It’s a beautiful day in the Rhein Valley. A few clouds at three or four thousand feet but otherwise just great. The temperature is warm and spring is in the air. Two hours until the end of the day shift. I’m in charge of the shift for the shift supervisor has left for a haircut. All the pilots are canceling IFR and switching to Tower before they need vectoring to the final. Well I’m a great controller and can handle all this easily. All I need is someone to work the phones and I’ll work all the positions: Frankfurt Arrival, Wiesbaden Arrival and a Combined Departure Control East and West. Visual Flight Rules is easy. So I let all the other personnel off early.
This is Frankfurt Approach Control in 1957. We control a twenty-five mile radius of the Rhein Main Range (Adcock type) from the surface to 20,000 feet, except along intersecting airways where we only have the first four thousand.
There are over 250 IFR operations a day to and from Rhein-Main Air Base (Frankfurt International Airport). An additional thirty or forty a day at Wiesbaden Air Base and a few from Bonamais and Offenbach U.S. Army strips. I’ve been a controller here for three years and I’m now a Staff Sergeant with over five years in the Air Force. An Assistant crew Chief and on my way up.
Married and the father of a 18 month old baby girl. I can handle anything. But a strange thing happens.
The next weather report for Frankfurt is not VFR. A high cloud cover has come in and the visibility has reduced in haze to less than three miles. IFR in an instant. All the traffic is now under my direction. No more, “I’ll go to Tower now, thanks.”
Holy Cow! Now I better show what I can do.
I hope the next shift gets here soon. The departures start to flow and they’re all mine. Two in the south-west quadrant need vectoring and one in that crazy left turn after take-off with a climb to pass over the final approach fix, the self same Rhein-Main Range at three thousand, a vector to avoid arrival traffic and then to Limburg or Nauheim climbing to altitude assigned.
Frankfurt Air Route Traffic Control Center calls with an inbound to Frankfurt from Rudesheim NDB(Non Directional Beacon). Frankfurt ARTCC is a non-radar, manual control facility so I get no help from them on exact positioning of aircraft.
Rudesheim is 25 miles west of Frankfurt. The inbound just called is the only arrival on the board so I approve a descent to 4000 feet. That’s not a normal inbound altitude because of the standard departure from Wiesbaden Air Base which is 10 miles west of Frankfurt and uses 4000 feet until clear of the route from Rudesheim to Frankfurt, but, I control their departures.
Wiesbaden Tower calls with a departure on an Italian C-119 and I acknowledge. With radar on both I should have no problem. But I forget, radar is fine, but if you don’t talk to the pilots it is of no use other than to watch them fly at each other. Neither of the aircraft crews comes on the frequency assigned. Luckily, because one is a departure and the other an arrival they are assigned different frequencies.
Finally, the arrival, a C-47 established radio contact. His first question after initial contact was to ask who that was that just passed in front of him crossing his path at the same altitude. “It had a green and red roundel on the fuselage and was a C-119.” I responded that it was an Italian aircraft and was not on my frequency. For some reason this incident was never reported by the C-47 pilot and was once I didn’t make a report of my mistake when I knew I had made a serious blunder.
Again I had escaped serious consequences of the moment and nothing came of the incident to tarnish my official record or cause me professional harm.
What had I done? I had allowed a non-standard operation when I was about to be inundated with problems. Exactly when I should have been most insistent on sticking with standardized procedures.
Again I thought I had the world by the tail but the situation had me by the short hairs before I knew what happened. Additionally, in retrospect, I had not reported the non-standard separation and could have been branded with not only the mistake but a less than honest reputation. I don’t believe anyone else ever knew of the incident. The assistant was too busy with his position to know what happened and all the radio work was through my headset. The only one who had heard the transmissions was me. Now the world knows. About 10 to 15 seconds from a mid-air collision between Wiesbaden and Rudesheim.
Four circumstances saved my professional life: frequency separation, one aircraft was not a U.S.A.F. or civilian aircraft, the pilot of the C-47 didn’t want to make an official report, and I didn’t own up to my mistake.
I should have finally learned the lesson of pridefulness by now but there is a next time. Stay tuned. I’ll be back. Out.