Suncoast Pasco News
Hudson Man's Book Recounts Aviation Adventures
Cheryl Bentley/SUNCOAST NEWS
Alfred J. D'Amario shows off a model B-52. D'Amario once had to parachute out of a nuclear-armed B-52 over Greenland while in the Air Force.
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Published: April 30, 2008
Alfred J. D'Amario once put a bullet through his own fuel tank while flying a single engine jet in Korea during the Korean War.
And he meant to.
That was because the authorities who ran the air base at which he was trying to land were refusing him clearance because he was carrying a full fuel tank. The tank was out of service because of a loose fuel cap.
D'Amario was told to drop the tank at a bombing range before he could land.
Then came the second problem: He couldn't get the external, wingtip-mounted tank to eject.
Three shots
D'Amario felt he had only one choice. "I took out my 45, put three rounds through the tank and drained the fuel out."
About 15 years later, he wrote about the incident in the military weekly Air Force Times, in a "Stake Your Claim" column about one-of-a-kind flying escapades. His shoot-the-tank adventure was never one-upped by readers, as far as D'Amario knows.
The fuel tank caper is only one of the adventures in flight Hudson-area resident D'Amario recounts in his new book "Hangar Flying," published by the self-publishing company AuthorHouse. The title is the term pilots use – when safely on the ground – to chronicle their white-knuckle adventures aloft.
The Smithsonian Institution's Air & Space magazine has contracted to buy a chapter from the book about his fighter bomber training in Las Vegas at a time when there were only three hotels on the strip, D'Amario said
In true hangar flying style, D'Amario delights in detailing his in-air adventures. "I have a lot of bad luck, but I've had a lot of good luck because I was able to fly out of it."
The story of one of his escapades has appeared in "Broken Arrow: America's Lost Bombs," a program on cable television's History Channel. Broken Arrow is the military code word for nuclear accidents.
Nuclear mishap
D'Amario appeared in the segment that concerned the 1968 crash of a nuclear armed B-52 at Thule Air Base, in Greenland. D'Amario was third pilot on the mission. When the plane caught fire the crew had to bail out. All but one made it safely, including D'Amario.
He wasn't afraid while parachuting through the air, D'Amario recalled. "You look down. You're not connected to what you see on the ground. It's total detachment."
As for the nuclear weapons, they didn't explode because of the numerous safeguards built into them to prevent accidental detonations, D'Amario said.
The man who gets queasy when looking down from the second story of a building got his pilot license before he graduated high school in Baltimore, where he grew up.
The inspiration
He was inspired by World War II movies starring actors like John Wayne and Errol Flynn
"My life ambition beginning around 12 was to be an Army Air Corps pilot," said the 78-year-old D'Amario. Before the creation of the U.S. Air Force in 1947, the Army Air Corps conducted air military operations.
He and his dad use to watch Army Air Corps pilots take off from a small field near Baltimore. Someone always had to move propellers by hand to start the planes.
Security appeared nonexistent in those simpler times, D'Amario recalled. "Back then, you could walk up to a wrought iron fence and see everything that was going on."
D'Amario retired from the Air Force in 1970 after a 20-year stint. In his second career, he was an insurance adjuster.
His new job was perhaps an appropriate follow up to his pilot duties.
What did he do?
"Investigated crashes," he smiled.
For more information send D'Amario an e-mail.
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