WEBVTT

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You're listening to the podcast. So there I was this is episode 48 with carrots,

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What a great storyteller and fellow naval aviator funny fast naval Academy graduate,

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sir grad another sir grad and an s3,

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Viking and kind of a good luck charm You wanted to be in his squadron because in spite of some tremendously horrific mishaps everybody seemed to walk away

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way.

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Which, which is truly a miracle. It really is. And he has, uh, he was an LSO, landing signal

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officer, has, uh, some pretty terrifying stories of, uh, well, ramp strike, having to

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jump over the side of the ship.

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Yeah, exactly. And that's where he came up with an idea, which, uh, led to the title of this week's

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show, cat shots and orgasms.

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It's a great story. You just got to listen. because we couldn't even begin to do that one. Nope. Can't do it.

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Not going to not even going to try.

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So here is folks. Here comes Carrot.

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Sit on the ejection seat handle. Don't do it.

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On the tanker, through the weather. Oh, and to the tanker crew who did that.

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Music.

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So there I was, which is how all great aviation tales begin.

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You're listening to the podcast.

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So there I was. Repeat here, coming to you from New Hampshire today, joined by my co-host, Fig.

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Hello, gentlemen. How you doing, Fig? I'm coming to you live.

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Well, I guess we're recording from Denver, Colorado. It's a pleasure to be here.

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We have with us fellow Naval aviator, Carrot.

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Welcome Carrot.

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Well, thank you, gentlemen. And I use the term very loosely. As you should.

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Gotta stop swearing. There's gentlemen in the area. All right.

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So, Kerrit is a former American Airlines captain. We can say that because they can't fire you now. Though they tried.

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Unsuccessfully.

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And Navy S3 pilot. Welcome. Thank you, sir. We, uh, we're super glad to have you.

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How, how is it you wound up, uh, A interested in aviation and B flying Navy airplanes?

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Well, uh, the neighborhood I grew up in Prairie Village, Kansas.

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And the fifties had two brand of pilots in the neighborhood. Oh yeah.

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And my dad was an ex army colonel and, uh, as a communications officer in a fighter squadron and fighter group, uh, in world war II.

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And it was just a neighborhood that had a lot of aviation stories in it.

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When we were kids, when the neighbor across the street would go down to downtown airport in Kansas City to start his trip for Braniff, the kids would all pile in the car.

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At the time, everybody only had one car. And while he was in flight planning, etc., we'd go out to his DC-3 and climb in the cockpit and play bomber pilot over Germany.

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Oh my gosh.

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And so, and that, and some of the guys at Dickie at Richard's Cabar, which everybody calls Dickie Goober, now that, uh,

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south of Kansas city, uh, was in a fighter base, uh, air transport command base.

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And some of the guys in the F-100 squadron, and then they transitioned to 102s and then 106s were, uh, at the begin with

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the early fifties where guys, my dad had been in the service with.

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With. And we'd go out there for barbecues and watch them fly our fighters around.

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And in fact, the first time I ever heard a plane go to break the sound barrier was at an Armed

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Forces Day live air show at Dickey Goober. And then that Super F-100 went by at about 50 feet

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going Mach 1 plus. Everybody watched him go by and then that sound wave smacked in the back of

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of the head when it finally got there.

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That hurt.

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Well, of course you were interested in aviation at that part.

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I mean, who the hell wouldn't want to be?

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So I just grew up wanting, I read everything I could on, in history, on World War II and World War I flying.

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And, uh, I set up my life so that I could be a Naval aviator in that, in all the reading I did.

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I figured that anybody can land on a 10,000 foot runway, but trying to land on a moving target,

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that's only 440 yards wide, the landing area, would probably be a challenge.

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And therefore you had to be a better pilot than the guys that couldn't hack that.

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The gauntlet. Was it that those gringos said, how hard could it be? You never have a crosswind and you got

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a wire to stop it. Don't have to flare. I don't want to live with 5,300 guys. Right. That's right.

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Exactly. So you've heard of that. Certainly did. Oh my gosh. That's a funny song. Right. Oh, it is.

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So what was your commissioning service? Yeah. How'd you get commissioned?

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I, my dad recommended at the beginning, I wanted to be a, uh, enlisted man.

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Cause everybody glorified how, you know, all the enlisted guys in world war II.

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And my dad, who was an officer said, Hey, if you want to go in the service, the,

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best way to go as an officer, because they live a lot better than the people

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that aren't officers, and that made sense to me.

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And after I decided I wanted to be a pilot and decided the Navy was a better way to go,

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I applied to our congressman, the third congressional in Prairie Village.

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It turned out it was a man by the name of Wynn, who happened to be a fraternity brother of my father's at Kansas State.

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I applied for a Naval Academy appointment. I got one of six nominations at the time.

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I don't know if you guys know how the Academy worked at the time.

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Every congressman and senator could appoint a person, one person. And if that person was

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qualified, the Academy had to take him. Or, and if you did that, you had one set of friends,

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that would vote for you.

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Or you could nominate six candidates, let the academy choose the one they wanted,

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and you had six sets of parents, six sets of friends, etc. And it was a lot more votes.

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So I was one of six. And in April that year, well, let me back up, and playing football at

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Shawnee Mission East, in our last game, Bird Dog for West Point. Bird Dog is a scout that watches

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as high school football players, saw me play, and asked me if I was interested in the academies.

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And I said, yeah. But at the time, I had the nomination to Annapolis.

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And he said, how about, you know, you may not get in. Things won't work out.

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How about if we put you in the West Point Prep School program as a backup? I thought, OK.

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That went through, and I was scheduled to go to Bullis Prep School in Washington, DC

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after my senior year in high school.

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But time went on in April, I went to the mailbox on Saturday morning, opened the letter from

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the academy, and it said basically, thanks, but no thanks.

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We selected one of the other six guys. Well, being a carrot top, that pissed me off something fierce.

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So I went to my Naval Academy catalog, looked up the telephone number of the athletic department,

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at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning in Kansas City, 11 o'clock back there, I called and

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got a guy by the name of Commander Bowler on the phone.

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And I said, this is who I am.

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Just found out I didn't get the appointment from the third congressional in Kansas City.

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I just want you to know that I'm going to go to West Point's prep school program next,

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year and then spend four years kicking the Navy's ass playing football.

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Commander Bowler, I didn't know at the time, was the athletic director at the Naval Academy.

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And he said, back off, kid. Let me get your information. Slow down. Yeah.

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Let me look into it, and I'll get back to you.

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Well, Monday morning, I got called out a first hour period to the office, and it was

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Commander Bowler on the phone saying, well, congratulations.

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We put you in our Naval Academy Prep School program.

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And I thought, well, that's OK. I'm already in West Points.

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And I told him that I'm going to Bullis Prep, and that's the Naval Academy Prep School

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program also. So just tell them you're going to pay for it instead of West Point.

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He said, and this I hate, oh, no, no, no. We looked at your record and we think that would just be repeating your senior in high school.

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And you certainly don't need that.

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We're going to send you to Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore, Oklahoma.

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What?

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Yeah, that didn't send chills down my back. It kind of puckered my asshole, if you pardon my French. No.

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And he said, at 18, you believe almost anything.

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And he said, by going to OMA, you're going to be taking your freshman year in college.

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So you won't be wasting a year of your life. And as 18 years old, you go, a year of my life?

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I don't want to waste that. So I agreed. Consequently, I was in their prep school program.

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And a week later, I got a letter from Buber's, and I opened it.

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And this is April 6, 1965. was going really big. They were drafting like crazy.

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Oh, sure. And this letter said, congratulations on your acceptance in our prep school program. This

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letter authorizes you to join either the Navy or Marine Corps, regulars or reserve programs

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to increase your chances of getting into the Academy. Well, again, being an 18-year-old

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idealistic, know nothing, went behind the ears. I said, well, that sounds like, you

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That sounds like, you know, if you're going to be a good officer, you should know what the enlisted

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guys go through. So I think I'll take advantage of this. And talking with my dad, he agreed. And,

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on a Saturday morning, I went down to the ninth Naval District headquarters, walked in the door,

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and there were about 100 guys in there, took a number like you do at a bakery,

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waited for my number to be called, and went in and the chief sitting at the desk said,

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What do you want, kid? And I said, hey, I got this letter from a Vice Admiral Bagley,

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who calls himself Bupers. I don't know what that is, but he says I can join the Navy if I want to,

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the reserves. I kind of like to do that.

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What are you talking about? Let me see that letter. I had it to me. Where did you get this thing? I

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said, what did you can't read? It's right there. It's on the letterhead. And he signed it with his

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name. You wait here, kid. I'm going to go see the captain. He went in the office and I heard saw him

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talking to the guy. Next thing I know, I'm standing in front of the captain. He goes,

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how did you get this letter? I said, what? You don't know how to read in the Navy? This is

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is really amazing. It's obvious it's a it's from a vice Admiral Bagley. He called him. You don't think I'll call it this number.

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Do you? I said, I don't call it. I don't care. And he did. And by and vice Admiral Bagley actually answered. And it was I,

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got this letter here. It says he can join the reserves or then regulars and yes, sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

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Yes, sir. Right away, sir. No, sir. Never again, sir. And he And I didn't realize I'd made a mistake until I stepped off the bus.

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And there was a 260 pounds, six foot five red headed chief standing in front of me.

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We took one look at me and my red hair and said, you're here to piss me off. Aren't you kid?

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But two weeks, he made my life fun. Yeah, I bet he did. Yeah.

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He did. He did. He did. He did.

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He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did.

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He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did.

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He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. I rolled. He made my life fun. Yeah, I bet he did.

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I bet he did. And. So was that at, uh, was that up at Glenview?

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Where'd you go through basic? At Glenview, which incidentally, my first airplane ride ever was on TWA

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from Kansas city to Chicago O'Hare.

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And at the time I'm in my white uniform, Navy white uniform, Dixie cap.

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And I'm thinking this is probably a bad time to figure out you hate flying.

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Right.

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Right. But anyway, I went through the two weeks of boot camp and that, and the next two

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weeks was supposed to be on a destroyer escort in the great lakes, learning how to be a Navy sailor.

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And, uh, the chief called me in one day, just before at the end of this two week

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period and said, I don't know who you know, but I've got orders here to get you

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out of here and to Kansas city and down to Oklahoma military Academy, wherever

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God knows that is, and I'm going to be a Navy sailor.

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God knows that is by Sunday, pack your bag, you're gone.

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How about that? Thank you, Jesus. Great.

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I was never so glad for two days in August of my life. Oh my gosh.

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So at the prep school, did you play football or did not? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

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Yeah, junior college, Oklahoma junior college football, which is a whole different kind of animal.

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There were six of us for the prep school program there for the Navy.

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And,

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It's just a brutal kind of football. We had a receiver that went out for in practice,

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made a diving catch and knocked out his two front teeth, came back to the coach,

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holding him, blood dripping from his mouth, going, coach, knock my teeth out.

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And all the coaches began taking their plates out of their mouth and going,

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you're a football player, you're going to coach. Yeah. Welcome aboard, sir.

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Right. Stick them back in. They may stay. What position did you play in football?

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Defensive end. Oh, so the acorn didn't fall very far from the tree.

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Unfortunately, my son never saw the light. He was offense.

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Sorry, I interrupted you. You were going somewhere with that.

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We had to wear army uniforms. We marched and played. It's like trying to set themselves up

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as a West Point of the plains. And it was basically junior college kids and the high

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four-year high school and they were either delinquents that the courts sent there or

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their parents were rich and were trying to get rid of them and send them there.

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So it was like a different kind of world experience. Oh yeah. That's quite a crowd.

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Yeah. From a kid from Prairie Village, Kansas. Oh yeah. And we played the University of Tulsa when Jerry Roan was a big.

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All-American quarterback. I know this predates you guys, but he was very big,

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kind of a Roger Stolbeck kind of guy.

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We played their freshman team.

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And this commander bowler came down, because they were playing the varsity the next day,

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and met with each of the six of us.

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And he sat there and pulled my file out and said, I don't know why we didn't get you in the academy this year.

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You certainly had all the grades and the SATs. We should have given you a nomination this year.

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Well, yeah, now you tell me. Yeah, this is two months, three months into the program and I get this kind of thing.

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But it worked. They guaranteed anybody who went in the prep school program would get a

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nomination. I got mine through the Naval Reserve.

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They take 50 a year from each of the four, uh, regulars, Marine, Navy. Okay.

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So came through the reserves. Nice. Now was that pre-major time? Cause we had, Panther was on and he, and he was one of the first

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classes that got to major. I think he was started in 68. Yeah, that sounds right.

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Does that sound right? Panther is a classmate of mine.

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Get out of here. Okay. Cause I was 68. We were in class of 71. We started in, uh, well, 67, I'm sorry.

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I started in June of 67 after my high school graduation in 66. So he was a year behind me.

