PART
III. Military Aviation
By
age sixteen, I was sick of school, always bored and hated the high school I
attended. Like many young men seeking adventure, I decided it might be time for
me to join the Navy and see the world. On a Saturday morning, I drove my old
car to the downtown post office in Dayton, Ohio where the Naval Recruiting
office was located on the second floor. I told the recruiter on duty that I was
thinking about joining the Navy.
The
recruiter politely informed me that at age sixteen, I could not join his Navy
and even at seventeen not without written consent from a parent. He then
proceeded to give me the standard and still best advice for a young man, which
was to stay in school and get a good education before taking on the Navy and
the world.
With
my ego somewhat deflated, I thanked the recruiter for his time and told him
that I would be back someday to sign up as this was what I wanted to do. From
time to time, I would peruse the brochure the recruiter had given me describing
the different enlisted ratings in the Navy. The one that most appealed to me
was the description of an Airborne Radio Operator.
The
following year, I found out about Naval Air Station Port Columbus and an Air
Reserve unit there that I wanted to join. My mom said no, but my dad said that
he would sign the papers for me to join the reserves if I would promise to
finish high school and go to college. I agreed and signed up.
Recruits
were required to take a physical examination when enlisting. I passed
everything until I took the eye exam. I had better than 20/20 vision, but the
medic who gave me the exam said I was colorblind. “I am not!” I told him. “I’ve
never had any problem seeing colors. “Point to a color and I’ll name it.”
“Yes
you are,” the medic replied, “if you can’t read the numbers in these flip
cards, you’re colorblind.”
As
it turned out I am what is called pastel blind. Some greens and some blues
apparently appear to me as differing shades of gray, but I have no trouble with
other colors. Without knowing it, over the years, I had trained myself to
identify one shade of gray as green and the other shade of gray as blue.
That,
however, was of no help in picking the numbers hidden within the bubbles on
those flip cards. I could join, but the test for an aircrewman was stricter.
Fortunately, the final test for color blindness in the Navy was the Farnsworth
Lantern test, which I did pass and was still able to become an aircrewman.
Now
a Navy airman striker, I would drive my old '39 Lincoln Zephyr 3-window coupe
up to NAS Port Columbus one weekend every month to attend reserve drills. With
the rest of the non-rated folks I slept through the usual tech-training
classes. My first year in the Naval Air Reserve (USNR-Air), I only pulled
Kitchen Police (KP) duty once, peeled potatoes for a half day.
For
chemical warfare training, we entered a small building, put on gasmasks and
were told that a tear gas capsule would be exploded and one by one, we were to
step to the door, remove the gasmask and recite our name, rank and service
number. Each airman took his turn at the door. From that day forward, I assure
you, no trainee ever forgot his service number.
After
exiting the chamber and facing into the wind, it felt like someone had thrown a
handful of chili pepper juice in your face. Told to keep our hands off your
eyes, we all lay on the grass waiting for the tears to clear from our eyes. The
drill was intended to show us how well a gasmask worked and we decided they
worked darn well. In this was period just after the Korean War and the
heightening Cold War. Nuclear weapons and biological warfare had become the
main threats to our generation.
By
the time I was eighteen, I had met all the requirements to become a full-fledged,
three-green-stripe Air Naval Reserve airman. The surface Navy wore white
stripes. Red stripes designated engineering. Construction sailors or Seabees
were identified with blue stripes. The green stripes had been used for an
orderly until after WW II and were considered less than prestigious ratings
among surface Navy sailors. The green stripes were now being used by the Navy
to designate non-Petty Officer airman. Old salts would mistake us for an
orderly.
Gedunk,
pronounced gee-dunk, is the Navy’s nickname for a snack bar. The walls of the
gedunk at NAS Port Columbus were decorated with original artwork of the
characters in the comic strip Terry and the
Pirates drawn by Milton Caniff. Impressive for me as Caniff’s comic
strip was one of my favorites.
The patrol squadrons during this time
period were flying the PV2 Harpoon, a plane similar to the PV1 Lockheed Ventura
and the civilian Lodestar. Some of the coastal squadrons still operated Martin
Flying Boats. However, I never had a chance to fly in one. Only Petty Officers
flew aircrew in the patrol squadrons (VP). There were a couple of fighter
squadrons (VF) based at Port Columbus that flew Chance Vought F4U-4 Corsairs.
On a drill weekend the summer between
my junior and senior years in high school, The personnel office called me in
and told that I hadn’t met the requirement for an annual two-week training
cruise. One of the VF squadrons was leaving the following day for their cruise
and had an open billet for an ordnanceman striker. I’ll just go with them I
told the yeoman and he cut my orders. Actually, I believe I was supposed to go
to Great Lakes Training Center for boot camp, but it would turn out, I never
had the pleasure.
As
it turned out, a Consolidated Vultee PB4Y-2 Privateer was assigned to the VF
squadron as a support aircraft. Most of the support personnel flew in an R5D,
but I laid claim to being the ordinance aircrewmen on the Privateer. No one
seemed to care so I acted like I knew what I was doing, helped load the plane
and climbed aboard. Those in their right mind don’t normally volunteer for
ordinance duty. It’s a hot, sweaty and sometimes dangerous job involving long
hours.
The
old Privateers were the Navy's version of the Air Force's B-24 Liberator. The
obvious difference in appearance between the two planes being that the P4Y had
a single large vertical stabilizer and the B-24 had the twin-tail empennage.
My
VF squadron was headed for Masters Field Marine Corps Air Station just outside
Miami, Florida. Don’t bother to look for it on a map, as it has long since
become a housing addition. Most of the Petty Officer rated men in the squadron
were veterans of the Korean War and even some from World War II. The ordinance
crew usually worked twelve-hour shifts and I was gung-ho. I’d sit and listen to
all the war stories as we linked .50 caliber shells to load them into the
Corsairs.
Non-rated
airmen like myself were assigned to KP duty for at least one day of a two-week
cruise. It was still dark when I reported as ordered for my day on kitchen
police and was put to work in the scullery washing pots and pans.
About
an hour had passed when the Flight Line Chief came storming through the chow
hall door dragging some chubby, young one-striper behind him. The Chief yelled
out, “Cookie, here’s your replacement. Arnold you come with me!”
Seems
the Chief had a couple of senior ordinancemen ragging him about what happened
to their helper. I believe that was the last KP I ever pulled. I always think
of the engineman sailor in the Sand Pebbles
who claimed that if you were good at what you did, they’d take care of you.
After
my first few days on the line, I was fully checked out in ground servicing the
Corsairs. This meant I was to be on the ramp at sunup every morning to help
preflight the Corsairs. Actually, I think some of the older Petty Officers just
didn't want to get out of their bunks that early.
After
checking the oil and fuel tanks, each aircraft engine had to be run-up and a
Yellow Sheet filled out. Suited me fine because I learned how to start and
preflight those big radial engine fighters. A Yellow Sheet was a detailed
checklist of the aircraft's mechanical, electrical and instrument systems. This
checklist determined whether the aircraft would be up or down for flight status
on that particular day.
The
pilot assigned to one of my Corsairs had an aircraft catch fire and burn out
from under him during the Korean War. Needless to say, he was a little spooky
about engine fires. Standing by the fire bottle as he cranked the engine for a
morning flight, he flooded the exhaust stack and it flamed excessively. Using a
hand signal, I tried to get the pilot to rev up the engine in order to blow the
flame out, but he didn’t respond. By the time I got the fire bottle safety pin
pulled and the nozzle up to the exhaust stack, he had shutdown the engine, was
out of the cockpit and looking over my shoulder.
Each
aircraft’s machineguns were loaded with its own color rounds. We coated the
tips of the bullets with a sticky, non-drying paint. The purpose of this was
that when the bullet passed through the airborne target, it would leave that
unique color mark on the cloth. This way, we could grade the pilots on their
gunnery practice hits.
The
biggest problem with this practice was that the sticky paint gummed up the
machine guns to the point where they would sometimes even stop firing. Because
of this, each night we had to remove every gun from the aircraft's wings,
disassemble and wash them with 130 octane avgas. Then reassemble the guns and
reinstall them prior to the next day’s flight. For two flights a day, we sent
the planes out and waited on them to come back. Surprisingly, you can learn to
sleep comfortably in the shade of an aircraft wing on a concrete ramp during
the heat of the day, if you’re tired enough.
Prior
to group takeoff, we prepared a long cheesecloth tow target and took it out to
the end of the runway for the sacrificial Corsair to tow aloft. Even though the
towline was three hundred feet long, it wasn't pleasant for the aircraft tow pilot
to sit there while .50 caliber shells whizzed past his tail. I think the pilots
drew straws for the job each day.
We’d
spread the target out and S-turned the towline on the runway. The tow aircraft
would get a good running start and jerk the target into the air when the line
ran out. On return, the pilot would make a low pass over the field and drop the
target. We’d pick it up and score the number of different colored marks. We
knew the colors of the particular pilot firing and if he was one of the good
ol' boys, he’d get graded a little better than some of the crap-heads that
complained about everything.
Over
the weekend the Corsairs flew over to Gitmo, sailor’s slang for Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba. This was pre-Castro Cuba and the place was wide open to the Yankee
dollar. The pilots took lists of who wanted any duty-free items brought back
and I ordered a bottle of Channel No.5 to take home to my mom. The fighters
departed for Gitmo and we got a couple of welcome days off. We were not allowed
to go on liberty except in class-A blues and winter wools were a little hot in
Miami that time of year.
On
my first night off base, I went to a nearby bar with some of the old hands. In
Ohio, at age eighteen, it was legal to drink 3.2 beer, but in Miami anyone in
uniform could order from the bar, no questions asked. One of the local Ohio
beers was Burger beer, so I ordered my usual, "I'll have a Burger
please."
The
bar hop looked at me a little funny and told me that they didn't serve
sandwiches at that bar. So much for ordering a beer, so I decided I would try
one each of all the different kinds of mixed drinks I had ever heard of.
After
three mixed drinks, the distance from the bar stool to the floor looked to be
about 40 feet. I climbed down into the distant canyon below and made my way out
of the bar. There was a four-lane highway between the bar and the Navy base. I
stood for some time, looking in both directions for oncoming traffic. It went
through my mind that my mom would kill me if I got myself run-over and somehow
that made sense at the time.
When
the highway looked clear for about a quarter mile in both directions, I crossed
as fast as I could and ran into the chain link fence that surrounded the base.
Finding my way, hand over hand along the eight-foot chain link fence I
eventually came to the guard shack. After taking one look at me, the Marine MPs
on duty had a good laugh and helped me find my ID card.
Back
at the barracks, they had been having a water fight with the pump handle fire
extinguishers and someone was asleep on my top bunk. He refused to get out
because he said that his mattress was wet. I knew in my clouded mind that I was
going to have to lay down real soon or I was going to fall down and most likely
would not be able to get back up again. Lifting up the mattress, I rolled him
out of the top bunk and he hit the floor with a loud thud. What have I done to
this poor guy, I thought. But he got up, stumbled over to another bunk and lay
back down.
The
following evening, several of us took the bus to Miami Beach. At a bandshell on
the beach, there was a Latin orchestra playing and couples were dancing in the
park. The two guys I came with, picked up a couple Latin chicks and wanted to
stay. So I left to wander in and out of several different hotel parties along
the beach allowing them to assume I was one of their alumni or frat-rats. No
one asked me to leave. Several, who didn’t have a clue who I was, shook my hand
and explained how sorry they were when they heard I had gotten drafted.
Sometime
after midnight, I was walking along the beach behind the cabana at the
Fontainebleau Hotel on my way back to find a bus stop. A couple of young
schoolteachers from back east were sitting in the pool area near the beach
visiting with the one girl’s boyfriend and I stopped to visit with them.
One
of them ordered me a fancy rum drink with a little umbrella in it and we talked
until the wee hours of the morning watching the stars and staring out over the
dark Atlantic. I had nothing else to drink that night, having learned my lesson
the hard way from the hangover I had earned the night before. Thus, ended my
first Navy liberty.
Two
days before we were scheduled to return to Port Columbus, the weather bureau
began reporting a hurricane headed our way. We had no weather satellites and
thus no long lead-time advance warning in those days. Hours before the
hurricane hit, the squadron Commanding Officer (CO) made the decision to fly
all our aircraft out of the area as the storm was going to come ashore near our
location. Worse yet, the storm was forecast to cause widespread heavy rain for
most of the east coast.
The
Skipper, the Patrol Plane Commander (PPC) and copilot (PP2C) went to make one
last check on the weather. The Plane Captain (PC), an enlisted flight engineer,
preflighted the plane. I loaded the rest of the tools and equipment into the
PB4Y and we took off just ahead of the storm. The weather overtook us about
halfway back to Port Columbus. We could have outrun it if we had been flying
away from the storm, but we were paralleling its course at a right angle.
When
I saw a forty-pound toolbox floating around in the back of the plane, I
realized we were in some really rough air. After strapping down everything with
ropes and tie-down cables, I went to watch the instruments over the PC’s
shoulder. The rate of climb indicator was pegging out up, then down. The
altimeter looked like a high-speed time clock doing the same thing. The PC said
I better get strapped in, so I went forward and buckled myself into the nose
gun turret. I couldn’t even see the wing tips and the rain was so heavy it was
coming in the cracks around the turret.
Late
that afternoon, approaching Port Columbus, the landing conditions were
zero-zero. There were no VOR, DME or ILS approaches in those days. Our pilot
was an old experienced pilot and set up a long final approach. The Ground
Controlled Approach (GCA) guys were keeping us on course, but staying on glide
path was another thing entirely. When you’re losing 500 hundred feet and
gaining 500 hundred feet every other minute, it's hard to nail the glide slope.
Hearing
the wheels hit, I said to myself, thank God we’re finally on the ground, but I
could still couldn’t see anything. The power came up and we were airborne
again. A second later, we were on the ground again and this time I could see
the runway lights passing by the windows.
It
was still raining hard as we parked the aircraft and all climbed out. We were
standing under the wing to stay out of the rain when the copilot went over to
the landing gear and picked a limb out of the strut. “See I told you we hit
something,” he said, holding up the small branch for proof. Obviously, we had
taken the top out of a tree just before touchdown.
“That
ain’t all,” the PC added. “We hit the ground!”
“Nah,”
the pilot rebutted. “No way we were on the ground.”
An
old brick factory in line with the runway just outside the boundary fence had
been torn down years before, but the cracked and partly mud covered brickyard
foundation remained.
The
next morning, our PC got a pickup and drove out to where he thought we had hit
the top of a tree. What he discovered was that about 50-feet the other side of
the small tree were two short, but very distinct main-gear wheel tread marks on
the brickyard ground. He came back and took us out to see for ourselves. Any
landing you walk away from is a good one, they say, but evidence indicated we
had made more than one.
The
fighters couldn't stay in the air like we did in the old Privateer. When the
squadron pilots started reporting in, we found out the Corsairs were scattered
all over the southern U.S. at any National Guard air base or airport they could
find.
After
my dad was transferred from Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio to Tinker AFB in
Oklahoma, I left my weekend air reserve unit at Port Columbus taking with me
fond memories of some good times. Thinking I had no other options, I joined a
reserve surface unit in Oklahoma City. The worst part was giving up my green
airman stripes, which I had worn proudly. So, for a short time, I was an
ordinary seaman.
I
graduated in 1955 from Midwest City High School and planned to enter
undergraduate school at the University of Oklahoma in the fall. There is
probably no good reason for this story in a group of flying stories except that
summer, I was offered a front row seat in which to view how the surface Navy
coordinated anti-submarine warfare in the era prior to the proliferation of U.S.
and Russian nuclear submarines.
I
needed to take another two-week Navy training cruise. In those days you did
what you were supposed to do because if you didn’t, you’d get a letter in the
mail that began with the word “Greetings” from your local draft board.
Posted
on the Reserve Center bulletin board was information about several two-week
cruises to Puerto Rico and I thought to myself that sounds like fun, so I
signed up for one. Unbeknownst to us landlubbers, this was a long-standing joke
among the yeomen. There were no reserve ship cruises to Puerto Rico. All of the
cruises were temporary duty (TDY) with the regular Navy fleet and you took the
luck of the draw.
When
my orders arrived, I had been assigned to two-weeks duty on the USS Ross out of
Norfolk, Virginia. A round trip airline ticket was enclosed. Maybe this wasn't
all bad. One of the airline legs was on an airline that was flying the new
British Comet, the first jet passenger aircraft to be placed in commercial
service.
However,
the Comet had recently experienced some structural failure and had been
grounded. Another seaman from my surface unit also drew the same assignment. We
were traveling together and flew on a Vickers Viscount, a new turbo-prop
airliner.
My
shipmate and I arrived at the Norfolk Naval Base and as we entered the dock
gate, the Marine MP on duty asked me for my ID card. I took it out of my wallet
and handed it to him. He broke it in half and handed it back to me snarling,
"Never let your ID card out of your possession, sailor."
I
began to suspect this might not be my kind of Navy and the next two-weeks would
bear that out. We boarded U.S. Navy destroyer DD-563 the USS Ross, reported for
duty and were off on our two-week shanghaied adventure. The Ross was a Fletcher
class destroyer. Whatever that meant? So I looked it up. Basically, it’s bigger
than a destroyer escort, smaller than a cruiser and a lot smaller than a
battleship. The largest watercraft I’d ever been on was a six-passenger
speedboat and that was on a lake.
The
next morning, I was sound asleep in my bunk located in the bow of the ship when
I heard this terrible crashing noise. Trying to get out of an unfamiliar bunk
quickly, I hit my head on the bunk above me. What had awakened me was the
anchor chain falling into the anchor locker just forward of my bunk. No one
else was around. When I went topside, the chief on duty acted surprised to see
me because he had reported me absent at muster and assumed that I had missed
the ship’s sailing. I guess the regulars thought it was funny not to bother
waking up the reserve kid.
After
a chewing out from the chief, he sent me to the executive officer who chewed me
out again and assigned me to the highly technical job of chipping paint off the
first gun turret deck. I was also told that it was against Navy regulations to
get sunburned. With my fair skin, it was going to be difficult not to get
burned from the sun’s reflection off the water, but some how that regulation
seemed to make sense to the officer explaining it.
Obviously,
what they did on these old destroyers was start at one end, chipping off the
old paint and repainting it until they got to the other end. Then, start all
over again. It was, however, peaceful cruising out there on the ocean waters.
At
sea, I learned to tell how far away we were from the coast by the green or blue
shades of the water and watched the dolphins run along the sides and chase the
bow as though they were racing with the ship. On occasion, I would see flying
fish come out of the water and travel long distances through the air. I guessed
they were feeding on insects just above the water.
On
one sunny afternoon, while executing my prerogative to chip as much paint as I
cared to, a large submarine surfaced about a quarter mile off our side. The
ocean was very calm at the time and the boat just seemed to materialize right
out of thin air. It is really a very eerie feeling to watch a sub surface close
up for the first time.
Our
ship was scheduled to take part in submarine chasing exercises for the next
couple of days and I was ready for a change in duty. Standing port or starboard
watch above the bridge was a whole lot more interesting than chipping paint.
Well, everything is relative isn’t it?
Every
24 hours, I had to stand a four-hour day watch and a two-hour night lookout
watch. For some reason, I always seemed to catch the mid or first watch. When I
asked why I always caught the middle of the night watches, the boatswain mate
laughed as he explained that he set the watches alphabetically starting with
the mid-watch. My last name began with “A” and of course, he started with me. I
got the message.
When
the sub's antenna is out of the water, they can communicate with the surface
ships via radio. Late that afternoon, we joined up with several other destroyers
and a cruiser. An Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) blimp was also in the area.
After dark, the fleet exercises with the submarine commenced and to make
matters more interesting, a heavy overcast had rolled in.
At
night, the sea glowed like it was lit with a florescent light down the sides of
the ship as it cut through the water. I knew it was only the phosphorous in the
salt water that caused this, but it gave the ship a ghostly glow in the
nighttime darkness and even more pronounced from atop the lookout deck.
In
the wheelhouse below, I could hear a lot of chatter over the radio, so I
assumed we were chasing the sub I had seen the day before on this particular
night. The blimp was also somewhere above us in the clouds. Suddenly, out of
nowhere, I heard the roar of two radial engines as the blimp descended out of
the clouds just over my head. A large splash in the water a few feet off our
port side and a muffled boom in the water followed the sound of the blimp’s
engines.
We
had been mistaken for the submarine by the blimp and what had hit the water was
a Practice Depth Charge (PDC). Needless to say, our Mustang Captain exchanged a
few choice words over the radio with the blimp pilot. The term mustang denotes
an officer who had come up through the ranks. I’ve often wondered what would
have happened if that PDC landed on the deck where I was standing lookout and
exploded.
The
weather cleared the next day and when I reported to stand port watch that
afternoon, visibility was unrestricted and clear from horizon to horizon.
A
few months earlier, the Ross had hit a waterlogged tree floating just below the
surface and did some major damage to the bow. Because of this, the Captain had
emphatically ordered the lookouts to report any and every object sighted.
The
sailor standing watch next to me on the starboard side was looking through his
binoculars and sounded off, "Tin can at zero three zero, sir."
Tin
Can is the nickname for a destroyer escort. The Officer of the Day (OD) or
bridge officer on duty grabbed his binoculars and commenced scanning the
horizon to the right of the bow. After a minute or so, the Captain came out on
the bridge deck and also started looking.
By
now I’m looking over to the starboard even though I was on port watch. Finally,
the OD looked up to the starboard watch and asked, "What kind is it again,
sailor?"
The
sailor took another look through his binoculars and replied, "Looks like
peaches to me, sir." Even the old, seldom smiling Captain got a laugh out
of that as we watched an empty one-gallon can float past the right side of the
ship.
Steaming
along, actually the ship burned diesel, on a rather quiet afternoon, I watched
the boatswain mate walk down the side of the ship with an old ragged, taped up,
life preserver in his hand. He flung it as far off into the water as he could
and someone yelled, "Man overboard!"
Instantly,
an alarm bell went off, men stopped their work and took up assigned positions
on the ship. There were a lot of commands being issued from the bridge as the
Ross slowed and made a hard turn to the right.
In
the midst of this commotion, I tried several times to get the attention of
someone down on the bridge deck to explain that it was only an old life
preserver and not a man and we shouldn’t worry about it. I continued to be
ignored. Finally, I yelled down, "It's not a man overboard, it’s a piece
of junk!"
The
OD looked up at me and sarcastically said, "It’s a drill." Well, who
said a kid from Oklahoma that grew up in Ohio was supposed to know anything
about the sea-going Navy anyway.
In
dock, we had to cross a moored aircraft carrier going and coming ashore and I
got a chance to look around. Firmly, I resolved that the closest I would ever
get to the big pond again would be flying over it in an airplane too large to
land aboard an ocean going vessel. Until many years later when I went aboard a
large vacation cruise ship in the Caribbean, I kept my vow.
The
second week of the cruise, we steamed into the North Atlantic. One night while
standing lookout, the waves started breaking over the bow and splashing against
the lower forward gun turret, approximately the height of a third-story window.
The sailor standing watch with me explained that he had seen the waves break
over the second gun turret before, so not to worry.
After
my infamous cruise on the USS Ross, I drilled at the Reserve Center in OKC a
few more times. I would go into the room where they gave the physicals and
practice on the color blindness flip cards. There were twenty-four cards with
different shades with numbers hidden in the colored bubbles. By getting someone
to name the six or eight cards I always missed, I tried to memorize the
patterns on the cards and sometimes I could.
If
all I wanted to be was a jet jockey, why not just go join the Air Force. The AF
took high school graduates for pilot training, so I walked into the AF
recruiting office and told the Sergeant, “I want to be a pilot. Where do I sign
up?”
The
ol’ Sergeant, who’s stack of ribbons went up over his left shoulder, explained
that he would have to send me to the Air Force training base at Wichita Falls.
He handed me a voucher for a bus ticket, shook my hand and I was off.
The
next morning, after spending the night at a hotel in beautiful downtown Wichita
Falls, I reported to the base. I was sent to a building where I took a written
exam. The airman giving the exam told me that with scores like I had made, I
was as good as in. I started feeling pretty good about my chances.
Next,
I was sent to take the physical exam and I busted the color test. Once again I
insisted, "Point to any color and I will name it for you, I am not color
blind."
The
flight surgeon allowed that maybe I wasn’t exactly color blind in the truest
sense of the word, but if I couldn’t pass the card test, he wasn’t going to
pass me for a flight physical. The AF allowed for no other test like the Navy’s
Farnsworth lantern test or the Army’s yarn test.
