Background
I checked into Pensacola Florida as a Naval Aviation Cadet (navcad) in July
1961 and completed flight training 20 months later at NAS Kingsville Texas in
February 1963. Thereupon, I was commissioned an Ensign and designated a Naval
Aviator. I drove from Texas to Colorado taking leave to visit my family there,
then drove on to San Francisco reporting to air intelligence (AI) school, NAS
Alameda. This six week school was designed to give junior officers enough background
in intelligence to become the intelligence officer in a fleet squadron. I remember
much more of my evenings exploring San Francisco night life than of my days
in Alameda ground school. However, I did become better qualified for the job
of AI officer than I was for many other jobs that I also was to be assigned.
After AI school, my orders took me south to NAS Miramar at San Diego. I reported
into the RAG squadron VF-124, the F8U training unit. Before Mr. McNammara intervened
to homogenize the services into one slick corporate structure, the Navy had
it’s own system of organization. Thus the above acronym, RAG, stood for
Replacement Air Group. So while Air Wings have replaced Air Groups, navy pilots
jargon is still "going through the RAG" or the commander of a Wing
is still the "CAG". Likewise, the F in F8U stood for fighter, the
8 the eighth fighter aircraft from that manufacturer and the U the manufacturer’s
designation, in this case, Chance Vought. The new designation became simply
F8 followed by the model, i.e. F8C or F8D. The Navy method of designating a
squadron, V for heavier than air, F for fighter as above; was not changed by
Mr. M et al. and is still used today.
I arrived at Miramar late in April, 1963. NAS Miramar was not yet named "Fightertown
USA", but it was home base to all west coast fighter squadrons and two
RAG squadrons. VF-121, which trained pilots transitioning to the F3H "Demon"
and the F4H "Phantom", and VF-124 for F8Us "Crusaders".
The RAG
VF-124 also owned a couple of F9F-8Ts, which were the two seated version of
the vintage Grumman Cougars I had flown at Kingsville. VF-124 kept them to refresh
pilots in instrument flying in those days before simulators, and I needed refreshing
sorely. This occupied the first half of May and the second half was devoted
to ground school studying the F8’s systems and procedures. We were in a
loose class of about eight students, I say loose because, although we started
classroom study together, in flying, for one reason or another, some students
progress through a syllabus faster than others. As I recall, there were four
or five of us brand new aviators and two or three second or third tour pilots
in our group initially.
The thrill of my first flight in the F8 Crusader is something I can never forget.
Strapping on a high performance single seater without benefit of having had
any time in the aircraft with an instructor or in a simulator of that aircraft
type is an experience that probably has ended with that era. My turn was June
4th, 1963. By the end of the month, I had 38 hours in the machine.
In fact, the whole experience of going through VF-124 was unforgettable. The
squadron was without a doubt the forerunner and model for "Top Gun",
the tactics school that came later. Morale was tiptop, the instructors all dedicated
fighter pilots. They named their quarters in a large hanger The Ponderosa, after
the ranch of that name from the popular television show Bonanza and they took
nicknames from Bonanza’s characters. Since the F8's primary weapons were
heat seeking Sidewinder missiles and it’s four 20 mm cannon, the aircraft
had to get on the tail of it’s adversary and that necessitated winning
the "dogfight". Therefore, a lot of our training was concentrated
on air to air combat maneuvering and gunnery. This later paid very high dividends
for many in the skies over Vietnam. The F8 had the highest Mig kill ratio of
any aircraft in SEA (Southeast Asia) at 6 to 1. By contrast, the F4H RAG squadron,
VF-121, concentrated their efforts on intercepts and head on encounters which
proved to be an unusable tactic in Vietnam and eventually resulted in the creation
of the Navy Fighter Weapons School or "Top Gun". Some of the VF-124,
F8 instructors were checked out in the F4 to become the first Top Gun instructors.
Among the best of instructors at 124, a fighter pilot’s fighter pilot,
was Foster S. Teague, "Tooter Teague". Tooter was flamboyant, talked
a good game, an exceptional pilot and was totally dedicated to the navy. He
had been a collegiate football player, playing for Bear Bryant. A big ruggedly
good looking man, Tooter must have been squadron records officer at the time,
at least he signed my log book while I was there. Anyway, he approached me in
mid July, noting I was supposed to have had a cross country flight in the F9
instrument coarse, but had not. Therefore, he proposed I take it with him the
coming weekend. The real reason for the cross country however, was that his
wife and children had gone back to Louisiana for the summer and he wanted a
weekend visit with his family. He came to me prepared for a real sell, but I
didn’t need much persuasion, I enjoyed weekends in San Diego, but there
was nothing tying me down.
Tooter arranged everything. We took off Friday, flew to Webb AFB in Texas to
refuel. On descent into Webb the whole Canopy fogged up as Tooter in the front
seat had missed the defogger switch and we had to continually wipe holes to
see through. From there we flew to Barksdale AFB, our destination. Coming into
the break at Barksdale, Tooter asked the tower for a "tuck under break",
knowing full well that a SAC (Strategic Air Command or bomber) base wouldn’t
have a clue what he was talking about. And they didn’t, but they cleared
us for a "tucker" break anyway. So instead of the normal break, flying
down the runway at speed and then breaking, putting the aircraft into a left
90 degree bank turn and pulling to dissipate speed and turn down wind, we came
streaking down the runway and banked right 270 degrees, basically a 3/4 aileron
roll. A long time after, Tooter and I laughed about our "tucker" break.
I had a great weekend in Bossier City Louisiana. Tooter went out to a cabin
by the lake to join his family, but not before seeing that I was all set up,
staying in his old room at his parents house, provided with a big Chrysler and
a lovely young lady friend of the family as an escort. In the evening, she took
me to various night spots in Bossier City and Saturday out to the lake. Southern
hospitality personified.
On the way back to Miramar, we stopped at Biggs AFB, El Paso Texas for fuel.
We knew that taking off at a hot, high altitude airport in the underpowered
F9 was going to be a stretch, so Tooter briefed me to leave the flaps up on
take off roll until his command to set them. Using his technique, we got airborne
near the end of the runway and fortunately, there were no real tall cactuses
for a few miles off the end.
By September we were down to the last crucial part of the program, carrier landings.
We started with FCLPs, field carrier landing practice at Miramar, we called
it the "bounce pattern". Some flights we never got above six hundred
feet of altitude, around the pattern six or eight times, then into the fuel
pits to "hot refuel" (refuel with the engine running) and back out
for another six or eight. When we became fairly proficient in daylight, we flew
over the mountain to Naval Auxiliary Air Station El Centro for night practice
where it was blacker and there were fewer complaints about the noise. Some nights
we stayed over in the BOQ at El Centro, some nights they needed the airplane
back over the mountain at Miramar and that could get interesting. The instructor,
the LSO (Landing Signals Officer) would monitor our fuel states and the weather
at Miramar, he squeezed in as many bounces as he could, but when the fog started
rolling in to Miramar, he would dispatch us over in a hurry, no time to even
hot refuel. If he misjudged, it meant we shot an approach to very low visibility
and ceiling with very little fuel to spare. Normally single seat Navy aircraft
were restricted to minimums of 200 ft. ceiling and 1/2 mile visibility; however,
some really smart fellow had found a clause that said if the aircraft had radar,
the mins could be lowered to 100 and 1/4. Since the F8 had radar, albeit intercept
radar, worthless on an approach, we could use the lower mins. I had to use this
precept once or twice coming over from El Centro and consequently was beginning
to see sometimes how far a military pilot was expected to hang his bare fanny
over the edge. Incidentally, the minimums precept was later invalidated by someone
with a real head on his shoulders.
On Sept. 9th we began carrier qualifications. The Bonhomme Richard, CVA-31,
was steaming up and down the coast. The "Bonny Dick" was an Essex
class modified WWII carrier, also know as a 27 Charlie for the modification
and the smallest class in the attack fleet. She was there for our quals and
for the F4s and F3Hs of VF-121 as well as for the requal of some Marines out
of EL Toro. She also was trying out some new lighting on the flight deck, unfortunately!
The next two days were all right, we flailed around the pattern, starting off
with a couple of touch and goes and then the required "traps", Navy
talk for arrested landings. I got my required number of daylight traps interspersed
with a few bolters. The first thing a carrier pilot does when his aircraft hits
the carrier deck is add full power and if a pilot misses all four of the arresting
cables, known as "wires", he rotates off the angled deck for another
try. Unless he is low on fuel. In the training situation, minimum fuel is called
"bingo fuel", just enough to get you to the bingo airport. The bingo
field was usually the closest suitable, our home base Miramar ideally, but often
the runway on San Clemente Island.
Trying to night carrier qualify on the Bonny Dick were the most frightening
hours of my life, bar none! Worse than any of my 133 combat missions or anything
else that has happened in my 39 years and nearly 30,000 hours flight time flying
airplanes. There were several reasons for this. First, the F8, as sweet as it
was to fly, was a difficult airplane to bring aboard the ship, largely because
of speed instability in the landing configuration. Auto throttles later helped
in this regard but they were just being installed at that time and not available
to us. Another factor was the experimental lighting, they had installed a drop
line of multicolored lights down the fan tail of the ship. They were supposed
to give the illusion of approach lights, which they most certainly did not,
but they did help with line up and a simplified version was later adopted on
all carriers. The really bad idea was converging edge lights on the angle deck.
They were supposed to give the illusion of a long runway, but instead only gave
the illusion of being high.
Probably the biggest factor was the weather. Each night there was a marine layer
at about a 1000 ft. A solid overcast and at sea, completely black underneath.
Navy regulations said there must be a visible horizon during carrier qualifications
and indeed standing outside on the darkened deck one could faintly see the horizon,
so in the eyes of those making the decisions the regulation was satisfied. But
for those of us flying, once we were looking through the plexiglass canopy or
through the windshield, even with instrument lights off there was complete blackness
outside. Add to this the fact that many of us, me included, were very low time
inexperienced pilots with very little instrument time and night carrier flying
is essentially that, precision instrument flying.
And so the horror show went, I flew constantly with vertigo, my inner ear telling
me one thing and the instruments something else. Even the nutty lighting system
through peripheral vision telling me I was high when the meatball was reading
otherwise. I wasn’t alone, the others were having the same difficulties,
bolters, frantic POWER-POWER-POWER calls from the LSO, wave off calls and bingos.
I bingoed one night to San Clemente Island and had to land with two disabled
aircraft on the runway who had bingoed there ahead of me. The runway went entirely
across the north end of the island with a low cliff to the surf at either end
and a hump in the middle. Again, an illusion to the landing pilot that he was
about go off the far end when he still had lots of runway ahead. Throw in the
adrenaline left from the carrier pattern and over braking - blown tires the
result. Fortunately the first aircraft on the runway was on the left side so
I landed on the right and once past him I transitioning to the left to go around
the other aircraft on the right half of the runway. I think that was the night
I overnighted on San Clemente. Another amazing sight I experienced while I was
aboard ship waiting another turn, was watching an F3H Demon actually fly around
the ship. He got so low so early in his approach, he turned to fly around the
ship before the underpowered Demon finally began to climb.
The fiasco had a tragic ending. Only a couple of seasoned pilots got their required
number of night landings. Two Lcdr.s turned in their wings and quit and finally
my classmate and shipboard roommate, Mel Mobley was killed. He boltered and
was bingoed to San Clemente Island, but he never made it. The search for him
and his aircraft yielded only small bits of debris including part of his helmet.
It was speculated that he flew into the water while turning toward San Clement
and perhaps looking away from his instruments to dial in new radio frequencies.
Another thing we had to contend with was that VF-124 flew 4 different models
of the F8 and not all the switches were in the same place.
Mel, a tall shy redhead from Palo Alto, California was the third of four roommates
killed in accidents, I had lost two while I was in the training command. Slowly
a couple of things were beginning to sink in, one that we were expendable and
two, if one were to survive, he had to learn to fight for himself.
After a day of search operations, the Bonny Dick resumed carrier qual. operations
for another two days before her scheduled time ended the 16th of Sep. I ended
up with 24 traps on Bonny Dick, but only 4 night traps and I needed eight. Ten
days later the Kitty Hawk was sailing off the coast and they tried get me finished
up on her, but although I did get two daytime landings, the plan didn’t
come together and I had to wait for the next carrier scheduled for a qualification
period, the USS Constellation CVA-64, in October.
Night landings on the "Connie" were still that, night carrier landings,
but conditions if not fun, were at least hugely improved from those on Bonny
Dick. On the 15th, 16th and 17th of Oct., I accumulated 13 traps on the Connie,
including the 4 night landings I needed to qualify. Subsequently, I was detached
from VF-124 with orders to fleet fighter squadron VF-111, the Sundowners, which
had sailed with the rest of Carrier Air Wing 11, in USS Kitty Hawk, CVA-63,
for West Pac (Western Pacific) on the 17th. the same day I had finished transition
training.
Kitty Hawk
Two other pilots with orders to VF-111, had caught up with me and finished the
RAG. A senior Lt., Milton Moore, "Uncle Milty", and Jerry Smith, "Smitty",
another nugget like me, joined me on a United flight to Honolulu to catch up
with the ship. ("nugget" was a term given to novice naval aviators
who still wore the single gold bar of an ensign on their collars. With the end
of the cadet program, almost all aviators have been promoted to Ltjg. by the
time they receive their wings, but the term is still used to denote a new arrival
to the fleet.) As a fellow bachelor, Uncle Milty took me under his wing and
was my unofficial advisor, especially in those early days. When we arrived at
Honolulu, we found the ship was at sea for an Operational Readiness Inspection,
Uncle Milty knew and soon confirmed that the squadron did not want to see three
new faces until the inspection was over in a few days, so he promptly got us
set up to wait on Waikiki at the military recreation facilities of Fort De Russy.
When the Kitty Hawk did dock at carrier row on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor,
Uncle Milty again took us by the hand in everything from where to catch the
launch to get over to Ford Island, to finding our way around the ship. He was
an expert in the latter, having been a flight deck officer, "yellow shirt",
on Kitty Hawk and having sailed on her maiden voyage from Philadelphia around
the horn to join the Pacific fleet, 2 years prior. We sailed west in the early
days of November, 1963 and I began my life at sea.
Life for a Navy pilot aboard ship centers around three locations, his state
room, the wardroom, but mainly the ready room. The ready room is not just where
pilots prepare for flights, but where the duty officer has a desk and mans the
phone, where paper work is done in the big comfortable leather chairs, where
meetings are held, where discussions both social and serious are held, where
the movie is shown, and many other activities; in short, home. Sharing our squadron
ready room was the photo detachment of 4 pilots flying the photo version of
the F8.
The Kitty Hawk had two officers wardrooms, the forward wardroom on the O3 level
just beneath the flight deck and the aft wardroom, down the escalator and beneath
the hangar deck. Breakfast and lunch were walk in, but dinner was two sittings
at 1700 and at 1800 hours. Officers names were posted with a napkin ring number
and table. However, they were short a few places and the most junior officers
napkins and rings were placed on a sideboard and one had to wait for the seat
of a no show. Being one of those junior officers, I found this somehow to be
humiliating and embarrassing although it shouldn’t have been. It should
have been an opportunity for the more senior to extend a little welcome and
warmth to a new shipmate at their table, but often that was not the case. On
board were the brown shoes, aviators, and the black shoes, non aviators; so
called because aviators only, could wear aviation greens, a green uniform and
brown shoes. The brown shoes could also be worn with the khaki uniform, the
non aviators had to wear black shoes with their khakis, thus the distinction.
Unfortunately, the rivalry between the two sometimes turned to animosity and
the chance to snub an aviator was too much temptation for some. There were some
put downs and snide remarks, or sometimes I was just ignored. However, this
didn’t last long in that we were soon at flight ops (operations) and they
opened up a section of the wardroom for those on duty to eat informally in flight
suits or work clothes and I nearly always had my meals there, I also very quickly
gained enough seniority to get off the musical chairs list.
My stateroom, typical of most, was shared with another Sundowner pilot, Ken
Jaskolski. The bunk beds were up against the bulkhead on the other side of which
was the steam accumulator for the port catapult. I would pull back smartly sometimes
when a little bare skin touched the rivets, but it was a comfort on cold nights.
Otherwise the room was just big enough to accommodate an upper and lower bunk,
a wardrobe each and a desk with a small safe each. Other than to sleep, I spent
very little time there, although it was quite comfortable.
As soon as I checked in to the squadron, I was assigned collateral duties, among
those were; communications officer, air intelligence officer, classified material
officer, mess officer etc. etc. At one time I had 13 total collateral duties.
Most did not involve much, but nevertheless, there were responsibilities. In
addition, there were watches to stand. Squadron Duty Officer, the SDO, was a
24 hour watch rotated among the junior officers and four hour Condition Cap
watchs were the main ones. Once we sailed out from under the Air Defense coverage,
we had fighters on alert continuously. Usually there were one or two pilots
on either Condition IV, which was 15 minute alert and meant after preflighting
our aircraft, we could return to the ready room; or Condition III, where we
sat in the cockpit ready to launch as soon as we could turn our engines up.
That’s where I was sitting in the wee hours Nov. 23rd when the announcement
came over the bull horn. "standby for a message from the captain".
In the few moments it took before Captain Epes began to speak, my mind raced.
I knew it was no casual announcement at that hour and whatever catastrophe,
I was sure I was going to be launched off the heaving deck into the black night.
Instead, I had the remaining hours of my watch to quietly contemplate the assassination
of President Kennedy, alone in the cockpit.
Generally, there were two fighters on Condition Cap, one of our squadrons F8Ds
and an F4B from the other fighter squadron aboard, VF114. Besides the two fighter
squadrons, Air Wing 11 was composed of two A4 attack squadrons, VA-112 and VA-113,
an A1 "Spad" (the vintage propellor A1s were nicknamed spads after
the WWI fighters) squadron, VA-115 and VAH-13, the heavies flying the A3. Two
detachments, one from VFP-63, the F8 photo birds, and VAW-11 flying W2Fs, the
early warning radar planes, rounded out the Air Wing. The W2Fs were a modified
version of the anti-sub S2F "stoof", so with the big radar disk overhead
they were called a, "stoof with a roof", or being WFs they were also
called "Willie Fudds". The detachment Officer In Charge was known
affectionately as "Fudd Man".
Also aboard were two UH2A Seasprite helicopters who were not part of the Air
Wing, but rather a detachment from a utility squadron and assigned directly
to the Kitty Hawk. Whenever the ship was engaged in flight ops, one of the helicopters
was airborne, standing by for any need of rescue at sea. They also shuttled
mail and other necessities between ships of the task force. One of the helicopter
pilots, Woody Beck, was a good friend of my roommate Ken Jaskolski and I got
to know him well enough that he took me along on a mail run one day. I got a
few minutes of "stick" time in the helicopter on the way back to the
Kitty Hawk and Woody said I did pretty well, but I flew in a crab the whole
time which explained the draft coming in the left open door.
Once we arrived in the far east, another aircraft operating aboard frequently
was the "COD" (carrier onboard delivery). The CODs were yet another
version of the S2, modified to become a transport. The CODs were detachments
that were shore based at the major Naval Air Stations in the Pacific. They shuttled
personnel and supplies between shore bases and the carriers operating in the
area. They were always very welcome because arrival of a COD meant mail call.
Arriving into the squadron just days behind Milty, Smitty and me, was our new
CO, Commander Charlie Ray. Charlie Ray may not have been the world’s greatest
pilot, but he was born to be a squadron commander. He liked the joke, "what
do you call a Mexican fishing boat captain?" "Hey Skeeper!" And
that is usually how he was called, skeeper or skipper. He was even handed, good
humored, a good listener and enthusiastic. As far as I know, he was the first
since the famous WWII Flying Tigers to paint sharks teeth on our aircraft. He
encouraged putting our Sundowner patches everywhere and all of the officers
bought civilian blazers with the Sundowner patch. Baseball caps, coffee mugs
etc. not only among the officers, but the enlisted members of the squadron as
well. Everyone seemed to like him and yet there was good discipline and things
were done right as well. The result was high morale and an efficient fighting
unit. The one thing he did that was more popular than anything else among the
pilots was to insist that all flying was split up evenly. We all got the same
number of hours, same number of night landings and we all spent an even amount
of time on Condition Cap watch, including himself. Okay! Well, maybe sometimes
he had more pressing things to do.
Life at sea settled into a routine, landing aboard day or night the norm, there
often was no bingo field within range but that ceased to worry us, we were becoming
seasoned carrier pilots. I never learned to like night landings and they were
always challenging, but no longer dreaded. Besides, you only had to make one
at the end of a flight, they didn’t trap you and send you back to the catapult
as they did during quals. A typical flight would have us launch and rendezvous
20 miles in front of the ship, either as a four plane or more often a two plane
formation, fly out 150 miles or so and make contact with a radar picket destroyer,
who would run intercepts with us. First among ourselves, then when the A4s turned
back to the ship from their practice bombing missions, he would vector us to
intercept them. Usually, these intercepts ended with few "turns" of
air to air practice combat. Then back to the landing pattern and back aboard,
after debriefing the flight, we also always also got an LSO debriefing on the
landing.
Westpac
Our first port of call in the far east was Okinawa in mid November followed
by Sasebo, Japan at the end of the month. The Kitty Hawk anchored out at Sasebo
and I got my first taste of Boat Officer duty. The ship used it’s 40 ft.
utility boats to carry sailors to and from liberty ashore and required an officer
be aboard these boats. A Coxswain and two sailors handled the boat, the Boat
Officer was responsible for the safety of the passengers and safe operation
of the boat. Taking them to shore was no problem, bringing them back was something
else again. Many of the sailors were still in their teens and could not legally
drink at home where the drinking age was almost universally still 21 years and
they had not yet learned their own capacity for alcohol. Combine this with the
pent up frustrations of shipboard life and we had some very drunken sailors
to bring back to the ship. I saw more than one fall off the dock into the water
trying to climb aboard the boat, usually some fighting and always somebody puking
over the gunwales. A very inglorious command at sea, Ensign Marcy and a boat
of 60 or 70 drunken sailors shuttling across the harbor.
