Patrick D. McCaslin Interview, 11 November 2000
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| message because there was only one radar set. The ECM equipment hadn't been used." | ||
| JK | Electronic Warfare? | |
| PM | Yeah, when I've repeated this story, and it hasn't been very often but I told my family about it, meaning my mother and father, some time later, and then my wife has heard it, my kids have heard it, but it's never varied and I don't think I've missing anything. One variance between Brad and I is that I remember picking it up earlier than he apparently remembers it. He remembers it coming into the V, you know after they turned back toward the VOR, and I remember it coming out, as we approached the VOR and then it was off our right wing and turning into it, and off our left wing as we went back toward the base. | |
| JK | Well, there's sequences in the documents, which confirm things, but it doesn't say that you guys were asked to go around again and asked to overfly it, but it does say that the object was sighted on the ground or near the ground, so— | |
| PM | That was by our pilots. Yeah, I can remember that conversation, you know they wanted us to go around and do a visual to see if—and our pilot, whichever one was talking at the time was reluctant to do that, but he reluctantly agreed to go around and take a look. That to me was the most tense part of it, was we were going over this thing at low altitude, basically on a search mission at a low altitude and I remember that being a pretty tense time. But, I even remember him saying "We'll go around one time, and then we're putting this thing on the ground" because everybody had had about enough of it. | |
| JK | Well, there was something special about the request to go around that last time, which Runyan mentions, could you hear that radio traffic at that time? | |
| PM | I remember a conversation, one that I just relayed, where there was a request for us to go around one more time visually, and see if we could see something. I don't remember the exact words, but the pilots were not keen to do that, but agreed to do it on the condition that they were going to come around one time visually and then they were putting it on the ground, and full stop. | |
| JK | Right, right... well what Brad said was that you'd had this radar occurrence, and were approaching for a landing, and he said he doesn't recall whether you did a low level approach or a touch-and-go, but that the intention was to land. | |
| PM | Right, when we were coming in from the west that was going to be our full stop. | |
| JK | —and then Brad said that a General Officer was patched through to the radio and ordered them to go around. | |
| PM | Now, see I'd have no way of knowing that downstairs who they were talking to. All I remember is a conversation where they were asked to go take a look, and I remember the |
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