POWERGRAMS

2 INTO THE WILD BLUE YONDER Ken Menk's military career probably won't be made into a Hollywood movie. He never left American soil during World War II. But the retired Alabama Power engineer thinks he did as much to aid the war effort as anyone. "I volunteered for overseas duty, but they told me they needed more flight instructors than fodder," he said. "I enjoyed teaching others how to fly." Now 95 years old, Menk was sharp as a tack with excellent recall in a late summer interview detailing his military service and work in Montgomery, where he retired in 1985 as Southern Division's chief engineer. He's a transplant from Indiana, driven from the Hoosier State to Alabama by cold and ice. "After the war, I finished college at Purdue University and got stuck in a snowbank in downtown Lafayette, Indiana. I said, 'Enough of this,' so I went back to Alabama." Menk was assigned by the Army Air Corps (there was no Air Force then) as a flight instructor at Napier Field in Dothan, where he stayed until the war ended. He piloted a single-engine, two-seat taildragger, the AT-6, and taught advanced flying. Menk wasn't joking when he said instructors were at more of a premium than pilots at that time of the war. "After you became an instructor, you couldn't go overseas unless you screwed up," he said dryly. Although Menk never had to face enemy fire or a dogfight, there were plenty of close calls. "I came close to being extinguished a couple of times by my students," he deadpanned. In one instance, while teaching formation flying, a student did a barrel roll over his plane. "I looked straight up and could see him" flying upside down, Menk remembered. "He didn't understand what he was supposed to do. When we got down I told him to come over here and I had a word with him." Another student landed with the brakes on; a no-no on a taildragger, a plane that reclines on a small back wheel. The brakes would cause the nose to hit the ground, flip the tail and put the plane upside down. "I didn't need a microphone to tell him to get off the brakes. I was in the back seat and grabbed the stick to take it away from him. I did it so hard I probably bruised his knees." In an unusual instance, Menk got to use what he taught his students in a potentially fatal situation. On a flight from Rock Springs, Wyoming, to Salt Lake City, clouds rolled in, blocked normal navigation and Menk got lost, forcing him and a student to return to Rock Springs. M E N K S T A Y E D H O M E T E A C H I N G W W I I S O L D I E R S T O F L Y Menk mounts a trainer plane.

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