As I look back on my career in college and after, I was no great star. A wise man once stated that 75 percent of life is showing up. During my college career, I never missed a practice. Aboard ship I never missed a muster. In the final analysis, the pleasure and satisfaction of the Navy career has been the camaraderie and bonding with my fellows, male and female, that occurs. I’m blessed with having made lifelong friends who will be with me through thick and thin. I could not have had a better career.
Chapter Nine
BACK INTO THE COCKPIT
I had to slow down and extend the flaps to stay with it. As I described the aircraft’s markings to the controller on the ground, I was startled to look up and see the skyline of Havana about fifteen miles on the nose.
IT WAS AS IF I HAD MENTALLY HEAVED a huge sigh of relief. I gazed at the F3H Demons in perfect alignment alongside Fighter Squadron 14’s hangar at Naval Air Station Cecil Field, Florida, and knew I was home again, and where I belonged. The jets had been in the fleet nearly ten years and were rather antiquated, but that didn’t matter, because ours would be the third squadron to receive the new F-4 Phantom IIs. My orders to VF-14, via the Replacement Air Group (RAG) squadron VF-101, meant Anne and the kids could stay where they were, I’d be donning a flight suit and oxygen mask again, and all was right with the world. Part of me regretted the departure from the surface Navy, but I was overwhelmingly certain the air Navy was for me.
It was the fall of 1962. VF-74 and VF-102 were ahead of us in gaining the F-4s, and VF-14 would have to make one more Mediterranean deployment with the Demons before acquiring the Phantoms. I did have a measure of experience in the bird from my test pilot experience, which should prove valuable to the squadron when the Phantoms arrived the following spring.
I was ordered to Naval Air Station Key West for refresher training in the Demon before linking up with the squadron and was there when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October. The base was gridlocked with aircraft from the Navy as well as the Air Force and the Army as tensions mounted between the United States and the Soviet Union. Our syllabus training was put on hold for a time, so, as a volunteer, I assisted in air operations, keeping track of the elements involved in the buildup. I was not alone in believing that the likelihood of a nuclear confrontation was real. Fortunately, the crisis was resolved with the removal of the missiles. Our group finished training at Cecil Field, capped by carrier qualifications aboard the USS Antietam.
I had accumulated a few hours in the Demon at Patuxent test work and was aware of some of the jet’s deficiencies, but when I joined VF-14 aboard the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, the shortcomings in that airplane manifested themselves more noticeably than earlier. It was too heavy for the thrust available with the J71 engine. Regardless of the weapons and fuel load we carried, every catapult shot had to be made in afterburner. We were so concerned with the airplane’s lack of range—or, in the vernacular, “legs,”—that we flew virtually every mission at maximum endurance power settings. Not a good way to do business in any aircraft, much less a warplane. If we ever did have to jump or dog fight Russian MiGs, we’d be at a disadvantage from the get-go.
VF-14’s aircraft availability rate was poor. Too many aircraft were “down” at any one time. Assigned as maintenance officer with a cadre of about two hundred personnel under my purview, I learned right off the bat that two major discrepancies were the principal cause of this: a leaking hydraulic system and communications, the latter dominated by TACAN and ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radio failures, twin bugaboos that plagued the unit. I noticed that hydraulic problems most often occurred after an in-port period, during which the idle jets were never turned up. I ascertained that the hydraulic seals were drying out during the lull in activity. Inevitably, when we resumed flying at sea, the seals leaked.
As a department head, I had direct access to the executive officer (XO) and CO. When I suggested to the skipper, Cdr. Cal Buck, that we start the Demons’ engines and turn up each aircraft daily during in-port stays to keep the seals moist, he hesitated, knowing this wouldn’t set well with the air boss, Cdr. (later Vice Adm.) Beetle Forbes, much less the pilots who would have to do the turning. Nevertheless, after a moment, he gave me the simple go ahead, “Do it.”
