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That Blue Uniform

C-130 Hercules

Remnants of this season’s first storm dripped steadily from the eaves as a bright winter sun beamed down. Cows longed for their daily encounter with the feed truck to deliver cubes and hay. Pecans waited in wet groves to be harvested.

It was a rather typical wintertime day for Pontotoc County’s Billy Gibson. Earlier, he topped his western shirt and blue jeans with a heavy coat and his well-worn felt hat for the trip to meet buddies at a popular Ada coffee shop. Stories were swapped and coffee pots were emptied before the morning’s ritual gradually came to a close.

Billy had just fired up his pipe as one fellow coffee shop regular was leaving. He stopped to ask Billy to be on the look out for a spray rig – he needed another one. Billy obliged, promising to keep his eyes peeled for any bargains. He filled his to-go cup with coffee before heading to the parking lot to get behind the wheel of the feed truck and head back to his ranch west of Ada. The wintertime routine varies, particularly when conditions are suitable for pecans to be harvested.

But the 74-year-old has lived the life of the typical Pontotoc Countyrancher for more than three decades. In the den of the Gibson home, photographs and other memorabilia hang prominently and offer a different glimpse of Lt. Col. Billy Gibson, U.S. Air Force, retired – Vietnam War pilot, The Pentagon, a prototype of Air Force One, a huge photo of the cockpit of a 747. "I’d do it again. Any day!”

Billy was in high school at Allen during World War II, and remembers watching airplanes go over his home daily. He was enamored, and made many trips to a bombing range about 20 miles away just to watch. "I also built every model plane that I could get my hands on.” When Billy enrolled at Oklahoma State University to study animal husbandry, he also joined the Air Force ROTC. He graduated in 1955 with his bachelor of science, and received a deferment from the Air Force so he could attend the University of Illinois and work on a masters.

The four-year obligation from his Air Force ROTC came calling almost before he cracked a book at the University of Illinois, and it was off to San Antonio for flight school. Georgia was the next stop for six months of training to fly B25s. Lincoln, Neb., was next on his itinerary before he was shipped back to San Antonio for a couple of years with the four-engine B29; then West Palm Beach for the cargo-carrying C97; back to Lincoln for the KC97 aerial refueling tankers where he spent about six years before being assigned to Columbus, Ohio, for three years in the KC135, another tanker plane.

I was tired of flying tankers,” said Billy, so he volunteered for service in Vietnam. "I wanted to go to Vietnam. It was the only way to get out of tanker service. I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but I didn’t have any choice of what I flew. You just flew what they assigned you. I just wanted to fly.”

He was sent to Alabama for command staff training, trained on the cargo plane and transitioned at a Tennessee base. "When Vietnam first started building up, I got a call at 3 p.m. Sunday to go, and they said bring clothes for a long time. I went to the base, and they said you’re fueled up.”

He left in his plane with sealed orders, which contained his designation. The Air Force stationed him in Taiwan, where he and his C130 crew rotated in and out of Vietnam every 23 days. "You would bring the plane back to Taiwan for maintenance. We flew eight missions a day delivering everything, including an elephant. We hauled everything that the Army might need, from food to clothing to ammo.”

Billy remains a big fan of the C130s, which still are in use by the Air Guard and are being flown in Iraq and Afghanistan. "You could land the C130s into anywhere you had a 2,000-foot strip to get into with a load. It didn’t take a paved runway to put them down. It’s the only plane the Air Force has had that had engines big enough to do what you wanted to do.”

He flew about 1,400 missions during Vietnam. "For the type of business we were in, 1,000 was normal. Usually, you’d get an hour or two off. You were supposed to fly 16 hours a day and be off. More usually, it was 20 hours and then you’d be on the ground.”

His crew usually was four – him, the co-pilot, flight engineer and loadmaster. Sometimes there was a navigator, but not normally. "You didn’t need a navigator, and they weren’t available either. Usually, you’d get close enough. We flew by the seat of our pants to get the job done.” He remembers one mission. His crew was making a delivery in the dead of night. Ground troops marked the landing area with two cans of burning diesel "so we knew where the runway was. You got out as soon as you could.”

While the C130 he flew was a cargo plane, Billy said it was used several times to drop bombs to clear zones for troops to get in the jungles. "You just pushed a 10,000-pound bomb out the back. It would clear the jungle for helicopters. We hauled U.S. troops, Vietnamese troops and probably a few VC. We hauled a lot of troops, taking them into hot zones. Sometimes you’d have to drop them in because of ground activity. We just hauled anything that needed to move. Sometimes you had to justify it when you got back home. We also flew lots of medivac missions in the Delta area. We’d stop and pick up the wounded. Some of that was a little touchy. It was impossible to keep your airplane in good condition because you were doing so many flights. But, it was interesting.”

The Vietnam War escalated with the Tet Offensive, a series of operational offensives timed to coincide with the lunar new year. It lasted about two months, and is widely seen as the turning point of the war that led to the eventual withdrawal of American forces. While the Tet Offensive was a tactical defeat for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army, it was a psychological and propaganda victory that polarized the U.S. over the war.

Billy and his crew were on the ground loaded with ammo when the offensive was launched. He pulled his C130 out, dumping ammo on the runaway. "I pushed the power up, released the brakes and the pallets went out. We started dumping cargo on the runway. They were dropping mortars in between every pallet. It looked like fireworks coming across. It was the prettiest fireworks display I’d even seen, knowing at the same time it was deadly.”