Kobe was our next port and again we anchored out. I remember a very beautiful
old city where, as we, a few friends and I, walked about, westerners were not
always welcome. By evening we were looking for a place to eat and drink and
were turned away at two or three places before finding a very nice bar which
served food as well. However, even as they admitted us, a few locals got up
and left. Some time during the evening, I moved from our table to the bar and
had a long conversation with the bar man. He spoke no English and I no Japanese,
but from somewhere he produced an English-Japanese dictionary and he was enjoying
himself so much that he kept replenishing my sake cup, often from his other
customers bottles. (The sake was served in a small bottle with a small cup beside
it.) Too much, way too much sake and I ended up missing the last boat back to
the ship and muster the next morning. As I waited the next morning for the first
boat back to the ship, who stepped off it, but Cdr. Ray. He looked at my rumpled
appearance laughed and asked me "had I had a good time". I assured
him I had and he moved on, however, my next encounter was not so lucky. Climbing
up the ships accommodation ladder, I met Cdr. Lynn, our Executive Officer. He
took me aside and told me I was in hack for the rest of the in port period.
That meant I could not leave the ship again, however, it was not very severe
punishment as it was only a three day port call and I had the duty one of the
remaining two days anyway. Nevertheless, among my old navy friends, I was the
only one to ever have been put in hack and they have never let me forget it.
Another at sea period and then Kitty Hawk tied up at the pier of the big Yokosuka
naval yard just before Christmas. As she was going to be in port for a while,
the Air Wing flew many of it’s aircraft off the day before to operate out
of Atsugi base in the interim. I was not on the fly off, but had been into Atsugi
a few days prior. I was Uncle Milty’s wingman on a night flight, as always,
we checked each others hooks before starting our descent to the carrier. Milty’s
hook had not extended. We tried all the advertised procedures, cycling the lever,
pulling Gs, etc. to no avail. Upon reporting our problem to the ship, they wanted
us to make a pass by the ship so they could access the situation. Milty refused,
to have done so would have used enough fuel to make a diversion to Atsugi dicey
if not impossible. We diverted to Atsugi, got the hook fixed, had a short overnight
in the BOQ and returned to the ship the following morning. I learned a valuable
lesson about not letting someone on the ground box you in.
The ship stayed at Yokosuka until January 5th and we flew out of Atsugi. Often
during these flights in the skys over and surrounding Japan we encountered other
fighter aircraft, if we saw them first we jumped them and usually vice versa.
And although these mock dogfights were illegal and unsanctioned, they were excellent
air to air training of dissimilar types. The U.S. Air Force was flying both
the F102 and the F106 at that time and from a distance they looked very much
alike, but were totally different adversaries. The F102 was not much of a match
for the F8, but the F106 could be a tough opponent. One day we mixed up with
a 4 plane flight of Japanese National Guard F86s and learned very quickly what
magnificent fighters the old Sabre Jets really were; only our afterburners and
the ability to pull off high kept us from being humiliated. I later would keep
that lesson in mind when we were trolling in Mig territory, for the Mig 17 would
certainly have had many of the same capabilities. This valuable if unauthorized
and ad-hoc "training" of dissimilar types was later wisely incorporated
into Top Gun school.
Flying over Japan was also very scenic, Mount Fuji of course and the Japanese
mountains, and the lights of Tokyo at night were beautiful. After a hard days
flying, off to the club for a hotsey bath and massage, then cocktails and a
nice dinner made for the good life. However, we still had duties back on board
the Kitty Hawk and so we made quite a few trips back and forth to Yokosuka,
sometimes by taxi, but usually by train. I still remember a trip on New Years
day when nearly all the natives, including men, were wearing their best Kimonos.
It was beautiful and fascinating.
Back to sea in January and the north Pacific in winter meant that the wind chill
factor determined whether or not we had to wear an exposure suit. We called
the exposure suit the "poopy suit" and we hated them, the rubber suit
was hot and sweaty, tight around the neck, wrists and ankles, clumsy and a struggle
to put on. Even harder to don was our full pressure suits, which required assistance
to get into. They could be worn as alternative to the poopy suit, but only once
did I see one of our photo pilots wear his "space suit". And they
were a space suit, identical to the ones the astronauts were using. The suits
had been individually fitted and issued back at Miramar to each of us at a taxpayer
cost of $5000 (1963 dollars) and they were kept in a special temperature controlled
room on the Kitty Hawk. They were required because presumably the F8 could fly
above 50,000 feet, which we never did.
Thankfully, we soon sailed south into warmer waters and a visit to Hong Kong.
Anchored out in Hong Kong harbor, the ship ran only the officer’s motor
boat and the captains gig and they contracted a ferry to transport men to liberty
ashore and hence no boat officer duty. However, I did pull a few hours duty
with the marine security detail circling the ship in a whale boat. Their talk
was mostly of the previous nights patrol which had discovered two bodies floating
in the bay, I was very glad we didn't repeat that ghastly experience.
Hong Kong quickly became my favorite port of call and everyone else’s as
well, I’m sure. Beautiful women in their split skirts, beautiful scenery,
shopping galore, dining and night life; our few days were not nearly enough.
Another two weeks at sea and back into Yokosuka and Atsugi. One February, I
pinned on the silver bars of a Ltjg. As aviation cadets, our date of rank was
our initial carrier qualification date in training, even though we did not become
ensigns until we finished pilot training. So I spent just one year a nugget
and the Academy grads could never understand why we were back dated and they
got no credit for their midshipman days. Frankly we didn’t understand it
either, but it was a nice perk for navcads.
By this time several more new pilots had checked into VF-111 and the squadron
roster was beginning to become the group I would serve with most and know best.
Four pilots, Jess Stewart and Gene Gollahon from the Naval Academy, Terry Appelgate
a NROTC officer and Tom Howard, who I had known since early cadet days, had
checked into the squadron before me and were all first tour, first cruise pilots.
Behind me were two more navcads, Jim Shardy and Vic Riley, later came Hotdog
Brown from the Naval Academy, Nick Norris and then Wes Clarke, all fresh out
of flight school. With Smitty and me, 11 of the squadron’s 16 pilots were
junior officers. We got on together tremendously overall, we stuck together,
had none of the backbiting and rivalry sometimes evident in units where individuals
are scrambling for career advantage. Another first cruise pilot checking in
was Capt. George Schulstad U.S.A.F. exchange pilot. It was his first cruise,
but Capt., soon to be Major, Schulstad was no beginner, he was a fighter pilot
every inch and had more flight time than anyone else including the skipper,
and all in fighters. His last airplane had been the F104 Starfignter. George
had a contagious enthusiasm that spread rapidly among us, to him everything
was VSH (very shit hot). He taught us many Air Forceisms.
Among the old timers who had been on the previous Kitty Hawk cruise were Lcdr.
P.D. Smith and Lt. J.O. Kennedy who checked out and left early in the deployment
and who I really hardly had time to get to know. Lcdr. Dick Cavicke, who at
the time was one of highest flight time Crusader pilots in the navy, made the
whole cruise with us. So did our safety officer senior Lt. Al Thayer and three
new full Lieutenants, Tony, "Stick" Longo, Ken Cox and my roommate
Ken Jaskolski. Lcdr. Dick Bellinger, CAG operations officer and not a Sundowner,
flew with us fairly regularly though out the cruise. Lt. Herb Grose, an up through
the ranks ground officer, had also been in VF-111 the previous cruise and finished
up this one as well. Chief Warrant Officer Marty Jung joined us sometime after
I had arrived and replaced Lt. Gary Carlson as our other non flying officer.
Events At Sea
Ret. Adm. Paul T. Gilrest states in his book "Feet Wet", talking about
Air Wing 3 launching it’s aircraft from the Saratoga in 1971 while she
was at anchor, "To my knowledge, such an undertaking had never been done
before, nor has it been done since." (Generally, an aircraft carrier needs
wind over the deck to launch aircraft.) I don’t know about since, but Kitty
Hawk launched 20 aircraft of Air Wing 11 while moored to Piedmont Pier at Yokosuka,
February 12th, 1964. The weather had prevented a fly off the day before and
not only did they want the planes to fly out of Atsugi, they also needed the
deck space to do maintenance on the catapults.
Kitty Hawk sailed again about 10 days later but Uncle Milty and I stayed behind
a few days to wait for two of our birds to complete heavy maintenance. By the
time our aircraft were ready, the Kitty Hawk was steaming far south below Okinawa.
We got one message from her giving her position, PIM or point of intended movement
and a charlie time, (arrival time for us); and that she was operating in EM-Con
conditions, which are radio emission controls. We had to find the ship and be
there on time without the aid of any navigational or communication radios, in
other words by dead reckoning and radio silence. It actually turned out to be
fairly easy, we flew to Kadena AFB on Okinawa, spent the night and the next
day plotted the ships position at our charlie time and took off in time to be
there on time. The weather and visibility were excellent and we spotted the
task force easily. Still, it was a lesson and confidence builder for me.
Around this time, I also was one of the Air Wing pilots who put on a fire power
demonstration for Chiang Kai Shek. We strafed and fired rockets at a large white
target along a beach of Taiwan while the observers watched from some bleachers
off to the side. Another time we had an exercise with the British and if memory
is correct the carrier H.M.S. Arc Royal. We couldn’t exchange landings
on their carriers because of different equipment, but we did make passes by
their ship.
We visited Sasebo Japan again and then after another at sea period, and we were
supposed to have 3 days in Okinawa. However, that turned out to be only one
day as the Alaska earthquake hit and fearing a possible tsunami, the Kitty Hawk
put out to sea as soon as she could get steam up. All hands on shore were ordered
back aboard, but of course quite a few were left behind. I made it back. After
the tsunami failed to materialize and the the danger had passed, we pulled back
in to gather the rest of the crew.
Once again out to sea and I believe the at sea period in which we hit a severe
storm and some very heavy seas. Even the 80,000 ton Kitty Hawk pitched and rolled
considerately, but our poor destroyer escorts really took a beating. I remember
watching them off our beam, their prows plunging into the waves, and green water
over the bridge, then coming up and one could see their bottoms with rolls of
30 degrees to one side then the other. When it did smooth out some, they came
along side to transfer several sailors with injuries to our hospital facilities
via boatswains chair, or in this case a stretcher. I was always fascinated by
any at sea transfer and spent hours on the catwalk at decks edge watching the
un-reps, underway replenishments.
Extension One
April 10th to 16th, 1964, another great visit to Hong Kong, spring time to boot.
We were supposed to be nearing the end of the cruise, but after Hong Kong our
scheduled cruise went by the board and we were extended at least twice. We had
been away for nearly six months and had had very little contact with events
at home. Other than personnel letters from friends and family, we had only the
Stars and Stripes and a short daily bulletin put out by the ship for news. For
instance, the Beatles tour of the U.S. came and went while we were at sea and
to this day there is a gap in my experience when the subject comes up and I’m
among others of my generation. It was a very pleasant shock when we returned
and found the young women wearing miniskirts. We also missed much of the 1964
political campaign, ironically one of the major issues of which was Vietnam.
Nevertheless, there we were steaming off the coast of Vietnam in the spring
of 1964 in a "show of force" we were told. A show to whom I can only
guess as I can find no reference to our presence there at that time in any of
the volumes written on SEA. We conducted air operations in the area and very
odd ones at that. We were vectored by our fleet air controllers to intercept
AIR LINERS. We made passes by the aircraft to get the name of the air line and
type of aircraft. Most were international air lines such as Air France or BOAC
or Air India, but I remember some very different types of aircraft and unknown
air lines as well. Obviously it was a major air corridor and why we were engaged
in those intercepts I have never found out.
After about two weeks in the South China sea, we returned to Yokosuka for the
first week of May, then back out for what was supposed to be the last at sea
period before starting home. Sometime during this period, I got my one hundredth
trap on the ship and became a Kitty Hawk centurion. A reporter and photographer
from Parade magazine came aboard via the COD. They wanted to do a story for
Parade to be titled "A day in the life of a carrier fighter pilot",
and the pilot whom they picked was my friend Jess Stewart. After following Jess
about the ship a couple of days, they wanted some pictures of Jess and a friend
on shore leave. Jess picked me as his friend. The ship was due back into Yokosuka
in about four days, but the newsmen had a deadline and wanted to take us with
them right away. Permission was finagled and Jess and I launched off in the
COD with them, the only time I ever flew on or off a carrier with some one else
doing the flying.
Jess and I were giddy, we both had visions of being wined and dined on a Parade
magazine expense account, the toast of Tokyo. Not Quite! When we got to Atsugi,
the two Parade guys gave us a time and place to meet them in Tokyo the next
day and disappeared. We met them the next day near the Ginza, took a few photos
and they were gone. They didn’t even buy us lunch. Left to our own devices,
Jess and I descended on Tokyo like the two gallants we were. We checked into
the Sanyo, another military recreation hotel in the middle of Tokyo, found out
where the American school teachers hung out, found where an all girl French
revue cast met after hours and came up for air four days later at Atsugi base.
Extension Two
At Atsugi, we met another Sundowner, Ken Cox, who had flown a squadron airplane
in for Memorial day open house at Atsugi. We had hardly exchanged greetings
when a flash message came from the Kitty Hawk ordering all available pilots
and aircraft to return to the ship ASAP. There were only two available aircraft,
an F4 also flown in for the open house and the F8 Ken Cox had flown into Atsugi.
Three available F8 pilots and one F8 and I was junior in rank.
For some reason, the F4 was delayed and I took off alone. I caught the Kitty
Hawk in the Luzon strait steaming flank speed for the South China Sea. In fact
she was steaming so fast her destroyer escorts could not keep up, everyone got
a big chuckle when one, I think it may have been the Turner Joy of later notoriety,
sent the message, "Send us oars and a big bass drum". I was "Charlie
on Arrival", and the Kitty Hawk didn’t even need to turn into the
wind for my recovery. She was making plenty of her own on course. When I reached
the ready room not knowing what to expect, I found a dead serious atmosphere,
everyone was preparing for combat. Maps and charts of SEA were being issued,
our bright orange flight suits were being traded for what ever could be found,
personal survival gear checked and updated, but no one knew exactly where or
what we were getting into. The attack squadrons perhaps were better informed
in that they had secret target briefings. One clue was that the photo detachment
sharing our ready room had been reinforced with additional photo birds and pilots,
including two U.S. Marine pilots.
Looking back on these events, I can only surmise why the mad scramble. Had there
been some action or event which we were reacting to, the scramble would have
been reasonable; however, I can find nothing recorded in the history of the
times which required an immediate reaction. Rather, this seems to be a forerunner
of a Washington ignorance or disregard for the mechanics of military operations.
Between what I have studied in the writings of the SEA war and what I experienced
when I was there, I conclude it wasn’t that there were not plans, the Joint
Chiefs, the Generals and Admirals submitted plans to the White House throughout;
but that the plans were not approved and passed back down the chain of command
to be implemented, they were picked over and implemented piecemeal by direct
order to the field.
D-Day
In late May, 1964, we arrived off the coast of Vietnam and the photo birds began
their missions over the Plaine Des Jarres of central Laos, where the Pathet
Lao aided by North Vietnamese threatened to take over Laos. The rest of the
air wing flew normal training type flights off shore. However, the photo planes
were coming back with battle damage and it was obvious a rescue plan was needed.
Soon after the photos launched, June 6th, skipper Ray and I as his wingman went
down to the ships intelligence room for a RESCAP (rescue combat air patrol)
briefing. After a rather long briefing, the skipper and I manned our aircraft
on the port and starboard catapults. Meanwhile, the next two pilots, Lcdr. Dick
Cavicke and Ltjg. Terry Appelgate began the second briefing. It was a short
watch, not long after we manned up, the news came that Lt. Chuck Klusmann had
been shot down over Laos and we started engines, my war had begun. Hooked to
the catapult, ship into the wind, I saw CAG, signaling me to open my canopy,
he climbed up on the side of the aircraft and gave me a last minute briefing
on the "rules of engagement"; basically, don’t fire unless fired
upon, or as directed by the on scene commander. He climbed down and we launched.
We headed west for Danang, about 150 miles. Just before Danang was a large thunderstorm
and Cdr. Ray tried to climb over it in afterburner. At about 48,000 ft. it became
obvious we were not going to get over it and we went around it, however, we
had used a lot of fuel, which I could have used later on. Over Danang, the skipper
lost his utility hydraulic system and after radioing the ship he returned to
Kitty Hawk while I was ordered to circle Danang and join the second section
which had launched 20 minutes behind us.
I joined Dick Cavicke and Terry Appelgate over Danang and we headed west across
Vietnam and up the Laotian Panhandle. Cavicke was doing the navigating and I
remember trying to keep track of where we were and making mental notes of our
headings in the event I had to make my way back alone. For a while we were in
range of the Danang Tacan, (navigation radio), but eventually were beyond that
range. We were dodging towering thunderstorms, but could see the jungle below
and finally the Mekong. I remember looking down and thinking that most of the
jungle was enemy territory, I was not particularly scared, but very alert and
intent, besides navigational position, fuel was my big concern.
Nearing the PDJ, we were on frequency with Air America T28s at Klusmanns SAR
site and in fact used ADF direction finding to locate their position from the
radio chatter. Arriving overhead, Dick Cavicke reported to one of the call signs
we had been listening to, that we were a flight of 3 F8's with 400 rounds 20
mm each and asked if they could use us. The answer was negative, it was getting
too dark and they were breaking off their own contact. Indeed it was getting
dark and I could now barely see the ground below. We were all low on fuel and
me the lowest, I didn’t even have enough to get back to Danang. However,
we knew they were to send a tanker after us, so we left the scene and switched
from the SAR frequency to the tanker frequency. A big relief to find that the
A3 had followed us up the Laos Panhandle a considerable distance and we soon
joined up to take on some gas. He didn’t have enough to get us back to
the ship, but did give us enough to go "feet wet", (cross the shoreline),
and he assured us there would be another tanker with plenty to get us home.
We rendezvoused with the other tanker after crossing the shore and made a night
landing on Kitty Hawk. As soon as I climbed down from the cockpit on the dark
flight deck, an enlisted man grabbed my helmet bag and said, "Sir! follow
me, you are to report to the Admirals Bridge immediately", or words to
that effect. I had just ended the longest flight I ever made in the Crusader
and had been in the cockpit almost four hours, he was very reluctant but I prevailed
in stopping at a head (restroom) on the way. When I arrived at the bridge, Dick
Cavicke was already relating to the Admiral what we had seen and heard. Admiral
Bringle asked Dick a couple of short questions and then asked me had I anything
to add, I replied "no Sir", and we were dismissed. I don’t remember
Terry there but he must have been.
An Aviator’s log was not kept by the individual pilot, but by the squadron
flight records officer and then certified correct by the pilot each month. Gene
Gollahon, later shot down over North Vietnam, signed my log book for June 1964.
On the 6th, he entered a 2.9 hour flight with .5 hours night, one day air refueling,
one night air refueling, and a, ‘kind of flight code 1P’. P for rescue,
survivor search including combat. While the log does show the last part of the
flight was flown at night, Navy log books did not record actual time of day
entries. I note this because apparently the the flight was scratched from the
record.
In an article in the July 1999 edition of the prestigious Naval Institute magazine,
"Proceedings", entitled " ooo put me through to the Commander-in-Chief"
by Commander Glenn Tierney, U.S.Navy (Retired); Cdr. Tierney writes of an order
concocted by Sec.s Rusk and McNammara that there would be "no round-eye
rescue" (American) efforts made for downed U.S. pilots and how CincCPac,
Adm. Felt went over their heads to have the order rescinded by LBJ. However,
Cdr. Tierney says a RESCAP from the Kitty Hawk was launched, but because of
the order, recalled and never showed up at Klusmann’s location. We did
launch, we were never recalled and we did arrive on scene. Someone changed the
record, who and why?
We will probably never know, however, Washington was running a covert CIA war
under operational plan 34A and were trying very hard not to commingle with regular
armed forces, except for reconnaissance, and thus separating the reconnaissance
aircraft from standard practice of armed escorts. The next day when armed escorts
did accompany the photos and our XO Cdr. Bud Lynn was shot down, the news release
was that he was another photo pilot. The timing also is very interesting, according
to Cdr. Tierney, Chuck Klusmann was shot down about 1300, backtracking from
my night recovery, we had to have launched between 1630 to 1700. Why the delay?
I have believed for all these years that it was because the ship did not learn
of his downing until the other photos were within radio range of Kitty Hawk.
(they would have landed while we were briefing in intelligence). But they knew
about it in Honolulu almost immediately and in all likelihood, so did Adm. Bringle
on board. We launched at about the same time as Adm. Felt got the go ahead from
the president. It would seem very possible we had been held back awaiting a
green light from the White House and because we were too late and therefore
ineffective, maybe after all of this it was easier just to report we had been
launched and recalled because of the order.
At any rate, our mission on the 20th anniversary of D-Day may have been the
first armed war mission of the regular U.S. forces, even though we didn’t
fire a shot or see an enemy. After the Admiral’s debriefing, I returned
to the ready room where the flight surgeon gave me a couple of bottles of medicinal
brandy and a sleeping pill. By the time I awoke the next day, most of the rest
of the squadron had launched as escorts for the photos. I was very disappointed
that they had left without me. On the mission, Cdr. Lynn was shot down, he ejected
and was plucked out by helicopter the next day. "Toolshed", our A.F.
exchange pilot, brought back a battle damaged aircraft in a configuration that
one was not supposed to land in and rewrote the rule book. Chuck Klusmann spent
86 days as prisoner of the Pathet Lao before escaping with the aid of Hymong
CIA guerrillas.
