I was in the USAF In 1952-3 at Brookley AFB, Mobile, AL as an ROTC 2nd Lieutenant. I was selected to be the officer responsible for helping test a Wright Patterson AFB-developed, parachute-dropped, remotely-controlled lifeboat. During the Korean War too many air-dropped lifeboats had blown away from crash & ship-wreck survivors in life vests & life rafts in the ocean. Thus the development of a system to drop, start and direct the boat to survivors in the water.
On the day of the test, a fellow 2nd lieutenant buddy of mine, Bud Bullock, and I were set adrift in the Gulf of Mexico out from Mobile Bay in a small life raft from one of Brookley’s crash boats. The Wright-Pat boys wanted realism in that test, so we paddled far away from the crash boat. We were to be the airmen to be rescued.
A B-29, with lifeboat snugly attached under its belly, soon flew up, circled and dropped the lifeboat! There was real drama when the chute did not open and the lifeboat dropped like a rock and hit the sea about 500 yards away. The Brookley crash boat motored over to the crushed, sinking life boat & caught the bow ring. Bud & I paddled over as fast as we could & were hauled back onto the crash boat. The Wright-Pat officers wanted to try to save the expensive but fast sinking life boat so we started to pull it back to Brookley AFB all the way at the other end of Mobile Bay, about 25 miles away.
The large lifeboat was soon completely submerged and became an unmanageable sea anchor, so the crash boat was not able to make progress. The Wright Pat officers and I conferred about what to do. We could have stayed out in the Gulf until a large tug with barge and crane could be obtained. But they decided that the expensive one-of-a kind electronics was ruined and that the life boat was replaceable so recommended that the grievously wounded boat be cut loose. I concurred but gulped a bit when that boat disappeared into the depths. Tough loss, but that was that…
Or so I thought.
Months later when I had served my your and was going through the discharge process, a red flag came up that I owed the US Government around $250,000 for a remotely controlled air-dropped life boat that I had signed for……..
Yikes!
After a lot of conversations, exchanges of telexes with Wright Patterson (no faxes or emails in those days) and a lot of red tape over several weeks, I finally was let off the hook and given a clean release from active duty. I thus became a civilian instead of a poor indentured 1st lieutenant (I had been promoted by then) or worse.
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