The Breaks of Naval Air: The Further Adventures of Youthly Pursesome

By Jack D. Woodul

This book is a collection of mostly light hearted stories about tactical Naval Aviation off aircraft carriers in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It is not a history, per se, nor is it like one of the many fine, factual, first person accounts of by other Naval Aviators. The author’s impulse was to capture a snapshot of that culture and experience through both oral tradition—stories told by aviators that were too good to be lost; and his own experience. Thus was born Youthly Puresome and his passage through the various Breaks of Naval Air. Depicting the experiences of a typically irreverent young Naval Aviator, these stories stir memories of similar experiences in all who have flown Navy jet aircraft from the decks of aircraft carriers or from bases ashore. While the hardware may be different, these tales should resonate with other services, and the characters and life its ownself be familiar with those that know and love them.

Beginning in the Fall 1991 issue of The Tailhook Association’s quarterly publication, The Hook magazine, until Fall 2011, a series of these stories were published under the title: “The Further Adventures of Youthly Puresome.” Youthly is the alter ego of Jack Woodul, a native of New Mexico who went through the Navy’s Training Command in the early ’60s and earned his Naval Aviator’s wings. He flew the A-4 Skyhawk in Vietnam, and after leaving active duty continued to fly F-8 Crusaders and F-4 Phantoms with the NAS Dallas Reserves. When not bagging flight time in gray jets, he was an airline pilot in “real life.” Now retired, he continues to fly and write about light airplanes and ranch life.

“The Further Adventure of Youthly Puresome” series led to an Outstanding Sea Story award by Fighter Squadron 201 in 1988; the 1994 Hook Magazine Contributor of the Year award; and a 1998 Tailhook Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youthly
• Release date: Oct 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781612003191

Jack D. Woodul

Jack Woodul grew up in dusty New Mexico, which may account for his love of bodies of water larger than stock tanks. His fascination with military aircraft started from being a child in the aviation target rich environment of Dallas-Fort Worth during World War Two. North American pumped out P-51’s in nearby Grand Prairie; NAS Grand Prairie’s Yellow Perils were separated from his back yard by a chain link fence; and the Big Bomber Plant in Fort Worth pumped out B-24’s. A booklet named “Wings of Gold” in the grade school library pointed the way to Navy Wings, and the movie “Task Force” locked the notion in concrete. His high school biology teacher had been a Navy fighter pilot in the War, and he taught the future Puresome to fly a Super Cub for bribes of the smelly black twisted truck tire cigars he always had in his mouth. Poverty stopped this program at some twenty-two hours, but the NROTC program at the University of New Mexico got him his private license and orders to Pensacola and flight school.This retired Attack and Fighter pilot will reluctantly admit he was also an Airline Puke for thirty years. He is now retired to a ranch in remote Northern New Mexico, where he is spiritual leader to a flock of goats. It suits him, but he would not have missed flying Belch Fire Go Fast Jets off flat top iron boats for anything.

Book preview

TRAINING COMMAND

"Holy mierda! thought Puresome as several wild-eyed, skinheaded creatures in poopy suits hustled by him at the double. They were being invited to expedite their passage by a drill sergeant with a voice like an electric cattle prod. Puresome, who was waiting to turn his head and cough for the Preflight quacks at Mainside Pensacola, recognized that these frightened creatures were not Commie Gulag political prisoners, but were NavCads," Naval Aviation Cadets, who were just starting a hopeful 18-month journey to a commission and golden wings.

Preflightus Maximus

Actually, the creatures might also have been another category of beings seen around Mainside Pensacola known as AOCs, or Aviation Officer Candidates. These chaps had completed their four years of university and were only subhumans for 90 days or so until they got their commissions. It seemed a small distinction at the moment.

Replete in starched khakis with brand-new brown bars on his collars, Puresome could only shudder because there, but for the grace of the Big Guy, went he. Fortunately, the moment of temporary insanity brought about by two years of completed college and a bottle of Jack Daniels Blackness Label consumed one dark and stormy night, did not result in his buggering off to join the Naval Aviation version of the Foreign Legion. A two-day hangover and a certain amount of chagrin resulting from launching a half-pound brick of cheddar cheese through his plate glass dorm window (it’d seemed like a good idea at the time) had luckily distracted him.