A very grateful Cdr. Lynn rejoined us in the ready room to tell us his tale
and then he and the O in C (officer in charge) of the photo detachment, Lcdr.
Ben Cloud, were whisked off to Washington to debrief the Pentagon. Meanwhile,
we were relieved on station by the Constellation and we proceeded to Yokosuka,
finally on our way back across the Pacific to San Diego. On the way, a one page
document was printed that all ships company and Air Wing personnel aboard the
U.S.S. Kitty Hawk had to sign stating the previous operations were classified
and could not be revealed to anyone.
Extension Three
One more visit to Yokosuka, Cdr. Lynn and Lcdr. Cloud rejoined us and yet another
extension. The Bonny Dick arriving at the beginning of a West Pac cruise had
limped into port with a damaged propeller shaft and to make sure the fleet was
not short a carrier, we had to wait around until the situation was assessed.
No one was too happy about the delay and most of us spent a lot of time at the
Yokosuka Officer’s Club. But so did the Air Wing off the Bonny Dick and
therein caused an incident that became known throughout the fleet.
The skipper of VF-194, an F8 squadron on the Bonny Dick, was the notorious Cdr.
Billy Phillips. Phillips was known wherever he presented himself for his flamboyant
antics and loud mouth. At Miramar I remember his "shotgun takeoffs".
The F8 afterburner lit with a bang not unlike that of a shotgun and Phillips
would taxi his whole squadron of 12 airplanes on the runway at once then roll
at 2 second intervals lighting burners. It was quite an air show all right,
it sounded terrific, but to watch the last few airplanes lift off in the smoke
and turbulence and wobble like wet noodles was not pretty and all for the glory
of Billy Phillips up front in smooth air. At any rate, his loud mouthing at
the Yokosuka club was more than one of Kitty Hawk’s doctors could stand
and he put a punch on Philip’s kisser that laid him out flat. The surgeon
broke his hand but became a hero fleet wide.
Going Home
Finally we sailed. I crossed the Pacific 5 times in aircraft carriers in my
brief Navy career and each time we were visited by Russian bombers. They were
always intercepted by our fighters as far out as possible before they arrived
overhead. Therefore, we spent most of the crossings maintaining a Condition
Cap on the catapult. I never got to intercept one, but I spent many hours ready
for them. Otherwise, it was generally a quiet time aboard; time for reading,
playing cards or sometimes a raucous game of Acey Duecy, a traditional Navy
version of Backgammon, as well as catching up on the omnipresent paperwork.
I was on the fly off to Miramar July 19th, 1964, nine months from departure.
There to meet us was a small group of wives, a few children and friends, champagne
and lots of hugs, secondary for me as a bachelor.
My Aunt Lila and Uncle Tiny lived just up the coast from Miramar at Cardiff
by the Sea and I had left my Pensacola Rusty Chevy with them while on cruise.
The next day, we rented a trailer and drove down to Coronado via the ferry to
meet our own ship as she came into port. It was little weird standing on the
pier with hundreds of family and friends there to greet our own shipmates. When
things settled down a bit, we began unloading our belongings from the ship into
the trailer to haul back to the BOQ at Miramar. Mostly it was the stereo gear
we had purchased in Japan or Hong Kong. After moving was completed we all went
to a favorite restaurant in La Jolla called the The Court House for dinner.
Vic Riley and I were taking leave and going home to our respective families,
driving the chevy first to his parents home in Albuquerque, then I on to my
parents in Fort Collins, Colorado. I had planned to leave the next morning,
but Vic convinced me that he was not tired and I could sleep in the rear seat
while he drove, so we set out after dinner. We drove straight through to Albuquerque
arriving the next night, I met Vic’s parents who tried to convince me to
stay the night, but by this time I too was very anxious to get home and I continued
on. Somewhere between Santa Fe and Raton NM, I began seeing double and knew
I had to get some sleep. I made it to the first motel in Raton, got a room and
I was so tired I had hallucinations. I set an alarm but slept through it. The
following day I set out going up Raton Pass. I got about 3/4 of the way up when
the chevy quit. I found there was no fuel coming from the fuel pump and I thought
any vapor lock would be in advance of the pump, and since the pump had a slight
leak anyway, I was sure that the fuel pump had failed. So I walked back down
a couple miles to a telephone and phoned a garage for help. A tow truck picked
me up and we drove up to the car which started right up, vapor lock after all.
The tow driver charged me $15, I tried to tip him but he wouldn’t take
anything, he must have taken pity on me in ragged jeans and driving such a pile
of junk. Little did he know I had some $2000 of pay saved from the cruise in
those ragged jeans (not literally in cash).
I had bought the 58 chevy as a cadet in Pensacola and being from the dry high
plains, I knew nothing about rust. The car had not been undercoated and the
whole bottom rusted out. One could sit in the back seat and put ones feet on
the road. When it rained and I drove through a puddle, water splashed up the
back of the seat as though I was riding a bicycle. So while I was home on leave,
I negotiated for a brand shiny new Plymouth Barracuda, trading in the chevy.
My father laughed to his dying day about driving down with me in the chevy to
pick up the new car. On the way, a tire went flat and we put on the spare which
had to be pumped up first and only held air long enough to get there, just before
we got to the dealer, we broke a fan belt and by the time we pulled into the
lot, the tire was going flat and steam was coming from under the hood. But,
the deal was already done and we drove away in my shiny new "cudda".
Back to Miramar
On my way back to California, my mother and younger sister, Margie, drove back
with me for a visit with Aunt Lila. In Utah, we took a short cut on a secondary
road across the mountains which was very scenic but also became more and more
secondary until we were on a trail. We even had to ford a stream at one point,
but the map showed the road linking up with a main road again and it did, but
not without some consternation. I could never find that road again on any subsequent
map.
August found us back flying regular training flights out of Miramar. Because
the Navy was realigning it’s fighter squadrons, VF-111 was being reassigned
from Air Wing 11 to Air Wing 2. Until this time, each Air Wing had been made
up of one F4 squadron and one F8 squadron, however, the F4s were chewing up
the wooden decks of the 27 Charlie carriers and they took more space aboard.
Thus, the new plan was for two F8 squadrons on the 27 Charlies and two F4 squadrons
on the big boats. Our move was an interim move and we still would have a F4
squadron, VF-21, as our sister squadron. In light of this and to fit into Air
Wing 2, we were to be redesignated VF-26, and we even had new ball caps made
with VF-26 emblazoned on them. There was resistance to this arbitrary name changing,
and the tradition and morale issues that went with it. Our squadron’s tradition
and commendable battle record went back to the early days of WWII. If memory
serves me correctly, Charlie Ray battled hard against the change and eventually
won, although the pervasive argument may have been the paper work tangle of
changing not only our squadron, but many more in the shuffle that was only beginning.
Consequently, we remained VF111.
Air Wing 2 was assigned to the U.S.S. Midway and in early Sept. we were doing
day and night FCLP and on the 10th, I got 4 day traps and on the 11th, 2 night
traps on her. We were getting ready for a "Mid Pac" cruise to Hawaii
and back.
Another early Sept. event that sticks in my memory was the return of Chuck Klusmann.
He had escaped from the Pathet Lao and was flown back to Travis AFB and then
on a Navy aircraft to North Island Naval Air Station at Coronado. At North Island
would be the first newsmen he would encounter. Available members of VF-111 and
friends from the mother photo squadron VFP-63 at Miramar, were asked to go down
to meet his flight and to form a reception line from the aircraft door to an
awaiting car so that the newsmen would be kept at arms length. There was a substantial
number of us there and when the aircraft parked and shut down, we formed what
I thought was a fairly solid shoulder to shoulder line on either side of the
short pathway to the waiting car. I was completely shocked at the incivility,
the ruthlessness and sheer brutishness of the newsmen and photographers as Chuck
and his wife stepped outside of the aircraft. Somehow, I found myself on the
outside of a surging bunch along with all of the rest of our reception team.
They were in his face without any regard for his weakened condition. Somehow,
his wife and a medical aide got him to the car in a few minutes, but we were
useless.
We were gone almost the entire month of Oct. on our Mid-Pac cruise to Hawaii.
Skipper Ray was on crutches with a foot and ankle in a cast, he had broken it
demonstrating skate board technique at a squadron party at his house. We became
acquainted with our future home, CVA-41, the Midway. We flew air to ground training
missions to the target island Kahoolawe. We flew into Barbers Point Naval Air
Station and back out to the ship and got a few days R and R on Waikiki. Near
the end of the month we sailed east for San Francisco Bay as Alameda was home
port for the Midway.
My roommate on the Mid-Pac cruise was Nick Norris, a new member of the squadron
who had joined us shortly before we came back on the Kitty Hawk cruise. Nick
was killed the 29th of Oct. trying to get aboard the carrier on a black night
in heavy seas. Nick was another low time pilot just out of flight training and
the RAG. In heavy seas, the Midway’s deck not only pitched, the stern did
what we aviators called a Dutch roll, or it moved in a sort of horizontal figure
eight. On the night Nick hit the ramp, or the round down, the aft end of the
flight deck, the deck was pitching vertically more than 20 feet and doing it’s
Dutch roll. It takes two people to get the aircraft aboard under these kinds
of conditions, the pilot and the LSO, because only the LSO can judge where the
deck will be when the plane is over the ramp. The pilot can only average out
the movements, if he chases the "meatball", as Nick probably did,
he may end up going low just as the deck starts coming up and get into a position
from which there is no recovery. Nick’s airplane hit the ramp and broke
apart, some of it going down into the hangar deck below with the fuselage including
the cockpit rolling in a fiery ball up the flight deck and off the angled deck.
It should not have happened. We were operating off shore of the bay area and
within easy bingo distance. Nick was flying to get some night experience, but
when conditions deteriorated, and the LSO had recommended bingos, he should
have been sent to a bingo field. However, the brass aboard insisted the airplanes
be brought aboard. Everyone really had taken to Nick, he was intelligent, a
hard worker with a great sense of humor and we were all pleased at his joining
us. He was the only non combat loss while I was in the squadron.
Yuma
Back from Mid-Pac and skipper Ray’s year as C.O. was over, I believe he
did an excellent job of making the Sundowners into one of the best squadrons
in the fleet. He was relieved by Cdr. LaHaye, who by comparison, was quiet and
reserved. However, he too had a good sense of humor and was a good leader in
his own less flamboyant style. Soon after Cdr. LaHaye took over, the squadron
deployed to Yuma Arizona for gunnery. While there, we got notice of a top secret
dispatch to be delivered by courier which had to be picked up at the civilian
side of the airport. I being the classified materials officer, was sent over
to pick it up. I signed custody of a vanilla envelope stamped "Top Secret,
for the Commanding Officer’s eyes only". When I brought it back to
Cdr. LaHaye, he opened it, laughed and handed it to the XO, Cdr. Lynn, who also
read it and laughed. There was then a short discussion about what to do with
it since the squadron safes were back at Miramar. Cdr. Lynn had a safe in his
room, so he said he would keep it and I forgot all about it, a big mistake since
I was the one who had signed for it. Many months later after both Cdr. LaHaye
and Cdr. Lynn had been killed in action and we were at sea in Midway, I was
asked the location of the document. I vaguely recalled Cdr. Lynn saying something
about the squadron not having proper security for top secret material and using
the safe at VFP63, the photo squadron. Fortunately, when we got back the document
was found there and since it was no longer needed, destroyed. Phew!
Gunnery deployment to Marine Corps Air Station Yuma was real fighter pilot living.
Flying, shooting and partying, paper work was mostly left behind at Miramar.
After the days flying was finished, we usually headed for happy hour at the
club, then into town for dinner and sometimes we would close the bars in Yuma
and drive west over the Colorado to Winter Haven California, where the bars
were open another hour. If that wasn’t enough, there was San Luis Mexico
only a few miles south. I remember being awakened in the wee hours by Terry
Appelgate who needed to borrow my car to drive down to the border and pick up
a very cold and hung over instructor pilot from VF-124 who was also on a Yuma
deployment. We had to double up on cars as only a few drove over, my new cudda
was very popular.
This was my fourth time through air to air gunnery, we were put through in the
training command, first in the T2J Buckeye and later in the F9F, then we had
deployed to Yuma with the RAG, VF124. Those three previous times, the emphasis
had been on the gunnery pattern, a very precision maneuver. This time we were
all fleet pilots who had mastered the pattern and the idea was to get hits on
the target.
Chocolate Mountain gunnery range lies to the northwest of Yuma and just east
of the Salton Sea. Just south of the range is a dark brown mountain isolated
against the tan desert that looks just like a chocolate drop and was so called.
It made an excellent landmark and we used it to rendezvous and begin the north
bound runs. In the Naval Gunnery pattern for F8's, the banner was towed one
thousand feet behind the tow plane at 30,000ft. The pattern was started with
a division, four planes, at the "perch", about two miles abeam the
starboard side and 8,000 ft. above the tow plane. The lead rolls in, diving
and turning left and calling "one in", at 90 degrees of turn he would
be directly facing the banner and reverse his turn to a steep right turn, at
this point called "low reversal": number two would call "two
in". Meanwhile one would start tracking the banner in his gunsight and
when it became big enough, i.e. close, fire! Then ending the run by quickly
leveling the wings, and because he was already pulling several gs, the aircraft
would climb over the banner, then right back into a steep right turn to bring
the aircraft parallel with the tow plane. As he passed close off the port side
of the tow plane he would call "one off". At this time, number three
rolls in and two would be at low reversal. Number one pulls up over the tow
in a right hand turn until he is heading 90 degrees away from it and then reverses
his turn, "high reversal", at which time four rolls in, three would
be at low reversal and two calling "two off" abeam the tow plane.
Number one continues his climbing left turn back up to the perch and starts
another run, this continues to the far end of the range and then the same returning
southbound.
We also took turns towing the banner, which was a new experience for most of
us. The banner was laid out beside the runway and then had to be snatched quickly
off in order not to damage it by dragging it along the ground. To do this, it
was necessary to climb as steeply as possible to above one thousand feet. Afterburner
was lit only after takeoff so that it wouldn’t burn the cable in two. Another
thing about towing was that after the runs were completed, one had to fly very
gingerly back to the drop area because if you lost the banner, you had to endure
the wrath of the shooters who had had their best runs ever, but couldn’t
prove it.
Hits on the banner were identified by color, each of the four planes in a division
had ammunition painted a different color and it left that particular color around
the edges of any hole in the banner. Also, the length of the hole in the banner
gave an indication of the angle from which it had been fired. Ideally, one was
supposed to break off the run when the banner appeared square, any more fore
shorting meant you were too much in trail of the banner and tow plane. As well,
the hole should be downward, meaning the shooter was properly firing down at
the target. I got one hit which was 18 inches long and pointing up! I’m
sure the tow pilot that day, my old friend Tom Howard, has not forgotten it
either. George Schulstad advised me how to get hits, he said "drive it
in until you’re scared, then pull the trigger". His advice worked,
I got my share of hits, but I’m not proud of that run.
Yuma was hard work for the three non flying officers in the squadron. Lt. Skip
Hopkins, "Skippety doo daw", was ordnance officer, and kept very busy
not only maintaining the four 20 mm cannon on each aircraft, but firing them
in as well. Carrier aircraft get slammed around pretty hard and it’s difficult
to keep the cannon aligned. But Skip was happy, he loved working with the guns,
he was a LDO, limited duty officer, who had come up through the ranks and became
one of my favorite people. Marty Jung, a commissioned warrant officer also was
an old hand. "Omar Mung friend of Marty Jung". I always think of that
little jingle when I remember Marty. On the Kitty Hawk someone had made up the
rhyme and I think Omar’s last name. One story has it that Omar became the
Sundowner mascot because all the other squadrons in Air Wing 11 had animal mascots
and they needed a zoo keeper. Hence, Omar the tent maker became Omar the zoo
keeper. At Any rate, the little triangle shaped fellow with a hat, stick feet
and a dour expression became our symbol. Like the happy face fad that came along
much later, we put our little Omar everywhere, at Atsugi officer’s club,
we drew him on our checks to the delight and giggles of the Japanese waitresses,
we had little red Omar patches made up and we sewed them to our flight suits
and flying jackets.
Roy Allen was the third "ground pounder", he joined us as an almost
brand new ensign and remained the most junior officer in the squadron throughout
his tenure. He got all the crummy little jobs and kept them. He was the best
mapco we ever had, (movie and popcorn officer). Roy was a trooper and in the
end, he earned the respect of all of us for his willingness and diligence.
Another pilot who joined us about this time was Lcdr. Bob Pearl, coming to VF-111
for the third time. Later he would return again as skipper of the Sundowners,
a very unusual fourth tour in the same squadron and maybe unmatched. With his
easy going manner, Bob was immediately liked and looked up to. The make up of
the squadron was now pretty much what it would remain for the next year and
for the combat cruise aboard Midway. The five senior officers were Cdr.s LaHaye
and Lynn, Lcdr.s Bob Pearl and Uncle Milty, and Major George Schulstad. With
the nine other JO pilots and myself, and the three non fliers, we formed the
officer roster of the squadron. I shall always believe it’s make up couldn’t
have been better. Under the stress of combat, the confinement of ship board
living, the separation of sea duty and everyday concerns, there was no pettiness
or bickering or jockeying for advantage; morale stayed high and we did our jobs
as called.
Of course there were 150 or so hard working, dedicated enlisted men in the squadron
as well. However, my collateral duties were such that I worked with only a few
of them. I got to know only a handful very well, but was aware of all the contributions
from maintaining the aircraft to typing the ever present paperwork.
On paper, the squadron pilots were organized into "divisions" of four
planes or four pilots, and in turn each division was divided into two "sections"
of two with each having a leader and wingman. VF-111 would have had four divisions
and the idea was that the four pilots in a division would fly together whenever
possible. As a practical matter, it seldom worked out that way, however, flying
a section leader and his wingman together was much easier to schedule. My section
leader was George Schulstad and I flew with him much of the time. And I learned
a great deal from him.
One of the things I remember George teaching me was how to fly low level over
a ridge and keep under radar coverage. He explained to me that when you flew
over a ridge or crest at low level, if you merely pushed over no matter how
hard, you would nonetheless balloon above the horizon and good radar operators
would catch your profile against the sky. Therefore, the technique to use was
to roll inverted just before you reached the ridge, then pull the nose down
the slope on the far side and roll upright. I was a little dubious to say the
least about aiming to go over a ridge at less than 50 ft and rolling on my back
just as I crossed, but I tried it and it was far easier than I had anticipated.
Shortly thereafter we got a chance to prove the technique. The Marines at Twenty
Nine Palms wanted aircraft to act as targets for their new Hawk ground to air
missile system. George and I got the mission.
George briefed me for the flight. The first runs were to be from over the flat
desert in formation as low and fast as possible. Normally in formation, the
wingman flies "stepped down" on the leader about 3 ft. or so; George
briefed me to fly stepped up slightly as I would be sucking sand into my intake
if I stepped down on him. And that’s exactly the way we flew it, we made
two or three runs from west of the facility in towards them at "steering
wheel level" and 600 knots plus. Each time they acquired us on their radar
right at their max range of 60 miles and had a lock on moments after. But the
last run they left us to come in from any direction of our choosing and naturally
we had agreed in briefing to come in separately from over the mountains to the
northeast. Using the inverted over the ridge technique, George went in first
and completely caught them off guard, nearly knocking them out of their chairs
as he roared directly over their trailers at 50 ft. The neatest part was however,
that they were still talking to George on the radio and their mic was open when
I crossed over at 50 ft and we could hear my pass on the frequency, complete
surprise as they didn’t realize we had separated and they thought it was
all over.
All of the flights and squadron work at Miramar were aimed at preparing for
another cruise to the west Pacific. We knew we would be involved in operations
in South East Asia and had talked to other pilots home from cruises after our
own homecoming including those who participated in the Golf of Tonkin incident.
However, very little else had happened and we were not anticipating nor worrying
about what was to come.
Christmas
Meanwhile, we were enjoying the good life at Miramar, for me the bachelor’s
life. We got back from Yuma in December 1964, a week or so before Christmas.
About half the squadron took leave and and the other half manned the store.
Since I had taken leave immediately after coming in on the Kitty Hawk, I minded
the store. I remember Christmas because I was SDO, I had volunteered so that
one of the married guys could stay home. The reason I remember Christmas was
because I was looking forward to a nice big Christmas dinner at the BOQ officer’s
mess, however I did not take note of the bulletins put out and failed to notice
that dinner had been rescheduled from the usual evening meal to something like
1400. I fooled around down at the squadron all afternoon, went home to my room
and changed into full uniform of the day and crossed the street to the dining
area only to find it all locked up. Madder than a hornet, ( my own damn fault
) I could only find a vending machine with some peanut butter crackers and a
couple of candy bars for Christmas dinner.
Unless one had the duty, we generally had weekends and evenings off, evenings
unless we were night flying. The Miramar Naval Air Station had no officer’s
club at that time, social life on base was a small bar off the BOQ lounge and
happy hour at the BOQ patio bar. Most of the time we, various fellow bachelor
residents of the BOQ and myself, headed into town, usually La Jolla. Our favorite
hang out by far was the "Courtroom", which featured very good food
and a lively bar tended by one George Bullock. George fascinated me with his
capacity to tend a full bar, keep several cocktail waitresses busy, keep up
with several conversations and always with a most agreeable disposition. I have
watched many good bartenders since, but in my mind, he will always be number
one. Later George opened his own successful restaurants, one in La Jolla and
one in Del Mar.
