Early in the war, my father was Post Engineer and Fire Marshall at Sheppard Field. One Saturday he had taken me to his office on the apron, not far from the runway threshold, west end. There was a firehouse just off the runway, south side. The tower was somewhere nearby on the far side of the runway. I was five, at most just six.
Pilots trained here in a number of aircraft. The landing procedure was that a flight of 4 or 5 would make a "downwind" pass near the tower at low elevation, and then peel off left at intervals into a 180 to land, coming back past the firehouse. I said downwind pass, but I never saw them use the runway in the other direction, so a lot of the landings may have been downwind, if not most.
This day would involve a Thunderbolt. Radios were in short supply and the training P-47s did not have them. I assume the close tower pass let the tower check for gear down or other trouble. My father and I had just left his office to head for home. We hadn't gotten 100 feet down the apron when the firehouse siren went off, the doors went up, and a large fire truck-- large even by today's standards-- rolled out all in one motion. He crossed to the far side of the runway and turned right and raced at full speed down the runway.
At the same time my father veered from the exit and headed up toward the firehouse and himself turned down the near side of the runway and floored the gas. I had the good sense to stand up on the front edge of the seat and get a good grip on the top of the windshield. Well, it isn't like there was anything else to hang onto in that jeep-- no radio in it either. We went down the runway at 60 flat out and didn't catch the fire truck.
I just don't remember exactly when the Thunderbolt entered the picture. We could not have outrun it from an even start. The fire truck had to have crossed the runway ahead of the aircraft, considering the distance it slid, and the speed at which it did so-- it was an extremely heavy fighter for its day. Gear failure to lower, obviously. No time to foam the runway, if they even had the capability then. All I remember for sure is that we all three went down the runway more or less in a small group. The fire truck and the P-47 ground to a halt together, and we were 5 or 10 seconds behind, about 30 feet to one side, and the fire truck about the same on the other.
Having to write this down, I realize now that the fire truck had to position itself on the upwind side of the aircraft. There must have been a telephone line from the tower, and the fire crew must have known they had to cross the runway before the P-47 reached its turning point and returned, and known exactly how much time they had to do this.
When we got there, the pilot was already out of the cockpit and standing up on the fuselage. There wasn't anyway he could get off of it, because just like that the plane was already surrounded by a burning pool of fuel. And on that plane, you are a long way up on the top of it.
One of the fire crew was already in his reflective aluminum foil suit, put on his helmet and walked toward the burning fuel with a foam hand line. He knocked the fire down on that side in short order, maybe 15 seconds. A couple of the fire crew came over with a ladder and got the pilot off. The fire was still burning on our side. I remember it had a four-bladed propeller, and all the tips were bent back. It had yawed about 20 degrees to the right, but slid fairly straight. The rescue looked effortless-- I'm sure that seconds mattered, though.
Years later, after my father had died, I found a letter from a general commending him. It seemed it was my father who had devised this procedure, to deal with what had become a considerable problem. So yes, I don't see a 35-second response as being something that just isn't possible.
Anyway, one of my father's last airport jobs involved the design and construction of the airbase at Dhahran in the Saudi. He was Chief of the Design Division in Tripoli, and the design reviews and resolution of construction problems at Dhahran were handled by his office. It is possible the Saudis learned from him where the firehouses should be placed and why --it would have been within his authority to set that detail up just as he thought it should be done. I assume Riyadh would have copied such details.
OE