It
was a long bus ride back home that night. What was I going to do? Ever since
grade school, I had planned on becoming a jet pilot and had never even
considered any other option.
PART
III. Military Aviation
In
the fall, I enrolled at the University of Oklahoma and transferred to the Naval
Reserve surface unit at Norman for drill. I had only one goal in mind, get two
years of college and apply as a Naval Aviation Officer Cadet (AOC).
OU
was a land grant university and these were mandatory military draft times for
all males over the age of eighteen. This meant that every able bodied
non-veteran male under the age of thirty five that wanted to stay in college
signed up for one of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs during
their freshman and sophomore years.
The
primary requirement for joining the ROTC was to have a pulse and to be able to
stand up slightly more erect than an orangutan. Guys that wanted to go to
advanced cadets and could not pass the AF eye exam went in the Army ROTC
program.
My
first inclination was to sign up for Naval ROTC, but that required a four-year
commitment. You were, however, paid a small salary like in the reserves. The
Air Force and the Army ROTC only required two years of attendance and only paid
its cadets if they continued on in the advanced two-year program.
Signing
up for Naval ROTC would probably have been the best move for me. Being in the
reserves like some of the other ROTC students, I could have drawn both ROTC pay
and Naval Reserve drill pay. However, if I could not get into aviation cadets
after graduation, I would have been obligated to spend four-years in the
surface Navy and that was not going to happen.
To
meet the college requirement, I signed up for Air Force ROTC, but after trying
to enlist as a pilot once already, I had no plans of going in the Air Force. I
could enter the Naval AOC program with sixty college credit hours, if not
married. That seemed like the shortest path to my goal. Thus, my plan was to
finish my sophomore year and apply for AOC as I had already passed the Navy’s
flight physical exam.
The
AFROTC program classes on air power were reasonably interesting, but Tuesday
afternoon drills were a real bitch. Oklahoma’s unpredictable weather had us
marching in winter Class-A wool uniforms on 90-degree days. That was less than
conducive to enhancing one's espirit de corps.
Having
no plans to go on to advanced AFROTC, my second year was pretty much of a
coast. There were some real geeks in the senior officer cadet corps that
delighted in intimidating the underclassmen. One hot afternoon, returning to my
dorm from the drill field with my cap cocked on the back of my head, my jacket
unbuttoned and my tie loosened, a late model sports car screeched to a halt and
backed up towards me.
I
saw it was one of those rich-kid cadet officers on me like a traffic cop.
Demerits could affect your grade point and I didn’t need any. My grade average
was bad enough as it was.
Thinking
fast, I removed my nametag and stuck it in my pocket. The cadet officer approached
and asked my name. I said, “Robert Anderson, sir,” as I proceeded to put my
uniform in order. He wrote me up for being out of uniform and not having a
nametag. I hoped there wasn’t a real cadet by that name because if there was,
he sure as heck got a demerit that day.
Someone
told me about a Naval Air Reserve VP squadron at NAS Dallas in Grand Prairie,
Texas. It was the largest Naval reserve base not located on a coast. The Navy
mainly kept it open for the convenience of refueling cross-country aircraft and
because the Chance Vought aircraft factory, which manufactured the F4U
Crusaders, shared the runway.
NAS
Dallas sent an R5D to the Will Rogers Municipal Airport once a month to pickup
USNR airmen in the area. We were picked up on Friday evening and returned us
home late Sunday evening. This beat the heck out of going to drills one night a
week with a surface unit. I was assigned to VP-702, a patrol squadron, just
what I had been wanting.
My
new reserve squadron was flying the older P2V-4 Neptune. The letter “P” being
Navy designation for patrol aircraft, the number “2” being the second patrol
bomber purchased from that manufacturer, the “V” standing for Lockheed. The
dash numbers following the aircraft indicated its modification. Newer versions
being flown by the fleet were the P2V-5F. The fifth version along with many
other improvements added the tail-boom stinger for the Magnetic Anomaly
Detection (MAD) equipment. The F-modification, in this case added the outboard
jet engines.
The
range for a fully loaded P2V was about 4,000 statute miles. However, an early
model set a world’s non-stop, non-midair refueling record. The Truculent Turtle
flew from Pearce Aerodrome in Australia to Port Columbus in September of 1946.
The
original Lockheed P2V weighed in at about 39,000 pounds, but by the time they
got through hanging all of the ASW gear on them the P2V-5 weighed in at about
40,000 pounds. The P2V-5F and later versions had a gross takeoff weight of over
70,000 pounds with a full fuel load. No wonder they added a pair of J34W jet
engines to the long-winded ol’ Neptune to help her takeoff. Top speed with
two-a-turning and two-a-burning was about 330 mph at low altitude. At 14,000
feet maybe 400 mph, but she would really be burning up the fuel to get that
speed.
Lockheed
was famous for building aircraft with strong main spar structures and with the
exception of the Boeing B-50, several Lockheed models were the only aircraft
certified to fly into the eye of a hurricane at the time.
Many
uncertified aircraft have been flown into hurricanes. My cousin Phil flew
aircrew on an Air Force C-54 in the Pacific. He recalled how in the
mid-fifties, they were often ordered to divert towards possible developing
typhoons and hurricanes to report back on the storm's condition and position.
On
my first cruise with VP-702, we went to NAS Alameda across the bay from San
Francisco. For a young aviator like myself, the area reeked of aviation
history. This was where the legendary Pan American Flying Clippers first
originated their trans-Pacific flights. Circling the Bay area was the first
time I had ever seen a large shipyard from the air and a giant aircraft carrier
looked like a postage stamp. Yes indeed, I had made the correct decision by
joining a land-based air unit.
The
Navy was still operating blimps and several were assigned to a reserve unit at
Alameda. This, however, was the last time I recall seeing blimps in actual ASW
service.
During
the two-weeks we were there, I never saw the entire Golden Gate Bridge. In the
mornings, the bridge would be completely covered by fog and by noon the fog
would roll back just enough to reveal about half of the bridge. I still recall
flying over Sausalito and how the mountains were always a deep dark blue,
almost purple, as we came in over the bay. I took a great photo with our
ship-rigging camera once. It was high quality, but of course was in black and
white.
Over
the weekend, I ventured over to the then small artist’s colony at Sausalito.
After looking across the bay to San Francisco, I went to find a pay phone and
called my wife. A year or two before, she had bought a large framed print of a
painting of the San Francisco Bay. Not that she liked the painting so much, but
because the colors matched her new furniture. Over the phone I asked her,
“Guess what, I’m looking at?” It was the exact picture we had on the living
room wall and obviously the spot where the original had been painted.
During
this cruise, a regular Navy P2V had to ditch in the drink several hundred miles
out. Our squadron participated in the night search with no success. The
aircraft’s crew were located early the next morning and picked up by a surface
ship. Of the twelve aircrewmen, all had survived the water ditching, but two
died of hypothermia during the night. It is noteworthy that the survivors were
the heavier crewmen and that the two lighter-weight men, those with less body
fat, did not survive.
Our
P2V-4s had a 70,000-candlepower searchlight built into the forward part of the
right wing tip tank. This light could be manually directed with a pistol grip
from the cockpit. It was a lot of fun to come in low over a ship at night and
light it up with the searchlight. The crew on board the ship could probably
read a newspaper in the dark as we passed over.
During
the second week, at crew briefing, the CO read us a memo from the area Merchant
Marine organization. The gist of the memo was that we were eliminating the
helmsman’s night vision with our searchlights. They claimed that the helmsman
had to be replaced and his replacement paid overtime. The memo went on to say
that if we didn’t stop doing it, they were going to bill the Navy for the
overtime. Not exactly sure how you bill the Navy for anything, but the CO asked
us to stop and so we did.
One
of our P4Vs took a seagull through the front windshield during takeoff. Both
pilots and the PC in the jump seat ducked and no one was injured, but what a
mess. It took two days to clean all the bird feathers and stuff out of that
cockpit.
Our
P2V-4 aircraft were used for ASW patrol and training, even flying some of the
regular Navy’s coastal fan patrols. Pilots needing instrument currency training
were relegated to the Beech SNB twin-engine trainers. A light twin trainer does
not rate an aircrew position, but regulations required an observer, a lookout,
to be on board during simulated under the hood instrument flight conditions. I
took a half dozen of these sightseeing flights around the Bay area as an
observer.
The
Navy aircrewmen in the 1950s and early 1960s wore the silver combat aircrew
wings as aircrew designations. The Marine Corps still uses that style of wings
badge. There were three small holes in the scroll above the wings for inserting
small gold stars. Each star had a meaning, air-to-air combat, air-to-ground
combat and air-to-sea combat. Wearing the wings without the stars designated a
non-combat trained aircrewman.
In
the late 1950s, the Navy authorized a new style of aircrew wings. The new wings
were the larger gold observer’s wings worn by airborne weather observers and
back seat jet jockeys, except they now had the letters AC of the anchor.
I had acquired a pair when I was at Port Columbus and when I
showed up back at NAS Dallas wearing the new wings, I was challenged several
times as to the authenticity of the wings. Our post-exchange (PX) eventually
ordered the wings and within a year, every aircrewman on base was wearing the
new gold wings with their Class-A uniforms. Personally, I still preferred the
old style silver wings design and I still have mine.
An Air Naval Reserve Squadron is an
odd lot of men who for one reason or another are attracted to the adventure of
flying. Some were veterans who enjoyed continuing their duty part-time. Others
were there only to fulfill a military obligation. We had some Navajo Indians
that came over from Albuquerque. Their only employment other than the reserve
was fighting forest fires for the government. Their standard greeting was
“Yaa-ta-hay,” meaning hello and we all used it when they were around.
A
slang word that caught on was tool’in.
There was this movie actor kid from California. I had seen him in a TV
commercial once. A group of us were standing around and he was explaining about
an incident that had happened while they were airborne. “You see,” he said, “We
were tool’in around the pattern…” and one of the pilots asked what tool’in was.
He replied, “You know, like in tool’in around,” breaking everyone up. I’ll
remember them all as a great bunch of aviators.
When
my wife and I returned briefly to Dayton, Ohio where my daughter Laura was born
in Xenia. I transferred back to NAS Port Columbus. They would soon be getting
the Lockheed P2V-5F Neptunes being rotated down to the reserves as the new
P2V–7 versions were delivered to the fleet squadrons.
In
order to meet my annual two-week training requirement, I signed up for a P2V
electrical systems training class at NAS Brunswick, Maine. When we landed at
the base, there was eight feet of snow beside the runway. The tails of the
planes on the taxiways looked like shark dorsal fins moving across the snow.
The
base had the first helicopter squadron I had ever been around. They were flying
the early Sikorsky twin-rotor jobs and I was able to bum my first ride in a
chopper. In an airplane, I never experienced a sense of height. However, coming
into hover for touchdown in a helicopter gave me a sudden sensation of height
and messed with my Altiphobia.
With
the tech school under my belt, I was promoted to Aviation Electrician Petty
Officer 3rd Class. That spring, we returned to Oklahoma and I enrolled at
Oklahoma City University taking mostly design classes and an Airframe and
Engine (A&E) class as an elective. To stay active in the reserve, I
requested a transfer and was re-assigned to NAS Dallas and to the newly formed
VP-704, which now coincided with the OKC Will Rogers airport pickup.
On
my second VP squadron cruise, we were still flying the P2V-4 with only the two
recips, no jets outboard yet. The squadron departed as each aircraft was made
ready for NAS Los Alamitos located south of Los Angeles. Not to be confused
with NAS Alameda across the bay from San Francisco. Patrol planes were lone
eagles and seldom flew in groups.
Due
to fuel allocations, there was some kind of bookkeeping advantage to our
getting fuel in transit from the Air Force with gas chits. The AF had lots of
money, but the Naval Air Reserve was always short on funds.
We
landed at Amarillo Air Force Base near the site of old English Field. It was a
B-52 base for a while and after the Viet Nam war as an Army Air Depot. The
bases are closed now and the 13,500 ft runway is being used as the main
Amarillo airport.
A
freshly painted shiny white fuel truck came out and topped off our P2V with
115/145-octane Avgas. After takeoff and reaching cruise altitude, Commander
Moore, our squadron CO, dozed off with an enroute chart in his lap. Our
copilot, a young Lieutenant, was flying. I was riding the jump seat and we were
BS’ing about something or another.