Besides La Jolla, we roved all over the San Diego area, I believe it was Wednesday
night that was ladies night at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot’s O club
and we often stopped there. They opened a new "auxiliary" O club at
Navy North Island called the "Downwinds" and sunday afternoon they
held some of what must have been the first disco style sessions and it was jam
packed. And of course in those days before the Coronado Bridge, we took the
ferry across to Coronado and right at the Coronado side landing was Mex Village,
a restaurant and watering hole familiar to all west coast Naval Aviators of
the era.
On weekends, I frequently visited my mother’s sister, Aunt Lila and Uncle
Tiny at their house in Cardiff by the Sea just a few miles north of Miramar.
Sometimes my cousins were around and it was a great respite from the rather
hectic Navy life. My father’s sister, Aunt Marie and Uncle Dewey also lived
just up the road in Encinitas and I visited them, although less often.
Most of January, 1965, we spent in the "bounce pattern" or technically
field carrier landing practice, FCLPs. At the end of the month and the beginning
of February, we flew aboard the Midway and operated from her deck a few days
getting refreshed in both night and day landings. Then it was back to Miramar
getting packed up and ready for our deployment to the far east.
Back to Sea
Mid February, I took my personal baggage up to San Francisco in my still new
Barracuda where the Midway was tied up at Alameda. My father had come out from
Colorado and met up with his brother, my Uncle Don. I gave the two of them a
tour of the U.S.S. Midway and as I remember, they were quite impressed, especially
by the dent on the round down caused by Nick Norris's crash the previous October.
One of Uncle Don’s sons, cousin George was a career Air Force NCO and was
stationed at Hamilton Air Force base in Marin County and we drove up to his
house for dinner. An enjoyable evening with a lot of talk about airplanes. George,
who was nearing retirement from the AF, had spent most of his career in maintenance
of aircraft and at that time was maintaining the F-101 VooDoos at Hamilton.
The next day, having left me off at Alameda, Dad and Uncle Don set off for Colorado
in my Barracuda. I found out later they drove almost a thousand miles before
they discovered 4th gear. (The car was one of the first of that era to sport
"four on the floor".)
Although we then sailed from Alameda, it was not yet for the far east. The ship
and air group were part of an exercise called Operation Silver Lance which was
a large landing and invasion maneuver by the Marines at Camp Pendleton. The
two week exercise required a lot of coordination with the Marines and the Marine
air units at El Toro. As squadron air intelligence officer, these sorts of exercises
required a lot of briefing and preparation and as I complained in a letter home,
very little flying for me. In fact, my log book shows I flew only four times
during the period.
After the exercise, we pulled back into Alameda for three days. For me, it was
just three days of liberty in one of my favorite places, San Francisco; but
for the guys with wives and families this "double farewell’ was more
difficult, especially the air group because it was not based in the Bay area.
Some wives from Lemore and San Diego did come up to see us off, but for most
it was a telephone goodbye. Also there were a few departing toasts at the Alameda
Oclub and in the middle of the revelry, the Admiral’s flag came to be missing.
I was in town, not at the club, so I hadn’t anything to do with it. With
a little hint of a twinkle in his eye, "Major Toolshed", who was there,
also denied any knowledge of the disappearance and as far as I know the missing
flag has never been found.
On the morning of March 6th, we sailed under the Golden Gate and headed west.
By this time, the American bombing campaign against North Vietnam had begun
and we knew we would soon be in on the action. In remembering general feelings
of the pilots aboard and mine in particular, we were not overly eager for combat,
but yet I think we felt ready for whatever was to come. After all we were going
off to do what we had been trained to do. And since the bombing had begun only
in the previous month, Rolling Thunder began Feb. 13th, we had no feedback from
anyone who had been there.
The ship reached the Hawaiian Islands Mar. 13th. I flew an aircraft off to NAS
Barbers Point. I don’t remember why, but it was probably for deck space
during our upcoming ORI (operational readiness inspection). If my memory serves
me correctly, the squadron had 12 airplanes, but when we reached our area of
operations, we generally left two ashore for heavy maintenance and to give the
ship more deck space. By the time we, I think I was with Bob Pearl, got a Navy
van back to Pearl Harbor, the Midway had tied up at Ford Island.
We stayed at Pearl Harbor only one day, the 14th, to take on provisions and
the ORI inspection team. The next four days we operated in Hawaiian waters using
targets on the island of Kahoolawe. Again the ORI, like Silver Lance, involved
a lot of air intelligence work, but little flying for me, I got in two flights
in the four days. Finally, the inspection over, we got three days of beaches,
bikinis and Mai Tais. At that time, Fort DeRusse, the military R & R facility,
was a collection of beach bungalows, one of which became the squadron home room
and we made various forays about Waikiki from there.
Midway
On the 22nd of March, we set sail from Hawaii for Subic Bay, Philippine Islands.
Life aboard the Midway was a little bit different from the Kitty Hawk. First
the Kitty Hawk was almost new, she was roomy and clean, had not yet been modified
and she was pretty well air conditioned. By contrast, the Midway had been built
for World War II, although she was commissioned too late in 1945 to see any
action; she had been modified many times which meant she was a maze to navigate
through and many of her spaces were quite small. Air conditioning was inadequate.
I remember the ships barbershop was way forward and I got lost trying to find
it not just the first time, but it was several haircuts before could get there
without getting lost. I went to the post office, then couldn’t find it
again when I needed stamps.
It wasn’t the location of a space, that was easily obtained from a directory
which gave you the deck number and position on that deck, the frame number,
it was the getting there. Passageways did not run in a straight line for very
long before you had to turn left or right, up or down a ladder. I found the
best way was to get on the flight deck or the hangar deck and go to the approximate
location and then try to descend or climb to the deck which the space was on,
however, there wasn’t always a ladder in the right location and since the
ladders were at deck’s edge, that method didn’t always work either.
But with time one learned the routes to the spaces used regularly and the whole
ship became more familiar. The shin knockers were another fact of ship life.
Going down a passageway, every few feet one had to duck his head and step over
the "shin knocker". The doorways through the bulkheads were mostly
shaped like an elongated oval, about two feet wide and the top low enough to
make it necessary to duck and the bottoms about ten inches or so off the deck.
There was hardly a time when I didn’t have at least one bruise on a shin.
The Sundowner ready room however, was an improvement over the Kitty Hawk. It
was located forward of the island on the starboard side and opened out on what
we called the "Sundowner Sundeck". The sundeck had actually been the
platform for one of the ships five inch gun turrets, but the five inch guns
had been removed from the Midway and we inherited a great flat space where we
sometimes briefed our missions, got some fresh air or just hung out. It also
was a perfect spot to watch unreps.
Uncle Milty had decided that bachelors should room together and he chose me
as roommate, which was lucky for me as he had rank in the selection of staterooms.
Our stateroom was just a ways forward of the ready room and the most starboard
of a row of staterooms that ran along a passageway to the port side. Being on
that end turned out to be very advantageous because the air vent started with
our room went on down to each room in turn and by the time it got to the last
stateroom, there was little air left. We did build a damper on our outlet to
share the air down stream but we didn’t have to resort to building cardboard
and duct tape extensions to blow air directly on our bunks the way some of our
neighbors did. Some of those cardboard and duct tape systems were minor engineering
marvels. I don’t remember who all of the occupants of those staterooms
along that passageway were, but Tom Howard and Gene Gollahon were in one, it
seems like Terry Appelgate and someone were in another and a couple of A4 drivers
in another. There also was a head and showers.
Crossing the ocean is a fairly languid time in the life of a carrier pilot.
There is always paperwork and watches to stand, but also time to read and watch
the movies etc. Heading from Hawaii to the Philippines, we stayed in tropical
waters and the sea was calm the whole way. I spent time each day up on the flight
deck getting some air and exercise, watching the Albatross and flying fish.
Many of the men were up on the deck working on their suntans.
Once we were out from under the Air Defense coverage we again began maintaining
a Condition IV CAP. We manned the airplane, did our preflight inspections, started
the engine and ran through all the checks and positioned everything for launch,
then we would shut down, leave our helmet on the canopy rail and go hang out
in the ready room in full flight gear. This was just one step down from sitting
in the cockpit for four hours. With our strength at 15 pilots, one could expect
to get a Condition Cap every other day.
As the ship plodded across the Pacific, we had a little time to get to know
our shipmates; first the photo drivers, the detachment was led by Lcdr. Ray
Duncan, Morrie Lewis who had been with us on the Kitty Hawk, Bill Wilson whom
I knew from the BOQ at Miramar and Marv Fields. They also had with them a non
flying photo interpreter, Ens. Bianco who didn’t spend much time in the
ready room but rather was in the photo shop. Also sharing the ready room were
the Fudd men. Adjacent to our ready room to port with a doorway between was
the F 4 ready room and we began getting to know some of the VF21 pilots and
RIOs, ( radar intercept officers ). The rest of the air wing consisted of two
A4 attack squadrons, VA22 and VA23; the A1 Squadron VA25, and A3s of heavy attack
squadron VAH8. Commanding the air wing or the CAG was Cdr. Robert Moore, a man
whom I believe I can say every pilot in the air wing became devoted to in the
days to come. Cdr. Moore had been skipper of VF111 about a year before I joined
the squadron and I knew of him by reputation. Although he had flown the F8 as
CO of 111 a couple of years prior, he chose to check out in the A4 as CAG. A
decision based not only on the less demanding flight characteristics for an
aviator at the end of his carrier flying career, but also a plane more central
to the air wing’s mission.
CAG’s operations officer, Cdr. Dee Butler, however, was checked out in
the F8 and flew our airplanes whenever he could. Another officer on the CAG
staff who we saw a lot of was the CAG LSO, Vern Jumper. We knew Vern pretty
well by now as he had waved us through Mid Pac and FCLPs at Miramar as well
as helping our own LSOs, Shards and Hotdog get qualified. The air wing’s
flight surgeon was another Miramar bachelor, Rick Vidacovich. Back at the BOQ,
the Philippino stewards could not pronounce his name and whenever something
unintelligible came out of the loudspeakers he would state "that must be
for me" and head for the telephone. Usually he was right.
Subic Bay
This was to be my first visit to the Philippines as the Kitty Hawk had not put
into port there on the previous cruise. We sailed through the San Bernardino
Strait and I stood on deck with Gene Gollahon, who gave me a very interesting
history of the battle of Leyte Gulf fought in these very waters a little over
twenty years earlier. He had obviously studied the battle at the academy. I
remember the lush green of the jungle on either side as we slid through the
strait.
I must have utterly confused my parents about where I was in the Philippines
in my letters home as I used Subic Bay interchangeably with Cubi Point. In fact
Cubi Pt. Naval Air Station was part of the large Subic Bay Naval Base. Cubi
was indeed a point of land jutting out into Subic bay. At the very point was
the pier where the carriers usually tied up, beside the pier ran the single
runway and on the east and inland side of the runway the bluffs rose fairly
steeply. Atop the bluff with a magnificent view of the runway and pier below,
the whole bay and surrounding mountainous terrane, was the Cubi Pt. Officer’s
Club. Across the street from the club was a BOQ and swimming pool. I was to
become very familiar with these facilities. I hardly ventured any further in
the larger Subic Base except for occasionally the PX (post exchange) and rarely
the stodgy Subic Bay officer’s club. The Subic Bay Oclub was the refuge
of the officers based at Subic and the black shoe navy, who considered we transient
brown shoes undesirable ruffians, and they were right.
Outside the main gate was of course the many storied Olongapo. The town owed
it’s existence to the U.S. Navy paycheck, but it never got much of mine.
It’s dusty streets filled with prostitutes, thieves, beggars, pickpockets
and jeepneys illustrated all too well the third world poverty which spawned
it. The lack of sanitation made me feel unclean and the poverty made me feel
uncomfortable and after two or three ventures into Olongapo I stopped going
and spent my time at the Cubi Pt. Oclub.
Navy officers clubs at that time were still fairly formal, although they loosened
up considerably shortly thereafter. An officer had to be in the uniform of the
day or equivalent civilian attire, no flight suits at any time. In the evening
it was uniform with blouse or coat and tie, this was true even at Cubi Pt. However,
the Philippine "Barong Tagalog", the fancy native shirt was an acceptable
substitute for coat and tie. There was a little shop off the entrance to the
club that would rent you a Barong Tagalog for the evening, but we all bought
our own as they certainly made more sense in the heat.
Drinking and sea stories were the main activity at the Oclub with alcohol being
ridiculously inexpensive. Something like drinks 25¢ each and 15¢ during
happy hour. There was a story going around about an aviator who walked up and
plunked two dollars on the bar at Cubi and said. " When I drink this up,
carry me home!" These were early days in the war, as time went on the Cubi
Oclub evolved. There is a recreation of the club at the Naval Air Museum in
Pensacola Florida, but I don’t recognize the recreation as the club I knew
in 1965-66.
Anyway, this initial visit was fairly short and busy, I flew on two of the days
in port and was squadron duty officer one day so I didn’t have a lot of
time to explore. We did pick up some "scuttlebutt" (navy term for
the office water fountain, thus the news or gossip). One story I remember was
the radio transmission of an F8 pilot on a raid over Thanh Hoa, just a few days
prior on April 3rd. The story was that Spence Thomas, who had been a VF 124
RAG instructor when I went through training there and was now back in a fleet
squadron, had felt a couple of hits as he pulled off target. Far enough off
shore to be out of anti aircraft range, he saw tracers streak by, he pulled
into a hard turn and looked over his shoulder and made the call, "Holy
fuck, there’s a shittin Mig on my ass!". Not many sailors could best
that spontaneous efficiency in stringing together vulgarities. That story and
others pretty much brought us up to date on what we were about to get into.
The story also was the first of any Mig action over North Vietnam and it turned
out to be the case that it was indeed the first air to air encounter.
War
We sailed from Subic Bay to the Tonkin Gulf on April 8th to take our station
at what was to become "Yankee Station", the name had not yet been
coined. On the 10th and 11th, I flew my first two combat missions of the cruise
as wingman first to skipper Cdr. Lahaye and second to Uncle Milty, providing
air cover for the search of the crew of an F4 shot down by Chinese Migs off
Hainan island, except we didn’t know that. We were briefed that the Chinese
may have shot down the F4 and I think I thought at the time by a missile. It
was years later that I learned there had been a dog fight and the wingman had
positively identified their foes as Chinese Migs. I know the powers that were
in Washington did not want to provoke the Chinese by publicizing such events,
but we had a need to know flying cover in the same airspace two days after the
fight.
After a couple more wet CAP missions, flying cover for the fleet over water
generally about 20 degrees north, my first missions over North Vietnam were
TARCAP for bridge strikes. TARCAP, (target combat air patrol), meant we provided
overhead Mig cover for the A1s and A4s dive bombing the target. Our secondary
mission was flak suppression and we watched for muzzle flashes to locate flak
emplacements. If we saw any, we rolled in on the emplacement and strafed them
with our 20 millimeter cannon or fired five inch Zuni rockets.
The first bridge was the Bi Duc Thon highway bridge and the morning strike on
good friday, April 16th, failed to bring it down so we repeated the strike in
the afternoon. We didn’t see any flak so I fired my Zunis, 2 in the morning
strike and 4 in the afternoon at approaches to the bridge. That was the first
ordnance I fired in the war and they were fired to get rid of them more than
anything else, they could come off the airplane during an arrested landing aboard
ship and become a hazard to all. Although we didn’t see any return fire,
there had been some as one of our F8s, I think it was Tom Howard’s, came
back with a hole through the vertical tail. Not seeing the enemy fire was most
likely due to our inexperience, not yet knowing what to look for and where to
look. As for the hole through the vertical tail, we made it a practice to jink
(twist and turn to avoid flying in a straight line) when we pulled off our target
and he was most likely in a steep turn when he took the hit.
The F8Ds the squadron was equipped with had of course the four twenty millimeter
cannon built into the nose of the aircraft and a pylon mounted on each side
of the fuselage just below and aft of the cockpit canopy. The pylon had an upper
and lower rail to which could be attached one Sidewinder missile per rail or
two Zuni rockets. Thus we could carry four Sidewinders or eight Zuni rockets,
or a combination. While flying in Mig country, we carried at least two Sidewinders
and full ammo or fammo, 400 rounds of 20 mm. Whether or not we carried Zunis
depended on the mission. The five inch Zuni rockets were a very good air to
ground weapon in that they went exactly where you aimed them, they came out
of the launching tube with a whoosh and accelerated rapidly to 1.5 mach above
launching speed, little effected by wind or gravity. The only drawback was that
they were so fast they went through the target or buried themselves before the
warhead exploded, we needed proximity fuses badly, but it took some time before
we got them.
On the 22nd of April, George Schulstad and I escorted a photo on a "Steel
Tiger" mission over the Laos panhandle. We could see troops firing at us
from a ridge near Mu Gia Pass. We turned around and strafed the ridge with 20
mm, the first time I fired on a known enemy position. The next day we again
flew a morning and afternoon strike, this time on the Yen Vinh bridge northwest
of Dong Hoi.
Two days later on another photo escort, this time with Gene Gollahon, we accompanied
the photo (I did not note on my mission card the photo pilot’s name, I
think it was Marv Field) down route 6 in central Laos. Cruising down the road
I spotted what looked like a motor bike traveling along the road. He must have
heard us just about then because he suddenly made a left turn off the road and
into a field. As we went by, I could see him over my shoulder bouncing over
the field heading for the cover of some trees and it looked very comical. Shortly
thereafter, we came upon a fairly long convoy of trucks and still further up
the road we were suddenly surrounded by bursts of flak, another new experience!
Altogether, the flight was nearly a three hour mission, very long for us. I
got a chuckle out of the motor bike but I guess they got their own back with
the ack ack. I don’t remember why we didn’t attack the convoy or the
anti aircraft guns, but the rules of engagement were different for Laos and
or fuel may have been a consideration.
My next mission also was memorable as it was against two North Vietnamese PT
boats discovered in an inlet along the coast north of Dong Hoi. They had been
covered with foliage and tied up on the bank of the inlet. When we arrived,
they were trying to get under way, some of the camouflage was burning, but they
returned our fire with ferocity. I remember seeing the tracers from their 37
mm deck guns coming at me and splitting, going either side of the canopy as
I made my strafing runs. although they were burning from stem to stern when
we left, they were still afloat. As they were about the only enemy threat to
the fleet sailing in the Tonkin Gulf, it was of paramount importance to sink
them and that was accomplished with bombs later in the day.
The next day, Bob Pearl and I made an armed recognizance along the same stretch
of coast, but saw nothing except a few junks, The weather was a factor and we
were cruising along at 13 thousand feet, above an overcast at what Bob thought
was a safe distance offshore, when I saw black bursts of flak behind him bursting
ever closer. I called "break right!" and he pulled hard to the right
just before the next burst exploded where his aircraft would have been. Most
likely very accurate radar guided 57 mm. This incident also proved the value
of the loose deuce formation.
Loose deuce was a combat formation we used most of the time. In this formation,
the wingman flew abeam his leader at a considerable distance so that each pilot
could look over his shoulder and check the six o'clock of the other for a considerable
distance behind. This was necessary mainly because the Soviet bloc fighters
carried the Atoll missile, a copycat version of our Sidewinder, a heat seeker
which had to be fired from astern. The firing envelope of the heat seekers expanded
with altitude, so the higher we flew, the further abeam the wingman. It is a
challenging formation to fly, probably harder than tight parade formation in
that whenever the leader makes a turn, the wingman has to compensate for the
different axis of turn. If the turn is a 90°, the wingman crosses over to
the opposite side, If the turn is 180° he crosses back again; but small
turns he must compensate with speed and altitude. However, we were by this time
quite proficient and could maintain position without giving it a thought. A
good measure of proficiency was fuel consumption; when the wingman could fly
a good loose deuce position and not burn any more fuel than his leader.
Life aboard the Midway in combat operations was changing from the familiar peacetime
routine. For the men, it was long grueling hours of labor. Their spaces below
worse than officer’s for air-conditioning and everywhere one went about
the ship you found men trying to get a few winks where there was a little breeze
or a cool bulkhead or the cool steel of a 500 pounder. Everyone was always in
work clothes, navy denims and the light blue denim work shirts or the colored
shirts of anyone who worked on the flight deck; plane handlers in yellow, maintenance
in green, ordnance men in red, plane pushers in blue, plane captains in brown,
fuelers in purple and now and then corpsmen or flight surgeons in white. All
except the latter, usually grubby and sweat stained. Officers in work Khakis
or flight gear. The flight gear was a real mish mash. Navy supply had not yet
caught up to our needs and our navy issue flight suits were still the bright
orange for high visibility. I had a light tan flight suit left over from WW
II that I some how got issued, It remained my favorite as it was light weight
and cooler. Most of the pilots were wearing olive green fatigues which they
had bought or had sent to them and some found olive green flight suits. When
we did get camouflage flight suits some time later, they were found to be rather
heavy and hot in that latitude. They became more tolerable after several washings.
In general though, we looked as though we had walked off a M.A.S.H. set. (But
before it’s time.)
Cdr. LaHaye made a trip into Saigon and came back with bright red berets to
go with our assorted flight gear. The parariggers, (parachute riggers, who had
a sewing shop aboard and were very creative), made us individual survival vests
to be worn under our torso harnesses. These little vests had several zip pockets
to put in whatever items we thought might be most beneficial. The real jewel
of our personal equipment was the survival radio. The first ones issued were
hand held locator beacons which could be turned on or off, but we soon got the
next generation featuring two way transmission and they proved to be a godsend
for many downed aviators in SEA.
Maybe the biggest change for us in VF 111 was no night flying. Although the
air wing was launching night raids, the F4s with their superior radar and RIOs
were the logical choice for barrier CAP and without the capability to carry
flares, we didn’t have much air to ground value either, so we rolled the
movie in our ready room.