Leaping Tall Hurdles

But getting bureaucratted and administrated into the Preflight program was not precisely a piece of cake. Puresome had come to early grief with the medical establishment when he had noted that he had hay fever — which he didn’t — but it sounded better than the sinus troubles he had not enjoyed as a kid. The quacks had hissy fits and promptly bounced him for review. Puresome, scared to death, started back-pedaling furiously, righteously contending that it wasn’t really hay fever, but something that lingered from when he was an infant — eastern New Mexico sandstorms must have packed his baby nostrils with dirt, and he had long since snorted that stuff out.

The quacks eventually bought his story and he was reinstated. However, he had in the process learned a valuable lesson. He resolved never, ever again to admit within quack earshot that he suffered from anything a-tall.

Another joyous encounter was with the sandcrabs in charge of travel pay. After laboriously frabbing up several intricate travel claims, Puresome had finally proudly submitted his form to a formidable office pinkette with the beginnings of a handlebar mustache and sparkly rhinestone eyeglasses.

Oh, Mr. Puresome! she sighed, disgustedly shaking her great head. The following discussion rapidly degenerated to near fist-fight level, except that Puresome was afraid of what appeared to be stainless steel rat skewers that held her hair bun together. In the end, there was no actual blood spilled, but Puresome didn’t get paid a bunch of miles he had racked up on his Volkswagen. He filed the incident away in the paybacks are hell folder, fortunately not knowing that he would win very few against the minions of Conanetta the Accountant.

There were two final, formidable hurdles to be leapt over — the screening exams for math and physics. Those wussy, non-aeronautical engineers (such as Puresome) who bothered to show up could be expected to be winnowed out and assigned stupid study classes to bring the probably unworthy up to minimal technical standards. Puresome bought a Cliffs Notes booklet on mathematics for the severely inept, and studied up. But he knew that there was no way he could pass the physics exam, since he had always studiously avoided any science that involved anything more complicated than long division.

So he decided to fess up and get started early in physics stupid study. But the bored third-class yeoman empiring the desk in the testing office set aside his jelly donut long enough to explain to the silly ensign that it just wasn’t procedure. First, you get tested, then you go to stupid study if you don’t pass. It was the Navy Way.

Resolving not to be blinded by science, Puresome took the exams. By rigorous use of the wild-ass-guess method, he navigated through slugs and mass and ohms. And passed! And another mighty lesson was learned by an amazed and grateful Student Naval Aviator — aggressiveness and dumb luck will often win the fight and occasionally whup the system.

Figuring Out the System

Finally, a Preflight class was formed. More than half the class were freshly spit-shined Marines from Basic School in Quantico. There also was a smattering of NROTC types such as Puresome, a senior LTJG from the blackshoe Navy and a couple of giants that had taken Marine Corps commissions upon graduating from the Aerial Force Academy. The JG was obviously Senior-Dude-Present-Aboard, and soon he was barking Up, bookbags, hew! and marching his charges about the red-bricked, white-columned buildings of Mainside Pensacola.

But, evidently, the Honchos in Charge had seen laissez-faire young officers before, and a dress inspection was laid on by an extremely intimidating Marine captain. His cold eyes routed out errant spiffies and Irish pennants as he lambasted the unworthy.

"You people look like Joe Shit the Rag Man! You will not look like Joe Shit the Rag Man any more! You will look like A.J. Squared-Away! These cadets will look at you as officers and expect that you will have your ‘eagles up’ and your shoes spit-shined. You will square away or you will not hack the program!" he snarled.

Puresome didn’t know either Mr. Rag Man or Mr. Squared-Away whom the captain referred to, but he was truly convinced that his liver would be eaten, raw, if he emulated the wrong one. The Quantico Marines already knew about this Rag Man fella, and they smiled secret smiles.

The clear message from the academic side of Preflight was that you had to be totally extraordinary to even presume to make it through the program, and those that were chosen to fly jets would be very elder gods, indeed. Flight Physiology said that jet pilot’s blood could boil at altitude, and that the unwary could black out and buy the farm if oxygen wasn’t sniffed right or the deadly g forces were disregarded. Academics said swept wings, machety-mach and weird stuff like dutch roll and inertia coupling waited to snag even wary deities. And the god-like acts of whanging onto a moving carrier deck without striking the ramp were not even factored in.

Finally, the folks in the academic department said that only a very righteous few with the very top grades would ever make it to jet training. A propulsion instructor noted that Puresome’s class was apparently indifferent to the instructor pointing out the private parts of great hulking, cut-away, multi-bank piston engines, so he axed, How many of you want to be jet pilots? Puresome warily kept his hand down, aware that Grong the goat god was watching the presumptuous. But several dumb shits actually raised their hands.