The
rest of the crew had all settled in for the six-hour flight to the west coast
when the right engine started to pop. This woke up Commander Moore. The copilot
came forward with the mixture on that engine about the same time I was thinking
that would be a good idea. The right engine calmed down for a minute, only to
be followed by the left engine starting to pop.
We
had just crossed Sandia Mountain and were about 14,000 feet above Kirkland Air
Force Base, which at that time was a Strategic Air Command (SAC) base and also
where atomic bombs were stored. The Commander radioed for an expedited landing
at Albuquerque and we began a slow spiral to the runway with full rich mixture
and both engines cutting out all the way in. The Commander hadn't wanted to
call a Mayday, declare an emergency, as there was always a lot of paperwork to
filled out afterwards. We just wanted to get the plane on the ground and check
it out.
General
Curtis LeMay was head of SAC at the time and he was notorious for faking
emergency landings at his bases in order to check their security. We touched
down and two jeeps with APs holding burp guns stopped us on the runway at the
end of our rollout. The Commander told everyone to wait in the plane and he went
to identify himself so they would let us park.
After
checking a couple of plugs that were fouled, we drained some fuel from the two
main tanks and sent it over to the lab. Turned out the avgas was contaminated
with jet fuel (JP), basically a high-grade kerosene. Some phone calls back to
Amarillo AFB revealed that the gas truck that fueled us had recently been
repainted for use as a 130-octane fuel truck, but that it had previously been
used for JP. Obviously, they had failed to drain all the old fuel out of the
truck's tank.
The
AF de-fueled our plane and re-fueled it with fresh avgas. Needless to say, we
did an extensive ground run up prior to takeoff. And so a change of fuel and a
change of underwear later, we departed for the coast.
Our
P2Vs carried eight rockets under each wing. To qualify as combat ready, each
pilot had to fire a given number of practice rockets and drop some practice
bombs. I don’t think anyone ever failed this test. They just tried their best.
The rocket firing range was located in the desert outside the small town of
Fallon, Nevada. Several large bulls-eye targets the size of half a football
field were painted in the sand.
There
was a place on the pilot and copilot’s windshield frame to mount an optical
cross-hair gun sight. For firing rockets, we would start at 6,000 feet and push
over into about a 30-degree dive. At 3,000 feet, the pilot would fire one
rocket from each wing. I was standing up bracing myself against the bulkhead
between the two pilots in order to score hits on the target. After a few
routine dives, I got my 35mm color camera and was taking photographs. I took
some great shots through the cockpit windshield. That was until one of the
pilots was a little late on his pullout and hauled back a bit too hard on the
yoke. I was looking through the camera’s viewfinder and busted my ass on the
deck.
We
were flying in one of two orbital patterns around the rocket range with other
P2Vs from our squadron. The plane diving on the target to our right was still
in its dive when the eight-man life raft mounted on the left side of the rear
fuselage, exploded out the side. It inflated immediately and tumbled harmlessly
over the horizontal stabilizer and floated to the ground. We saw the whole
thing. They returned to NAS Fallon and landed. When we completed our runs, we
landed to have a look. Other than the loss of the raft and side panel, no harm
was done. Maybe it was the G-forces that had popped the raft, maybe improper
installation or maybe just one of those freaky things.
The
practice bombs were ten inches long and weighed a couple of pounds. They had a
charge in them that looked like a shotgun shell. My ordinanceman was a young,
three-stripe airman. As we made passes over the bomb target, the pilot would
radio him over the intercom system (ICS) when to drop a practice bomb out of
the rear hatch. It wasn't long before I caught on he was only dropping one bomb
at a time. We had cases of those practice bombs on board and this was going to
take all afternoon.
Making
my way to the aft section, I put my parachute on and laid down on my belly
looking out the open hatch beside the ordinanceman. Each of us took two bombs
in each hand and released them on a 1-2-3-4 count when the pilot called. This
put an adequate spread across the target and guaranteed at least a couple good
hits. After the eighth pass, I looked back and there was still one more full
case. On the next pass I dumped the whole box. On that last pass, the target
spread must have looked like it was hit with a giant shotgun blast. I called
forward to say we were out of practice bombs. No questions were asked.
Back
in L.A. that weekend, the crews divided into two groups. Those that needed a
long, over-water navigation training flight and those that just wanted to go
somewhere different. The first group was off to Hawaii and the other group
voted to go to the Seattle World's Fair.
One
of our reserve pilots, a civilian lawyer, needed to attend an emergency meeting
back home in OKC. He wanted to take an SNB and do a 2-day turnaround. Of
course, no one wanted to go with him. I was working on building time for my FAA
Commercial license and told him I’d go as observer, if he’d let me fly.
I
went over to Seal Beach to Turk’s Bar that Saturday evening and we departed
Sunday morning. Some SMBs may have had autopilots, but this one did not. In the
heat thermals over the Rockies, that Twin Beech beat me to a pulp. After a few
hours, I looked pleadingly at the Lieutenant, “You want to fly for a while?” I
asked.
“Nope,”
he replied with a grin. “You wanted to fly, have at it!” He made the landing at
Will Rogers and my young wife was there to pick me up. Monday afternoon we
returned to NAS Los Alamitos and I’ve never liked a Twin Beech since.
By
the end of my fourth fall semester in college, I was still a couple-dozen
credit hours away from an engineering degree. Remember the rules, you could go
to Naval AOC with 60-credit hours if you were single, but if you were married
you had to have a full degree.
It
was the second presidential term of Eisenhower and the economy had gone down
the tube. I had a family to support and I had four years of college plus the
equivalent of an Associates Degree in Drafting and Design. However, I still
lacked a semester and a half to complete my Bachelor’s Degree. Unable to find a
decent job in Oklahoma, on my next drill weekend, I drove to Dallas so that I
could also look around for a job.
Chance
Vought Aircraft, now called LTV for Ling-Tempco-Vought, was located on the
other side of the runway from Navy Dallas. I walked into the employment office
to apply for work as a junior engineer. When the laughter in the office died
down, I was told that LTV had just laid-off 6,000 employees due to the F8U
Crusader contract having been cancelled by the government.
In
order to draw two-week’s pay and stay in the barracks while I job-hunted, I
signed up for a two-week technical training class. Navy Dallas had a Marine VF
fighter squadron flying North American Saber jets and a couple of VR transport
squadrons flying the Douglas R5D. More to the point, the VP squadrons would
soon be getting the P2V-5F and the Navy had recently decided to train the
reserve patrol squadrons in ASW.
Apparently,
the training officer had seen my personnel file when I reported for tech school
and he explained that NAS Dallas had been selected as one of the three reserve
ASW training centers. How would I like to come on board as an aircrew-training
instructor? The Temporary Active Reserve (TAR) program allowed a Petty Officer
to pick his station assignment.
I
explained that I wanted to apply for aviation cadets, but wasn’t quite eligible
yet. Actually, I had one other pressing problem. If I stayed out of school to
work very long, I was going to get a draft notice and I’d have to go on two
years active duty wherever they sent me. Here I would have to sign up for three
years, but what he offered sounded appealing.
The
training officer pointed out that I was almost ready to go up for 2nd
Class Petty Officer and when I made 1st I could apply direct for AOC
at that time. Also, if I wanted to I could attend college locally in the
evenings. I said okay and he sent me to interview with Commander Kovak, the
officer in charge of the new ASW Training project. If he liked me, I was hired.
Kovak was my kind of officer and I signed up.
The
first order of business was to go through an instructor's training school. The
class was made up of mostly senior Petty Officers who taught in-service and
tech training classes. Instructors had to give a short lecture on some aspect
of training for their final exam.
Most
students in the class were nervous and gave otherwise dry and boring lessons.
Being well aware that I was the new kid on the block and even worse, a college
kid, I needed an icebreaker. The subject I chose was "If all else fails,
read the manual," and I told an off color joke to make my point. I was the
only one in the class with the nerve to do this and it worked. I was accepted
into the ol’ boys club, so to speak.
The
new ASW training unit would consist of the Commander, a Chief Petty Officer
(CPO) and three rated Petty Officers. We were given an empty wing in the
building that housed the Link trainers to set up our equipment. Trucks began
arriving with giant crates of equipment, which we unpacked like a bunch of kids
on Christmas morning. We had no idea what we were getting.
The
crates contained an elaborate sonobuoy sound simulator console, an ultra sound
water tank which was used to simulate radar signals and about every conceivable
piece of out dated ASW training equipment that the regular Navy wanted to get
rid of.
At
this time, the Russians had about four hundred conventional submarines.
Conventional meaning diesel electrical powered subs. The U.S. submarine fleet
had gone nuclear and thanks to the foresight of Admiral Rickover, we had a
bunch of them. Our nuclear submarine capacity was pretty scary in that many of
those subs could carry sixteen Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM).
With
all due credit to SAC, the U.S. submarine fleet may have been the single
greatest deterrent throughout the Cold War. Our Naval ASW air units were quite
capable of countering a conventional submarine threat, but as would soon be
proved to me later during exercises in the Caribbean, these tactics were
relatively useless against a high-speed nuclear powered sub.
Not
long after going on active duty, I was promoted to Aviation Electrician (AE)
Petty Officer 2nd Class. That, plus flight pay, off base married
rations pay and proficiency pay 1&2 for being in a critical rate now I was
making more that if I had hired on as a junior engineer on the outside. Not to
mention an allotment check that went to my first daughter.
For
the next two and a half years, I would divide my time equally between
instructing aircrewmen in the classroom and flying with the various reserve
squadrons. Each year, a couple of us aircrew instructors would go along with
each of the squadron’s two-week training cruises. Occasionally, we would form
up a special team to compete with an Atlantic or Pacific Fleet joint maneuver.
A
lot of our training cruises were off the West Coast in that our sister training
facility was NAS Los Alamitos. Thus, we logged a lot of flight time between
Dallas and the West Coast. In all my time as a Navy aircrewman, I don’t recall
any fatalities or serious injuries in our reserve squadrons. Their flight
safety records were excellent, but then again, we did have a lot of experienced
pilots and aircrewmen in those days.
An
amusing incident occurred at NAS Dallas when a transit blimp the Navy used for
public relations landed for an overnight stay. All of the ASW blimps had been
decommissioned by this time. The base still had one of the old mooring-masts,
which was rolled out to secure the blimp. The crew of the blimp had stopped
over to attend the annual Texas-OU football game and street party. The crew was
in a hurry to go on liberty and apparently spent the night in Dallas.
That
morning when I reported in, everyone was asking if I had seen the blimp. I
hadn’t and went to take a look. The blimp was still attached to the mooring
mast, but was standing nearly straight up on its nose with its tail fins up in
the air.
During
the night, a low-pressure front had moved through the area. Needless to say, no
one on our base knew anything about blimps, but apparently there was a chain
attached to a valve that allowed the pressure in the blimp to be released in
order to keep the blimp level.
When
the blimp crew arrived, they were somewhat upset to find that no one had taken
care to release the pressure valve. One of the flight line crew told them that
they ought to feel lucky that the darn thing was still there! After the crew
leveled their airship and calmed down, the base Ops Officer suggested that the
next time they came to Dallas, they might want to take time to give us some
instruction on the care and feeding of their large floating object. That was if
they expected us to baby-sit the blimp for them.
We
flew on Sundays and I guess that’s why they called us Weekend Warriors. On a
routine weekend training flight out over the Gulf of Mexico in a P2V-5F, a
couple hundred miles south of New Orleans, the right engine started smoking. We
had likely busted a jug, a cylinder head, on the radial engine and it was
pumping oil from the case onto the hot exhaust stack. The ventilation system
was picking up the smoke and within seconds, the entire aircraft cabin filled
with smoke. I wasn’t PC that day. I was sitting at the Nav table training a
couple of radar operators. The smoke was so thick that you couldn't see your
hand in front of your face, but there was no fire.
Finally,
the pilots realized that if they’d shut off the air vents, the smoke would stop
coming into the cabin. As soon as they did, the cockpit cleared and the pilots
proceeded to feather and shut down the right engine. We were plenty high and so
they took their time cranking up the two outboard jets. We obtained a clearance
to NAS New Orleans and without declaring an emergency, made a routine landing.
After
a phone call back to Dallas, the decision was made to leave our plane there
until our own mechanics could go down and repair it. NAS Dallas sent an R5D
from the VR squadron to pick us up. Needless to say, we took a pretty good
razzing from the Douglas pilots for them having to come and get us. A popular
magazine advertising slogan for Lockheed Aircraft at the time was "Look to
Lockheed for Leadership." The VR aircrew improved on the slogan by saying,
"Look to Lockheed for Leadership and Douglas for Transportation."
