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Eternally At War
von: Jeanette Vaughan, Robert G. Lathrop
AgeView Press, 2016
ISBN: 9780989207881 , 200 Seiten
Format: ePUB
Kopierschutz: frei
Preis: 4,29 EUR
Chapter 1
∞ March 19, 1967 Kingsville, TX ∞
Despite having a background in forestry, not aviation, I had no anxiety training as a Naval flight student. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a pilot. As a young boy, I read about the Flying Tigers, which were the 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Air Force. They trained around 1941 or 1942 as a group of nicknamed pilots from the United States Army Air Corps, Navy and Marine Corps.
The group first saw combat twelve days after Pearl Harbor. I remember hearing about their innovative tactical victories on the news, when all the other news in the U.S. was filled with little more than stories of defeat at the hands of the Japanese. But reports of these combat missions and the bravery gave me hope. I saw good in what they were doing and was inspired by their stories that America might defeat our enemies in World War II. Who couldn’t remember the shark-faced nose art complete with shark’s teeth painted on their planes?
Now, as a First Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, I was flying my first tactical bombing training mission. Fearlessly taking to the skies, I flew number two in a formation of five TF-9J aircraft. The Cougar jets were modeled after the Grumman Panther that had flown during the Korean War. They were underpowered compared to more modern aircraft, but good training planes. Aircraft with excessive power could easily get inexperienced aviators into trouble. In pilot speak, you had to fly the plane to stay ahead of it.
It was a Sunday briefing. We were flying seven days a week, from 4:00 AM until midnight, trying to fast track our training to provide much needed replacements for the fleet. I was one of the few Marine students flying because of a national funding problem. Most military aviators were prevented from commencing their training until the beginning of the fiscal year in July. Guess I just got lucky.
Over the last few months, I had mustered up a lot of confidence flying the F9F-8 and looked forward to the tactical bombing hops. It was nicknamed The Cougar. Wanting to check off my ride with a flight instructor, I was keen to join the fleet. I hadn’t received my orders yet, but expected to graduate in the next two weeks. They were due any day.
Driving through base housing in the early dawn, I marveled at the sunrise. It was going to be a great day. I just knew it. I loved to fly, despite my anxieties about going into the Marines instead of the Navy. I knew I never quite fit in with the gung ho, hey diddle-diddle up the middle, macho “semper fi” stuff. I was too much of an independent thinker. I processed stuff and thought things out.
Don’t get me wrong, the training you got in the Marine Corps was superb, not only for military endeavors, but for the rest of your life. When they tell you to do something, you don’t say, ‘I’m not going to do it,’ you analyze how you’re going to do it and make a decision and do it. They pretty much beat you down to get you to understand that you never give up. Never. Taking action just comes naturally. That kind of decisiveness doesn’t always fit in your life later on, but it is a type of training that gives you strength, for officers anyway.
Basic and officer candidate school started at daybreak. We got into formation and marched to breakfast. Marched back. All day we fought with bayonets and rifles. Constantly marching. We ran and climbed hills. And then attended classes. I remember being so very tired. But God forbid if you couldn’t keep your eyes open in class. There would be hell to pay.
All the yelling and the drilling. Well, it was tough, but it taught you to follow orders. Discipline in the Marine Corps was just that way. You developed stamina. Whether you were running, or doing pull ups or swimming. Luckily, I had always been an outdoor type as a young man, so I didn’t have trouble with the stamina required. You figured out pretty quick that the Marine Corps didn’t end at midnight. There were boots to clean and your rifle to muster. Then it was time to do it all over again. Little did I realize, but that training prepared me for future combat missions. Endless missions that started and never seemed to stop.
I just knew the “hey diddle-diddle up the middle whatever stuff” wasn’t me. To this day, I rarely am heard to say “Oohrah.” Most of the guys I was in training with were young. I was married with a baby. I had fought forest fires and worked as a foreman with the toughest and roughest of people.
