This was the first real sea story I heard on active duty.
When I arrived in Beeville, Texas for advanced Navy flight training, it was with some trepidation. We were leaving the excitement of Pensacola, a town of some size, with many great hangouts, a wonderful beach scene, young ladies in abundance with cute southern accents, and lots of historical significance. Beeville, on the other hand, had one bar, a small base, and mostly sagebrush for a view. Reportedly there were six single women in the town, although I never saw that many at one time.
TF-9J Cougar over Beeville, Texas
The first thing I noticed was there were a number of foreign students. Apparently this was the tail end of a large group of pilots being trained by the Navy for the Shah of Iran. While we were making a wopping $4000 a year, enough for rent, a car payment, starching our uniforms, and a few beers, the Iranians were pocketing $28,000 a year. To put things in perspective, a new Corvette Sting Ray was about $4800 back then.
One gentleman from that group attended a baseball game up in San Antonio with some other pilots in training and loved the game. He went out and bought a new GMC Sportscoach, which was in the five figures for sure. He became the quintessential host for the San Antonio baseball games, and usually had someone else drive while he was in back in a card game, providing food and beverages and being the life of the party. It was not uncommon to have a dozen or more Nasal Radiators in the sportscoach partying on their way to and from the baseball games. His only other means of transportation was a Bultaco two stroke motorcycle which was more than adequate to get around the base and the tiny berg of Beeville, Texas.
GMC Sports Coach
On one of the trips to the ball games, said Iranian met a young lady and began to date her. One particular weekend, getting close to the holidays, he was getting ready to go to Victoria to see his lady friend, but the weather turned sour with thunderstorms and rain pelting down. He decided to opt for driving the Sportscoach to Victoria.
Late Friday evening the Officer of the Day at NAS Chase Field in Beeville, got a call from a hospital south of Victoria. They said they had a pilot injured in a car accident, very agitated, who was speaking a foreign language and they could not get him to speak English. From his identification, they saw he was from Chase Field. The OOD rang up the Iranian Liaison Officer and they jumped in the duty pickup truck and sped up the highway the 60 or so miles to the hospital.
Upon arriving they were shown to the emergency ward. The Iranian pilot immediately began an animated diatribe in Farsi. The doctors asked the liaison officer a number of questions to ascertain the injuries of the pilot so they could continue treatment. As this wound down, the OOD queried the liaison officer to ask the pilot how the accident happened.
Again, they conversed in Farsi while the doctors patched up the hapless pilot. The liaison officer listened for a minute, and then hung his head. The OOD’s curiosity was overwhelming.
“So what happened?”
“Well, he said he was driving up the highway in the Sportscoach and got hungry. So he put the vehicle on cruise control and went in back to make a sandwich. He does not know what happened after that.”