Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Time marches on..new era, new words. “Back in the day” Vietnam era style, the most oft heard words were, “aww shit.” “This sucks” hadn’t made it into the lexicon yet–public or military…now “its the standard..
All hail Bug. Never, ever reluctant to wave the Whale. Proud to say I have more than few Whale CQ’s with him on the platform alongside our own guys.
I was onboard the Ranger during that cruise. If memory serves, it had lost the right main wheel on a previous attempt. We were close enough to a divert field in the Aleutians, that it was considered. Apparently, conditions were poor enough there (either runway or weather, don’t recall), that the barricade was the preferred option. Would have been in March or ’87, after a lovely visit to Pusan, Korea. Not as nice as Subic Bay, but pleasant none-the-less.
I remember Pusan, and the mama-sans yelling “Buy sumting!”
Sounds like a hell of a guy…proud to share a last name with him, though I doubt we are kin.
Not everyone is cut out to be the boss. Not everyone is going to be the Chief or the O6. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some excellent qualities that someone brings to the table, where they need to be kept where they perform best and not be punished for it. We get too caught up on ‘pushing to the top’ in America. Sometimes it’s OK to just… be and be the best at that.
That’s what I get from reading about CDR Roach. From what I read, he just seemed like the kind of guy who loved being with people and a bit of a caretaker. He made sure people were safe. I’m glad the Navy didn’t make him get out and gave him the rank he deserved to be able to stay in and do what he did best. It appears that CDR Roach was completely comfortable with who he was and that he was the best at what he did. What a tragic loss… there are so few men like him.
I had the honor hearing Bug’s calming voice while sitting in ECMO-1 seat with a nugget pilot having a rough night on the ball, while blue water. We must have had four bolters and going to the tanker didn’t make it any easier or less fatiguing on him. On the fifth pass, Bug started talking as soon as I called the ball. Afterwards, during the debrief, Bug invited the nugget to spend some time with him on the platform to really “get the picture; and anticipating, not chasing the ball.” Said nugget went on to be a superb LSO, trained by Bug, and with the same calm, professional demeanor.
On a side note, IIRC, most of the pallbearers at Bug’s funeral were wearing stars. Says much for the man and his legacy.
I thought it was the ballistic spreader that didn’t work. I had a friend who worked for a contractor whose chute didn’t open after the motor seized. I have little time in those type seats, not sure I’d fly with them again.
“This sucks”….perfect succinct summation to the end of a very bad day. Priceless. And sad.
Bug’s Prayer….
is germane and moving….
Thanks flit. Turns out Bug was my exact age and class {’66) which really brings it home to me tho I be USAF..,
Bug-the-man was amazingly even better than Bug-the-myth.
He tolerated some adversity without ever a complaint. He accomplished some impressive things that even his friends were not aware of. His deeds and admiration in fact stretched well beyond that of his unparalleled naval service and his Navy comrades.
Years earlier CDR Roach had deposited a couple of thousand dollars with the Miramar Officer’s Club, instructing them upon his eventual demise, drinks and hors d’oeuvres were to be all on him. Indeed it was a large, impressive and august group who attended that memorable, but most sad day. The mold was broken with Bug; no better man likely to be found anywhere.
“Here was a man! When comes such another?” – Julius Caesar, III.ii, slightly paraphrased.
I’m sorry for your loss, Flit. Seems obvious from your comments you were acquainted with CDR Roach, did you know him well?
Darkly ironic that he died just a couple weeks before Tailhook broke. You could probably write a book using those two events to mark the end of an era.
I too, was aboard Ranger during that barricade landing. Since I was shackled down in Radio Central as usual, I saw the landing through the flight deck cameras on the TV. Bug, bless his sole was one of my favorite avaiators. I saw him a lot at mid-rats in the dirty-shirt. A special guy for sure. I hope that if we can get Ranger as a museum here in Portland, that we can attach some sort of memorial to him out on the LSO platform.
Somebody ought to write a book about this guy.
I’m just honored to think that I was out on the water at the same time a guy like that was out working. While I never had the pleasure of meeting him, just knowing I served at the same time is inspiring.
I have a very young son just entering his toddler years and can’t wait to teach him about men like this.
Really great work.
And sorry to hear of his passing.
Great man. Wow..
March of ’87? Pusan? Sounds like Ranger was supporting Team Spirit 87. I have a fond memory of watching a pair of Intruders go screaming by at low level at high speed (well, high speed for an Intruder!). Maybe 50 feet and 400kts? All about 100 feet away from me.
Dad’s first fleet squadron skipper was Robin Lindsey, who also had a reputation as a great LSO and something of a character.
Reading of Bug’s passing saddens me. I know I met him, but I don’t know where exactly. I am thinking it was at Miramar in 1976-77 when I was a student at VF-124, the F-14 RAG. Any chance he was an instructor there at the time? It always hurts to read of a great man lost. Having lost a good friend to a seat failure makes this even sadder for me.
Flit, thanks for the link to Bug’s prayer.
