Good old stories.
The three Pensacola sailors who stole a T34 (2 seats!) to go to New
Orleans. They ended up somewhere in Northern Alabama out of gas in a
field. I presume their next post was Portsmouth (NH) brig.
A crew chief was taxi-checking a Sabre at Williams AFB (AZ) way back
when and temptation got the better of him. He got airborne okay but
getting down - he was talked down by an IP but pranged the bird
successfully - i.e. he didn't kill himself.
As for getting airborne with stuff hanging on - one of our F86Ds at
Naha got airborne with a intake screen still attached. Nobody had a
good explanation for that as the screen was painted bright yellow.
An F4 got airborne with the big clunky gear downlocks still attached.
They're big things like pipes sawn lengthwise and clamped about the
shiny part of the retraction cylinder rams. They're also painted red
and have streamers attached.
One of my classmates got airborne at Nellis back in the 'Tiger program
days' in an 86 that had not been refueled from the previous flight- on
the turn out of traffic he found he had about 250 pounds of fuel left
- he got down okay, and got 'counseled' by his instructor.
Another one got one the shortest flights ever made at Bainbridge - the
fuel selector on his Piper PA18 was not positioned properly and about
25 feet in the air the engine quit cold. He got down okay, and went on
to a great flying career culminating in a 747 captaincy.
I 'recurrented' an old friend of mine in fighters - he got me in a
Sabre dance in a 104B. I'd neglected to ask what he'd been flying -
took it for granted he was still flying T33s. Nope - he'd been flying
T29s. OOps! But we survived.
Be ever pessimistic - it's a survival trait for pilots.
Walt BJ