On
the return flight, riding in the back of the R5D, we waited for the pilot to
get up to cruise altitude and trim the aircraft up. Then six or eight of us got
a cup of coffee and strolled to the rear of the plane. We waited a few minutes
for the pilot to re-trim and then we walked back to the front again and waited
for the pilot to re-trim.
It
took one more time before the pilot caught on and yelled back, "Would you
guys just find a seat and sit down." Everyone had a good laugh because
payback is always heck.
PART
III. Military Aviation
On
the P2V, behind the pilot to the left of the PC’s fold-down jump seat, was the
infamous 186 Panel. Pronounced
one-eighty-six panel, this bulkhead consol contained most of the aircraft
system’s circuit breakers and some electrical components. The panel was so
named because it was located at aircraft station line 186.
An aircraft is dimensioned from nose
to tail by station numbers equal to inches. Thus, the 186 panel was located at
186-inches behind the nose or station zero of the aircraft. Like a ship, the up
and down measurements on an aircraft are measured by inches above and below an
arbitrary water line.
Aircraft
lofting evolved from shipbuilding and thus were dimensioned the same. The
draftsmen and designers were called Lofters
because they worked in the lofts above where the ships were being built.
The
Lockheed P2V could be boarded from the nose wheel-well into the cockpit area or
through the larger hatch in the rear belly. If an aircrewman ever had to
bailout, the rear hatch would be the first choice. The wing-spar on a P2V ran
through the center of the fuselage and was referred to as the wing beam.
Directly
above the wing beam was a plastic observation dome for sightings with a
sextant. The dome/hatch could be removed and laid on the deck. On hot days, the
hatch was always opened when boarding to let the heat vent out and often left
open in flight. It was noisy, but cooler.
During
taxi, a crewman would sit on top of the aircraft with his legs dangling through
the hatch and talked to the pilots over the ICS. I often performed this task,
as it was fun sitting up on top of the big bird as we taxied out. On a hot day,
it beat the heck out of the high temperatures inside the flight deck, but most
of all it probably saved many a wing tip collision, especially during night
time taxi.
The
radio operator’s station was located just aft of the wing beam. Down a short
stairway into the rear fuselage was the galley and ordinanceman’s station. In
this section, you could stand full up, unlike the forward flight deck where you
had to stoop to walk. There were drift flares and sonobuoy launch tubes located
in this rear area. In addition to an electric stove and cooler, there was a
canvas bunk for taking a nap.
In
the nose wheel-well crawl space, there was a small window to look through in
order to see if the hook-like latch had locked over a roller bearing on the
nose gear strut. Standard procedure on an approach to landing was for the PC to
drop down into the crawl space and verify that the gear was in the down and
locked position.
Sometimes,
when the gear was lowered at too high an airspeed, the gear would not latch
into the locked position. If this were the case, the nose gear would fold up
when the full weight of the aircraft settled onto it. Over the years, more than
one P2V had skidded in on its belly radar dome (Radome). The gear could be
kicked into the locked position if it failed, but the best procedure was to
slow down and recycle the gear.
Upon
checking, the PC would call out "The gear is down and locked, sir."
However,
on one routine flight, the following incident occurred. On final approach to a
landing, the pilot was intent on his approach and the PC hollered out "The
gear is NOT down and locked, sir."
The
pilot was only listening for the key phrase down-and-locked and replied,
"Roger" as he continued the approach.
The
anxious PC repeated, "NOT down and locked. I said, NOT locked, sir!"
The
startled pilot pulled up and executed a missed approach. When the gear was
recycled, it locked. Subsequent to that incident, the procedure was changed for
the PC to report, "The gear is UNSAFE," if indeed it was.
As
for a nose wheel failure, although a potentially dangerous problem, it was not
normally a serious condition on a P2V. Even the early P2V series were equipped
with a large Radome on the belly. If the nose wheel failed, the aircraft would
skid along on the runway, tearing up the Radome, but with very little damage to
the rest of the aircraft. Fortunately, I was never on one that failed. Although
on several occasions, we had to recycle the gear in order to get the nose wheel
to lock.
When
the nose gear failed to lock after many attempts, the procedure was to circle
the base in order to burn off any excess fuel before attempting to land. Thus,
while the plane circled, the crash crews were alerted and almost everyone on
the base had time to hear about it and find a good place in the shade to sit
and wait to watch the landing technique the pilot would use. In the only
incident I ever witnessed, the hydraulics held the aircraft up long enough to
get a jack under the nose.
Regulations
dictated that we had to wear our crash helmets for takeoffs and landings. I
usually put my helmet on for takeoff, but with a full fuel load onboard, it
wasn’t likely anyone would survive a crash on takeoff. Our standard issue
flight jumpsuits were coated with a flame retardant, which nearly made them insufferable
to wear in hot weather. After one or two washings, they lost the coating and
were as comfortable to wear as cotton khakis.
We
were to wear our parachute harness at all times. Over water, to also wear our
inflatable rubber life vest nicknamed a Mae West for the buxom film star. At
altitude, you had time to put on your harness and low over the water, there
wasn’t time to jump anyway. So, of course, no one did.
Over
the South Pacific, you might survive in the water long enough to get the life
raft out, but up north or in the Atlantic, you’d freeze to death in a matter of
minutes without an all-weather water suit. With a suit you might survive an
hour or two hoping to be picked up.
Sometimes
out over the water, especially in the Pacific, we might hit a wind shear. The
plane would gain 500-feet and before you could grab hold of something, lose
500-feet. It was a good idea to keep your seat belt on, at least loosely.
During a wind shear, one of our crewmen received a broken arm when he floated
into the air and tried to break his fall hitting the deck.
The
ol’ P2V could easily stay out for ten to twelve hours, even fourteen if need
be, but most of the time our patrols were only eight hours. Except for rigging
the occasional ship, we mostly bored holes in the sky. The far back bunk was
always cold at higher altitudes, so my sleeping place of choice was on the
floor beside the navigation table. For one thing, I could get to my crew
station quickly, if needed. The crew had to climb over the wing beam to the cold
back-end from time to time, as that was where the pee-tot tube, slang for
relief-tube, was located.
In
the Naval Air Reserve Training command (CNARESTRA), an aircrewman had to either
be an aircrew instructor or qualified in a needed aircrew position to draw
flight pay. There were some politics involved among the AD’s who had to rotate
the flight pay, but ASW types like myself, stayed on regular flight pay.
Our
regular ordinanceman on Cmdr Novak’s crew wasn’t a real gung-ho aircrewman, but
needed the flight pay for his young family and was also a very good cook. He
would draw ham, eggs, bread and coffee from the mess hall instead of our other
option, which was to draw box lunches. We ate pretty well on long flights. When
he wasn't cooking, he kept the coffee pot going. The flight deck could call for
a hot cup of java to be passed up over the wing beam anytime.
On a
routine weekend drill flight, I was onboard as an instructor, and the reserve
PPC decided his crew needed to do a bailout drill. He announced the drill over
the ICS and rang the standby-to-bailout bell. The first or short bell ring
meant standby for ditching or bailout. The crew was to put on their Mae West
life vests and crash helmets. If bailing out, assuming you had your harness on,
you had to also snap on your parachute. In this case, we were at altitude and
so it was a bailout drill. The reserve ordnanceman on this flight wore his
chute-harness all the time. That should have told me something.
The
second or long bell meant bail out. After the first bell, I felt a sudden rush
of air through the cabin and realized the rear belly hatch had been opened.
Diving over the wing beam and down the aft stair, I was barely able to grab the
reserve ordinanceman who was fixing to jump. He had been asleep in the bunk and
hadn’t heard over the ICS that it was a drill.
Aft
of the wing beam was a small compartment where the long-range radio operator
crew position was located. We rotated crew positions because in the reserves we
never had enough men to fly with a full crew compliment. I was a qualified PC
and as a radar operator, but often had to go back and set up the high frequency
(HF) radios. Unintentionally, I had fulfilled my once upon a time boyhood
ambition to be an airborne radio operator. Not a lot of our crewmen could tune
those old HF radios. My dad, having been an amateur radio operator, had taught
me a lot about radios even before entering the Navy.
Those
forty-pound ARC-14s radios located in the radio operators crew station, would
tune into almost any frequency, but the transmitter had to be setup with a
separate crystal-controlled tuning unit. Thus, the required frequency had to be
manually tuned from the radio compartment so that the pilots could switch to it
from their communication (COM) switchbox in the cockpit. These guard channels
were mainly to maintain contact with Air Traffic Control (ATC) center when we
were too far out and too low to talk to them on UHF. We used them more in the
Caribbean.
On a
long night patrol out over the Pacific, I was sitting in the radio compartment
tuning around on the shortwave band receiver for some music when I came across
an English language news broadcast. As I listened, I was thinking how
drastically the world situation had changed since I had last heard the evening
news. When the station identification came on, the announcer said, "You
are listening to Radio Moscow."
There
was a trailing wire cable antenna for the HF radio that could be reeled out of
the rear of the plane. The end of the cable had a lead ball weight, sometimes
referred to as a fish, to help hold the antenna vertical in flight. The antenna
could be reeled out 60-feet or more below the belly. This long wire antenna had
to be reeled in when flying between cloud layers because if the antenna touched
a cloud layer with a different static charge than the one we were currently
flying through, it would melt the fusible link connecting the antenna in the
rear bay and/or fry the antenna, cut it off like it had been cut with a cutting
torch.
Rigging
a ship means to come in low and fly alongside the ship, taking photos of it
with a hand-held camera that produced a large negative to show the ship in
great detail. Off the west coast the ships we rigged were a wide assortment of
tramp steamers and merchant ships. Russian trawlers were not often seen, but a
prize catch when found.
Russian
trawlers, used during the Cold War, were spy ships made to look like commercial
fishing vessels, but were equipped with elaborate electronic listening devices.
They had a large array of antennas that could be taken down when approached by
Navy surface vessel or patrol aircraft.
We
were required to fill out a brief form identifying the characteristics of each
ship we rigged. This method was used to track almost all ships going in and out
of our coastal areas during the Cold War. Comparing the many different sighting
reports provided very accurate tracking of all shipping. With today's AWAC
aircraft, the faster P3V Lockheed Orion and modern satellite surveillance,
these low level patrols are no longer as essential as they used to be.
Normally,
when rigging a ship the aircraft would fly a parallel course to the ship, but
if we intended to buzz them for effect we’d came in straight across their
mid-section. When we buzzed a merchant ship of suspicious origin and rattled
their portholes, we could tell it was a European crew because they would give
us the ol’ center-arm-up. If, however, it happened to be an American crew, we
usually got the middle-digit as we flew by. I don’t recall any sailors ever
jumping overboard when we buzzed them like in the movies. They had enough sense
to know we wouldn’t hit the ship, only rattled their portholes a little.
A
trawler’s crew was capable of taking down and covering up its antenna array in
a matter of minutes. On the rare occasion when we did come across a legitimate
Russian trawler, we tried to get on top of it before they could take down their
antennas. The procedure we followed was to pick up a suspect on long-range
radar, quickly try to get a bearing and range on the target and then switch the
radar to standby so as not to be picked up by the trawler’s Electronic Counter
Measures (ECM), basically a radar receiver.
More
than likely they had us on their radar, so we’d turn like we were flying away,
but descending so as to disappear under the radar horizon. At a couple hundred
feet over the water, with engines at military power, we’d turn to the heading
to intercept the trawler. The pilots would use the radar altimeter to judge the
height over the water.
Creative
ingenuity being what it was, the trailing wire antenna or at least the threat
of them became the reserve air Navy’s weapon of choice in our thin line of
defense against the Russian trawler fleet. We had heard of it being used and on
this one occasion, I was relatively sure we were onto a hot bogey. Our crew and
some others had rigged the same ship a few days before. I think that trawler’s
crew may have been getting a little tired of taking down and putting up their
array.
From
the APS-20 station, I called the flight deck, “Permission to lower the trailing
wire antenna,” fully expecting a negative reply.
Instead,
“What the hell, let’s give it a try,” was the answer. I scrambled over the wing
beam and lowered the trailing wire antenna all the way out as we approached the
trawler amid-ship. The object being to bring the cable and lead ball across the
trawler’s antennas, popping insulators and busting poles as we went over. Other
crews had done it before. This procedure wasn't in the book, but if executed
properly, would knock a trawler out of commission for two or three-days
minimum. Who were they going to complain to?
