It was around mid December, 1956. We had just retuned to San Diego from cruising Hawaiian waters during the Suez Crisis. It was getting close to Christmas so a couple of the younger Pilots decided to take a cross country flight to Dallas over a weekend. Since I hadn’t been home for a while, I signed up to go, too. All was fine when we left North Island early Friday afternoon. It just so happened that the pilot flying the right seat loved to play with the radar. Since there was only the three of us, he decided he want to play. He came back to the radar station and I climbed into the right hand seat he had just vacated. The weather was great so the Pilot allowed me to fly the plane for the better part of an hour. This, of course, was not the first time I had taken over the controls in flight.

But when we arrived in the area of Biggs AFB in El Paso, Mother Nature had dealt a pretty tough hand. The temperature had taken a drastic drop and there was about two feet of snow on the ground. In spite of the inclement weather, we refueled and filed our flight plan to NAS Hensley Field in Dallas. We waited, and we waited! Finally, we were told that the ceiling and visibility in Dallas was zero and wasn’t expected to lift until morning. NAS Hensley was not equipeted with GCA Radar at that time. We spent that night in a Motel just outside the base. Before we settled in for the night, we went to the restaurant, had something to eat and then to the Bar. We had several beers before turning in for the night.

The next morning we returned to the Airbase and checked the weather. It was not only clear in El Paso but it had cleared in Dallas as well. We loaded our gear onboard and off to Dallas we went. On arrival, it was cold and very windy so we tied the plane down, took our gear to the Flight Control Center and filed our flight plan for the next day. Our plans were to meet back at the Flight Control Center at noon on Sunday. We didn’t realize the storm we had encountered in El Paso would bear down on us in Dallas. But since we had come all this way to see family, off we went. The next morning we awoke to find 18 inches of snow on the ground. But like the troopers we were, we met at the Flight Control Center as planned. What we didn’t expect was the difficulty we encountered trying to start the engines. The engines had not been prepped for cold weather and it took a couple of hours, yes I said a couple of hours, to finally get them started. Since it was so cold, the three of us had taken turns trying to get the engines started. Since I was the one at the throttles when they finally did start, I taxied the plane up to the staging ramp near the Center. We had already taken the tie downs off and all that had to be done was remove the chocks, which the ground crew did before disconnecting the APU. In those days, I was one of the few enlisted squadron members who had a airplane taxi license.

We loaded our gear, received final clearance from the Flight Control Center and, after receiving clearance from the Tower, took off. At take off time the ceiling was about 600 feet with visibility of about a mile so we were allowed to take off under VFR. Once we reached cruising altitude, it was smooth sailing to Biggs AFB.

The real problem began when we started our initial approach into Biggs. It was about dusk and visibility was poor. There were pretty heavy snow flurries. The pilot was concentrating on the instruments while the Co-Pilot kept asking, “Where are the runway lights? Why don’t they turn them on?” When we had dropped to about 500 feet, The Co-Pilot was screaming, “Where are those damned runway lights!” Just in time, it cleared enough that we could see trees lining what we thought was the runway. We were about to land in a snow covered, plowed field. The pilot quickly added emergency power and we climbed to 3,000 feet in a matter of seconds. Or at least it seemed that way. With the cleared condition and the altitude, we could now see the runway lights at Biggs. To this day, I don’t know why Biggs Approach had not seen where we were and let us know.

We vectored to the approach lane and received clearance from the Tower and made an uneventful landing. We parked the airplane and went into the Flight Control Center while the plane was being serviced. By this time, it had started snowing very heavily again. When the Pilot went to file his Flight Plan for the last leg to North Island, we were grounded again. We spent another night in El Paso and finally returned to North Island late on Monday afternoon. Upon our return, the Skipper, CDR Neal Weary, called us all into his office to explain our tardy return. But when he saw the Flight Logs, no further action was taken.

That was the last cross country I ever took during the winter months in Texas.

Joe D. Dunegan, AE2/AC, VS-37