Low level flying is a standard practice in Naval Aviation.
But when the news that the war was over came through. I just had to celebrate with a foolish stunt.
It’s called “trolling for submarines” a meaningless macho thing. Very dangerous.
Just then, the Emergency Sortie Signal came in.
It came out of nowhere, A Borg ship.
Our entire Air Wing along with the Air wing from
The Enterprise, CVN-65, were dispatched to engage this new and deadly enemy. It was eventually destroyed,
but I didn’t get to see it, after making my run, my ship was hit and I was going down fast.
Engine gone, Hydraulics gone, Map light burned out. I had no choice, I had to leave her.
She impacted the water nose first and sank in seconds.
My seat ejection and chute deploy were nominal,
and I landed in the water unhurt.
After 20 minutes in the water the “SAR” Helo picked me up and took myself and other downed pilots
back to the ship. They gave us all a bunch of medals. But, best of all they gave me a new plane.
Back on the beach:
VA-25 returned to NAS Lemoore in California. My new Corsair, and I, at the end of a hard day, try to relax on the drive home.
There’s always some guy in front of me that just has to drive 55. 15,000 pounds of trust under me and I have to do the speed limit?
If that guy had only realized that I had two sidewinders on board, and me sitting there cross legged and thinking, “I had way too much coffee today.”
Back to Chapter 1: