ANDY JONES RECALLS HIS TIME WITH THE USAF

Saved by the Hangar Queen
Before my time at Dunsfold I had spent some thirteen years in the RAF, the last two of which had been on an exchange tour with the USAF at Tyndal Air Force Base (AFB) in north west Florida. The unit to which I was attached was a weapons test unit equipped with F-101 Voodoos, F-102 Delta Darts and F-106 Delta Daggers. We had been there only a month or so and I had just finished my conversion training on the F-106 when a hurricane started forming in the Gulf of Mexico. Nobody was particularly concerned when it started to move north towards the panhandle and Tyndall - they usually did that before turning east or west. Not this time. This thing, which they called Camille, stalled some way south and sat there for a while. This is dangerous because it gives time for them to build up in strength.

Camille duly became a Category 5 storm with wind at one stage measured at over 299 mph. And then it broke the rules and started to move north again. Three things were now clear: the base had to evacuate all its aircraft (well over 200 of them) to some safe place; the sea was rising far above the normal level ahead of the storm itself because of the very reduced atmospheric pressure; and although it did not look as though the storm would pass directly over the base it was going to be in considerable danger. I was told to stay in our house, right on the waterfront! - with my family (wife plus one on the way) - and await instructions.

By that time nobody could get off the base anyway as all the roads used bridges which were by then impassable. The wind rose relentlessly and then, as it got dark and the rain started, I got the call to report to the squadron. I was to take the last F-106 to Perrin AFB in Texas. This particular F-106 had spent months in the hangar being robbed of its bits to keep the others flying and had been frantically put back together (sort of) when the storm started to threaten. I was not overjoyed; it was not called the ‘Hangar Queen’ for nothing. I had to leave a very nervous wife in a house that looked as if it was about to be flooded and then blown to bits, and try to take a very dodgy machine half way across the States….

When I reached the base it was clear that I would have to get into the aircraft in the hangar and be towed out. The wind had reached seventy knots and the rain was absolutely torrential. I was hugely cheered to be told that the aircraft’s TACAN, its primary navigation equipment, was unserviceable. To my immense relief the ‘Hangar Queen’ utterly refused to start; it was towed back into the hangar to await its fate and I went home.

Camille coasted in some one hundred and fifty miles or so to the west of Tyndall, more or less wiping Gulfport and Biloxi off the map. Tyndall had winds that night well over 100 knots, and eleven inches of rain; high tide peaked fifteen feet above normal. Several aircraft which had not been evacuated were destroyed but the ‘Hangar Queen’ lived to fight another day. I am not sure if that would have been the case for either her or me had she started when asked.