I
didn’t even feel a jerk when the cable hit. Either I had let out too much cable
or the pilot was too low and I think the ball hit the side of the ship and
bounced into the air. If we did any damage to their long wire antennas, it was
pure luck. It stripped the lead ball weight off of the end of our trailing wire
and I was afraid it had bent the cable reel, but it hadn’t.
The
fun part was when the pilot executed a pullout, did a tight turn and came back
parallel to the trawler for a second pass. We could see the crew standing on
deck shaking their fists at us. This meant that if we hadn’t done some damage,
at least they darn well knew we had tried.
The
P2V was a fantastically durable airplane. It had a thick wing spar like a B-29
and would take extreme turbulence without structural failure. However, it did
have two design faults. The first, as aforementioned, was about the nose gear
failing to lock in the down position at high air speeds. The other was a
variable camber (Varicam) trim design on the horizontal stabilizer. This trim
system used electro/hydraulic motors linked mechanically to the stabilizer to
vary or warp the aerodynamic curvature for providing nose-up and nose-down
trim.
One
of the procedures that we trained for on the earlier models was known as
run-away Varicam. If the nose-up trim failed in the nose-up position, adding
power to the aircraft would cause the P2V to fly into a power on stall. Until
the P2V-7 series, where the pilot had control, the pilot had to fly the plane
while a circuit breaker or relief valve taken off line.
The
prevailing theory on how to fly out of condition was to reduce power and enter
a left bank, the normal attitude that an aircraft tends to nose-down, until the
failure was resolved. We heard rumors of it occurring in the fleet, but it must
have been a rather rare because I can’t recall any such incidents with our
planes. I understand that the P2V-6 and P2V-7 had a different override
procedure for the runaway Varicam, but I was out of the service before the –7s
entered the reserves squadrons.
Leftover from the latter part of World War
II, those old APS-20 radar sets were very effective for searching an area 100
miles ahead. At night, it was really good for navigating along a coast. Water
absorbed the radar waves and the earth reflected them displaying a map-like
silhouette of the coastline.
On a
night flight up the East Coast to Newfoundland, we soon ran out of VOR stations
and had to navigate on the old LF radio ranges. We were headed to NAS Argentia,
some Canuck airfield where the U.S. had a joint Naval operation agreement.
Sitting at the radar station and comparing the coastline to a sectional chart
in my lap, I was able to give the pilot headings to steer over the ICS, which
he cross checked with the LF until he decided my heading were better. In fact,
when we got closer, I told him where to look and he had the airbase lights in
sight
Our
PPC on this trip was the base Executive Officer. He was also our pilot training
officer. He and Commander Kovak were our two best pilots. The first time I flew
with the Exec, he boarded the aircraft and threw his parachute harness behind
the seat. I remember thinking this pilot has no intentions of bailing out of
this plane. He intended to bring the bird home and that was my kind of pilot.
The
next morning when we were ready to depart Newfoundland, there was a driving
rain and visibility was zero-zero. I could not see the tip tanks as we taxied
out to the runway for takeoff. Kovak was in the pilot’s seat and the Exec was
flying copilot. Kovak ask me to go forward to the nose, get on the ICS and see
if I could see the runway centerline.
The nose observer’s seat on a P2V is
entered through a crawl space beside the nose wheel landing gear. I climbed in
the nose station seat and called back that I could see the centerline of the
runway just fine. The nose crew position was normally not occupied during
takeoff, but I buckled-in. I was to call out if we were left or right of the
runway centerline.
Commander
Kovak put the nose wheel on the centerline and pushed the throttles forward.
The white-line was barely visible through the rain streaked nose canopy and I
doubt the pilots could see it at all from the cockpit. At rotation speed (V1)
we were lined up fine, lifted off safely and climbed out at (V2) through the
driving rain. We broke out into a sunny sky a few thousand feet later or as I
mentioned in the preface, we flew for the light.
Anytime
we flew up north to New England, orders were placed to pick up fresh live lobsters
for the base CO and others. On this particular flight to Newfoundland, a couple
of old 1st Class AD Petty Officers had come along. I assumed they just wanted
to get away for a few days, but unbeknownst to me, during the night they had
unbolted the searchlight housing on the front of the right wingtip tank,
collapsed the fuel bladder and stacked 24 cases of Canadian whiskey into the
tip-tank.
On
the return flight, we stopped at Providence, Rhode Island for a routine customs
check. When the inspector came aboard the aircraft, he immediately found a case
of Canadian whiskey not very well hidden in the radio compartment, which had
been intentionally placed there for the inspector to find. Someone paid the
duty on the decoy stash and we were off. As an unwilling participant in their
little rum-running scheme, I was glad I hadn't known anything about it until
after we got back.
Behind
the radar operator’s station was the navigator's table where charts could be
spread out. We had no navigators like in the old flying boat days. The pilots
and crewmen like myself were all trained in dead reckoning and we could drop
wind drift smoke flares.
The
radarman’s seat could be rotated to face the navigation table and the reason I
avoided learning, or at least denied knowing how, to play 42 or pinochle.
Commander Kovak liked to play pinochle with two other crewmen and they
generally played at the NAV table. Whenever the pilot climbed out of the
pilot’s seat I’d bust my tail for the front seat. Most of the rest of the crew
didn’t want the seat anyway. I’d turn off the autopilot and practice flying the
gages.
Commander
Kovak had flown in Korea and returned to civilian life after the war. The best
job he could get was as a crop duster and he soon decided that he had a better
deal in the Navy. At any rate, he was one heck of a good pilot and I logged
several hundred hours of front seat time flying with him or maybe I should say,
with whatever reserve copilot (PP2C) was with us at the time.
Approaching
the Dallas Metroplex from the east we had to crossover Love Field traffic to
get to Navy Dallas. I had been in the pilot’s seat for an hour or so when
Commander Kovak had grown tired of playing cards and relieved the copilot. The
copilot promptly stretched out on the flight deck to take a nap.
We
were not yet in the DFW control zone and I was straight and level at about
8,000 feet inbound on the Dallas VORTAC. Commander Kovak, of all things, was
reading a Flight Safety magazine,
a monthly Navy publication.
A
dark shadow came over the cockpit and as instantly as it had come it was gone.
A half second later, we were looking down the exhausts of a Boeing 707 Delta
airliner, descending into Love Field. Expecting to be rocked or even rolled by
the airline’s vortex, I got a death grip on the yoke. But not even a ripple.
Vortex only occurs when the wings are loaded and the airliner was descending
rapidly.
It
was a classic case of us being below him and the airliner being above and
behind us. It was doubtful that they ever saw us or received an ATC radar
advisory.
Turning
to look at Kovak, I fully expected to be ordered out of the pilot's seat and
allowed never to take the controls again. He just looked up from his magazine
and remarked, "They sure get big when you get that close to them, don't
they,” and went back to reading his magazine. As the old cliché goes, an inch
is as good as a mile.
With
the draft still in effect, the Air Navy was getting more volunteers than it
could train so the regular Air Navy initiated an Aviation aircrew Candidate
(AvCad) program and sent them to the reserves. The Army and Air Force Reserve
and Guard had initiated similar programs. These programs allowed an individual
to serve only six months on active duty and then remain in a reserve unit for
the next seven and a half years.
Avcads
were sent to A-School in Memphis, Tennessee for a rating, but some of these
schools only took four or five months to complete. After that, they were sent
to us to finish their active tour of duty. I guess we were supposed to make
aircrewmen out of them in that time. The classes I used to teach to six or
eight students mushroomed to twenty or more students.
We
put them through basic sonobuoy, ECM and radar operation courses, but it’s really
difficult to keep students in class eight hours a day, plus our actual airborne
training capability was limited, except when reserve pilots were there on
weekends. Between classes I had AvCads scrub decks, polish floors and paint
bulkheads to occupy their time. Now I had become as bad as those regular Navy
swabbies back on the USS Rose.
If a
trainee fell asleep in my class, I had a mop bucket just around the corner from
the sonobuoy trainer. During my lectures, if someone nodded off to sleep,
without missing a beat, I would pick up the mop bucket and as the rest of the
class watched, drop it right beside them. The sleeping trainee would be
startled awake and the rest of the class would get a good laugh out of it.
Needless to say, most then stayed awake in my classes not knowing when the next
shoe might drop.
We
got a new assistant ASW training officer assigned to our unit, a Lieutenant
Commander who had been a single-engine jet pilot in a VF squadron. He had flown
Panthers and Cougars in Korea, but knew little and cared less about ASW. He was
only there to finish his twenty for retirement. On Sunday mornings, he’d sit in
the training office with his feet up on the desk and read the funny papers. If
anyone asked him what he was doing, he’d reply, "Studying for
Commander."
A
year or so earlier, I had designed some file cards for tracking each
aircrewman’s training progress. This goes back to the thing about who was
authorized to wear the gold aircrew wings. Each class attended during the
training regiment of flight and ground school was marked on the cards
indicating qualified for a specific aircrew position. In order to send them to
the printing office, I assigned some made-up official looking form number to
the file cards. With the addition of some new aircrew classes, it was time to
update the file cards.
The
new officer and I first became acquainted when I was re-doing one of the file
card layouts and the he saw me marking up the cards to be reprinted. He
commenced to chew me out. Something to the effect of who did I think I was,
modifying an official Navy document without authorization.
Looking
up from my work, I saw Commander Kovak and the Chief standing in the doorway
behind him. They were laughing at my getting chewed out and my trying to
explain the made-up form number. I’m sure Kovak explained it to him later
because after that the new LtCmdr and I pretty much became friends. He liked to
tell flying stories and I was always willing to listen to a good flying story.
During one of our many bull sessions, I asked him if he had ever bailed out of
a jet fighter, as I knew the old Panther and Cougar jets were notorious for
flameouts.
"Well
almost," he said and went on to tell me that while flying off a carrier,
his Cougar's engine started to surge and appeared to have flamed out. Climbing
out on the wing, he looked down at the water 6000 feet below. “While hanging
onto the side, I reached back into the cockpit and jockeyed the throttle back
and forth until the engine started again and I climbed back in. So you see, I
almost bailed out one time.”
On
another occasion, we got off on the subject of UFOs and he told me about an
experience he had, “One night over Los Angeles, I was flying a North American
F4J Fury and I spotted several UFOs flying at a higher altitude and I attempted
to climb up to their altitude. Each time I would get close to them, they would
move rapidly away. I never got near them, but I’m convinced to this day, that
UFOs do exist!”
I’ve
talked with other pilots who had similar encounters. This did me a considerable
amount of good finding out that others, who had no reason to lie about it, had
seen them too.
During
the Cold War era after WW II between our Allies and the Iron Curtain, the
United States planned a round of nuclear tests in the Bikini Islands. In order
not to tie up a regular Navy unit, NAS Dallas was asked to activate one of its
patrol squadrons. VP-703 was designated to be that unit. In order not to work
hardships on married families and career professionals, a call went out for
volunteers from all the VP squadrons.
I
was one of the station keepers transferred to VP-703 to help train and
re-qualify the aircrewmen for the new composite squadron. On the day the
squadron mustered to depart for the West Coast and their final leg over the
Pacific, to my disappointment, one of the volunteers named Bruce did not make
muster at the assembly hall. He was an electronics technician (AT) and a real
asset to the squadron.
The
P2Vs were lined up, engines running and ready to taxi when I saw Bruce wheel
into the Flight Ops parking lot. I took off running to meet him, grabbed one of
his bags and we both ran for his waiting P2V. The lookout sitting in the open
top hatch, I’m sure had called the pilots over the ICS and he was yelling for
us to come on and pointing to the rear belly hatch. We threw his stuff on and I
gave Bruce, who was a little short, a boost in through the hatch. I was still
laughing as they taxied out.
The
primary duty of the VP squadron assigned to the atomic testing was to patrol
the waters surrounding the test area in an effort to clear it of ships. By far,
the largest violators of these restricted waters were fishing vessels from
China and Japan. Having been assigned to VP-703 to train them made me eligible
for the joint AF and Navy Commendation to this unit.
The
Bikini atomic bomb tests would make interesting stories for those who
participated to tell for years to come. They were witness to the last of the
atomic explosions to be detonated in the earth's atmosphere. Bruce told me
years later that he got so accustomed to the testing that when he was off duty,
he could actually sleep through a distant atomic explosion.
