On this day in history, 17 February 1974, Robert K. Preston, a United States Army private first class, stole a United States Army Bell UH-1 Iroquois ("Huey") helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland, flew it to Washington, D.C. and hovered for six minutes over the White House before descending on the south lawn, about 100 yards from the West Wing. There was no initial attempt from the Executive Protec...tive Service to shoot the helicopter down, and he later took off and was chased by two Maryland State Police helicopters. Preston forced one of the police helicopters down through his maneuvering of the helicopter, and then returned to the White House. This time, as he hovered above the south grounds, the Executive Protective Service fired at him with shotguns and submachine guns. Preston was injured slightly, and landed his helicopter.

In a plea bargain, he pled guilty to "wrongful appropriation and breach of the peace," and was sentenced to 1 year in prison and fined $2,400. This amounted to a six-month sentence, since he had already been in prison for six months at the time. He eventually served two months of hard labor at Fort Riley, Kansas, before being granted a general discharge from the Army for unsuitability.

At the time of the incident, President Richard Nixon was travelling in Florida, and First Lady Pat Nixon was in Indianapolis, Indiana, visiting their sick daughter, Julie

Private First Class Robert K. Preston, US Army, a helicopter pilot who had washed out of training, crept across the tarmac at Fort Meade, Maryland, and boarded a UH-1 Iroquois helicopter. The aircraft was unarmed and, as was usual, was kept fueled on the flight line. With the practiced hand of his training, he quickly went through the start up sequence.

Without clearance, he pushed in the power, pulled up on the controls and took off into the night. For a time, he orbited the base at night, enjoying the view and hovering over base housing. Finally, bored with this, he set out for a new destination — the White House. When PFC Preston arrived in Washington, he took a flight down the Anacostia River, turned north at the Capitol Street Bridge and then flew directly to the White House. It was about 1:00 am.

At first the Secret Service was somewhat miffed. He buzzed the White House itself and then hovered overhead for six long minutes. At the time, policy was that they would not fire on a helicopter or other aerial intruder if it might endanger innocent bystanders, and so they waited. Finally, he flew down the South Lawn and landed about 100 yards toward the south fence. The Washington Monument towered in the background and he remained there on the ground for a minute. Two Maryland Police helicopters that had flown down from around Baltimore hovered nearby. Suddenly, PFC Preston took back off into the night skies and the police gave close pursuit. An extended tail chase ensued at low level.

In fact, it turned out that PFC Preston was indeed quite an expert pilot after all, as he managed to not only outmaneuver the two helicopters at ever turn but even managed to drive one down in the process. The second helicopter broke off but stayed nearby after what officials called, “a modern day dogfight”. PFC Preston returned to the White House once more. It was nearly 2:00 am and he had led the officials on a prolonged chase — certainly, his fuel was running low. This time he flew up to the Washington Monument, hovering at seven feet of altitude along the base for a bit before flying back straight north onto the White House’s South Lawn. There too he hovered just a few feet over the grass and it seemed to officials that this time he might be preparing to make a dash to crash into the building. The second Maryland Police helicopter set down quickly between him and the White House as Secret Service agents moved toward the helicopter.

Then, without warning, they opened fire with handguns and shotguns hoping to cripple the helicopter. They also fired and hit PFC Preston with a shotgun blast, injuring slightly. He landed the damaged helicopter at once — though it seemed also that the damage from the gunfire had knocked the aircraft out of the sky, leaving the Secret Service to conclude that it had downed the helicopter. Once on the ground, the Secret Service and Maryland Police rushed in. PFC Preston jumped clear and fought them hand to hand, though he was badly outnumbered. It wasn’t long before he was subdued, however.

Handcuffed, he was taken into the White House for questioning before being transferred to Walter Reed hospital for treatment for his light injuries — mainly shotgun pellets. The following day, when being escorted into a police car, he was smiling. When asked why he had flown back to the White House a second time, he said that he knew it was wrong to fly over the White House so he had flown back “to turn himself in”. The Secret Service ordered psychological testing. Ultimately, all civil charges were dropped and he was left to the military court system. In the end, PFC Preston had proven two things — first, he was a pretty darn good helicopter pilot after all; and second, that he was certainly not up to the moral and ethical standards of the US Army. He was sentenced to a year in prison.