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They changed from everybody taking exactly the same courses my junior year, my second class year,

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and allowed you to choose a major. And I chose political science.

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And the only- Well, that'll work out great. It was pretty good, except I had to take four years of French and the same French professor. And

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And at the end of the last semester, and the last day of classes before the final exam,

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first class year, he pulled me inside and said, Monsieur Gatchetta, if you promise never

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to speak the language, if you promise never to try to tell anybody that you ever took the language,

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I will give you a C for a final grade.

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Thank you. Which is way higher than I was aiming for at the time.

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Yeah. You didn't even say, we d'accord.

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I just said, praise Jesus. There you go. Thank you, Jesus. That's awesome.

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Perfect.

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So, you graduated 71 from the academy and then straight to flight school.

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Almost. At this particular time, it was kind of an allure of Vietnam. So, the bottom line is I had

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to go to the fleet and serve on a ship for nine months before I could go to flight school. Service

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selection night, you go down to a big auditorium and they call you in order of your class and you,

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And you select what you want to do.

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There are different boards around.

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And the aviation board, you went over and they had flight dates, flight school start,

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dates. And by the time I got there, the first date was in February of 72.

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So I ended up on the John S. McCain, a DDG out of Long Beach for six months before I

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went to flight school.

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Just as a side note, how did the Naval Academy's football team do the years that you played?

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Okay. We won my plebe year and my first class year, the two most important years.

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Okay. The first class, plebe year if you win, and this was always the Saturday after Thanksgiving, you got carry on.

00:18:39.945 --> 00:18:43.550
You didn't have to run in the halls. You didn't have to brace up. You didn't have to eat square meals.

00:18:43.550 --> 00:18:52.550
You could be a normal person from that weekend until you came back after spring, after Christmas break in January. So it was huge.

00:18:53.007 --> 00:18:59.984
So it was huge. Oh yeah. And then first class here because obviously it gives you bragging rights going into the service.

00:19:00.550 --> 00:19:07.500
Right. Your last game was against another service academy. However, I'll tell you, it came down to a decision.

00:19:07.834 --> 00:19:11.345
It came down to decision. I could either play football.

00:19:12.281 --> 00:19:18.611
Or I could graduate from the academy. I couldn't do both. So, I decided to stop playing football

00:19:18.611 --> 00:19:23.971
after my youngster year, which is sophomore year at the academy. My roommate flunked out,

00:19:23.971 --> 00:19:29.574
and I came within three people being called in front of the academic board for malfeasance,

00:19:29.889 --> 00:19:36.560
if you will, when they stopped kicking people out. And after that, I decided I better get serious Okay. It didn't.

00:19:38.051 --> 00:19:40.161
What did we learn last week? What do you call the last guy in his class?

00:19:40.809 --> 00:19:44.531
He's the anchor man. Graduate anchor man, but he's the graduate.

00:19:45.355 --> 00:19:49.211
The anchor man in the class of 69 lived across down across the hall from me.

00:19:49.451 --> 00:19:51.211
He was an offensive tackle force.

00:19:51.651 --> 00:19:56.651
And that man saved my ass more times than I care to, to tell you about from the

00:19:57.051 --> 00:20:00.811
assholes in the squadron that wanted to run this young man's ass into the ground.

00:20:01.127 --> 00:20:05.171
Well, he, he was a great guy. to run this young man's ass into the ground.

00:20:05.484 --> 00:20:08.371
Well, you have him to thank for that then. Yes, I did.

00:20:09.651 --> 00:20:16.791
He was a very good friend. So flight school in spring of 72. Okay.

00:20:17.412 --> 00:20:24.611
Uh, Meridian VT1, of course, 30 some hours. The instructor, we got the first day of training where you

00:20:24.611 --> 00:20:26.371
actually go out to the flight line.

00:20:26.739 --> 00:20:29.571
They assign you an instructor and two of us had an instructor.

00:20:29.961 --> 00:20:37.289
And the first question he asked after introducing himself, what do you want to fly. My compatriot sitting next to me said, I want to fly helos. And I,

00:20:37.991 --> 00:20:42.111
said, I want to fly jets. And by God, that's the way he worked it. I didn't

00:20:42.111 --> 00:20:45.175
know at the time, but having been an instructor, I now understand that pretty

00:20:45.551 --> 00:20:46.903
months of fix was in for me.

00:20:47.777 --> 00:20:50.987
Then he makes sure that my grades were good enough. I got jet selected.

00:20:51.144 --> 00:20:52.503
Excellent. And that was in Meridian?

00:20:52.620 --> 00:20:59.156
Yeah. Not Pensacola? No, no. At the time you could stay in Pensacola, but not very many people did.

00:20:59.498 --> 00:21:01.467
You either went to Beaville, Kingsville, or Meridian.

00:21:02.144 --> 00:21:05.627
Okay. When I heard Meridian, again, one of those, oh no.

00:21:06.385 --> 00:21:14.270
Right. And sure enough, I got BT-9 and Meridian for basic. And I spent the next three years of my life there.

00:21:14.658 --> 00:21:16.187
Oh, because you got surgratted.

00:21:16.521 --> 00:21:30.051
Yeah, plow back Sir grads. The way it worked is we started advanced jets. The day McCain came home from the north. We watched him on TV, get off the airplane and limp over to be greeted and everything. And then we went in and started academic. Wow.

00:21:30.483 --> 00:21:34.814
VT-7 advanced jets there. Okay. So was that TA-4s back then?

00:21:35.187 --> 00:21:40.989
Yeah, TA-4s. Okay. Biggest squadron in the Navy had over 120 TA-4s.

00:21:41.187 --> 00:21:41.853
Oh my gosh.

00:21:42.349 --> 00:22:08.104
Yeah, it was huge. Yeah. Yeah, we got our wings in June of 73. My class in June, they decided that the war had ended when McCain came home, it was all over, that they didn't need pilots anymore in the Navy. So 50% of the graduates in June were sent to the fleet, the bottom 50% was sent to the fleet never to fly again for the Navy. The top 50% were all plowed back to the training command.

00:22:08.203 --> 00:22:09.187
To instructor jobs. Yeah.

00:22:09.187 --> 00:22:18.367
So obviously you were in the top 50%. Thank goodness. Well, I don't know whether I was or not, but as a student, I was kind of bored because

00:22:18.367 --> 00:22:21.847
you only fly once or twice. If you're really lucky, twice a day.

00:22:21.847 --> 00:22:23.057
Some days you don't fly at all.

00:22:23.627 --> 00:22:29.387
So I had asked the XO of the squadron if I could have a job in the squadron, and he assigned

00:22:29.387 --> 00:22:31.483
me to be the branch officer for the Paraloft.

00:22:32.563 --> 00:22:39.533
And the ejection seat guys. So, I was working in the squadron and when this came out, they requested

00:22:39.533 --> 00:22:47.768
me for BT-7. So, that worked out good. Yeah. And it was, it worked out really good for a while.

00:22:48.173 --> 00:22:54.253
And as a new instructor, you do all the fam and instrument work. My first student was a Marine

00:22:54.253 --> 00:23:00.093
helicopter pilot captain back from Vietnam. At this time, now that the war was over, all the guys

00:23:00.093 --> 00:23:06.025
that went through Army helicopter training, they now had to go back through Navy flights training

00:23:06.250 --> 00:23:14.901
to get their unrestricted aviator on their file. And my first student, this Marine captain,

00:23:15.297 --> 00:23:19.753
had the habit of every time we'd sit down for a brief, he'd have his logbook out,

00:23:19.924 --> 00:23:26.217
paging through it. I don't know if you guys know in the Navy logbooks, the combat tan is green,

00:23:26.568 --> 00:23:33.853
Night time's red, normal times black, but combat time is always in green ink. It'd be page after

00:23:33.853 --> 00:23:39.133
page after page of green time, trying to intimidate me. And it worked pretty good.

00:23:41.133 --> 00:23:46.733
My first GCA hop with him in the back, he was coming in and at 200 feet when the controller

00:23:46.733 --> 00:23:53.293
told him to go around, he dropped the nose and added power, which in an A4 slams you into the

00:23:53.293 --> 00:23:55.960
the ground a lot faster than what you thought you were going to do.

00:23:56.333 --> 00:23:56.752
Oh yeah.

00:23:57.213 --> 00:23:59.693
It scared the be Jesus out of me. I grabbed the airplane.

00:23:59.933 --> 00:24:02.813
It wasn't until later on that I found out the way you go around

00:24:02.813 --> 00:24:09.053
than a helicopter is you lower the collective to change the pitch angle on the rotors and add power.

00:24:09.373 --> 00:24:11.613
He was just, he was just doing muscle memory, man.

00:24:14.773 --> 00:24:22.413
It took me a long, took me several of those. The next time I was ready for him, but the first time, Oh Lord, you

00:24:22.413 --> 00:24:23.678
talk about a pucker factor.

00:24:24.433 --> 00:24:25.393
Surprise.

00:24:26.513 --> 00:24:35.633
Incidentally, our first day at, uh, in Pensacola was a physiology hour and the flight surgeon came in to talk about physiology.

00:24:35.633 --> 00:24:39.233
He turned around on the board and put the word lemur on the board,

00:24:39.233 --> 00:24:45.392
wrote lemur, and he said, gentlemen, the definition of lemur is a cold shot of urine to your heart.

00:24:46.256 --> 00:24:54.266
He said, if you're not lucky, you'll experience that once. If you're lucky, you'll experience more than once, probably many times in your career.

00:24:55.231 --> 00:25:00.650
And to say I had a lemur on that GCA hop with that Marine was an understatement. Yeah.

00:25:01.146 --> 00:25:05.066
GCA. GCA stands for? Ground Controlled Approach.

00:25:05.066 --> 00:25:05.786
Ground Controlled Approach. All right.

00:25:05.786 --> 00:25:08.906
I didn't know if we had covered that before, but I just wanted to make sure that was out there.

00:25:08.906 --> 00:25:11.066
I don't know if we have or not. Yeah. GCA, Ground Controlled Approach.

00:25:11.066 --> 00:25:13.866
You actually got a controller sitting there going, you're a little high,

00:25:13.866 --> 00:25:19.626
down and down and on glide slope slightly left. Yeah. Yeah. Come left, come right.

00:25:20.140 --> 00:25:25.306
Yeah. It was the Navy and Marine Corps version of a precision approach. None of our airplanes

00:25:25.306 --> 00:25:29.755
were equipped with ILSs like the Air Force guys had. So, because we're much better.

00:25:30.187 --> 00:25:33.302
First ILS I ever flew was for American.

00:25:33.914 --> 00:25:34.186
Yeah. Right.

00:25:35.626 --> 00:25:43.306
And it was like, what the hell is this? Hey, so I just curious, three years as a SIR grad or a instructor.

00:25:43.306 --> 00:25:48.687
Two years. Yeah. Two years. Two years. How, how much flying, uh, how much A4 time did you end up with?

00:25:48.946 --> 00:25:49.839
A thousand hours?

00:25:50.226 --> 00:25:53.584
Yeah. Oh yeah. But here's the deal. I wanted fighters.

00:25:53.989 --> 00:25:55.266
I wanted to be a fighter pilot.

00:25:55.786 --> 00:25:58.553
And so I was going to do everything I could to be a fighter pilot.

00:25:58.746 --> 00:26:07.706
So I would sit in the back of lead solos, the way ACM air combat maneuvering hops work in the training command, there's always a leads, uh,

00:26:07.746 --> 00:26:12.371
lead and the student goes with an instructor on the first, say offensive hop.

00:26:12.741 --> 00:26:16.134
And he teaches you how to do yo-yos, et cetera.

00:26:16.693 --> 00:26:20.186
And then the student goes solo. But there's always a solo lead.

00:26:20.726 --> 00:26:23.147
So I'd fly my one or two hops as an instructor.

00:26:23.453 --> 00:26:27.459
And then I'd go jump in the backseat of some ACM lead and fly with them.

00:26:28.117 --> 00:26:33.666
And after doing that for about eight months, I was flying on a Friday night in the backseat

00:26:33.666 --> 00:26:36.408
of the ACM standoff, the guy that runs the program.

00:26:36.651 --> 00:26:39.792
And we got out of it. And he said, when we landed, he said,

00:26:39.919 --> 00:26:43.087
If you're too stupid to go to the club on Friday afternoon to drink,

00:26:43.357 --> 00:26:46.146
I'm going to qualify you so that I can go to the club and drink.

00:26:48.626 --> 00:26:53.426
So at about 10 months in the program, I became an ACM instructor and was one of the first

00:26:53.426 --> 00:26:59.746
plow backs was the first plow back in Meridian that ever became an ACM instructor. So for the,

00:26:59.746 --> 00:27:04.626
Yeah, the last year I flew ACM and tactical hops the whole time.

00:27:05.917 --> 00:27:12.607
Not being the smartest kid in the room, I decided that I wanted to be an LSO when I was in the fleet.

00:27:12.607 --> 00:27:18.574
So why not try to be an LSO in the training command, which they never had, and they never done before.

00:27:18.790 --> 00:27:22.058
Went in and talked to the squadron LSOs, we had two from the fleet.

00:27:22.292 --> 00:27:29.233
We talked to the detailers and et cetera, and they said, we've never done it before, but what the hell, why not try it and let's see how it goes.

00:27:29.656 --> 00:27:37.907
So I started LSO in my last year also, and went to the boat with him and started to be an LSO.

00:27:38.721 --> 00:27:43.267
And that was my big undoing. That screwed me over because...

00:27:43.808 --> 00:27:47.427
Well, landing signal officer, the definition of that is standing on the boat and watching

00:27:47.427 --> 00:27:49.747
your friends fly in. Watching them try to kill you.

00:27:51.351 --> 00:27:58.547
But because I was an LSO when our detailing came up, and the way this SIRGRAD 50% went to the

00:27:58.547 --> 00:28:00.567
the fleet, 50% became plowbacks.

00:28:00.633 --> 00:28:03.667
Of those 50%, only 50% were going to go to the fleet.

00:28:04.216 --> 00:28:07.267
So you had to be good enough that you made the cut again.

00:28:08.147 --> 00:28:11.307
And that's one of the reasons I volunteered to be an LSO.

00:28:12.227 --> 00:28:17.747
And when the detailer, they were detailing our group, I made the cut, but I guess

00:28:17.747 --> 00:28:23.227
they all sit in a room around desk and, uh, they were transitioning S2s, which

00:28:23.227 --> 00:28:26.244
were a prop airplane, to S3s, which were jets.

00:28:26.694 --> 00:28:33.725
And the damn S3 detailer called out, hey, I need an LSO. Was there anybody got an LSO?

00:28:33.987 --> 00:28:35.832
Yeah, uh-oh.

00:28:36.307 --> 00:28:40.000
So yeah, I got one here. He's coming out of the training command.

00:28:40.807 --> 00:28:44.834
I'll take him. So I got S3s out of that.

00:28:45.747 --> 00:28:51.622
And on the morning that we knew, we were all waiting. We knew that it was gonna come down any day.

00:28:52.067 --> 00:28:55.727
And then the squadron and I went in one morning and they said, hey, the orders came in.

00:28:56.187 --> 00:29:01.794
For you guys. I said, what did I get? And they said, the skipper won't let me tell you.

00:29:02.507 --> 00:29:05.307
He said, wait till he comes in this morning. I said, where is he?

00:29:05.307 --> 00:29:06.448
That he's out playing golf.

00:29:07.493 --> 00:29:11.663
So I jumped in my car and drove up to the golf course and chased the skipper down. No!

00:29:11.724 --> 00:29:18.143
Yes! On a green and said, skipper, I got to know. I gots to know. And he said,

00:29:19.042 --> 00:29:23.423
Kip, I'm sorry, you're not going to like it. They don't do the kind of flying you like to do.

00:29:25.023 --> 00:29:30.703
They're a different kind of animal. You got an S3. And I mean, I felt my heart drop out of my

00:29:30.703 --> 00:29:33.463
Skipper, come on, you don't play with me.

00:29:33.523 --> 00:29:34.703
And he said, I'm not playing.

00:29:35.463 --> 00:29:37.209
He said, go to the squadron. When we get there, we'll start calling.

00:29:37.943 --> 00:29:39.143
See if we can't get it changed.

00:29:40.143 --> 00:29:46.383
And we couldn't. So I went off to be an LSO for a brand new S3 squadron that

00:29:46.383 --> 00:29:47.652
they were putting together.

00:29:48.503 --> 00:29:53.854
It was actually the last S2 squadron in the fleet and the way it worked.

00:29:55.376 --> 00:30:03.946
Uh, the S3 was an airplane. The S3 was an airplane that was meant to have one set of controls in the left seat.

00:30:04.943 --> 00:30:09.905
There'd be a right seat, but he'd be working the radar, the FLIR, the ESM.

00:30:10.303 --> 00:30:13.020
They had an AW in the back left seat.

00:30:13.543 --> 00:30:17.998
He read all the sonobuoy information, did all the sound stuff, listened to that, tried,

00:30:18.543 --> 00:30:22.338
to determine what pumps, etc. he was listening to.

00:30:22.563 --> 00:30:24.903
And then the tactical officer sat in the right back seat.

00:30:27.577 --> 00:30:32.883
Well, the S3 community, the VS community wasn't highly rated in the Navy.

00:30:32.883 --> 00:30:37.843
And there were admirals that said, you're going to put two pilots into a jet, they're

00:30:37.843 --> 00:30:38.843
going to kill themselves.

00:30:38.843 --> 00:30:42.723
We'll put a set of a second set of controls on the right seat.

00:30:43.277 --> 00:30:50.253
And we'll put a jet qualified aviator in the right seat to make sure these guys don't kill themselves.

00:30:51.323 --> 00:30:57.509
So immediately you had a community that was split between senior S-2 pilots that had flown

00:30:57.599 --> 00:31:02.425
props their whole life and nuggets coming in that were all jet-trained aviators.

00:31:02.963 --> 00:31:04.648
That was not a good situation.

00:31:05.765 --> 00:31:12.255
And that S2 was a, those were monster, uh, reciprocating piston engines, radial piston

00:31:12.255 --> 00:31:20.411
engines. My, my, when I got to this VS24, they'd just given up their S2s and the LSO I was replacing hadn't left yet.

00:31:21.005 --> 00:31:26.740
And he said, Hey, you want to go fly? And I said, yeah, let's, you know, he said, we'll go pick up an S2 from the, uh, rag.

00:31:27.215 --> 00:31:29.255
We walked over there, yellow sheets signed for the airplane.

00:31:29.255 --> 00:31:31.241
Then he said, let's go next door and get a lunch.

00:31:31.790 --> 00:31:32.555
And I thought, what?

00:31:33.335 --> 00:31:39.275
In and got a box lunch to take out to the airplane. And I thought, Oh, this is really a different kind of flying.

00:31:39.655 --> 00:31:42.335
Never once did I eat at lunch flying in an A4.

00:31:42.503 --> 00:31:43.975
Right. Right.

00:31:45.335 --> 00:31:48.335
So you might've lost your lunch flying in an A4 once or twice.

00:31:49.575 --> 00:31:52.415
Did, uh, did you know Chas from the fleet?

00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:57.735
I asked him that pre-show. They, he, yeah, he was in Nimitz and Chas was forestall.

00:31:58.995 --> 00:32:08.717
One of the things I wanted to talk about in the training man was my flight jacket and the saga of my leather flight jacket. Oh my gosh, yes. Tell that story.

00:32:08.996 --> 00:32:15.335
My first Navy student, I picked up in basic instruments and took him through to advanced

00:32:15.335 --> 00:32:21.575
instruments, flying under the back and under the bag in an A4. And one of the things they're

00:32:21.575 --> 00:32:27.175
supposed to do is go on cross countries with these guys. So he had an uncle out in LA that

00:32:27.298 --> 00:32:34.935
got tickets for us on a Saturday for the USC UCLA game. And I put in a request to do a cross-country

00:32:34.935 --> 00:32:41.255
out to El Toro in LA, got it approved. And on a Friday afternoon, we took off from Meridian.

00:32:42.535 --> 00:32:51.015
I was going to stop at Dyes for gas, but our fuel was so good. It was such a great day and there

00:32:51.015 --> 00:32:53.355
wasn't much headwind going west.

00:32:53.639 --> 00:32:56.519
We stretched it all the way to Cannon Air Force Base.

00:32:57.320 --> 00:33:02.137
And the old adage, never refuel at someplace you don't want to spend a lot of time at. Right.

00:33:02.317 --> 00:33:09.015
Bit me in the ass. Coming out of there at sundown, we had a complete electrical failure.

00:33:10.149 --> 00:33:14.719
Now, my student's under the bag. He's still climbing out. And I'm sitting there going,

00:33:14.719 --> 00:33:19.286
oh, man, this football game is great. They're playing for first place in the PacWest.

00:33:19.628 --> 00:33:25.999
If I just follow Interstate 10, I probably can find LA. But never having been flown into LA,

00:33:25.999 --> 00:33:32.079
I said, how the hell am I going to find El Toro in that LA basin? And as I'm trying to ponder this,

00:33:33.087 --> 00:33:38.639
continuing to fly, we had a hydraulic failure at the same time. And then the A4, the first thing

00:33:38.639 --> 00:33:44.834
under hydraulic fire is a big red caution fire. The hydraulic bowsers sit above the engine.

00:33:45.199 --> 00:33:50.159
So I decided that enough of this, time to go back to cannon. We declared an emergency. I

00:33:50.159 --> 00:33:55.599
took the airplane, we dove into cannon and landed. And it was such a bad thing that the

00:33:55.599 --> 00:33:59.778
damn duty officer came out in his own personal car and picked us up on the flight line,

00:34:00.246 --> 00:34:05.599
took us over to the BOQ and then to the O club, he felt so bad for us and dropped us off.

00:34:06.449 --> 00:34:10.759
And we sat down and looked at each other and said, this just gets worse and worse.

00:34:11.079 --> 00:34:14.439
Yeah. Let's get this party started. Huh? Yeah.

00:34:15.599 --> 00:34:23.719
We're drinking our beer feeling as low as you can. When all of a sudden the doors open and in came a whole F-111 squadron.

00:34:23.959 --> 00:34:29.729
They had been doing the dining in and they all piled in here and they were drinking their beer and they were all drinking their beer.

00:34:30.359 --> 00:34:32.839
And they were all drinking their beer. And they were all drinking their beer.

00:34:32.839 --> 00:35:01.839
In here and the first thing we know the CO sent over a couple of beers for us. And then the XO sent over some beers and it started working down the line until it was a junior officers in the squadron were buying the shots of tequila. And we're at the bar now. And I decided that it was only fair to show Navy hospitality reciprocate. And so the four of us, my student and the two JOs from the F-111 squadron, we were all in the bar.

00:35:03.082 --> 00:35:08.637
Went through a whole fifth of tequila trying to see who could outlast the other one.

00:35:09.645 --> 00:35:16.215
The next morning I woke up spread eagle, sans clothes on the BLQ room floor,

00:35:17.333 --> 00:35:19.575
did the toe and finger crawl over to the porcelain.

00:35:21.024 --> 00:35:27.335
Sure. Eventually staggered out and began getting dressed and my leather flight jacket wasn't

00:35:27.335 --> 00:35:34.535
around. Instead, there was an Air Force nylon rain flight jacket there. That son of a bitch,

00:35:35.472 --> 00:35:39.073
stole my jacket from me, but he was at least nice enough to leave me a jacket.

00:35:39.442 --> 00:35:46.215
I put it on and it came to there on my arms. Right. So it was a trade. He traded you.

00:35:46.215 --> 00:35:52.535
You just traded. Yeah. Not a good trade. The way it works. We had Marine captains in the

00:35:52.535 --> 00:35:57.815
squadron instructors and the way the Navy works. They sent a Marine captain and a mech to fix our

00:35:57.815 --> 00:36:07.015
airplane. And my student and I sat in ops and watched the UCLA USC game hung over watching this.

00:36:07.790 --> 00:36:15.415
I landed, my next door neighbor was a short guy and had always wanted this nylon green Air Force flight jacket.

00:36:16.217 --> 00:36:21.135
It was kind of sought after at the time. So I traded the jacket for a tail hook, a four tail hook.

00:36:22.275 --> 00:36:30.135
Nice. Nice. And this guy's name was fireball. So named because like one of the other people on your podcast, his airplane

00:36:30.135 --> 00:36:33.420
was on fire on a GCA hop and he was on fire.

00:36:33.879 --> 00:36:36.495
His airplane was on fire on a GCA hop.

00:36:37.156 --> 00:36:41.015
And he decided instead of ejecting, he was a mile and a half short of the field.

00:36:41.015 --> 00:36:42.335
He'd just come on in and land.

00:36:43.133 --> 00:36:50.255
And so from that time on, he was called fireball. He was just a blaze of fire coming down final.

00:36:52.190 --> 00:36:56.280
So I'm glad we can laugh about that though. Right.

00:36:56.580 --> 00:37:00.400
Exactly. Years go by. They don't always end that well. Years go by this guy.

00:37:00.787 --> 00:37:11.887
My buddy is now a Delta pilot and he's a super stretch a check out, check airman on as an engineer.

00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:16.400
And, uh, he's calling the roll on a new class center in front of him.

00:37:16.960 --> 00:37:21.920
And one of the guys, he calls the name and he says here, and he goes,

00:37:21.996 --> 00:37:23.887
He looks at him and goes, no, you're not.

00:37:24.922 --> 00:37:28.676
He said, that is the name on your jacket. The name on your jacket says Kip Gatchel.