George Schulstad changed our rendezvous method, instead of orbiting ahead of
the ship 20 miles, often leader and wingman were on the catapults side by side
and the second plane off merely kept the first in sight and accelerated to join
up. Then one day when his wing man was behind a couple of planes in the launch
sequence, George just made a left turn off the catapult and a 360° turn
at flight deck level off the port side of the ship. Once downwind, he could
see his wingman on the catapult and gage his speed and turn so that when the
wingman launched, he came streaking up along the ships port side and joined
his wingman a mile or so ahead of the ship. To my knowledge, no one objected
to this procedure, not the ship’s captain nor the air boss, it was efficient
and it was a little air show for the hard working crews. It became our standard
rendezvousing method.
Not everything was acceptable however, because of the extra heat and blast on
an already hazardous flight deck, we rarely used afterburner on a cat shot.
In the F8, there was a short but finite delay between the time the pilot selected
afterburner and the time it lit. Photo pilot Bill Wilson discovered that if
he selected afterburner as soon as he felt the cat shot, it would light just
after he cleared the bow. It was a fairly spectacular departure and as he began
doing it regularly, it got him the moniker "Burner Bill". The nickname
stuck, but the technique didn’t. Others tried the technique, I did once,
but it was soon pointed out that the F8 occasionally had a ‘burner blowout’
where the afterburner was out but the nozzles of the tailpipe were open. This
meant a huge power loss and if it happened right after launch, chances were
that there wouldn’t be enough power to climb and accelerate and into the
drink you would settle. The order came down, no more Burner Bill takeoffs.
On May 2nd, I flew as skipper Lahaye’s wingman on a courier trip to Tan
Son Nhut, where we spent about two hours. It was to be the only time I ever
actually was on Vietnamese soil. Cdr. LaHaye went off to headquarters with the
film or whatever we had brought in and I had lunch at the Oclub and milled around
the nearby vendors. I bought a jungle camouflage hat and a wild west style hip
holster for my service Smith and Wesson 38 revolver. I bought the holster in
truth because I thought it looked cool, however, I had a rationalization. On
one particular cat shot, my fully loaded 38 had come out of the navy issue shoulder
holster and ended up on top of the instrument glare shield and slid way up to
the bottom front of the windshield. With the canopy closed, there was simply
no way I could reach anywhere near the loose revolver. I didn’t think it
was ideal to come back to an arrested landing with a loaded revolver loose in
the cockpit so I began using zero "g" maneuvers to see if I could
float it back to within reach. After a few tries, I finally got my fingers on
it and got it back in it’s holster. However, after my trip to Tan Son Nhut,
I wore my gun on my hip cowboy style.
May 4th I was on an armed reconnaissance mission south of Than Hoa with Uncle
Milty and we spotted the smoke of a burning railroad car a flight of A4s had
attacked, we made several runs on other cars of the short train, then returned
to Midway. The next day I returned to the same site with Skipper LaHaye and
Hotdog Brown. We again made several runs with indeterminate results except the
Skipper set a building along side the tracks afire, probably with secondary
explosions as it burned to the ground in the short time we were there.
Over night the ship steamed south and we ended up at what was later dubbed "Dixie
Station" and May 6th I flew my first "in country" mission over
South Vietnam. It was a five plane flight led by Cdr. LaHaye and we had difficulty
finding a FAC (forward air controller) because rain showers had grounded our
assigned FAC. We ended up with two helicopters directing us to an area of jungle
north of Saigon where was said to be a regiment of VC. I made a note in my mission
card that it was a joint Army, Navy and Air Force effort and I have a vague
recollection of a flight of F100s also strafing the area and the helos must
have been army. What I do recall vividly, was flying over a rubber plantation
nearby and admiring the Mediterranean style buildings and the red tile roofs.
It looked so civilized and I never again saw anyplace in SEA so picturesque.
Losses
May 8th saw us back up on Yankee Station and a black day it was. Our squadron
Commander, Jim LaHaye was shot down and went in with the plane in a raid on
the Vinh airfield. I was not on the attack, but another attack was made that
afternoon and I was assigned escort to Bill Wilson’s photo plane doing
the BDA (battle damage assessment) photos. Bill briefed me to make a diversionary
zuni/strafing run from the northeast while he began his low level photo run
down the runway from the south west. We were to make these runs 30 minutes after
the attack. Bill was to give me a radio call when he wanted me to begin my run.
However, for some reason the attack had been delayed and the strike force was
just finishing up their attack when we reached our briefed point of separation
offshore just south of Vinh. Bill peeled off to the left to circle around the
airport and get west of it and I continued north to get into my position. I
had just got there when Bill announced not my cue to start my run, but his own
photo run. I rolled in on my run and quickly spotted Bill streaking across the
ground and down the runway, he got less than halfway down the runway when I
saw a huge stream of fuel pouring out of his aircraft. He announced he was hit
and I reported the fuel streaming as I broke off my run and pointed my nose
at him to join up on him.
I joined up and we crossed the shoreline trading our speed for altitude. I flew
under Bill’s aircraft and could see a hole about five inches in diameter
in his fuselage just beneath the left wingroot (where the wing meets the fuselage).
Daryl Foley, a VF 21 F4 pilot joined us and soon the fleet tanker, an A4, also
positioned himself so Bill could plug in and take on fuel. As soon as he began
taking on fuel it began gushing out the hole with a renewed volume. Soon after,
it caught fire and became a giant blowtorch. In what seemed a little comical
later, I had been tucked in close to Bill on the port side and Daryl in tight
on the starboard side, as soon as the fuel lit, we simultaneously had the same
thought and the same reaction. We could visualize the tanker, Bill and the two
of us going up in a hugh ball of fire and we both immediately widened our formation
considerately.
Bill dropped back from the tanker and I radioed him he was on fire to eject.
Bill’s only response was reading a litany of failing systems from his instrument
panel. I again informed him the whole aft of his aircraft was in flames and
to eject, he replied with more instrument readings and then went silent as his
generator failed. After a few more moments, he came back up reporting he had
dropped the RAT, an acronym for ram air turbine, a propellor housed in the fuselage
which could be dropped into the slipstream to provide emergency electrical power
and or hydraulic pressure. Daryl also called to him to eject and finally, I
think when his engine started to wind down, he stated he thought he was going
to have to get out.
By this time, only the nose and cockpit of the aircraft were free of fire, he
looked like a fiery comet with the head streaming a broad tail of fire. I had
a front row seat view of the ejection, first the canopy flying off, then the
seat shooting up the rail that had telescoped up behind it a split second before
and the seat and rider whipping back over my right shoulder. I made a hard right
turn to keep him in sight, my peripheral vision caught the burning aircraft
nosing over towards the sea, I lost Bill momentarily but picked up the white
of his now deployed parachute and circled it as it descended to the sea. Daryl
Foley’s F4 was getting low on fuel and he left for the Midway. The ship
had been on frequency the whole time and informed me an HU16 rescue seaplane
was enroute.
Bill was a tiny orange dot in the South China Sea and I thought it was his life
preserver, although I found out later he was in his one man raft. I orbited
him keeping him in sight, the HU16 came on frequency and asked for a short count,
1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1 so that they could get an ADF steer to my location. I soon
got them in sight and soon after, they me, I continued to orbit until they called
Bill in sight, then I made a low slow pass directly over Bill rocking my wings
goodbye and pulled up to head back to the ship pretty low on fuel. As I pulled
off I realized my guns were still armed and I had just made a pass over my buddy
with the stick in my right hand and my finger on the trigger. I didn’t
tell Bill this until some years later when he introduced me to his parents and
we were talking about the incident. We had a good laugh.
May 8th was our last day on the line before pulling into Subic. We had been
scheduled to spend a few days in Subic and then a visit to Hong Kong, however
Hong Kong had to wait as the USS Ranger, CVA -61, had had a bad fire in her
engine room and was off the line, meaning the schedules of the other carriers
were juggled accordingly. Also, although we didn’t know it at the time,
May 10th began one of Johnson’s bombing halt's. He actually thought that
by stopping the bombing for a week, he might get some sign from Hanoi or Moscow
that they would negotiate. I also didn’t realize at the time, in fact until
I read the Pentagon Papers years later, that the Rolling Thunder campaign of
Johnson/McNammara was started in the south part of North Vietnam and moved ever
closer to Hanoi in a naive attempt to intimidate them. Also that the targets
were deliberately kept out of MIG ground control intercept (MCI) range by the
White House. But what the strategy really did was allow the enemy to build up
his air defenses further north so that when we did get up there, it was a hell
of anti aircraft guns, SAMs and MIGs. What we did know at the time was that
the frag orders (the orders were sent out in fragments and pieced together for
the whole plan) came direct from Washington. What targets to hit, when to hit
them, what ordnance to use, even what type of fusing. I remember times when
a certain type of bomb load had been anticipated by the ordnance men and the
back breaking job of moving the bombs almost complete when the late frag order
came in with different loads and the over worked crews had to redo much of the
heavy heavy work.
In Port
Leaving Yankee Station, we had been at sea for over a month, continuously engaged
in combat operations. We had left Subic Bay not knowing quite what to expect.
My main fear had been, and I’m sure it was shared by most others, will
I measure up under fire. Now sailing back to Subic just 30 days later, we had
the answer, we all had measured up and then some. We were already fairly seasoned
veterans.
The evening of May 11th, we were launched as a fly off to Cubi. I was on Schulstad’s
wing and we climbed out in afterburner, tucked in tight on his starboard side
I was having a little difficulty maintaining my position. It was like trying
to touch like poles of two magnets, every time I got almost to a perfect position,
my aircraft would bob away. Finally I glanced down at my instruments and realized
what was going on, George had leveled us at the top of climb but we were still
in afterburner doing about mach 1.4. The shock waves from his aircraft were
what had been effecting my aircraft so I found it much easier to fly a little
looser formation.
We got in pretty close to Cubi and were on Cubi approach control when they announced
the field was closed due to a disabled aircraft on the runway. I can’t
recall exactly what happened that particular night, but I believe one of our
air wing’s A4s closed the runway. It is not uncommon for carrier pilots
after extensive periods at sea, to let their guard down coming into a field
landing and goof up. The habit of lowering the hook is a gotcha as it will grab
the emergency gear at the field if down, another is braking, forgetting to brake
then hitting them too hard and blowing tires. Whatever it was, several of us
had to divert to Clark AFB.
At Clark, George was on familiar ground and he set to. There were six or eight
Sundowners and George got us all BOQ rooms, then he tried and failed to get
the Oclub to extend it’s hours as it was about to close. He got the next
best thing in that he got a van to take us to the base gate where we walked
through and picked up taxis bringing airmen back to base. Our taxi drivers orders
were to take us to the nearest night spot and we raced away in caravan coming
a few miles down the road to a big old dark house. The taxis pulled into the
dusty driveway honking, shouting and scattering roosting chickens, soon one
light and then several appeared in the old house as a driver rapped on the door
and began jabbering to someone behind it. We were soon herded inside and into
the parlor of what was obviously a bordello. Sleepy eyed Filipinos edged in
and a makeshift bar started supplying us with cold beer and cheap liquor. After
a couple of hours of being fleeced by the natives, fatigue set in and we crawled
back into the taxis and returned to Clark.
We flew over to Cubi the next morning where the ship tied up for the next week.
Jess Stewart and I went to Manilla. Jess had friends who were assigned to the
U.S. embassy and they graciously gave us a tour of the city in their air conditioned
car. I was impressed with the National cemetery there, I think it was probably
the first one I had seen at that point. I remember some parts of Manilla as
being magnificent in their old Spanish colonial style, but mainly I remember
the poverty and squalor and I have never been comfortable in the third world
setting. I was glad I had seen it, but happy to leave it behind.
Cdr. Lynn had put in for retirement and would have been leaving us in Cubi,
but when Cdr. LaHaye was shot down, Cdr. Lynn withdrew his retirement to take
over the squadron. Waiting for us at Cubi was our new XO, Cdr. Dick Cook. I
came to really like and respect Cdr. Cook, but I got off on the wrong foot with
him.
Arriving from the states before the ship pulled in, Cdr. Cook had gone through
a local one day jungle survival school which he thought was very good and one
of his first acts as our new XO was to put everyone through the school. I didn’t
like the imposition on my time in port and tried to weasel out of it. However,
Cdr. Cook was not about to be out maneuvered by an uppity Jg and he cornered
me and let me know in no uncertain terms I would attend, although it couldn’t
be scheduled until the next time in Cubi.
Actually, the school turned out to be fun. We were driven to a spot on the edge
of the jungle just outside the base, where we met our pigmy instructors. Wiry
little guys about four feet tall they spoke passable english. They took us back
a short distance into the jungle, pointing out different plants, their edibility
or poisonousness, marks of different animals, notably the scratches of wild
pigs etc. We soon came to a stand of bamboo which was to be our classroom for
the rest of the course. They showed us how to do everything with bamboo but
build a grand piano and I wouldn’t doubt they could have done that too.
One of them caught a "wild" chicken to cook and they produced a bag
of rice which they put in a newly built bamboo pressure cooker and ‘Viola!"
We had chicken and rice for lunch.
After lunch we returned to the starting point and our instructors brought out
their other homemade crafts for sale. I bought a bow and arrows, (the bow broke
the first time I drew back on it) a blow gun and darts, (it was confiscated
by the OD that afternoon as we were practicing against the ladies room door
of the Oclub, there were no ladies in the club at the time) and a big knife
made from a car spring with a buffalo horn handle. (I still have it in my workbench
drawer)
One other landmark of this visit in port was that I bought a camera. Up until
that time, I have no personal pictures of my navy experiences.
Back on Line
We steamed out of port on the 19th for Yankee Station. I flew a photo escort
mission over the North on the 21st, but weather obscured all our targets. Weather
would be a problem in the ensuing days as the rainy season had begun. May 25th
I flew Cdr. Dee Butler’s wing on a strike against the choke point of Mu
Gia Pass. We were TARCAP for A4s and A1s and they were getting a lot of flak
which Cdr. Butler and I made several passes against. I was Schulstad’s
wingman on the 27th and with a flight of A4s on an armed reconnaissance, we
found a PT boat in an inlet just south of Than Hoa. We made two zuni runs and
a strafing run and got good hits, but I don’t think we put it out of commission.
George diverted to Danang with a hook that wouldn’t come completely down.
However, the 27th was another black day. Commander Lynn was killed on an attack
on the Vinh army barracks just a short distance from where Cdr. LaHaye was shot
down 19 days earlier. Cdr. "Bud" Lynn had been in the squadron longer
than anyone else at that time, he had been there to greet everyone as we checked
in. We all thought the most of Cdr. Lynn, he had a great since of humor and
was completely honest and fair. Although I knew nothing of his religious beliefs,
I know he was a devout man who neither drank nor smoked and his strongest language
was a mild oath. He talked a little about combat in Korea and had been shot
down and picked up in Laos just short of a year earlier.
The loss dumped a big load onto Cdr. Cook’s lap. He had joined us scarcely
two weeks earlier in the middle of a combat situation. However, very shortly
the problem was resolved. Cdr. Dee Butler had already been selected to command
another F8 squadron, so it was a matter of switching his orders to VF111 and
pushing them up a few weeks. It turned out to be the ideal solution. Cdr. Butler
had been flying with us and knew us all and we knew and liked him. He was already
family and now he was head of the household.
But we had no time to dwell on our losses, operations continued. The next day,
Gene Gollahon and I took two birds to Cubi for maintenance. Once there we became
stuck. There was a weather front which moved in between Cubi and Yankee Station
and behind it a typhoon. The ship endured winds of over a hundred miles per
hour and some very rough seas. In Cubi we sat it out in the BOQ watching it
rain, and did it rain! I had never seen so much water come out of the sky. It
was ankle deep even on the high spots. I spent the time reading and finally
on the first of June we were able to return to Midway.
Back aboard, my boss, Uncle Milty, grounded me for a few days to catch up on
paperwork. The omnipresent hated paperwork had piled up during the previous
intense sea period and during the past days away, however mostly because of
procrastination. I didn’t miss very much in that the tempo during those
few days was slow, mostly due to bad weather.
By the sixth I was back on the schedule, but didn’t fly as the morning
mission was canceled for weather and my aircraft was a mechanical down on the
afternoon launch. On the next day I flew escort for Lcdr. Duncan’s photo
plane and on the two subsequent days days BARCAP, first as wing to Terry Appelgate
then for George Schulstad. BARCAP or barrier patrol was set up as a line of
defense between the Mig bases and the fleets air operating area. It operated
under radar intercept direction of "Schoolboy", the radar destroyer
stationed in the northern waters of the Tonkin Gulf. Generally, BARCAP was an
F4 assignment because of their superior radar and head on missile capability.
However, there was an incident where one of VF21, our sister squadron’s
F4s encountered a Mig, maneuvered into position and locked on but could not
fire because their switches were not armed and it took a few minutes for their
Sparrow missiles to warm up. The Mig got away and the Admiral was furious. He
pulled the F4s off BARCAP and and said he wanted aircraft with guns, which meant
us, on BARCAP. I can’t remember exactly when this happened, but as I had
several BARCAP missions around this time, I assume it was when it happened.
At any rate, after a few days, the Admiral cooled down and the VF21 skipper,
Cdr. Franks, convinced him to give them another chance and they were completely
vindicated shortly thereafter when two VF21 F4s led by their XO, Cdr. Lou Page,
shot down two Mig 17s, the first confirmed Mig kills of the war.
A couple of days after that four of our A1s from VA25 were jumped by a flight
of Mig17s. The ensuing dogfight was a wild melee at treetop level down among
the karsts in the area, the Spad pilots yanking and banking for their lives,
but still managing to squeeze off a few rounds of 20 mm of their own. Finally,
whether hit or not, a Mig slammed into the side of a karst and the battle was
over. The Spad flight got credit for the third Mig kill of the war and the Midway’s
Air Group all three victories. There was much jubilation aboard, press visits
and medals awarded; Secretary of the Navy, Paul Nitze was aboard on the the
day the Phantoms got their kills and South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Ky came
aboard to award medals to the Spad pilots.
But the jubilation over victories notwithstanding, we were under no delusions
by now of the deadly business we were into. Besides the Sundowners loss of two
commanding officers, the rest of the air group had lost five airmen, killed
or missing in action and several shot down and rescued. One VA22 A4 pilot, Lt.
Paul Ilg, was shot down near Sam Neua Pass and evaded the Pathet Lao two days
before being rescued by an Air America helicopter.
However, coping with the danger did not preoccupy my time or that of any of
the others that I know of. I became rather fatalistic in my outlook in that
if I were killed, I reasoned that I had had a very good life. I had had a great
boyhood and family life, I had already done things and been to places beyond
what my boyhood peers would most likely ever do and I had no dependents or responsibilities
to leave behind. I did worry some about how hard my parents would have taken
my death, however, I wasn’t an only child and knew we were all strong people.
I feared capture much more than death and sometimes figured I would just not
be taken alive, although I knew that was mostly just to avoid thinking of being
held POW.
My room mate, Uncle Milty, had nightmares, but I slept very well. Nevertheless,
in spite of not worrying consciously and sleeping long and well, there was an
underlying stress and strain which manifested itself in general fatigue. In
my annual physical exam, I failed the eye test. Rather than ground me, Doc Vidacovich
gave me a provisional up to continue to fly and sent the results to whatever
bureau of the Navy he was obliged to, knowing full well they were going to come
back and I would need more testing at a shore based medical facility with more
extensive test equipment.
I wrote home about this time that I had started an exercise program, some sit
ups and pushups. One reason my clothes may have been becoming a little tight
was that several of us gave up cigarettes during the cruise. The Midway opened
a late night short order counter, it was for the crews working late into the
night, but we day fighters took full advantage of it and after the movie we
often headed down for a hamburger and or ice cream. The question, "did
you eat yet? lets go eat" said very very rapidly became "cheet? squeet".
The nightly ready room movie became ritual. According to Hotdog, it started
back on the Kitty Hawk when Uncle Milty came down from his room for the movie
with a bag of popcorn. He was immediately set on to explain where he’d
gotten it and to share. While in port Milty had bought a small popcorn maker,
but it didn’t have near the capacity it needed once it was revealed, so
a collection was taken to buy a commercial sized popcorn machine. Each night
after the last Sundowner was safely aboard, the movie projector and the popcorn
machine were set up in the ready room and when the skipper arrived, he ordered
"roll em". Popcorn was free to Sundowners and a generous bag, five
cents to others. Word soon got out around the ship and kept the machine busy
all evening. In fact one evening a customer in khakis came in and asked Joe
Fiumefreddo, the apprentice yeomen who ran the machine, "how much?".
Joe didn’t even look up, "a nickel". " Will you take five
pennies?" "Yup!" Joe handed over the bag of popcorn and took
the five pennies saying "thanks chief". Only then did the skipper
in the front of the ready room look back and see the captain of the ship leaving
with his bag of popcorn and call "attention on deck!".
When I had first joined the squadron, I was junior officer and got the job of
movie officer, but that was pre popcorn days. (Actually, Smitty was junior to
me by a few weeks and I think he had the job for a time as well.) Mainly all
I had to do was go down to the hangar deck pick up the evenings movie. Movies
were shown though out the ship and there was a priority as to who got which
title, so I had to choose from what was left when it was our turn. I believe
Vic Riley was our first MAPCO, movie and popcorn officer, but Roy Allen had
the job the longest.
I flew a variety of missions the second half of June 1965. We did more BARCAP,
probably as VF21 was stretched a little thin flying day and night missions.
I flew George Schulstad’s wing on a BARCAP one day and on weather reconnaissance
the next, both into the heart of Mig country, but all we could do was count
them in revetments on the ground where they were off limits. Since the first
scores we all wanted Mig action, but George more than anyone. It was not to
be, we never saw a Mig airborne the whole cruise. I also flew a couple of photo
escorts and TARCAPs during this time. The Rolling Thunder bombing campaign had
moved north to the Red river valley and vicinity and we encountered some flak
on almost every mission. However at altitude we were relatively secure, the
rate of fire of the 88 mm and 100 mm guns was slow enough that if you saw the
first burst or two, you could dodge any further fire. SAMs were not yet active,
but they were building the sites which were off limit targets! As well, there
was a thirty mile circle around Hanoi and a ten mile circle around Haiphong
Harbor, all off limits.