In
the early days of the Viet Nam conflict, several of the other crew I help train
qualified me for the RVN Armed Forces medal and the RVN Training medal. I
earned the usual NDS and NR medals, plus Expert and Marksman with 45, 38 and 50
calibers. I also qualified for the Expeditionary medal via a clandestine Cuban operation
out of Rosy Roads, but it was never entered in my service record and I never
received a Good Conduct medal for reasons, which I will attempt to explain in
the next chapter.
PART
III. Military Aviation
As
the Indo-China and Cold War tensions continued, our training flights became
more and more restricted in the Pacific. Most of our flights were now conducted
in the Caribbean. NAS Dallas based squadrons regularly flew to Panama, Gitmo
and Puerto Rico for training.
If
the subject of Russians or the USSR being in Cuba came up, our standard reply
was, “Don’t worry, they’re still ninety miles off the coast.”
On training flights into Panama, we
landed at an Air Force base, home of a C-130 squadron. The based was surrounded
by lush jungle vegetation and the barracks were large screened in buildings,
somewhat akin to camping out with a roof overhead.
The
main military force for Panama was referred to as the Guard. It was patterned
after our own National Guard, a remnant of years of U.S. occupation. Panama
City was a thriving metropolis with everything from luxury hotels to massive
slums. The two things I remember most about Panama City are the constant
honking of car horns and vendors selling fried platanos
(plantain similar to a bananas) on the street.
Guantanamo
Bay, our base in Cuba nicknamed Gitmo, was and still is a permanent U.S. Naval
base with a history dating back to the Marine Corps landing in the Spanish
American War. During Fidel’s revolution against Batista, we sometimes saw
cannon fire in the mountains while flying off of Cuba’s southern coast.
Americans
mostly had a free run of Cuba until the U.S. government decided that Castro’s
banditos, who were trying to conquer the Batista regime, were a bunch of
Commies and restricted military liberty into the mainland.
There
was, however, a small Cuban settlement just outside the main entrance to Gitmo.
Up until the full Cuban embargo, liberty was permitted in this village.
On a
hot sultry summer afternoon in one of the village bars full of U.S. sailors,
Marines and a few reserve airmen, a rag-tag bunch of banditos wandered in for a
beer. They explained that they were los
insurgencies fighting for la
revolucion. Between drinks a tall slender, unshaven member of their
group would walk out the front door and fire a couple of rounds into the air
with his old Springfield O3A3 rifle and yell, "Viva la revolucion." And guess what, at this writing
ol’ Fidel is still el presidente de
Cuba.
In Puerto Rico, there was an old
airbase at Roosevelt Roads nicknamed Rosie Roads. The British had used the base
during World War II, but now the Navy was using it as a base for ASW operations
throughout the Gulf of Mexico and the Southern Caribbean. Flying weather
conditions were excellent most of the year, except during hurricane season.
The
best job a weatherman could hope for would be as a weatherman in Puerto Rico.
All he’d have to do was get up every morning and forecast, "It will be 85
degrees today, sunshine and light rain showers expected this afternoon,"
and go back to bed. He would be right ninety percent of the time, a better
average than most weathermen back in the states.
During
a weekend off, some of my crew and I bummed a ride into San Juan with one of
the regular Navy guys who had a car. San Juan was really two cities in one. The
uptown was crowded with fancy beach hotels and restaurants. The old town
squares down by the Spanish fort were where the average Puerto Rican came to
hang out and socialize. In each of the town squares, there was a public TV that
usually had several dozen people standing around watching.
Most
of the Puerto Rican people were bilingual and I seldom met an unfriendly local.
In the small towns on Saturday night, you could always find a steel band
playing with people sitting around listening, dancing and drinking. The one
thing that struck me as being very unique about the Puerto Rican people was
that when they went out for a Saturday night, they took along grandma, grandpa
and all the kids.
When
one of our crews was not flying, I’d take the men over to the large Olympic
size swimming pool on the base and spend the afternoon training them to inflate
a Mae West and board an eight-man life raft in wet flight gear. In addition to
having a lot of fun, the aircrewmen quickly found out how hard it was to
survive in the water with their flight gear on and how difficult it was to
climb aboard a life raft.
On
the far side of the base along the ocean shore there was a white sandy beach,
which was excellent for snorkeling. The water was so clear that even at a depth
of six feet or more, the bottom appeared to be only a few inches deep until you
stepped in. Swimming or snorkeling inside the reef was unlike swimming in the
murky shores off the Continental coast. We were cautioned not to swim outside
the reef because there were schools of barracuda, which I was told were more
dangerous than sharks.
Down
the beach a ways, there was a long pier that extended out past the shallow
water. Cargo ships used the pier to drop off supplies for the base. These types
of piers were referred to as boondocks, I guess because it was out in the
boonies and I’m sure where our high-top lace boots got the nickname
boon-dockers. We wore the black boon-dockers with our dungarees and the brown
rough-out boon-dockers with our flight suits.
Standard
issue with our flight gear was a really durable hunting knife intended for
cutting your way free of parachute lines. In the evenings, when we’d climb the
stairs in the old wooden barracks, I unsheathed my knife and throw it up the
large open stairwell to stick it in the old wooden plank wall.
This
developed into a regular nightly contest to determine who was the best knife
thrower. To make mine a little lighter and better balanced for throwing, I cut
the top knob off the handle with a hacksaw. As the contest grew, we ruled only
one throw per crewman, per evening. I got to where I could stick it in the wall
consistently from 15-feet away or let’s just say I seldom had to buy the beer.
Being
able to fly out of Rosie Roads was our squadron’s first opportunity to practice
with a nuclear submarine. It didn't matter which submarine we were assigned to
for an exercise, if it was a nuke, they always identified their boat as the USS
George Washington.
Small
vessels like PT boats and launches are correctly called boats, but a submarine
regardless of size, is the only ship in the Navy that is correctly called a
boat. During these exercises, it became apparent to us that the conventional
tactics we were using to locate and track diesel electric submarines were
fairly useless against the Nautilus Class submarines. The speed of USN nuclear
subs has always been classified. However, considering that the USS George
Washington could take off in any one of 360 degrees at speeds of 40 knots or
better underwater made them very hard to catch.
The
methods used to detect a submarine by patrol aircraft were surface scan radar
to detect a conning tower or a fully surfaced boat, ECM to pickup their radar,
dropping sonobuoys in a cloverleaf pattern and using MAD gear. That was all we
had. That stuff was classified information thirty years ago, but you can see it
all on the cable TV channels now. It’s kind of like that copy of an Aviation Week magazine article that was
found at the Pentagon stamped SECRET.
A
sonobuoy, dropped by a small parachute, deployed a sonar microphone and
transmitter antenna upon hitting the water. By tuning to different buoys on
different frequencies, the sub’s propeller noise could be tracked and the sub's
underwater course guesstimated.
Our
MAD equipment would indicate a fluctuation in the earth's magnetic field when a
large metal object like a sub disturbed the field. The readout on a MAD was
similar to the needle graph on a seismograph. Modern subs have coils of wire
wrapped around their hull for inducing a counter Electro Magnetic Field (EMF).
This makes them almost impossible to detect with MAD equipment.
On
an assigned morning patrol, flying off the coast of Rosie Roads, we
rendezvoused with a Washington class submarine. The sub came up on our UHF
frequency and transmitted that they were ready to play games. They gave us a
bearing and distance to them. By the time we got there, the sub had submerged
and we began a standard search pattern dropping sonobuoys, but were unable to
locate the sub.
Ever
so often, the sub would stick its UHF antenna out of the water and taunt us by
radioing their new bearing and approximate distance. After several hours of
this, the sub came to conning tower depth. We picked it up on ECM and radar and
headed for the contact. The sea swells were high that day and the sub’s dark
color blended into the water. We didn’t even make visual contact until we were
nearly on top of the sub.
We
probably passed directly over the top of the submerged sub several times, but
our MAD gear never indicated a contact, thus leading me to believe the sub must
have been equipped with some kind of reverse magnetic polarity device.
The
day after our practice submarine chase, my squadron was due to rotate back to
NAS Dallas and another squadron was due in to replace us. That evening, our
squadron threw a big party. Bacardi rum was ninety-five cents a bottle in
Puerto Rico where it was produced and was actually cheaper than beer to drink.
The CO hired some entertainers who played steel drums, complete with dancing
girls.
At
any rate, the party degenerated into hauling the large tub full of iced down
Bacardi and pineapple juice back to the barracks in a flight line pickup. The
steel bunks were pushed back to the wall and everyone fell asleep on their
mattresses thrown on the floor in a big circle around the tub.
Sometime
around sunup, I woke up with someone shaking me. When I pried my eyes open, I
was looking up into the face of our training chief from Dallas. I couldn't
figure out where I was and I asked the chief, "How did I get back
here?"
The
chief and his crew were all laughing at us camped out in the center of the
barracks. When I finally got myself awake, I realized the other squadron had
flown in overnight and had just arrived.
In
April of 1961, the CIA backed the infamous invasion of Cuba known as The Bay of
Pigs. It was obvious to us at NAS Dallas that something was afoot because they
had activated one of our VF squadrons and assigned it to the fleet. Our
detachment of Marines was also sent aboard a carrier. A gunny corporal friend
of mine told me later that when they woke up the morning of the invasion, all
the insignias and markings on the Navy aircraft onboard had been painted over.
Another
interesting story told to me was about a Marine Corps Captain who was circling
overhead in a Fury waiting for orders to support the Cuban freedom fighters.
When the order came to return to the carrier, he could see what was happening
and he went in to make a strafing run across the beachhead where Castro's tanks
were moving into position to attack the landing forces. He did this supposedly
to warn the invaders that they were walking into a trap. No court martial or
hearing was ever held to the best of anyone's knowledge because our official
propaganda line stated that the U.S. was not involved.
During
the third year of my tour of duty at NAS Dallas, my wife took a job in the
Technical Publications Department at Chance Vought Aircraft. We always called
it the Bomber Plant. My wife worked Monday through Friday and I worked every
weekend, except when there was a fifth weekend in the month. Remember, we fly
on Sundays. With the extra income from my wife’s job we purchased a new Morris
Minor, which was the first new car we had ever bought. It was kind of like a
British made water-cooled, front engine Volkswagen.
When
I met my wife for lunch, I had to change out of my dungarees and into civvies
and then back again after returning from lunch. Four changes of clothes a day
really got to be a pain, but it was Navy regulations. The base had the duty
nights arranged so that Petty Officers only caught the overnight duty every
eighth night. To get out of duty night, you could pay another Petty Officer,
usually one of the single guys who lived on base, to stand your duty for a few
bucks and I often did.
All
ASW aircrew training instructors were required to have a secret clearance. The
main reason for this was that we had access to the codebooks that were required
to be onboard certain flights. During World War II, both the German and
Japanese codes had been broken and with the advent of computers almost any code
could be broken in no time at all. The U.S. method of coding changed to a
different key every few hours based on Greenwich Mean Time and thus, the
codebooks were only good for 24 hours. We kept them in a safe in Cmdr Novak’s
office and only a few officers knew the combination.
In
October of 1962, we began noticing a lot more coded traffic over the airways.
The ASW training building had a full HF radio station. When I reported to the
base on the morning of the Cuban Missile Crisis, we were told that all leave
had been cancelled and those of us living off base were now confined to the
base. We went to Defense Condition (DEFCON) Two, as the news broke about the
Russian ships carrying missiles that were headed for Cuba. The question was,
were they going to try to run our U.S. Naval blockade.
Married
personnel were given a couple of hours to go home and prepare their families
for what could possibly be the beginning of World War III. Needless to say,
anyone who knew what was going on, was scared once the reality of the situation
began to set in. When I got to the house, I told my wife to stay home from work
and not to take our daughter to nursery school. We loaded the Morris Minor with
canned goods, bottled water, blankets and first aid stuff. When she dropped me
back at the base, I told her to fill the car with gas and keep it full.
My
instructions to my wife were probably similar to those given to many other
wives at the time. We lived in Grand Prairie and there was open country to the
south, the Texas hill country. I told her if war broke out, to head south as
far away from the Metroplex as she could get because I didn’t know where I
would be and didn't think I’d be able to get home to go with them. At least, I
would know the general territory they were heading to and could find them later.
