This story came to mind today as Joyce and I were drinking a beer or maybe two. I was talking about how lucky I was to still have her in my life after last year's tribulations.
I was on my first carrier qualification cruise and sitting an a plane on the flight deck just like the one in the picture above about 100 miles off the coast of LA , grooving to the Wolf Man Jack radio show out of Los Angeles, California. It was just about dusk when one of our squadron planes tried to make a landing on the ship. The co-pilot was making the landing so he could qualify as a pilot. He caught the arresting wire too far left of center and the plane slid further left and ended up in the steel netting at the edge of the carrier and directly across the deck from where I was sitting. Had he landed too far right, I would have been dead. The plane hung in that net for a few seconds and the cracked open like an egg. It then feel into the ocean in two pieces. The pilot made his way out and the enlisted radar tech in the back of the plane did too, but the co-pilot and the two officers in the back did not. The pilot and enlisted guy made their way to the surface and were rescued by the rescue helicopter that is always in the air until after flight operations.
I knew the enlisted guy and he worked in the avionics shop with me when he was not flying. He was lucky to get out of the plane and I was lucky it didn't go the other direction. That same guy was later on shore patrol in Olongapo, Philippines during the cruise. He went into a bar there to break up a fight between a bar girl and a sailor. Shore patrol always go in pairs for their own protection. The guy he was with stood horrified at the event taking place. The one from my squadron separated the sailor and the bar girl and was telling the sailor to just leave and not go back to that same bar anymore when he heard a bottle breaking. He turned around and the bar girl had broken a beer bottle and as he turned she sliced him from his forehead down the his lip. It made for an unattractive scar. In that case he was lucky to not lose an eye, but unlucky to have been there and had a second shore patrolman that should have covered his back.
I suppose that is the way life goes, we are lucky one moment and not the next. That memory of those events has never left me. Some things are that way, while other things evaporate in my mind in short order. I suppose that made a huge impact on me and a long lasting memory.
I was on my first carrier qualification cruise and sitting an a plane on the flight deck just like the one in the picture above about 100 miles off the coast of LA , grooving to the Wolf Man Jack radio show out of Los Angeles, California. It was just about dusk when one of our squadron planes tried to make a landing on the ship. The co-pilot was making the landing so he could qualify as a pilot. He caught the arresting wire too far left of center and the plane slid further left and ended up in the steel netting at the edge of the carrier and directly across the deck from where I was sitting. Had he landed too far right, I would have been dead. The plane hung in that net for a few seconds and the cracked open like an egg. It then feel into the ocean in two pieces. The pilot made his way out and the enlisted radar tech in the back of the plane did too, but the co-pilot and the two officers in the back did not. The pilot and enlisted guy made their way to the surface and were rescued by the rescue helicopter that is always in the air until after flight operations.
I knew the enlisted guy and he worked in the avionics shop with me when he was not flying. He was lucky to get out of the plane and I was lucky it didn't go the other direction. That same guy was later on shore patrol in Olongapo, Philippines during the cruise. He went into a bar there to break up a fight between a bar girl and a sailor. Shore patrol always go in pairs for their own protection. The guy he was with stood horrified at the event taking place. The one from my squadron separated the sailor and the bar girl and was telling the sailor to just leave and not go back to that same bar anymore when he heard a bottle breaking. He turned around and the bar girl had broken a beer bottle and as he turned she sliced him from his forehead down the his lip. It made for an unattractive scar. In that case he was lucky to not lose an eye, but unlucky to have been there and had a second shore patrolman that should have covered his back.
I suppose that is the way life goes, we are lucky one moment and not the next. That memory of those events has never left me. Some things are that way, while other things evaporate in my mind in short order. I suppose that made a huge impact on me and a long lasting memory.
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