◆ SpookStack

supply of cargo on top of a power station, mistaking the lights on the power station for our ground support team. It had a side note too ••• the air crew in command of that airplane had about 45,000 pilot hours, and they got lost coming back and landed up near Comitan in Mexico. We found the airplane before the Mexicans did, and were refused permission to go in and pick it up. I say, "we" .•• one of the officers of the Guatemalan Air Force and Mr. Alejos, I be- lieve, and probably Connie Seigrist were included. They flew to Comitan and landed and came back and said we could pick up the airplane because the air crew had mismanaged their fuel. The airplane had fuel in it, and it could have been taken off and flown back to JMADD. 27/ The series of mishaps in the early weeks of the air training program, initiated a period of declining relations between the Cubans and their American instruc~ tors -- the Americans tending to regard the Cuban capa- bilities with some considerable suspicion. From the early fall of 1960 through the initiation of overflight operations there were constant requests from the field for authorization to use the American pilots in both the transport and in combat training operations. Ferrer, himself, pointed out in considerable detail that there was a negative impact on the American trainers as the result of these early foulups. In this context, too, Ferrer also charged that the North - 115 -