A number of years back an Experimental Aircraft Association chapter asked me to make a presentation on my Vietnam experience. Working through a pile of old dusty slides I tried to digitize them with an old Nikon scanner I had. Since it was a short fuzed opportunity I did not even try to clean up the slides. Been using those same slides now for over almost fifteen years and curse the dust every time.
As I watch this, I still get a deep sense of having been at the peak of my craft, an Olympic athlete in the airplane competition of putting weapons on target and surviving the opposing resistance. And I was surrounded by the cream of the crop. While one tried not to bond too close in wartime, that was difficult when you knew you could daily have to trust your life to one of your squadron mates. When things went south, your radio died, your navigation was gone, your gyro was upside down, your wingman, junior or senior, could always be trusted to lead you home and get you on the ground or back to the ship. It was a level of unmatched camaraderie, and a level of focus, thinking on one’s feet, reacting with exact timing and no hesitation that brought most of us home.
And while internally we gave a slight bit of margin for our skills while tucked tightly under a wing in a thunderstorm over the dark ocean, we gave no quarter to the concept of maintenance failure. We had young men from all walks of life working on our aircraft. The young farm boy from the midwest, the hub cap stealer from The Bronx who was given the option of the service or serving time, Surfer Joe who traded in his blonde pony tail for a buzz cut. And they all stepped up, a team to be counted upon to get the job done regardless of the hours, the weather, their fatigue or their youth. It was a proud, but dangerous time.
Click below for the Power Point Presentation