Well, forget about it! The instructor snarled. The Navy flies mostly props — P2Vs, P5Ms, S2Fs, some ADs and helos. Only a very few of you are going to fly jets — most of you are going to fly props, so snap out of it!

Though Puresome was impressed by the long row to hoe and the competition yet to come, he knew that little talk belonged in the same category as the one that invited the listener to look to his right and left, and to know that two of the three would be gone in 18 months. Puresome knew that he could gut it out with the best of them, and he resolved to be the one still there. Maybe he could sneak into Spads.

Fresh Air and White Sand — The Obstacle Course

The physical side of training also counted for the final Preflight grade. Puresome had shown up in the moist, Pensacola sun fresh from the seasonal ice age in the Sandia Mountains and from a month of pasta delights rendered by his new child bride. This had left him sleek as a seal and moderately out of shape. This had not caused any problems in the swimming pool, since he was more buoyant, but the first trip to the obstacle course had almost caused an out-of-body experience.

His class had joined a group of South Vietnamese officer students for the two-mile jog out to the course, and Puresome actually survived the run. Since the trip through the obstacle course was a timed, graded exercise, the group was sorted into pairs. The competition, then, was against the clock and one’s running mate.

Puresome’s partner was a skinny little Marine, and they chatted while waiting for the pairs ahead of them to finish. Puresome started licking his chops when his pale-white competition admitted he’d been sick! Unfortunately, when their turn came, the sick little Marine bounced over the barricades like a gazelle of the veldt, scrambled over the barriers like a monkey of the jungle and blistered across the finish line in record time. Meanwhile, far behind, Puresome plodded, wheezed and barely got his plump buns over the rope and barrier obstacles. Fortunately, all the activity and anxiety and hard work melted some lard off Puresome’s fanny, and his times improved in subsequent repetitions.

So the training went. Puresome studied more of his fanny off, dreaming of the whine of turbines at 20,000 feet. Listening every night to the cadet choir sing the Navy Hymn at sign off for the local radio station, he hoped the lines Lord, guard and guide the men who fly, and hear our prayer, for those in peril in the air might apply to Student Naval Aviators as well.

He learned real aviator-type talk, like umpty for non-specific numbers (three point umpty-ump), can of worms for any messed up situation and buy the farm, which covered the many ways the incautious aviator might mort himself. He finally progressed to the point that he could, without guilt, occasionally shoot a game of pool, visit Pensacola Beach or pass through Trader Jon’s on a weekend.

Feasting on Little Furry Creatures

One of the final events was a trip to Eglin AFB for survival training. Puresome looked forward to skulking about the woods, as he had done this sort of thing all his life and enjoyed eating the odd small, furry animal. About the only thing that wasn’t fascinating about survival was a couple of thigh-thick swamp rattlesnakes introduced by instructors as examples of really good Florida chow.

The swamp was wonderful! Puresome was out of the classroom, sneaking around the palmetto and pines while, overhead, Air Force F-104s moaned like prehistoric beasts. Since his class only got to eat what they could catch or dig up, the students formed into teams. Puresome studiously avoided the snake team, which was made up of good ol’ Southern boys with forked sticks who thrashed small creeks for the wiggly, fanged creatures. Instead, he led the Rocky the Flying Squirrel Patrol, which was a bunch of barbarians banging on dead trees with sticks. This caused the terrified, Disney-cute little critters to launch themselves into space in frantic escape maneuvers, only to be chased down by a howling mob with cudgels. The total of all the team’s bounty — turtle, snake, flying squirrel, palmetto shoots, prickly pear parts and the odd can of tuna someone had sneaked along, was dumped into a tin container with a great deal of water, and the whole mess was brought to a boil over a fire. The broth and beast parts were divvied up among all the extremely hungry young, manly men, who scarfed it down. Unlike the cliché, Puresome didn’t think it tasted like chicken. That didn’t stop him from wishing for more as he wiped his greasy lips on his sleeve.

Finally, it was done. The ritual X’s had been put in the first box, and Puresome had done all right among ordinary mortals. A couple of academic weirdoes (one had actually put Coptic down for the religion of choice for his dog tags) led the class, followed by the Aerial Force Academy Jarboon ringers. The big dress-up, stomp-and-salute graduation exercise was memorable in that Puresome’s pal, 2LT Jawbone of His Majesty’s Horse Marines, managed to drip sunny-side-up egg yellow on the front of his immaculate, shiny-white dress uniform tunic during breakfast.