00:37:29.153 --> 00:37:31.530
And he goes, oh, this old thing?

00:37:31.656 --> 00:37:36.733
He said, I won this in a poker game. He goes, no, you didn't.

00:37:37.012 --> 00:37:41.440
I have your jacket hanging in my closet. You stole it from him after you got him drunk

00:37:41.440 --> 00:37:43.296
in Cannon, New Mexico.

00:37:43.476 --> 00:37:48.958
And we don't allow thieves at Delta Airlines. Pack your things and get out.

00:37:49.228 --> 00:37:50.821
And the guy just turned white.

00:37:51.434 --> 00:37:55.701
I have to admit, I'm just pulling your leg, but I know the story behind that jacket.

00:37:56.475 --> 00:38:04.400
Well, 20 years go by, my son's roommate in college, they both went to Louisiana Tech

00:38:04.400 --> 00:38:07.800
and got all their ratings there and then followed each other around.

00:38:07.800 --> 00:38:09.204
He was a United pilot.

00:38:10.807 --> 00:38:14.750
He's sitting in the bar in Amarillo, Texas, and calls me up one night and goes, would,

00:38:15.640 --> 00:38:17.120
you like your flight jacket back?

00:38:17.873 --> 00:38:23.360
And I said, what are you talking about? He said, I'm sitting in the bar and there's a guy at the bar who says he's Kip Gatchel

00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:24.733
wearing a Navy flight jacket.

00:38:25.156 --> 00:38:28.280
You want me to get it back for you?

00:38:29.080 --> 00:38:34.348
Yes I do. Let him keep it. If he's had it that long, he deserves it.

00:38:35.080 --> 00:38:39.000
But I thought that's kind of an unusual, I mean, how many times does this keep running

00:38:39.000 --> 00:38:40.880
into you, keep running into your old jacket.

00:38:41.108 --> 00:38:45.040
Right. It's a small world and aviation is an even smaller world.

00:38:45.267 --> 00:38:49.800
That's a good story. Anyway, ended up in VS-24.

00:38:51.326 --> 00:39:00.720
We had 25 pilots and I was a nugget LSO. The two S2 LSOs had extended.

00:39:01.552 --> 00:39:04.226
This gets into the CV, CVA and CVS stuff.

00:39:05.320 --> 00:39:15.605
The Navy was going from two carrier groups, any submarine in attack to one carrier, and we were going to be able to do that.

00:39:16.685 --> 00:39:22.120
And they were going to put the ASW on the big boat.

00:39:23.203 --> 00:39:30.882
And the squadron VS-24 made the last CVS cruise, or well, actually it was the first CV cruise

00:39:30.936 --> 00:39:36.238
on the Intrepid, where they put the S2s with attack airplanes to see how it would work.

00:39:37.426 --> 00:39:44.476
And because of that, their LSOs had extended for this extra cruise and couldn't extend anymore.

00:39:44.476 --> 00:39:52.019
So I ended up as a nega-LSO with no senior LSOs over me and responsible for getting 25 guys

00:39:52.217 --> 00:39:58.796
carrier qual. And came back, we spent six months out at North Island getting transition,

00:39:58.951 --> 00:40:03.436
picked up our new airplanes at the factory in Long Beach and flew them back to Cecil Field in Florida.

00:40:04.451 --> 00:40:09.600
And the first day back, the CO calls me into the office and said, when's my first deck?

00:40:10.663 --> 00:40:17.891
Excuse me? He said, when's my first deck? I want to know by noon when my first deck is so I can go out and carrier qual on.

00:40:18.716 --> 00:40:24.337
I said, I don't know how to do that. And he said, you're my LSO, figure it out. Oh boy.

00:40:24.850 --> 00:40:29.756
Yeah. I had to go shopping through other hangers trying to find LSOs that tell me how the hell

00:40:29.756 --> 00:40:33.036
you qualify a squadron and get a carrier.

00:40:33.303 --> 00:40:38.196
Our first deck I got was the Lexington out of Pensacola, a training carrier.

00:40:38.596 --> 00:40:41.156
Oh yeah. Yeah. We had idling. I landed on the Lex.

00:40:42.796 --> 00:40:47.914
I got 16 traps on the Lex. I got 10, I got six. I got, I got six. I got 10.

00:40:48.476 --> 00:40:53.649
Hey, all right. When we were students, the Lex was in the yard and the T2, we couldn't get any traps.

00:40:55.305 --> 00:40:59.436
So in the A4, we got the four that just didn't work. So we got the four that just didn't work.

00:40:59.436 --> 00:41:04.436
So in the A4, we got the four that you're supposed to get in the T2 plus R6.

00:41:06.153 --> 00:41:09.952
How about that? And that's probably the first time I ever flew with a completely drunk pilot.

00:41:12.243 --> 00:41:18.162
When you went to the boat? Yeah. We'd been out steaming the night before because the overhead wasn't until three o'clock.

00:41:18.495 --> 00:41:21.123
So we closed all the bars down at Meridian at two.

00:41:22.114 --> 00:41:26.678
And at six, they called us and told us we had a 10 o'clock overhead. Oops.

00:41:27.029 --> 00:41:30.495
Yeah. And the way these guys had worked it, the instructors had worked it.

00:41:31.062 --> 00:41:33.043
No drinking within 50 feet. You were fine. Yeah.

00:41:33.663 --> 00:41:39.843
Because we hadn't had traps as T2 students, they convinced our skipper that what they

00:41:39.843 --> 00:41:45.043
need, we needed to do was right in their back seat so we could see what trapping and catapult

00:41:45.043 --> 00:41:50.563
shots were all about as nuggets, which was a complete boondoggle for these guys so they

00:41:50.563 --> 00:41:52.118
could get traps. You bet.

00:41:52.643 --> 00:41:57.343
So I'm sitting in the back seat going out to the boat the first time and my first trap

00:41:57.343 --> 00:42:03.863
was sitting in the backseat and I mean to tell you, it was amazing because you got nothing

00:42:03.863 --> 00:42:07.363
to do except try to peer around the guy in front of you and all of a sudden, you're being

00:42:07.363 --> 00:42:09.745
slammed into the instrument panel on the trap.

00:42:10.583 --> 00:42:15.543
They took us right over to the cat, hooked us up and took the cat shot and I thought

00:42:15.543 --> 00:42:17.397
my heart was gonna come out of my mouth.

00:42:17.983 --> 00:42:24.994
It was the most amazing feeling you've ever experienced when you don't have to do anything except ride it.

00:42:25.583 --> 00:42:31.728
It was amazing. And we went back to the beach and then the next day we went out as nugget students and got our traps.

00:42:32.070 --> 00:42:35.248
Well, it's kind of nice having a preview.

00:42:35.823 --> 00:42:40.883
So you alluded to this, the guy that you were in the backseat of, you're pretty sure he was functioning.

00:42:41.183 --> 00:42:50.423
That's kind of unnerving. From this experience, I tried to convince the skipper and the squadron after I was plowed

00:42:50.423 --> 00:42:56.303
back to give me some money to study because I figured I could do a physiological study

00:42:56.303 --> 00:42:59.194
of how you couldn't survive a cat shot

00:42:59.563 --> 00:43:01.598
while you're having sex at the same time.

00:43:02.660 --> 00:43:10.627
And I figured with enough money, sit in the back of the A4, have a young lady straddling you.

00:43:10.627 --> 00:43:13.987
And this takes, you got to appreciate this takes a lot of time work because there's such

00:43:13.987 --> 00:43:19.107
a delay from when you salute the cat officer to when he actually points down the deck and

00:43:19.107 --> 00:43:21.538
they push the button to fire the cat.

00:43:21.847 --> 00:43:27.227
It's all about timing. And I figured it's going to take a lot of work to get this down.

00:43:27.227 --> 00:43:30.108
And you take the cat shot, you have the orgasm.

00:43:30.307 --> 00:43:31.755
And I figured that would probably kill you.

00:43:32.899 --> 00:43:37.467
Yeah. And the skipper said, what if it doesn't? Then I've wasted my money.

00:43:37.467 --> 00:43:42.234
I said, ah, skipper, cat shot, orgasm, ejection.

00:43:43.187 --> 00:43:47.267
Have her pull the face curtain as you're taking the cat shot with an orgasm.

00:43:47.267 --> 00:43:50.930
And I'm pretty sure there would be no surviving that.

00:43:51.827 --> 00:43:55.227
He never bought off on it. Gee, I wonder why.

00:43:55.227 --> 00:43:59.248
That sounds like a really good idea though, on paper. Yeah.

00:43:59.807 --> 00:44:07.707
Oh my gosh. Yeah. was the show title in there somewhere. But that's a lot of words, you know, cat shots and orgasms.

00:44:07.707 --> 00:44:11.927
We may have to paraphrase. Hey, before we go any farther, there was an acronym thrown

00:44:11.927 --> 00:44:18.187
out that I don't know we've ever covered. ASW. I know what it means, but can you explain it?

00:44:18.187 --> 00:44:22.387
Yeah. Anti-submarine warfare. That's basically what your weapon system was all about.

00:44:22.387 --> 00:44:29.847
Yeah. The S3 was all designed to fight submarines. It carried sensors and weapons was a torpedo

00:44:29.847 --> 00:44:49.847
nuclear depth charges. We had a radar that was good at 160 miles, supposedly could pick up a Coke can at 160 miles. It had a tremendous ESM suite on it that could gather all this radar emissions and be able to triangulate where the receivers, the transmitters were coming from.

00:44:50.507 --> 00:44:55.307
Transmitters were coming from. With all that electronic equipment going on, I'm

00:44:55.307 --> 00:45:01.827
surprised any of you people ever reproduced. And our big computers on that,

00:45:01.827 --> 00:45:05.199
we had three of these things was 376K.

00:45:06.612 --> 00:45:16.010
And it was, they were big. And one of the things we learned in the S3 with all this electronic stuff, we had to start up 45 minutes before cat shots.

00:45:16.722 --> 00:45:19.182
So we could get everything online and see if it would work.

00:45:20.737 --> 00:45:25.535
And you turn all the systems on. And if it didn't work, the first thing you did is just turn it on and off.

00:45:26.062 --> 00:45:26.363
Right.

00:45:26.723 --> 00:45:29.424
And you could just turn it off and on and off. And you could just turn it off and on and off.

00:45:30.462 --> 00:45:34.462
And you could just turn it off and on and off. And you could just turn it off and on and off.

00:45:34.462 --> 00:45:39.562
Did is just turn it on and off. If that didn't clear default, you turned it off

00:45:39.562 --> 00:45:41.136
and called the ETs in.

00:45:41.640 --> 00:45:45.682
They told you to turn it on. They'd see that the message still was there.

00:45:45.682 --> 00:45:49.490
They'd go and unseat the box in the back of the airplane in the rack. Call that a re-rack.

00:45:50.093 --> 00:45:56.762
Yeah. The S3 had a tunnel behind the two guys in the back with all these electronic boxes in it.

00:45:56.762 --> 00:45:59.699
And they'd go and unplug it and plug it back in.

00:46:00.041 --> 00:46:04.443
And if that didn't clear it, they'd send it down to the shops and put a new box in.

00:46:04.922 --> 00:46:09.482
Big control, alt, delete there. You want to reboot? Exactly.

00:46:09.482 --> 00:46:17.289
I imagine cooling was probably a big pain in the ass, too. We had big, yeah, they always had big air conditioning

00:46:17.487 --> 00:46:20.701
doohickeys plugged into us to keep the electronics cool.

00:46:21.082 --> 00:46:28.042
And now your iPhone or your Android has 50 times the computing power, 500 times the computing

00:46:28.042 --> 00:46:35.861
power. It's crazy. All those racks. You alluded to in our preamble about your night in the barrel.

00:46:36.402 --> 00:46:41.362
Oh, okay. You wanna talk about that? Yeah, the S3, the S3.

00:46:44.008 --> 00:46:49.058
We took off five minutes before the air wing because we had very big wings. They folded,

00:46:49.058 --> 00:46:52.898
but when they came down, they took up a lot of deck space. So to get rid of us,

00:46:53.082 --> 00:46:58.738
they'd shoot us five minutes before the rest of the air wing. And we'd been at mid-cruise stand

00:46:58.738 --> 00:47:05.938
down and had just gone out for the first line period out of Sigonella into the Med. And we

00:47:05.938 --> 00:47:11.778
got a real world tasking that the Russians were bringing down a nuclear attack boat to bring into

00:47:11.778 --> 00:47:15.930
the men and he was supposed to be coming through the straits of Gibraltar that night.

00:47:16.380 --> 00:47:21.218
In the meantime, there was a diesel electric boat sitting outside the strait of Gibraltar

00:47:21.218 --> 00:47:25.778
on the surface, waiting for the Russian to show up so they could start doing the crazy Ivan,

00:47:26.625 --> 00:47:30.258
dance to get rid of the American attack boat that was following the Russian down.

