Remembered Sky: Gift of Wings

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Ed

Throughout our lives we receive multiple gifts, many simply because we are loved. Whether private, commercial or military, aviators are given the gift of wings only if they earn the right and persist in a pursuit of perfecting the gift. My intent after posting several articles was to explain my vision for Remembered Sky. As in Ghosts of Christmas Past, it seemed a wiser choice to defer to those who’ve already said the words. And so, airplanes, adventure, mission, country and people.

The Airplane: A Gift of Wings by Richard Bach

And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the dead engine and dead airframe come to life at the touch of a human hand, and join their life with the pilot’s own.

*******

Continue reading →

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Dangerous Sky – Combat Rescue: Part # 2 – Wolf FAC

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Ed

Introductory note: Before  we tell Hippo’s story and complete the telling of the rescue of a downed Air Force Wild Weasel crew well inside North Vietnam in November 1972, I think it necessary to provide a short comment on how I anticipate Remembered Sky to playout over time. The next post will provide more on the framework and goals and types of things the reader can expect, but for now let me just say that the intent is not to be a vehicle for me to tell my own stories, nor is it to be just a re-telling or link to stories long known and available. While Remembered Sky will certainly provide both, what is really desired is to lay out the tapestry (only word I can think of) that comes from the people, missions, adventures, emotions, thought, insight, and just listening and associating with all the stories  that evolve day in day out from flying. Bob’s writing sets a great target for future stories.

Richard Bach in A Gift of Wings noted that if you love to fly, if you hang around airports and visit hangars, if you visit the sky, you’re bound to find real friends. Hippo and I have never met, but he’s for sure a great friend.

So here’s an intro to Bob Hipps, and then the Wolf FAC story: Continue reading →

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Dangerous Sky – Combat Rescue: Part #1 – Sandy Superb

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Ed

Few missions are more dangerous than rescue of a downed aircrew behind enemy lines.  Needless to say, a slow moving helicopter is an easy target. The aircrew location must be exact, few search planes escaped damage,  suppressing enemy fire critical.  Losses could escalate immediately, yet no matter the threat, no effort is left undone, if there’s even the slightest change of getting one of our own out before they can be captured. Many of the most heroic events of the Vietnam war were rescue missions. These were the Sandy missions and in 1972 included the Air Force A-7D Corsair II and the HH-53 Jollie Green Giant helicopters. (Carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin often hosted Jollie Green Detachments onboard.  Needless to say, these balls of steel AF dudes always found a welcome and invite down to the bunkrooms for some hiden/forbidden young Scotch.)

The story (in two parts) of one of those aircrew rescues deep inside North Vietnam is Remembered Sky’s next offering in the War and Remembrance thread. The whole comes from Major Bob Hipps (USAF Ret). It’s in two parts because the first part is about the A-7D Sandy mission. The second part relates the equally dangerous F-4 Phantom Fast FAC mission without which the rescue could not have been accomplished.

More about Hippo (like me a Nashville boy/mutual friends, etc) in the second part, but note this story and the send to Remembered Sky is case perfect of what I want this site to be about –  people, organizations, airplanes, missions, all  in a tapestry of flying. Continue reading →

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James Tiberius Kirk, Where Are You?

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Ed

Ask any pilot, why or how they got into flying and you’ll find multiple answers, many will overlap but some will be unique, but all will be a personal thing long remembered. Continue reading →

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Air War Vietnam: Remembrance at 40 Years – All Days Come From One Day

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Ed
Note: This article was originally posted April 10, 2012 on the Project White Horse Blog

On April 10, 1972, Midway steamed under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, bound on a 7800 mile voyage to the Vietnam War Zone.  This in itself was not uncommon.  What made this cruise different from proceeding ones in the ship’s history was the fact that Midway was deploying over seven weeks in advance of the scheduled departure date with less than one week’s notice, with a vastly abbreviated training period, and with the additional handicap of a short, three day load out.

 Shouldering these burdens, on April 29, exactly 19 days after departure, the aircraft of Carrier Air Wing Five were winging their way off USS Midway and towards the Republic of Vietnam.  Their mission, as part of the ship’s overall mission, was of two basic parts: one, they were to provide aerial support for the South Vietnamese forces in their efforts to turn back the tide of the Communist invasion from the north, and two, they were to protect the remaining Americans present in Vietnam as the withdrawal of United States ground forces continued.

From: Opening pages, USS MIDWAY 1972-73 Cruise Book

All days come from one day, as the writer, the poet, the singer  says, so without attempting to channel Ernest Hemingway, this reflects basic remembrance of the day I and a lot of young men went off to war.  For me, it meant I would spend the 11thof April at sea – my one month wedding anniversary.  I left a beautiful young woman crying on the pier.  She drove from Alameda to the Golden Gate Bridge to watch MIDWAY change her life in ways completely unexpected a month earlier in the chapel at Point Mugu.  We weren’t following closely the day-day of the war nor privy to the back channel information of impending crisis in the war in Vietnam. Things had been rather quite there since the bombing halt up North in 1968 called by President Johnson after the Tet Offensive.  Continue reading →

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Sticks & Wires & Cloth

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Ed

“An airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly.  An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding.  Those things aren’t destructible.”

Nothing by Chance, Richard Bach

 

Nanna by Kristin Hill

That quote also serves as the first words in Sticks & Wires & Cloth by Anne Hopkins.  Then in the closing chapter  she begins:

“Someday I will discover that climbing into Nana’s cockpit takes too great a toll on my body, or I will make a mistake. I will miss seeing traffic that I should have seen, land badly without understanding why, make a dangerous pilotage error, or perhaps do something even worse.  Then the little voice within will whisper, “You’ve had a good run, quit now.”… Knowing this, I avoid spending leisure time on anything I will be able to enjoy later as the mind fades or the need arises for cane or wheelchair.”

As noted in Remembered Sky’s opening post, reading Anne’s book was the catalyst in finally moving ahead with this blog. I had a good run in flying, now its time to put some stories together. It’s her fault I’ve started Remembered Sky, so let’s talk about her book and the connected story abit. Continue reading →

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Remembered Sky

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Ed

Everyone at one time or another stumbles across something or someone that sends their mind cascading back in time to people and events that have shaped their lives. Aviators in particular are notorious for that instantaneous hands in the air “and their I was, flat on my back, running out of airspeed, altitude and gas… but here’s what I did…” – airshow time at the bar. Late 1999 I experienced that moment when daughter Tracey – made in Hong Kong 1972 in the midst of the war over Vietnam – announced she was bringing home for Christmas an F-14 Tomcat type naval aviator. The result was really my first effort at story telling by actually  writing – The Ghosts of Christmas Past…Fly Navy, the BEST Always Have.

Since October 2006, when I began the website and accompanying blog focused on decision making in severe crisis  –Project White Horse 084640 – I have found myself on special days – Veterans’ Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day and Christmas – posting articles about flying and the air war over Vietnam in remembrance of all the people brought into my life by being a naval aviator. Continue reading →

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