Puresome didn’t even have to remind him about Joe Shit the Rag Man.

Back, back over the left field fence of history, Naval Aviation offered a plethora of planes for an aspiring young manly man to consider. There were huge flying boat P5Ms that could land on salty water, there were P2V patrol planes that had their own hot plates for lunches, and the S2F Stoof came back to its own wee carrier after scouring the wine-dark sea for the wily submarine. There were helos of various shapes and sizes that could stop and back up.

Then there were jets.

Forget them jets! barked the instructor in the preflight power plants class. Most of the Navy flies recips, and so will most of you. So get your heads down from twenty thousand feet and pay attention to this sump-light thing.

Like everybody else who heard this speech, Bullet Boomer understood that its grim statistics applied to everybody else. But he had heard of the Breaks of Naval Air whereby even aces of the base were whimsically assigned to some girly airplane that wasn’t even on their choice list. But the practicalities of growing up on a ranchito deep in the heart of Texas and surviving the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M had given Boomer lots of practice in figgerin’ things out.

Boomer had figgered out that over in Corpus Christi, hidden among all the many-motors, the Navy was still training a few folk, mostly South Vietnamese, in the wonderfully manly Douglas AD Skymider. The Spad was a legendary machine that could carry many things that went boom under its wings, and it carried four mighty 20 mike-mike cannon.

If he was probably going to fly a recip, it might as well be something with lots of guns. He was not called Bullet without reason, and it was for the hope of something good to come that he went all squinty-eyed and concentrated as the instructor droned on about the joys of overboosting.

And so it was that Bullet found himself at VT-30 in Corpus Christi with a few other lucky lads and lots of South Vietnamese. After the mandatory studying-up on the new airplane, he and two others were assigned to a flight that would mostly fly together through their training. They seemed to be good ol’ boys, and they listened intently to their instuctor’s tales of the terrors of torque rolls as he readied them for their first solo.

All by now had well-developed right legs from stuffing takeoff rudder in T-28s and were tall enough to see out of the cockpits without sitting on a stack of phone books, unlike some of the smaller Southeast Asians. Boomer and his pals all made their solo flights in the Beast without a prang.

The Mother of All Celebrations

Naturally, this joyous achievement demanded a bonding ritual. Kitchen passes were to be written for all those who had soloed that week for a Friday afternoon competition, and wives and lady friends understood that there might be some beer drinking involved. Naturally, there was no flying scheduled for the next day.

The nature of the competition, Boomer found out, was that the three members of each flight had to drink a case of beer that had been decanted into a chromium-plated bomb case. The flight that emptied the bomb in the shortest time won the competition and was entitled to bragging rights and a plaque engraved for ready room posterity to admire. Bullet knew his flight had to win, so he started figgerin’ out how.

Fellas, he told his pals, I know something about drinking beer fast — you have to take the fizz out. I’ll take an eggbeater and whup it up. Now, I can give it a purty good hit the first time around, but if it comes back to me, it had better be about gone.

Bullet’s flight swilled the bomb empty in a minute and 39 seconds. It was a new world record — none of the other competitors even came close. It was such a triumph that Boomer spent the rest of the evening sucking the top out of beer cans in celebration. Somehow, he completely forgot that his Sweet Wife had invited folks over for a lovely spaghetti supper.

Sweet Wife’s Revenge

When Boomer finally made it home, the guests and spaghetti were long gone. Sweet Wife was not overly proud of the world record or the commemorative plaque, either.

Came the dawn and the little man with the ice pick had visited the head of the leader of the world-record-holding Swill Team. Neither were Bullet’s innards ready for his usual sausage, biscuits and hen’s egg breakfast. Fix me something simple, he murmured to Sweet Wife.

How about some cinnamon toast? she replied with a strangely inscrutable smile.

Bullet grunted his acceptance as Sweet Wife bustled about the kitchen, whipping out a dutiful breakfast for her beloved, errant husband.

The cinnamon toast was lovely, right up to the point where Bullet found out it had been made with last evening’s garlic butter. It was only after an extended session addressing the ivory throne that he was able to contemplate that, just perhaps, he hadn’t quite figgered everything out.

