Good clean aviation fun!
B1 Bomber for Sale
A B1 bomber was in (Billings , MT ) doing practice
approaches and touch and go ' s. On one of the landings the pilot
sets his brakes on fire. He taxis in, and the airport
parks him on a taxiway and then puts cones around him until parts and
mechanics can be brought in from Ellsworth AFB, Rapid City SD, the next
day.
The next day is a Saturday, which doesn't have much going on, so we
get to laughing in the tower that maybe somebody should hang a For
Sale sign on the plane. We convince one of our guys who's well known
for doing things like this that it would be a good idea.
So he takes off for the hardware store to buy a For Sale sign. On the
way back he stops at a car dealer and gets one of those "As is/No
Warranty" signs that hang in all used cars. On that sign was written
something like low miles, new engines, needs brakes and tires. Those
signs were taped together, and off goes our hero.
He climbs over the fence, leaving some skin on the barbed wire, and
makes his way the 1000 feet or so to the aircraft. As he's doing that,
we see a couple of airport vehicles starting to gather with the
recently arrived mechanics as well as the plane's crew. Not looking
good for our intrepid airplane salesman. He gets to the nose wheel and
tapes the sign to the nose strut.
Then he starts to make his way back from the plane as the vehicles
start to head out from the shop on the way to the bomber. Somehow he
makes it without being seen.
The vehicles arrive at the plane, and of course notice the sign right
away. The Air Force guys are in stitches, funniest thing they've seen
in a long time. Airport guys are not sure what to think. Airport
management is livid as they've been tasked with security.
Pretty soon a camera appears and all the Air Force guys are taking
pictures of each other by the sign.
Our hero is back in the tower now, and notices the bomber's commander
is talking on a cell phone. Our guy gets on the radio to the airport
truck and asks for that guy's phone number. As soon as he finishes
that call, our guy calls the aircraft commander. When he answers, our
guy says "I'm calling about the plane you have for sale." Aircraft
commander about falls over from the laughter. It just so happened that
the chief photographer for our local newspaper is a pilot and he may
have been called prior to the sign being placed.
He was told to get up here with a big lens. Here's one of the pics he got:
An article showed on the front page of the Sunday paper. When that
came out, the Colonel running Ellsworth called the airport director
and read him the riot act, wondering what kind of dog and pony show he
was running up there. We were later informed by the crew that the sign
was framed and is now permanently mounted inside the aircraft. Hard to
have that kind of fun anymore.
