Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [126]
Murray flew the F-101 doing just about everything that needed to be done in support of Oxcart operations. This included flying against the Red Dog simulators, observing tanker refuels, overseeing takeoffs and landings, and flying Lockheed photographers around on CIA photo shoots. But Murray’s path in life took a significant redirection when General Ledford, the head of the Office of Special Activities at the Pentagon, decided he wanted to learn how to fly the F-101 while he was overseeing activities at Area 51. Murray recalls: “The general had been a bomber pilot in World War Two but he hadn’t ever flown anything as fast as the Voodoo could go, which was around twelve hundred or thirteen hundred miles per hour. So he decided that he wanted to learn how to fly it and when it came to choosing an IP, an instructor pilot, the general chose me.”
Murray now had to teach a legendary war hero, someone who also happened to be the highest-ranking military officer on the Oxcart program, how to fly supersonic. It might have been a daunting task. Except that it was not in Frank Murray’s character to be apprehensive. To Murray, it sounded like fun. “Out at the Ranch we had eight 101s that ran chase and one of them was a two-holer, with two cockpits and two sticks. ‘Come on, Frankie,’ the general said. He got in the back and up we went.”
General Ledford began to spend more and more time at the Ranch, where, in addition to the serious work being done, operations had taken on a boys’ club atmosphere. After a day of intense flying, nights were spent eating, socializing, and having drinks. “Sometimes, on the late side of things after dinner, Ledford would get a hair in his hat that he wanted to get back to Washington to see his wife, Polly,” Murray says. “He’d slap me on the back. That was my cue to take him home.” Home, in Washington, DC, was 2,500 miles away, and with supersonic aircraft at one’s disposal, this could actually happen this late at night. “Ledford was my student but he was also the general so on these trips home, I started letting him sit in the front of the plane; I’d sit in back. Well, all those hours flying back and forth from Area 51 to Washington, that cemented it. He was my boss but he also became my friend.” Ledford had other friends as well, several in high places at the Air Force, which made getting back to the East Coast from Nevada in the middle of the night a relatively easier trip. “Ledford had a buddy who was still in SAC, an air division commander at Blytheville Air Force Base in northeast Arkansas, just about halfway between 51 and Washington. Ledford would radio him when we were up in the air approaching the next state over and he’d say, ‘Have you got a tanker in the area?’ If he did or didn’t you could bet your fifty there’d be a tanker lining up next to you somewhere over Arkansas,” Murray says. What this meant was that when Murray and the general were traveling from Area 51 to the East Coast late at night, they never even had to stop for gas.
After a little more than two hours in the air, the men would land at Andrews Air Force Base and taxi up to the generals’ quarters—similar to a luxury hotel suite on the base—and enjoy a postflight scotch. “Ledford had a fancy setup on base quarters that had a fully equipped bar,” Murray explains. “We’d have a pop and chat a little before his wife, Polly, arrived to pick him up and take him home. I’d spend