High Adventures: A Memoir of Flying in War and Peace

By David Palmer

David Palmer, who grew up fascinated by airplanes, looks back at a lifetime flying in this memoir.
Beginning with his graduation from the Naval Academy in 1967 to starting his own air charter business at age fifty-five, he celebrates a series of increasingly fulfilling adventures.
Whether it’s fighting in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, being a test pilot for General Dynamics, or serving as a member of the navy’s Reserve Air Forces, he shares a candid picture of what it is like to be a pilot in war and peace.
“This book captures not only an individual’s drive to be the best he can be in a very difficult and demanding profession but also adds the flavors of camaraderie and fears experienced in extended combat. It adds in the demanding precision of an experimental test pilot. Carrier-based naval aviation provides a unique ‘living on the edge’ sense of accomplishment that stays with each of us privileged to have had that opportunity, for the rest of our lives.” —Capt. Jim Ruliffson USN (Ret.), Navy Fighter Weapons School (Top Gun) plank owner (1968–70) and Commanding Officer (1975–76)

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532089572

David Palmer

David Palmer was born in New Zealand and currently lives there. An adventurous disposition has taken him to many places, and a perversely romantic impulse has led him to eke out a living as a freelance writer. He is amazed and grateful that his wife and son still put up with him. He has had articles published on innumerable subjects as well as one book, Walking Historic Auckland, an anecdotal history of the city. Due out is a non-fiction work concerning RAF aircrew in World War II. David has lectured and published on spiritual matters, motivated by a range of out-there experiences that defy science. Some get into Refuse Generation. He has an unfashionable enthusiasm for metaphysics and an unlikely expertise in military history. He believes that history matters, that if love isn’t the answer then it’s a very good question, and that the relationship between spirituality, religion and science is disastrously misunderstood. He wants to change the world, doubts that it’s possible, but decided to make a start by encouraging people to think for themselves.

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Copyright © 2020 David Palmer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-8956-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8958-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8957-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019920827

iUniverse rev. date: 02/18/2020

       To my family.

       To those who

have come before.

       To those with whom I’ve lived and loved.

       To those who will come after me.

       You are my touchstone.

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Flight Training—The Navy Way

Chapter 2 My First Scare—And We’re Still in the US

Chapter 3 Early Departures

Chapter 4 On the Line

Chapter 5 Into the Land of Phantoms

Chapter 6 Combat

Chapter 7 Becoming a Test Pilot

Chapter 8 Engines R Us

Chapter 9 A Staff Job

Chapter 10 More Phantom than Falcon

Chapter 11 First Experimental Flights

Chapter 12 Settling Down in Texas

Chapter 13 Back to Edwards

Chapter 14 Major Changes

Chapter 15 The Middle Years

Chapter 16 New Beginnings

Chapter 17 A Whole New World

Chapter 18 Looking Forward to Monday Mornings

Chapter 19 Flying Off into the Sunset

Honors and Awards

Acknowledgments

Glossary

PREFACE

It was early April 1970. My squadron mates and I in VF-53, flying F-8 Crusader fighters from the deck of the USS Bon Homme Richard, were headed west and passing the Hawaiian Islands. We were on our way to Vietnam for what was to be a nine-month combat cruise. As we had been at sea for a week without flying, our air boss had commanded the ship’s complement of tactical pilots to get into the air that night. The proximity of US military air bases in the islands afforded us an emergency divert field option if needed. The F-8 had a reputation for being difficult to land aboard aircraft carriers, especially at night.

The weather was miserable for night operations—a moonless night, a very low cloud ceiling, storms in the area, and thick clouds up to thirteen thousand feet above the sea, which was moving with six- to eight-foot waves.

I launched from the deck of the USS Bon Homme Richard at 22:00 (10:00 p.m.). Within seconds, it was apparent to me that I had no attitude information (pitch and roll) from my flight instruments. I was blind at less than a hundred feet above the waves of a very dark ocean. The fighter was within seconds of stalling and consigning me to a cold, dark, watery grave before my twenty-sixth birthday. My salvation rested on a very archaic pair of remaining instruments—the turn needle and angle of attack devices. Using these two instruments allowed me to very carefully maintain some semblance of roll control and a speed above stall speed of the wing as I managed to fly up through the clouds and into clear air. The three to four minutes it took for me to break out of the clouds seemed like an eternity. Upon reaching thirteen thousand feet, I saw the glow of the big island to my north. I landed at Barber’s Point Naval Air Station (NAS) twenty minutes later.

