Transcript

[00:01] RANDY SMITH: My name is Randy Smith. I’m 66. I’ll be 67 in about four months. We’re in Wichita, Kansas. My interview partner is Logan Doherty and I’ve started volunteering at the Kansas Aviation Museum. So this is how I got to know him.

[00:21] LOGAN DOHERTY: My name is Logan Doherty. I’m 26 years old. It’s March 9, 2023. This is in Wichita, Kansas. My interview partner is Randy Smith. I know him because he’s a volunteer here at the museum where I work. Okay. How did you first get interested in aviation?

[00:51] RANDY SMITH: I was born in aviation. My dad always had aircraft, and we had aircraft in the garage and a lot of my friends and my first girlfriend, when I took her to the house, she goes, you have an airplane in your garage? I said, well, doesn’t everybody? So I’ve been in aviation since I could walk. I grew up around all the aviation stalwarts. Let’s just say my dad was friends with Bill Lear. I knew Dwayne Wallace through, through Cessna. Just a lot of grew up with Harold Cryer was another, another friend of my dad’s famous aviation stunt pilot. So grew up in it, always was fascinated with aviation. 1973, I joined the air force, got sent to Vietnam. Well, actually not Vietnam, but I was in Thailand. I was in a wild weasel squadron. So I launched f, was a crew chief on, on the Thunder chief. After, after we shut down the squadron in Vietnam, they sent me to George Air Force Base, California. I ended up crew chiefing f four s for the next about ten years. So I got out of the, I got out of the service in 1987. So I’ve always worked jobs that have been in aviation. I was the line supervisor for yingling aviation for about ten years. And then mainly just, I did a lot of contract work for the government. I worked at Vance Air Force Base as contractor. I’ve been to Afghanistan as a contractor before it got nasty and got to see a lot of country and work on a lot of aircraft. I’m ArFf certified aircraft rescue and firefighting. So I can thank aviation for giving me a great career, 50 plus years of aviation. I’ve seen a lot of changes, a lot of innovation, and I’m just looking forward to it continuing.

[03:33] LOGAN DOHERTY: So how did your dad get involved? Did he work for one of the companies?

[03:37] RANDY SMITH: He worked for a company that modified military aircraft, Hays Corporation in Alabama. In fact, that’s where I was born. And then he joined the military air force, and he was one of the first airmen here at Wichita Air Force Base when it was still Wichita Air Force base. Before it became McConnell. So I kind of followed him in his footsteps, joined the air force, and I’ve enjoyed it ever since.

[04:16] LOGAN DOHERTY: So did you ever come out to this building when it was part of the air force base?

[04:21] RANDY SMITH: No, I was only about a year old. He never brought me out here, but he told me a lot of stories out here. He was here when the B 47s were here, so a lot of stories, a lot of history out here. Got good pictures of him sitting on the ramp in front of this building, in fact. So I always thought that was pretty cool that he’s in the very picture that has this building in it. I think that’s just one of the, one of the great things about it. But I have volunteered for this museum. Back in the early eighties, when Ron Ryan got my dad involved in it, he brought my brother and me along, and we worked in a lot of different areas in this museum. Third floor was one of the ones we were helping tear the floor out of and using grain shovels to shovel out the pigeon poop and all the trash and everything else that was in there. So broken windows and everything was a mess back then. In fact, my dad, brother, and I helped put the roof on, on the east side back in the day. A lot of fun out here. A lot of it was the changeover from analog to digital. Just the fact trying to learn a new, new skill set, I guess what you could say. Plus, in my day, I fueled a lot of round engine airplanes that took 115, 145 avgas, and then we started transitioning to jet fuel and a whole different set of rules then. So it’s been a. I can say that a lot of times when the military aircraft would come in, it would be checked oil and or fill the oil and check the gas because they just burn tons of oil with those round engines. So I miss the old days with the round engine stuff. And there’s nothing like hearing a radial engine running. I love, I love the early jets, but they were a maintenance headache, so it’s probably our ghost.

[07:17] LOGAN DOHERTY: Um, let’s see.

[07:23] RANDY SMITH: Friday night, I did. I got shoved by one.

[07:30] LOGAN DOHERTY: Yeah, you should tell them about that.