Preston was a 20-year-old private first class in the U.S. Army, stationed in Panama City, Florida. Although he was training to become a helicopter pilot, he abandoned the training due to "deficiency in the instrument phase". Preston had enrolled in the JROTC program at Rutherford High School in Panama City, Florida and had longtime aspirations to a military career. After being taken into custody Preston indicated he was upset over not being allowed to continue training to be a helicopter pilot, and staged the incident to show his skill as a pilot

All Counts Dropped Against Marine for Jet Fighter Joy Ride
November 07, 1986|GARY JARLSON | Times Staff Writer
All charges against an El Toro Marine corporal who took a jet fighter on a Fourth of July joy ride have been dropped and he will be discharged from the military today, the Marine Corps announced Thursday.
"This was a very unusual case in which a Marine with a tremendous amount of skill and great potential did a very stupid thing which could have resulted in a tragic loss of life," Brig. Gen. D.E.P. Miller, commanding officer of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, said in a written statement.
Miller said the charges filed against Lance Cpl. Howard A. Foote Jr. "are very serious and his lack of judgment and violation of trust make it impossible to keep him in the Marine Corps.
"However, I feel that the 4 1/2 months he has served in confinement, coupled with an other-than-honorable discharge,will adequately serve justice in this case."

Parents Overjoyed
Shirley Foote said Thursday that she and her husband "are very overjoyed" that their son will be released today. "When we heard it, we were jumping in the air," she said.
She said she believed that what her son "went through was overkill on the part of the Marine Corps. I think they went overboard. It could have been handled a lot less detrimentally to both the Marines and our son."
The Marine Corps has said that Foote, 21, a Los Alamitos native and record-holding glider pilot before entering the service in 1984, donned a flight suit at 2 a.m. on July 4 and climbed aboard an unarmed A-4M Skyhawk at the El Toro base. He took off from an unlighted runway and returned about 40 minutes later, flying over the base several times before landing.
At a hearing in August, an aviation maintenance officer at the base testified that the jet Foote flew was in need of repair. Maj. Frank B. Kennedy III testified that the aileron rigging on the plane was out of alignment and that the nose wheel steering mechanism was not working properly.
"From a maintenance standpoint, it was not a flyable airplane," Kennedy said.
Injury Kept Him Out
According to Foote's parents, he took the plane after finding out that an injury he had suffered during an attempt to break the world glider altitude record would prevent him from becoming a jet fighter pilot, a goal they say he had pursued since he was a young boy.
The dismissal of charges and Foote's discharge came about as a result of long negotiations between Marine Corps authorities and his defense attorneys, Michael J. Naughton of Laguna Hills and Capt. Brad Garber.
As part of the agreement, Foote wrote a letter of apology to Miller in which he said, "I realize now that my actions were not only foolhardy, but downright dangerous . . . even though I have some civilian pilot ratings and am qualified in a glider, this training is not sufficient for one to fly a high-performance military jet safely. . . .
"Though I would like to repay the Marine Corps for the problems I have created, I understand that it would be difficult for the Marine Corps to take me back."
Foote had been scheduled for a general court-martial next Wednesday on charges of misappropriating the $14-million, single-seat jet fighter and a maintenance truck he drove to the plane.

If he had been convicted, Foote could have faced a maximum sentence of nine years at hard labor, forfeiture of all pay, demotion to private and a dishonorable discharge.
Confined to Brig
Because there is no prison facility at the El Toro base, Foote, an aviation mechanic assigned to a base maintenance squadron at the time of the incident, had been confined in the brig at Camp Pendleton since his arrest.
Foote was originally charged with misappropriating the truck and plane, damaging the aircraft and disobeying regulations.
He also was charged with hazarding a vessel--flying without proper training or approval and recklessly disregarding the plane's mechanical condition. That charge technically could have resulted in the death penalty under centuries-old maritime law.
However, all the charges except those accusing him of misappropriating the plane and the truck were dismissed some time ago.
During Foote's pretrial hearing he was described as a dedicated Marine with a spotless service record who was highly motivated to become a fighter pilot.
Garber, his military attorney, said at that hearing that Foote's unauthorized flight should be treated for what it was--"a once-in-a-lifetime flight from reality . . . not a beginning of criminal conduct."

