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Fox Able 27 high flight across the North Atlantic was the
movement of the 50th Fighter Wing's aircraft, F-86s, T-33s and
the Goonie Bird (C-47) from Clovis AFB, New Mexico, in August of
1953, to Hahn AB in Germany.
Robbie Risner was "clean up flight" for the F-86s -
if anyone had to abort their scheduled take off, after their
repair Robbie would collect all the strays and bring them along.
The normal flight departures scheme would be all the F-86s
followed by the T-33s, the clean up maintenance crews in the
C-47 and Risner (clean up flight).
On each leg of the flight, the T-33s would always be passed
up by Risner and end up landing last at their destination. On
the final leg from Prestwick, Scotland to Hahn AB. Germany, H.B.
Smith who lead the T-Bird flight vowed to beat Risner into Hahn,
he pushed the T-birds to max power the entire flight (had to
change all the tail pipes after landing - they looked like
corrugated pipes).
When Robbie was approaching Hahn he heard Smith calling for
landing instructions, he had not seen them in the air and had
not passed them up in-flight. After hearing the radio
transmission Robbie saw this airfield just ahead and quickly
dove into the traffic pattern and landed.
He did not see any T-33s in the pattern so he figured he beat
them again -the only problem was Smitty landed at Hahn AB and
Robbie landed at the nearby Spangdalem AB! |