But first I had to explain to Commander Forbes why we wanted the turn ups. He resisted, because he knew the sounds of all those engines turning would carry across the harbor to the shore and disturb the local citizens. That wouldn’t set well anywhere, especially in places like Cannes on the French Riviera.
With a bit of boldness, I said, “Commander, if you want these Demons to fly, we’ve got to turn ’em up.” He shook his head in dismay but ultimately agreed to our request.
Commander Forbes wasn’t the only one troubled by the turn ups. My fellow pilots hated them, because it meant rising early after a night of shore leave to man aircraft and run the engines for a few minutes. This action alleviated the hydraulic leak problem, however, because the seals stopped leaking.
In retrospect I believe there was a sense of complacency under the previous leadership in the squadron. I had learned that other Demon commands were also turning up their birds in port but not VF-14. To me that meant the previous CO was less than dynamic in maintaining a high state of readiness. He was willing to accept missing sorties on the flight schedule. Commander Buck felt otherwise, and that, combined with a dedicated cadre of maintenance troops, resolved the problem.
As to the TACAN and UHF radios, they were the very lifeblood of our capability to navigate, especially at night or in bad weather. TACAN provides bearing information from the ship or points on land as well as distance through its distance-measuring equipment (DME) imbedded within. With these two elements, unless you’re beyond the range of the signal emanating from the TACAN station, usually the ship when at sea, a pilot always knows where he or she was. Keep in mind that these were the days before global-positioning satellites. If a pilot lost his TACAN at night, he was in a legitimate emergency situation. To recover on board the carrier, he would have to be led down by a wingman until radar control took over. A double whammy occurred if you also lost your UHF radio. It could get very lonely up there with twin failures.
The squadron’s avionics officer, Lt. Frank Taylor, was an LDO lieutenant and a fine officer. LDO—limited duty officer—is an unfair title, because LDOs were usually experts in a specific technical field and were indispensable in any unit. LDOs are highly qualified, former enlisted personnel selected for commissioning as officers. Usually, they are experts in a particular field such as aviation electronics, or ordnance/weapons handling. Anyway, to reduce the communications failures, he and I decided to “turn to” the aviation electronic technicians, the “ATs.” We directed them to remove the UHF radios and TACANs and, basically, to overhaul them insofar as their training and experience allowed. Now aircraft maintenance is carried out under a three-level system—organizational (squadron level); intermediate (aircraft intermediate departments ashore and afloat); and depot (major overhaul and repair facilities). Each element has increasing capabilities. Back then, squadrons did what they could to repair equipment in-house. What we couldn’t fix we transferred to more capable facilities ashore, hoping to get the repaired part returned in reasonably good time.
After a couple of weeks of focused effort on the communications systems, our aircraft availability rate improved substantially. Combined with the turn ups and a more concentrated tweaking of Demon systems, we began to lead the air wing in flight hours and sorties completed, which was a nice turnaround compared to the commencement of the deployment. There was a price to pay. As much as I would have liked to visit Pompeii, or lounge on a Riviera Beach, most of my time was spent working on the Demons. My reward came in witnessing the squadron meet, if not exceed, its flight requirements during the remainder of the deployment.
Tragically, we lost two pilots on the deployment, both as a result of misfires on the catapult. This was a mystery, because the F3Hs had been flying fr
om the carriers for six or so years without major catapult problems. Along with ship’s company personnel and a technical representative from the Navy’s engineering facility in Philadelphia, I became immersed in the investigation to figure out what was going wrong. The culprit turned out to be holdback rings.
Basically, an aircraft is catapulted like a sling shot by a steam-powered piston below the flight deck. A shuttle in the groove of the catapult track was connected to the jet by a heavy cable. The cable was pulled taut—tensioned up—around the forward lip of the shuttle, with the cable’s ends connected to fittings on the aircraft. The cylindrical-shaped holdback ring, with flanges at each end, was attached to the deck aft of the aircraft’s tail via a cable affixed to a holdback fitting. On signal from the flight deck officer, the aircraft was “tensioned” on the catapult, the cables pulled taut. Next, the pilot was signaled to add full power. With checks complete, the flight deck officer, wearing a yellow jersey, cranial helmet, and goggles, exchanged salutes with the pilot, indicating the catapult was cleared to fire. At a certain designated pressure for the Demon, the holdback ring would break, releasing the jet down the track.
