In WW II, my father was a bombardier in B-17s. On one of his missions his aircraft was thoroughly mauled by a pack of ME-109s. Both pilots were incapacitated so he “went upstairs” and took control of the aircraft and flew it back to England.
When coming in for the landing he was issued the challenge code word. He was supposed to give a specific password in response. He hadn’t paid attention during that part of the briefing and didn’t know it.
The tower told him that they would scramble fighters to shoot him down if he did not come up with the correct response whereupon he cussed them out.
They let him land. In the post-flight debriefing they said that they allowed him to land since no German could know that much English profanity or use it in such a creative fashion.
The truth was that they did scramble fighters and they checked the tail number. It matched one that took off that morning.
In WW II, my father was a bombardier in B-17s. On one of his missions his aircraft was thoroughly mauled by a pack of ME-109s. Both pilots were incapacitated so he “went upstairs” and took control of the aircraft and flew it back to England.
When coming in for the landing he was issued the challenge code word. He was supposed to give a specific password in response. He hadn’t paid attention during that part of the briefing and didn’t know it.
The tower told him that they would scramble fighters to shoot him down if he did not come up with the correct response whereupon he cussed them out.
They let him land. In the post-flight debriefing they said that they allowed him to land since no German could know that much English profanity or use it in such a creative fashion.
The truth was that they did scramble fighters and they checked the tail number. It matched one that took off that morning.