The Sky Warriors

By Jerry R. Thompson LtCol USMC (Ret.)

This book traces the steps to becoming a designated naval aviator and a subsequent flying career encompassing the many adventures of a combat pilot. The author recounts what it is like to fly 437 combat missions and becoming the commander of the most famous fighter squadron in history, the Black Sheep. In this book, the author describes meeting many famous pilots along the way and tells why he thinks they are all great sky warriors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781643349640

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Dawn of the Jet Age

The British are generally credited with having been at the forefront of the dawn of the jet age with the development of the de Havilland DH-106 Comet. The world’s first commercial flights of the Comet jetliner started in May of 1952. The United States got into the commercial jet age with the introduction of the Boeing 707 in 1957.¹

Prior to that, the Germans had used the Messerschmitt Me-262, a military twin-engine jet fighter, near the end of the Second World War. It came too late to have an impact on the outcome of the war but foretold the use of jet-powered military aircraft for the future. The backbone of the German Luftwaffe during World War II was the Me-209 of which the Germans built an amazing number of 33,984.

The Me-262 held the world-speed record for over a year. In March of 1956, the British Fairey Delta 2, a high-speed research aircraft, became the first aircraft to fly faster than 1,000 mph.

Several years later in my military career, I had occasion to become acquainted with the most-celebrated test pilot in history, Charles E. Yeager, who was the first man to fly faster than sound. His historic flight took place in 1947. At the time of our meeting in 1962, I was a Marine captain, and he was a colonel in the United States Air Force. (More about that in a later chapter.)

The Fairey Delta 2 was flown by British test pilot Peter Twiss. He had been a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy and had flown Supermarine Seafires from the carrier HMS Argus and earlier flew Hawker Hurricanes from the carrier HMS Furious. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross twice and also held the Order of the British Empire. He also received the Britannia and the Segrave trophies. As a military pilot, he downed at least three enemy aircraft and was a true sky warrior in every respect.

On his fourteenth test flight of the Fairey Delta 2, the engine failed at 30,000 feet and 30 miles from his base at RAF Boscombe Down. He managed to glide to a landing back at the base and, amazingly, executed a dead-stick landing. There was some damage to the aircraft but no injuries to himself.² A real sky warrior for sure.

After about one year in service, the de Havilland Comets began to have problems, which were eventually traced to metal fatigue, resulting in breakups in midflight. Fuselage tests revealed that metal fatigue was primarily an issue around square windows in the fuselage and the ADF avionics windows at the top of the fuselage. Also, repeated pressurization and depressurization cycles contributed to the problem. The findings resulted in stronger fuselage designs and rounded windows in retrofitted and later models of the DH-106 Comets. However, these problems led to the demise of the Comet as a commercial airplane.

No doubt, rival aircraft manufacturers, such as Boeing, used the lessons learned to build stronger and better airframes. After improvements to the Comet structures, the aircraft and variants thereof remained in service for more than sixty years, finally morphing into a maritime patrol aircraft for the RAF, the Hawker-Siddeley Nimrod, in 1969 and remained in service until 2011.

This was the dawn of the jet age, and I could feel the excitement as I drove down to the Naval Air Station, Atlanta, Georgia, to take the physical and psychological exams for acceptance into the US Naval Aviation Cadet Flight Training Program.

Successful completion meant a commission as an officer and Navy wings of gold and the fulfillment of a dream. I believed that nothing could be greater than to fly jet fighters at the dawn of the jet age. It was a romantic period in aviation history, and I was fully aware that people held military jet pilots in high esteem. The public perception of military pilots was also influenced to a degree by Hollywood, with John Wayne starring in Flying Leathernecks in 1942 and later in another movie titled Jet Pilot made earlier but released in 1957, after almost six years, before being cleared by the USAF. I later lived in Newport Beach, California, near John Wayne’s home but never met him personally. I did meet Mrs. Wayne who had been a Peruvian actress named Pilar Pallete. I also met her son, Ethan Wayne, and we went flying together once to Catalina Island with Ethan as pilot and myself as copilot. He was a very competent pilot, and when I told Pilar Wayne as much, she replied, Well, I hope so. She became acquainted with my wife, who was operations officer for the Bank of Newport where Pilar Wayne was a customer. My wife was also acquainted with Pilar’s first husband, Richard Weldy, a big game hunter Pilar was married to for five years before meeting John Wayne. He was a friend of the Danches brothers who operated a jalousie-windows factory in Miami, Florida, where my wife worked as a secretary.

The Danches brothers were also movie producers and would receive telephone calls from celebrities from time to time, including the Duke, John Wayne. He would tell my wife to just tell them Duke was calling.