[07:32] RANDY SMITH: It was interesting. Mister Stearman’s car that’s there in the building, we ended up moving it and had to literally pick it up and move it because it was just too hard to push. So we literally picked it up and moved it. And the gal that was running the paranormal, she asked if he was upset because we’d moved his car. And yes. And she goes, well, this gentleman was one of the ones that moved your car. And about that time, I felt a real cold just envelop me, and literally, I was thrown backwards. And then they caught him on their little tv screen, and he sat down on the hood of his car with his arms crossed, just stared at me. And the next night, when the group came in again, they asked him if he was still mad, and he said yes. Well, you know, he was just doing what he was told. Oh, yeah. First time I’ve ever been attacked by a ghost. Yeah, we’ve been. When we were here in the early, early eighties, we were told that there was one in the. In the tower that didn’t like people coming up there and never really bothered us. But you kind of got an uneasy feeling when you’re up there in the evening or at night. So we just tended to stay out of there.

[09:15] LOGAN DOHERTY: You talked about jets changing the way aviation worked, and I often wonder. A lot of technological development is kind of on an s curve, where it starts out slow and then there’s a quick change, and then it’s just fine tuning again. Do you think aviation follows that sort of an s curve where we’re just making small progress now and there were big leaps in the past, or do you think we’re due for another big leap?

[09:46] RANDY SMITH: I think we’re at that point now where it’s going to get real advanced. We’re kind of in a lull right now. I mean, when I went from the f 105 to the f four, they were just changing over to Doppler, and the technology was digital, just trying to. Luckily, I was a crew chief, so we had people that took care of the instruments and the Doppler and all the other circuitry and everything else, but I did have to know about it. I think right now we’re at a stage where they’re talking about aircraft that are going to exceed Mach six or Mach seven, maybe Mach eight. We’re talking about hypersonic type of aircraft. They’re talking about commercial aircraft that are going to fly at Mach one that several companies are trying to develop right now. And I think the technology is there, and they’re starting to utilize it, and it’s just going to get better as we go along. So I think it’s another interesting time in aviation is going to be real, gonna be real, real fun to watch, so. But I’m all about the history of aviation. I’m all about World War two and Korea and Vietnam. Since I was involved in Vietnam, the history of aviation has always been fascinating to me. And as my wife can say, I have a man cave in our basement that’s literally crammed full of books, just about of everything. So I’ve collected pictures. Oh, she calls it my mess. So.

[11:57] LOGAN DOHERTY: So were you involved with pulling out of Vietnam?

[12:00] RANDY SMITH: Yeah. Yeah, I was in the very last wild weasel squadron. We shut down corrot Air Force base. We were the last ones there. So we pulled out 1975 and we shut it down. We were one of the last groups to leave. So that’s when I got transferred to George Air Force Base after the 105s were phased out. So I love the f 105 because really, that was my first airplane. But I did fall in love with the f four. It’s a great airplane. Just learning to two of everything with the f four is the. As opposed to the 105. And you’re talking about an airplane that was designed in the 1950s as opposed to an airplane that was designed in the sixties. So the technology was a little bit different, but a lot of fun. Unlike the guys today, we actually had to work on our airplanes. They can just roll a cart up to it, plug it in and tell them, and it tells them what’s wrong with it. So we actually had to diagnose our problems. A big, heavy brick of an airplane that just has two massive engines that pushes it through the air. Bent wings and bent tail. So it’s a brute of an airplane. But I tell you what, it was a great aircraft. I mean, the f 16 is kind of what the f four was back then. Just a massive, brute airplane. Enjoyed every bit of it. I’d do it again if I had a chance, only they won’t take 66 year old people anymore.

[14:07] LOGAN DOHERTY: What did you do in the air force after 75?

[14:12] RANDY SMITH: I was still a crew chief. Yeah. In fact, that’s when I got into the arf. I was cross trained in the aircraft rescue and firefighting and spent some time on the air force. Fire, fire, fire stations and filled in, did all that. But mainly, mainly just crude. And went tdy a lot of places. Temporary duty. Spent a lot of time overseas and different countries. Spent time in Nellis was another home away from home. Spent a lot of time at Nellis Air force Base. One of our favorite things to do at Nellis was on the weekends we’d rent a houseboat and go out on Lake Mead, and we’d usually have 20 or 30 people on there. And so we had always count heads. Sunday afternoon, you better count, make sure everybody’s there. Nobody fell in the lake and drowned. So it was. It was our party boat. Let’s just say we probably broke the rules of nice society a lot. What do you expect for a bunch of air force guys? I enjoyed every minute of it. I spent a lot of time contract work for the military, and I’ve enjoyed every bit of that. So it’s my way of keeping in touch with the military, and I still enjoy it. That’s why I love working here. It’s just. It’s right up my alley. So.

[16:07] LOGAN DOHERTY: What was your favorite place you went to?

