Not a stolen aircraft story, but one of the lax security during the ‘70s.
TINS – I had pre-positioned an A-4 at Eglin AFB for a special Navy R&D project. We were to sometime later load special sonobuoys on it for testing in the Gulf of Mexico.
The civilian scientist conducting the tests was an absent-minded-professor type. He also was one who had invented, designed, and built some of the remote sensors of
Operation Igloo White. He worked out of what looked like a mad-scientist’s garage at the Naval Air Development Center (NADC). Let’s just call him “Fred.”
Although not as lax as the Navy at the time, the Air Force – excepting SAC – still had some very lax security that Fred unwittingly exploited.
So this little old man Fred having driven all night, unshaven and dressed in shoddy civilian clothes drives up to, and on the flight line at Eglin AFB,. He is in his old, brown, beat-up ugly Dodge station wagon that is fully loaded with a bunch of
shiny tubes in the back. But nobody bothers to stop or question him.
He rolls up in his old beater and parks next to my (
beautiful) A-4, right on Eglin’s flight line in between other aircraft. Fred then proceeds to start unloading these strange shiny tubes from his personal station wagon, and is putting them onto my A-4.
Suddenly, but very much belatedly, he is spotted. Alerts sound! The AF Military Police come out in full force, armed and serious. The poor old man is shaken. (This was not at all like the flight line at NADC where he was a hero to most, and had free access anywhere.) The MPs immediately take him into custody.
Meanwhile, I am sleeping in late at my beachfront hotel after a fabulously fun night in Ft. Walton Beach. Abruptly, the damn phone ringing awakens me. Oh-oh! It is from Eglin Operations, asking… ah, no actually screaming,
“Do you know this guy, WTF, who do you think you are, and just what the hell is going on here?????!!!!!
A good ass-chewing later followed. But that was all. Anyway, good ol’ Fred along with my good small crew of Navy Sailors and I all had a good laugh about little old Fred easily sneaking by the Air Force’s supposed, rigid and airtight security!