A SAC Story....
Posted: Wed May 13, 2026 10:44 am
....Not mine, but this rings absolutely true, from chicagoboyz.net:
Tales of the Base Tour Guide – The Lost Ladies
May 12, 2026 by Sgt. Mom
Early in the 1980s I spent a year assigned to the Air Force public affairs office at now-closed Mather AFB, a nice little base situated in Rancho Cordova, an outlaying suburb of Sacramento, California. The base then hosted the primary training school for Air Force navigators, and a substantial Strategic Air Command element of B-52 bombers and KC-135 tankers. The SAC element operated from their own heavily guarded and patrolled alert area; in the event of the cold war with the Soviet Menace (as it was then) suddenly boiling over, we had aircraft ready to take off at a moment’s and bomb the ever-loving heck out of whatever target in the USSR had been designated for our high-explosive attention. Those ready-prepped aircraft and their crews sat in an extra-specially guarded alert area, well-lit and patrolled, with their own designated ramp to the main runway.
And so it came one early evening just as dusk was falling, a civilian automobile came into the base via the open POL gate. (POL – Petroleum-Oil-Lubricant: basically, the utility gate, around in the back reaches of the base. As always on Air Force bases, the gate was guarded by our military security police.) The automobile, as it turned out – was driven by a late middle-aged-to-elderly outpatient mental health worker, accompanying one of her clients – another middle-aged-to-elderly woman. The driver of the car apparently was badly lost and drove up to the POL gate to ask for directions. The nice young security policeman obliged with directions, telling her to drive just inside the base, do a U-turn, go out the gate again and be on her merry outpatient health worker way.
Instead – and you can guess where this story is going – the driver became totally confused and unnerved and continued on into the base just as it was getting dark. Since this was the POL gate, the road soon merged indistinguishably with the ramp and runway, the driver apparently panicked at not seeing anything but an endless stretch of pavement and kept going at high speed. Almost at once, her car was pursued by the security police; probably the gate guard had called in, when the civilian car didn’t immediately turn and head out the gate again.
The pursuit apparently became really wild – the car driven by the mental health worker and her presumably freaked-out patient were finally surrounded by security police vehicles and forced to stop and explain themselves … in the middle of the ramp to the SAC alert pad. It was only due to the good sense and excellent judgement (and probably good eyesight) that deadly force was not used on a couple of deeply lost and confused senior citizens – and that was what the Security Police commander told his troops at the next commander’s call briefing. He gave everyone concerned in the capture and release of the two lost ladies an atta-boy! for using good sense and judgment in not fatally ventilating a pair of innocent civilians who had blundered into an area of the base where the SPs had a perfect right to do just that. It made a rather amusing story in the public affairs shop, something for us to giggle over … until somehow a reporter for the Sacramento Bee got ahold of it. Our Media Relations section dreaded anything to do with him, as he was a guy who had all the charm and hail-fellow well-met personality of a honey badger with a hangover. He seemed to be of the conviction that he could catch more flies with vinegar than honey, and routinely assumed that everything we provided to him in answer to his questions was a lie.
The story made the front page of the Bee, with a funny illustration of two ladies in a car with their eyes bugging out in terror, as they were being pursued by a Keystone Cops series of police cars. Yep, that reporter was one of our very favorite people. Not.
Mike
Tales of the Base Tour Guide – The Lost Ladies
May 12, 2026 by Sgt. Mom
Early in the 1980s I spent a year assigned to the Air Force public affairs office at now-closed Mather AFB, a nice little base situated in Rancho Cordova, an outlaying suburb of Sacramento, California. The base then hosted the primary training school for Air Force navigators, and a substantial Strategic Air Command element of B-52 bombers and KC-135 tankers. The SAC element operated from their own heavily guarded and patrolled alert area; in the event of the cold war with the Soviet Menace (as it was then) suddenly boiling over, we had aircraft ready to take off at a moment’s and bomb the ever-loving heck out of whatever target in the USSR had been designated for our high-explosive attention. Those ready-prepped aircraft and their crews sat in an extra-specially guarded alert area, well-lit and patrolled, with their own designated ramp to the main runway.
And so it came one early evening just as dusk was falling, a civilian automobile came into the base via the open POL gate. (POL – Petroleum-Oil-Lubricant: basically, the utility gate, around in the back reaches of the base. As always on Air Force bases, the gate was guarded by our military security police.) The automobile, as it turned out – was driven by a late middle-aged-to-elderly outpatient mental health worker, accompanying one of her clients – another middle-aged-to-elderly woman. The driver of the car apparently was badly lost and drove up to the POL gate to ask for directions. The nice young security policeman obliged with directions, telling her to drive just inside the base, do a U-turn, go out the gate again and be on her merry outpatient health worker way.
Instead – and you can guess where this story is going – the driver became totally confused and unnerved and continued on into the base just as it was getting dark. Since this was the POL gate, the road soon merged indistinguishably with the ramp and runway, the driver apparently panicked at not seeing anything but an endless stretch of pavement and kept going at high speed. Almost at once, her car was pursued by the security police; probably the gate guard had called in, when the civilian car didn’t immediately turn and head out the gate again.
The pursuit apparently became really wild – the car driven by the mental health worker and her presumably freaked-out patient were finally surrounded by security police vehicles and forced to stop and explain themselves … in the middle of the ramp to the SAC alert pad. It was only due to the good sense and excellent judgement (and probably good eyesight) that deadly force was not used on a couple of deeply lost and confused senior citizens – and that was what the Security Police commander told his troops at the next commander’s call briefing. He gave everyone concerned in the capture and release of the two lost ladies an atta-boy! for using good sense and judgment in not fatally ventilating a pair of innocent civilians who had blundered into an area of the base where the SPs had a perfect right to do just that. It made a rather amusing story in the public affairs shop, something for us to giggle over … until somehow a reporter for the Sacramento Bee got ahold of it. Our Media Relations section dreaded anything to do with him, as he was a guy who had all the charm and hail-fellow well-met personality of a honey badger with a hangover. He seemed to be of the conviction that he could catch more flies with vinegar than honey, and routinely assumed that everything we provided to him in answer to his questions was a lie.
The story made the front page of the Bee, with a funny illustration of two ladies in a car with their eyes bugging out in terror, as they were being pursued by a Keystone Cops series of police cars. Yep, that reporter was one of our very favorite people. Not.
Mike