George V.
Given the risks of military flying, I find it ironic that all but one of the retired officers that I am acquainted with, or have as a friend, all but one was a pilot on active duty.
One had the engine in his T-33 fly apart on him over Germany. Launched from Ramstein for England, but dead sticked into Rhein Main. A couple others Army Rotorheads, one from the Cav in Vietnam. Just beat the odds.
Probably. I believe Bug was there at VF-124 from 1973 to 1976, when he then transferred to CVW-11 as CAG LSO until 1979. But Bug was ubiquitous. He was anywhere and everywhere.
Ode To Bug
(An anonymous poem written apparently by one of his students and his next generation of Naval Aviators:
Damn. Just Damn.
http://youtu.be/DRURB7FdsII
Here’s the link to the 20 minute version. Its interesting to watch and listen to all that goes into a barricade trap. Are the lights bobbing in the back of the carrier the plane-guard destroyer? That deck was moving!!! Just curious, are there not as many of these today as there apparently used to be? Reading up on Bug, he was involved in a lot of them.
Great post and comments…my kind of guy indeed…
A question…Bug said just after the trap…
…” just for the record…thats a five pointer”…I’m hoping that a good/max score… Best
PS, informality… delightfull or otherwise was the ethos in my time in Special Forces… an attitude/style clearly not appreciated or rewarded in most tight-assed regular Army units.
Bug’s death, however, likely saved the life of another aviator down the road. Lex, feel free to correct me.
The flame-out problem was well-known in the A-4s, but IIRC the NATOPS guidance to avoid it was less than 10 seconds inverted flight, less than 4 seconds negative G. In the wake of Bug’s mishap, however, this was tested and revised to less than X seconds of less than positive G. I don’t know if that was the fix or not.
However, a second problem was that the rockets in Bug’s seat did not fire like they were supposed to. The engineering guys then took ten of the rockets from the same lot and when tested, 8 out of 10 failed. Immediate fleet grounding and the AME’s raced to replace all of that lot of rockets.
Back in the Top Gun hangar, another pilot tried to figure out why a lanyard intended to keep the ejection seat in a vertical position as it left the aircraft didn’t work (sorry ’bout the split infinitive). He went out to the nearest A-4 and tugged on the lanyard–and it came right out of the floor! In lightening the A-4s for ACM training, a structural piece that the lanyard was intended to be attached to had been removed, and the lanyard was now basically attached to sheet metal. Another grounding.
Less than a month into my time with VF-45, our XO had the same engine stall and fail to relight, fortunately his ejection was uneventful. It was extremely unfortunate that all three of these problems ganged up on Roach, but it seemed to me that the outrage that it did happen to him got some seriously needed fixes made.
It’s been twenty some years, but if I remember correctly, it was ’86 and that deployment of the Ranger was a “surge” deployment of only three months. After Ranger tried sneaking across the Pacific and made it through the Bear Box without being detected. We did support Team Spirit and made our one and only Westpac liberty call in Pusan. Leaving Korea, we headed up to the Aleutions just off Russian territorial limits — not ’cause we wanted to, but the weather was a bitch. That barricade landing occured up in the Gulf of Alaska. We had a bunch of A-6s up when the seas kicked up rather quickly. IIRC, the first A-6 missed the wire on the first attempt and bent something as he boltered. We then launched more A-6s to tanker the remainder and they all took off for Elmendorf AB in Alaska while we rigged the barrier. I didn’t pay that much attention to the barricade landing as I was up to my eyeballs trying to get the folks at Elmendorf to acknowledge the fact that we had those A-6s inbound and they would arrive with low fuel state. Seems the AF comm guys refused to route our Flash message to the right folks because we didn’t include the right “slash” codes in the header – gotta love the Zoomies! On our way back we stopped in for a little more liberty in Vancouver, BC. We arrived on the last day of the World’s Fair – wouldn’t you know I got stuck aboard with some visiting NAVELEX guys.
I just went back and thumbed through my old cruise book. Yep, there was bug with his big ol’ moustache on the CAW-2 page. Unfortunately, doesn’t appear to be any candid shots of him on the job. Strangely enough that was the 75th anniversary of Naval Aviation that year.
FWIW, Cdr. Roach features in a lot of the sea stories from the Gulf War collected in “This Ain’t Hell…” http://www.amazon.com/This-Aint-Hell-Here-Sketchbook/dp/0891414436/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326737575&sr=1-1 I read it shortly after I got back from the sandbox, and I thought then that he’d be a helluva good officer to work for. This clip tends to reinforce that impression…
Replying on my own post to avoid excessive clutter – I just watched the clip again… There are very few officers you’d follow to Hell just because you know they’d find a way to bring you back home again. Based on this clip, Cdr. Roach is one of the few.
I know of no better tribute I can offer…
Thanks, Lex!
I remember seeing him on base and in Hangar 1. Seems to me he always had cowboy boots on. I also remember the day he passed on. I was a bullet right next door to 126. Sad say for everyone.