One day I took two copilots and the two flight engineers up to Fargo for touch-and-go takeoffs and landings. Fargo is a good place because it has a long runway and not much traffic. We did several in succession where you take off, pull the gear up for the right sensation, and put the gear down again as you go around to cool off the tires. They get pretty hot on multiple touch-and-goes. Well, in this instance the tires didn’t cool off enough and we blew all four left gear tires on a landing,

            So we were in Fargo awhile. They didn’t have any 720 tires; they had to be flown up from the Twin Cities. I called by dad and my brother, I’m from Fargo, and said where can we eat? The Fargo Country Club, they said, we’ll pick you up. You can imagine walking in there with four uniformed Chinese officers turned some heads. What’s going on?

            One of the people there was a reporter for our newspaper, the Fargo Forum. She interviewed us. We took her to the airport for a look-see at the plane. It had been refurbished down in Texas and had the Chinese Nationalist flag on the vertical fin and Chinese characters on its nose. The interior was pretty plush and it had a separate forward compartment for the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang. The result was a story in the Fargo paper.

            Col. Chang was not in Fargo with us, as I mentioned, he didn’t want to train with his copilots. The next day he walked in my office and said I understand you bought dinner. How much was it? I said no problem. He then quoted Confucius – “the teacher brings knowledge to the student, the student brings food to the teacher.” How much was dinner? he asked again. I didn’t know because my dad and brother paid for it. Twenty-five dollars, I said. He peeled off twenty-five dollars. I sent it to Fargo.

            The day finally came when it was time to say farewell. Before takeoff, our Northwest people wanted to check the cargo hold. Col. Chang said no way. He had a padlock on it and wouldn’t open it. A stalemate occurred and I told him he had an hour. If he didn’t open the cargo hold I was going home. I guess there were some other factors to consider, though, and 45 minutes later we took off for San Francisco and Honolulu, the cargo hold still sealed. I’m sure it was full of purchases and more than likely their mechanics had stashed a collection of our Northwest tools. They’re probably still out there in Taiwan someplace.

            Jerry Fredrickson and I flew with them to Honolulu, I as safety pilot -- a final check of their skills to make sure in my own mind that they were qualified to fly the aircraft and Jerry monitoring the navigators. We overnighted at a military base in San Francisco, then on to Hickham field. Some farewell handshakes, they took off, we returned to the Twin Cities.

            That’s not quite the end of the story. Three weeks later I received a letter from Col. Wu-Hung asking me to bring Mrs. Brown and come to Taiwan for awhile to continue his training. As I said earlier it had become necessary for us to concentrate our Minneapolis training on Col. Chang and one of his copilots. Col. Wu-Hung said Col. Chang is no longer with us. No explanation.

            I couldn’t go, of course. I wrote him back thanking him for his invitation, complimenting him on his abilities, and urging him to keep flying, takeoffs, landings and instrument time with a good copilot. I never heard anything more so I guess it worked out all right. As I said, they were good men and I still think of them often.