Mohawk

Air Classics, Dec 2001 by Ellis, Robin M

I read the article "Mohawk Zero-Zero" in the April issue and this brought back an almost forgotten memory about an early Mohawk flight in the Enterprise-Fort Rucker, Alabama, area during the 1961/62 time frame.

Returning from Germany in late 1959, I was assigned (at my request) to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, for school attendance to become a motion picture photographer. Graduating, I spent most of the next six years on worldwide TDY. As I was in the top five of the graduating class, I was assigned to the Army Pictorial Center in Long Island City. After local training in and around the New York area, and on the center's sound stage with the "old hands" who were military and civilian, I eventually began going out with crews having specific assignments.

Later, by myself, I was often on temporary duty at points to include Fort Huachuca, Yuma Test Station, Fort Rucker, and Fort Benning. If at Huachuca-YTS I was usually shooting drone tests; if at Rucker-Benning, I was on flight pay and often shooting aerial footage of whatever was the subject of the assigned mission.

One humid mid-summer morning at Fort Rucker, I was in what seemed a very small fenced field with trees all around the fence. There, sitting quietly, was an OV-1 Mohawk that had been pushed back until the tail was only a few inches from the fence line. The Mohawk had been flown in just a short time before my arrival.

My assignment was to shoot throughthe-windshield coverage of a short-field takeoff. After a half-hour discussion with the pilot, safety director, film crew chief, and myself, the pilot, although unhappy about the flight, said it was a "go." So, helmeted, flight suited and with camera, I climbed into the right seat. Preflight finished, the pilot's last comments to me were to the effect that if I saw his hands flying upwards to the yellow-black stripe handle above his head, I was to do the same and pull the handle hard.

I did not get any footage. As soon as we started the roll and began to leave the ground, I was immediately in a state of vertigo and could do nothing except watch. One eye watched the rapidly-nearing fence line, the other eye watched the pilot's hands. Had his hands gone up an inch, I'd have beaten him to ejecting. We flew back to Rucker. No footage but a fantastic experience - and then there were the flights under the Golden Gate Bridge!

Robin M. Ellis San Antonio Historical Association