Authors: Charles Hough
The crews of the giant bombers found life as hurried as the rest of the personnel. Normal stateside operations called for
a full day of mission planning, three to four hours of preflight, and at least two days of recovery after the mission. Here
in-country, the operation was squeezed into a few hours to prepare and then a rushed entry into the aircraft and a sudden
launch in a wave of aircraft. Ironically, crews found that the only place to relax was in the air. Sorties from Guam to Vietnam
took over eighteen hours. It was thought of as eighteen hours of boredom broken up by a few minutes of sheer panic.
Into the midst of this chaotic dance was thrust a young man, a first lieutenant named Justin O. Sommers. He was the proverbial
wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, his silver bars as new as his navigator wings.
The normal order of integration for a new navigator in the Strategic Air Command was much more relaxed. The new nav usually
finished Combat Crew Training School, where he was introduced to the venerable B-52. He then cleaned up various required units
like water and land survival schools, and reported to an operational unit for more training. His first flight at his unit
was called a dollar ride and usually involved no more than a ride to watch how a fully trained crew operated. He was then
given several flights with his crew to learn his job and, finally, he was evaluated by his friendly neighborhood Standardization
Board instructor to see if he could do the job.
For Justin Sommers there was no gentle breaking-in period. He had been hustled through a succession of accelerated courses
with all the time to breathe taken out. Instead of leaving Castle Air Force Base at this point for his permanent base, he
was shifted down the road to the Replacement Training Unit. The purpose of this unit was to turn the young nav into a steely-eyed
killer capable of navigating the D model of the B-52. The D model had been given the “big belly” modification to allow it
to carry over a hundred bombs and was fast becoming the workhorse of the Vietnam war.
As soon as RTU had scared him to death, the Air Force shipped Lieutenant Sommers to his base of assignment. He was there for
just long enough to set his bags down. He was thrown on the next available cattle car, a charter airliner, headed for Guam.
The air carrier deposited the young man at the base, a taxi took him to the squadron, and the operations officer informed
him that he was happy to have him aboard and that he was late already.
Usually, even in times of war, the squadron was able to give a new man, especially one as new as Justin, time to settle in.
But the war, and especially Andersen’s part of the war, had suddenly intensified. Every man was needed yesterday.
The major apologized but directed Lieutenant Sommers to grab his flying gear and meet a bus in front of the squadron. His
dollar ride was going to be a doozy!
The bus took the dazed lieutenant to the flight line. He was amazed by the activity. Everywhere were trucks, buses, cars,
bomb wagons. In the midst of it all, B-52s were taxiing, taking off, and landing. He drove past row after row of bombers.
They were separated from each other by three-sided boxes made of steel and filled with dirt. They were called revetments and
had a very special purpose. The military found out on December 7, 1941, that parking aircraft close together was not a great
idea. The Japanese learned, to their delight, that they didn’t have to hit every aircraft on the ground. Just hitting one
on either end of a line led to a very deadly chain reaction. The explosion of one plane caused the explosion of the next,
and that caused the next to go up, and so on right down the line. Revetments were invented to stop the possible chain reaction.
At first glance it would seem that the steel-reinforced bunkers were meant to prevent damage. The actual purpose was not to
protect aircraft and crew but to contain the damage to a single aircraft.
The bus drove down the taxiway separating the two long runways. The driver glanced at a sheet of paper and pulled to a stop
in front of a B-52 levered into one of the revetments.
“Here you are, L.T., Charlie Fifty-four.”
The driver indicated the number on the revetment. The lieutenant stepped off the bus and was immediately accosted by a captain
in a flying suit.
“Hi, I’m Chip Barnes. You must be Sommers. You’re late. We have to mount up right now and get started. I’ll be your instructor.
Denney Hodges is the radar and he’s got all the mission paperwork with him. Jump on up and I’ll throw your gear in. We got
to get buttoned up right now.”