On diamond jubilee, naval aviation's spirit shows
May 13, 2013 17:42 IST

Since 1910, when a barnstorming aviator first took off from a warship deck, naval fighter pilots have considered themselves a special breed.
But few yearned to fly as much as Leading Aircraft Ordnance Mechanic Ajit Singh Gill, an enlisted Indian Navy sailor who eventually fulfilled his ambition by stealing a Seahawk fighter from the Meenambakkam base in 1964.
Only officers can fly fighters, but Gill was never selected, not even for an Emergency Commission after the 1962 war. So he learned to fly a tiny single-engine aircraft in the Delhi Flying Club and built aeromodels in his leisure time.
On base, he volunteered for duty helping naval pilots strap into their Seahawk fighters, during which he asked casual questions about how to fly them. One Sunday, alone on guard duty, Gill clambered into a Seahawk, fired the starting cartridge and -- using all the information he had gathered -- roared off the runway into the sky.
At about the same time that the off-duty fighter pilots and the Meenambakkam control tower realised that an aircraft had been stolen, Gill realised he had no idea how to land the high-speed fighter.
Wisely choosing to land on water where he wouldn't catch fire, Gill touched down just off Tiruvanmiyur beach. Since he did not know how to close the canopy, the unconscious Gill floated to the service where his opened hair was spotted by the frantic fishermen who had just had a fighter jet land amid their boats.
Gill was court-martialled, to the regret of many naval fliers. Says Admiral Vinod Pasricha, himself a veteran carrier pilot, "I think Ajit would have made an excellent fighter pilot. He had all the right ingredients -- courage, determination, capability, enthusiasm and perhaps the little madness associated with all of us."


The day an Air Force mechanic commandeered a North American F-86
By Paul D. Mather
Air & Space Magazine | Subscribe
November 2011