The investigation revealed that, under tension, a twisting phenomenon took place that rolled the holdback fittings out of the holdback apparatus. We never did figure out what precisely caused the twisting, but we altered procedures during the tensioning up process to resolve the problem. That is, we imposed the tension load at a slower rate so the wire would stretch slowly without a twisting-type action.
One pilot dribbled off the bow and was killed because of the holdback problem. During a night shot, a second pilot slid with his aircraft into the catwalk that ran parallel to the catapult track and was uninjured. The second fatality occurred following a successful catapult shot in which the pilot flew, inexplicably, into the water. We collected debris from this accident and found an airplane part for a generator still in its packing box, which was another mystery, because we couldn’t figure out how this part, if not installed, could have caused the crash.
Although the basic principal is the same, launching systems on today’s carriers are much improved and far more reliable.
The Roosevelt was roomier than the Essex, and its angled deck and steam catapults made it operationally safer, despite the losses mentioned above. There were some exciting moments with the F8U Crusader squadron, VF-11, on board. The Crusader was tough to handle at night, so when VF-11 flew after dark, getting back on deck was always an adventure. Plus, we had VAH-11 aboard, the heavy attack squadron that operated the huge A3D Skywarrior. I really admired the guys who flew that bird because of its size. It weighed in excess of thirty tons and had a seventy-two and a half-foot wing span. When the Skywarrior grabbed a wire on landing, you could feel it throughout much of the ship.
We were extremely lucky to have Cdr. Bud Nance as air operations officer. A 1945 graduate of the Academy, Bud’s coolness under pressure and ability to control aircraft at night very likely averted an untold number of accidents. Bud reached flag rank, and when he retired from active duty, he became the nonpaid chief of staff for South Carolina senator Richard Helms.
A realization came to me from this deployment that I believe is crucial to the understanding of leadership in the Navy. It is of huge benefit for the naval officer corps to be crewed not only by Naval Academy graduates, but also by men and women from other sources, ranging from Ivy League schools to diminutive or large colleges and universities across the country. The Aviation Officer Candidate (AOC) program, which converted college graduates into commissioned officers in four months, is an excellent source of talent, as are the multitude of NROTC programs in many of today’s learning institutions. The diversity of commissioning sources is a healthy process. This sort of cross-fertilization strengthens the officer corps and makes it better. It was true in my day and remains true today.
The Cold War was certainly ongoing in the early 1960s. For us, it was manifested in the occasional overflights of U.S. ships by Soviet Bear bombers in the Atlantic. These incidents worried Navy officials, because they feared the Air Force could proclaim our carriers vulnerable to enemy attack. For a time, carriers intentionally traveled a longer southern route from the United States to the Mediterranean, remaining just beyond the range of the bombers, which launched from Russian bases.
We returned to Cecil Field in April 1963 anxious to take on the hot new Phantom, now identified as the F-4, rather than the F4H, because of a revised designation system for naval aircraft. Our transition took place primarily at Key West in the RAG, VF-101. The Demons were phased out. Because I was familiar with the Phantom from my Patuxent River days, I was helpful to the pilots and a new brand of officers in the squadron, the RIOs. The RIOs are naval flight officers (NFOs) who controlled the fighter’s weapons from the rear cockpit. The Phantom represented a quantum leap in technology from the Demon in terms of complexity and performance.
