The Mother of all Cross-Country Checkouts

Recently, while getting rid of items from the storage area in my garage, I came across a sealed cardboard box that had not been opened for over five decades. After opening this mini time capsule, it was discovered that among other things, the box contained the flight navigational logs for a cross-country flown over 50 years ago. While reviewing the material pertaining to this almost forgotten event, I began to recall the following:

In 1955, I was an instructor pilot assigned to the 3530th Pilot Training Squadron, Bryan AFB, Texas. Like most young pilots, I took advantage of every opportunity to increase my total flight hours. Actually, during my Training Command tour, there were few weekends when I did not fly student training flights.

Once, while engaged in this type of training, a student and I had flown three flights in one day. Two of the flights had been at or above 40,000 ft. attitude. Unfortunately, after the third flight, the student exhibited symptoms of hypoxia. The T-33 cockpit pressurization system was
never anything to brag about. Regardless, from that time on, when conducting student cross-country training, while assigned to Bryan, I was restricted to two flights a day and only one could be at, or above, 40,000 feet. At the time, this situation seriously jeopardized my plan to fly over all 48 states within the United States, and the District of Columbia, during one cross-country.

Remember, this was before Alaska or Hawaii was a state. Providence stepped in, however, when I was asked to give a so-called “behind-the-line” pilot a 1,000 mile cross-country checkout. Briefly, a behind-the-line pilot is a fully rated individual assigned duty other than on the flight line. I quickly agreed, since this would not involve a student pilot, negating the previously stated restrictions.

This opportunity materialized in November, not the best time of the year for the type of flight I had in mind. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember the name of the major that shared this experience with me. I do recall, however, how surprised he was to learn what his crosscountry check out was going to consist of. In an effort to reduce our ground time, I had prepared all the . . .