Latest / So There I Was / Cat Shots & Orgasms

Transcript

Cat Shots & Orgasms · So There I Was

• WEBVTT 00:00:00.387 --> 00:00:06.217 You're listening to the podcast. So there I was this is episode 48 with carrots, 00:00:07.147 --> 00:00:14.043 What a great storyteller and fellow naval aviator funny fast naval Academy graduate, 00:00:15.042 --> 00:00:17.777 sir grad another sir grad and an s3, 00:00:18.823 --> 00:00:27.177 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 00:00:27.177 --> 00:00:27.582 way. 00:00:28.339 --> 00:00:34.377 Which, which is truly a miracle. It really is. And he has, uh, he was an LSO, landing signal 00:00:34.377 --> 00:00:41.577 officer, has, uh, some pretty terrifying stories of, uh, well, ramp strike, having to 00:00:41.577 --> 00:00:43.297 jump over the side of the ship. 00:00:44.363 --> 00:00:49.217 Yeah, exactly. And that's where he came up with an idea, which, uh, led to the title of this week's 00:00:49.217 --> 00:00:51.663 show, cat shots and orgasms. 00:00:54.617 --> 00:00:59.450 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. 00:00:59.712 --> 00:01:01.134 Not going to not even going to try. 00:01:01.458 --> 00:01:03.519 So here is folks. Here comes Carrot. 00:01:04.051 --> 00:01:05.185 Sit on the ejection seat handle. Don't do it. 00:01:07.543 --> 00:01:11.817 On the tanker, through the weather. Oh, and to the tanker crew who did that. 00:01:12.080 --> 00:01:27.280 Music. 00:01:27.276 --> 00:01:36.437 So there I was, which is how all great aviation tales begin. 00:01:36.437 --> 00:01:37.597 You're listening to the podcast. 00:01:37.597 --> 00:01:43.598 So there I was. Repeat here, coming to you from New Hampshire today, joined by my co-host, Fig. 00:01:43.877 --> 00:01:46.877 Hello, gentlemen. How you doing, Fig? I'm coming to you live. 00:01:47.748 --> 00:01:53.197 Well, I guess we're recording from Denver, Colorado. It's a pleasure to be here. 00:01:53.197 --> 00:01:57.157 We have with us fellow Naval aviator, Carrot. 00:01:57.389 --> 00:01:57.758 Welcome Carrot. 00:01:59.063 --> 00:02:03.393 Well, thank you, gentlemen. And I use the term very loosely. As you should. 00:02:05.633 --> 00:02:08.113 Gotta stop swearing. There's gentlemen in the area. All right. 00:02:10.460 --> 00:02:18.913 So, Kerrit is a former American Airlines captain. We can say that because they can't fire you now. Though they tried. 00:02:20.513 --> 00:02:21.313 Unsuccessfully. 00:02:23.406 --> 00:02:28.233 And Navy S3 pilot. Welcome. Thank you, sir. We, uh, we're super glad to have you. 00:02:28.233 --> 00:02:34.873 How, how is it you wound up, uh, A interested in aviation and B flying Navy airplanes? 00:02:34.873 --> 00:02:38.412 Well, uh, the neighborhood I grew up in Prairie Village, Kansas. 00:02:39.115 --> 00:02:43.913 And the fifties had two brand of pilots in the neighborhood. Oh yeah. 00:02:43.913 --> 00:02:54.673 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. 00:02:55.589 --> 00:03:00.673 And it was just a neighborhood that had a lot of aviation stories in it. 00:03:00.673 --> 00:03:09.673 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. 00:03:09.673 --> 00:03:20.624 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. 00:03:20.849 --> 00:03:22.569 Oh my gosh. 00:03:22.956 --> 00:03:30.473 And so, and that, and some of the guys at Dickie at Richard's Cabar, which everybody calls Dickie Goober, now that, uh, 00:03:30.513 --> 00:03:36.261 south of Kansas city, uh, was in a fighter base, uh, air transport command base. 00:03:37.701 --> 00:03:45.313 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 00:03:45.313 --> 00:03:48.633 the early fifties where guys, my dad had been in the service with. 00:03:48.633 --> 00:03:54.793 With. And we'd go out there for barbecues and watch them fly our fighters around. 