There But for Grace, (The Final Flight of Pace 38) In Memory of 2nd Lt. William J. Stone, by Bob Kaufman

The night sky was pitch dark, moonless, and overcast. Monsoon thunderstorms surrounded the valley. To the east and north of Phoenix and adjacent cities, ominous storms were building and coming our way. The darkness was pierced, rather frequently, by lightning. Our weather briefings sometimes contained the code: “LTGCCCG” which is translated to mean: “Lightning Cloud - to - Cloud, Cloud - to - Ground”. Monday, July 26, 1971, was that kind of night, a typical mid-summer night in the Valley of the Sun. But moments before 11 PM, it all changed, as if a lightning bolt had struck right beside me!

At 2234 MST (10:34PM, Mountain Standard Time), 2nd Lt. William Stone advanced the throttles to the wall, lighting the afterburners of his T-38 jet trainer and accelerated for takeoff from runway 30C at Williams AFB on his initial night solo flight. Because of the thunderstorms, solo students were prohibited from flying in the practice areas over the mountains east of the base. Instead, Lt. Stone, and about 20 other student pilots flying the same mission, received radar vectors from Phoenix Approach Control to “High X-Ray”, the pattern entry point, 3 miles southeast of the approach end of the runway at 4600 feet altitude, geographically just east of the town of Queen Creek, Arizona.

For the next 24 minutes, Lt. Stone flew a rectangular pattern over the base, 1500 feet above the normal pattern. The purpose was to burn 1300 lbs. of jet fuel, reducing the aircraft weight making it safer for practice landings. A fully loaded T-38 carries 3800 lbs. of fuel, making the total aircraft weight over 11000 lbs. at takeoff. Although light by military jet standards, the T-38 demanded careful attention for safe flight, especially when attempting to land “heavy weight”. For safety reasons, solo students were prohibited from landing with more than 2500 lbs. of fuel except in an emergency.

With both the high and normal patterns operating, the beehive was buzzing, as were the radio channels. One could barely get a word in edgewise. 

At 2257:45 MST, an unidentified aircraft called Rum Dum, “Outside downwind breaking out”.  Radio transcripts show that for the next 45 seconds, Phoenix Approach was busy in conversations with other aircraft. Rum Dum was the call sign for the Runway Supervisory Unit (RSU) located at the approach end of the runway, staffed by qualified instructor pilots who observed all pattern activity to improve flight safety.

At 2258:30 MST, Lt. Stone, call sign “Pace 38” (spoken as “Pace Three Eight”), having exited the high pattern and having turned northeast to a heading of 030 (“zero three zero”) degrees, radioed: “Phoenix Approach Control – Pace 38 – pattern breakout, request X-Ray”. Because of the radio chatter, Phoenix did not respond to his call. One minute later, traveling in nearly level flight at an estimated speed of 280 Knots, Lt. Stone’s aircraft crashed into the side of a vertical rock face in the Superstition Mountains a short distance from the prominent Flat Iron.  The impact occurred at 4570 feet, about 50 feet below the peak at that location.  The aircraft disintegrated upon impact and Lt. Stone was killed instantly.

Radio call signs for every training mission at Willie were a combination of a key word and a two-digit number. Key words such as Oslo, AWOL, Pace, and Vest were assigned to formation, instrument, cross country, and other flights. The two-digit number corresponded to the scheduled takeoff time. Pace 38 was scheduled for 2238 (10:38 PM). Lt. Stone was the last solo on the schedule board. Others were scheduled at three minute intervals prior to his time.

That night, I was Pace 32.

Just one minute and thirty seconds prior to Lt. Stone’s last radio call, I made an almost identical call to Phoenix Approach Control – different only by the numbers of my call sign. Before the controller could respond to my call, Cram 02, another aircraft radioed Phoenix requesting instructions.  Within a few seconds the controller responded: “Zero Two Standby / Pace 32 squawk ident zero four zero zero.”  Following his instructions, I pushed a button on my transponder causing the image of my aircraft to stand out on his radar screen. Immediately the controller returned: “Okay 32, radar contact, turn right heading 120.” In the next few minutes, I received additional instructions that took me to “X-Ray”, the entry point to the normal traffic pattern at 3100 feet altitude. I had just completed a right turn to the base leg of the traffic pattern when I looked to my right and observed an explosion and huge fireball in the distance.

The highest point in the Superstition Mountains is a little over 5000 feet elevation. I was a mountain boy from Northern California, and a little 5000-foot hill just did not seem like much of an obstacle to me. On our usual departure to the east, we flew several thousand feet above it and I simply never gave it much thought. The next morning when I drove to the base on Williams Field Road, that mountain looked to me like Mt. Everest!