[16:12] RANDY SMITH: I actually enjoyed England. The weather was, a lot of times, terrible, but it was one of my favorite places. I always wanted to go to Germany and never got a chance. But when I went to Afghanistan, they always warned me. In fact, the gentleman that hired me said, if you like heat, you like sand in your food and your hair and your clothes, you’ll love Afghanistan. And we asked. We asked when the things started kind of going bad, we said, well, if it comes down to it, are we allowed to protect ourselves? No, you’re not allowed to carry a weapon. But every one of my civilian cohorts, we all had weapons in our lockers, so if it came down to it, we were able to protect ourselves. And luckily, we got out of there before it really got bad. So I left in 2016, so it wasn’t too bad then, but we still had a good presence a year and a half. So I spent a lot of time fueling airplanes and taking care of aircraft coming in and out. So how did you get started? In the archive business.

[17:46] LOGAN DOHERTY: I got my undergrad in history at KU, and then my masters in local and community history at KSU.

[17:54] RANDY SMITH: Yeah, yeah. So what gravitated you towards the aviation part of it?

[18:01] LOGAN DOHERTY: This job was open. Someone I went to school with in my grad program was the old curator. When I heard he was leaving, I asked him to recommend me for this job. It’s pretty hard to find public history jobs. There’s probably ten of them in the city total. So, yeah, I don’t really have a big aviation connection. I’ve learned a lot since. Since I’ve been here. It’s more about history and museums and archives. For me, that’s much more of my focus. I’m very interested in history in general.

[18:39] RANDY SMITH: That’s why I’ve always loved this building, is because it has so much history behind it and the personal history with my dad being one of the first airmen here, us working, working this museum, when it first came to be as a museum, helping with the airplanes, my brother and I helped with the company that brought the B 47 here, the company that he worked for, we put the gear under it, we redid the canopy and all that. And I’ve always enjoyed coming out here doing this. And when my wife and I came out, what, a month ago now, and went through the museum and I noticed how much it had changed and said, maybe it’s time I come back.

[19:36] LOGAN DOHERTY: We’re trying to make some changes.

[19:37] RANDY SMITH: And I tell you what it is. That’s why I’m here right now. It’s a great place. I’ve enjoyed every bit of it so far, and I look forward to a lot more.

[19:50] LOGAN DOHERTY: Yeah. I love the historic building. I do have a personal connection to this place in that my great uncle was a TWA pilot. Oh, okay. So he easy passed away when I was a child, but I didn’t know him, and he wrote a memoir. But he flew, flew in and out of here.

[20:09] RANDY SMITH: Wow. He flew.

[20:10] LOGAN DOHERTY: Flew from Kansas City, which is. I’m from the Kansas City area. So he flew from Kansas City to Albuquerque, back and forth, and stopped in Amarillo. And he actually flew over the Trinity test in 1945.

[20:27] RANDY SMITH: Wow.

[20:27] LOGAN DOHERTY: And they tested the first atomic bomb. He was flying nearby in an airline. They didn’t warn the airline.

[20:35] RANDY SMITH: Oh, my goodness.

[20:36] LOGAN DOHERTY: It was top secret.

[20:37] RANDY SMITH: Yeah.

[20:38] LOGAN DOHERTY: They thought it was the sunrise at first. Actually, he wrote about it in his memoir that it was unpublished, but I donated it to the museum. But, yeah, they thought it was the sunrise, except it was coming from the west and not the east.

[20:52] RANDY SMITH: Not the east.

[20:53] LOGAN DOHERTY: People started ordering coffee on the. On the plane before they figured out it was.

[20:59] RANDY SMITH: It was a nuclear ocean. Yeah.

[21:02] LOGAN DOHERTY: And then when he tried calling the air force, when he landed, and they didn’t tell him anything, of course.

[21:09] RANDY SMITH: Yeah. Of course not. Yeah. Well, the good thing about being in the. In the military and working in the civilian sector of it is that I’ve had a. Had a top secret clearance for 30 years, 30 plus years. And I got to see a lot of. Do a lot of different things that a lot of people would never get to do because I did have that clearance. I got to see a lot of nuclear type stuff. So it’s been very interesting. One of my times, I was tdy up at Omaha and offut. I was taking pictures of the doomsday airplane, the E 4747, that sits up there all the time. And an air policeman caught me in, wanted to know what I was doing, so I had to show him my top secret credentials, and he was like, well, you got a higher clearance than I do, so I guess it’s Okay. I do have some pictures of an e four at home that probably are never going to be seen.

[22:17] LOGAN DOHERTY: You have secrets you’re taking to the grave.