00:03:56.093 --> 00:04:00.873 And in fact, the first time I ever heard a plane go to break the sound barrier was at an Armed 00:04:00.873 --> 00:04:09.173 Forces Day live air show at Dickey Goober. And then that Super F-100 went by at about 50 feet 00:04:09.398 --> 00:04:14.873 going Mach 1 plus. Everybody watched him go by and then that sound wave smacked in the back of 00:04:14.873 --> 00:04:17.473 of the head when it finally got there. 00:04:17.869 --> 00:04:18.753 That hurt. 00:04:20.313 --> 00:04:23.273 Well, of course you were interested in aviation at that part. 00:04:23.273 --> 00:04:24.833 I mean, who the hell wouldn't want to be? 00:04:26.476 --> 00:04:33.233 So I just grew up wanting, I read everything I could on, in history, on World War II and World War I flying. 00:04:33.873 --> 00:04:40.993 And, uh, I set up my life so that I could be a Naval aviator in that, in all the reading I did. 00:04:41.446 --> 00:04:47.397 I figured that anybody can land on a 10,000 foot runway, but trying to land on a moving target, 00:04:47.892 --> 00:04:54.153 that's only 440 yards wide, the landing area, would probably be a challenge. 00:04:54.153 --> 00:04:57.344 And therefore you had to be a better pilot than the guys that couldn't hack that. 00:04:58.974 --> 00:05:03.304 The gauntlet. Was it that those gringos said, how hard could it be? You never have a crosswind and you got 00:05:03.304 --> 00:05:10.504 a wire to stop it. Don't have to flare. I don't want to live with 5,300 guys. Right. That's right. 00:05:13.064 --> 00:05:18.744 Exactly. So you've heard of that. Certainly did. Oh my gosh. That's a funny song. Right. Oh, it is. 00:05:20.102 --> 00:05:22.904 So what was your commissioning service? Yeah. How'd you get commissioned? 00:05:23.433 --> 00:05:29.744 I, my dad recommended at the beginning, I wanted to be a, uh, enlisted man. 00:05:29.744 --> 00:05:34.144 Cause everybody glorified how, you know, all the enlisted guys in world war II. 00:05:35.316 --> 00:05:39.556 And my dad, who was an officer said, Hey, if you want to go in the service, the, 00:05:40.231 --> 00:05:44.264 best way to go as an officer, because they live a lot better than the people 00:05:44.264 --> 00:05:46.784 that aren't officers, and that made sense to me. 00:05:46.784 --> 00:05:54.617 And after I decided I wanted to be a pilot and decided the Navy was a better way to go, 00:05:55.544 --> 00:06:01.784 I applied to our congressman, the third congressional in Prairie Village. 00:06:01.784 --> 00:06:10.784 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. 00:06:11.361 --> 00:06:17.024 I applied for a Naval Academy appointment. I got one of six nominations at the time. 00:06:17.024 --> 00:06:20.759 I don't know if you guys know how the Academy worked at the time. 00:06:21.224 --> 00:06:26.664 Every congressman and senator could appoint a person, one person. And if that person was 00:06:26.664 --> 00:06:32.384 qualified, the Academy had to take him. Or, and if you did that, you had one set of friends, 00:06:33.173 --> 00:06:34.047 that would vote for you. 00:06:35.226 --> 00:06:41.213 Or you could nominate six candidates, let the academy choose the one they wanted, 00:06:41.483 --> 00:06:46.996 and you had six sets of parents, six sets of friends, etc. And it was a lot more votes. 00:06:47.577 --> 00:06:55.476 So I was one of six. And in April that year, well, let me back up, and playing football at 00:06:55.476 --> 00:07:02.676 Shawnee Mission East, in our last game, Bird Dog for West Point. Bird Dog is a scout that watches 00:07:02.676 --> 00:07:08.453 as high school football players, saw me play, and asked me if I was interested in the academies. 