In retrospect, I survived that near-death experience by not succumbing to panic and because I had a lot of self-confidence. My parents, my athletic coaches, and my classmates and instructors at the Naval Academy had instilled that in me. But it was primarily due to the absolutely superb flight training I had received from the navy in the previous thirty months.

I was born on December 28, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge—the last major offensive of the German army in World War II. I was raised in a small town in northwestern New Jersey. My parents were as focused on raising children who would become functioning adults as any parents I’ve ever known. We were told early and often that if we were to get anything out of life, we were going to have to work for it. My siblings and I took that to heart. My brother excelled in the world of law. My sister was successful in education administration. I became enthralled with aviation at age twelve and never looked back.

The following recollections are predominantly about all kinds of flying—carrier aviation, combat, developmental and experimental test flying, international airshow demonstrations, charter-flight flying, company ownership, and finally, flying just for the joy of it. They are also about the many people with whom I lived throughout that most enjoyable and exciting of journeys.

David Palmer

Fall 2019

Willow Park, Texas

CHAPTER 1

FLIGHT TRAINING—THE NAVY WAY

After graduating from the Naval Academy in June 1967, I was ordered to Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, Florida, in August.

Figure%201%20.jpg

Figure 1. Me, June 1967.

I had decided to apply for the aviation side of the navy during my second year at the academy following an eye-opening experience I gained in Pensacola with my classmates in what was termed Aviation Summer. We observed future aviators as they were conducting their initial training in propeller-driven primary aircraft, T-34A Mentors.

As the days turned into weeks, we too were invited to fly with the instructor pilots taking off from NAS Saufley Field and be exposed to acrobatics, basic maneuvering, stalls, and spins. The Mentor, built by Beech Aircraft, was the military version of the Beech Bonanza. Major differences included full acrobatic certification, a conventional empennage (as opposed to the Bonanza V tail), and tandem seating versus side by side.

The highlight of the experience came at the end of our month in Florida. We flew aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lexington maneuvering off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico. The flights were in T-28 Trojan advanced propeller trainers built by North American Aviation and powered by supercharged Wright R-1820 radial engines that developed 1,500 horsepower. The touch-and-go landing was of course performed by the instructor pilot, but it didn’t matter—I was hooked. That experience focused my attention on naval aviation from that day on.

Three years later, my interest had only grown. My wife, Betty, and I had rented a small duplex in Warrington, Florida, twenty miles from Saufley Field, where I would learn to fly the T-34A trainer.

We were childhood sweethearts and had married earlier that year. My focus since the beginning of my career at the Naval Academy at Annapolis was to fly fighters off carrier decks for a full career of twenty years or more. I considered the timing of being allowed to participate in the Vietnam War as fortuitous. There was a war on, and it had been my intention for years to take part in it. The Naval Academy, since Plebe Summer in 1963, the year JFK was assassinated, had prepared me to assume the responsibilities associated with being an officer of the line (in other words, an officer trained and designated as a warfighter as opposed to support functions such as supply or medical corps—the line refers to a line of warships engaged in combat). Great emphasis had been placed on developing a mind-set of completing any mission I was assigned and conducting myself as a professional, highly trained warrior not subject to second-guessing myself or succumbing to panic under stress regardless of the circumstances.

My classmates and I spent a month in the classroom studying basic aerodynamics, meteorology, physiology relative to human flight, and a large dose of the finer details of the Beech T-34 Mentor.

Finally, we started to fly. My flight instructor was Lt. Cdr. Thomas, a heavyset man with a round face who knew a lot of what there was to know about most navy airplanes and especially the Mentor. He had a pleasant demeanor and always seemed to have an apple or some other fruit to take along on our training flights. He had twelve years of flight experience and proved to be more than willing to share it.

My first flight was on October 5, 1967. I remember the first takeoff as if it were yesterday. It was the first time I had actually controlled an airplane, and it was magnificent. Thomas was as cool as could be and simply let me fly the maneuvers that were on the run card. Navy briefs (and debriefs) can be exhausting, but they usually leave nothing left unsaid—a very good practice, especially in the early weeks of flight training.

I flew my first solo flight in the Mentor seventeen flight hours later; this was considered the standard amount of time for a young ensign or second lieutenant. It took twenty-five days to achieve that owing to rainy weather in the west Florida area.

