Think Big -Work Hard -and Follow Your Dreams
Primary Flight-the T-34 Mentor
Stay in Pensacola-for the Choir
Ensign's Bars & Officer Insignia
As newly minted Ensigns, it was a remarkable shift of gears we found ourselves making! We no longer had the stern Gunnery Sgt. Oren to answer to or have to be in barracks at a prescribed hour. We were adults -again! We could now dress in "Civies" on our off-duty hours, have a car and were making the princely sum of $345 per month [including flight pay] ! The Chevrolet and Pontiac dealers right outside the front gate at "Mainside", NAS Pensacola made a fortune every Friday afternoon, writing contracts for new Corvettes and GTO's, as the brand new officers spread their wings.
But, we also had heard the myriad stories about the "screamer" flight instructors at Saufley Field -and some of them were true. Lest we get too rambunctious, it was apparent that we were STILL students. The base at Saufley Field was very compact and down to business. We stayed in the Bachelor Officer Quarters [BOQ] which, for all intents and purposes were WWII vintage barracks. It was only steps from there to the Officers Mess [Dining Hall] where we ate most of our meals.
Nearby was the small Officer's Club and a couple minute's walk away from all of this was the hanger and flight line where we got our first taste of real Naval Aviation. The course of instruction was very intense and things happened fast. We flew every day and -before we knew it, in the matter of a few brief weeks, we had soloed. Every Friday, there was a big informal event in the Officer's Club, where all of the "Solo-ees" during the week were announced and congratulated by their instructors and then had the traditional necktie-cutting routine performed upon them.
Over the years The Training Command has changed the "pipeline" from what it was in the mid-1960's. Then, all pilot-trainees began at VT-1 at Saufley Field. Upon completion of Primary there, the group was split, based upon flight grades.
The folks with the top flight grades were offered jets and sent to fly the T-2 at NAS Meridian, MS after completion of Primary Training. The rest proceeded on to VT-2 & VT-3 at NAS Whiting Field in outlying Milton, FL.
Upon completion of training at either VT-2 or VT-3, the group of student Naval Aviators was split again -those going to multi-engine reciprocal Fleet aircraft proceeded on to Corpus Christi, TX and those going to helicopters stayed in the Pensacola area for training at NAS Ellyson Field.
It was getting close to the time when I was about to finish Primary at Saufley Field, that a former choir member, who had just received his wings at Corpus Christi, came through on his way to his Fleet RAG [Replacement Air Group]. He stopped in Pensacola to say hello to the choir director, LT Karl Schott and titillated us all with his tales of Advanced Training. The news I heard from him changed the course of the rest of my life. He told us that students with top flight grades out of Whiting Field were being offered a chance to advance to jets or the AD-1 Skyraider upon arriving at Corpus!
I checked this out with some instructors and senior squadron officers and found that it was true. It was mid-1966 -the hostilities in VietNam were escalating and the Navy was not able to pump out enough jet pilots with the pipeline through Meridian, so they were taking the top prop students from Whiting, when they got to Corpus Christi, too.
This was too good to be true! I really wanted to fly jets -always had, but there was so much fun to be had singing in and traveling with the choir, I was extremely reticent to leave the Pensacola area to go to Meridian. The choir had several great trips coming up that I would miss by going to Mississippi.
There were trips to New York -for The Johnny Carson Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Milton Berle Show -and to Los Angeles to meet and sing for Walt Disney at Disneyland -and many other exciting other events on the future schedule. This bit of information weighed heavily on my mind and swayed my thinking over the next few weeks, as we wrapped up Primary.
Listen to some of the Choir's Songs
Link to more Choir Pictures
My flight grades were very high, upon completion of Primary at Saufley and I was given orders to jets in Meridian, along with a week of leave to go home to visit family. It was a gut-wrenching decision, but, when I came back, I told the Command Training Officer that I had changed my mind and did not want to go to Jets. It has been many years now, but I think I recall that he was pretty ticked off at me. I don't recall any comments about "hauling rubber dog poop out of Hong Kong", but that is the "look" I got! I got out of there and shuffled off to join my peers at NAS Whiting Field, who were about to learn to fly North American T-28B Trojan.
