Grostenquin France

JATO Bottles on a T-33 – August 1958

I was employed in Wing Instrument Flight for a period of time during my tour at 2 Wing. One of our T-33 aircraft made a trip to England and it encountered "fuel problems" on the return flight. As a result, it made an emergency landing at the American base in Landstuhl Germany.

The pilot managed to land the aircraft without any difficulty, but departing would prove to be another story due to the short runway and the fact that the airport was surrounded by mountains. After a great deal of discussion, we came up with the idea to use JATO bottles. I should mention that not everyone appeared to be in favour of this suggestion.

Sgt Hay and myself convinced the CO and we got a "green light" to proceed with the trial. It took us about a week to prepare the aircraft circuits and to obtain the right JATO bottles. We briefed the pilot as to when to activate the JATO.

As you can well imagine, all kinds of bets were made between American and Canadian military personnel. The T-33 was warming up on the very short runway about 2:00 in the afternoon. Sgt. Hay and I were standing about 100 yards away. We gave the pilot, who had volunteered for the flight, the signal to push the JATO button which would activate the bottles.

Everything went off without a hitch and the aircraft cleared the mountains with lots of separation. Sgt Hay and I were eventually commended by our Commanding Officer.