00:47:31.270 --> 00:47:36.923
And so we got tasked to go out and spend the night over the top of this diesel electric boat

00:47:37.229 --> 00:47:43.538
with our flare, which allowed us to see him just like it was daytime. And the idea was when he

00:47:43.538 --> 00:47:51.298
pulled the plug, we'd call control and tell him the Russians are starting their dance. And so,

00:47:52.173 --> 00:47:58.898
the deck was moving about 40 to 50 feet that night. As we're manning up, the whole air wing's

00:47:58.898 --> 00:48:04.083
getting ready to go at launch. And just before the, about 10 minutes before the launch, the

00:48:04.191 --> 00:48:08.071
The air boss comes on and said, cancel the launch, launch the Viking.

00:48:08.498 --> 00:48:10.558
The SVA's name was a Viking.

00:48:11.348 --> 00:48:14.769
And I said, boss, let's reason together.

00:48:16.218 --> 00:48:21.133
Can't we cancel to launch the Viking. So the next thing I know, bam, we're shot off.

00:48:21.844 --> 00:48:27.198
And the whole air wing has been canceled. And I told I'm flying with my assistant LSO who's in the left seat.

00:48:28.038 --> 00:48:32.318
And the way the Navy works, you need two landings when you come from a night

00:48:32.318 --> 00:48:35.528
Carrier landing is good for seven days, period. That's it.

00:48:35.888 --> 00:48:41.334
After seven days, you need two day traps, two day landings before you can do a night trap.

00:48:42.190 --> 00:48:51.858
So this is our first day out. Joe had had my assistant, Joe, had had his two landings.

00:48:52.083 --> 00:48:57.800
I'd only had one, so I wasn't qualified to go at night in the right seat.

00:48:58.070 --> 00:49:03.258
So I'm sitting in the right seat working the radar and Blair for Joe, who's flying in the left seat as

00:49:03.258 --> 00:49:11.618
their as the pilot in command. And we go out sit on top of these Russian diesel boat for four hours. I'm telling Joe,

00:49:11.618 --> 00:49:17.978
this is not good. When we come back, the whole damn boats been staying up for four hours waiting for us. And I said,

00:49:17.978 --> 00:49:24.458
what's going to happen, they're going to bring us in at 1200 feet at 450 knots, and about three miles behind the boat,

00:49:24.458 --> 00:49:29.258
they're going to call dirty up call the ball. And that's exactly what happened.

00:49:29.858 --> 00:49:35.258
And now you call the ball. And the first thing we hear is disregard the ball, the deck's moving.

00:49:36.023 --> 00:49:42.559
And it's like, Oh God, here we go. Our first pass, we had to climb to get above the back of the boat.

00:49:43.990 --> 00:49:50.640
And so that was our first wave off. The next pass, the boat rolled into us and we had to.

00:49:53.082 --> 00:49:59.280
Do a go around to avoid hitting the island that was rolling in front of us. We did two bolters,

00:50:00.257 --> 00:50:06.480
and after as we were climbing out for the next, this is after four passes, the squadron LSO calls

00:50:06.480 --> 00:50:12.400
up and goes, hey Viking, we can't find your squadron LSO. He's nowhere to be found on the ship.

00:50:13.059 --> 00:50:14.440
I said, well, he's sitting in the left seat.

00:50:15.606 --> 00:50:18.880
And he goes, Hey, I got an idea. Why don't you change seats with Joe?

00:50:19.320 --> 00:50:22.840
And I said, Oh, I'm not going to ruin my landing grade.

00:50:25.103 --> 00:50:28.128
I said, but I, I went Bob and I'm not qualified to go at night.

00:50:28.605 --> 00:50:29.600
I only had one day landing.

00:50:31.680 --> 00:50:37.440
And so out of the blue, I'm sitting in the left seat. And I'm like, Oh, I'm not going to ruin my landing grade.

00:50:37.440 --> 00:50:48.167
And I'm like, Oh, I'm not going to ruin my landing grade. And so on the sixth trap, we finally got aboard, but it was, it was one of those things where.

00:50:49.440 --> 00:50:53.380
We had guys in the back that were looking, watching this on flare.

00:50:54.280 --> 00:50:57.403
And they kept trying to tell us things. It was like, stop talking to us.

00:50:58.000 --> 00:51:01.923
We're working here. We know how screwed up this is.

00:51:02.310 --> 00:51:09.854
No need to tell us. That's when you needed the shot of medicinal brandy after you landed. Oh boy. Right on.

00:51:10.502 --> 00:51:17.440
Oh, that's for boatin' though. Before you move on, let me ask, so you stood on that platform a lot.

00:51:17.440 --> 00:51:23.200
And what's the most colorful or most frightening thing you saw standing on the LSM platform?

00:51:23.200 --> 00:51:25.725
He did have an F-14 ramp strike during workups.

00:51:26.976 --> 00:51:32.726
I was in Tim Keating's, he was a classmate of mine. I was in class, I was in company six

00:51:32.726 --> 00:51:35.024
and he was in company four at the academy.

00:51:35.555 --> 00:51:38.553
We knew each other, we've been friends for four years.

00:51:39.106 --> 00:51:45.584
He was an A7 LSO on his second or third cruise with the A7 squadron.

00:51:45.656 --> 00:51:48.420
He was our team leader and I was assigned to his team.

00:51:48.986 --> 00:51:54.919
There were four or five guys in the team. The way it works on the LSO platform, which is five by five,

00:51:55.726 --> 00:52:00.140
There's a air wing CAG LSO, Commander Air Group is a CAG.

00:52:04.326 --> 00:52:08.927
And there's a CAG LSO who's a senior LSO over all the LSOs on the boat.

00:52:09.166 --> 00:52:11.114
There are four or five team leaders.

00:52:11.339 --> 00:52:17.074
You'd fly, the way it works as an LSO, you fly two days and then you wave one whole day and night.

00:52:17.886 --> 00:52:23.780
And each of the squadrons has several LSOs and they become part of the team.

00:52:24.166 --> 00:52:29.794
This night we were bringing in F-14s on the first real dark landing, night landing.

00:52:30.246 --> 00:52:33.917
And the second guy down, I was writing book for Tim, the way it works.

00:52:34.166 --> 00:52:39.166
The CAG controlling LSO stands behind the team leader, who is a controlling LSO.

00:52:39.646 --> 00:52:44.166
At night, he has a pickle switch to control the wave off lights on the mirror.

00:52:44.366 --> 00:52:47.166
And he has a radio. He's talking to the pilots coming in.

00:52:47.446 --> 00:52:51.926
The guy writing book who's standing right beside him, looks at the second guy back

00:52:51.926 --> 00:52:54.640
at night and make sure he's not going to kill himself.

00:52:55.326 --> 00:52:58.394
Well, this night, the second guy back was really far right.

00:52:59.086 --> 00:53:03.282
So I turned to the CAG LSO and said, hey, second guy needs to come left for lineup.

00:53:03.686 --> 00:53:07.972
And you always have an A and B channel. First guy's on A, second guy's on B.

00:53:08.646 --> 00:53:12.726
The CAG LSO changed to the B channel and called left for lineup.

00:53:13.186 --> 00:53:18.514
We took the first F-14, and now we're looking at the second guy that was started off bad.

00:53:18.606 --> 00:53:20.945
And his night's going from bad to worse.

00:53:21.246 --> 00:53:24.645
He gets low in the middle and he gets a power call.

00:53:25.545 --> 00:53:31.795
Goes high and close and sucks off all the power and starts coming down and five and a half seconds

00:53:31.795 --> 00:53:38.115
from the ramp we gave him power power wave off wave off the red ray wave off lights on the mirror

00:53:38.115 --> 00:53:44.355
flashing as he's coming down he notices the balls dropping he begins ratcheting the nose up to try

00:53:44.355 --> 00:53:51.075
to hold the ball oh and now these are turbofan engines on the f14 he had him in the spool down.

00:53:52.453 --> 00:53:53.475
So it takes, it takes a second to spool up.

00:53:53.495 --> 00:53:57.315
It takes about six years for the power to come up when you're that low.

00:53:57.315 --> 00:54:01.155
We didn't, when we heard that when he got the first power, he, he took it.

00:54:01.395 --> 00:54:03.552
He said he took it, locked his arm.

00:54:04.111 --> 00:54:09.515
And this guy was the, uh, an F14 LSO. He was a junior LSO in an F14 squadron.

00:54:09.675 --> 00:54:14.115
He locked his arm, but the engine took a while to spool up and he's trying to hold the ball up.

00:54:14.315 --> 00:54:17.083
Now, as the engine starts spooling up, he's behind the power curve.

00:54:17.435 --> 00:54:22.475
There isn't enough power to get him overcome the drag of where he is.

00:54:23.015 --> 00:54:24.195
And he smacked the back of the ramp.

00:54:25.535 --> 00:54:31.955
The, the main gear made the deck. The main gear cleared, cleared the round out, cleared the round down

00:54:32.195 --> 00:54:34.715
the rest of the engines and part fell off.

00:54:35.235 --> 00:54:36.035
Oh shit.

00:54:36.996 --> 00:54:40.066
The only thing he did all night long was get his line squared away.

00:54:40.903 --> 00:54:42.478
All the debris went up and off the angle.

00:54:43.195 --> 00:54:45.692
Thank goodness. off the angle. Thank goodness.

00:54:45.955 --> 00:54:52.595
Now the way carrier crashes work, people die on this LSO platform on the

00:54:52.595 --> 00:54:53.675
Nemitz, it was sunken.

00:54:53.715 --> 00:54:55.594
It was three feet below the flight deck level.

00:54:56.243 --> 00:55:02.155
So you couldn't stand on the flight deck. You could only lean over there to watch them if you needed to, but they

00:55:02.155 --> 00:55:07.435
had this big steel net off the side of you about eight feet down.

00:55:08.195 --> 00:55:11.033
That's woven big steel cords.

00:55:12.447 --> 00:55:21.198
Yeah. And the first thing you do as an LSO, if there aren't any mattresses there, you go down to the enlisted bunk rooms and steal mattresses and go up and play them all over there.

00:55:22.016 --> 00:55:25.779
Because if you jump in the steel net, it's going to be like straining yourself as you go through.

00:55:25.918 --> 00:55:27.758
You're going to strain yourself, right? Yeah.

00:55:28.102 --> 00:55:33.438
But one of my fears was the way the adrenaline works is that I need to jump in the net.

00:55:33.438 --> 00:55:37.918
I'll probably miss the net by jumping over it and end up on a swan dive for 16 minutes.

00:55:37.918 --> 00:55:44.846
I'll probably miss the net by jumping over it and end up on a swan dive for 60 feet down to the ocean. Right. At night.

00:55:45.017 --> 00:55:46.719
Yeah. This night I found out that...

00:55:47.169 --> 00:55:53.918
And the Russian judge says... This night I found out it isn't your brain that takes control, it's your knees.

00:55:54.442 --> 00:55:59.918
As you're sitting there watching this, we knew he was going to hit the ramp, and I'm sitting there, I can't believe he's going to hit the ramp.

00:55:59.918 --> 00:56:04.918
I can't... and your knees go, we're out of here. We don't get paid enough to do this.

00:56:05.200 --> 00:56:10.880
Right. We all collapsed in a, basically a big puppy pile on the platform and rolled into the net.

00:56:14.176 --> 00:56:20.438
We jumped over the railing and into the first door. We, we came to slam the fireproof door.

00:56:20.438 --> 00:56:23.438
Cause there's always fire and debris on these things.

00:56:24.518 --> 00:56:31.878
And the CAG LSO goes, uh, Keating, Tim Keating, Keating, take a roll of your

00:56:31.878 --> 00:56:33.518
team and let's see who isn't here.

00:56:34.682 --> 00:56:36.878
Well, Keating wasn't there. Yeah.

00:56:36.878 --> 00:56:40.698
And since he was a classmate of mine, I told him, I told the CAG LSO, I'll go check on,

00:56:41.551 --> 00:56:46.080
him, figuring that I'm going to find Keating cut in half or bleeding or maimed or something.

00:56:46.718 --> 00:56:53.878
So I climb out, get on the rail, peer over the platform and Keating's up there, God damn

00:56:53.878 --> 00:56:57.251
son of a bitch, hit the fucking ramp on me. I'm going to kill you.

00:56:58.118 --> 00:57:01.438
He was there. He never, he never jumped over. No.

00:57:01.438 --> 00:57:05.598
Cussing out the pilot who's now in a parachute coming down, landing in the water.

00:57:07.568 --> 00:57:12.958
The Rio, the backseater, ended up on top of an A6, and he was the only one in this whole

00:57:12.958 --> 00:57:18.638
accident that got hurt because he cut his arm on a blade antenna on the top of the A6,

00:57:18.638 --> 00:57:21.038
and needed about six stitches to fix the cut.

