I I I I quote the comedian uh Chris Rock when he said, always follow your dreams, but make sure they're hiring. And I mean, I guess I guess I guess he's saying don't say you want to go be a sculptor and think you're gonna help support yourself. But I think they're always gonna be hiring pilots. Now I know there's some people that think the technology is gonna change that, and I think it is gonna change a lot. We're seeing that in the uh Ukrainian-Russian war right now. It's pretty incredible. But I think we're always gonna need pilots. So I would say, as I was digging through some of my old logbook today, I found this.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

So hold that up so we can see it's Sky Castle Airport.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Sky Castle Airport, Newcastle, Indiana. I think this is about uh 66 or something. But it was 40 minutes solo, eight dollars. A 40 minutes solo. I was making, I think, 90 cents an hour sack in groceries, so that was a day's work for 40 minutes in an airplane, but it's so expensive now. I don't know how young folks do it without joining the military or whatever, but and that's what I loved about the Air Force. I spent 29 in the Air Force. I loved it because flying was always at the core of what I did, but I got to do other things. I think I'd have been bored if I'd had just done nothing with fly airplanes my 32 years I spent in in military uniform. But I loved it. I'd go do this for a while and then I come back and fly. And I go do this. And guess the main thing I tell them, I say, think about joining the military if you really want to fly, particularly the really cool coolest airplanes.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Great advice. So, Randy, here's my last question for you. I understand your first flight in the 89th operations group was in 707 tail number 26,000. Can you tell us about that mission?

SPEAKER_01 30:42

That was actually not my primary uh mission airplane at the Andrews. I flew the VC-9 because I always want to fly that airplane. And but when I first got there a couple days after change of command, I was shocked to discover tail number 26,000, the one that I saw President Kennedy come into Indianapolis on in 1962. They were still flying it. They still had five 707s uh there when I took over in July 2nd, 1996. And uh we eventually replaced them with 757s while the two years there I was in command. But so I said, okay, what I want to make sure, because I knew it was due to be retired. I had a local training mission and so got an IP and they put about four pilots in to go get all their landings in a traffic pattern. I we never got more than 15 miles from Andrews, but I said, I have to be able to land 26,000. So we did that. And that I mean that what a thrill. That so much history for that airplane.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

So this is the same aircraft that you had seen in 1962 when you saw President John F. Kennedy come down the back stairs.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

I'm not sure I saw him come down the stairs because I was looking in the window to see the pilot. But yes, he was there. My dad saw it.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

He came down the stairs even if you were looking at the I was looking somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

But no, that was the plane. That was the same plane that carried Kennedy to Berlin to give his famous speech and all that. Okay. So I'm sitting in my office about three months after I assume command, and this elderly gentleman comes in my doorway and says, Sir, can I ask you a question? I said, Yeah, come on in. He says, I'm Chief Master Sergeant retired Joe Chapel. He said, I was just coming back from the commissary and I saw 26,000 parked out there on the ramp, the 707. Would you drive me out there so I could walk through it? I kind of go on, well, yeah, yeah, uh retired Chief Master Sergeant, sure. I didn't know who he was. Well, he ended up giving me the tour that day. We get on the airplane and he said, you know, I was the flight engineer on the day that we took President Kennedy to Dallas in 1963, November 22nd. They had spent the night in Fort Worth. They just flew the short flight from Fort Worth to Love Field that morning, and they were going to be on the ground about three or four hours. Kennedy was gonna go down, give a speech at lunch, and then they were gonna fly home. So all the crew is out there on the ramp. He said, We're just out there talking to the Secret Service, and one of the Secret Service agents comes running up to us and said, They've killed President Kennedy. And we're gonna take him home on the plane. And so Chief Chapel said, Uh, he knew at that point the procedure for carrying a casket in one of those 707s was in the forward cargo compartment. It's only place it fit. Joe told the Secret Service agent, I'm not putting my president in the cargo compartment. They said, Joe, you can't fit him in the door. When you come in the back door of that airplane, there was a bulkhead there. And it, I mean, you know, it's not a support structure, it's just a wall that Boeing put in there, and I think it was maybe to help keep the noise out because that door is always open for the stairs and everything. And he said, Joe, you can't make the turn with the casket because that bulkhead. And Chief Master Sergeant Joe Chapel said, Get me a saw. He sawed off that bulkhead. He pulled out six seats and set them on the ramp. They brought the casket up and they turned it and they set it there and put a cargo strap over. And that's how they uh brought President Kennedy home from Dallas. And uh that airplane today, I retired it in 1997. We flew it to Wright Patterson. It's in the museum now. And if you go back there to where that back door is, that bulkhead is there, and you can see the seam where they fixed that bulkhead. And that's what Joe Chapel showed me that day when he gave me the tour of 26,000. A few weeks after they brought President Kennedy home, and it's flown ever since then with that repair. And I know that the day that we retired that airplane, I used to fly Air Force Two with Vice President Gore, and he came out the day when we were going to fly at the Wright-Patterson, and he said he wanted to. He primarily flew on the C-9, and but he wanted to come out and we went through there, and there's so many stories inside that airplane. Now you know that it's not Air Force One unless the president's on board. If the president's not on board, it would be Sam, stands for Special Airlift Mission, Sam 26,000. Or the twin plane was Sam, was 20 tail number 27,000, nearly identical. So here's my trivia question. When was this radio call sign made? Kansas City Center, this is Air Force One. Please change my call sign to Sam 27,000. No one ever gets it. When Richard Nixon was flying from DC to San Clemente, the radio operator walked up and handled Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Albertazzi, sitting in the left seat, handed him a note that said Gerald Ford has just been sworn in as president. So Ralph calls Kansas City Center. This is Air Force One. Please change my call sign to Sam 27,000. But those two airplanes, 2027,000, is on a spike at the Reagan Museum in California. 26,000, boy, if you get to the right, I'll tell you what, the Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson is worth a trip to Dayton, Ohio. It's incredible. I mean, 26,000 is just one of the things there. But anyway, that what an honor that was to um serve there and fly the nation's leaders and uh for an Indiana farm boy that thought it'd be cool to go fly a little airplane out of a grass strip.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Quite an accomplishment and quite a career. So, Randy Larson, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. Greatly appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

David, I greatly appreciate it. I certainly will recommend a lot of friends to listen to your podcast, not mine. They've heard all my stories before, but man, the stories you have on here from folks, uh great flying stories.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

You do a great job. You've been listening to the Flyboy Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by our parent organization, the Flyboy Lab. The mission of the Flyboy Lab is to elevate awareness and appreciation of aviators, their service, sacrifices, and contributions, and hopefully we've fulfilled that mission today. New episodes of the podcast drop every Thursday morning, and you can find previous episodes on our website, theflyboypodcast.com. Until our next sortie, push the mock, use the vertical, and fly safe.