What IF?

I often wonder about the what ifs that happen in our lives. I was sitting in the cockpit of an E2A on the flight deck listening to the radio and watching deck landings during carrier qualifications off San Diego when another E2 was landing. The co-pilot was practicing his carrier landings. He caught a wire too far left of center and the plane careened toward to the port side, hung over the edge for a few seconds and then cracked open like an egg before both halves fell into the water. Three officers, including the co-pilot were lost at sea. Now what if the qualified pilot had taken the landing instead of the unqualified co-pilot? Would the same calamity have happened? I know that if the co-pilot had caught the wire right of center this story would never have been written.

I was reading a story last night about a young Marine stationed on the USS Indianopolis in 1945. He relieved his Marine friend a half hour early on the midnight watch. The Marine he relieved had time to return to the Marine quarters on the ship when one of two Japanese torpodeos hit the Indianopolis, killing the Marine just relieved and saving the one who relieved the watch a half hour early. What if the survivor had been a half hour late and the other Marine had been saved?

Joyce's father joined the navy during WWII and was trained at a diesel mechanics school in Virginia. He was assigned to a navy destroyer. The navy destroyer ran off steam turbines so her father worked as a water tender in the boiler room, but because he had training in diesel engines, his battle station was in the auxillary steering room powered by a diesel engine. When a Japanese "Val" dive bomber dropped a 500 pound bomb that penetrated through the deck and down into the boiler room on the ship, almost all the men in the boiler and engine rooms were killed, but the separate auxillary steering room was not harmed. After the attack, two other navy destroyers (against navy general orders) stopped to pick up the survivors. What if he had not been to that diesel school? What if the other destroyers in the squadron had followed general orders?

The what ifs abound in our lives.