I had a beer last Friday with an old friend, like me recently retired as a captain. We were roommates back in the day along with a third brother of a another mother, as lieutenants aboard the USS Constellation. A thousand years ago, or it might as well have been. A lifetime ago.
Do you remember that movie, “Stand By Me“? At the end, Dustin Hoffman Richard Dreyfuss – the narrator – voices over the conclusion the 60’s coming of age tale thus: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
Yeah, they do. If they go to sea together for months on end they might. If they’ve flown aircraft off together off carrier decks they might. If they’ve been ashore in foreign ports together and seen what the night could bring, they might. If they’ve been separated from their families and flung together in forced intimacy they might. If they’ve sat in coffin racks at 0200 and tried to find a way to fall asleep after a hairy night behind the boat, it helps. Laid in the darkness with their eyes closed and ears wide open and heard the stress breaks in each other’s voices. Filled in the spaces where the words ran out. You could have friends like that.
Things have changed a lot since then of course. We all grew up. I had two daughters to go with the son and wife I missed. He got divorced, remarried, started another family. We all moved around. Somehow we both ended up in the same place again we’d run a merry lap or two around back when we were junior officers. Mere chance.
We had two beers, talked about times old and new and then walked out to the parking lot. Who’d have believed it, I asked. You and me. After all these years. Retired captains, for God’s sake.
He laughed and agreed. And because we were once roommates, I wondered if he was thinking about the same moment I was. The moment wherein all of those things that have transpired since the fall of 1988 might have been suddenly cut short, and an entirely different history unfolded. One that lacked your correspondent and his two daughters. One that lacked my friend’s new family.
It was a long range night strike into the Hawaiian operating areas – work ups for deployment. My friend wouldn’t make the cruise itself, he already had orders to the Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland. I was the attack element lead, and he was my wingman. The mission ran smoothly all the way to the target, which was in itself a kind of blessing. This was before night vision goggles turned the lights back on at night, and coming safely across a target with a large force at night in a expeditious fashion required meticulous planning, flawless execution and a generous dollop of luck. Hurling yourself at the ground in the daytime in a large force strike, with everyone else vying for a piece of the same delivery cone is hard. At night, with no NVDs it’s like Chinese algebra. Sometimes you suck it up and trust to fate. Mostly it works out.
A few minutes later we were off target, feet wet, through the tanker and on the way back to the ship. Close enough for the post-target let down to set in, for the adrenaline to leech out of our systems. Far enough away from the ship to leave fretting over the night landing for another moment. The boat wasn’t going anywhere, there’d be time enough to worry about the Terror Machine when we got on final. And as wingmen and roommates we were young, capable and familiar with each other. We were, in a word, complacent.
Little things add up. I checked my inertial nav and turned a degree or two to starboard, towards the ship’s expected recovery position. My roommate might have checked his abeam distance in our combat spread formation and decided he was a trifle wide, checking a degree or two to the left in the pitch black night. We were now on gradually converging headings. We were tired. Our minds were elsewhere. I didn’t see him arcing towards me until I saw his formation lights passing under my jet. Ten? Twenty feet below me? Too late to take any kind of evasive action. I would have gone to my fate thoroughly at ease.
In the FA-18, the altitude readout on the heads up display is in a digital format. If you’re assigned a 27,000 foot altitude, 26,990 feet is not correct. Neither is 27,010 feet. Right is right, everything else is wrong. It doesn’t matter that in any other jet the difference could be attributed to pointer error or parallax. You fly the assigned number. He was at 27k and so was I.
Which is why I still don’t understand to this day how we missed each other. How the timeline we all now share wasn’t suddenly deflected, every moment from that to this altered, all of these possibilities revised and emended. Why it is you, gentle reader, are looking at these words instead of some others.
Mere chance. No rational reason.
Do you ever think of that night, I asked in the parking lot. Off Hawaii?
Only when I see you again brother, he answered.
Yeah, I replied. I know what you mean.
See you next time.
Ah, irony, I just read your post after learning the death of an old shipmate I flew with in one of our mutual old haunts in Meridian. Saw him four weeks ago passing as we did at work in the middle of the night.
Had to kiss my kids and wife…….
Thanks for the indulgence Lex
The IPA is saddened to learn of the death of ANC MD-11 Captain Christopher Caron. Chris passed away Friday night as a result of injuries sustained earlier in the week in a motorcycle accident.
Christopher Deans Caron, age 50, of Monroe, a pilot for UPS, died on Friday, July 18, 2008 in Bridgeport Hospital. Born in Hartford on March 30, 1958, he was raised in South Windsor. Mr. Caron was a member of the class of 1976 at
East Catholic High School in Manchester and was a graduate of the University of Connecticut. A retired Lt. Commander for the U. S. Navy, he was an F-14 pilot on the USS Forrestal serving his country in Operation Desert Storm. He
was an avid skier and motorcyclist and enjoyed music and spending time at the cottage in Sturbridge with his family and friends. His most cherished time was spent with his sons Joseph and David and his wife, Angela. He was
pre-deceased by his father, William and mother, Joann Caron Prescott and two infant sons. Survivors include his loving wife of 23 years, Angela Russo Caron, two sons, Joseph and David of Monroe, a brother David Caron and his
wife JoAnn of South Windsor, a sister Suzanne Caron and her partner Becky Rehel of Bloomfield, two sisters-in-law, Jacqueline Russo of Monroe and Violet Pickney and her husband Bill of Fort Washington, Maryland, and he
also leaves two nephews, Neil and Steven Caron. To honor Chris’ memory, please wear your motorcycle helmet.
I’m betting the digital readout on your HUD was converted from analog from your altimeter sensors, which means the error comes from the error found in the sensors and your display was merely repeating it.
Some things digital are either exact or not at all. Your cable TV perhaps, or your SMS messages on your cell phone. Your altimeter is not one of those things.
Which, to segue into another thought about digital, I’ve been led to understand that when the Iowa-class were last refit digital fire control was considered, and found no more accurate than the old analog systems already on them.
Always wondered about that, how 60 year-old cams, chains, and gears would compare to computers and solenoids and sensors. And wondered why, if they compared well, we continue to push the electronics so.
I’ve also wondered how I see headphones in the local shopping center marked “digital.” Last I heard, sound to my eardrums is, in fact, analog.
I suspect there’s a similar story with a digital altimeter.
– Max
I thought Richard Dreyfuss was the narrator?
Ernest Gann had it right.
1998 in the gulf, we lost a Great American and two jets in a very similar mid-air. Tragic.
I have a similar incident involving me in my P3 and my wife’s sister’s future husband in his F4 off the east coast of Northern Japan. On exact altitude and reciprocal headings. Another second’s hesitation by either pilot and the F4 would have been thru my Orion and out the Mad Boom. Two radar blips nearly merged as one.
We didn’t discover each other and put the story together until 4 months later by chance over Thanksgiving Dinner at the NAS Pensacola BOQ . What a small community (NavAir) we live in.
Lex, do you remember landing that night?
The near miss I’m thinking about involved a truck, and I can feel an echo of the adrenaline just sitting her now. At the time, I found a place to pull over and settle, and you still had a night carrier landing in front of you.
As an aside, you’re right, TheBronze. Richard Dreyfuss is the narrator and the adult Gordie that appears at the beginning and end of the film. Stand By Me is one of my favorite movies, and the making of it is a story in itself.
Here’s a quote: The wonderful love of a beautiful maid,
The love of a staunch true man,
The love of a baby, unafraid,
Have existed since time began.
But the greatest of loves, The quintessence of loves.
even greater than that of a mother,
Is the tender, passionate, infinite love,
of one drunken Marine for another.