After our three-month introduction to the primary basics of flight in Pensacola, we moved the family to our next stop. I had been allowed to proceed into the jet pipeline, my first hurdle. There would be many more on the way to get to where I wanted to go. I detached from VT-1, the primary aviation training squadron, on November 9, 1967. My new duty station was NAS Meridian in central Mississippi. The town of Meridian was ten miles south of the airfield named for Senator Stennis, a prominent member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Betty and I rented a very attractive, small home on a corner lot in a neighborhood that featured pine trees, most of which rose fifty to sixty feet. Fortunately, it was inexpensive enough to be affordable on my ensign pay. The purpose of this assignment was basic jet training, and the planes were North American Aviation T-2A Buckeyes, which had been in service with the navy since 1959.

The A model featured a single engine, the Westinghouse J-34. It was not until our next assignment, six months later, that we would fly the twin engine version of the airplane, the T-2B, specifically designed for carrier operations. That model utilized General Electric J-85 nonafterburning turbojet engines. Their very rapid spool-up time (ability to increase or decrease commanded thrust) proved to be ideal for aircraft carrier landing purposes.

While all certified aircraft have emergency procedures developed for them, the use of military aircraft is unique in that its mission is at minimum a flight from point A to point B. Usually, in military usage, the airplane’s mission goes far beyond that basic element to include multiple, very precise, and potentially dangerous maneuvers and tasks that require the pilot’s full attention and focus. Potentially layered on top of those tasks are all the things that can go wrong with the platform. Consequently, we were trained from the very beginning to imprint these emergency procedures in our minds to the letter to optimize our ability to prevent bad situations from becoming lethal and yet still perform the mission. Because combat missions as well as the carrier environment can be dangerous, both had to be respected at all times.

Each student pilot received fifteen hours of simulator training prior to his first flight; my first jet flight occurred on December 5. The jump from flying a propeller-driven airplane to flying a jet was jolting. T-34s were noisy and didn’t have much power, and the operating envelope (the physical limits—altitude, speed, and turn rate for which the aircraft was designed to handle) was severely limited. Practically speaking, it went from zero to 190 knots and up to perhaps twelve thousand feet above sea level. In my first jet, with all my equipment, G suit (to minimize the downward flow of blood when pulling a g load during maneuvers), my form-fitted helmet, and my oxygen mask, it was more like dancing than flying. Maneuvers were fluid and more easily performed owing to the greatly increased power of the jet engine, and the cockpit environment was remarkably quiet. It was a mystical experience, and it heightened my desire for more of this wonderful, remarkable, and new experience.

The operating envelope even in this relatively unremarkable jet was from zero to four hundred knots and up to forty thousand feet above sea level. I could actually go play among the clouds—and I did at every opportunity.

Besides making us familiar with the jet, the syllabus included performance maneuvers, acrobatics, basic tactical maneuvers, basic instrument flying, basic radio instrument flying, and finally formation flying. Formation flying would start with the basic navy element for tactical flying. A section—two like airplanes—advanced to becoming a division—four jets of the basic strike mission. In both cases, the leader was the guide and controlled navigation, communication, and mission requirements while his wingmen took positions slightly behind and below him.

For typical swept-wing aircraft, the wingman would take a position to the leader’s left or right, lining up his aircraft so he could look along the leading edge of his leader’s wing. Horizontal separation between aircraft would be ten to fifteen feet, and vertical separation (step down) would be three to four feet. These basic formations would be very useful in carrier operations, especially when one or the other aircraft was experiencing difficulties.

The basic jet syllabus ended with night formation flying. This would be our first real opportunity to begin to grasp the carrier environment. Navy tactical missions are conducted twenty-four hours a day and in all kinds of weather. Should adverse weather preclude safe operations, one waited, often in the cockpit, until conditions improved. Nevertheless, given that mission success was the primary imperative, it often meant flying in less than desirable situations. That mind-set was established early in the training syllabus.

I flew my last flight in the T-2A on April 19, 1968. Soon thereafter, in a ritual that we would come to regularly expect, we packed up the family and moved on to the next duty station, in this case, back to Pensacola, to join the initial carrier qualifying squadron, VT-4, at what was then called Main Side on the NAS Pensacola facility.

