High, Low, Joker and the Game

About the Book

The B-52 bomber, painted a brilliant fluorescent red, skimmed 500 feet over the prairie at 450 miles per hour, heading west out of Wichita, Kansas toward Colorado.  In little more than an hour, high in the Rockies, a vicious, hurricane force wind slashed the big airplane like a giant broadsword, neatly excised the vertical stabilizer, jammed the right elevator and tossed the crew about as though they were inside the tank of a cement mixer.  The plane immediately went into a steep right-hand bank and tumbled toward earth out of control.  The next six hours were a white knuckle show for the pilot, Charles F. Fisher, but in the end he landed the bomber, intact, at Blytheville, Arkansas.  The SAC commander at Blytheville described the feat “an unbelievable piece of aviation!”  Thousands of people followed the drama on television and radio.  Newspapers from coast to coast covered the story and the chilling climax in detail.

The finless flight, as it was called, made Fisher an instant celebrity and a hero, at least in the aviation community.  High, Low, Joker, and the Game: The Adventures of an Experimental Test Pilot is  Chuck Fisher’s story.   He spent twenty-seven years as an experimental test pilot for the Boeing Military Airplane Company.  There was never more than a handful of these pilots in the first place.  Today they’re not merely rare, they’re extinct–technological dinosaurs.  All airplane design and engineering, both commercial and military, are accomplished with complex, high-powered computer models.  The testing is done in simulators.

During his career Fisher became the Senior Experimental Test Pilot as well as Chief of Flight Operations for Boeing.  These achievements were not only due to his years of experience but because, on an unprecedented three occasions, he was designated Project Pilot and because he consistently performed at a level that clearly exceeded expectations.  He and his crews routinely boarded a B-52 bomber or a KC- 135 test bed and pushed it to 150 percent of design capability for the purpose of making the aircraft safe for Strategic Air Command pilot usage.   The Boeing pilots must have done a first class job.  The B-52H remains ACT One in the U.S. manned, heavy bomber, offensive portfolio even though the last one came off the assembly line in 1962.

The Stratofortress was used in Desert Storm when they delivered their payloads on Iraqi targets and was also used in Kosovo to bring the Serbian government to its knees.  Boeing doesn’t make any more of the big bombers.  Nor are they making any more experimental test pilots.  But during the years Fisher flew for Boeing he enjoyed the reputation in the aviation community as a superbly competent experimental test pilot.  Among the SAC crews he flew with, trained, and helped, he was known as “Mr. B-52.”  This is no adventure novel, although it is an adventure.  This man is a real, breathing in and out human being.  The experiences described in the book are real.  Fisher really did fight the fights, fly the missions, suffer the embarrassments, experience the thrill of achievement, and conquer abject fear.  He did it all and more.

    If you were to ask Fisher what he is, he would respond unabashedly, “A damned good Aeronautical Engineer.”  As the story unfolds the reader may agree that he was a good enough engineer, but recognize that he really was a great pilot--one of the very few preeminent experimental test pilots in the business.  He wasn’t born with rudder peddles for feet and an airplane wheel in his hands.  As a child Fisher dreamed of flying and fly he did, but he would achieve greatness only after he conceded the greatness of others, in particular the Boeing pilots who drove the B-52 bombers off the assemb? ????? ???? ???? ??? ????????? ??? ??? ???????????? ???? ?? ??? ?????????

About the Author

Charles F. Fisher retired from Boeing Company in 1988. He is an Aeronautical Engineer with more than 30,000 hours of flying experience, mostly in B-52s and KC 135s, but he also flew fighters during the Korean War. Fisher was project pilot on an unprecedented three programs and became Chief of Flight Operations, and Senior Experimental Pilot. He ended his career as Chief of Systems Safety. Steve Conway, a long-time acquaintance of Mr. Fisher, retired from the Forest Products industry in 1992 and now pursues a career as a writer, a professional biographer and an archaeologist. This is Conway’s third book.