“Semper Fidelis”
General Louis H. Wilson
Commandant of the Marine Corps
Toast given at 203rd Marine Corps Birthday Ball
Camp Lejueune, N.C. 1978
Nose,
By my count we have had 2-3 midairs a years with Hornets since the turn of the century..
Not sure why that is, but with everything being Hornets- big, little, USN, USMC and now “Q”, it just sticks out. Maybe it’s the relatively small size- I don’t know. The last couple years have been particularly nasty and as you know there often isn’t anyone left to discuss it. I read most of the SIRs and sometimes it’s seems surreal. Makes me wonder how many near misses we got that go unreported…
b2
Great post, Lex. Freaky.
Which, only slightly off-topic, makes me wonder, do you believe in fate? I do, up to a point anyway. I think opportunities and choices are given to us but then free will intervenes and we decide what to do. Anyway, great post. Great way to start a Sunday.
Lex,
That is a story which reiterates the daily risks that those in service take, even in peacetime, to hone their survival skills to a razor edge.
The comment by b2 is disturbing. I wonder why we are so wedded to the round numbers in assigning altitudes. I would think it would be a simple thing to define an altitude stagger for a flight based upon your formation that would minimize the risk of collision. If your strike force had been assigned 27,000 ft, then each pilot added or subtracted 20 to 50 ft based on his formation position, collisions such as you nearly had would be less probable.
Edward
Lex, there are times that words just don’t even begin to communicate what is actually going on inside during these times. You talk of the F-18 incident, it just wasn’t your time.
The Military doctors didn’t figure I was going to survive a TBI. It was causing seizures, some could have very well been fatal. The seizures were not the violent type, but just as lethal. I was able to some things, the Military decided to send me home. But they really didn’t tell us anything, even in the written records. I was fortunate enough to find a mentor to help me adapt to the situation. He was an older man with a “colorful background”, his terms. The description was independently verified. But he also described himself as an old hermit, but you could not prove that by any of the disabled vets and a former P.O.W., that he befriended. He kept an important mindset, he said, “No matter how long I live or where I live, I’m deployed on a mission until the day I die.” He helped all of us.
I had one really bad time at the end 1999, seizures became violent and constant. My body was shutting down. But everything stopped in a good sense. The doctors figured it would be best to send me home to die. They figured I had about 6 months from Jan 2000. Well, I got home an our Mentor wanted to talk with me, “Well, what did they say?” I told him. He said, “Hold it, you’re not getting out of here that easily, the good die young and you’re here forever.” I said, “Just one thing, look at who is my teacher?” He put his head down and gave me a side glance and we both broke out laughing.
As always, he found his way to get even. One day he was reading my writing, he said, “I really don’t know how to put this, your style of writing is neither fast nor slow, but it’s most definitely, ‘HALF-FAST’”.
Have a GREAT WEEK,
Grumpy
Flying _is_ an un-natural act, you know, at least for humans.
When you leave the ground in an aerodyne, you are completely dependent on the sense of humor of the Big Guy.
Edward,
What you see in a digital or even analog display ain’t reality like a video game there are hundreds of changes happening per second. Do you know how many different variations of “altitude” there are? Airspeed? Some measured, some not, some truncated. That’s the machine side, hi-tech and all. On the process side there are dozens of human choices made per minute while you’re hurtling through space, as I can remember seeing it.. Lastly, there’s the weather and the visibility constantly changing. Cumulatively, they conspire insidiously, sometimes. Lex’s point.
Nothing’s routine, even the most mundane task.
b2
Socal Pir8 tale is true. We were the F-4 wingman on a 2 v 2 ACM run in against Black Sheep A-4’s, cold nose. Rolled inverted and this RIO got to see a gigantic P-3 planform flash by through the top of the rear canopy. Seemed nearly as big as a Russian Bear at the time.
It is only by the grace of the Gods that I am here today. In ‘79, I was in the bounce pattern at Rota and on about the 20th crash and dasj of the day. There was a VP-23 bird inbound, and I was sitting behind the Pilot’s station on the forward magnatron cabinet, listening in on a set of headphones.
