POWERGRAMS

3 Menk's advanced flight instruction included how to fly "beyond the point of no return," meaning how to slow the plane to a crawl and mix the fuel to reserve enough to fly back. "We had been given up for lost," he said. "I would dodge mountains and fly around them, slowing the plane down, puttering along." They landed in Rock Springs with 7 gallons of gasoline; not enough to circle the field one more time. But there were fun times, too, although it often spelled trouble. Menk flew from Dothan to Idaville, Indiana, buzzed his old high school and did some acrobatics. "I went into a high-speed stall. I saw the trees coming at me." He recovered at the last second. Back in Dothan, "We would fly underneath trees or turn the plane on its edge to fly between them. We'd fly over the Chattahoochee River real low. We weren't afraid of anything." He and his buddies once did an illegal diamond formation and flew too close together and too low over the Dothan airport without air traffic control clearance. The captain of his squadron threatened to court martial Menk and his pals if they did it again. In an ironic twist, Menk saw the same captain when he returned to Purdue University, but the captain was an incoming freshman. "I just laughed at him," he said. After the war, although he had the required licenses, Menk didn't go the route of an airline pilot. "I had gotten married and had responsibility. I said, 'No, I don't want to take any more flying. I'm through.'" He hasn't piloted since. Instead, he finished his electrical engineering degree at Purdue, and after his snowbank incident, applied by letter to Alabama Power, which invited him down for an interview and hired him on the spot. by Gilbert Nicholson Menk during the war. Menk trained pilots in this AT-6.

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