Justin just gaped wide-eyed at the verbal barrage from the captain. He was barely able to nod at what he thought must be the
appropriate places. Before he knew it he was in the nav station ejection seat and strapping in for a flight. His first mission
with a real crew was going to be a real honest-to-goodness war mission. No time to learn.
A few minutes later the big bomber lumbered out of the revetment and headed for the runway. On the way out they passed the
bus that had brought Justin to his plane. The driver waved out the window, but the bomber proceeded without notice. The driver
shrugged and headed for the next pickup.
Well, I tried,
thought the driver.
Maybe the kid won’t need his helmet this time.
In the haste to get Justin aboard, a very important piece of his personal safety gear had been forgotten. A crew flight helmet
is never referred to as a crash helmet, but every flyer knows what it’s there for.
In SAC the worst thing for a navigator is to be behind the airplane. In school they told him, “you’ve got to stay ahead of
the aircraft. You’ve got to anticipate, plan ahead, always stay one step in front.”
Here, now, on a real flight, in a real war, Justin felt like he was so far behind that he was probably still back in the parking
stub. He sweated in the cellar of the big, black bomber. Paper flew and pencils broke. He and the senior nav, the radar navigator
in the seat next to him, strived to keep the big bomber on course in spite of capricious winds and last-minute changes. Justin
wrestled with the time control. Everything had to be controlled to the second or they wouldn’t have to worry about enemy gunners.
They would run into a friendly who was on time and end up in a monumental aluminum shower.
They were in-country and on the bomb run before Justin had time to breathe. His instructor had given quiet instructions and
whispered words of encouragement up to this point. Now he was strapped into his seat as the hostile threats made flying more
and more dangerous.
The B-52 is one of the few two-storied airplanes in the Air Force. The pilot, copilot, and electronic warfare officer were
on the top story, striving to dodge the antiaircraft fire and flaming SAMs or surface-to-air missiles.
Down below, in a windowless room illuminated only by the orange glow of the radar, the nav team prepared to deliver the bomb
load. Justin glanced at the radar nav. The RN was an old head, used to the stress of battle. He was refining his aiming and
quietly readying the equipment that would deliver over fifty tons of high explosive on the target. The gunner, in his private
cockpit in the tail of the aircraft, was calling out SAMs being launched. His voice did not betray the anxiety he must be
feeling.
They reached the initial point. Now all the energy of the crew would be directed to putting the bombs on the target. The RN
assumed control of the aircraft. Every move of his tracking handle moved the giant bomber closer to the target. Justin counted
down the seconds. “Five, four, three, two, one, hack.” The bomb lights flashed, the aircraft jumped slightly and its weight
suddenly decreased.
“Two’s clean, breaking away,” said the copilot over the radio.
The mighty bomber executed a sweeping turn to the left, away from the target and the enemy.
“Watch it, Two. You got a SAM coming up at you.” The call from the number three aircraft in the cell alerted the pilot. He
racked the control column to the left, increasing the bank at the same time he hit the throttles. The missile streaked toward
the escaping aircraft.
Down below, the nav team was thrown about by the tight bank. The RN watched his pointed dividers float into the air. He grabbed
at them and leaned way over to follow them as they headed for the floor. Justin turned to watch him try to retrieve his tools.
The SAM didn’t hit the aircraft. It missed. But even its miss was terrible. The enemy soldier had guessed at the altitude
of the bomber and set a proximity fuse. His guess was nearly perfect. The weapon detonated very close to the nose of the aircraft
on the left side of the fuselage.
The RN was leaning over, trying to catch his dividers. The explosion took out his panels where just a few minutes ago he had
put in the settings for the bombs. He missed the wave of concussion and the flying pieces of his instruments. He was untouched.
Justin wasn’t so lucky. He barely had time to see the metal panels flying toward him like lawn mower blades.
The instructor watched in horror from the IN seat. Maybe if Justin had been wearing his helmet, he might have been saved.
Maybe it wouldn’t have made much difference. The exploding panels ended Justin Sommers’ short career as a B-52 navigator.