For a long time afterward, I reviewed over and over in my mind what I had done the night before and wondered: “what would I have done if I had not received that response from Phoenix Approach?” I cannot say with certainty that I would have recognized the danger and turned to a safe heading on my own without instruction from Phoenix.  I have often thought: “There, but for the grace of God, go I”.

For ten and a half months, Bill Stone and I and thirty-three other student pilots in the John Black/Beercan flight of Willie class 72-02 did everything together. We sat in all the same classrooms, studied aerodynamics, aerospace physiology, weather, and principles of flight together. We even endured a week-long defensive driving course before they ever let us touch an airplane. We sat with a buddy in the high-altitude chamber and watched each other ride the Barany Chair. From those somewhat humorous experiences, we witnessed the effects of rapid cabin decompression, oxygen deprivation, and spatial disorientation. We chuckled as the other guy’s fingers and lips turned blue, and within seconds, he could not write his own name. My now nameless companion failed at 95 while trying to count backward from 100. We laughed as we watched the other guys try to sit up straight after several revolutions in the chair. They looked like they had just spent the night at the bar in the Officers Club. Despite the humor, aerospace physiology was serious business. Our lives depended on understanding the hostile environment we had entered.

We watched each other literally get our butts kicked when we squeezed the triggers of the ejection seat in the Boom Bucket. One by one, we were pulled behind a speeding pickup truck and sailed up in the air 300 feet on a “parasail”, then banged our knees on the desert floor at the Rittenhouse Auxiliary when we tried to practice the parachute landing fall (PLF – in the military, everything has an acronym). That parasail was just a regular parachute with a couple of panels removed “for stability”. What it really did was increase our rate of fall as we descended to the concrete desert floor.

Physical conditioning was a necessity. Frequent exposure to five G’s in a high-performance jet was physically demanding. We ran the mile and a half, three or four times a week and did a hundred other things to earn the coveted wings of a United States Air Force pilot.

One by one, as we each returned safely from our initial solo in the T-37, we took off our boots, and were summarily dispatched to the dunk tank by the rest of the gang. My first solo in the T-38 was a thrill I will never forget … but that’s another story.

(In this picture: 2nd Lieutenants all - Angelo John, left, Rich Martindell, Ed Morrow, Robert Swanson, Frank Zazula, and me, of course.)

In all that time together, I only have one other memory of Bill Stone. One afternoon on the track, as we were nearing the end of a run, he appeared out of nowhere and zoomed past me like he had just lit his afterburners. I finished that race eating his dust!

Every day, when we went to the academics building, we passed a display case showing each of our names and a shiny pair of wings above each name. It was a sad day when the name of William J. Stone was removed from that case.

As a result of the accident and the investigation that followed, local flight procedures where soon changed. A new pattern breakout heading was given so that we weren’t heading directly at the mountains, and we were instructed that if approach control did not respond by the time we reached the highway from Apache Junction to Florence Junction, we were to turn right to a heading of 120 degrees which would keep us a safe distance from the mountains.

For over forty years I had thought the location of this crash was forgotten and unknown.  Prompted by
the tragic crash of a civilian aircraft the night before Thanksgiving, 2011, I searched the internet and discovered photos taken in the past few years showing debris from Lt. Stone’s aircraft located near the trail to the Flat Iron in the Superstition Mountains above the Siphon Draw Trail.  The 2011 crash site is just a few hundred yards away.

Since that time, I have scaled the mountain twice (edit: as of 2015, five times) to visit the site where my classmate perished.  I hope one day to place a plaque at the site in honor of my fallen comrade.

My first experience witnessing the Air Force Missing Man formation was later that week as a Memorial Service was held for Lt. Stone at the chapel on Williams AFB. Rest in peace, Stone. We, the students of Willie class 72-02 will never forget you.

 

Radio Call Transcript

The transcript of the radio conversations that night indicate that Pace 38 and Cram 02 were in the same general location at the time Lt. Stone executed his pattern breakout and that the overworked controller apparently confused the two aircraft.  (Cram 02 was a “control ship” with a qualified instructor pilot onboard.  Regulations required a qualified pilot to be airborne at all times when student pilots were flying solo.  Cram 02 was the lead control ship which took off before the solo students.  He was nearing the completion of his mission.  Cram 47 was the trailing control ship which took off after Lt. Stone.  All solo students had a Pace call sign.)