I was hald-listening but something didn’t sound right. The same thing was picjed ip on bu the pilots and the FE. As we were over the numbers, we looked up and there was a set of landing lights right ahead of us. Same Bat time, same Bat station. I remember the PPC hollering into the mike to “Break left” and we banjed at about a 60+ degree anfle as the FE slammed the power levers forward. Thankfully, the VP-23 bird did the same and we crossed belly-to bellu at about 500 geet over the ramp.
I have a distict memory of the Maintance Control Master Cief looking up at us, along with several ASM and AD types, all frozen in horror. I also recall the whole of VQ-2 parked below us and thinking, man, if we go in we take a whole squadron with us…..
Thanjfullt, we missed eacjother but I swear I started my growth of grey hairs at that instant.
So yeah, things DO happen for a reason. We get to remember these tales, and perhaps we do as a warning to others. Or in memory of those who can’t.
I remember one day during work-ups in the operating area off the coast of Florida. Mission completed, the weather was deteriorating and on controlled approach to USS Ship.
Flying through the goo, there was nothing to see until — FLASH– right across the flight path, literally a few ahead away, so close you could see the squadron colors flash by, went another jet. There and gone in an instant, so fast there was no adrenalin because the crisis was over before you could react to it.
You think “*expletive*, that was close!”
In time you appreciate how interdependent the whole CV/Airwing team is, and how any mistake, any inattention, by anyone, can be catastrophic.
At first you’re stressed by what you don’t know, and later you’re stressed by what you do know.
Flatlander.
Damn straight…. it’s not what you don’t know, what what you DO know,…..
These days, and I hate to say it, but I really DO NOT like to fly commerciall. It’s like a cattle car and I just don’t like sitting in the back of the bus.
And my kids wonder whay I drink…
At first you’re stressed by what you don’t know, and later you’re stressed by what you do know.
When I wrote at my place about the excitement of trapping and launching when I visited STENNIS, Jimmy J (and some other guys who also comment here) seemed surprised to think I found it enjoyable.
They mentioned how “uncomfortable” they’d always been flying COD despite their years of stick experience, and called me brave. I demurred, told them playfully that the reason I wasn’t afraid was precisely because I HADN’T had years of stick experience. Ignorance is bliss.
Didn’t realize quite how right I was until now…
Once on a TDY hop from DaNang to Saigon for a targeting conference in an O-2, we were feet wet just abreast of Phu Cat at roughly 1500′ AGL when all of a sudden I sense something to my right, swivel my head just in time to get a head-on view of the oval air-intake of an F-100C/D at a 45 degree angle taking up my entire field of vision–not even time to flinch–how it missed I’ll never know–”mild” turbulence after the pass….. I was the passenger along for the ride on that hop–didn’t even have time to “camouflage” my flt suit. My left seater was a FNG Major who forgot all about the proximity of the pattern at Phu Cat–the old “hungry” was obviously climbing out after T.O.
Fool that I was I had assumed he knew what he was doing and I had just awakened from a brief snooze. As the saying goes, if I want to die, I’d rather do it on my own time.
I don’t have the experience of most of the aviators here, but back in the day I was working on my private pilot license, bouncing with my instructor at an uncontrolled airfield.
There were at least five of us in the pattern for runway 36, all using the radio frequency assigned for that field for position calls, when a new pilot calls up saying he’s five miles out for runway 18. (For those not familiar with runway numbers, 18 and 36 is the same length of tarmac; for runway 36 you’re landing to the north, 18 landing to the south.)
Just about everyone told this guy that runway 36 was in use, but he ignored us all. I had just touched down, throttled up and rotated when he said that he was on left base for 18. I’m flying a T-34 with the landing lights on, on a clear day, and this turkey wants to turn right in front of me and land as though nobody else is around.