I don't remember worrying very much about whether the decision I had made, based upon information that had been gleaned from a virtual stranger, was the right one, as the training and other choir and social activities came so fast and furious there was little time to think about consequences.
I did my Advanced training at NAS Whiting Field with VT-3.
There was no difference between the two squadrons [VT-2 -or- VT-3], as the training syllabus at each was exactly the same and everyone lived in the same WWII style barracks on base. The squadron set-up was pretty much the same as VT-1, except the T-28B was a VERY high-powered machine, compared to anything I had ever flown before. We started up from scratch again, just like with the T-34.
The program was designed to build knowledge and confidence, one building block at a time. It is worth mentioning that I never made the mistake of telling anyone that I had a Commercial Pilot's license, on advice of folks who had been through the program before. While the prior experience was a great boon in the early stages, giving a high "comfort level" being in and around the T-34, it could have been a distinct disadvantage, had the instructors known about it.
There were tales of individuals being "ridden", un- mercifully, due to the disclosure of their previous experience. Besides, by the time we got to the T-28B my peers had almost caught up and we ALL were awed by this mighty beast!
What a wonderful HIGH PERFORMANCE aircraft! I love it to this day! I can smell the 115/145 High Test AVGAS burning in the early morning mist of Whiting Field.
I can hear the mighty R1820 radial engines crank, sputter, cough and then ROAR -to life . . "BAA-LUM. ."BAA-LUM". ."BAA-LUM". ."BAA-LUM" (LISTEN NOW) -smoke and flames belching out of the side pipes! I can utterly relate to Robert Duval's in Apocalypse Now shouting: "GOD!. . I LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning !", in that great scene on the beach !
The day I think it hit me; "I can do this . . I am a real aviator", was likely about the 2nd-3rd solo hop in Formation Flying. Here we were, 4 college boys, not long out of school and the Navy had given us the keys to the T-28B to go out and fly them within inches of each other for an hour or two! What a Kick! By the time we got to Formation, we were pretty capable and ready for the next segment.
Shortly before Christmas in 1966, we completed our course at Whiting Field and proceeded back to Saufley Field and Carrier Qualification at VT-5. This training was an absolute HOOT! We were now flying the T-28C -a T-28B -with a tail hook. The only instructors we had were on the ground -in a classroom. GDD ! We were being treated like big boys now! With 4 student pilots to a flight, we fired up the T-28C's and flew to an outlying field [Brewton-I think], where we practiced multiple carrier approaches to a mock-up of a carrier deck on the field. The outlying fields appeared infrequently used then, in 1967, if they are still there -and not a housing development, they probably have grass growing the runways.
We practiced and practiced and watched movies of terrible crashes on flight decks, to get our attention, I suppose. On the 13th of January, 1967 we strapped on our T-28C's and flew them out over actual ocean -for the very first time, to the waiting USS Lexington, for the trial-by-fire that distinguishes Naval Aviators from all other aviators!
My butt is puckering as I sit here scavenging up the dim memories of that day. We just went out and did it by rote, the way we were taught. Establish radio contact with the ship. Enter Marshall, to wait our turn. "Gosh. There's a LOT of airplanes out here today." Cleared to turn toward the ship, entering the break overhead, for separation. Fly downwind. . telling yourself, over-and-over . ."don't put the hook down THIS time! This first one is a touch-and-go". . boy! . .that was hard. .for the last several weeks we had it driven into our heads, "--don't forget the hook".
When we first saw it, the ship looked small -and even manuevering around and flying overhead in the break at 1500', . but, it did not strike me until turning on final and lining up in the groove, "Oh_Good LORD!. HOLY MO-LI. .I am REALLY landing on THAT!? " One touch and go and five "Traps" later, we were, all of us, Carrier Qualified. Actually, this is the type of thing for which God made Adrenalin. If we thought about things like this, we might not do them. It all went by SO fast and when it was over, it seemed like it was SO easy.
LINK: Learn About Carrier History
The very next day -the day after the biggest emotional "high" of my life, Carrier Qualification, I received the most stunning disappointment. When we showed up to receive our certificates of qualification and orders for the next segment of training, to everyone's complete shock, every single student pilot in the class had received orders to helicopters at Ellyson Field! It seemed "the needs of the Navy" had changed overnight. A new combat helicopter attack squadron [HAL-3] was being formed for action in Vietnam and many veteran Fleet helicopter aviators were volunteering for it. Those pilots had to be replaced with new students. AND -we were it!