I knew naval flight training would test my physical and mental abilities, and even my father asked, Son, can you do that? when I told him I was going to win my wings. I sensed some doubt in his voice as he asked that question, but it was he who had told me earlier, while I was in high school, Son, if you want a military career, be an officer. They get the best of everything. This was good advice, and I took it to heart.

My father had been a corporal in the US Army infantry fighting the Germans in France in World War I. The Germans used mustard gas, and he lay on the battlefield for three days after being subjected to it. He was finally rescued by the American Red Cross.

He had some postwar problems with his lungs from time to time as aftereffects but not very often. So I thought he knew what he was talking about when he advised me to become an officer. Both of my older brothers had been enlisted men in the army in World War II. My main goal was to become a jet pilot, and a commission as an officer would come with it.

It was clear to me that opting for military flight training would not only test my mettle but could also be life changing, lead to greater confidence, and open up a future with endless opportunities for excitement and adventure. I had seen posters with the proclamation, Join the Navy and see the world, and that prospect appealed to me as well. I would soon find out how true that claim would turn out to be. I would also learn the truism:

"The Navy can do anybody’s job, but only the Navy can do the Navy’s job."

Chapter 2

Learning to Drive

My father let me sit next to him and steer the car from about age ten, which I loved to do, and so I developed my motor skills early and was driving alone at times at age twelve. My father owned an automobile dealership, which included two lines of passenger cars, GMC trucks, and Willys-Overland Jeeps, plus Graham-Paige farm equipment.

One day I just helped myself to a new Jeep and drove everywhere in it.

My older brother and my father had gone to New York City to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to see the new Kaiser-Frazer automobiles for which my father had obtained the franchise for southwest Virginia. I didn’t know when they would return from this trip, but I wasn’t worried about it too much. I was a brash kid and fully confident that I could handle a Jeep.

I drove up the street to my friend Gerald Begley’s house. He eagerly jumped in, and away we went, shifting gears straight from first to third as I was not sure about shifting to second gear as yet. We managed to drive all weekend, and on Monday, I drove the Jeep to school. After school, I continued to drive everywhere and finally decided to go home around 7:30 pm.

On my way home, I met my brother coming the other way, and we stopped abeam of each other. He yelled, Where in the h——have you been? Dad is fit to be tied! I cringed as Dad had a temper and was quick to use it. I thought he was going to be really mad at me. When I walked in the door, he said, Where have you been? We didn’t even know you could drive. I said I didn’t either. He asked, Don’t you think I should whip you? I said no. Then he said, Well, sit down and have your dinner then. What a relief that was, and then I thought, far from being angry, he was really proud of me for learning to drive on my own.

I remembered earlier he had told my older sister, who was not that confident, that it took courage to drive a car. You need to find the courage, and learn to drive, he told her. In my case, all I needed was the keys, which my brother reluctantly gave me. I had asked for them as they left for New York, and he had said no. My dad overheard him and asked, What does he want? He wants the keys to the Jeep, my brother replied. And Dad said, Give them to him. He can’t drive anyway.

My older brother Cecil had been a boxer in the Army, and he had a physique like Charles Atlas. One day, I asked him how he got his build. He said that in the Army, he was part of an artillery crew, and his job was lifting heavy artillery shells and passing them on to the next soldier in line. I wanted to look like him, so I rigged up a rope-and-pulley system in our garage and attached objects that were available, including an old lawn mower. I worked out with it quite often; however, I never thought I looked as good as my brother.

After the experience with the Jeep, all were confident that I could drive very well without any formal instruction, and although I did not have a license, I drove as often as I could, even going to West Virginia with one of Dad’s employees to pick up new Kaiser and Frazer cars from the distributor, Rahal Motors. It was a fact that I was a better driver than some of them as I told my dad after one such trip.

Mr. Harris is a dangerous driver. He takes curves on the wrong side of the road all the time, and he is going to have an accident. So I insisted on driving, and I didn’t want to go with him next time. My dad scoffed at my warning, and I was sure he was thinking that this was just a fourteen-year-old kid talking, but on the next trip, Mr. Harris went alone and was gone an extra week. He had picked up a beautiful new Kaiser Manhattan with extra chrome trim.

When we put it on the showroom floor, I noticed the chrome trim along the roofline was missing from one side of the car. When asked about it, Mr. Harris admitted that he had sideswiped a car on a curve and stayed an extra week while the bodywork was completed.

They couldn’t get the chrome trim piece needed to finish the repairs, so he came back to the dealership without it. I think my dad found new respect for my opinions afterward, and I was happy about that. Mr. Harris liked me, and I liked him, and at one time, he had been the high sheriff of Lee County, Virginia. However, this flaw in his driving was very dangerous, and people needed to know they would be risking their lives riding with him.