00:07:09.116 --> 00:07:13.196 And I said, yeah. But at the time, I had the nomination to Annapolis. 00:07:13.196 --> 00:07:17.411 And he said, how about, you know, you may not get in. Things won't work out. 00:07:17.796 --> 00:07:23.568 How about if we put you in the West Point Prep School program as a backup? I thought, OK. 00:07:24.196 --> 00:07:27.916 That went through, and I was scheduled to go to Bullis Prep School in Washington, DC 00:07:27.916 --> 00:07:29.141 after my senior year in high school. 00:07:30.156 --> 00:07:36.476 But time went on in April, I went to the mailbox on Saturday morning, opened the letter from 00:07:36.476 --> 00:07:39.709 the academy, and it said basically, thanks, but no thanks. 00:07:40.396 --> 00:07:48.916 We selected one of the other six guys. Well, being a carrot top, that pissed me off something fierce. 00:07:48.916 --> 00:07:56.697 So I went to my Naval Academy catalog, looked up the telephone number of the athletic department, 00:07:57.116 --> 00:08:02.196 at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning in Kansas City, 11 o'clock back there, I called and 00:08:02.196 --> 00:08:04.916 got a guy by the name of Commander Bowler on the phone. 00:08:04.916 --> 00:08:06.716 And I said, this is who I am. 00:08:06.815 --> 00:08:10.254 Just found out I didn't get the appointment from the third congressional in Kansas City. 00:08:10.605 --> 00:08:13.963 I just want you to know that I'm going to go to West Point's prep school program next, 00:08:14.456 --> 00:08:20.116 year and then spend four years kicking the Navy's ass playing football. 00:08:20.679 --> 00:08:27.076 Commander Bowler, I didn't know at the time, was the athletic director at the Naval Academy. 00:08:28.051 --> 00:08:33.841 And he said, back off, kid. Let me get your information. Slow down. Yeah. 00:08:34.221 --> 00:08:36.381 Let me look into it, and I'll get back to you. 00:08:37.117 --> 00:08:42.061 Well, Monday morning, I got called out a first hour period to the office, and it was 00:08:42.061 --> 00:08:44.861 Commander Bowler on the phone saying, well, congratulations. 00:08:44.861 --> 00:08:47.421 We put you in our Naval Academy Prep School program. 00:08:48.162 --> 00:08:51.016 And I thought, well, that's OK. I'm already in West Points. 00:08:51.367 --> 00:08:56.061 And I told him that I'm going to Bullis Prep, and that's the Naval Academy Prep School 00:08:56.061 --> 00:08:59.741 program also. So just tell them you're going to pay for it instead of West Point. 00:09:00.461 --> 00:09:08.141 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. 00:09:08.141 --> 00:09:09.741 And you certainly don't need that. 00:09:09.903 --> 00:09:13.657 We're going to send you to Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore, Oklahoma. 00:09:13.981 --> 00:09:14.350 What? 00:09:14.764 --> 00:09:23.201 Yeah, that didn't send chills down my back. It kind of puckered my asshole, if you pardon my French. No. 00:09:23.622 --> 00:09:26.278 And he said, at 18, you believe almost anything. 00:09:26.701 --> 00:09:32.361 And he said, by going to OMA, you're going to be taking your freshman year in college. 00:09:32.361 --> 00:09:37.180 So you won't be wasting a year of your life. And as 18 years old, you go, a year of my life? 00:09:38.121 --> 00:09:44.361 I don't want to waste that. So I agreed. Consequently, I was in their prep school program. 00:09:44.361 --> 00:09:49.531 And a week later, I got a letter from Buber's, and I opened it. 00:09:49.621 --> 00:09:55.721 And this is April 6, 1965. was going really big. They were drafting like crazy. 