It was a lesson, of course, that you had to keep jinking. And it was real good training, since no future Gomer was bound to be as wily as a Sweet Wife get-back.

The only thing that stood between Puresome and oysters and fried-up red snapper in Pensacola was the highway south out of Milton. It was time to forget the tedious pleasures of basic instrument instruction at North Whiting Field, and he and Tunita were humming along at maximum rev’s of his ancient Volkswagen’s engine, though their groundspeed was significantly reduced by the interaction of tires and the sticky asphalt of summer. In those ancient days before air conditioning, the car win dows were wide open, and a wondrous world of smells was there for one’s entertainment.

Puresome had made it past the dead tuna aromas of the paper mill and was actually enjoying the salty tang of the ocean when a flight of four round-motored Spads roared above the road just in front of him. The churning of all those pistons made such a manly roar that the palmettos by the side of the road quivered and the short hairs tried to stand up on the back of Youthly’s close cropped, Student Naval Aviator neck.

Yeeeehaw! For a chap who had a sufficiency of being under the bag in the back seat of the T-28, climbing and turning at precise bank angles and airspeed while changing from low blower to high blower, this was tactical! Those guys looked like they were out hunting, and Youthly knew he wanted to do that when he grew up and got his Golden Wings.

He stuck his head out the side window and waved and hollered some. This affected his precise track down the highway, which was duly noted and commented upon by the Child Bride who remembered the stories from survival training about the slithery creatures that lurked off-road. But small swerves were nothing to the skilled, thousand-mile-an-hour hands of the future terror of the skies. One had to expect some shrieks in an operation like this, and Puresome was lost in fantasy as he watched the Spads disappear in the distance.

There was still a long row to hoe in the Basic Training Command before Youthly even had a shot at being a tactical sort. But the air above northern Florida was full of noisy T-28s, and he studied up and tried to make his instructors happy enough not to hurl kneeboards or do damage to their vocal cords. He did his best not to get dripped on too much by the bodily fluids that drained or oozed from the big radial engines. He avoided overboosting and underboosting and the deadly sump light, which caused taking to parachute or messing up some farmer’s cotton field.

He watched the interesting ground antics of the twin engine Secret Navy Bomber (SNB) being flown by helicopter-bound chaps getting their instrument ratings. Puresome was hacking the program and having a real good time pretending he was flying a blue Hellcat in search of the Wily Nipper instead of an orange-and-white two-seater. Every day was one more brick in the wall, and eventually he moved away from the FNGs at North Whiting Field down to the more advanced flying from the South Whiting complex.

Readying for the Really Big Mission

Making the move with him were famishedeyed NavCads, MarCads and assorted officer types. An exotic element was added with a large number of South Vietnamese that had come to the Land of the Big PX for flight training. They were an interesting lot, who clearly had the gauge on academics but tended toward a leisurely attitude about completion of the program, since that would involve going home and the War Thing.

Finally, the all-highest instructor persons felt that their charges were ready for a Really Big Mission. While it wasn’t exactly bombing Schweinfurt, a gaggle of students were to fly a semi-low-level cross country, herded by an instructor, who hoped they could look out their windows to find obscure checkpoints like Mobile Bay and New Orleans, and then successfully return to base. The icing on the cake was to be a touch-and-go landing at Sherman Field, in front of God, Mainside Pensacola and maybe some Blue Angels. It was a righteous opportunity to look studly, but Puresome quietly petitioned the Big Guy for no frabberies.

So lines got drawn on sectional charts and some figgering got done. The instructor carefully briefed the three Vietnamese, Puresome and his pal, NavCad Glen, that their en route formation should be like the Air Force — same day, same way — so they not smite one another while navigating. But anyone not flying perfect close formation anywhere near a naval air station would find himself, right quickly, chipping paint on some water-logged coastal freighter. As they drew their parachutes and waddled out to the aircraft, Puresome knew he hated paint-chipping, and he vowed to formate admirably and beware the Hun in the Sun, especially if that Hun was Vietnamese or NavCad-ish.

All the big parts of Youthly’s T-28 seemed to be where they were supposed to be, but he carefully counted the drips from tubes in the nose wheel well and was wary of other a la carte secretions. He pried open dzus-buttoned covers to discover interior secrets. Everything seemed tickedy-boo, so he tugged his parachute straps tight and climbed up his steed to do battle.