The plane was in the air for five hours because "I didn’t have any place to fly” before Billy finally made it to Da Nang in northern part of the country. "The loadmaster said we took 157 hits going in and out. It sounded like a hail storm from the small arms fire.”

Tet lasted about two months; however sporadic operations associated with the offensive continued into 1969. Billy and his crew were the last going in and out of Khe Sanh, an airstrip and U.S. Marine based just south of the DMZ. The attack was intended by the North Vietnamese as a diversion to draw American attention and forces away from the Tet offensive and to prevent forces at Khe Sanh from attacking supplies and troops moving south on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The attack lasted almost three months, and was primarily heavy artillery bombardment. The ground supply to the base was cutoff, and airborne resupply was difficult due to enemy fire. Billy remembers going back to land after one mission to Khe Sanh. "We had lost fuel out of six of the eight fuel tanks. As we pulled into the parking area, the engines quit. We knew it was close. "We went back in and dropped again at Khe Sanh, two or three missions a day.” During one of his last drops, he said they dropped a pallet with a case of eggs strapped on top. "It was the first fresh eggs the troops had in a long time.”

When Billy finished his tour in Vietnam, he was assigned to Seymour Johnson Air Force base in North Carolina, spending 13 months flying VC135s. "We flew all over the world. The plane didn’t have a boom (to refuel others in the air), so we just used all the fuel we hauled.”

He and his crew were on alert status (24-hour-a-day call up) the entire tour. The planes were equipped with radio relay – if a crisis did arise the planes were in the air and the relay feature allowed communication with anybody in the world. "We could direct ground activities from that plane,” Billy says, calling it the forerunner of today’s AWACs.

Billy was involved with the design and building of AWACs while stationed at Seymour Johnson, but didn’t get to follow through. "Those planes were the pre-runners of the National Airborne Command Post. It was quiet a challenge. Everybody had a little input into it.”

Billy also worked as a part of the Strategic Air Command, refueling B47s and B52s. While he was stationed at Seymour Johnson, he received a call from his old commander who was stationed at the Pentagon. "He started the conversation visiting, like always, and asked if I wanted to come to the Pentagon. We argued back and forth about an hour and he finally said bring Janet and the kids and be at his house Friday. We drove to D.C., and he said ‘You’re coming to the Pentagon.’ I said I don’t have a choice, and he said no.”

Billy got the call later from the old commander telling him that he would be picked up, taken to D.C., and be met by the commander. He and his family found a home, and two or three weeks later they were in D.C. "I was supposed to be there for three years, but it was four and a half years because he wouldn’t let me leave.”

He worked on recommendations for 87 Third World countries, evaluating their wants and checking to see if their requests for arms were warranted. "The biggest challenge was convincing Third World countries they couldn’t afford the arms they wanted to buy, and that was a challenge. One African landlocked country wanted a submarine. That’s how ridiculous it was.” Another project he worked on was Air Force One, the presidential airplane. That came after a move.

After four and one half years, the Air Force screwed up and sent this Okie to Oklahoma, and I was supposed to be a logistical officer. I was a project officer and had responsibility for the 747, which the president flies around in today. They sent me to Tinker.

I just signed in, then they sent me to Seattle and I spent the next six months commuting. "Janet built this house while I was doing all that running around,” Billy says from his recliner. "On Christmas Eve 1975 at 8:30 p.m. I signed acceptance for four 747s, and then I was unemployed. I came home to visit my family and went back (to base). They wanted me back and started in and I got all kinds of promises they’d leave me at Tinker. I told them that I don’t want to stay. I’ve got other things I want to do because for the first time in 20 years, I was within 500 miles of home. I said there’s a ranch I’ve been gone from for 20 years. I told him (the commander) about that ranch. We were running about 4,000 stockers and 1,500 to 2,000 mama cows. It had been going on all the time I was in service. He (the commander) said ‘Why the hell did you come in the Air Force?’ I said I wanted to fly airplanes. After 21 years of service, I retired.”

Billy has not regretted leaving the service. "I’ve been farming ever since. I’ve never missed it one bit, because I was busy. I have lots to do. I didn’t slow down. I just keep going nowadays.” He still keeps a few contacts with old service friends, and attends a few reunions to reminisce with buddies.

The group is getting smaller, maybe 50 percent its original size, because many have passed away. "They were good people. That’s the biggest thing about service life – you’re just one big family. You could take off and not know where you were going. The phone would ring and you’d be gone. But you didn’t need to worry. There would be someone there at your house by daylight.”

He’s only been in the pilot’s seat once since retiring. "I flew once after I took off that blue uniform. I didn’t want to, but a friend picked me up and said ‘you get in the left seat’.” While Billy takes pride in his military service, and reiterates that he would do it again if he had the opportunity, he cannot tell visitors what the drawer full of medals in his dresser represent. "Yeah, I’ve got some – a whole chest full, but I can’t tell you what they are. I was never impressed with medals. I wore ’em because I had to.”

Sounding like the rancher he’s been for the last 30-plus years, Billy sums up his Air Force career succinctly: "It was interesting. The biggest challenge was to have the desire to go and fly.”

Mike Nichols. You Never Know Unless You Ask. The Magazine Of The Oklahoma Farm Bureau: Oklahoma Country. Winter 2007.

C-130 Hercules in Action First flying in the mid-1950s, the C-130 Hercules has served more than 60 nations and has been in production longer than any other aircraft. First published in 1981, this photographic history of the C-130 takes you from its earliest prototypes through the first 30 years of its service, showing you the changes to each model as it was developed. An excellent tour covering transports, gunships and more.

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