On June 26th, I flew my last mission of the at sea period, a photo escort in
the Dong Hoi area. I brought my new camera along and took a few slide photos.
On the 28th, Rear Admiral Bringle was relieved by Rear Admiral White as Commander
of Carrier Division Seven and Commander Task Force 77. RAdm. Bringle had begun
his command with us on board the Kitty Hawk in April of 64. After the change
of command, the Midway set sail for Yokosuka Japan ending a 44 day at sea period.
We had been at sea all but 17 days since we began Operation Silver Lance on
Washington's birthday off the west coast of California another lifetime ago.
Japan
The first of July, I flew off the Midway to Atsugi base and on the eighteenth
I flew back aboard. My logbook shows I flew one training flight out of Atsugi
on the sixth, the rest of the time, except for a watch here and there, was spent
enjoying Japan and shore life in general. Some of the time was spent shopping,
mostly for stereo equipment, most of which I still have. We spent hours listening
to and discussing the merits of one brand versus another, each of us trying
to achieve the ultimate in sound. I also bought a set of china for my mother.
Prices for Japanese merchandize at that time were very reasonable, with the
yen being 360 to the dollar. We went to Tokyo for a weekend and I remember Roy
Allen and I had dinner in a Kobe Beef restaurant that was absolutely marvelous.
It was a small place and about the only other patron was an american TV star.
However, I didn’t write down the name of the restaurant and could not find
it again the next time I visited Tokyo.
I also played my first round of golf with some of the other guys as coaches.
My memory is rather dim, but I think Terry Appelgate tried to help and I’m
sure Shardy our inveterate golfer was there. I do remember it being a misty
day and my feet getting soaked and our caddies were little Japanese women carrying
bags bigger than themselves with ease. I must have enjoyed it because when we
finally got home from the cruise, I decided to take up the sport.
A few Sundowner wives flew over to Japan to join their husbands for the much
needed R and R. Understandably, they went off to spend maximum time with each
other and my path rarely crossed theirs.
All too soon the ship sailed from Yokosuka on the 17th. On our way back to Yankee
Station, we diverted to the scene of the grounded destroyer, Frank Knox DD 742
on Pratas Reef, which is in the South China Sea about halfway between Hong Kong
and Taiwan. The Midway’s helicopters off loaded 155 of her crew and flew
supplies to the skeleton crew left on board. The saga of "Knox on the Rocks"
went on for some time and she was eventually towed to Taiwan and repaired, but
we completed our part in the rescue/salvage and continued enroute to Yankee
Station.
Back to Yankee Station
Back on Yankee station, I flew my first mission as BARCAP with Gene Gollahon
on July 23rd; then I was grounded a few days with a cold. The area where Gene
and I patrolled that day was the same area where the next day an USAF F4 was
shot down by a SA-2 guided missile, the first SAM casualty of the war. Then
on the 28th I escorted photo pilots Marv Fields and Morrie Lewis on a run over
the Nam Dinh thermo power plants and then south to take low level photos of
tunnels northwest of Dong Hoi. It would seem a little incongruous to take pictures
of tunnels from the air, but I supposed they were trying to get a fix on the
entrances.
The next day, July 29th, I was again Gollahon’s wingman on a weather recce
(reconnaissance) back to Nam Dinh. Having radioed our weather report, Schoolboy
the radar destroyer vectored us to intercept a bogey SW of Hanoi, heading towards
Hanoi. We accelerated to over 600kts to have good fighting speed and began straining
to get a visual. I saw him first. Gene didn’t see him right away and as
was the procedure, he passed the lead to me. The bogey was a large four engine
propeller driven transport coming head-on when I first spotted him several thousand
feet below us. Schoolboy asked us to identify him and as he passed below me
on my left I made a steep diving 180 degree turn to come up alongside him from
the rear. My eyes were all over the sky as all I could think was Mig escorts
this close to Hanoi and for that reason I kept my speed up. As I came around,
Gene followed and sighted the bogey, but in the turn, fortunately headed away
from the bogey, he was doing something with his armament switches and accidentally
pickled off a Sidewinder. As I flew past what turned out to be a C 97 Strato
Cruiser, I was still doing over 600 knots and he about 100, the markings on
the aircraft looked like Russian characters to me ( turned out they were Polish
) and at that speed differential, I couldn’t get many copied on my knee
pad in one pass. I was sure I was going to be asked for all the details on debriefing
and consequently we made two more passes to get all the details down, still
watching for a Mig escort.
We were asked for all the details all right, but not of the aircraft markings,
but rather why we had made runs on the Polish delegation of the International
Control Commission. We had been briefed at some time in the past about these
occasional flights of the ICC and so had Schoolboy. As well as that, I was squadron
air intelligence officer and should have known. That weeks flight had been noted
in the message file in the ships air intelligence room which I was required
to read and initial. However, I had a running argument with the ship’s
air intelligence officer, Lcdr. Daly whom I had met in the training squadron
in Kingsville Texas. In fact it was several arguments, but the one in point
was the secret and top secret message files I was supposed to read and initial.
The file was usually at least a half inch thick and 99% had nothing to do with
our squadron’s operations. My beef was that daily I was running the risk
of being shot down and captured and the less secret stuff I had read the better.
As an aviator himself, although in a non flying assignment, I thought he would
understand my concern. But since he would not relent, I developed a habit of
barely skimming the messages before initialing. The sidewinder Gene had cooked
off was reported to our skipper, Cdr. Butler, who reported it to CAG. CAG interviewed
Gene and me and as I remember, told us not to lie about it, but not to bring
the Sidewinder up unless asked.
The Polish Delegation, Poland still a soviet bloc satellite at that time, lodged
a complaint to the UN Security Counsel that their aircraft had been buzzed by
"six" US fighters and I was interviewed one more time by CAG after
Gene was shot down and that, as far as I know, was the end of it. For my part,
I have never thought we did anything particularly wrong except we should have
recognized the aircraft on the first pass if not from a little greater distance.
The 30th, I again flew wingman for Gene in a four plane led by the skipper,
Cdr. Butler and his wingman Tom Howard, as TARCAP over an attack on the Vinh
army barracks. I noted flak bursting at our cap altitude of 22 thousand feet.
That seems high for our usual TARCAP altitude but there may have been weather
considerations. The next day I escorted Morrie Lewis’ photo bird getting
pictures of the barracks just north of the DMZ and following trails west over
the mountains to the Laotian border. And on the second, escorting Ray Duncan
getting BDA photos over Vinh again and again more flak and then south to the
caves and tunnels north of Dong Hoi. The third, another four plane TARCAP, with
Bob Pearl, Jerry Smith and Terry Appelgate; covering the A4s bombing the Nam
Dinh thermo power plant and noting flak as high as 26 thousand feet.
And the routine continued. The next day, August 4th, it was back to photo escort
mission, Terry and I escorting Bill Wilson for BDA of the Nam Dinh plant and
some new construction west of Than Hoa. I marked airfield construction in a
note, but it was probably the rapid construction of SAM sites. After that I
got a couple of days off before flying a weather recce with Gene Gollahon on
the 7th. And then on the ninth I flew fighter escort for an Air Force electronics
surveillance air craft called "Peter Rabbit 3". The aircraft was designated
in the Navy as an EA3B, in the Air Force as a B-66. It was an electronically
equipped version of the A3 s aboard Midway and I escorted him just off shore
from the DMZ to just above Haiphong and back down again. Really a pretty boring
mission but at least a change of pace.
I didn’t fly again until the thirteenth and that was the day we lost Gene
Gollahon. Tom Howard was Gene’s wingman that day and they were in the same
flak infested area of the lower Red River valley where a lot of our recent targets
had been. After Gene radioed he was hit. Tom tried to join up from his loose
deuce position but Gene’s F8 descended into a cloud layer. Tom dove through
the cloud layer but only caught a glimpse of Gene’s aircraft before it
crashed. I was escort for both Morrie Lewis and Marv Fields in the same area
that afternoon. The photo’s were making runs to detect SAM sites. We were
within 10 miles of Gene’s last known position and listening intently, hoping
Gene had gotten out of his stricken aircraft and we would pick up a signal from
his PCR-49 survival radio. Sadly, we did not.
The loss of Gene was a huge blow to all of us, probably more so than Cdr. LaHaye
or Cdr. Lynn, who were separated from us by age and rank. We junior officers
flew, worked, ate, slept and played shoulder to shoulder. Gene and Tom’s
stateroom was just a door or two from ours and I can still picture him on his
bunk wearing just his skivvies practicing on the guitar he had bought. We all
knew his wife Mary and their little daughter Lori, who was about three then.
Mary was one of the wives who flew out to Japan during our R and R there and
she became pregnant with a son Gene never lived to see. Thirty seven years later
Gene’s remains were repatriated and in a beautiful ceremony attended by
his family, friends and many Sundowner squadron mates, finally laid to rest
with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
Dixie Station
We left Yankee station that evening and headed south for Dixie Station off the
coast of South Vietnam. I launched in the morning with Uncle Milty and Hotdog
Brown while the ship was still steaming south. We rendezvoused with our FAC
over the target a few miles east of Ban Me Thuot, but the target was covered
with morning fog. We waited for as long as we could for the fog to dissipate
finally firing our zunis at a ridge sticking through the clouds. That afternoon
the same three of us attacked a supposedly Viet Cong infested canal way down
in the delta. And so it went for the next week, two missions per day almost
every day for the next nine days. Usually in a three or four plane formation,
although a couple of times there were only two of us and once I was the only
F8 that got airborne and I joined 3 F4s and went to their target.
A typical incountry mission would start with getting our assignment, the flight
leader would get the information and brief the rest of the flight. We had to
locate the target area on our maps, plan the route to and from, copy the FAC’s
call sign and frequency and backup frequencys, and emergency contingencies which
are always a part of all briefings. Once the formation had launched and rendezvoused,
we flew to the target area. Within range we would switch to the FAC frequency
and if all went well, make radio contact. The next chore was to get a visual
contact with the FAC. To do this we used our ADF navigational instrument, which
could be switched to our UHF voice communication radio.
The ADF instrument is a compass card on the instrument panel with a needle pointer
pivoted in the center. For navigation, there is an ADF radio which receives
signals from nav stations on the ground and the needle on the panel instrument
points to the station selected, this tells the pilot what compass direction
to the station. By switching the ADF to voice channel, the needle points at
whoever is transmitting on that frequency. If we asked the FAC to give us a
short count, 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1, The needle would point right at him while he
was transmitting and we then knew where to look for him.
The FAC was usually pretty easy to spot. The light colored O1 Cessna moving
over the dark foliage below stood out. Sometimes, once we called him in sight,
he would announce and execute an identification turn. He would tell us what
the target was, for example a known area of V.C. or a storage area or suspected
encampment. He verbally located the target by terrain features, for instance
"that clump trees two clicks (kilometers) west of the bend in the river"
or "those hooches (small buildings) on the edge of the rice patty".
Very often he would fire a phosphorus smoke rocket at or near the target and
then ask us to put our ordinance on his smoke or 50 yards NW of it or some such
direction and then clear us to make our runs. After we had expended all of our
ordnance, zunis and 20 mm, Our flight leader would call off target and the FAC
would give us a preliminary BDA before we left his frequency. From there it
was back to the ship and recovery aboard.
The BDA the FAC gave us was generally the percent of the target covered or number
of structures damaged or destroyed. During this first sustained period on Dixie
Station, there were no KBA or killed by air counts on any of my missions. It’s
interesting in that I don’t think the infamous "body count" had
yet begun. Only one of these missions really stands out in my memory. On the
21st of Aug., the Skipper, Hotdog, Tom Howard and I were targeted on a V.C.
village and we set the whole village on fire. My minds eye can still see the
mass of flames as I pulled off my last run.
Back up North
I flew one more mission incountry on the 22nd and then the ship steamed back
north. On the 24th we were back on Yankee Station. It was a bad day for the
Air Wing, the skipper of VF21, Cdr. Frank and his RIO Lcdr. Doremus, who had
one of the mig kills to his credit, were shot down by a SAM. They survived the
missile and bailed out, we found out later they were captured almost as soon
as they hit the ground. Skip Brunhaver was an A4 pilot in VA 22 who also ejected
over North Vietnam that day and was captured. Skip had been a roommate of Vic
Riley in the training command and through Vic, Skip, who was a fellow bachelor,
and I got to know each other. Tom Howard and I were flying a Force CAP over
head the fleet and were alerted to stand by for a possible RESCAP, but it never
materialized because of approaching darkness. Tom and I were again launched
predawn the next morning to fly BARCAP for a rescue search that turned out to
be too late. All three were POWs until released in Feb. 1973.
The skies over North Vietnam had become even more deadly. We watched as they
built the SAM sites, but couldn’t strike them because Washington had put
them off limits. Now that they were operational, they suddenly became targets
and we went after them in an operation called "Iron Hand". They were
dangerous targets because the enemy had also used the time when the sites were
off limits to fortify the positions with conventional antiaircraft guns. We
in VF 111 had very little to do with Iron Hand except perhaps some photo escort
flights looking for the star shaped installations, early on, before radar identification
became the method of finding and striking them. The Sams could be out maneuvered
by fighter and attack aircraft, if the pilot saw the missile soon enough and
if he was at low altitude. And that was the Achilles heel, by forcing our planes
down low and into intense ground fire, the SAMs were an effective weapon against
us. Still, Haiphong harbor was off limits and on board the deck of Midway we
could see Russian freighters with the long crates we knew were SAMs piled on
their decks, steaming for Haiphong.
After the Midway recovered it’s aircraft on the SAR mission, she left Yankee
Station and set sail for Cubi Pt. Enroute the next day, we had a brief joint
operation with the British H.M.S. Arc Royal. Some of our Air Group made touch
and go landings aboard her and although I flew a training flight that day, I
didn’t make any approaches to the Arc Royal and I don’t think any
F8s did. I don’t have any idea why we needed training flights having just
flown our butts off the preceding five weeks. Not just the pilots, but the men
doing the thousand and one tough jobs about the ship that always reached a hectic
pace during flight ops. So far we’d had three frustrated men jump over
board. Fortunately, all three were picked up by the ships helicopters, but one
guy jumped at night and almost wasn’t found.
Subic Again
On the 27th, this time after 41 days at sea, we pulled into Subic Bay. We were
going to Hong Kong for R and R but the ship’s catapults needed maintenance
so we put in to Subic Bay, Cubi Pt. for a week. It rained and rained while we
were at Cubi. I think it may have been at this time when a couple of us went
up to Clark AF Base to shop. Their PX was bigger and better stocked than the
one on Subic Naval Base, especially with stereo gear, our objective.
And as they say, getting there is half the fun. Many of the ship’s company
officers of the Midway or any carrier for that matter are aviators on a non
flying tour of duty. In fact a career Naval Aviator could expect such a tour.
The catapult officer, arresting gear officer, flight deck officer and many others
would always be aviators. And at that time, aviators had to get four hours per
month flying time to draw flight pay and the only way for most of them to do
that was to fly while the ship was in port. Available at Cubi point was a SNB,
which everyone knew stood for "secret navy bomber". The C-45 by the
new designation was a light twin engine, twin tailed conventional gear aircraft
made by Beechcraft. So to get up to Clark you could hook a ride with, very likely,
a couple of jet jockeys trying to get their four hours in checking each other
out in a tail dragger resip probably older than themselves. Add to that the
monsoon weather and a ride up to Clark could be more harrowing than a mission
up north.
Then when we sailed for Hong Kong, we encountered Typhoon Rose. I don’t
remember too much about the typhoon, maybe because I slept through her mostly.
A rocking ship is good sleeping time for me and I got some extra because we
were delayed a day and a half getting to Hong Kong. Once there, all of Hong
Kong’s ferries were at typhoon anchorage and the ship’s crew had to
wait five hours for transportation ashore.
Hong Kong
This was my third visit to Hong Kong and my memories are hard to separate into
which visit a particular memory is from. I remember having escargot at Jimmy’s
Kitchen, I remember how beautiful the lights were reflecting off the water the
first time I rode the Kowloon ferry at night, I remember a rickshaw driver who
offered to kill "someone you no like" for two Hong Kong dollars, (
I believe he was just trying to shock us which he did ). I remember a bar girl
who said she was Alice Wong and Suzie Wong’s sister and gave us her business
card, ( "Suzie Wong" was a popular movie of the time about a Hong
Kong prostitute ). I had suits and clothes hand tailored, bought cashmere sweaters
and had shoes made to fit by Lee Kee, "leaky shoes". A memory which
had to have been on this visit was buying the final and most important component
of my stereo, the speakers. I remember because Tom Howard and I bought the same
speakers, Leaks, at the China Fleet Club. The China Fleet Club was an association
of Hong Kong merchants who agreed to abide by strict standards of business.
They had a large building where the participating merchants showcased a sample
of their merchandize. Almost all of the purchases I made in Hong Kong were through
the China Fleet Club.
The reason I remember the speakers purchase is because Tom and I got back aboard
the ship just in time to see our beautiful new walnut encased speakers in a
sling swinging out over the harbor. Then they swung over the forward flight
deck and were lowered to the deck where they were quickly disentangled from
the netting and four chinese men each put a speaker on his back and darted off
in separate directions. It took some time, but Tom and I finally found where
they had been safely stowed in a space designated for the Air Wing’s officers
personal gear, a provision which we hadn’t known about or at least I hadn’t.
Another memory from this visit was renting a room and getting off the ship for
a night. I still have the key, which I forgot to turn in, room 854 of the President
hotel in Kowloon. There were some pilots from VAH13 staying there as well and
they were in the habit of calling themselves Bat Air Lines. Filling out the
registration, they put Bat Air Lines as the company they were representing.
When they were ready to check out they found the hotel desk had charged their
rooms to China Air Transport called CAT Air Lines. I don’t know if they
let it stand or not, but they thought it very funny.
On Line Again
Hong Kong was Marvelous R and R and five days went by in a flash, and on September
10th we sailed for Yankee Station. Two days later, I was launched as the skipper’s
wingman in a four plane with Bob Pearl and Smitty on a Rolling Thunder mission
to North Vietnam. The target, the Vinh port facilities was weathered in and
we proceeded to our secondary target. The next day, the same thing, another
Rolling Thunder mission, primary and secondary target weathered in and we fired
our zunis in a free drop zone. I marked on my mission card "cratered bridge
with zuni". I think I meant to say I cratered the approaches to a bridge
and that brings up another of my arguments with the ship’s air intelligence
officer.
At some time during the cruise, it was much earlier I’m sure, Lcdr. Daly
handed me a stack of blank debriefing forms which I was to make sure my squadron’s
pilots filled out after every mission. To be fair, they were not generated by
Mr. Daly, but by our bean counting Secretary of Defense who thought he could
build up a data base to fight the war more efficiently. The forms had a multitude
of questions about such things as; the direction in which you made your attack,
your airspeed and altitude at the beginning of the run, speed and altitude at
point of weapons release, direction of pull off, number and location of enemy
antiaircraft fire etc. etc. and at the end, damage inflicted to the target.
We gamely filled out these forms the best we could with honest answers such
as; we started the run about 8 thousand feet to the southwest, we left blank
or put question marks in blanks where there was no definite answer and at the
bottom put "no damage" or "nil" if we hadn’t hit anything
of significance.
Of course our forms were unacceptable and Lcdr. Daly lectured me on how the
forms were to be correctly filled out. I replied that there was no way in the
heat of battle a pilot could note all the information on the debriefing form.
We were much to busy trying to stay alive, keeping track of the rest of the
flight, watching for Migs and SAMs, trying to locate ground fire and jinking
off target to worry about the compass direction we were flying. His answer was
that I had to educate my squadron’s pilots so they could fill out the form.
So the only recourse was to fill out the forms as they wanted them; "you
want my heading on the run? OKay, how about 195 and 1/2 degrees", "what
was rolling in altitude? 8265 feet". But the biggest fiction was the bottom
line, damage assessment. They would not accept "no damage", they reasoned
that since it was live ordnance exploding, it must have done damage of some
degree. Thus a rocket fired into the ground cratered the approach to a bridge.
The numbers game would only accelerate.
And speaking of numbers, I came back from a Force CAP mission the following
day to make my 100th landing aboard Midway and become a Midway Centurion, the
292nd pilot to do so. The next two days were also Force CAP missions over the
SAR destroyers and on the 17th, the skipper and I were escorts to an Air Force
EC-121 in the same vicinity. It was a job weaving constantly to stay with the
slow old Constellation. The next day my mission was again escorting an EA3B
from off Vinh to north of Haiphong and of course it all fits, when the SAMs
started flying, they send all of these electronic snoopers up to gather data
and jam radars. On the 21st, a little twist was added to the escort mission
in that Jess Stewart and I escorted an EA3B on a Barrel Roll mission into Laos.
The 23rd of September, Cdr. Butler and I flew a road recce mission, but the
route was obscured by weather and we expended our zunis on the Dong Hoi air
field, our secondary target. After two days of not flying, I flew twice on the
26th, a Force CAP and then the skipper and I again did escort duty for the EC121.
Flying two missions in one day from Yankee Station was unusual, but clearly,
these over water escorts and Force CAP flights were much less dangerous and
stressful. They also required much less briefing and preparation and therefore
didn’t take up as many hours of the day.
I didn’t know it at the time, but those two missions were to be the last
of my Yankee Station assignments for the duration of the cruise, the rest was
all down south on Dixie Station. We did learn our schedule for the rest of the
cruise about this time. From when we had left stateside, the rumors were constantly
floating around about when we would ultimately sail home. At one point there
was even a rumor we would be home early, but that wasn’t at all realistic
and we mostly expected an extension which proved to be the case. We would have
an inport period in mid October at Cubi Pt., one more on line period after that
and then back to Cubi Nov. 4th and San Francisco Nov. 23rd. And darned if we
didn’t do just that!