00:09:55.721 --> 00:10:01.721 Oh, sure. And this letter said, congratulations on your acceptance in our prep school program. This 00:10:01.721 --> 00:10:08.721 letter authorizes you to join either the Navy or Marine Corps, regulars or reserve programs 00:10:08.721 --> 00:10:14.721 to increase your chances of getting into the Academy. Well, again, being an 18-year-old 00:10:14.721 --> 00:10:20.535 idealistic, know nothing, went behind the ears. I said, well, that sounds like, you 00:10:20.850 --> 00:10:24.481 That sounds like, you know, if you're going to be a good officer, you should know what the enlisted 00:10:24.481 --> 00:10:30.321 guys go through. So I think I'll take advantage of this. And talking with my dad, he agreed. And, 00:10:31.193 --> 00:10:37.281 on a Saturday morning, I went down to the ninth Naval District headquarters, walked in the door, 00:10:37.281 --> 00:10:41.681 and there were about 100 guys in there, took a number like you do at a bakery, 00:10:42.428 --> 00:10:47.119 waited for my number to be called, and went in and the chief sitting at the desk said, 00:10:47.560 --> 00:10:52.641 What do you want, kid? And I said, hey, I got this letter from a Vice Admiral Bagley, 00:10:52.641 --> 00:10:56.976 who calls himself Bupers. I don't know what that is, but he says I can join the Navy if I want to, 00:10:57.444 --> 00:10:59.119 the reserves. I kind of like to do that. 00:11:00.208 --> 00:11:05.178 What are you talking about? Let me see that letter. I had it to me. Where did you get this thing? I 00:11:05.178 --> 00:11:09.978 said, what did you can't read? It's right there. It's on the letterhead. And he signed it with his 00:11:09.978 --> 00:11:15.944 name. You wait here, kid. I'm going to go see the captain. He went in the office and I heard saw him 00:11:16.241 --> 00:11:19.418 talking to the guy. Next thing I know, I'm standing in front of the captain. He goes, 00:11:20.184 --> 00:11:25.018 how did you get this letter? I said, what? You don't know how to read in the Navy? This is 00:11:25.018 --> 00:11:32.298 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. 00:11:32.298 --> 00:11:40.376 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, 00:11:40.938 --> 00:11:48.858 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. 00:11:49.081 --> 00:11:55.658 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. 00:11:56.218 --> 00:12:00.712 And there was a 260 pounds, six foot five red headed chief standing in front of me. 00:12:01.618 --> 00:12:06.302 We took one look at me and my red hair and said, you're here to piss me off. Aren't you kid? 00:12:09.418 --> 00:12:13.978 But two weeks, he made my life fun. Yeah, I bet he did. Yeah. 00:12:13.978 --> 00:12:15.512 He did. He did. He did. He did. 00:12:16.394 --> 00:12:17.858 He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. 00:12:17.858 --> 00:12:19.218 He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. 00:12:19.218 --> 00:12:22.678 He did. He did. He did. He did. He did. I rolled. He made my life fun. Yeah, I bet he did. 00:12:23.418 --> 00:12:26.458 I bet he did. And. So was that at, uh, was that up at Glenview? 00:12:26.458 --> 00:12:33.192 Where'd you go through basic? At Glenview, which incidentally, my first airplane ride ever was on TWA 00:12:33.258 --> 00:12:35.326 from Kansas city to Chicago O'Hare. 00:12:36.118 --> 00:12:40.286 And at the time I'm in my white uniform, Navy white uniform, Dixie cap. 00:12:40.778 --> 00:12:44.438 And I'm thinking this is probably a bad time to figure out you hate flying. 00:12:44.742 --> 00:12:44.472 Right. 00:12:44.938 --> 00:12:50.438 Right. But anyway, I went through the two weeks of boot camp and that, and the next two 00:12:50.438 --> 00:12:55.438 weeks was supposed to be on a destroyer escort in the great lakes, learning how to be a Navy sailor. 