Time	Position	Message
22:56:45	Pace 32	Phoenix, Pace Three Two pattern breakout request vec ah vectors to X-Ray
22:56:50	Cram 02	Phoenix Approach, Cram Zero Two missed approach and ah sounds like our other control ship is getting airborne.  This time request X-Ray.
22:56:55
22:57:00	Phx R5	Zero Two standby / Pace Three Two squawk ident Zero Four Zero Zero
22:57:05	Pace 32	Pace Three Two squawking
22:57:05	Phx R5	Okay Three Two radar contact turn right heading One Two Zero
22:57:10	Pace 32	Pace Three Two (Repeating the call sign is an acknowledgment of the instruction)
22:57:15	Phx R5	Pace Three Five ah heading ah --- Pace Three ah Five what’s your heading
22:57:20	Pace 35	Three Five heading One Two Zero
22:57:20	Phx R5	Okay
22:57:25	Cram 47	Phoenix Departure Control Cram Four Seven climbing to block above Willy
22:57:30
22:57:35	Phx R5	Four Seven radar contact
22:57:35	Phx R5	Two Nine descend and maintain Four Thousand Six Hundred and an continue Two One Zero
22:57:45	Pace 29	Pace Two Nine
22:57:50	Phx R5	Three Two squawk ident
22:57:55	Phx R5	Okay Three Five squawk ident (At this point it appears the controller is having issues keeping track of the aircraft. The ident feature in the transponder sends a signal to his radar system causing the image to be highlighted, allowing the controller to positively identify the aircraft in question.)
22:58:00	Pace 35	Three Five
22:58:05	Phx R5	Okay
22:58:10	Phx R5	Three Five turn right heading ah Two One Zero
22:58:15	Pace 35	Pace Three Five
22:58:20	Phx R5	Three Five descend and maintain Four Thousand Six Hundred
22:58:20	Pace 29	Pace Two Nine is heading Two One
22:58:25	Phx R5	Two Nine turn right inbound to X-Ray squawk standby (Standby causes the image to disappear from his screen.)
22:58:25	Pace 29	Pace Two Nine
22:58:30	Pace 38	Phoenix Approach, Pace Three Eight pattern breakout request X-Ray
22:58:35	Phx R5	Cram Zero Two turn right heading One Five Zero and squawk ident, maintain Six Thousand (Phoenix did not respond to Pace 38 – a heading of 120 is parallel to the runway.  Phoenix gave the instruction of 150 because he must have thought Cram 02 was too far to the east and needed a heading to take him back to the proper flight path)
22:58:40	Cram 02	Cram Zero Two
22:58:45
22:58:50	Phx R5	Pace Three Two maintain FiveThousand vector to High X-Ray
22:58:55	Pace 32	Ah Pace Three Two wants to go to X-Ray (not High X-Ray – the same point on the ground, but at 4600 feet and 3100 feet respectively)
	Phx R5	Okay you’ll be a vector to X-Ray – Pace Three Five turn right heading Two Five Zero to intercept the One One Six radial to X-Ray, Squawk standby and Rumdum.
22:59:00
22:59:05	Pace 35	Pace Three Five
22:59:10	Phx R5	Pace Three Two turn right heading Two One Zero, descend and maintain Three Thousand One Hundred
	Pace 32	Pace Three Two (acknowledged)
22:59:15	Phx R5	Cram Zero Two turn right heading One Eight Zero (This is crucial.  I believe the controller actually saw the image of Pace 38 and thought is was Cram 02.  This heading is an even greater correction back toward the traffic pattern than the one given 40 seconds earlier.)
22:59:20	Cram 02	Cram Zero Two
22:59:25	Phx R5	And Pace Four Seven ah squawk ident Zero Four Zero Zero (this is a mistake, his call sign was Cram 47 – not a major error, but indicates the controller was swamped.)
22:59:30	Phx R5	Pace Four Seven radar contact turn right heading One Four Zero, climb and maintain Six Thousand
22:59:35		(this is when I believe the crash of Pace 38 occurred as evidenced by the next radio calls)
22:59:40	Phx R5	Cram Zero Two Phoenix (The controller did not give any instructions. This indicates that he wants the aircraft to respond.)
	Cram 02	Zero Two go (meaning, I’m here, what do you want?)
22:59:45	Phx R5	Okay check your transponder, we just lost it, code Zero Four Zero Zero and ident (clearly something had just occurred to cause the image to disappear.)
22:59:50	Phx R2	When you can ah standby talk to Cram Zero Two and send him to channel twelve for (unintelligible) (R2, I suspect was a supervisor – channel twelve was the direct channel to T38 operations at Williams to be used by the control aircraft for special circumstances)
22:59:55
23:00:00	Phx R5	He’s going to Rumdum (unintelligible) (Rumdum was the runway supervisory unit at the base – manned by instructor pilots for pattern traffic control)
23:00:10	Cram 47	Ah Phoenix ah you might want to check with Rumdum, it looks like we may have had an aircraft impact out here

The T-38 Traffic Pattern at Williams AFB for traffic to runway 30.

With the help of a young friend, I finally made it to the top of the Flat Iron in 2015.
Stone's aircraft hit the rock cliff off my right shoulder (viewer's left).

The blackened rock face top center was the impact point of the civilian aircraft in 2011. Stone's aircraft impacted the large rock face to the left and below as he was traveling from right to left in this image. Debris fell into the draw roughly 500 feet below the point of impact.