Buried somewhere deep in U.S. Air Force folklore, there's a story about the military pilot calling for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked." Air Traffic Control told the fighter jock that he was number two behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. "Ah", the fighter pilot remarked, "the dreaded Seven-Engine approach".
The following is my experience witnessing a dreaded seven-engine approach
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As I typically do when exiting a building on base, I stopped, looked up and scanned the sky for interesting aircraft. That evening, I got a surprise. Far to the south, I saw a southbound, eight-engined B-52 bomber--that to many people would be just a black speck in the sky. It was only a thousand feet above the ground and its number 3 engine was flaming bright orange. I told Jim what I saw, and, at the same time, started running toward the flight line to get a closer look. Jim didn't understand what I said, didn't see the airplane and didn't know where we were going, but, he started running after me pleading for answers.
Across the street and halfway through a field, I realized that there was nothing I could do but watch. After all, I was a trained U.S. Air Force computer programmer and would be lucky if I could even put out a computer fire. So, I stopped, turned, looked back at a telephone booth that I had just run past and started running back toward the telephone booth. Jim of course, had just reached my running speed and we passed going opposite directions. "Now, where're we going," he yelled as he turned and started chasing me back to the telephone booth. "I'm calling the radio station," I said. "I'll tell them what's happening."
Just the week before, I had applied for a radio announcer job at Wichita, Kansas radio station KAKE, so, I had the radio station's telephone number in my head. (Someone there told me that my news presentation was good but, when I started talking of the cuff, it just did not work. "Get rid of that Texas twang and we'll talk.") I dialed the number without even thinking about it and the night DJ answered. I told him who I was and what was going on at the air base and he said, "Hang on, okay, start over from the first."
"About 10 minutes ago, a B-52 bomber took off from McConnell heading south. A few minutes after takeoff [the town of] Derby, the number-three engine caught fire. It continued south for a minute or two and then stated a wide left turn to come back to the base. Instead of circling the base and landing on runway 18 where he took off, right now he's headed straight for runway 36. It's probably overloaded with fuel 'cause it only flew for a few minutes and it'll be landing downwind, so...
"The engine fire's out now and I don't see any sign of fire anywhere else. He's turned on his landing lights and looks like he'll make normal landing. Lots of emergency equipment's heading for the runway and now there're red lights from one end of 36 to the other. The plane's on short final now. Its gear's down and everything looks normal. Okay, the plane just touched and is reversing the engines.
"It's slowing, slowing, slowing and coming to a stop about halfway down runway 36. Now, he's turning off the runway and coming--no--he just stopped at a 45 degree angle and he's half on and half off the runway. All the red lights are surrounding the plane now.
"It's pretty dark now but with all the red lights, I can see people leaving the bottom of the plane and walking away. It looks like everything's okay and everybody's getting out of the airplane. The runway's gonna be blocked for a while but it looks like the emergency's over. From here it looks like the fire's out, nobody got hurt and everybody's off the plane. I would guess the emergency is over. Any questions?"
Silence.
"I think the emergency is over. Hello? Anybody there?"
I looked at Jim and he said, "Anybody there?"
"Don't think so. Hello? Hello?" Hanging the phone up and leaving the phone booth, I said, "I think it's over. We might as well go. It's too dark now to see anything anyway. I wonder if I was talking to anybody."
Jim and I walked to my car, looked back one more time at the B-52 glowing bright red in a sea of red lights and headed out. I dropped Jim off at the barracks and I went to the house in downtown Wichita that I shared with Ed, Bill and Smitty.
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The next morning at the data center, everybody was busy and I was testing a panel on the IBM collator. I heard the front door open and looked across the cubicle tops to see David E. Weaver stride in, late as was often the case, as our local semi professional-bowler often was after driving in late at night from some bowling tournament somewhere. I went back to my machine but Dave yelled over the cubicles, "Hey, Warner--was that you I heard on the radio last night?"
I looked toward Dave as heads started popping up out of the cubicles. "Yeah," I said, "Did you hear me?"
Across the cubicles voices rang out, "Who was on the radio?" "Warner was on the radio?" "Why were you on the radio?" "What happened?"
Dave came over as all the other sergeants and airman headed for the collator where I was working. "Why was Warner on the radio?" "You were on the radio? Cool!"
Jim Andriani spoke first, "--coming out of the snack bar...running like mad men...calling the radio station...watching the plane put out the fire...watching all the emergency equipment..." He told the story better than I could. Jim thought it was cool.
I answered questions about 'the dreaded seven-engine approach' until everyone had heard enough and went back to work, then, I went back to my collator problems.
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Note - I often wondered if USAF base security might have chastised me for telling my tale live and in person on the radio. Oh, well, there was no war going on in Kansas--we were totally surrounded by peaceful wheat farmers--and the Vietnam War was going on thousands and thousands of miles to the west. I guess we must have been doing a good job at McConnell AFB, because, I have it on good authority that not one single Viet Cong soldier ever got by Wichita, Kansas.
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