Our class and the three behind us were all, against our wishes and best made plans to the contrary, ordered off to helicopter training at HT-8. To say I was upset and disappointed would have been a gross understatement! Only one guy out of the 12 of us going through training together had wanted helicopters. The rest wanted various muli-engined assignments and I, with top flight grades was hoping to get a shot at the AD-1 Skyraider or the A-4, after being selected for jet transition at NAS Kingsville, Corpus Christi.
I had certainly outsmarted myself by not going to jets in Meridian when it was offered several months before. Of course, there had been many enjoyable times with my choir buddies by staying for T-28 training in the Pensacola area, but the plan was to ease into Skyraiders or jets upon arriving at Corpus Christi. I had ALWAYS wanted to fly jets.
I had never even considered flying helicopters. How un-glamorous! It was the Navy-wide fixed-wing consensus that these people [helicopter pilots] were at the bottom of the gene pool -the end of the food chain in the Navy. They were the brunt of ugly, cruel jokes -the guys with the lowest flight grades -and now I ARE one? Oh, poor, poor, pitiful me!
The next day I marched, with regret, into the Admiral's office, intent on doing the "DOR" thing. That is, Drop On Request and get out of the program. If I had wings I would have thrown them on his desk and told him to "stuff 'em!" Or, so I thought. A very astute LCDR, a helo pilot himself -and highly decorated, intercepted me and pointed out that I did not yet have those much sought after Wings of Gold. "Wasn't the whole point of all the pain, work and everything that I have been through, up to this point, to achieve the goal of those wings?"
"Ya-butttt"
"You'll get a chance to fly other things." [he was lying, but it worked out later] So, I was talked out of the DOR and Monday morning, bright and early, my wingmen and I checked in for the next level of training, which would lead us to HT-8 at Ellyson Field. We were VERY unhappy campers. I was really ticked, mostly at myself, for not taking a sure thing the year before, when it was offered. Helos were fun to fly, it turns out, but I stayed slightly ticked off from the 14th of January, 1967 until approximately July of 1968, when the wheel of fate again turned. But, I get ahead of myself.
A much dejected young Ensign checked into VT-6, at Mainside Pensacola with orders to receive instrument training in the T-28, prior to commencing Helicopter training at outlying Ellyson Field. This was certainly *not* in the plan, to still be in Pensacola at this point in time. But, it WAS good to be able to log a few more hours in the T-28 (even if under the "hood", most of the time) and the ultimate goal of pinning on those Navy Wings was strong enough to keep me in the program.
I decided to bite the bullet and make the best of it. Also, there were a bunch of good guys, friends who had been together now for a long time through training, who were, of course, in the same boat. We commiserated a LOT, over adult beverages, at places like Trader Jon's, in downtown Pensacola. It is not like we had a lot of time to feel sorry for ourselves, due to the intensity of training.
I also had the luxury of mixing in frequent trips around the country with the choir, which mitigated the feelings of loss of direction. The choir commitment is what got me into this situation. It was fitting that it also helped me feel better about being there. This was the first time, since the beginning of training, that we were not provided with, or required to use Base Housing. It is my recollection is that the only ones who were still required to continue to live on-base were the Cadets, who were not going to be officers until the day they got their wings.
There were four of us who had been pretty tight, during the previous several months and we found two adjacent 40" trailers for rent in a very convenient location -about half-way between the beach and the base at Ellyson Field. This was good, as I recalled the rent [if you could find someplace] on the beach required a full LT's pay, which was a little rich for our blood.
It was also a VERY long drive every day from the beach to Ellyson Field. I shared one trailer [you didn't call them "Mobile Homes" in 1967] with a good 'ol Texas boy by the name of Bill Sherrod, whom I lost track of in 1967 and have not heard from -or of- since. And our trailer-mates next door were, Buddy Davis, a tobacco-chewing wild man from Louisianna and a Southern Gentleman from Georgia, Logan Herendon. Logan and I stayed in training together all the way to the Fleet and he married a girl I fixed him up with from my home town -and he has not talked with me since [grin].
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