Testimonials
Book Review by Bob Moreau (AF)
EARTHQUAKE is a welcome biography on the life of Brigadier General Robert F. Titus, whose career spanned some of the most consequential years in USAF history, especially the "Golden Era" of flight test at Edwards AFB in the 1950s and 1960s.
Uniquely positioned to tell this story, the author—William B Scott, a Flight Test Engineer graduate of the USAF Test Pilot School and former Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief for Aviation Week and Space Technology—begins by introducing us to a young lieutenant flying F-51s during the Korean War. We then learn that Titus' military career actually began in 1945 as an enlisted paratroop trainee.
The central theme of the book emerges early as Scott utilizes enumerable quotes from Titus that establish his disdain for poor leadership, wheather to a mission of to the treatment of subordinates. Of particular interest to SETP readers is how Scott threads this theme throughout Titus' days in flight test.
Titus began his flight test career in Class 54B in early 1954. What follows is a delightful insight into what life was like for a test pilot student at the time, and the life of a working fighter pilot that followed. He was in that fortunate period of the Century Series fighter development.
What really sets this book apart is Scott's brilliant connecting-of-the-dots between Titus and the many, oh so many, legends of the test pilot world.
Is EARTHQUAKE a good read? Well, let's put it this way; If you were to take a copy along on an overnnight trans-Atlanic flight from the U.S. to Europe with teh idea of reading a few pages before nodding off, you might just find yourself flipping the last page as the landing gear is lowered for landing, and not for a moment regretting the lost sleep.
Excerpt
Chapter 12 - OKINAWA
p.126
Titus added a unique item to 18th TFW history, when the unit held a “dining-in.” He sat at the head table throughout the formal military dinner, serving as a master-of-ceremonies. Titus stood, preparing to conclude the traditional series of dining-in toasts—accompanied by many glasses of wine—when all Hell broke loose.
Per an account by Jim Webster, a pilot in the 12th Tactical Fighter Squadron, to whom Titus had awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross, “Someone turned loose a chicken, and it ran up onto the head table, just as Earthquake was about to close the formal session and light the smoking lamp. The chicken ran by him on the table, as [Titus] gaveled the session closed—on the chicken’s head. Killed him dead right there! It could not have been done better in a movie. I doubt that would go over [well] in today’s Air Force!”
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