[22:20] RANDY SMITH: Yeah. Area 51. I’ve been there. As one of my air force friends said, he flew out of Area 51 and I asked him about it and he said, well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to shoot you. So there’s some things that I can say, but I can’t really get into it. Yeah, it’s an actual, actual base. And, yes, there are aircraft there are being tested. So that’s about all I can say. But, yeah, I’ve been to. Went to Nellis a lot to do a lot of testing on top secret things, and it’s been enjoyable. We’ve been to Eglin a lot for the armament. That’s where the armament squadron is. They do a lot of testing on. Out over the gulf, so they can shoot a lot of missiles out there. As I said, I’ve had. I’ve had a very interesting career, and maybe this will appease my daughter as I could. I can kind of put some of this into words. I learned to fly sitting on my dad’s lap. We flew off. I flew a. My dad had a Stinson 183, and we flew off a little airstrip grass strip just east of Derby, Kansas, called Hamilton Airfield. It’s now called Hamilton estates because it’s all houses now. The airport’s gone, but that was our Sunday afternoon. We’d get in the airplane, go fly, and go over to cook airfield, go over to rodding, visit everybody, say hi, and then we’ll go back to Hamilton and have a cookout next to the hangar. So mow the grass. And so we always had fun. Remember going down to the. The little office that they had at Hamilton? They always had orange and grape knee high sodas. Reach in there and grab one and sit and drink it on the. On the porch. But, yeah, I got. I got my pilot’s license in 1972, went through yingling because they were assessing a dealership. So we got to. Got to fly. Do it through Cessna. Cost me $900 then, and it. You could rent an airplane for about $15 an hour wet. So you can’t do that nowadays. No, but my brother had his license and had his own airplane, but I went flying with him several times. But it wasn’t like the old days where you’d just jump in the airplane, not have to talk to anybody, and just go fly around to the little airports. Those were the days. Now it’s almost like big brothers looking over at you with ads, bhdem, all the other, everything else that they follow you. So you can’t really do much of anything, probably late eighties, early nineties. As I said, our last airplane that we had in our garage, it was a Cessna 140 that we finished, and we took it off, took off from the road next to our house because we lived out in the country and flew over to mid continent airport a mile and a half away and never had any problems. So, I mean, we called the tower and told them we were taken off from our house, and they said, no problem. When I was growing up, as I said, my dad washing friends with Bill Lear, and remember sitting in his office one time talking to him, and he was telling us about testing the windshields on the new learjets. And they used to shoot live turkeys at the windshields until the live, live turkeys, they’d use an air cannon, shoot them. So it’s like, literally like hitting a bird at 300 miles an hour. And of course, the, the people did not like that. The, the animal activists found out about it and said, you have to start using either frozen or dead ones, you know, so they would, they would use thawed out turkeys. But Bill was saying that they were testing different windshields. And on the Lear 23, and he said, well, I was going to sit in the cockpit while they were going to shoot at. The engineers were like, no, don’t do that. You’ll get killed. And of course, Bill Lear was, once he made up his mind, he was pretty adamant about doing everything. And they cooked up a little plan to get him to go answer the phone. So they had somebody call that said, you got a phone call, Bill. They won’t, they won’t take no for an answer. You got to answer it. So he got out of the airplane. The engineer shot the turkey. It went through the windshield, went through the bulkhead. It ended up out past the tail. And when he came back out, he goes, well, I guess you guys are right. Turned around, walked off. So that’s just the way he was. He was a very interesting guy.

[28:27] LOGAN DOHERTY: Yeah, I understand a lot of people.

[28:29] RANDY SMITH: Thought he was hard to work with. He could be very difficult to work with. He was known to keep a. 38 special in his desk drawer, and if he didn’t like something, he would pull it on you. And literally, I had the good fortune to meet Bill Lear and know who he was. He gave me permission to ride my bike over to Learjet, ride it out on the ramp and look at the airplanes. All I wanted to. They all knew who I was. The other person that I always enjoyed meeting was Dwayne Wallace of Cessna. He literally was a. And through the company I worked for, yingling aircraft, they always told me, he said, dwayne will meet you one time. He’ll remember your name. And I met him once in the early seventies, and then probably mid nineties, I met him again. He walked up to me and said, how are you doing, Randy? And I went, wow, you remember my name? So he was. He was a. A class person. I always enjoyed talking with Dwayne Wallace. So I’ve been lucky to meet a lot of. A lot of my wife and I when we were hanging the pictures there in the hall of fame, all the. All the people that I’ve known in those pictures. Just aviation community is so small, but it is a tight knit community, and you meet somebody, and all through the years, my wife will say, I can’t take you anywhere because you always run into somebody that you know. I mean, we’ve been all over the country and run into people that were my customers or I’ve known. So it’s been. Been a great, great experience for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Since I was the smallest, I got to crawl into the airplane. And when we’d either buy one or. I got introduced to the dope putting on fabric. Probably one of. I was probably six or seven, and probably the first time I ever got high. And, boy, did it make my mother mad because I didn’t have a respirator on, and my dad was putting the dope on the fabric and, you know, getting it. Mom, I feel funny. It’s a coating that they put on the fabric to make it shrink up and be real tight. And literally, it’s like probably smoking marijuana, because, wow, it will get you high.