After a little priming and coaxing, his engine started with a couple of coughs, shaking for a moment and evening out to idle with the marvelous, clattery sound peculiar to round motors. Eventually, the rest of the flight was ready, and the first test was to successfully navigate Whiting’s torturous taxiways to the run-up pad adjacent the duty runway. Nobody got lost, and the flight went about checking engines. Puresome stood hard on the brakes, ran the throttle up to 30 inches of manifold pressure and checked for proper instrument readings. He throttled back, checked his magnetos and exercised his propeller controls. Satisfied, he throttled back to idle and ran through his Before Takeoff Checklist.

I betcha the belch-fire boys don’t have this much fun getting those jet engines started! Puresome thought as he gave the thumbs up ready signal to the plane next to him. On the other hand, they do have air conditioning! The instructor called for takeoff, and, at decent intervals, the T-28s roared down the runway, slipping the surly bonds of earth amid a great deal of noise and right rudder.

Feeling Like a Very Big Kid

Vulture Flight had made a successful rendezvous, and was motoring along in what was hoped was the right direction for the first checkpoint. The aircraft were comfortably spread out, and Puresome had his engine throttled back and set for cruising rev’s and mixture to auto-lean. He had time to look out the window at all sorts of jolly sights below, happy to be away from the constraints of Whiting’s usual practice areas.

The flight was separated into a Vic of the three Vietnamese and a section, which was Puresome and NavCad Glen, and they were arranged in a loose abeam scouting line that was, they hoped, an improvement over a herd of cats. The instructor buzzed about and didn’t natter too much. Puresome watched the world and the other airplanes, and felt like a very big kid, indeed.

The bridge over Mobile Bay was duly found as was the naval air station south of New Orleans, and Puresome had time to have fantasies about boiled crawfish and cold beer orgies. But when they entered the old T-34 Teenie-Weenie Primary Training operating areas of western Alabama on the return trip, it was time to suck it up, and they closed formation.

The instructor took the lead and called Navy Sherman tower for landing instructions for a flight of six. Tower advised that they were landing east, and to call over the numbers for a left break into the pattern. The instructor rogered the instructions and suggested that the tower might want to issue a warning NOTAM until Vulture Flight had gone far, far away.

When the instructor got squared away for a straight-in approach to the runway, he signaled Puresome’s section to move from his port side over to join the Vietnamese trio already on the starboard side, making a six-plane echelon. Puresome got real busy after the crossover, trying to average out the crack-the-whip effect of being at next to the end of the line of airplanes.

The formation didn’t look too bad when they crossed over the runway numbers and they were cleared to break for landing. The instructor passed the lead and broke away from the formation. Puresome started counting potatoes as successive flight members passed the lead on and broke away. Finally, the chap Puresome was flying on tapped his helmet and pointed his finger at Puresome, who tapped his own helmet, taking the lead. The other pilot blew an exaggerated kiss and broke away. It was now Puresome’s awesome duty to look and fly straight ahead smoothly while he counted up to his 10-potato interval. Then he looked starboard at NavCad Glen, passed the lead, made a kiss-off gesture of great style and arrogance, and broke away.

The Round Engine Goes Silent

The plan was for the instructor to make a touch-and-go landing and stay in the traffic pattern to fall in behind the students, who were making a straight-out departure for an en-route rendezvous back to Whiting. Puresome had managed an acceptable landing and was climbing out to join the other aircraft when he heard NavCad Glen call "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Vulture Five has an engine failure!"

"Straight ahead! Take it straight ahead, Vulture Five!" screamed the instructor, who was watching and afraid that NavCad Glen might make the classic mistake of trying to turn back toward the field and stall, spin, crash, burn, die. NavCad Glen didn’t say squat, being rather too busy. Yaaaaaaaa! Puresome screamed into his boom mike. "Ah, tower, Vulture Lead, Vulture Five has crashed into the golf course off the east end of the field!"

"Ah, Vulture Lead, which hole?"

Tower frequency then got very busy, with the instructor circling the crash site and trying to vector the crash trucks to the right fairway.

Meanwhile, the instructorless remainder of Vulture Flight had formed a loose Lufberry, circling about and waiting. Puresome’s already-wide eyeballs got a little wider when his low fuel light started glowing dully. Even though it probably meant a month and a half more flight time in a T-28, it was time to act. "Vulture Lead from Vulture Five, I’ve got a low fuel light. Are you comin’?"

"Vulture Flight, go on home! I’ll talk to you later."

