_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [9]
NBC News was the only agency with film, and we enjoyed our little exclusive.
In 1958, launches at Cape Canaveral had become the hottest news in the country. NBC’s Chet Huntley, America’s number-one broadcaster, was often at the Cape. From left to right: author Jay Barbree, Major Ken Grine, Chet Huntley. (Barbree Collection).
Project Score reached orbit five months into my employ by NBC News, and by now I knew my way around the Cape and the military.
As a farm boy of sixteen without a home, I lied about my age and talked myself into the air force, where I spent four years in search of an education. After basic training in Texas, I was assigned to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. There, I spent my off-duty time studying for my general equivalency diploma and watching the fighters and bombers climb into the sky from Scott Field. Sometimes I would walk to the end of the runway and stand, drinking in the energy of an F–80 jet thundering over my head, tucking up its gear and fleeing into puffy white clouds.
I was in awe of flying machines, and I began spending much of my spare time at a nearby private airport. I had no money for flying lessons, but I would stand there and watch the pilots shout “Contact!” to the mechanics that would grab the wooden props and swing them down suddenly; each aircraft engine would fire with a stuttering cough. I loved to stand behind the ships when the pilots revved them up for a power check. The air blast whipped back, throwing up dust and flattening the grass, blowing strong in my face.
Soon, I was an airport fixture. I was the pilots’ “go-fer.” I gladly ran their errands and helped them with their planes, and they repaid me with local rides.
I’ll never forget my first hop. The airplane was old, its fabric faded, splotched yellow, and the engine dripped oil. It smelled of gasoline in the air; it shook my teeth, but I didn’t care. After a few weeks, the pilots let me handle the stick and rudder foot pedals in flight, adding instructions when possible.
Then there was the day the man with the red-and-white Stearman biplane landed at our field. I helped the pilot with the awesome ship, running behind the right wing and pushing on the struts. We got the machine refueled, and I answered all the pilot’s questions, bringing him coffee and a couple of fresh doughnuts. And while he downed the coffee, I stood on a box, cleaning the cockpit glass, polishing the gleaming red-and-white surface as the pilot watched in silence.
“Hey, buddy!” he shouted. “Would you like a ride?”
My grin was my answer and minutes later we were in the air, where, for the first time, I experienced aerobatics as earth and sky vanished and reappeared with startling rapidity. It began with me staring at a vertical horizon and realizing the edge of the world now stood on its end. But not for long, as the Stearman continued on over, rolling around the inside of an invisible barrel in the air, until the ground was up and the sky was down. I had just enough time to catch my breath when the nose went down and an invisible hand pushed me gently into my seat and glued me there as the nose came up, and up. The horizon disappeared again, and the engine screamed with the dive. Then the nose was coming up, higher and higher, and the engine began to protest. The sun flashed in my eyes, and I found myself on my back as the Stearman soared up and over in a beautiful loop.
As we flew on, my pleasure grew, and my eyes were glazed with delight by the time the biplane whispered onto the grass landing strip.
There could be no stopping me now. I lived and slept flying, and within a year I had my pilot’s license along with my high school diploma, and I earned two years of college credits in night aviation classes. I was transferred to the Scott AFB Link Trainer Section, where I was appointed an air force