Back in Florida, we were fortunate enough to rejoin our old friends from the Naval Academy, Will and Mary Trafton. We had actually spent some social time with them at Meridian. Will had been a class ahead of me at the academy. He was an exceptional athlete and captained one of USNA’s premier soccer teams in 1966. Will was of average size but was extremely quick on his feet. His father had moved the family to Central America as he was an executive with United Fruit Company. Will had been exposed early and often with opportunities to develop his soccer skills. Watching him and his teammates overpower rival collegiate soccer teams was an exciting experience for fans and players alike.

They were great fun, and as luck would have it, Mary had an uncle who had two rental properties at the most easterly part of Pensacola Beach, so we were neighbors for the duration at Pensacola. Will had developed a problem with his appendix early in his time in the primary training squadron, VT-1, so he was held back a year and then progressed forward with my class. The two cottages were quite isolated from the rest of Pensacola Beach, and that made the experience all the more fun for us and our Gordon setter, Suzy Boo Que, who had the run of the beach. Actually, as we lived on Santa Rosa Island perhaps four hundred yards from the Gulf of Mexico to the south and less than that to Santa Rosa Sound to our north, she had the run of two beaches. It was a wonderful time for us all, and the flying made it that much more magical.

We were getting closer to being real aviators; my desire to get through the training command only heightened. I wanted to absorb the training and take every opportunity to learn from those who had already served in Vietnam, but I was also eager to get to where the action was before it was over. I can’t remember a squadron mate in those early years who didn’t share my view. My thoughts on the validity or morality of the war took a back seat to the adventure of it all. I considered my contribution to the nation’s efforts to be a requirement for achieving manhood. The fact that I would fly the world’s best fighter aircraft in combat was the biggest bonus imaginable.

The Tet Offensive had only recently come to an end; it foreshadowed a growing willingness of the enemy to be willing to sacrifice human life in great numbers to achieve their goal of unifying the two parts of Vietnam under a Communist banner. Being born in the 1940s and growing up in the ’50s in America had completely indoctrinated me in the view that Communism was the greatest scourge imaginable.

By that time, my old wrestling teammate, Guido Carloni, had entered the aviation pipeline. A bachelor, he had set up shop near Pensacola Beach as the party master of the group. Guido and I had been recruited by the academy as wrestling prospects. Our hometowns were less than sixty miles apart (mine in New Jersey and his on Long Island), but we never met each other until we arrived at Annapolis. He was big, strong, and agile, and he had a certain air about him that projected physical dominance. Nevertheless, he was a prankster and a terrific friend. Of Italian extraction, he was tall and dark and had a rugged countenance. The ladies enjoyed his company.

This was an opportunity to be with old friends we’d known for years. We’d developed real relationships in an environment where we were all heavily invested in our professional ventures. It was truly a remarkable circumstance. Many good memories were shared, mostly concerning our years at the academy and especially sports.

Training Squadron 4 (VT-4) existed solely to train the best carrier pilots in the US Armed Forces. That meant that after the usual ground school dealing with the physical laws involved in what we were about to undertake, we had to focus entirely on operating in the carrier environment.

The ability to land successfully on a moving ship day and night in all weather conditions is what distinguishes navy fighter pilots from all others. It requires intensive training, superb flying skills, a great deal of self-control, and a strong desire to succeed. Good luck was also a factor. In the era of jet-powered, very high performance aircraft, the aircraft designer’s task increased in complexity, especially when designing fighter aircraft. To survive in the air-to-air combat arena of the mid- to late-twentieth century, a carrier-based fighter would need great range, large weapons-carrying capability, Mach 2 top-end airspeed, supreme agility, strength to operate in the 6 to 7 g environment (that is, the strength to turn hard enough to stress the aircraft to six to seven times its own weight) and yet be as light as possible to achieve the performance criteria needed to conduct the mission.

That description probably described any fighter of the era, but navy fighters also had to be able to land as slowly as possible so they could stop without breaking the arresting cables and have a landing gear arrangement strong enough to withstand a design specification that required no permanent damage occurring to an aircraft being dropped from a height of nineteen feet. That required a daunting amount of structural strength. Additionally, for catapult-launching capability, the fighter—unlike land-based fighters—also required a full-length keel to keep the aircraft from being pulled apart during launch.

