Home Previous Page Last Modified: 10/26/08
October 20, 2000 the Gilmer, TX airport was renamed and dedicated to a native son now deceased, USAF Col. Bobby "Fox" Stephens, who headed up the USAF YF-12 and SR-71 program at Edwards AFB during the 1960's. For the event, several military airplanes were invited for a flyby. Steve Dean, the local airport event promoter, invited Lt Col. Jack Presley to make a flyby in a Texas Air National Guard F-16 in addition to a USAF F-16, F-15, A-10 and F-117.
I requested the opportunity to do a father-son, T-6/F-16 one pass flyby and we secured special approval from the Air National Guard for the event. In the pictures above, I am flying Eric Clifford's T-6 about as fast as it will go and my son, Jack is flying my wing in the F-16 at about as slow as he can go. The black and white picture was made with a telephoto lens making it appear that the F-16 is much closer to the T-6 than it really is. The F-16 is just a much larger plane. The day was cloudy and dreary. Jack made a couple of solo passes at Gilmer and then was able to land at the nearby Longview/Gregg County Airport which has a 10,000 foot runway. Jack's F-16 was in the depot for maintenance so he was flying Colonel Hank Morrow's plane. At the time Jack was the squadron commander of the 182nd Fighter Squadron at Kelly AFB and Colonel Morrow his wing commander. As of March 2003 Jack was promoted to Colonel and and moved up to be the 149th Operations Group Commander (Texas ANG). Morrow has since gotten his second star and moved up command 1st Air Force. As of spring 2006 Jack has retired and is now a pilot with Southwest Airlines. Note: Our flying suits are similar being of Nomex material. The "chap like" material fitted around Jack's waist, thighs and calves of his legs is a "G Suit". These sections inflate through a hose connected to compressed air in the plane during high speed tight turns which exert a lot of G forces on the human body. By squeezing the lower extremities, it keeps blood in your head to prevent blacking out. This G suit is almost the same as I wore in Korea and even worn by WWII fighter pilots.
Later that evening Jack and I were privileged to attend a reception in the Dean hangar where most of the living test pilots in Fox Stephens unit at Edwards were present. All had flown the SR-71 during testing and had interesting stories to tell about some of their experiences in the new, exotic and very top secret airplane at the time.
It was a very memorable event for me. From the response of the crowd at the airport they were pleased because the flyby was something they (nor anyone else) had never seen before. We are all very thankful to the Texas Air National Guard for giving us special permission to make this event possible.
The story of this flight was written up both in the National Guard and National Guard Association of Texas magazines in the June 2001 issue and spring issue respectively. http://www.ngaus.org/ngmagazine/roundup501.asp is the web site for the National Guard US and www.ngat.org is the Texas magazine web site (download 2001 Spring edition and go to page 14). I'm not sure how long the story can still be found on their archives (as of 5-25-05)
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Home Previous Page Last Modified: 10/26/08