Taal
However, I flew a bird into Cubi on the 28th of Sept. to pick up another aircraft
out of maintenance. The next day I did a test flight on the new airplane and
had a truly amazing experience. The Taal Volcano about 40 miles to the south
had erupted the day before and was still spewing smoke and ash into the air.
From my viewpoint over head it was both awesome and beautiful. I could see the
area that had been blackened by the soot and ash, but also the lush green of
the mountains and pure blue of the lakes. The original caldron formed a large
lake in the center of which was an island in the center of which was another
lake. The smoke and ash was spewing from one side of the island. The test portion
of the flight was only a few items and I had considerable time to gaze on the
drama below me. I only wished I had brought my camera. The next day, the 29th
I brought the aircraft back to Midway.
Steaming south to Dixie Station we probably had a couple of drinks. Officially,
U.S.Navy ships are dry, but in our staterooms we each had a desk with a small
safe closed with a combination lock. We joked about the navy issuing us a "booze
locker" and many if not most of us kept a bottle in the locker. Myself
and no one else that I know of, ever drank during those days when flight operations
were in progress, but when we were transitioning from one area to another and
had no watch duties scheduled, we broke out our stash. While it was not condoned,
the higher ups knew about it and when one of the stateroom parties got a little
boisterous, the skipper informed us a rule had come down from the bridge that
no more than four officers were allowed to gather in our stateroom "meetings".
Sometimes these "sessions" were initiated by the flight surgeon who
passed out the small bottles of medicinal brandy, awful stuff that was often
set aside and our own preference substituted. Mine probably would have been
Jack Daniels Black which had been purchased at the Cubi PX for a couple of dollars.
I never had more than one bottle in my locker and at sea periods being 40 days
or more, it shows there were not many of these drinking nights.
The first of October came with a revelation, at least to me. The ship was still
steaming south when I was launched in a four plane for a target in South Vietnam.
After launch they gave our flight a Charlie time to recover aboard one hour
and a half after launch. Cdr. Butler, who was leading the flight, informed the
ship we could not get to the target and back in that time, whereupon we were
ordered to drop our ordnance in the sea and make our Charlie time. This was
not just our flight, but others as well. Now we knew, the ships hour and one
half cycle time took precedence over the target in order to launch a maximum
number of sorties. The Navy Admirals and Air Force Generals were counting sorties
in the Vietnam numbers game they knew was so important to the statistic happy
McNammara.
So we began pounding them out, two sorties a day. Mostly we were able to reach
our target, put our ammo on the target that the FAC pointed out and get back
to the ship. However, it happened again on the 4th, thunderstorms made it impossible
to fly directly to the target and going around them would have taken too much
time, so again we jettisoned at sea. This was also a time when at home, McNammara
was denying there was a bomb shortage, while the A4s and A1s were often launching
four plane flights with one bomb each under their wings. Four sorties and four
bombs when one sortie could have carried all four bombs.
The fifth, on a flight with the skipper again, also Bob Pearl and Smitty, we
got a very enthusiastic BDA from our FAC including 5 KBA, the first such report
for me. I flew eleven incountry missions in the first eight days of October,
then we headed into Subic Bay.
In and Out of Port
Meanwhile the report of my eye exam which Dr. Vidacovich had sent in way back
in July had made the rounds and came back requiring the further testing he had
predicted. When we did get into Cubi, Doc Vidacovich set us up to go to Clark
AFB to do the tests. He advised me to get a good nights sleep the night before,
but I instead went to the Cubi Oclub for a late session. The relaxation of tension
was apparently the right prescription, because I passed the next days exams
at Clark without difficulty.
I stayed up at Clark a few days mainly because their club was occasioned by
flight attendants, nurses and school teachers. Of course the problem was that
there were also thousands of Air Force types in direct competition. At least
it was a change from the Cubi Pt. mostly all stag club.
On the 17th, I flew a bird from Cubi back aboard and we steamed for Dixie Station.
Another first on the 19th, we flew a strike in support of ground troops. Also
I wrote home that the deck was pitching so badly, it took me five passes to
get aboard and when I did I blew a tire. My log book shows no bolters that day
so all the passes were wave offs from the LSO. They canceled the afternoon launches
for the rough seas. The next day we resumed our two strikes per day routine.
On the 23rd, Bob Pearl, Smitty and I were directed in to help a support convoy
of vehicles headed for Plei Me which had been pinned down by enemy troops. The
road they were on went north up a long grade with heavily wooded slopes on either
side and the VC were concentrated in the trees to the west. After firing our
zunis we strafed until we were out of ammo. I remember slightly touching first
one rudder then the other while firing to walk my 20 mm rounds through the target
and cover as much area as possible. Along with three Spads from VA 25, we routed
the VC and allowed the convoy to proceed. In the mop up operation, 102 VC bodies
were confirmed.
The afternoon of the 25th, I took another aircraft in to Cubi and the next morning
flew a test hop and brought the replacement aircraft back to the ship that afternoon.
Back to the grind the next day with two more strikes and two more the next.
That day, the 28th, VA 22 lost another pilot whose A4 crashed into the water
in the landing pattern. I knew Tom Murray fairly well for having been his shipmate
the past nine months, but Jim Shardy had grown up with Tom in Missouri. Shardy
was chosen to escort Tom’s body, which had been recovered, back home. With
Shardy on his way, it left the squadron with just twelve aviators.
On the 30th, I flew my 100th combat mission and sometime towards the end of
the month, I had completed my first thousand hours of flight time. The last
day of Oct. we were accompanied by Ray Duncan and Morrie Lewis photo planes.
Morrie shot a picture of me firing a zuni rocket and the picture was used in
several publications including "Air Progress" and an encyclopedia
yearbook. I flew more hours in October 1965 than any other month in my navy
career, close to 51 hours.
Halloween came and went and I don’t think anyone even noticed, I flew two
more strikes on Nov. 1st and two more on the 2nd. Only one on the third, that
was the day Vic Riley made a controlled ejection overhead the ship and was fished
out of the water. Another strike the morning of the 4th and that afternoon Cdr.
Cook, Smitty and I flew our last mission of the cruise. All three of us would
be back next year.
Sail for Home
We sailed to Subic Bay, spent a few days there, then direct to Alameda Naval
Air Station in San Francisco Bay. the crossing was unremarkable and I don’t
remember much about it other than Condition Cap watches came up frequently with
only twelve pilots in the squadron. I also remember much cooler air in the mid
Pacific than we had experienced for some time having spent the whole cruise
in tropical waters but for the trip to Japan in mid summer.
November 22nd, We catapulted off the Midway one last time and landed at NAS
Alameda. The next day we gathered with the crowd dockside to watch the Midway
pull into port. My younger brother, Dewey had driven my Barracuda out from Colorado
to meet me and and was one of those watching the ship dock. Although I had written
that I would undoubtedly fly off, that hadn’t registered with Dewey and
he was quite surprised when I walked up behind him and tapped his shoulder before
the ship actually tied up.
The next task of course was to unload all of our personal gear including my
new stereo and haul it south to Miramar. About half of the squadron took leave
and the rest of us spent most of our time getting settled into our new spaces.
It was a week before I went back up to Alameda to fly an airplane down to Miramar.
Since I had held the fort down over Christmas the previous year, I had leave
over Christmas this year. In the meantime, everything took a pretty slow pace.
I flew a couple of local flights out of Miramar and on the tenth of December
I went up to Alameda to bring back the last of our aircraft from the fly off.
My last flight of the year was to take bureau number 148693 on it’s last
flight from Miramar to Navy North Island. (Some F8Ds were later remanufactured
as F8Hs.)
Christmas In Colorado
My leave commenced on the 18th and I pointed my Barracuda east for Colorado
going as far as Las Vegas the first day. Las Vegas was then still the overgrown
cow town with a definite western desert flavor. Food, drink and lodging were
inexpensive and with a servicemen’s discount, I could get a very reasonable
room even at one of the major casinos on the strip. I think it was this time
through, when after my dinner, I found a bar stool near a side entrance of the
main showroom in one of the big casinos. The door was left ajar and I had a
pretty good seat for the entire show which was Kay Starr and her guest Jim Nabors.
Jim Nabors was known for his role as Gomer Pyle on the Andy Griffith show, but
I don’t think many at that time knew he could sing, for sure I didn’t
because I was quite astounded. I also, on one of my stops in Las Vegas, heard
Wayne Newton when he was the lounge show entertainer and still an unknown.
The following day, a long days drive to my parents home in Fort Collins, Colorado
was before interstate highways were complete and before the Eisenhower Tunnel,
so you hoped snow wouldn’t close the passes, particularly Loveland Pass.
Fortunately, in making the trip several times, I never had any trouble and while
the roads were not four lane super highways, traffic was never a problem.
Christmas at home in 1965 was exactly as it should be, all the family gathered,
my mother’s good home cooking, jokes and stories. I think it was the first
time in quite awhile that all five of my parents children were together again.
My older brothers, Sam and Doug and Doug’s wife Jerri and their growing
family were there as was my younger brother Dewey and sister Margie both college
students. I had leave until the fourth of January, I was home nearly two weeks
and through New Years. My time also coincided happily with my mother’s
Christmas break from her school teaching job in Wyoming.
Heading back towards San Diego would have been the same two day trip with a
layover in Las Vegas. And I would have set off with a full load of advice as
to winter driving in the mountains, from my father.
Back to Work
Back at Miramar, the tempo picked up to full throttle with several tasks ahead
for the squadron. One was transitioning to the F8E model of the Crusader. Two
was integrating into a new Air Wing, Air Wing 16 and getting ready to deploy
aboard the U.S.S. Oriskany. And third was an almost complete change over of
personnel, at least pilots. At that point in the war in southeast asia, the
Navy had decided that pilots would only be exposed to one full combat deployment.
This policy was not entirely about concern for over exposure, but because of
pressure from many career officers who were afraid the war would be over before
they got a chance to put a medal on their chests. When Ltjg.s and even Ensigns
began coming back with a half dozen air medals and other combat decorations,
some of the senior Lt.s and Lcdr.s turned positively green.
At any rate, Smitty and I were right in the middle. Hotdog Brown, Wes Clark,
Vic Riley and Jim Shardy all had sufficient time left in their first tours that
they were transferred to east coast squadrons. Terry Appelgate and Jess Stewart
finished their first tours and got their second tour orders, Tom Howard finished
his reserve contract and got out of the Navy just before we deployed. George
Schulstad finished his exchange tour and returned to the Air Force. If I’m
not mistaken, Uncle Milty had been on what was called a split tour, the first
half with us then the second half a shore assignment. That made him due for
shore duty and he got his orders. Just before we left, Cdr. Butler would turn
the command over to Cdr. Cook and he with Bob Pearl made four of us from the
Midway cruise who sailed in Oriskany, five with Terry Appelgate who left us
from Japan.
And with the departure of the old crew came the arrival of the the new guys.
I have nothing but my fuzzy memory to document when people came or went, but
I know the transfers to the Atlantic fleet occurred very soon after we got back.
One of the first new guys to check in was Lcdr. Norm Levy. Norm was a fellow
bachelor and he lived at the BOQ, although he had a steady girl friend. We spent
considerable time together on and off duty and became good friends. Norm had
a masters degree in aeronautical engineering and had put in for the astronaut
program. He didn’t get it and he used to joke that they were looking for
a tall handsome WASP with a wife and children, not a short homely jewish bachelor.
A very upbeat guy who seemed always to see the humor in things, but hard working
and methodical, somewhat of a perfectionist. He gave me a self made list of
restaurants in the San Diego area and many times I was invited to join him and
his girlfriend, Marla, for dinner.
Another fairly early newcomer was Bob Grammer, a first tour pilot who I think
had done a Mediterranean cruise from the east coast. I went out for drinks one
night with Bob and he offered me a cigarette, I explained to him that I had
given them up on the last cruise. He was incredulous, "you are going back
to Vietnam and you’re worried about cigarettes?" I thought that over
for a minute and then said,"give me one". Unfortunately it took me
another 35 years to break the habit for good, but I don’t blame that on
Bob.
Randy Rime, like Bob came from an east coast squadron I believe. Ed Van Orden
came to us from VU7, the utility squadron based across town at North Island
Naval Air Station. Ed joined us after the start of the deployment. Jay Meadows
also joined us and I don’t recall his background. Ed and Randy were both
Lieutenants a bit senior to me. Rounding out the junior officer roster was Cody
Balisteri fresh from VF124 RAG and Bill McWilliams who had gone through the
RAG on the east coast in VF174.
Another Air Force exchange officer, Will Abbot, joined us going through Japan
after the cruise began, contrasted to the vivacious George Schulstad, Will was
rather quiet, but a very likable fellow. If I remember correctly, like George,
Will came to us as a Captain, but made Major shortly thereafter. Lcdr. Pete
Peters came to us from instructing in the east coast VF174 RAG and with a reputation
as one of the best Crusader drivers in the navy. He and I didn’t see eye
to eye and I thought his reputation overblown. Lcdr. Dick Schaffert had been
an instructor at Kingsville Texas and I think I had flown with him there as
a student pilot. I believe Dick too, had just come from an east coast squadron.
And from the 124 RAG instructors roster, Tooter Teague, my old instructor checked
in, also a Lcdr. Just before we deployed, Cdr. Williams joined us as our new
XO.
F8Es
We began getting our F8Es in January, my logbook shows I flew one on the eleventh
and my last F8D flight, ferrying it over to North Island on the 21st of March.
The big differences in the new F8Es were the intercept radar which could expand
it’s search range from 20 miles to 40 and 60 mile modes. And the addition
of pylons on the wings so that we could now carry bombs or rocket pods. Otherwise
the differences were minor.
Unlike the previous two cruises when our sister squadron aboard had been a F4
squadron, we would be deploying this time with another F8E squadron, VF162 commanded
by Cdr. Dick Bellinger who had flown with us on the Kitty Hawk. We would no
longer be day fighters, so night flying was back into our schedules. VF162 and
the rest of Air Wing 16 had also just returned from a combat tour in SEA, the
Oriskany had returned just a couple of weeks after Midway. The second fighter
squadron on that cruise had been a U.S. Marine Corps F8 squadron, VMF212.
The training flights we made were mostly familiar, more intercepts, more low
level navigation flights, but new was the bombing role. We hung the small (about
the size of a football) practice bombs under our wings and flew out to the bombing
ranges in the desert and dropped them. The practice bombs exploded on impact
with just enough smoke and dust to be visible from over head. One of the problems
of using the F8 as a bomber was that it did not have a bombsight and the pilot
had to improvise using his gunsight. The mil lead required on the gunsight was
so low on the windscreen it was almost unreadable. However, with a little experience,
we managed to get most of our bombs within a respectable distance of the target.
Night bombing was an even more bizarre new experience, with one aircraft of
the formation dropping the flares, which eerily lit up the target and produced
strange shadows of the mountains. Dive bombing at night in mountainous terrain
put all ones senses into high gear. I also remember firing zunis at night, closing
one eye just before you pulled the trigger so that you would only be blind in
one eye from the flash.
As the deployment drew closer, our training turned, as it always does for carrier
pilots, to FCLPs or the "bounce pattern". Day and night landing practice.
The New Miramar
Miramar had changed while we were gone on the Midway, it now sported an officer’s
club, a golf course and driving range among other improvements. I availed myself
of both the club and the driving range. The club was a welcome change from the
BOQ closed mess and I went there fairly often. I had bought an inexpensive starter
set of golf clubs and went to the driving range to try to learn the game. I
got so I was quite adept at hooking the ball so that it hit the tin roof of
a maintenance shed off to the side of the driving range. I also had pinned on
the double bars of a full Lieutenant during this time.
Towards the end of March, we went aboard the Oriskany and operated from her
deck for most of the month of April off the California coast. It was the first
chance most of us had to meet the rest of the Air Wing, although some of us
had flown together. Earlier, our new CAG had organized a joint simulated strike
over the desert. We rendezvoused with A4s from NAS Lemore and F8s from Miramar,
19 aircraft in all, and he wanted us all to fly in formation, a 19 plane echelon
on his wing, low level. The F8s were on the end of the echelon and I was number
19! I went from afterburner to idle and speed brakes to try to stay in position
because of the whiplash effect. I cannot imagine why he thought such a stupid
formation would be of any advantage, but he didn’t give up the idea and
I flew it twice more, once on an actual North Vietnam strike.
We flew our birds off the ship on the 22nd of April for another month of operations
out of Miramar. The next weekend, the 30th, I took one of our F8s cross-country
to Denver’s Buckley Field. Once in the Denver area, I canceled my instrument
flight plan and flew to my parents house in Fort Collins. I had planned this
and had told my folks not to come get me until they heard from me, but Dad couldn’t
wait and they had already left for Denver. I made three low passes over my folks
empty house, although brother Dewey did see me from where he was a couple of
miles away. One neighbor claimed his chickens didn’t lay for a week after
I buzzed them.
It was only an overnight stay and I had to get the airplane back to Miramar
the next day. On the way, in about the Four Corners area, I suddenly got a fire
warning light, all my instrument readings were normal and I made the recommended
sharp turn to see if could see a smoke trail, but didn’t. So, I ignored
the warning light and continued to Miramar, but it did get my attention.
The next three weeks we flew a relatively light schedule, getting ready for
another Wes Pac cruise. On the 17th, we had a squadron change of command. We
said good bye to Cdr. Dee Butler and Cdr. Cook took over the reins. I believe
it was also about this time that Tom Howard left the squadron and the navy to
begin his career at American Air Lines. I had known Tom longer than anyone else
in the squadron, since we had both been cadets in flight training at NAS Pensacola
Florida. On the twenty third, I flew my last flight out of Miramar taking an
aircraft to Navy North Island to be loaded aboard Oriskany, the "O-boat".
I don’t remember why we loaded aboard some or all of our aircraft, but
I think it had to do with deck space when the Air Wing’s entire inventory
had to be taken aboard. At North Island, an aircraft could be taxied or towed
right up to dock side, then hoisted aboard by crane. We sailed for Hawaii shortly
thereafter on the 26th.
Oriskany Cruise
Somewhat differently from previous cruises, the Oriskany conducted flight operations
enroute, we flew right after departing San Diego on both the 26th and 27th and
closing on the islands, the Oriskany commenced flight ops and after a brief
overnight in port to pick up observers for an ORI, we spent several days operating
offshore before pulling into port. The last day before docking at Ford Island,
was May 31st, my 25th birthday. I flew one day and one night hop to celebrate.
Once in port, I teamed up with Jay Meadows, also an unattached bachelor and
we set out to find unattached persons of the fairer sex. We succeeded in meeting
some airline flight attendants who were flying the MAC (military air contract)
routes and who were going to be in Japan, our next stop, about the same time
as we were. Their layover in Honolulu was about over, but we did agree to look
for each other in Japan. Meanwhile the squadron on shore activity center once
again became Fort DeRusse. Bill Mcwilliams, our most inexperienced and weakest
pilot had another problem, he could not hold his liquor.
I was not at Fort DeRusse on our last night in port, but Bill was and he became
quite rowdy. In fact, so rowdy that he was asked to leave and in the best traditions
of camaraderie, a couple of his shipmates volunteered to take him back to the
ship. One of them was Tooter Teague and as they stood outside on the curb to
hail a taxi, Bill suddenly turned and punched Tooter square on the nose. Tooter
had played football with Bear Bryant and was a good sized man while Bill was
only average size. Nevertheless, he flattened Tooter and broke his nose. The
next day, I flew an airplane aboard from Barber's Point Air Station and found
Tooter in the ready room, his nose full of gauze and his eyes black. Tooter
for his part, handled it with aplomb and went about his business as though he
had merely run into a door. A subdued Bill McWilliams also went about his business
and I never learned what reprimands he had been given, if any.
Again, we commenced flights ops shortly after leaving port enroute for Yokosuka,
Japan. And as soon as we were out from under the Air Defense Command’s
cover, we again were assigned Condition Cap watches. And again we were over
flown by Russian bombers. And again I was not on watch when they overflew and
didn’t get to intercept them. This was not exactly by chance because it
was pretty well known when they were coming and the Condition Cap watches during
those times were taken over by senior ranking pilots on one pretense or another.
As we said, "RHIP" or "rank has it’s privilege". However,
we all got to see the big Russian Bear bomber as he flew right by the ship at
about 500 feet.
We arrived at Yokosuka on July 14th and shortly thereafter I took five days
leave. An officer could only get paid for a maximum of 60 days leave when he
mustered out of the navy so I had five days to use or lose. I had wanted to
take those five days in San Diego before we left, but there were too many things
needing to be done around the squadron and I couldn’t be spared. I didn’t
do very much with my leave in Japan other than a trip or two to Tokyo.
At the Sanyo Hotel in Tokyo, I did indeed meet up with the flight attendants
we had met in Waikiki. However, I think they soon became very overwhelmed by
the number of officers in the club vying for their attention and they departed
after a couple of drinks. Another disappointment in Tokyo was not being able
to find the Kobe beef restaurant Roy Allen and I had been to not quite a year
earlier.
I know I had a good time in Japan on this visit as I did on every previous visit,
but the only other incident which I remember was another negative, although
it’s comical in recall. At that time, there were very few signs written
in english and it could be difficult getting around. I was coming back from
Tokyo by myself and going to Atsugi base. I got on the train and it pulled out
of the station, almost immediately passengers began pulling down the overhead
bunks and making obvious preparations for a night’s journey. I began trying
to make inquires as to whether the train would stop at Atsugi, but all I got
was, "no no Osaka!" I was a little panicked at the idea of ending
up riding all night to Osaka and then trying to make it back to whatever commitments
I had, maybe even ships departure. Eventually I found a conductor, showed him
my ticket and through much gesturing, pointing and a few words here and there,
found to my relief that the train made one more stop before it’s all night
trip and I could get off, cross over to the opposite side and catch another
train back to Tokyo and start over again. Wow!