00:57:21.287 --> 00:57:27.278
Well, that's a miracle. It was. All the debris went up and off the angle, and on a carrier, the way it works

00:57:27.278 --> 00:57:32.078
is you have a yellow line that's a foul line and all the mechanics and all the deck crew

00:57:32.078 --> 00:57:35.198
were lining that thing on a recovery waiting for their planes to come in.

00:57:35.198 --> 00:57:40.021
Yeah, which is on the right hand side, right? Right on the right hand side of the of the angled deck.

00:57:40.192 --> 00:57:45.438
Yep. And the only airplane that got hurt was an S3 because the one of the main gears bounced up

00:57:45.438 --> 00:57:50.078
and came down on a wing and punched a hole in the top of the wing from the fire as it

00:57:50.239 --> 00:57:51.438
bounced off into the ocean.

00:57:51.998 --> 00:57:55.358
Nobody, nobody died. Nobody got hurt. That is a miracle.

00:57:55.358 --> 00:58:01.330
And the board gave the pilot an up and he flew with, he flew the, made the cruise with us.

00:58:01.898 --> 00:58:10.358
Nice. Kitting was not at fault for it. And one of the really amazing things years later, I'm sitting and having a RC

00:58:10.358 --> 00:58:11.655
Cole are watching the news.

00:58:12.474 --> 00:58:18.024
And after the news, I switched on a program called JAG. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that.

00:58:18.024 --> 00:58:21.828
Yeah, yeah. I used to have that. Navy JAG lawyer that's an F-14 pilot.

00:58:21.890 --> 00:58:22.377
Yes.

00:58:22.665 --> 00:58:26.424
Well, in this program, he's got a woman pilot that's having trouble at the boat.

00:58:26.424 --> 00:58:32.984
So he's out working with her on a two plane and bringing her into the carrier at night in a storm.

00:58:32.984 --> 00:58:36.624
And I'm sitting there watching our accident, our ramp strike on this.

00:58:36.624 --> 00:58:38.554
It was the plat tape from that night. Yes.

00:58:38.764 --> 00:58:43.811
The plat tape from that night. I'm sitting there, I can't believe the Navy did this.

00:58:44.594 --> 00:58:47.904
How about that? Let them have it. Maybe, maybe the Navy didn't know.

00:58:51.499 --> 00:58:54.784
I have, you can use anything for less than 30 seconds. Fair use.

00:58:54.784 --> 00:59:00.264
I haven't seen Keating since we left the, the off of that cruise, but I always

00:59:00.264 --> 00:59:05.304
wanted to ask him if he knew that the Navy released our ramp strike commercial TV.

00:59:07.037 --> 00:59:09.413
Well, I, you know, that's a good story because, uh, it, it kind of has a happy,

00:59:10.044 --> 00:59:15.264
ending, you know, no, nobody died there other than the F14 that was, uh, destroyed.

00:59:15.922 --> 00:59:19.744
Yeah. No, nothing else really got destroyed. It sounds like he even got to reuse that S3.

00:59:19.744 --> 00:59:22.800
Yeah. They patched that up. Incidentally, this.

00:59:23.286 --> 00:59:28.264
Get some speed tape and launch it. This cruise on the Nimitz 78 med cruise was the first time in

00:59:28.264 --> 00:59:33.126
the Navy aviation history. And it was 68 years into it that not one pilot got killed.

00:59:33.624 --> 00:59:41.704
Not one pilot got killed. That's an amazing story. We lost five airplanes, but we got all the pilots

00:59:41.704 --> 00:59:49.624
back. So you lost five airplanes in one cruise? Yeah. Okay. So that was one was the F-14 incident

00:59:49.624 --> 00:59:54.830
you just talked about. What were the other aircraft? An A-7 got in a flat spin, which you,

00:59:55.944 --> 01:00:01.624
can't get inverted flat spin. You can't get an A-7 out of a flat spin, but an inverted flat spin.

01:00:01.624 --> 01:00:07.460
And it turned out he was a test pilot from Pax River. So when he said it was an inverted, they took his word for it.

01:00:07.744 --> 01:00:09.531
Yeah. He punched out and they got him back.

01:00:10.084 --> 01:00:15.184
Uh, we lost a helo. We had an RA-5C break its back on landing.

01:00:16.064 --> 01:00:23.104
And it's the vigilante, the big supersonic bomber that became a recon plane.

01:00:24.184 --> 01:00:27.337
Landed, trapped aboard and broke right behind the cockpit.

01:00:29.904 --> 01:00:36.565
Oops. Oops. Okay. And what else did we lose? I can't.

01:00:39.148 --> 01:00:45.078
Can't remember the other ones. But no, no pilots. No pilot. No, we lost. We lost one of our H threes,

01:00:45.774 --> 01:00:52.038
in the Caribbean. They all got out. They got that one was amazing. They had a mechanic. They had a

01:00:52.038 --> 01:00:56.667
transmission problem. So they put it down on the water about three miles off the side of the ship.

01:00:57.081 --> 01:01:04.798
They were on plane guard duty. And so who gets to who gets the crew when the plane guard goes down? on shit.

01:01:04.994 --> 01:01:08.522
Well, the way the boat kind of motored over beside it.

01:01:08.818 --> 01:01:14.678
And now the helo squadron skipper and maintenance officer are arguing with the first lieutenant

01:01:14.678 --> 01:01:18.587
on the boat and the executive officer of who gets to recover the helo.

01:01:19.718 --> 01:01:24.582
In the meantime, the crew is in their rubber life rafts and get picked up.

01:01:25.578 --> 01:01:29.838
And we're sitting there watching this helo slowly sink into the water.

01:01:30.254 --> 01:01:34.800
And as we're watching it, all of a sudden the water goes over the floor of the door,

01:01:35.484 --> 01:01:41.858
and the boat keeps sinking and it gets fuller and fuller. And pretty soon the rotors are afloat and they settle.

01:01:42.258 --> 01:01:45.369
And now they decide, okay, it's time to put the crane on it and pull it up.

01:01:45.999 --> 01:01:49.708
Well, the only problem is now you're pulling up the whole entire ocean with it.

01:01:49.938 --> 01:01:53.938
Right. Yeah. It's full of water now. It didn't come.

01:01:53.938 --> 01:01:57.531
The cable snapped and we watched it disappear out of sight.

01:01:58.980 --> 01:02:05.058
How about that? So something that I wanted to ask you earlier, but I couldn't, I didn't

01:02:05.058 --> 01:02:08.818
want to interrupt because you were kind of on a roll. And this goes way back, way back

01:02:08.818 --> 01:02:14.538
to Meridian. You were an instructor there. When you were an instructor in the training

01:02:14.538 --> 01:02:19.298
command, did you lose any A-4s during the period you were there?

01:02:19.523 --> 01:02:20.451
Yes, three. Oh my gosh.

01:02:21.498 --> 01:02:24.498
Didn't lose a student though. Okay.

01:02:24.498 --> 01:02:30.101
The problem we were having, the landing gear cable was being mis-rigged on the main gear.

01:02:31.407 --> 01:02:35.476
And it occasionally would hang up on the door when it came down.

01:02:35.778 --> 01:02:42.236
So you would try to do all kinds of things. Raise the gear, lower the gear, G it, negative G it.

01:02:42.578 --> 01:02:47.124
If that didn't work, you just brought the gear up into the belly and landed on the drop tags.

01:02:48.304 --> 01:02:55.194
And the damaged, there was no damage to the airplane. They'd skid out on, they'd form the runway, you try to land in the phone.

01:02:56.394 --> 01:03:01.354
They take the drop tank, they jack the airplane up, lower the gear, take the drop tanks off and

01:03:01.354 --> 01:03:07.506
have to take off the nose cone. And it's a fiberglass nose cone. And it wasn't an accident.

01:03:07.668 --> 01:03:12.874
It was a mishap. Yeah, because of the cost. Yeah, in the meantime, guys would punch out of this

01:03:12.874 --> 01:03:25.519
this thing, because it was such an unset. The TA-4 sits up high on a skier. And when you come down, it's really low. And so they scare people, and they punch out.

01:03:26.473 --> 01:03:42.353
Yeah. That's interesting. I was just curious, because, you know, we talk about a lot, especially with the fellow naval aviator stories, and how many air, how many crew and airplanes are lost just in training.

01:03:42.731 --> 01:03:44.394
And, and so that's what made me think of it.

01:03:45.423 --> 01:03:50.394
Yeah. Uh, in my entire Navy career, we didn't lose a pilot in any of the squadrons I was in.

01:03:51.941 --> 01:03:55.394
That's a miracle. It is amazing. That's rare. I mean, that is so rare.

01:03:55.394 --> 01:04:03.394
Yes, it's very rare. Miraculous, yes. I lost friends and fellow pilots after they went to other squadrons, but never in the squadrons I was in.

01:04:04.265 --> 01:04:10.224
You, you must be like, uh, the good luck charm. I'm the little lucky charm in Leopard Mountain. A giant leprechaun.

01:04:10.394 --> 01:04:21.279
Oh, if we have time, I got, we made the first port call into Israel by a carrier in the Navy in 78.

01:04:22.098 --> 01:04:23.350
Very, very first ever. Very first.

01:04:23.593 --> 01:04:28.040
And by port call, I mean, we went into Haifa and we stayed a mile off the beach out of,

01:04:28.571 --> 01:04:31.181
Haifa and then you bowed in to Haifa.

01:04:31.461 --> 01:04:40.454
But, uh, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were you

01:04:39.599 --> 01:04:46.089
on going in there, since we were the first one, it was a big deal. So the Israeli war cabinet came

01:04:46.089 --> 01:04:52.809
out, and they helicoptered the board. And we were going to put on our air wing flight demonstration,

01:04:52.809 --> 01:04:58.009
each of the squadrons comes in and does their thing. The F-14s come by fast, and they come by

01:04:58.009 --> 01:05:04.249
slow with the wings out. The A-7s come in and do a bunch of bombing stuff. And our last part of our

01:05:04.249 --> 01:05:09.689
air wing was always an A6 would come in with all the Mark 82s and do a lay down, which is pretty

01:05:09.689 --> 01:05:15.320
impressive. They can carry a lot of Mark 82s. And the way they set this up is they put a.

01:05:17.039 --> 01:05:22.828
Empty 55-callon drum with a flare on it at one end and another one at the other end,

01:05:23.116 --> 01:05:28.249
and that's your run-in line for the demonstration. Well, the ship's navigator forgot to take in

01:05:28.249 --> 01:05:35.849
account drift of the ocean. And by the time the A6 came in and did its lay down, the air was filled

01:05:35.849 --> 01:05:45.209
with this whirling, buzzing stuff. The Israelis up the Goldermeier, Moshe Dayan, all the top

01:05:45.209 --> 01:05:49.849
Israeli people were in the, uh, the, the.

01:05:51.707 --> 01:05:56.037
Catwalk on the island watching this thing, they were the only ones that understood these were

01:05:56.037 --> 01:06:02.677
frags from the bombs. And they were pulling people down. The rest of us Americans, we never heard

01:06:02.677 --> 01:06:07.717
this before. And we're going, right, what is that? What is that whizzing sound going by? Yeah.

01:06:09.317 --> 01:06:30.357
But they knew that because they live that shit every day. Navy, Naval, Naval war demonstration, USS Nimitz wreaks havoc.

01:06:30.357 --> 01:06:39.122
One of the things we did on this day, we went to all the VIPs had manders, et cetera, escorting them around.

01:06:39.657 --> 01:06:44.457
We went up on the flight deck to watch this thing, and the Israeli helicopter pilots were standing around.

01:06:45.748 --> 01:06:51.698
Nobody was talking to them. We went over and stuck up a conversation with one who turned out to be Moshe Dayan's son.

01:06:52.777 --> 01:06:55.992
We invited him down to the ward room to have lunch with us.

01:06:56.457 --> 01:07:01.297
He invited us down to Tel Aviv that night to go to dinner with him.

01:07:01.297 --> 01:07:04.733
We took him up on that, and he showed us one heck of a good time in Tel Aviv.

01:07:05.137 --> 01:07:06.588
How about that? Yeah.

01:07:07.137 --> 01:07:10.720
I can only imagine. That is cool. That is awesome. Okay.

01:07:12.259 --> 01:07:21.478
Another story I'll share with you, because this goes to your theme song of crossing the Atlantic.

01:07:21.977 --> 01:07:30.737
We were in, at the end of cruise, one of our last ports was in England, and we were going

01:07:30.737 --> 01:07:36.537
out to operate in the North Sea on 4th of July with a bunch of Brits on board.

01:07:36.537 --> 01:07:43.497
Going to do a just a couple cycles of flying to impress the Brits and I got detailed to

01:07:43.614 --> 01:07:44.829
be in one of these cycles.

01:07:47.629 --> 01:07:52.004
In the Navy, if the sea air temperature is 55 or below, you're supposed to wear your poopy suit,

01:07:52.328 --> 01:08:00.119
which is your survival suit. Right? So I was too big for a survival suit. So I was able to have a.