00:12:56.463 --> 00:13:00.958 And, uh, the chief called me in one day, just before at the end of this two week 00:13:00.958 --> 00:13:06.238 period and said, I don't know who you know, but I've got orders here to get you 00:13:06.238 --> 00:13:10.238 out of here and to Kansas city and down to Oklahoma military Academy, wherever 00:13:10.238 --> 00:13:13.243 God knows that is, and I'm going to be a Navy sailor. 00:13:13.360 --> 00:13:18.318 God knows that is by Sunday, pack your bag, you're gone. 00:13:19.318 --> 00:13:22.358 How about that? Thank you, Jesus. Great. 00:13:25.398 --> 00:13:29.988 I was never so glad for two days in August of my life. Oh my gosh. 00:13:30.198 --> 00:13:36.658 So at the prep school, did you play football or did not? Yeah, yeah. Okay. 00:13:36.858 --> 00:13:42.006 Yeah, junior college, Oklahoma junior college football, which is a whole different kind of animal. 00:13:42.718 --> 00:13:45.588 There were six of us for the prep school program there for the Navy. 00:13:46.462 --> 00:13:46.786 And, 00:13:47.812 --> 00:13:52.222 It's just a brutal kind of football. We had a receiver that went out for in practice, 00:13:52.916 --> 00:13:57.022 made a diving catch and knocked out his two front teeth, came back to the coach, 00:13:57.022 --> 00:14:01.582 holding him, blood dripping from his mouth, going, coach, knock my teeth out. 00:14:01.757 --> 00:14:04.542 And all the coaches began taking their plates out of their mouth and going, 00:14:05.213 --> 00:14:08.462 you're a football player, you're going to coach. Yeah. Welcome aboard, sir. 00:14:12.451 --> 00:14:17.015 Right. Stick them back in. They may stay. What position did you play in football? 00:14:17.556 --> 00:14:21.805 Defensive end. Oh, so the acorn didn't fall very far from the tree. 00:14:21.931 --> 00:14:24.542 Unfortunately, my son never saw the light. He was offense. 00:14:26.222 --> 00:14:28.547 Sorry, I interrupted you. You were going somewhere with that. 00:14:28.880 --> 00:14:34.302 We had to wear army uniforms. We marched and played. It's like trying to set themselves up 00:14:34.302 --> 00:14:42.382 as a West Point of the plains. And it was basically junior college kids and the high 00:14:42.382 --> 00:14:47.389 four-year high school and they were either delinquents that the courts sent there or 00:14:47.662 --> 00:14:50.540 their parents were rich and were trying to get rid of them and send them there. 00:14:50.981 --> 00:14:56.688 So it was like a different kind of world experience. Oh yeah. That's quite a crowd. 00:14:56.976 --> 00:15:03.422 Yeah. From a kid from Prairie Village, Kansas. Oh yeah. And we played the University of Tulsa when Jerry Roan was a big. 00:15:04.529 --> 00:15:09.662 All-American quarterback. I know this predates you guys, but he was very big, 00:15:09.662 --> 00:15:13.243 kind of a Roger Stolbeck kind of guy. 00:15:13.829 --> 00:15:15.530 We played their freshman team. 00:15:16.160 --> 00:15:22.003 And this commander bowler came down, because they were playing the varsity the next day, 00:15:22.561 --> 00:15:24.199 and met with each of the six of us. 00:15:24.550 --> 00:15:30.204 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. 00:15:30.492 --> 00:15:36.019 You certainly had all the grades and the SATs. We should have given you a nomination this year. 00:15:36.352 --> 00:15:43.702 Well, yeah, now you tell me. Yeah, this is two months, three months into the program and I get this kind of thing. 00:15:44.472 --> 00:15:48.022 But it worked. They guaranteed anybody who went in the prep school program would get a 00:15:48.145 --> 00:15:50.262 nomination. I got mine through the Naval Reserve. 