The Viet Nam War was raging and the U.S. military was testing airplanes that could pack a big punch in close quarters warfare. After testing several aircraft as in-flight cannon platforms officials experimented with a C-130. That’s where young USAF electronics technician, Mark Banus, came into the picture.
“There was a shortage of C-130’s, so they got an original AC-130A from a museum, outfitted it with eight guns and took it to Viet Nam for testing.” Known as the Spectre Gunship, it was like a fire-breathing dragon.
Mark’s main job was to maintain the avionics and side-looking infrared radar (SLR) equipment.
“I was also a part-time brass shoveler,” he laughs. “At 6,000 rounds a minute from each gun there were a lot of shell casings that we didn’t want to fall into enemy hands.”
The final evaluation showed that Spectre had three times the combat effectiveness of previous test aircraft.
Along the way Mark met and married Meg, his wife of 51 years.
“I was stationed in Biloxi and I was the only one among my friends who had a car – a ’57 Ford hard-top convertible.”
His friends had been invited to a student nurses’ pool party in Gulfport and asked Mark to drive them.
“You want me to drive you to a party, drop you off and leave? I think not!”
Mark joined the party and met a student nurse named Meg from New Orleans. They have a son, Richard, and grandson, Shaun, who is getting married later this month in Atlanta.
Born in Boston, Mark grew up in Topsfield, Mass. where his father, an MIT PhD, worked at nearby Lincoln Laboratory. After graduating from Kimball Union Academy he joined the U.S. Air Force, completed his four years, and enrolled in Boston University. He graduated with a BS Ed.
“I was going to be a phys-ed teacher,” he says.
“Then I realized how little teachers were paid. Something I might have checked out first,” he adds ruefully.
Instead he joined the U.S. Navy.
“I knew from experience that military training was exceptional and that I would be well qualified when I finished.” Mark also had a love of aviation
“As a kid I build and flew model airplanes.”
He trained as a bombardier-navigator on A-6 aircraft. By the time he retired over 20 years later he had 750 carrier landings, reached the rank of commander and acquired an MBA along the way.
Mark’s last posting in the Navy was aboard the USS Enterprise – which was in dry dock in Newport News, VA for refit.
“I was assigned to the ‘tik shack’ and I didn’t know what it was at the time.”
He soon found out.
“A nuclear carrier is an extremely complex machine. My job was to ensure that every component was deenergized before people worked on it. ‘Lock out-tag out’ involved locking off electricity, steam, water – any energy source that could injure or kill workers – and placing a tag, or ticket, on the component to show it had been deenergized.” One large valve had more than 1,300 tags on it and the process was completely manual, extremely labor intensive and had to be continually double checked. “It was very inefficient and I knew there had to be a better way.”
In cooperation with several others, Mark helped to develop a basic DOS-based computer system to track the process. “It wasn’t perfect, but it sure made things easier and safer.” That system would soon lead to a new business after Mark retired from the Navy.
Along with Navy retiree Chip Stilwell, whom Mark had first met in 1986, he developed a Windows-based lockout-tagout computer program they christened ‘Tag-Link.’ “Power plants were our first target market. They’re just like big ships that don’t move. Many power plant workers are former Navy.” Tag-Link was successful and the company was eventually acquired by a group of retired Navy personnel.
In 2001 Mark decided to build his own airplane. He turned his Virginia Beach garage into a shop, bought a Glasair II FT kit and set to work for the next 13 years. “Eventually I had to move it to a hanger in Chesapeake because the garage wasn’t big enough for the wings.” The maiden flight for the single-engine two-seater was on June 4, 2004 over southeastern Virginia.
Mark and Meg, along with their two Papillion dogs – Chu-Chu (Le Petite Choux) and Tee (Tyrannosaurus Rex) – moved to The Villages in 2013. “We rented for a couple of years and then found a great home in Bridgeport at Lake Sumpter Landing that’s close to the Town Square.” Mark plays pickleball and soccer with The Villages Senior Soccer Group. Meg is an accomplished artist.
But sailing, which seems to be in the Banus family genes, is another passion. Mark’s father spent a number of years after his retirement sailing in the Caribbean. “As a kid I had a 17-foot day sailer and I took it out of Marblehead and other harbors. Later I had a 30-foot sloop, Siren Song, that I sailed in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic for 27 years.”
In 2012 Mark joined former Navy captain Jack Flanagan on Pacific Rose, a 47-foot yawl, for a 31-day circumnavigation of Canada’s Vancouver Island. “I was the cook and a deckhand,” he says. ”It was a great experience, especially since Jack and I had been sailing together for years on various boats. We knew what to expect from each other.” This summer he was again on Pacific Rose for a cruise from Sequim, WA to Chatterbox Falls, north of Vancouver, BC. Next sailing adventure? – a visit to Haida Gwaii, an archipelago of islands off the British Columbia coast that is thought to be one of the first Aboriginal settlements in North America.
John W Prince is a writer and Villages resident. Learn more at www.GoMyStory.com.