Even as the powerful F-100 and other Century Series jets were carrying the U.S. Air Force to supersonic speeds in the 1950s, the North American F-86 Sabre was still a trusted fighter. Its reputation as a MiG killer, earned during the Korean War, made flying the Sabrejet a young airman’s dream. It wasn’t easy, especially considering the competition. Many F-86 pilots were World War II veterans with combat experience.
New Sabre pilots faced at least a year of training, including several hundred hours of classroom work and several hundred more of dual and solo flight time. After that came 15 hours in a cockpit simulator. During the student’s first flight in the single-seat fighter, an instructor flew on his wing, teaching via radio.
And then there was Airman First Class George R. Johnson. A 20-year-old mechanic at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, Johnson skipped the preliminaries; on the evening of September 20, 1956, he took a Sabrejet up for a ride. Up to then, Johnson’s piloting experience amounted to two hours with an instructor in a Piper Cub.
I learned about Johnson from an article in the now-defunct Argosy magazine, published in February 1959. At the time, I was a senior at Iowa State University studying aeronautical engineering and in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program. (I was commissioned in November 1959 and entered active duty the following January.) There were no quotes from Johnson in the Argosy story, and the piece did not say what happened to him after his adventure. I always wondered about him, and when I asked around in the rather large community of former F-86 pilots, I was surprised to find how little anyone knew about his exploit. After retiring from the Air Force, I decided to look him up.
Now 75, Johnson was amazed that anyone would still be interested in his long-ago flight. An intensely private man, he nonetheless agreed to meet me at a motel in Safford, Arizona, near his hometown, last November.
He grew up fascinated with airplanes. Johnson still remembered the bright yellow AT-6 Texan trainer that buzzed his family’s Pima home early in World War II. After his family moved to Los Angeles, he rode his bicycle to Inglewood to watch airplanes take off and land at the airport. At 17, with a letter of permission from his mother, the underage Johnson enlisted in the Air Force in January 1954. He got his first airplane ride on a chartered Convair 240 to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas for basic training. Having worked on cars in high school, Johnson had mechanical skills, and so was sent to jet engine school at Chanute Air Force Base in Illinois. There, he accompanied pilots in the T-6, rode in the nose of a B-25, and in his spare time logged Cub flight time. Though Johnson dearly wanted to fly for the Air Force, he knew he never would; as a boy, he had stared at the sun during an eclipse and had slightly burned one retina, making it impossible for him to pass the physical for military pilots.
In October 1955, Johnson arrived at Williams, about 30 miles southeast of Phoenix. The base was just beginning to transition from a basic training site, where students flew the Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star jet trainer, to an advanced fighter training base stocked with F-86s. Assigned to the 3525th Periodic Maintenance Squadron as a T-33 mechanic, Johnson did hydraulic and electrical repairs, engine changes, flight control and system checks, and flight instrument calibrations. He learned how to start and run the engine, and how to taxi the aircraft.
Johnson was proficient enough to be reassigned to the Sabre early the next year. On September 20, he and several other mechanics were working the evening shift on the flightline. The day shift had done major maintenance on an F-86F, no. 52-5039, but the work had not been done correctly; as a result, one of the aircraft’s control cables became inoperative. Fixing it required that the aft section of the Sabre be pulled off, the cables realigned, and then the aft reinstalled before all wiring, cables, and tubing could be reconnected.
Before the evening shift’s work could be signed off on, the mechanics had to perform a functional check, to be followed the next morning by a pilot’s flight check. While one mechanic connected a ground power unit to the aircraft, Johnson gave the Sabre an external check, grabbed his headset and microphone from his toolbox, climbed into the cockpit, and started the engine. Normal procedures called for the aircraft to be taxied to a run-up area, a short concrete spur near the active runway, where the engine could be monitored for normal operation up to full power.
Donning his headset, Johnson called the control tower, manned by Airman First Class Theodore Davis Jr., who cleared him to taxi to the run-up area. A few minutes later, after the engine check, Johnson called again and asked for permission to use the runway for a high-speed taxi test—a common procedure after any work on the brakes or nose wheel. The F-86 had a history of problems in which the nose wheel shimmied, so the damping mechanism had to be carefully adjusted. Davis again granted clearance, and watched as Johnson taxied the Sabre to the active runway, 30L, which was seldom used at night
“My intentions were still just to do a high-speed taxi,” Johnson recalled. “I never had a conscious intention to fly that airplane. The nose lifts off the runway at about 105 knots [120 mph]. As I approached 105, I could feel the nose getting light, and I thought I would just wait a few more seconds to see if I could feel the plane getting light on the main gear. The few seconds passed, and I just didn’t think I had enough room to stop. I wasn’t thinking about being in trouble. I was thinking about maintaining climb airspeed, and when I was in a definite climb, I retracted the landing gear. I was off and committed. There was no wind at all that night. The air was smooth as glass.” The time was 10:34 p.m.
Reaction on the ground was immediate. As the F-86 climbed northwest into the moonlit sky, Davis tried, unsuccessfully, to contact it. He then alerted the Officer of the Day, Captain Robert McCormick, who in turn notified other officers, including the base commander, Colonel Jerry Page, and the fire chief, Edward Anderson.
As all of them converged on the airfield, Johnson finally came on the radio, calmly announced that he had taken off, and asked what the tower thought he should do. McCormick, who by then had arrived in the tower, asked Johnson to orbit eight or 10 miles from the base and to avoid flying over residential areas. McCormick, who was an F-86 pilot, talked Johnson through the proper engine power adjustments to conserve fuel and to cease his climb and level the aircraft.
Johnson told me that while he was a bit apprehensive about his predicament, he was not afraid for his life. “I knew that airplane,” he said, “and I knew the numbers on various approach speeds because I knew the pilot’s handbook. I knew that intimately. Spent a lot of time studying that. I was as prepared as you could be without actually flying.
“The F-86 had one nasty characteristic. You could get into trouble on takeoff. If you lifted the nose too high at 105 [knots], then you get [too much] drag, and it wouldn’t accelerate out of it. You had to put the nose down to get the speed on up.