So the Vultures found their way back to Whiting Field, and Puresome wasn’t remotely close to the reciprocating version of a flameout. When the instructor showed up, it was with good news. NavCad Glen had done his low-altitude emergency drill perfectly and put his T-28 and himself down, more or less intact, on the Mainside Pensacola golf course. The retired admirals golfing that day were a little annoyed they couldn’t play through, but it was just another of those Breaks of Naval Air.

As it turned out, both Puresome and NavCad Glen went on together to advanced training at NAS Chase Field where the big jet engines whined. After winging, they both went east to NAS Oceana, though Puresome went to Skyhawks and former NavCad Glen went to Phantoms. And, as it finally turned out, a short time later, former NavCad Glen flew into the waters of the Chesapeake Bay during a night intercept mission, and Puresome did not.

In the after years, for every squadron reunion held in the birthplace of Naval Aviation, and every visit to its wondrous Museum, Puresome always takes the short drive after the main gate along the manicured borders of the golf course. Tunita always knows what he is going to say. Perhaps former NavCad Glen would like being remembered that way.

Puresome knew that it was going to be a TINS sea story when the Naval Aviator set down his cold beer in order to free his hands and admitted that, in the Antediluvian Age of Aviation, he had been a certified, bottled-in-bond, Training Command ace of the base.

Back then, Jimster explained, he had been a Snuffy white-hat enlisted person who left the Naval service for college, had earned his degree and availed himself of the Aviation Officer Candidate program in search of a brown bar and Golden Wings. After boot camp, indoc at Pensacola proved a piece of pastry. He soon found he could flop, chop, prop, one-ten drop with the best of the T-34 chaps. His prowess at counting various drips under the engine of the manly T-28 and flinging it about the sky in approved Naval fashion had garnered him lots of attaboys and few aw shit flight grades. As the final exam of carrier qualification approached, Jimster was a leading candidate to eventually join the fabled Order of the Cherry, whose elite members had not received a down (unsatisfactory flight) during their Naval Aviation training and could expect orders to aircraft that whoostled.

The Order of the Cherry

Sippin’ Whiskey for the First to Qualify

So the USS Antietam (CVS-36) awaited their pleasure. As the big day arrived, Jimster’s class took up a collection to buy sipping whiskey for its instructor, LT Lipster, as well as for the first student to finish his carqual. Sipping whiskey being what it was, competition was fierce, and the students cut cards for flight positions.

It doped out that the instructor would lead a flight of four and a second section of two students out to the boat. ENS Jimster drew the wingman position in the section led by MarCad Mike, a Marine student aviation cadet who starched and ironed his government-issue skivvies to iron-sharp creases. Things did not look good for Jimster, and MarCad Mike salivated at the thought of long, cool drinks with paper parasols in them and kicking some serious Squid butt.

The carrier finally passed a Charlie time to the squadron, and it was time to hit the boat. The flights manned up — six sets of rotating speed brakes started slicing and dicing the air as mighty piston engines coughed, belched smoke, broke wind and settled into a steady roar. LT Lipster was carrying the Plane Captain of the Month in his rear seat to observe the festivities. The hard-working white-hat was used to the bucking and snorting of the big aircraft on the ground, but his eyeballs grew wide at the astounding racket of takeoff and the ballet of the running rendezvous as the students joined on the lead aircraft, slid up its wingline and separated into a close finger-four formation closely followed by the section of two.

The First Look at the Boat

As if he didn’t have enough to think about, Jimster knew that poor formation flying during carqual had gotten downs for looking bad around the boat, and he worked hard to fly perfect parade position on MarCad Mike. As Lead checked them in with Antietam over UHF, Jimster just had to sneak a look. The sight of the big, dark blivit steaming around the ocean up ahead caused a huge thrill of excitement and adventure, as well as a major twang of his pucker string. As the two flights went into Delta, holding above the ship for their turn in the landing pattern, occasional glimpses below showed the painted outline of the landing area on the flight deck, aircraft approaching and leaving the flight deck and the boiling white energy of the ship’s wake against the blue sea.

The first break came when pri-fly called Flight Lead to send down two aircraft to fill the pattern, and he responded by detaching MarCad Mike and Jimster. Yaahoo! Down they went, finally paralleling the ship’s course and flying up the starboard side. Somewhere in front of the bow, MarCad Mike tapped his head and blew him a kiss to pass the lead to Jimster. With that, the Marine broke downwind