I had him spotted, so I turned inside him, but got close enough to write down his tail number. Schmuckatelli continues on, fat, dumb, and happy, and proceeds to land on 18. Once I got back to my airfield, I was all set to call the FAA and have them give this buffoon a sweating down, but my instructor took the tail number and said he’d deal with it. Probably he threw the number out, but I hope the idiot spent some uncomfortable time with his pilot neighbors. Never felt the situation was dangerous, but we don’t need someone flying the wrong way, even when he’s telling us he’s oncoming.
Bruce,
That was basically my own expericence, except a lot closer, and with a 4-engine turboprop. (P-3B Orion)… Imagine 2 of them trying to share the same airspace from opposite directions, and then going belly to belly abour 500 feet agl.
It makes a great story now in my later years. At the time, not so muvh…
PS: Amen to Flatlander and and AW1Tim about what you DO know–sure, people, just keep believing those flight “attendants” who tell you how safe everything is…..Of course second guessing other people’s stick/rudder/throttle techniques SOP when one’s life in the hands of others….occupational hazard for ex-military
types……
Some interesting stories, generally involving just a few planes in some near airspace.
I’d really like to hear what the bomber pilots in World War 2 Britain went through.
I mean, by today’s standards the B-17 and B-24 are sort of small for bombers, just a bit larger physically than the F-14 or F-15. But they’re heavy, four-engined beasts that don’t exactly turn on a dime.
And you’re assembling 1000 of them in the air at a time on a mission into Germany.
With clouds. Without radar. Without air traffic control once beyond the tarmac. VFR indeed.
Whenever I hear a radial motor I kind of get a little lump in my throat. Such a pretty sound, a growl rather than the moan or bellow of an inline. The thought of hearing 4000 radials going full-tilt-boogie across the heavens?
Well, I’d pay anything so I could to hear it. Likewise, for those who heard it they’d have paid anything they could to not *have* to hear it.
Funny thing, that. The boom of the cannon is an impressive spectacle to the sight-seer. To the cannoneer and the infantry, no less impressive but much less desirable.
I should learn to temper my enthusiasm for these stories with an appropriate measure of thoughtfulness for what others have done and continue to do.
– Max
Gordo: so sorry for your loss. Living in CT myself, in a small town southeast of Hartford, I read about that accident. So young, so sad.
I think anyone who has had a “close call” goes thru that whole “why me/why not me” for years afterwards. Nothing aviation-related for me (more like a veal pen, AW1Tim…) but a couple of car accidents that I walked away from – and I shouldn’t have. Remains of injuries that are only visible on x-rays that tell me I shouldn’t be here anymore.
Makes life all the more precious. As my family’s motto says: We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time.
As a shipdriver by trade and an aviator by avocation, I have only had one midair close call. Flying through Pax River airspace talking to Pax approach. I get a call:
“93L, traffic 1 o’clock 1 mile [Huge roar and a blur down port side, loud enought hear through hedset] F-14.”
Max Damage,
I was looking at links to bomber group sites, and the mid-airs that occurred as they stacked up over England before heading to Germany, and found this story:
” On what was to be my final mission we carried delay action bombs which we called “doodle bugs” and they were used on enemy airfield runways to keep them unusable as the bombs were set with delays from one minute up to a week or more. After we took off and reached assembly altitude over England with the rest of my squadron, I went back to the bomb bay, as my usual job to take the cotter pins out of the bombs. These held the little spinners in place that prevented the bombs from going off accidentally and were removed after takeoff. These spinners being miniature propellers they would spin off when the bombs were dropped. At that time the bombardier in the plane to our left was doing the same thing, His navigator, trying to save him a job went over to his electric remote control chin turret, loaded and charged his guns and stowed them to the side so they’d be ready to test fire when we reached the English Channel. However, when he was through he forgot to turn off the master switch so the triggers were “live”. He also left the guns pointing to the right at our plane instead of away from it as was regulation. When the bombardier returned and sat down his elbow brushed against the trigger and he riddled our waist with bullets. He killed one of our gunners and wounded two others. Our radio operator yelled to us that [deleted] was badly hurt, very badly hurt. He knew his buddy had been killed but couldn’t bring himself to say it. It was too emotional for him. So because of this and the wounded on board we had to return to our base. But you are not allowed to land with bombs on board, so we headed for the coast to drop them in the sea.