“I knew all about things like that, so I flew the airplane largely with trim. I knew all about over-controlling. I wasn’t gonna do aerobatics or anything like that. It was very stable. And it instantly obeyed where I told it I wanted to go. I just spent my time at 10,000 feet circling the base.”
Though Johnson wasn’t worried, the men on the ground were. For one thing, Johnson had no parachute. His only hope, base officials felt, was to make a survivable landing with their help. “There was quite a lot of [radio] chat back and forth,” Johnson recalled. “Everything got pretty well stabilized with me at slow cruise and orbiting the base. I could see everything moving on the taxiways and runways. I don’t recall being frightened, although I was being very careful with the controls.”
Johnson asked the tower to contact Second Lieutenant George Madison to come and fly on his wing. Madison, an F-86 check pilot, had until recently been Johnson’s supervisor, and Johnson respected and trusted him. One of the senior maintenance officers, Captain Linden Kelly, also a pilot, rousted Madison from bed and briefed him on the situation. Madison quickly dressed, grabbed his flight gear, helmet, and parachute, and rushed to the flightline, where a crew had readied an F-86. Madison asked Kelly to accompany him in another F-86. Within minutes, both were airborne.
“The F-86F is very stable in smooth air and the night was smooth,” Madison told me via e-mail (he wouldn’t say where he lived). “I knew that if we could get him in a controlled descent of about 500 feet per minute at around 140 knots [161 mph] and keep him lined up with the runway, there was a chance he might survive. I told George to just relax when the aircraft smacked the runway and keep it straight. All the time I was hoping the aircraft would not bounce or porpoise. I told George to forget about the brakes and let the barrier stop the aircraft.”
Said Johnson: “When we turned to final approach, they [Madison and Kelly] had me lined up with the runway very nicely. On their instructions, I had extended the speed brakes and landing gear, and put the wing flaps down. Madison had me back off the throttle at just the right time, and I touched down very smoothly, right on the runway centerline. I saw both of them accelerate and begin climbing away. One of them said ‘Good boy’ as I touched down
Even though he had come in faster than normal touchdown speed, Johnson had lots of experience in braking and steering the aircraft. Still, he took Madison’s advice and let the Sabre roll the length of the runway and plow into the cable barrier.
“It seemed to me that I was still very fast and not at all sure about getting stopped. I stayed off the brakes and was still rolling quite fast as I hit the barrier target right in the middle. The barrier engaged very smoothly and quickly slowed me down to a stop.”
Johnson opened the canopy and shut down the avionics and navigation lights. Anderson, the fire chief, ran over, hopped up on a wing, and leaned into the cockpit, where Johnson was cleaning things up. “This bird really can fly by itself,” Johnson told Anderson in amazement, adding, “It’s all over now but the shouting.”
And it was. Johnson had flown an F-86 for one hour and two minutes. For his adventure, he was whisked off to the base hospital, given a blood test (presumably to check for drugs and alcohol), and confined for the night in a guarded room.
The next morning, Page, the base commander, came in and opened the conversation with “Well, what do we do now?” Johnson had expected a tongue-lashing, but found the colonel to be a kind man. Page told Johnson that he had put on quite a show of flying skill, and under other circumstances Page might even have considered recommending him for pilot training. However, Page said, a court-martial was inevitable. If he were to show leniency, he told Johnson, “I would have half of my mechanics trying the same damn fool stunt tomorrow.”
Johnson’s general court-martial was held on March 26, 1957. The mechanic faced three charges: stealing an F-86F (valued at $217,427), causing $195.64 worth of damage to the aircraft when he hit the barrier upon landing, and flying the aircraft without proper flight orders or clearance. The trial lasted a day, and a transcript shows that members of the court were keenly interested in whether Johnson had seemed distraught or had hinted that he intended to fly the aircraft. Witnesses who spoke with him on the radio that night, and those who listened in, were unanimous: He seemed calm and completely in control of the situation.
Ultimately, the court agreed that Johnson had not intended to steal the Sabre. He was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge: wrongful appropriation. He was found guilty on the second charge of damaging the aircraft but was acquitted on the third on the grounds that the regulation applied only to Air Force pilots.
The court sentenced him to six months confinement at hard labor, which reduced his rank to Airman Basic, plus he had to forfeit $65 a month for six months. But Johnson was not discharged. He served his time in the jail at Williams, and looks back on his imprisonment as not at all depressing. Daily he was allowed outside to serve on various work details, such as mowing grass. His cell door was seldom locked, and he spent many evenings playing cards with the guards. For good behavior, he was freed after five months.
The Air Force put Johnson back to work in a different maintenance squadron, and at a desk, rather than on the flightline. Given charge of the technical and maintenance library, he soon excelled and began to earn back his rank. Johnson served another two years at Williams until the base began a transition to training pilots in the new F-100 Super Sabre. In early 1960, he was transferred to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, and assigned to the headquarters of the 18th Tactical Fighter Wing. Following his overseas tour, Johnson opted not to re-enlist, and in late 1961 he was released from active duty as an Airman Second Class (equivalent to today’s Airman First Class or E-3).
Johnson went on to work in the computer industry as a customer engineering and service representative. He eventually earned his pilot’s license, flew cropdusters, and for a time owned a Mooney M20 four-seat airplane. He did not consider his Sabrejet flight a big event in his life. “It was kind of a dumb thing to do, but I got away with it,” he told me. “Had a guardian angel on my shoulder that night.”

When the F-86 was rolling out to U.S. bases in the 1950s, North American Aviation dispatched its legendary test pilot, Bob Hoover, to show the fighter’s safe handling and flying capabilities to Air Force pilots all over the world. Hoover’s demonstrations—which included barrel rolls immediately after takeoff—were meant to allay concerns about the stability of the new swept-wing aircraft at low speeds, and to reassure pilots of the ease of flying the Sabre. Too late came Airman Johnson and his amazing one-hour flight to provide the ultimate proof

I was in HAL-5 when that Marine kid stole that A-4.
My C.O. told me not to even think about it.

WOLVERINES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!