Murray now had to teach a legendary war hero, someone who also happened to be the highest-ranking military officer on the Oxcart program, how to fly supersonic. It might have been a daunting task. Except that it was not in Frank Murray’s character to be apprehensive. To Murray, it sounded like fun. “Out at the Ranch we had eight 101s that ran chase and one of them was a two-holer, with two cockpits and two sticks. ‘Come on, Frankie,’ the general said. He got in the back and up we went.”
General Ledford began to spend more and more time at the Ranch, where, in addition to the serious work being done, operations had taken on a boys’ club atmosphere. After a day of intense flying, nights were spent eating, socializing, and having drinks. “Sometimes, on the late side of things after dinner, Ledford would get a hair in his hat that he wanted to get back to Washington to see his wife, Polly,” Murray says. “He’d slap me on the back. That was my cue to take him home.” Home, in Washington, DC, was 2,500 miles away, and with supersonic aircraft at one’s disposal, this could actually happen this late at night. “Ledford was my student but he was also the general so on these trips home, I started letting him sit in the front of the plane; I’d sit in back. Well, all those hours flying back and forth from Area 51 to Washington, that cemented it. He was my boss but he also became my friend.” Ledford had other friends as well, several in high places at the Air Force, which made getting back to the East Coast from Nevada in the middle of the night a relatively easier trip. “Ledford had a buddy who was still in SAC, an air division commander at Blytheville Air Force Base in northeast Arkansas, just about halfway between 51 and Washington. Ledford would radio him when we were up in the air approaching the next state over and he’d say, ‘Have you got a tanker in the area?’ If he did or didn’t you could bet your fifty there’d be a tanker lining up next to you somewhere over Arkansas,” Murray says. What this meant was that when Murray and the general were traveling from Area 51 to the East Coast late at night, they never even had to stop for gas.
After a little more than two hours in the air, the men would land at Andrews Air Force Base and taxi up to the generals’ quarters—similar to a luxury hotel suite on the base—and enjoy a postflight scotch. “Ledford had a fancy setup on base quarters that had a fully equipped bar,” Murray explains. “We’d have a pop and chat a little before his wife, Polly, arrived to pick him up and take him home. I’d spend the night in the generals’ quarters. Get some sleep and in the morning head home to 51.”
It was an exciting time for Frank Murray. He couldn’t have imagined living this life. Only a few years earlier, he’d been flying Voodoos at Otis Air Force Base as part of the Air Defense Command when he had seen an interesting sign tacked on a bulletin board that read NASA is looking for F-101 chase pilots. He thought working for NASA sounded like fun. He had no idea that was just a cover story and that the Air Force, not NASA, was really looking for chase pilots for the Oxcart program at Area 51. Murray applied and got in. He moved the family to Nevada and swore an oath not to tell anyone what he did, not even Stella, his wife. But he knew his family would be super proud of him. For a farm boy from San Diego, he was at the top of his game.