I was the crew chief on the 2nd aircraft on that Turkey Trot. 741671, Sra Joey Rundell was my assistant. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the crew chief on 2064. Watkins was the assistant. The crew chief had to be sent back to Mildenhal on a train. He was supposed to fly that day and give Watkins a break, but when he got up he wasn't felling well. So, Watkins went by himself. We were on the ramp with our acft as spare when they took off. There a lot of things that they said went wrong that day. Officially in believe that they decided that it was a lighting strike. But, the closest storm was 60 mile from them. It also came out that Pat Cypher had a #? main tank c/b pop and on final he reset it for some reason causing a tank explosion. That was B/S! I knew and flew with Pat for many years and that just didn't happen. He was one of the best engineers at Dyess, by far! He would never have reset that c/b for love nor money. The other school of thought was a hand held rocket. We used to get small arms fire out there all the time. I wouldn't put it past the Curds.
I went on 11 and a half rotations to Mildenhal while I was at Dyess, Nov 74-March 82. I can also chime in on 74-1678's crash in 1982. Another long story.
Randy Brown, Smsgt, USAF, ret