From a maintenance officer’s viewpoint, this presented a huge challenge. But I was blessed with the arrival of a mustang officer (one who begins his career as an enlisted person and qualifies to become an officer), Ens. (later Lt. Cdr.) Harry Errington. Harry was worth his weight in gold. He made all the difference in getting our expanded maintenance department up to speed and beginning the arduous process of learning all about this high-tech, high-performance flying machine.
We applied the Navy’s new maintenance inspection system—“phased maintenance” on the Phantoms. Heretofore, when an aircraft was scheduled for a periodic inspection, it was placed in a “down” status for days, if not weeks or more. In effect, with the Phantom, we conducted the same maintenance but on a piecemeal basis, accomplishing repair or upkeep tasks in briefer periods. This reduced the down time and increased availability.
The influx of RIOs, doubling the officer complement in the squadron, was not only a plus for the tactical employment of the Phantom but it also increased manpower, thus relieving some of the administrative/paper work load that goes with being an aviator in a squadron. In the process I learned that, generally speaking, NFOs, who wear their own exclusive set of gold wings, take a more rational approach to paperwork and ground duties than pilots do. Pilots, conversely, especially young ones, naturally just want to fly and not be encumbered with satellite duties outside the cockpit. Happily, this did not produce discord. Rather, at least in our squadron, there was excellent rapport among the pilots and RIOs.
One salient reason for this, of course, was the valued presence of the RIO “in the back.” His handling of the weapons systems relieved the pilot so that he could concentrate wholly on flying this powerful and capable fighter jet. When facetious remarks flew around the ready room to the effect that pilots were truck drivers while RIOs did all the work, I, for one, took that in stride. It was fine with me.
While at Key West, we were assigned “hot pad” duty. There were lingering tensions from the previous year’s Cuban Missile Crisis, so we stood watches in a trailer near the flight line and could crew up and scramble into the air in minutes. We were “exercised” with some frequency to test our alertness, thus acquiring welcome flight time. One day, in my haste to get airborne, I discovered that my parachute harness was not hooked up. This could have been disastrous, to be sure, but after considerable sweat and squirming in the confinement of the cockpit, I got it hitched up properly.
On another occasion I launched to check out a bogey—an unidentified aircraft—in the area, a C-46 twin engine transport from El Salvador Airlines, traveling, we conjectured, from Miami to some point in Central America. I had to slow down and extend the flaps to stay with it. As I described the aircraft’s markings to the controller on the ground, I was startled to look up and see the skyline of Havana about fifteen miles on the nose.
“Break it off!” ordered the controller simultaneously with my sighting of the city. “You’re heading straight for Havana.” Naturally I complied.
Chapter Ten
FROM FIGHTERS TO FARAWAY PLACES
He was hospitalized temporarily, and it was during this interlude that I was shoved into the breach.
FIGHTER SQUADRON FOURTEEN became the first F-4 Phantom squadron located at Naval Air Station Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Florida, an excellent location for jet operations. There were outlying fields, like nearby Whitehouse, available for “bouncing”—field carrier landing practice—and a spacious working area off the Atlantic coast. Conversely, being the first unit of its kind at the base meant problems with maintenance supply support and acclimating to the way routine daily flight operations were conducted with respect to ground handling of the Phantoms.
At Oceana we conducted “hot refueling.” Pilots landed and, before entering the parking ramp, halted at the “refueling pits,” a designated area adjacent to the taxiway, where the aircraft stopped and kept their engines running while a crew of maintenance personnel plugged huge hoses into the aircraft and filled the bird with jet fuel. This was a carefully practiced evolution, but it worked beautifully, because when the jet was finally shut down after the pilot taxied it back to the squadron’s parking area, it was gassed up and ready to go on the next hop, assuming there were no other discrepancies.
Cecil Field did not advocate hot refueling. After shutdown, the crew had to hitch the plane to a tow tractor, tow it to the fuel farm, attach an external power unit to the aircraft to ensure that all the F-4s internal pumps were working, pump in the fuel, disconnect from external power, and tow the Phantom back to the line—obviously, a time-consuming and manpower-intensive exercise.
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