[31:46] LOGAN DOHERTY: Put it on over in the restoration shop without opening the window.

[31:49] RANDY SMITH: I know. Walk in there and I can smell it. It’s like, whoa, wow, you guys.

[31:56] LOGAN DOHERTY: It would give me a headache. I felt weird one day, and I wasn’t in there very long.

[31:59] RANDY SMITH: Yeah, that’s sadly something that I really should have pursued and stayed up on because I knew how to do rib stitching. And again, my dad taught me a lot of things, which is why I went into the military, but we were always, always doing something. He recovered the control surfaces for a B 25 that was up at Topeka. So one of the warbird owners, well known in California, contracted for us to do it. So we had the ailerons and the rudders off of a B 25 from the museum in Topeka and got to go up there, take them off, and then put them back on. So that was a lot of fun, just in a myriad of different things that I’ve done over the years. So I’ve enjoyed it. That’s why my daughter is always after me to pass this on, because she says, you need to let people know a little bit of your history, dad. It’s like, yeah, nobody wants to. Nobody wants to hear this. Are there any stories that you always told her that you haven’t told yet today? Yeah, there’s a lot of them. I’ve met a lot of famous people because of aviation. I’ve met Elvis. Hugh Hefner got on his airplane, and it’s true. He had a round bed in it. I’ve met three presidents. I’ve been Clinton, Bush, and Ford, and been through all the FBI and Secret service and all of, all of the investigations. The bad thing about it was, is that they would seal my fuel trucks. I couldn’t use the fuel truck until we fueled the Air Force one. So I had a fuel tanker that was completely sealed, but we couldn’t use it because they didn’t want any fuel contamination. Those were probably some. I’ve met a lot of celebrities. Kurt Russell had been a great, great friend. He and I used to go out all the time, take us out for steaks. And I got him into the simulator over here at the air guard, got him in the b one simulator because I knew the guy that ran the simulator, so I got him on that. But Kurt was. He was a good friend. Reba McIntyre was another one that used to come in quite a bit, fueled her airplane. So I’ve met a lot of. A lot of celebrities, and some that I just soon never made again. It has given me the opportunity to meet. Meet people that you probably never would meet before, so I’m thankful for that.

[35:42] LOGAN DOHERTY: Do you know anything about Bill Lear inventing the eight track player?

[35:45] RANDY SMITH: Yeah.

[35:46] LOGAN DOHERTY: Other than that, I always wonder about.

[35:48] RANDY SMITH: Yeah, he invented that. He’s got a great book out. It’s called Stormy genius. It’s all about his life and all the things that he invented. The man was, he was a genius. He developed avionics and everything for the aircraft industry. Yeah, the eight track was. Was one of the things that he’d actually come up with. And it was just, like I said, some of the things that he talked about, really, you know, and he was bitter towards. Towards the government because they. They put a lot of roadblocks in his way. So I guess that’s kind of. I have to take it from him as know why. But just knowing the man was. That was. That was an honor. So a lot of fun. But Herb Rodden, my dad knew him real well. I just was looking at the picture of the hangar out there. How many times I’d been in that hangar out there at Rodden Field back then, how many times we had been in that hangar. So just growing up around that environment was meeting a lot of people. The last thing I can say is one winter day when my dad was covering the control surfaces on Harold Cryer’s chipmunk, he had a hanger at Cook airfield, and inside the hangar, he had a big pot bellied stove. So I’m sitting on the floor playing with my race cars, and while my dad and Harold Crier and all the other aerobatic guys are all sitting around drinking beer and talking. And that was one of the. One of the things I can always remember growing up one winter day sitting in the Harold Crier’s hangar talking to all these aerobatic people. Charlie Hilliard, all of them. Mary Aiken was there, Joyce Case. Just a lot of these ladies that are here in our hall of fame. Whether or not they’ll ever remember me, I have no idea. I was just a little tight back then. Aviation has been good to me. I’ve had a good career at it, and I’m really. Maybe in. Maybe I’m in the twilight of my career. But that’s why I’m here, because I enjoy this. And anything I can do to help, you know, all you have to do is ask. So, thank you. You’re welcome.