00:15:51.314 --> 00:15:56.247 They take 50 a year from each of the four, uh, regulars, Marine, Navy. Okay. 00:15:56.652 --> 00:16:03.964 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 00:16:03.964 --> 00:16:08.124 classes that got to major. I think he was started in 68. Yeah, that sounds right. 00:16:08.124 --> 00:16:10.524 Does that sound right? Panther is a classmate of mine. 00:16:11.200 --> 00:16:19.284 Get out of here. Okay. Cause I was 68. We were in class of 71. We started in, uh, well, 67, I'm sorry. 00:16:19.554 --> 00:16:26.124 I started in June of 67 after my high school graduation in 66. So he was a year behind me. 00:16:28.052 --> 00:16:33.564 They changed from everybody taking exactly the same courses my junior year, my second class year, 00:16:34.426 --> 00:16:37.964 and allowed you to choose a major. And I chose political science. 00:16:39.314 --> 00:16:47.484 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 00:16:47.484 --> 00:16:53.682 And at the end of the last semester, and the last day of classes before the final exam, 00:16:53.924 --> 00:16:59.364 first class year, he pulled me inside and said, Monsieur Gatchetta, if you promise never 00:16:59.364 --> 00:17:04.962 to speak the language, if you promise never to try to tell anybody that you ever took the language, 00:17:05.331 --> 00:17:07.545 I will give you a C for a final grade. 00:17:08.022 --> 00:17:12.164 Thank you. Which is way higher than I was aiming for at the time. 00:17:12.164 --> 00:17:17.344 Yeah. You didn't even say, we d'accord. 00:17:17.565 --> 00:17:26.784 I just said, praise Jesus. There you go. Thank you, Jesus. That's awesome. 00:17:27.044 --> 00:17:27.530 Perfect. 00:17:28.260 --> 00:17:33.790 So, you graduated 71 from the academy and then straight to flight school. 00:17:35.362 --> 00:17:44.030 Almost. At this particular time, it was kind of an allure of Vietnam. So, the bottom line is I had 00:17:44.030 --> 00:17:49.550 to go to the fleet and serve on a ship for nine months before I could go to flight school. Service 00:17:49.550 --> 00:17:54.114 selection night, you go down to a big auditorium and they call you in order of your class and you, 00:17:54.590 --> 00:17:55.990 And you select what you want to do. 00:17:55.990 --> 00:17:57.445 There are different boards around. 00:17:58.190 --> 00:18:02.030 And the aviation board, you went over and they had flight dates, flight school start, 00:18:02.567 --> 00:18:08.419 dates. And by the time I got there, the first date was in February of 72. 00:18:08.950 --> 00:18:15.590 So I ended up on the John S. McCain, a DDG out of Long Beach for six months before I 00:18:15.590 --> 00:18:17.750 went to flight school. 00:18:17.750 --> 00:18:24.550 Just as a side note, how did the Naval Academy's football team do the years that you played? 00:18:24.550 --> 00:18:30.550 Okay. We won my plebe year and my first class year, the two most important years. 00:18:30.550 --> 00:18:39.396 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 Thank you to our sponsor, RobinsBirdBrainDesigns.com. 01:25:16.520 --> 01:25:22.623 If you need something customized, personalized, in a gift format, this shows that you've put a lot of thought, 01:25:23.523 --> 01:25:25.225 and effort into it. 01:25:25.225 --> 01:25:31.985 We have coasters with Squadron logos in your call sign, or airplane instruments in your tail number, 01:25:31.985 --> 01:25:33.191 anything along those lines. 01:25:33.825 --> 01:25:37.665 Custom etched coasters. She can etch just about anything, 01:25:37.665 --> 01:25:42.347 your iPad, your laptop, coasters, Christmas decorations, Halloween, Easter's coming up. 01:25:43.505 --> 01:25:48.665 Reach out to RobinsBirdBrainDesigns.com and work with her to get you some amazing gifts, 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.