The young warrior was decapitated neatly by the panels he had spent the last year learning to use.
But that’s not the end of our story. It’s only the beginning.
The war in Vietnam and the war activity on Guam didn’t slow down. They intensified. But as the activity reached a fever pitch,
another activity intensified also. Its effects were slow to advance but relentless.
A load crew arrived at Charlie Fifty-four in the predawn hours of a Sunday not many days after the ill-fated flight of Justin
Sommers.
As the crew prepared the bombs for loading the load chief looked around for the ground crew chief. The young airman should
have met them at the plane, but he was nowhere to be found. They finally found him huddled in the corner of the adjacent revetment.
He was shivering and holding his arms tightly to his body as if the weather had suddenly taken a turn toward winter. But winter
in Guam rarely got below seventy-five degrees and this was the middle of summer.
The load chief was finally able to pry some words of explanation out of the young airman. But what he heard left him more
confused than ever.
The airman had been dropped off at the aircraft around midnight to start preflight alone. When he jumped off the bus he noticed
a helmet bag near the power cart and had assumed that someone had forgotten it. He picked it up, felt the familiar shape of
a helmet inside, and climbed up in the airplane to leave it on board. The inside of the bomber was dark except for the light
from outside that shined up the hatch.
The airman was startled to see the shape of a crew member sitting in the navigator’s seat. The officer was in shadow but it
looked like he was doing some paperwork. He was doing paperwork in almost total darkness. The airman just stood on the hatch
steps in confusion, trying to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The shape turned toward him and reached for the helmet in
his hand. As it moved into the dim light from the hatch the airman was horrified to see that the body ended above the shoulders.
He could clearly see the lieutenant’s bars on the flight suit, but there was no head!
The airman dropped the bag and fled from the aircraft. He had been huddled in the corner of the neighboring revetment for
hours.
The airman was carted off to the hospital. He was listed as a case of battle fatigue. The long hours had just gotten the better
of him. He rotated back to the States early. The load crew found no helmet bag anywhere around the aircraft. And they certainly
found no headless lieutenant.
The next incident at Charlie Fifty-four took place after a flight. The B-52 had landed with a hung weapon in the bomb bay.
A load team was called to safely remove the weapon. The crew was just departing the area as the team arrived. The chief sent
one of his men to open the big bomb bay doors with the cables in the aft wheel well. As they swung open, he lit his flashlight
and ducked under the doors to inspect the bomb.
He walked to the back of the bomb bay and lifted his flash to look at the weapon. His light stopped, though, on an object
hanging from the catwalk above the bomb bay. As he moved closer for a better look he realized it was a booted foot. He raised
the light to find a leg then a torso in a flight suit. He stood with his mouth open in confusion. Suddenly the figure leaned
into the light. The head was missing.
The crew chief dropped his light and ran. He forgot that he was under a bomber. He tripped on an object on the ground. He
just had time to see what he had tripped on before his head connected with the bomb bay door. It was a helmet, in a helmet
bag.
The unconscious crew chief was taken to the hospital. His injuries were judged minor until he came around and started to babble
about the headless lieutenant. The doctors decided to reconsider the seriousness of his injury.
In the meantime the stories about the haunted revetment started to gain ground. After a while the rumored occurrences got
to be so numerous that no one wanted to work there. Even air crews were starting to refuse to park there. It came to a head
when a load crew pulled up to a bomber with a load of Mark 82 five-hundred-pound bombs to load. As the truck slowed to halt
the bomb doors suddenly slammed shut.
The crew didn’t even stop the truck. They just returned to the hangar and refused to go near the aircraft until it was moved
from Charlie Fifty-four. No other crew could be found who would take the job, either.
It is the position of the Air Force that things such as ghosts and goblins do not exist. They have no basis in fact and are,
therefore, not officially recognized. It is also a fact that from that day on, even with the ramp as crowded as it was, the
Air Force never again used Charlie Fifty-four as a parking space for a B-52.