The
DFW Metroplex was an excellent candidate to be an ICBM target. General Dynamics
and Carswell Air Force Base were located in Fort Worth. Carswell was a SAC base
at that time with a squadron of B-52s and General Dynamics was building the
B-58 Hustler bomber. The area was a prime target. Dallas was the home of TI,
LTV and NAS Dallas.
When
I reported back to the base, we started assigning the crews we had available to
aircraft. There wasn’t time to activate a reserve squadron. The crews could be
made up mostly of base personnel, but we soon realized we were seriously short
of pilots. One squadron was due in that weekend for drill and a few reserve
pilots, most of whom were bachelors, showed up on their own and volunteered to
fly if they were needed.
Our
national defense plan included the shutting down of all navigation aids and
rotating broadcast stations. This was called going to Controlled Electronic
Radiation (CONELRAD) emissions condition. This precaution was taken so that
enemy aircraft could not use our radio stations to home in on, as the Japs had
done at Pearl Harbor. Thus, any aircraft we put in the air would have to resort
to basic navigation techniques.
At
ASW, I prepared as many standard operational flight cases with codebooks and
charts as I had materials for, including chronometers and sextants.
A
group of us went to the ordinance storage area to see what types of bombs and
missiles were in storage. The only weapon we found was one sidewinder missile
that had been left by some transit aircraft and it didn't fit our wing mounts,
so we were left with nothing but some PDC, target rockets and a couple cases of
practice bombs. We were not prepared to help with any defensive effort.
That
night when I reported for guard duty as roving patrol and picked up my
equipment belt, I noticed the usually clip-less .45 automatic was heavier than
normal. The Chief Petty Officer (CPO) of the watch said, "Yes, it's
loaded."
Although
aircrewmen rated side arms, I had never been issued one to carry with live
rounds in the clip, even though I had qualified as marksman on the firing
range. Up until now, we had always joked that the .45 automatics we carried
were to beat someone over the head with or to throw at them. To this day, I get
kidded when I tell this story about defending NAS Dallas in an atomic war with
my trusty .45 automatic.
We
posted as many guards at as many critical places on the base we could think of
like the water supply, the fuel depot and the base perimeter. The only real
plan that we had was to get the aircraft airborne and out of the area if those
idiots did push the button. Beyond that, we had no workable plan.
Like most Americans, we sat by the
radio and TV and listened while two world leaders, who had been given far too
much power, played a horrible game of bluff poker. Carl Sagan wrote about the
nuclear arms race saying, "It was like two men in a room, ankle deep in
gasoline, arguing over which one had the largest hand-full of matches."
If
all out war had broken out, there would not have been time to activate the
reserve units. In an age of fifteen-minute incoming missiles and nuclear
weapons our military was forced to rethink the entire reserve program.
Traditionally, since the Revolutionary War, the Spanish American War and as
late as World War II, the regulars would be getting their ass kicked until the
militia, in later years what became the State Guards, National Guard and
Reserves arrived to reinforce them.
The
last conventional war this country would fight was in Viet Nam. Once again, it
was proven that people fighting for their own country could not be defeated. A
former Air Force Captain, who flew an F-86D in Korea, told me that his squadron
had two Korean Air Force pilots. He said that he would come in low over the
treetops on ground strafing runs with a death grip on the stick. When he didn't
think he could get any lower, he’d look down. Fifty feet below him would be the
two Korean pilots who were kicking the rudders in order to get a better spray
of bullets on their strafing runs. The difference was that the Korean pilots
were fighting for their own homeland, he wasn’t.
My
brother-in-law was the intelligence officer on the carrier USS Enterprise
during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He later told me that accidentally or
intentionally, their ship had ended up being the only large U.S. Navy ship
between the Russian cargo ships loaded with missiles and their intended Cuban
port. He talked several times via radio to the Secretary of Defense, Robert
McNamara giving him first hand updates.
Like
it or not, they were going to be the ship that had to turn the inbound Russian
ships around stopping them by whatever force necessary. Their orders were firm
and not negotiable.
The
world will never know what was going through President Kennedy's mind, but as
it turned out Khrushchev blinked first. Russia agreed to remove all of the
nuclear missiles from Cuban soil and a couple of weeks after the Crisis,
reconnaissance photos were published in the press. The photos showed what
appeared to be missiles shrouded under canvas on the decks of the Russian cargo
ships departing Cuba. Kennedy had agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey so
Khrushchev could save face.
Situation
normal all fouled up. Our daily routine eventually returned to normal at NAS
Dallas, as normal as things can get around a bunch of idiots who fly airplanes.
The weekend of the annual Texas OU football game celebration arrived. I was
late getting home that night after celebrating in the streets of downtown
Dallas on to discover that my daughter had come down with the measles.
Subsequently, my wife and I were up all night tending to her. What I am going
to do now is try to explain why I never received a Navy good conduct medal.
The
next morning, I went through the main gate late and I had a civvies shirt over
the top of my dungarees. The gate guard on duty was a fellow that I had never
met before and he stopped me insisting that I go in and talk to the Junior
Officer Of the Day (JOOD). The JOOD, a Chief Petty Officer, was new and had
just transferred to the base. I didn't know him either. Needless to say, an
argument ensued.
The
CPO was pounding on my chest with his finger to make his point when I pushed
his arm away. As I did, he stepped backwards putting his foot into a
wastebasket, stumbled backwards and broke a windowpane. It might have been
funny, but just then the OD walked in and it was the base Admin Officer, who
had also been up most of the night handling some problem with some locker
stealing over at the barracks. He said I was going to Captain’s Mast and that
was it.
At
the time it seemed rather serious, but looking back, it was kind of comical.
Calling over to ASW, I told my Chief what had happened and to call my wife and
ask her to bring me a clean set of dress whites. After lunch, I reported to the
Captain's office. The Yeoman who worked for the Admin Officer stopped me in the
hall and said, "I have been told to tell you to just keep your mouth shut
and everything will be okay,” and I agreed. As I entered the Captain's office,
there stood Cmdr Kovak, my Chief and the JOOD.
This
was embarrassing. My wife and I had recently sat at the same table with the
Captain and his wife at a banquet a few weeks earlier. Plus, Cmdr Kovak was not
a happy camper over one of his men being called on the carpet. The Captain, who
obviously hadn't had a very good night either, began to chew me out. Something
along the lines of disobedience and damage to government property were listed among
my many sins. Then he said, "What do you have to say for yourself?"
Desperately
I struggled for an answer. I had agreed to keep my mouth shut. I replied,
"I'll pay for the window, sir."
The
Captain looked away to keep from letting anyone see him smile. After, the
snickering in the room died down, he asked Cmdr Kovak to speak on my behalf.
I’ll always regard his reply as one of the finest compliments I have ever
received. He said, "Arnold isn't real sharp when it comes to wearing the
uniform and isn't real good at military protocol, but when I want a job done
right, I send Arnold to do it."
“Enough
said,” the Captain concluded, but he had to do something along the lines of
discipline. Without giving much thought to it, he simply informed the Admin
Officer not to recommend me for advancement to 1st Class Petty
Officer for six months. In other words, temporarily frozen in rank.
To
be fair, the Captain probably thought the punishment was only a slap on the
wrist. There was only one problem with his order, I was eligible to take the
rating exam the next month and my enlistment was up in three months. This meant
I would have to re-enlist for two years if I wanted to take the next exam. The
reason I wanted to make the next rating exam was so I would be eligible to
apply for Aviation Cadets and go to flight school at Pensacola. Also, I was
bumping the age limit at the time.
For
the next several weeks, I mulled over the pros and cons of my continuing in a
Naval career and discussed it with my wife over and over. Seven more years of
service meant that we would likely stay till retirement and could expect long
separations.
I
had received an offer from Chance Vought Aircraft for an engineering job in
cockpit design. The offer was the career path I had originally intended to
pursue and I decided not to re-enlist in the Navy. It was probably the hardest
career decision I ever made.
When
I do reflect back on it, I recall the character that William Holden played in
the movie The Bridges at Toko Ri,
a civilian lawyer recalled to Korea as a reserve Navy jet pilot and like that
character, I would have probably ended up dead in some rice paddy in Southeast
Asia. Who knows what choices we really have in life and what choices we only
think we have. Had I continued to pursue becoming a jet fighter pilot, I might
have missed many of the life adventures that my wife and I have enjoyed
together.
I
received an honorable discharge from the Navy after eight years of active and
reserve service and this made me eligible for VA flight training on the GI bill
and I took advantage of it. Additionally, I enrolled in some advanced
engineering courses at the University of Texas in Arlington.
Even
though I wasn’t career military, there was reluctance on my part to leave the
service. The reserves would now get the P2V-6 series Neptune as the fleet began
receiving their new Lockheed P3V Orion, Navy version of the Electra airliner.
Braniff
Airlines, based out of Dallas, was one of the first airlines to use the Electra
on their routes. Early on, an Electra came apart in a thunderstorm north of
Dallas. Scores of volunteers helped walk the fields looking for pieces of the
aircraft that had literally disintegrated in mid-air.
This
was uncharacteristic of a Lockheed built aircraft in that they had always been
known for building strong airframes. As it turned out, the angle that the
engines were mounted on the wings produced a harmonic vibration that eventually
led to wing spar failure. The whole thing was strangely reminiscent of the plot
in a movie starring Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, No Highways in the Sky. In the fictional
story, Stewart plays a bookish engineer that predicts the failure of the
empennage on a new British airliner. Subsequent modifications by Lockheed soon
made the Electra very durable. The Navy version of the Electra, the P3V Orion,
all had the stronger wing.
After
leaving the service, I tried to stay in a reserve squadron for a short time,
but it wasn't the same as being in the middle of what was going on all the
time. In retrospect, I probably should have completed the balance of the eleven
years I needed for a reserve retirement, but I didn’t.
After
returning to civilian life I joined the Texas Army National Guard (TNG) as a
member of the 149th Aviation Regiment. The 149th was an
observation unit for the 49th Armored. At the time we had about six
Cessna L-19s assigned to the unit.
Entering
the Guard as a warrant officer candidate, I was able to take advantage of a
fast track aviation program for commercial pilots. By going through ground
school at Fort Walters and the aircraft check flight program at the temporarily
reactivated airbase at New Brunsfield, I was awarded my Army wings from the
commanding general TNG. Our small group of L-19 pilots went through flight
check with those getting multi-engine qualified in the twin T-42 Cochise, a
Beech model 55.
Our
regiment was based at old Grand Prairie airport, but on drill weekends and
summer camp, we flew our L-19s down to Fort Hood and Gary Field. The tank corps
guardsmen literally lived in their tanks and on a hot, dusty Texas afternoon,
they got to be a little smelly. They were a motley bunch, but they loved their
work. They probably thought guys like me had to be crazy to want to fly around
in those powered aluminum kites. It’s the ol' proverbial Catch 22, you got to
be crazy to want to fly, but if you know that you’re crazy then you can't be
crazy. As Yossarian said, "That's a pretty good catch, that Catch
22."
Word
came down that the L-19s were going to be phased out and all the Warrant
Officer 1st pilots would have to transition to rotary wing aircraft
or be busted back to Sergeant. I thought I might want to be a helicopter pilot
and even applied for a school date at Fort Walters.
The
Viet Nam War was cranking up and all helicopter flight school dates were
cancelled, except for those who would agree to go on active duty for two years.
One
did not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that they would be headed
for Viet Nam immediately after finishing helicopter training. The better part
of valor was to sometimes attack to the rear and that bit of wisdom prevailed
for me. As a veteran, I was able to request a discharge from the TNG and left
Texas to take an engineering job with Lockheed Aircraft in Marietta, Georgia.
That
was pretty much the end of my military career until years later when I joined
the New Mexico State Guard (NMSG) as a 1st Lieutenant. I was soon
promoted to the rank of Captain and served under the New Mexico Adjutant
General (NMSDF) as Chief Information Officer (CIO) G-6 for HQ in Albuquerque
where I was promoted to Major. After that, I served as CO of the 3rd
Battalion, 2nd Brigade based at the armory in Clovis.
I am
very proud to hold the distinction of being awarded the a NMNG Outstanding
Meritorious Service medal given to me by Major General Laurence Morrell and
signed by Bill Richardson, the Honorable Governor of the State of New Mexico.
My
collection of service ribbons and Unit Citations from the Navy, TNG and NMSG
were starting to make me look like a South American general and maybe it was
time to start thinking about hanging up the ol’ military service cap and
retired as a brevet full Colonel.