I read an article in Motor Trend magazine once that stated that driving ability was a bell curve.³ Later, I studied bell curves and standard deviation, and I assumed that what the writer meant was that most drivers are within one standard deviation (68.2 percent) or average, and only 0.1 were truly outstanding, or 0.1 were extremely dangerous. The remainder is either above or below average. I won’t bore the reader with any more than that, but maybe being a bit egotistical, I always thought I was a very competent driver.

New cars trickled into the dealership from the distributors during this time as WWII had recently ended, and the manufacturers were not yet up to speed in turning out new civilian vehicles. Assembly lines had to be converted from producing military vehicles to civilian cars and trucks. General Motors produced more than 7,000 TBM Avengers for the Navy.⁴

We were only allotted one car at a time in those days, and trips to West Virginia to pick up new vehicles from the distributor were spaced about ten days apart.

I liked to make these trips as I couldn’t get enough of driving, and I never thought of it as work, just pure pleasure. On one occasion, I drove a new Plymouth coupe for three days and nights with very little sleep. Not recommended. I found myself nodding off several times before finally going home for some rest.

New cars were scarce, and the dealership had taken more advance orders than could be filled, so new Kaiser and Frazer cars were delivered to eager customers almost as soon as we received them. These cars were beautiful for their time and had dependable Continental Red Seal six-cylinder engines and were a pleasure to drive. Instead of the standard door handles, they had push buttons to open the doors. A feature that was not all that popular with the ladies as opening the car door often damaged their fingernails.

However, the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation did not survive the competition once the older, more-established manufacturers like General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford started to deliver vehicles in significant numbers. Today, Kaiser and Frazer cars are seldom seen, and most are owned by collectors. In 1946, Henry J. Kaiser announced that he was going to invest $50 million (about $620 million in today’s dollars) to start his own car company.⁶ Many in the industry believed that he would not succeed due primarily to undercapitalization. Although his cars were considered great, he failed to make it work and later sold his company to Willys-Overland Motors for a very low price. The Willow Run, Michigan, plant was sold to General Motors for $26 million in 1956.⁵

Starting a new car company today would cost around $2 billion or more, unless you are Elon Musk. He was able to start Tesla Motors for a fraction of that by buying a fairly new $800 million factory and much of its tooling from Toyota for only $59 million and acquiring a $50 million Schuler hydraulic stamping press for only $6 million during the recession.⁶

Elon Musk, a true visionary, also owns Space-X, a company that flies round trips to the International Space Station by launching a reusable rocket his company recovers at sea. Needless to say, this also saves a lot of money.

Becoming a pilot and flying military jets became an ultimate goal but still a faraway dream at this point in my life. Because I thought of myself as an excellent driver, I believed that I would excel as a military pilot, and I wanted to fly fighters, specifically jet fighters. Along the way, I would learn the meaning of the old adage:

There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.

Chapter 3

Qualifying for Flight Training

Arriving at NAS Atlanta, I was greeted by the officer in charge of Naval Aviation Cadet Recruiting, a Navy lieutenant. I was wearing a very nice silk shirt I had just purchased, and the lieutenant told me he wanted that shirt if I managed to pass all the tests and medical exams to be accepted into the program. I said, Lieutenant, if I get accepted, it’s yours.

Over the next three days, I took exams covering every subject one could think of, and I wondered about some of the questions, which seemed to me to have nothing to do with learning to fly an airplane. For example, one question asked if I would rather drive a bus or a garbage truck. And another wanted to know if I had ever owned a motorcycle. One particular multiple-choice question asked, "Who painted Blue Boy?" It bothered me that I didn’t know the answer, so I guessed. I couldn’t wait to look it up when I returned home. Turns out I had guessed wrong. The correct answer, of course, is Gainsborough.

Many years later, I was privileged to view the original, now on display at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The beautiful life-size painting (1799) is generally considered Gainsborough’s finest work. I looked at it for a long time, marveling at the skill of this great artist. It is so lifelike, it rivals a photograph.

But for now, my task was to try as hard as I could to figure out which answer they were looking for based on psychology. I tried to discern from the question how best to answer based on a very strong desire to pass the battery of tests and be accepted for flight training. It was the first hurdle, and if successful, I would be on my way to Pensacola, Florida, often referred to as the cradle of naval aviation. There I would undergo three months of preflight training before ever getting near an airplane.

After three days of tests and medical and dental exams, I was to meet with the lieutenant to get the results. When I walked into his office, he said, Well, Thompson, you passed, but just barely. Where is my shirt? I said, It’s in my car. I just had it dry-cleaned. I’ll get it for you. Maybe presumptuous of me, but I thought I had done very well on all the tests; plus, I wanted to please the lieutenant by presenting a freshly cleaned shirt. He was happy to take it. I would not see him again for several years.

The only problem with the medical part was that I needed some minor dental work, which I was told the Navy would not pay