Hosts RePete and Fig sit down with retired Marine Corps aviator “Maui,” call sign Cobra-31, for a wide-ranging conversation full of Marine Corps pilot war stories spanning three decades of service. Maui grew up on a South Texas farm, played college football at Texas A&I, and commissioned through the Marine PLC program before earning his wings in 1969. He recounts serving under Colonel Don Conroy, the real-life inspiration for The Great Santini, flying Huey gunships out of Marble Mountain alongside ROK Marines, and a harrowing New Year’s Eve medevac into the Kwaisan Mountains that remains one of his favorite Marine Corps pilot war stories decades later. The conversation follows his career well past Vietnam, from a tense homecoming to training Iranian pilots before the Tehran evacuation, flying CH-46s during Desert Storm, and running the AV-8 Harrier and T-45 programs at Headquarters Marine Corps. It’s a candid, funny, occasionally hair-raising look at four decades in naval aviation, capped off with the origin of his call sign, Maui.
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