Of tin gods and STEEL MAGNOLIAS

11 March 1972, Point Mugu Chapel one really beautiful woman and if I do say so myself, a rather dashing swash buckling Naval Aviator attack pilot type join in marriage. No time for a honeymoon we head back to Lemoore to continue training to go out for carrier qualification in the A-7 including first ever night landings. Little did we know that a month later, I’d be on my way to Yankee Station and the sky’s of North Vietnam on Linebacker missions as the result of the NVN invasion of the South on 30 March – the Easter Offensive. My squadron had a shoot down, POW within a month.

Left crying on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge as USS Midway sails beneath – one really crappy way for a brand new bride to start a new life. But here we are 49 years later. She’s still beautiful, a great artist, and I can still use my hands –“there I was at 100 ft…” – to tell some TINS ( “this is no s..t” ) flyboy stories.

Here’s to you my love
Words from a recent read: “Burning the days”

On the morning of 11 March this year, FaceBook offered up for me one of my“most liked posts of 2016” – the picture above of my wife and I on our wedding day in 1972. The prelude was my posted reply.

Lots of memories of leaving a bride so soon and unexpectedly, with first combat not long afterward. On this day 49 years ago USS Midway had crossed the Pacific, bypassing Hawaii, spent a couple of days at Cubi Point and her aircraft were now flying their first combat in  siege relief missions at An Loc, South Vietnam.

Needless to say, the VA-56 wives went through some serious trauma over the next 11 months with the loses of Garry, Smokey, and John and POWs Al and Mike. The picture above, the memories all lead to me wanting to remember those aviator wives, a part – important part – of RememberedSky and “Testimony of Pilot.” We shit hot naval aviators in speed jeans considered ourselves invincible and doing what we’d been trained to do – uh Tin Gods so to speak as one book title relates.. But the wives – now they were something else, something a lot more “else” ….

Hollywood has ALWAYS  played on the love interests in war movies particularly related to aviators with the pictures below offered by way of example. The 1927 Wings with Clara Bow was the winner of the first Academy Award for Best Picture. Grace Kelly is unforgettable as the Navy wife of William Holden in The Bridges at Toko-Ri …

And of course, the more recent TOPGUN with Kelly and Meg.

But movies are just movies, sometimes they get it close but other times its just playing the entertainment click bate advertising shtick.
…

Sex and the Naval Aviator

Sometime in the 70s,  a Navy flight surgeon, Lieutenant Commander – later Captain –  Frank Dully, created a briefing and provided talks at multiple naval air stations focused on mission accomplishment and safety that was also aimed at helping the wives of naval aviators better understand their husbands. It was entitled “Sex and the Naval Aviator.”

In today’s climate he would most likely find himself in front of whatever board in the Pentagon resembles corporate human resources, but in those days the title, the colorful language and irreverent references were designed to capture the attention of the fine young men and their wives (yes, only young men were aviators in those days).  His motivation was aviation safety and he wanted to  drive home the message that distraction in the cockpit kills, no matter the source.

Dully suggested a method for eliminating the distractions not only of  family life, but of everything but flying. He called it “compartmentalization.” It is a technique of mentally boxing up everything unrelated to aviation in your brain and filing it away in a sealed “compartment.” That way your sterile cockpit -your whole mental approach – begins as you start a mission brief and that rule persists through your preflight, cockpit checks, start-up, run-up and takeoff—right through the entire flight, whether combat or training.

But that was not the whole message. He also addressed the wives end of the equation.

Dully emphasized that she has this invisible trash bag over her shoulder and all this stuff goes in there. The bag does not have a vent at the bottom. It just gets fuller and fuller and fuller. It gets heavier and heavier and heavier. Wives are left behind much of the time to take care of the family, often living in Spartan base housing or in off-base homes they can barely afford. The lifestyle often leads to resentment and marital problems, and sometimes separation and divorce.

Dully said his research showed that Marine and Navy fighter pilots are bright, aggressive and ambitious; 80% of them are the oldest sons. He describes the typical aviator as a special breed. Many of the pilots marry the oldest daughters who also are bright, aggressive and ambitious. Both husband and wife want to be “controllers,” and because of his absence during long deployments and training missions she is forced “to become independent in a way that she never thought existed.

And that’s just the peacetime flying environment.

Combat Wives: Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs)

This has been a hard section to write. But then it hit me… upfront, I’m not qualified to write this section.”Pilot-speak” is simply inadequate, this story telling needs to come from the women who lived it. so, what I’ll attempt to do is provide some context.

New aviators – nuggets – come into their first squadron possibly not knowing anyone BUT they’ve been through the same exacting training and know many of the stories.  They have much to learn but the day-day environment is common and the basis for that learning is well laid out.

Wives on the other hand have found a partner but the flying is not their dream, they weren’t picked by the military, they just got thrown into the cauldron. There has been no training pipeline for dealing with the daily worry or the sudden notification of a shoot-down or a POW.

They learn quickly, throwing Mexican food parties augmented with ample margaritas -have each others back. Fortunately there are always a couple of senior officers’ wives who’ve done this before. While a military wife has no rank, the commanding officer and executive officer’s wives lead in a way hard to describe -mother, sister, best friend and always as vulnerable as all the others – maybe even more so because their husbands lead the missions, set the example, always out in front.

For us their tin gods, their “mission accomplishment” always seemed harder than ours. WE chose the life, we trained for it and we knew pretty much what to expect on any given mission, AND we knew for a fact we were invincible.  They on the other hand dealt with day-day uncertainty and the definite possibility of loss. tin gods but STEEL MAGNOLIAS.

Reflection

Flying a tactical fighter/attack aircraft requires a lot of training, focus and attitude, but the level of fun is almost immeasurable. Neither getting shot at by AAA or SAM, nor landing on a carrier at night can be classified as fun, but it is adventure of the highest order. Marriage to that is one whole different thing… so here’s to Mona, Pat, Kent, Lorna, Betsy, Carole, Ellen, Susan, Valerie, Karen, Virginia, Gail, Bev, Dianne, AND of course, most particularly Paulette, and to all the various squadron wives…

From the Willie Nelson in all of us