However, the regulations said that live bombs must be dropped 50 miles off the coast but “safe” bombs could be dropped just off the coast. Thinking that [deleted] our gunner could be saved if we rushed back, I proceeded to get back into the bomb bay and put the pins back into the bombs to make them safe. I had to line up three holes to insert the cotter pins. That was a delicate operation and had us all praying as one false move in lining up the parts to put the pins in could detonate the bombs. This was only the case for these delayed action bombs to prevent the Germans from defusing them after they had hit and laying there waiting to go off. I got them back in but sweated bullets standing in the catwalk of the bomb bay getting it done. When we landed and I helped carry [deleted] off the plane, we knew he was dead. We had rushed back needlessly. The two waist gunners were lightly wounded and [deleted], our tail gunner, had given them first aid.”
Max – three years ago at Thunder Over Michigan, there were 8 B17s. At the end of the show, they flew over together. Not quite some of those 8th Air Force missions, but as close as we can get today…
Coming from the rifle carrying end o things (i.e. cargo) my chances of this sort of thing were obviously smaller than most of the folks that hang around here. By way of background, I always enjoyed flying and unlike a large majority of my rifle carrying friends looked forward to being a passenger in a helo. Most grunts don’t like flying and the pilots and aircrew obviously knew this fact. Most flights included a bit of “let’s f with the grunts maneuvering”. These little events always brought a smile to my face and gave me ammunition when ribbing others in my platoon. Also, if we were flying , we weren’t walking.
Right in the middle of a Med cruise (last one before Desert Shield/Storm) we were finishing a field exercise in the Negev and happy to hear we would get a lift back to camp. Watched a beautiful sunset and ended up waiting for our ride long after the evenings chill had set. Course,in the desert the evening chill sets in about 10 seconds after the sun sets. A whirl of sand, some St Elmo’s fire lighting up the blades, the hand off of the name list to the crew chief as we trudged up the ramp and our ride was off into the clear night sky. My position in the back of the Ch46 this night did not afford me much of anything to look at so I spent most of my time watching the crew chief with his NVGs look out the side. We made a couple of turns and flared for our landing with the chief looking below. All of a sudden the chief yells into his headset and the helo jumps up hard and left. A speed increase, what seemed like a dozen hard turns and a few very calm minutes flying in a square later we made a landing and began to unload. Having a feeling that what just happened wasn’t another f with the grunts moment I asked the crew chief about it on the way out. He said that we had come within about forty feet of landing on top of one of the Cobras that had been our escort. I was one of the last cold warriors and was saved by the fact that the chief took the time to lean out into the rotor wash just a bit farther. A dark night, a ton of swirling sand and the more proof that another set of eyes can be a Godsend.
Yeah, that’s an interesting point, frmr grunt. But, you know the notion of having a second set of eyes in the cockpit has never been welcomed by the single seat communities. To paraphrase Lex, I think the attitude is “every one who needs one should have one.”
I’m surprised never to have seen any statistics published on the comparative accident rates between single seat and multi-seat aircraft performing similar missions during similar eras. My guess, not informed by any data other than anecdotal experience, is that the single seat accident rate would be significantly higher. There has got to be thousands upon thousands of flight hour data available for such analyses.
While there is a significant cost to putting the second guy in the cockpit, we just assume that it’s cheaper to eliminate the cost. If we looked at the difference in accident rates, it might well prove to be a false savings. Who knows, the return on investment for that second set of eyes might just be enormous. Not to mention the lives…
I guess the assumption is that R2D2 is getting to be better than a second human; it would be interesting to see what the data says about that.