We left Yokosuka June 22nd for a five day sail to Subic where we would take
on ammunition for our first on line period. While at Yokosuka, Terry Appelgate
had checked out of the squadron and Will Abbott and Ed Van Orden checked in.
That left only Smitty and me remaining from the Kitty Hawk cruise and Cdr. Cook
and Bob Pearl from the Midway. The four of us were the only combat veterans
and among the other pilots there was a little tension, nothing one could put
a finger to, but a little pre action jitters syndrome of some kind. I could
feel their eyes on the four of us, assessing our demeanor as a clue of what
to expect. I think we must have been reassuring because knowing what was coming
was not bothering us and I actually wrote home that the last two Mig kills were
by F8s and that the Migs were coming out again and I might get a chance at one.
It was a short stay in Subic Bay. I did some shopping and ended up at the Cubi
Oclub. This time it was my turn to take Bill McWilliams back to the ship. Apparently,
Bill had been there in the afternoon, dressed casually in tee shirt and sockless
loafers. When evening arrived he was not in proper dress so he improvised, he
rented a Barong Tagalog and then ripped up his tee shirt and wrapped the pieces
around his feet as socks. I suspect the Philippino club manager let him in not
wanting the confrontation. I was in a different part of the club and perhaps
the only other Sundowner in the club when someone, probably a member of another
Air Wing squadron, found me and suggested I get Bill back to the ship. I found
him in his weird get up, heckling the Philippino singer. Mindful of what had
happened to Tooter in Hawaii, I was really on my guard, but he came with me
quite peacefully out of the club, into a taxi and back aboard the Oriskany.
Bill was also having a lot of difficulty getting aboard the ship at night and
I remember we conducted some night landing practice while still within bingo
distance of Cubi Pt. His performance was marginal at best and I know there was
some talk of whether he could be considered night qualified and if not what
were the options. I’m not sure, but I think a decision was made to keep
him on the day schedule only, until he built up some carrier experience. If
that was the case, then it was a big change in philosophy from the past cruises
when all flying was divided equally. However, the squadron now was composed
very differently and besides it would seem to have been the most sensible solution.
Bill was my assistant in a couple of collateral duties and he was capable, diligent
and likable to be around. In hind sight, it seems obvious he just wasn’t
cut out to be a carrier pilot, but somehow had made it through all the phases
of training and into the fleet. Maybe because he worked hard and was likable,
he was allowed to slip through the cracks. I also think he was probably afraid
to death, but didn’t know how to back out with his pride intact. If I’m
right, that would probably explain his antics while under the influence as acts
of desperation.
Another FNG (fucking new guy), John Sande, joined us in Cubi. I believe John
had his orders to VF111 while going through the RAG at Miramar and had been
around to introduce himself before we left. Either that or I knew him at the
Miramar BOQ or both, because he was not a complete stranger to me when he came
aboard at Cubi.
As we sailed southward and temperatures climbed, the Oriskany’s lack of
air-conditioning became a major factor in life aboard. Smitty and I were roommates
and we had bought a small air conditioner in Subic of the type which veterans
from the Air Groups previous cruise in Oriskany had already installed in their
staterooms. However, these individual air conditioners were taxing the ships
electrical system and when we hooked ours up we blew fuses all through our area.
The ships engineer put a moratorium on any further installation until more circuits
could be added to the system. So we had to sweat it out, literally. I spent
nearly all of my waking hours in the ready room which was, thank goodness, well
air conditioned. Smitty even slept there often, but I couldn’t sleep in
a chair no matter how comfortable and there was always some activity going on
that would have kept me from sleeping soundly if at all. Instead I got into
my top bunk in my skivvies with no covering and managed to get some sleep, but
always woke up in a pool of sweat. We never did get the air conditioner hooked
up, but they were making progress with the wiring and Smitty and I sold the
unit to the junior officers who were in line to get our stateroom when we departed.
Another purchase I made during our short stay at Subic was a super 8 mm movie
camera. An A4 pilot on the Midway had made in flight movies during the cruise
and I decided to do likewise. I went down to Oriskany’s machine shop and
got a piece of strap metal and bent it to go around the radar scope to squeeze
into a clamp on the right side and then screwed the end to my camera. The bracket
worked fine but the drawback was that with the canopy closed, I couldn’t
get an eye any where near the view finder, so it had to be aimed and set with
the canopy open before launch and I couldn’t see the camera switches on
it’s right side so I had to operate it by feel. The first time I used it,
I thought I was switching from off to run and back to off, but in fact I was
switching from off to single frame. The second time I tried, the camera lost
it’s aim on the cat shot and so it went. Eventually, I became a little
more adept at running it and I have a few feet of film to show for the effort,
the best of which is couple of carrier approaches and landings. Another time,
I set it up with Ed Van Orden, whom I was flying with, to do some tail chase
enroute to the target and get some pictures. For some reason, Ed flew so slow,
250 knots or so and my attitude was so nose up that I got mostly pictures of
sky. Had I bought the camera much earlier in my career, I might have had most
of the wrinkles worked out and some decent footage to show for it.
I think it was on one of the training flights before we arrived on station,
I butted heads with Dick Schaffert. By butted heads, I mean we had a simulated
one on one dogfight. Back on the Midway, it was realized that most all of the
Mig encounters were occurring at low altitude and we had always practiced air
combat at high altitude. In fact in the RAG and also in the squadron, a base
altitude of 20,000ft. was established and the fight was over when one aircraft
reached the base altitude. The reason for this was that if in the hard maneuvering
you got the F8 into a spin it would take nearly 10,000ft. to recover and if
you were not out of the spin by 10,000 ft., the procedure was to eject. However,
the Crusader flew quite differently at low altitude and to familiarize ourselves
with it’s low altitude characteristics and capabilities, Skipper Butler
and later Dick Cook authorized low altitude ACM, air combat maneuvering.
I had done quite a bit of this low altitude yanking and banking, but for Dick
fresh out of an east coast squadron where they were still using a 20,000 ft.
base, it was an eye opener. As I remember, there was no winner or loser and
we both gave a good accounting of ourselves just as Dick did a year and a half
later in a 10 minute dogfight with four Mig 17s over North Vietnam. During our
debriefing, Dick was quite astonished at the difference between fighting at
low level and 30,000 ft. It may or may not be so, but it does my ego good to
think that that session may have contributed to the accumulation of technique
that enabled Dick to survive the one to four odds of his Mig encounter.
Deja Vu
We reached Dixie Station on the 30th of June, just in time to collect $65 combat
pay and a $200 write off on income taxes for the whole month. I flew an incountry
strike led by Norm Levy with our new XO, Cdr. Williams as his wingman and I
led the second section with Cody Balisteri as my wingman. I suppose Cdr. Williams
gave Norm the lead in deference to Norm’s more experience. Both Cdr. Williams
and Cody had radio failures but at what point in the mission I don’t remember.
With our new F8Es, we carried a pod of 16 2.75 rockets under each wing as well
as 4 Zunis and 400 rounds of 20 mm. The next day, the same four of us except
Cdr. Williams led and I became Norm’s wingman, flew another strike. This
time, instead of the rockets under our wings, we carried two mark 82 500 pounders
and I dropped my first live bombs on an enemy rice storage area.
Fourth of July 1966, another first for me, I dropped my first two napalm bombs,
both were duds and failed to ignite. I dropped a couple more a few days later
and one was also a dud and as that was the sum total of napalm I ever dropped,
my success rate is one for four. And the other planes in these flights also
dropped a lot of duds. The bombs we were dropping were surplus WW II and obviously
the fuses were bad. This was particularly disgusting because to drop napalm
we came in right over the tree tops, down into small arms fire where a 25 dollar
rifle could bring down a million dollar airplane and fully trained pilot. Our
FAC that day was taking ground fire, so we had been in jeopardy of being hit
while dropping duds. We had no sight for napalm and the method of aiming was
to count "one potato, two potato" after the target disappeared beneath
the nose, then pickle the switch.
The next day, the 5th, I flew another strike with Tooter and Jay Meadows and
a photo plane came along piloted by Miramar BOQ buddy, Vince Lesh. The photos
had no real mission on these incountry missions that I know of, other than proficiency
flying and maybe some good public relations photos. I never saw any of the photos
Vince shot that day so I don’t know if there was anything worthy of publishing.
And speaking of proficiency, my second flight that date was a night training
flight. One more incountry mission on the seventh and my brief life as bomber
pilot was over. I dropped less than a dozen bombs, all of them 500 pounders.
A few times, I think it was mostly VF162, F8Es were launched with a single 2000
pounder on one wing and I do remember a general briefing on the techniques of
the catapult shot with one heavy wing, rolling in so many degrees of opposite
aileron trim etc. I also remember a very early morning mission when our bombs
created visual shock waves in the misty morning air. The waves spread out from
the bomb burst in concentric circles exactly like those of a pebble tossed into
still water. Another of my bombs was a direct hit on a building and caused a
secondary explosion, proving that the building held ammunition, fuel or something
else volatile.
Somewhere in this time frame, Cdr. Williams our XO, turned in his wings and
left. I hardly got to know Cdr. Williams and of course the junior officer’s
in the squadron were not privy to the circumstances that lead to his departure.
For morale reasons, once a pilot has made the decision to turn in his wings,
he is not kept around, but quickly whisked away. I knew this from flight training
when DORs, dropped on request, were fairly common. Bob Pearl as senior Lcdr.
in the squadron became acting XO. The situation put more pressure on the skipper
Cdr. Cook, who already was embroiled in conflicts with Cdr. Bellinger who was
using his rank as senior Commander in such things as claiming first dibs on
limited F8E supplies, mission assignments etc.
Oriskany on Yankee
Station
Back up on Yankee Station on the 8th and my first mission was photo escort for
a photo bird piloted by Harry Samson. Harry and I had begun our navy careers
together being in the same class of cadets five years earlier. The next day
I led a BARCAP with Jay Meadows as my wingman. Because of the SAMs, BARCAP was
now being flown over the water off Haiphong Harbor and under the radar coverage
of RED CROWN, the radar destroyer positioned way up in the Tonkin Gulf. They
had the ability of monitoring the Mig bases and vectoring us in on them while
alerting the rest of the force. There was a shortage of sidewinder rails on
board the Oriskany, so we were only carrying two sidewinders and fammo. Also,
the new sidewinders, AIM 9D, were available, but on a limited basis. Most of
these CAP flights, I carried one AIM 9B and one AIM 9D. The Aim 9D had a much
wider look angle, meaning it could detect the heat of an enemy aircraft at a
much greater angle and one could fire it without getting exactly on the enemy's
tail.
On the eleventh, I led a coastal recce flight with Bill McWilliams as my wingman
northeast of Haiphong and over the many coastal islands looking for targets
of opportunity. Having gone up the coast we had turned around and were coming
back down at six or eight thousand feet with Bill flying Loose Deuce in towards
the coast when I saw and called out a few puffs of 57 mm way wide and behind
us. Bill’s right wing dipped as he looked over his shoulder to see the
flak, then he did the fastest crossover from my coast side to my gulf side that
I have ever seen. It amused me, but it was probably the first flak he had seen
and an understandable reaction. We found a small barge fired all of our 2.75
rockets at it, I wanted to get rid of the rockets and pods because they created
so much drag and thus upped our fuel consumption greatly. Bill reported some
kind of fuel problem and we got rid of our zunis against a karst and returned
to Oriskany.
A couple hours later I flew a BARCAP with Randy Rime and returned to the ship
for a night instrument approach and landing. One of the problems with our new
F8Es and their wing pylons was that they added weight and in order not to exceed
maximum landing weight, maximum landing fuel weight was lower, giving the pilot
a smaller margin of error. I was given a "charlie time", my time for
recovery aboard the ship. From the charlie time, the pilot subtracts the time
to make the approach from altitude, then goes into a holding pattern calculating
his turns so he will arrive over the point to start his descent exactly on time
and with maximum fuel also calculated to land with as much margin as possible.
I did all of this mental arithmetic, but while I was in the holding pattern,
they moved my charlie time back 15 minutes which put me below the max fuel I
would liked to have had. I started my approach using the later time coming in
a few miles astern of the ship, I called the ball, but was given a foul deck
wave off. By this time I had a low fuel warning light and ship’s tower
instructed me to switch to tanker frequency and refuel. I followed procedure
flying straight ahead of the ship and tried several times to contact the tanker
with no response. I went back to tower and reported no contact with the tanker
and was informed he was off on another frequency refueling a low state A4. I
was now 20 or so miles ahead of the ship and down to 600 lbs. Tower asked me
if I could make a visual approach as they now had a ready deck and I said affirmative.
I called the ball again with 400 lbs. and had to repeat it to an astonished
LSO. I trapped aboard with between 350 and 300 lbs not enough for another approach.
On his landing debrief the LSO gave me an OK one wire. (Generally, an OK grade
was given for a landing with no errors and such a landing would result in catching
the number three wire.) Obviously I had spotted the deck, dropped my nose a
little just over the ramp, ordinarily a big no no, but I couldn’t have
afforded a hook skip or bolter that night.
The next day I got airborne again with Bill McWilliams for a another coastal
recce, however we were diverted to standby off the coast for a possible RESCAP.
"Bulb" Adams, another Miramar bachelor from VF162 had been shot down
20 miles or so inland from Haiphong. We were not used, but a navy helicopter
successfully made the rescue. It was the second shoot down for Bulb, he had
been shot down by a SAM on the previous Oriskany cruise and picked up from the
Gulf of Tonkin. His real name was Richard, but he was prematurely bald and everyone
knew him as Bulb. After his second shoot down, he was sent home and later became
the announcer for the Blue Angels.
Later that day, I flew another BARCAP with Dick Schaffert and a day later one
with Pete Peters and after that, a dawn patrol BARCAP with Norm Levy. Later
that day, on a four plane with Norm, Randy Rime and Cody Balisteri, we were
called in as RESCAP for a downed A4 pilot off the USS Ranger. Randy and Cody
were split off from Norm and me and as we followed them in over the coast line
we saw a SAM missile go between their two airplanes. It was the only time I
ever saw a SAM being fired and it did indeed look like a flying telephone pole.
The rescue was called off shortly after that as the Ranger pilot had been captured.
The next morning, the 16th, Bill and I were again launched on another coastal
recce. This time the only target we found was another barge loaded with lumber.
We had zunis loaded on the wing stations, 10 of them and we fired them at the
barge getting direct hits but unable to tell if we did much damage, it didn’t
catch fire that we saw. On the way back to the ship, we rendezvoused with a
tanker and in attempting to refuel, Bill broke the fueler’s basket off
and it was stuck on his refueling probe. Neither of us had taken on any fuel,
but I reckoned we had enough to get us back to the ship, then Bill had a radio
failure and tried by hand signals to take the lead from me. I refused, so after
some rather loose wobbly formation, he again joined up close, holding up a sign
on which he had penciled "Da Nang". I understood that he wanted to
divert to Da Nang, but the ship was operating 150 miles or more north of Da
Nang and we did not have enough fuel. Through hand signals, I finally conveyed
this to him and we landed back aboard Oriskany.
Jay Meadows and I launched in the wee hours the next morning to dodge thunderstorms
in the dark on BARCAP. Thereafter, I flew a couple of uneventful four plane
BARCAPS and TARCAP for an attack on Dong Phong Thong with Norm, Randy and Cody.
On the 23rd of July, the Air Wing struck the Dong Nam POL storage facility.
This is where we flew in low level in CAG’s huge echelon and me again on
the end next to Tooter. We came in behind the karst ridge northeast of Haiphong
and when the A4s turned left to the target, Tooter and I set up a race track
pattern between the target and the Mig threat. After the strike force had called
off target and feet wet, (over the coastline) we were just ready to turn toward
the coast ourselves, when we spotted a bogey north west of us. We turned toward
him, but he was several miles in front of us and going away, we did not have
the fuel to chase him. It was the only time I saw a Mig airborne in all of my
missions over the north. We encountered pretty heavy 37 mm flak on the way out,
but returned safely to the ship.
That was to be my last mission over enemy territory. The next day I flew a four
plane over water BARCAP led by Will Abbot and another on July 25th, 1966, my
last and 133rd combat mission in Southeast Asia. On the 28th, I was given a
maintenance test flight as my final Crusader flight. I made some supersonic
runs, some aerobatics and just wrung the airplane out. It was a lonely nostalgic
hour and a half, I knew I was going to miss that kind of flying and I was right.
My War is Over
Back in Cubi on the first of August and there was a little going away party
for me at the O club. I know I overindulged, because I had a hangover the next
day making my way over to Clark AFB. To make things worse, when I got there
I found out I had to have a flu shot before I could board my flight home. After
getting the shot, I have a hazy memory of the crowded noisy wait of a couple
hours at Clark and me feeling pretty blah. Once on the plane, a World Air Lines
707, my seat companion was a black shoe Lcdr. who had a flask of Scotch which
he offered to share. I shouldn’t have, but on the "hair of the dog"
theory, I had a couple of laced soft drinks and felt even more retched. We stopped
at Midway island to refuel and I was able to shave and wash up and I felt a
little better. We stopped again in Hawaii and cleared customs there and finally
landed at Travis AFB late afternoon Aug. 3rd. From there was a bus to Treasure
Island Navy Base, where I was to be mustered out.
There was no way I was going to spend my first nights back in the world at the
Treasure Island BOQ, so I checked in and then got a taxi into San Francisco
and rented a hotel room. Mark Twain is supposed to have said "the coldest
winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco" and that certainly
seemed true to me. I had spent the previous several months in tropical waters
and didn’t have any warm clothing with me, civilian or uniform. However,
I soon acquired what I needed and spent part of each day checking out of the
navy and the rest enjoying San Francisco. I believe it took about three days,
I had to have a final physical, my pay calculated and approved etc. etc.
Once I had mustered out and got my paycheck cut, I headed south to San Diego
where I had left my Barracuda and other belongings. I made a trip to Los Angeles
to interview airlines, Western, American and Continental. I got an October class
date with Continental, I was put on to them by Bill Wilson, "Burner Bill"
who I had looked up and who had been working for Continental a couple of months.
Next, I drove back down to San Diego, rented a trailer, loaded up my gear and
headed home to my parents house in Fort Collins Colorado.
After I Left
While vacationing at home in Colorado, I wrote to my old squadron mate Norm
Levy and got a reply from him dated 5 Oct. They had had a rough period on the
line after I left. Cody Balisteri had been shot down up in the islands where
some of my last missions had been, fortunately he ejected and was rescued. Two
days later, the same thing happened to Norm himself. Jay Meadows had to jump
out of an aircraft whose engine failed. Tooter was escorting photo pilot Tommy
Tucker who was shot down, bailed out and landed in Haiphong Harbor. Tooter,
in spite of SAMs and intense flak was able to keep the North Vietnamese from
capturing Tommy long enough for a daring helicopter rescue. And finally, Will
Abbot and Randy Rime were jumped by Migs vectored in behind them under a cloud
layer. Will was shot down and became a prisoner of war, Randy managed to get
his beat up Crusader back to the Oriskany.
Before I could correspond further with Norm, he was killed in the horrific fire
aboard the Oriskany on the 26th of Oct. Cody Balisteri and Bill McWilliams also
perished in the fire as well as Lloyd Hyde our air wing flight surgeon, who
had lived in a stateroom adjacent to Smitty and me. Forty other former shipmates
also died in the fire. I went down to San Diego to visit the Sundowners shortly
after they returned. I remember seeing Jay Meadows and Ed Van Orden, but many
of the squadron were off on leave. Unfortunately, Ed was killed on a cold cat
shot less than a year later on the repaired O-boat’s 67/68 cruise.
It was tough to leave the Sundowners, but there was no choice. I could have
stayed in the navy and in fact Cdr. Butler had dangled a choice set of orders
in front of me to try to get me to augment or take a regular commission and
stay in the navy. But that was exactly the point, they were orders to a new
job. Had he offered me a chance to stay with my comrades and finish the fight,
which of course he couldn’t, I would have jumped at it and I think most
of the others would have too. Making a career out of the navy had never been
my objective. In the first place, I joined to learn to fly and I loved flying
and wanted to continue. However, it was not lost on me that my skippers only
had accumulated about 4 thousand hours total time and in their early forties
their flying days were about over. If I stayed in, 25% of my flying career was
already behind me. If I wanted promotions, I knew I was at a disadvantage because
I didn’t have a degree. If that wasn’t enough, I had seen how the
navy treated it’s own when it already had them locked in. For instance,
the orders Cdr. Butler had offered to me, to a weapons testing squadron at China
Lake were offered to Tom Howard if he would augment and I think to someone else,
probably Smitty; but not to those with a regular commission, they could be posted
to whatever spot needed filling whether they liked it or not. The regulars couldn’t
even resign their commission, the navy was sitting on all requests for at least
a year. My navy career was just over five years, a little more than half of
them as a Sundowner in VF 111. They undoubtedly were the most exciting, the
most dangerous, the most intense and the most memorable days of my life. Many
good and great comrades were lost, but the bonds of camaraderie among those
of us who survived endure and will endure until we are all dust.
,
George Schulsted and Roy Allen
Band playing at Unrep
Bridge Down in North Vietnam
Author and a Tinker Toy
Author and Roy Allen at Cubi Point
Aurthor at Atsugi
Ready Room Oriskany, Ed Van Ortan, Bob Pearl and Jerry Smith
Forward Flight Deck Midway
Roy Allen at his desk
Author at 110 missions
Vic Riley at Atsugi
Maning ariplanes