01:08:01.358 --> 01:08:07.866
Neoprene diving suit made for me to order. And I had all kinds of zippers on this thing so that

01:08:08.271 --> 01:08:13.799
when I wasn't in the water, I can unzip and would be comfortable. Instead of in the poopy suit where

01:08:13.799 --> 01:08:15.539
where everybody sweats to death.

01:08:15.539 --> 01:08:21.419
And just to define this for all the listeners that don't know what this is,

01:08:21.419 --> 01:08:23.206
can you describe the poopy suit?

01:08:24.159 --> 01:08:30.723
It is. Let me jump in before you do and say, to save some of them that are scuba divers, it's a dry suit.

01:08:31.020 --> 01:08:33.319
Yeah, it's a dry suit. Done some scuba diving dry suit, yeah.

01:08:33.319 --> 01:08:37.583
It's basically a big bag that you wear. Yeah. You're like you're over it.

01:08:37.999 --> 01:08:41.319
It's horrible. It's got a neck seal, arm seals, it's booted.

01:08:41.319 --> 01:08:44.361
You put it on, zip it up, and you're in a dry suit.

01:08:44.579 --> 01:08:46.882
Yeah. You're in a Ziploc bag. Yeah.

01:08:47.459 --> 01:08:52.939
The water gets you. But it's not insulated. So you would wear your-

01:08:52.939 --> 01:08:54.948
You would wear a flight suit, normal stuff underneath it.

01:08:55.139 --> 01:08:58.981
Because you're gonna sweat a lot, you need something to absorb that.

01:08:59.659 --> 01:09:03.500
Well, we're going out, it's a single cycle, which is an hour and 45 minutes.

01:09:04.319 --> 01:09:08.199
And I've got my wetsuit on and my flight gear over the top of it.

01:09:08.539 --> 01:09:14.069
And as we're going to man up, I thought for a moment, But I thought it's only an hour and 45 minutes.

01:09:14.979 --> 01:09:21.539
That's not a big deal. So we go up, we man up, take the cat shot and immediately the bladder low

01:09:21.766 --> 01:09:23.459
overfill light begins flashing.

01:09:23.899 --> 01:09:30.459
Of course. And so now we're flying around. And one of the things you do, especially in a crew airplane, you never admit you're

01:09:30.459 --> 01:09:31.722
uncomfortable or you have a problem.

01:09:32.699 --> 01:09:36.819
Because if you do, that's when the heckling starts in. Yeah.

01:09:37.196 --> 01:09:38.375
Oh, you can't hold it. You got old man bladder. Yeah.

01:09:39.219 --> 01:09:43.497
Oh, you can't hold it. You got old man bladder. Right. It just starts.

01:09:43.779 --> 01:09:50.579
Yeah. And people begin swishing water around and the, and their can and their little canteen things. And so.

01:09:51.491 --> 01:09:54.219
And I imagine when you're trying to go, it was probably, you know, loading up. Yeah.

01:09:54.480 --> 01:09:58.819
Let's pull a couple of G's here and unload and get you to piss on your shoes.

01:09:58.979 --> 01:10:03.499
Didn't have a relief to it had baggies with a sponge in them.

01:10:04.095 --> 01:10:03.519
Yeah.

01:10:04.259 --> 01:10:11.080
Piddle pack. Piddle packs. you piss into the pill pack, the sponge absorbs the urine, you zip it up, you're good to go.

01:10:11.387 --> 01:10:16.103
Well, in GQ on the carrier, they secure flushing water.

01:10:16.819 --> 01:10:24.664
So you can't use the urinals or anything else. So all the deckhands go in the S3s and steal the pittal packs to use.

01:10:25.079 --> 01:10:27.348
So by this part of the cruise, there were no pittal packs.

01:10:28.119 --> 01:10:37.479
So I was sitting there very uncomfortable. And after about 30 minutes, guys, please check and see if you got a pittle packed by mistake

01:10:37.479 --> 01:10:38.771
and your role.

01:10:40.968 --> 01:10:46.018
Cubby hole there beside your seat. Oh, why are you going to take a piss? No, no, I was just

01:10:46.018 --> 01:10:49.778
wondering that, you know, and then thinking of making the sandwich later and putting it in the

01:10:49.778 --> 01:10:56.258
baggie. Oh, yeah, that's it. That's my story. And I'm stuck with it really bad. And so finally,

01:10:56.258 --> 01:11:01.858
I decided, okay, I'm going to take my helmet bag, and I'm going to go back to the E&E tunnel.

01:11:01.858 --> 01:11:08.361
And I'm going to unzip everything and strip down and take a piss. So I go back down, I'm trying to,

01:11:08.730 --> 01:11:13.458
And it became one, I can't stand up straight in the sink because it's only about four and a half

01:11:13.458 --> 01:11:18.578
feet tall. And I'm trying to unzip thing and it finally it got to the point, there's no way I'm,

01:11:18.705 --> 01:11:24.978
if I ever do get his highness out, it's probably going to be all over me and then all the E&E

01:11:24.978 --> 01:11:30.898
stuff. I said, you just got to resign yourself to. So I go back and sit down and say, okay.

01:11:32.091 --> 01:11:37.133
I'm going to get this out till we go back at the end of the cycle. Well, about that time.

01:11:37.385 --> 01:11:42.338
The boat calls up and goes, hey, the Norwegians have lost a Russian bear coming around the

01:11:42.338 --> 01:11:53.138
peninsula. We want to double cycle you, so you and the E2 can triangulate them with your ESM

01:11:53.138 --> 01:11:57.618
gear and find them. And immediately I broke out in a cold sweat, because now it's another hour

01:11:57.618 --> 01:12:04.258
and 45 minutes until I can go back. I am almost dying. I mean, why my bladder didn't burst,

01:12:04.258 --> 01:12:09.378
I don't know. As we're coming in, I turned to my buddy. I'm in the right seat. I'm not flying. I'm

01:12:09.378 --> 01:12:15.378
just a rider. And I told my buddy, I said, you bolter on this. If my bladder exploding doesn't

01:12:15.378 --> 01:12:23.378
kill you, I will. We come into the break. He forgot to drop the hook. No. Yes. I caught it,

01:12:23.378 --> 01:12:31.417
slammed it down and said, asshole, you're going to pay for this. Mistakes were made.

01:12:31.524 --> 01:12:37.778
We trapped the board and before we even pulled back in the wire, I was out of the seat and

01:12:37.778 --> 01:12:43.458
thrown open the door and was running across the flight deck, jumped down into the catwalk.

01:12:43.458 --> 01:12:48.658
First door I come to, I throw open, run down the passageway. First head I come to is all taped up

01:12:48.658 --> 01:12:53.858
with masking tape. Of course, of course it is. This poor seaman, Deuce, is in there cleaning

01:12:53.858 --> 01:12:59.938
the head for inspection. I went there like a knife through hot butter and I've been zipping

01:12:59.938 --> 01:13:02.778
and throwing things off and you can't come in here, sir.

01:13:02.778 --> 01:13:03.816
I got an inspection.

01:13:04.041 --> 01:13:06.178
I said, son.

01:13:05.850 --> 01:13:11.060
If my bladder doesn't kill you or you don't drown from this urine, I will clean the head

01:13:11.060 --> 01:13:15.700
for you. Go get your chief. I'll explain it to him. And I must have pissed for about 20 minutes.

01:13:17.460 --> 01:13:25.448
Man, that song about crossing the ocean. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to piss in a pit. Oh, yeah. Right.

01:13:25.780 --> 01:13:28.580
Exactly right. It brought cold sweat to my forehead.

01:13:28.734 --> 01:13:35.300
We've all been there. I love that song, but just because I'm there, I've done that. It's like, Oh, good Lord.

01:13:35.660 --> 01:13:42.900
Here's something else. There was a guy, an LSO, A7 LSO that had this amorphous patch on a bunch of

01:13:42.900 --> 01:13:45.180
Brown with gold squiggly lines through it.

01:13:45.860 --> 01:13:50.420
And you never ask another guy what his patches are because you're going to be made fun of.

01:13:50.980 --> 01:13:55.011
After a couple of months, I couldn't take it anymore. I said, what the hell is that patch for?

01:13:55.460 --> 01:13:59.378
He said, oh, this is a patch you get awarded for taking the shit in your helmet bag.

01:13:59.684 --> 01:14:09.668
And then A7. Single airplane, having to take everything off, because you got to, yeah.

01:14:11.090 --> 01:14:14.820
Yeah. Yeah. That's impressive. Because I don't know anybody that's ever done that.

01:14:14.820 --> 01:14:18.780
I know some guys that just poop their pants because, you know, you're strapped in.

01:14:18.780 --> 01:14:20.506
You get strapped in. Oh my gosh.

01:14:21.082 --> 01:14:27.762
That's impressive. Another story. I had a friend in the, in BT-7 that was an instructor who came from A1s in Vietnam.

01:14:28.540 --> 01:14:34.080
A1 could spend nine hours airborne. And it was such a big single seat airplane.

01:14:34.400 --> 01:14:35.580
It had a door behind it.

01:14:35.945 --> 01:14:37.331
Sky radar, right? Sky radar. Yeah.

01:14:37.860 --> 01:14:40.419
They had a porta potty back there, like you have in a camper.

01:14:40.932 --> 01:14:48.280
So if you ever needed to go, you just unstrap, put it on autopilot and unstrap and go back in the back and take a dump.

01:14:49.160 --> 01:14:56.220
Oh, well, he's flying wing with on this mission and he signals to the lead that he's got to go take a dump.

01:14:56.605 --> 01:15:01.368
And he gets the lead, he sets the airplane up, he goes back and straps everything,

01:15:01.660 --> 01:15:05.356
takes the dump, resuits, goes to open the door and it's locked.

01:15:06.418 --> 01:15:13.628
What? He's locked himself in the back of the plane. Oh, shit. Yeah, well, that's when we

01:15:13.628 --> 01:15:19.308
found what the purpose of the survival knife is really for. He took his survival knife and cut

01:15:19.308 --> 01:15:24.508
his way through the door. And it took him a long time to do that. In the meantime, the lead is

01:15:24.508 --> 01:15:28.668
flying over the top of him looking upside down. You know, where is this guy? Is he just eyeing

01:15:28.668 --> 01:15:33.948
on me? Where did he go? It took him 20 minutes to cut enough hole in it that he could reach in

01:15:33.948 --> 01:15:35.388
and unlock it from the other side.

01:15:36.566 --> 01:15:40.748
Oh, terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely terrifying.

01:15:41.545 --> 01:15:46.828
So, well, none of that will compare then. We're getting close to the end of our time together, but I want to, I'm going to put

01:15:46.828 --> 01:15:56.108
you on the spot and ask you, uh, since you're retired, um, to fine is what 99% boredom, 1% sheer terror.

01:15:57.228 --> 01:16:04.266
And people get on passenger airliners all the time. and for the most part it's unbelievably safe. Every now and then there's a close call.

01:16:04.572 --> 01:16:09.148
What's either the closest call or the funniest thing or the scariest thing that you recall

01:16:09.148 --> 01:16:15.868
from your civilian flying career? I had three fires on Airborne. Three?

01:16:17.148 --> 01:16:21.068
Two on the... Well you were making up for your good luck, Charm. Yeah, I guess so.

01:16:21.068 --> 01:16:27.798
In the squadron. My first one was in the Super 80 and it was, we were 35,000 feet going by

01:16:28.005 --> 01:16:33.708
Cleveland over the Great Lakes at 11 o'clock at night. And all of a sudden I smelled something,

01:16:33.708 --> 01:16:39.148
I turned to my FO, I said, did you just take your shoes off? Because it smelled like wet gym socks.

01:16:39.690 --> 01:16:46.188
And he said, no, did you just fart? I said, no. I said, okay, let's do mask on,

01:16:46.188 --> 01:16:51.663
declare an emergency. We're going to drop into Cleveland. It was an electrical fire

01:16:51.960 --> 01:16:58.588
in the first class galley. And civilian airplanes and airliners, all the air from the back is sucked

01:16:58.588 --> 01:17:03.672
into the cockpit and then down over the cockpit into the A&E compartment to be recycled.

01:17:04.798 --> 01:17:08.668
Right. Cool the... Cool the electronics. Cool the avionics and send it over.

01:17:08.668 --> 01:17:16.491
And so we were pulling this electrical smoke and we dumped it and landed in Detroit.

01:17:16.950 --> 01:17:20.219
And I did my only evacuation in my career.

01:17:20.705 --> 01:17:24.828
We're sitting on the runway, we stopped and I thought, well, maybe it's over, maybe it's not.

01:17:24.828 --> 01:17:30.748
But on the other hand, why take the chance? So I did the easy victor, easy victor, easy victor.

01:17:30.748 --> 01:17:34.428
And we started throwing all eight of our passengers out the back.