As a manager, I had lot more experience in dealing with difficult people than my young Marine counterparts. They were still “gung-ho,” “oohrah,” naïve and I just wasn’t that way. So they perceived me as not being worth a damn. And on top of that, I was a pilot candidate too. Pilots weren’t considered real Marines by the infantry. As such, I was in the bottom ten percent at Basic School. But four months later, when back in my element, I was number two in my class in pre-flights.
So today was going to be fine. I was flying with Navy Training Squadron 21, which had a World War II hangar on the east end of the field. The airstrip was located five miles from the Gulf of Mexico out on the dry Texas coastal plains near the immense King Ranch, which extended nearly one hundred miles to the south.
In the ready room, six students and two instructors were briefed for the bombing mission. I would be flying with Captain Fred Harshbarger, a Marine who had just begun flying jet aircraft after medical leave. Seems he had an incident in Virginia where he had ejected at low altitude, his chute catching in a tree and snapping him like a whip. Just back on flight status, he would be flying number two with me.
Briefing by Captain Trumpfheller complete, we manned the aircraft, started them up and taxied in line to the take-off end of the east runway. While in the arming area, the lead aircraft aborted the mission, making me take the lead. As he taxied back in front of me, I called the tower for take-off. I motioned the other four aircraft into position up wind of me so they wouldn’t get in my jet wash.
Giving the hand signal to run up the engines, I then put my head back down in the cockpit while I checked my own instruments. Since the F9F-8 didn’t have an excess of power, it wasn’t in one’s best interest to have anything wrong that would limit the performance of the aircraft in any way.
With the engine at full throttle, the instruments showing full power, the gunsight and armament switches checked, I visually checked for a thumbs-up from the other aircraft. Nose lowered and at full thrust, I released my brakes and rolled. There was twenty knots of wind right down the runway, so I didn’t have to worry about the short length available on these warm spring days. Bumping along until the plane got enough speed to show airspeed, at 6,000 feet I rotated and lifted up.
It was necessary to hold, pulling up the landing gear just a second or two after getting airborne in the lackluster Cougar. I held the flaps until the plane had accelerated to 190 knots and reached 500 feet. Even at that speed, the Cougar would settle slowly downward, losing some altitude before the airspeed picked up enough to give the plane enough lift to start climbing at a normal rate. God love those training planes.
Easing the plane into a gentle climb after liftoff, I glanced periodically at the airspeed and altitude, wanting to pull up my flaps. It was dusty at liftoff and I headed for the small lagoon that led out to the gulf.
Flying so much during the last five months, I was almost more at home in the cockpit than on the ground. I truly loved flying jet aircraft and would have relished the chance to stay in the air twice as much as I was now flying, if given the opportunity.
Suddenly, just as I leaned back to recheck the airspeed, I reached for the flaps. At 140 knots and 400 feet, upon doing so, there was a loud clunk from the aft part of the aircraft. The nose of the plane pitched over rapidly. Jerking back the stick, nothing happened. I had no control of the tail at all.
Peering out the canopy, I saw the ground coming up fast. The plane was pitching forward and I heard the instructor in the back screaming.
“Eject. Eject, for fuck’s sake.”
Reaching over my head, I pulled the face curtain. Suddenly, everything was silent and seemed to be occurring in slow motion. The pace of the next few occurrences around me seemed to play out in minutes instead of seconds. The seat was above me in the blue sky. It didn’t move. It was stationary with the stabilization chute still attached.
Rolling over slowly to my left, I could see the tail of the F9 sticking up out of the waves of flame flowing ahead of it. Similar to waves that hit the shore on a nearly windless day at the ocean, but these waves were made of fire.
I watched the waves for a fraction of a second, then looked up to see if I had a parachute. I didn’t. I glanced back at the advancing fire and saw it expanding toward me as I descended and it engulfed me. It appeared as if I was penetrating...
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