A pilot’s landing skills tended to be very perishable; that required him to engage in periodic training operations when deployed so he could maintain the required finesse. A pilot’s professional reputation leaned heavily on his carrier landing performance; every landing he performed was graded by the air wing’s landing signal officers (LSOs) and displayed prominently in the squadron ready room throughout the deployment. The precision required for an okay approach (the highest grade) was remarkably high. To attain that grade in the case of the F-8 fighter (one of the two mainline navy fighters of the era), the pilot would be required to consistently cross over the ramp (the aftmost part of the ship) with a tailhook-to-ramp clearance of only six to eight feet while flying at approximately 140 knots (160 mph) at a ship traveling at 25 to 30 knots (34 mph). That level of precision required superb training and seemingly endless practice.

Initial flights in the T-2B were basic familiarization, continued formation work, and simple landing practice on the main runway at the NAS. My first flight was on April 30, 1968. By June 14, we had moved our training to an auxiliary airfield that featured a runway with markings identical to the landing area of the USS Lexington, the carrier we were to train on two weeks later. The drill, referred to as field carrier landing practice (FCLP), was required prior to every carrier deployment I would undertake for the next twenty years.

The auxiliary airfield would also have a Fresnel lens device mounted on the left (port) side of the landing area just as on the Lexington. The Fresnel lens, a very clever device invented by the British Royal Navy, provided carrier pilots with a visual indication of where their planes were in the vertical dimension relative to the glide slope, which was typically set at 3 degrees. Maintaining position with this device was referred to as flying the ball. The ball was a part of the system that provided a visual reference to the pilot. The system consisted of a horizontal series of green lights (as a datum line) and a vertical series of very directional lenses (each of which emitted an amber light) mounted perpendicular to and centered on the datum line. The system was typically mounted on the port side of the flight deck about two hundred feet forward of the ramp of the deck. The LSO station was also located very near the ramp on the port side. The airplane’s height above or below the glide slope would be indicated by which of the amber vertical lights was evident to the pilot and its relative position to the datum line.

Figure%202.jpg

Figure 2. The Fresnel lens installed on all fixed-wing US aircraft carriers to provide visual glide slope guidance to a pilot on an approach.

For the next fourteen days, we would fly the ball many times under the watchful eye of the instructor pilot aboard the aircraft and the LSO grading each pass from his position some two hundred feet in front of and to the left of the Fresnel lens. We all flew seventy-five or more FCLPs during this period and awaited the day when—weather allowing—the Lexington would call ashore and invite us to commence flight operations.

On June 28, we flew out to the boat with an instructor pilot in the rear seat and awaited our Charlie time—the time we would be cleared out of our holding pattern some five miles from the ship. Finally, the call was made, and we descended in divisions of four aircraft each and made our approach at one thousand feet above the sea, flying up the wake of the ship just after it had set its course into the wind. Flying over and just to the right (starboard) side of the ship, we continued ahead for approximately a mile when the leader turned hard left—that was called a break turn—while the rest would follow suit in ten-second intervals. Once abeam the ship, a pilot had to ensure the appropriate interval between him and the jet ahead of him. In that manner, the deck crew would have sufficient time to pull the arresting wire from the airplane’s tailhook. The pilot would then swiftly taxi the aircraft out of the landing area allowing the next airplane to land safely.

Our first two landings, however, were accomplished with the tailhook stowed, thereby preventing arrestment and allowing the plane to do a touch-and-go landing. This phased approach to the carrier landing process allowed pilots to incrementally absorb the new experience and was the model for the next twenty months of our training.

After the two touch-and-go landings, we dropped our tailhook and lined up for the real thing—what I had been preparing for most of my life and intensely during the previous two years. It’s been described as a double-E ticket ride at Disneyland, but that hardly touches the reality. I’d put it more in the category of the most fun I’d ever had sitting up. The deceleration from 120 knots to zero in a few hundred feet was unique and so exhilarating that I almost missed noticing the hook puller some twenty feet off my right wingtip motioning wildly for me to get out of the landing area and taxi forward. I’m guessing that most of us newbies reacted in a similar manner. After pulling forward up to the catapults, I directed my attention to the shooter, the catapult officer, and his assistant directing me to the next available catapult. We taxied up over the shuttle jutting up from the deck—the device that would connect us to the steam catapult that would shortly sling us off the deck of the ship.

This first experience during carrier flight operations left an indelible mark on my psyche; it was as if I had taken part in a ballet. The only newbies there were us pilots. The entire deck crew organizing this operation was remarkable in their professionalism, their smooth, graceful movements from one place on the deck to the other, and the practiced flow of the simultaneous landing and takeoff operation all in an environment of deafening sounds and so close to multiple lethal pitfalls.