01:17:35.648 --> 01:17:41.022
And on the captain's job is always to walk the airplane, make sure everybody gets out. Yeah.

01:17:41.481 --> 01:17:47.338
And then the super 80, what's staring at you is the tail cone exit, the back stairs exit.

01:17:47.486 --> 01:17:52.590
Right, right, right. The tail cone's gone, the slot. So I just continued to the back, went down the slide.

01:17:52.969 --> 01:17:57.613
And what they don't tell you is the slide, the tail cone's supposed to drop and roll away,

01:17:57.992 --> 01:18:01.269
but sometimes it doesn't. And the slide comes out and lands on top of it.

01:18:01.773 --> 01:18:08.618
So as I went down, I hit this big ski ski ramp and ended up assholes over elbows, trying to,

01:18:09.613 --> 01:18:16.138
fly myself on. So I wouldn't hit on my back and landed, did a perfect four point landing on the

01:18:16.138 --> 01:18:23.418
tarmac. That's funny, but it's not. So the only thing injured was your dignity.

01:18:24.938 --> 01:18:29.498
At least I didn't break my tailbone. All right. So that's the first fire.

01:18:29.498 --> 01:18:35.978
Yeah, the second fire, I was flying with a gentleman who was the 76 Czech airman.

01:18:36.990 --> 01:18:38.858
Who called himself Mr. 767.

01:18:39.870 --> 01:18:44.458
And he got a call from the back. I was his co-pilot. I had my cowboy boots off.

01:18:44.458 --> 01:18:47.178
I had my sleeves rolled up. I had my tie undone.

01:18:47.882 --> 01:18:51.658
And the flight attendant in the very back calls up and says, I think we got a fire back here.

01:18:53.301 --> 01:18:56.058
And he looks at me and says, why don't you go take care of it?

01:18:57.218 --> 01:18:58.847
And I said, well, I got to get dressed and all that.

01:18:59.538 --> 01:19:02.738
Well, you're Mr. Seven, six, seven. Why don't you go take care of it?

01:19:02.738 --> 01:19:06.634
I'm going to go back there and I'm going to come back and tell you it's out and you're going to go, well, I better go check.

01:19:06.978 --> 01:19:09.378
I said, so why don't we just cut to the chase and you go check?

01:19:09.858 --> 01:19:10.442
Yeah, there you go.

01:19:11.778 --> 01:19:16.058
So he did. And it was again, a galley fire and you pull the circuit breakers.

01:19:16.338 --> 01:19:18.178
It's electrical fire. So that takes care of it.

01:19:18.818 --> 01:19:23.978
We came back and he goes, what do you think we ought to do? We're going scheduled San Diego to Chicago.

01:19:23.978 --> 01:19:25.251
I said, we've had a fire.

01:19:25.773 --> 01:19:31.265
I think we ought to put the plane on the ground and let them figure out if it's all out or not.

01:19:31.517 --> 01:19:36.458
I said, I'd hate to be over liberal Kansas in the middle of nowhere and have this thing start up again.

01:19:37.062 --> 01:19:41.818
Right. So we did. We did a dive into Phoenix and put it on the ground and checked it out.

01:19:41.818 --> 01:19:47.307
And then the passengers were mad at us because a bunch of them had Chicago bear tickets that day.

01:19:47.818 --> 01:19:52.818
It should have gone the day before. gone the day before.

01:19:54.904 --> 01:20:02.978
And the last one was a seven five going into Chicago with me, the captain, and it was over.

01:20:02.718 --> 01:20:08.808
We were just past St. Joe, which is something you guys are familiar with, at 35,000 feet

01:20:08.808 --> 01:20:15.628
when I got a call that there was a smell of an electrical fire in one of the laboratories.

01:20:16.768 --> 01:20:23.488
And so we did a dive in, and by the time we got down, we were close to Chicago.

01:20:23.488 --> 01:20:30.568
And I hit the three-mile point at Chicago at 450 knots, and the 75 at 2,000 feet.

01:20:30.568 --> 01:20:35.788
Feet on me that maybe I better slow this thing down so we can actually land

01:20:35.788 --> 01:20:38.928
instead of doing a low pass by Chicago on fire.

01:20:40.008 --> 01:20:45.488
Give me an air show. So we, we, I didn't know the 75 had afterburners.

01:20:46.048 --> 01:20:51.330
We threw everything out, slowed it down, landed, uh, got clearance to the gate.

01:20:51.448 --> 01:20:58.448
And as I'm pulling in to the gate area, gate tells us as a 20 minute hold for our gates occupied for the load.

01:20:58.448 --> 01:21:00.608
I said, okay, here's the deal.

01:21:00.848 --> 01:21:03.928
You got about two minutes to give me a gate because I'm going to pull in the

01:21:03.928 --> 01:21:07.040
middle of the, uh, between the term and the, all the gate area, and I'm going to,

01:21:07.688 --> 01:21:13.528
do an emergency evacuation with my passengers and then you're going to get no airplanes out of here for the next six hours.

01:21:13.728 --> 01:21:16.528
Yeah. So figure that out. Yeah. And all of a sudden they're like, no, no, no.

01:21:16.728 --> 01:21:18.568
Oh, we got a gate for you. Yeah.

01:21:21.695 --> 01:21:27.079
It's a miracle. Oh man. That's funny. Oh man, that's funny.

01:21:28.041 --> 01:21:32.688
Well, Garrett, thank you so much. These are great stories. This is going to be a fun show to watch.

01:21:32.688 --> 01:21:41.448
I didn't think it was, I just kind of had the trepidations because I've been listening to Captain Williams, who was a phenomenal individual.

01:21:41.448 --> 01:21:43.229
And his career was amazing.

01:21:43.808 --> 01:21:51.288
It was fun. You know, I don't have much to tell anybody. Give us the, uh, give us the airplanes you did in the past so we can get a short list out.

01:21:51.288 --> 01:21:52.645
I thought that was amazing.

01:21:52.888 --> 01:21:54.643
And he's just so lackadaisical about it, you know?

01:21:54.928 --> 01:21:55.570
Oh, I know.

01:21:55.928 --> 01:22:01.008
He's talking about it. My Rio jumped out, and I just kept flying.

01:22:01.008 --> 01:22:04.123
Had to be in full afterburner to keep it flying.

01:22:04.288 --> 01:22:05.095
With a fire.

01:22:05.761 --> 01:22:07.192
With firefighters.

01:22:08.237 --> 01:22:15.727
Well, thank you, Carrot. Thank you for your service to our country and for being a naval aviator.

01:22:15.727 --> 01:22:17.888
We really appreciate that.

01:22:18.407 --> 01:22:21.686
Well, it was nice talking to even a couple of jarheads.

01:22:22.317 --> 01:22:26.899
There you go. Oh, boy. Yes. All right.

01:22:27.070 --> 01:22:34.100
Yes. Twist it. Stick it in and twist it. That's okay. I would expect nothing less from a Navy vet.

01:22:35.307 --> 01:22:41.047
Right. Well, I have to say it then. So people, we always get the grief from the Navy, you know, the Marines were a part of

01:22:41.047 --> 01:22:42.022
the department of the Navy.

01:22:42.437 --> 01:22:46.047
Yeah. Got their paycheck signed. The men's department. The men's department.

01:22:46.047 --> 01:22:47.047
Yeah, we're the men's department.

01:22:47.388 --> 01:22:57.327
Oh, right back at you. Oh yeah. Anyway, well thank you for your service.

01:22:57.327 --> 01:23:01.630
We also need to thank none other than Dave Hamilton over at the MacGee lab.

01:23:01.927 --> 01:23:02.629
Thank you Dave.

01:23:04.141 --> 01:23:07.167
That takes good care of us and helped us get this show up and running.

01:23:07.167 --> 01:23:11.910
So big thanks to Dave here. If you're at all tech oriented, want a good tech podcast to listen to.

01:23:12.396 --> 01:23:14.269
Highly recommend the Mac Geek Gab.

01:23:15.070 --> 01:23:21.467
And he also does the Gig Gab if you're a musician and the business brain for running your own small business.

01:23:21.467 --> 01:23:25.098
He and another entrepreneur go through the problems, trials and tribulations of business.

01:23:25.837 --> 01:23:28.942
All right. Here's the action you need to take, dear listener.

01:23:29.059 --> 01:23:32.804
Keep sharing. We've been doing that, and that's amazing. and our growth has been great.

01:23:33.704 --> 01:23:39.007
What hasn't been great is Rumble. We need 20 more. 20 more.

01:23:39.607 --> 01:23:41.914
And then we won't have to pay to be on Rumble.

01:23:42.661 --> 01:23:44.426
Since we hit the magic number of 100.

01:23:46.007 --> 01:23:51.247
Doesn't quite, hey repeat, does it cost anything? It costs you nothing but a few minutes

01:23:51.529 --> 01:23:52.492
of your time to sign up.

01:23:53.687 --> 01:23:58.640
And then you'll get emails when we go live. So that you can tell, for instance,

01:23:58.839 --> 01:24:02.260
Right now on Rumble, we have 18 folks watching us.

01:24:02.304 --> 01:24:05.547
People have been in and out the entire show, doing the live stream.

01:24:05.547 --> 01:24:06.647
You can watch us live stream.

01:24:06.931 --> 01:24:12.067
You can see all the mistakes, see all the stupidity going on in the background and,

01:24:12.067 --> 01:24:19.643
and, and have some fun as we do it live and see that the truly the raw pimples and all, so to speak.

01:24:19.887 --> 01:24:21.426
So share it with your friends.

01:24:21.768 --> 01:24:22.911
I certainly will. Yeah.

01:24:23.766 --> 01:24:27.502
So there I was.us slash Rumble. You can follow us also on Facebook.

01:24:27.747 --> 01:24:32.633
So there I was that us slash Facebook and the same holds true for Twitter.

01:24:32.769 --> 01:24:35.467
I need to get some tweets up there though. I hadn't been doing that.

01:24:35.676 --> 01:24:39.307
Been bad about that. Thank you for doing that.

01:24:38.935 --> 01:24:42.705
Shoot us some emails. All right. We've gotten some amazing emails.

01:24:43.022 --> 01:24:45.821
People that are aware of some of the crashes that we've talked about.

01:24:46.262 --> 01:24:50.785
People that wrote in, a gent wrote in and I actually made a post of it.

01:24:50.785 --> 01:24:54.248
It's on our website. So there are always that us. It's about two or three in town now.

01:24:54.725 --> 01:24:59.505
It's not a podcast, but it's an email about his dad ejecting from an A4 off.

01:24:59.658 --> 01:25:01.971
Marine. Marine aviator. In the newspaper articles that covered him.

01:25:02.125 --> 01:25:03.061
Yeah. It's a good story.

01:25:03.466 --> 01:25:04.865
It's a good, it's a good article too.

01:25:06.248 --> 01:25:12.505
Yeah. So shoot Fig an email. Fig. at SotheiroWoods.us or me, repeat at SotheiroWoods.us.

01:25:12.965 --> 01:25:16.321
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01:25:16.520 --> 01:25:22.623
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01:25:50.926 --> 01:25:57.265
for people or treat yourself to something. That music you hear in the background comes from our friends, the Dos Gringos, the two

01:25:57.265 --> 01:25:59.345
gents who give the Air Force a great name.

01:25:59.541 --> 01:26:03.465
Lots of good music, lots of fun. Great songs. Great songs.

01:26:03.465 --> 01:26:07.526
We enjoy their music immensely and we're grateful that they share it with us.

01:26:08.732 --> 01:26:14.557
So until the next week, everybody stay safe and don't sit on the ejection seat handle.

01:26:14.764 --> 01:26:19.745
Oh, check six. Check six. I would do. Yeah, exactly. I would do either.

01:26:20.148 --> 01:26:24.180
Check it. Exactly, I would do either. Stay safe and check six.

01:26:25.040 --> 01:26:59.440
Music.

01:26:59.433 --> 01:27:04.582
Like the song says, Fig, it's over. Thank you, gentlemen.

01:27:53.969 --> 01:27:58.643
Before you move on, let me ask, so you stood on that platform a lot.

01:27:58.643 --> 01:28:04.916
And what's the most colorful or most frightening thing you saw standing on the LSO platform?

01:29:24.469 --> 01:29:24.803
I'm going to scroll down to the second page.

01:30:09.777 --> 01:30:10.200
Oh.

01:30:34.957 --> 01:30:48.767
Oh. Oh, so it takes a second to spool up. It takes about six years, I think, for the power to come up when you're that low.

01:30:48.767 --> 01:31:10.524
I'm just kidding.

01:31:11.631 --> 01:31:25.585
The main gear cleared the round out. Cleared the round down.

01:31:28.781 --> 01:31:29.591
Oh shit.

01:31:37.720 --> 01:31:38.207
Thank goodness.

01:31:43.590 --> 01:31:45.517
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.