The Lexington’s catwalks four feet below deck level ran the length of the port and starboard sides of the flight deck and allowed a working space for many critical functions of deck operations. The average age of these sailors was nineteen, twenty; I was flabbergasted and proud to be among them.

The next few minutes were the second-most fun I’ve ever had sitting up—except in reverse. After I saluted the cat officer signaling I was ready for launch—I was configured properly with engines at full power—he returned the salute, lowered himself to miss my wingtip, and touched the deck, the signal to the sailor to my right (standing in the starboard catwalk with his hands held high so the cat officer could see them) to lower his hand to the button that fired the catapult. My head snapped back against the ejection seat headrest as I went from zero to 120 knots in three seconds—and I was flying.

After flying a mile ahead of the ship and climbing to one thousand feet, I banked left and circled around for another landing. It was just like the first except I felt more at ease. That time, we would pull forward, shut down the aircraft, conduct a debrief, and discuss the goods and not so goods of my performance.

These next arrestments would be solo since I had had two touch-and-gos and one arrested landing. It was good that we’d taken an hour or so between the accompanied landings and the solo landings; I had the opportunity to wind down a little from the truly exhilarating experience. That being my first carrier deck experience as a pilot, my adrenalin level was high, and it took some concentration to arrange my thoughts and actions while simultaneously feeling emotions such as joy and self-satisfaction. The relief I felt during this downtime was welcome.

I was soon back in the cockpit all strapped in and headed for the catapult again. It was a spectacular day—calm seas, clear skies, just perfect for my first attempt at this carrier experience. Before I knew it, I was back in the air. That time though, I learned that perhaps all those friendly comments from my instructor pilot in my rear seat had played a larger part in my performance than I’d thought. As I neared the ramp on that pass, I developed a slight sink from the glide slope and corrected with a little burst of power. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a little too much power as I sailed over all four arresting wires without the hook catching any of them. With the power full up, I flew away from the ship to try again. I’d logged my first (but not my last) bolter as we called them. However, the next two landings were good, and so we all flew off the ship before sundown and returned to Main Side—now officially carrier pilots—if just novice, day-only carrier pilots. At that point, I had accumulated 119 flight hours.

Betty had preceded me to our next duty station, NAS Kingsville, Texas. She was very late in her second pregnancy, and her doctor wanted her to avoid a long car ride from Florida to south Texas; he had suggested that she fly to our new home in late June. She had done so and arrived there on June 30.

I had to close down our cottage in Florida, wrap up my stay at Pensacola with the navy, move our household, and drive to south Texas; that kept me from arriving there until July 5. Unfortunately, our second daughter, Christine, hadn’t waited for me. She arrived to a very chagrined Betty on July 3. Fortunately, Betty’s mother arrived not long after. We learned as the years went by that experiences such as those were simply part of being in the navy (or any military service).

In Kingsville, I was ready to take on advanced jet training in a Grumman TF-9J Cougar, a single engine, two-seat fighter. After our familiarization training, we transitioned to the AF-9J—a single-seat, swept-wing fighter produced by the Grumman Corporation immediately after the Korean War. The swept wings allowed these airplanes to achieve supersonic flight more readily.

I completed my first flight in the TF-9 on August 5, 1968. August in south Texas was always hot, but in 1968, it was also quite wet as late-afternoon thunderstorms were nearly an everyday occurrence. One impact on the training was that the flight schedule would shift considerably to allow for fewer evening flights and many more flights taking off at 04:00 (4:00 a.m.) and shutting down flight operations after midafternoon.

Though not particularly powerful airplanes, the TF-9J and AF-9J were structurally very strong (as most Grumman tactical airplanes were), and despite their being our first swept-wing planes, they exhibited reasonably good carrier approach flight characteristics. The syllabus now would get into the real meat and potatoes of the fighter craft.

I was usually assigned to fly with Marine Captain W. C. Slick Miller as my instructor pilot. Flamboyant hardly described Slick. He always wore a flight jacket even in August; on it was a rather large display of his call sign—Slick—emblazoned on his back. He had already had a tour in Vietnam, had seen a lot of action, and looked the part—shaved head, custom-made flight boots, athletic build, and of course a USMC globe-and-anchor tattoo on his arm that completed the image. He was chasing the Blues as was the current slang—he was trying to be offered an opportunity to join the navy’s elite flight demonstration team, the Blue Angels. Officers who aspired to that position would typically have to spend time with the current team members