To All,
Good Tuesday Afternoon October 10, 2023
Here are a couple of stories that I think most of you will enjoy. Some of you may have seen some of them already.
Regards
Skip
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Starting off with a life lesson from Barrel
https://youtu.be/dhIkLozpN6o?si=1RTNaeLpszZaIkMr
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Thanks to Dave via YP and Dr.Rich
From the Crusadernet: Dave "Fireball" Johnson's story.
Talk about all the cards stacked against a first tour nugget Crusader pilot!
1. Terrible maintenance seems common. His Crusader in this story is a POS!
2. The "Shitty Shang" seems to deserve that nickname, with all sorts of backup systems that might have helped being simultaneously tits up.
3. He must have gone to Sunday School to have survived this. GB him.
4. Thank Grong I never had a really bad mtc problem in my 1200 hours in the Scoot. The Independence, CVA-62, had functional systems most of my two long and many short cruises. As soon as I cleaned up after a night cat shot, I started thinking about the approach. I never loved nights, but I stayed focused and that kept me off the blunt end of the boat..
5. In my 1200 Crusader hours, The Goat God had to work overtime on me.
YP
[Don't Stop Me if You've Heard This]
The Sermon On The Ramp
A few guys have asked why I haven't added my tale to the sea stories. Here it is, in a nutshell: I screwed up a night approach, blew up my F-8 on the ramp, flopped in the water, and was picked up by a tin can. I'm not particularly proud of wrecking a machine I loved to fly. By rights I should have been fishfood; that I wasn't, I firmly believe is because there is a God, who employs guardian angels (those assigned to nugget Crusader pilots really racked up the overtime), and who listens to those little pre-cat prayers. Read on; count the screw ups, count the dang-nears, then you decide. It sure as heck wasn't skill on my part that cheated the fishies.
Off the cat, AOA dropped to zero. Pretty soon, it came back on, seemed to work o.k. Suggested to my fearless leader that we join up before marshal for an a/s-AOA check, then we went on about our business and both forgot about it.
When I popped the boards leaving marshal, it went to zero again, then came back on. Too late to bother anybody now, so carry on. Dirty up, donut & a/s don't match for fuel load a/s is a few knots slow, but AOA was boresighted just before launch & sister squadron had recently had a couple bad a/s indicators, so I bet AOA is more correct. APC check - - APC doesn't engage. O.k., manual pass. Sure looks dark out there; oops, wing lites have gone out. Well, turn on the rotator and crack the probe door so the probe light comes on, maybe paddles can still see me o.k. Call the ball, manual, AOA seems to be responding o.k., I'm actually holding a donut most of the time. Paddles, however, sees only a "fast" approach lite the entire approach. The rotator and probe light don't give very good clues, so paddles checks the SPN-12 (approach speed radar) readout. SPN-12 is down. Paddles now has no way to judge distance, glide path or attitude (which is directly related to AOA, and therefore a/s), and thinks I'm fast as a bat.
Going a little high in close, make a correction apparently right at the burble. Ball is coming down, no dropping down, cob it & rotate, this ain't good, hit burner! Paddles first clue about how close the aircraft was, was when I appeared in the floodlights, low and nose high, and sinking - still showing a "fast" approach lite. The burner lit just as the wheels hit the rounddown and broke the airplane in half. Fuel tanks erupted, the burner lit the fuel, and the guys who were on the roof told me it was the most glorious explosion they had ever seen. The whole works continued up the angle, with the aft half doing a somersault in the fireball.
My brain may have been a bit scrambled from the impact, but something told me that it was too quiet in there, and too bright outside, and besides you shouldn't be going sideways across the #4 wire, you should leave now. Wait, sit up straight before you pull the curtain. Oops, cant't get it over my helmet now, I'll duck a little then straighten up when it clears the helmet, there, now pull hard. I didn't feel a thing, but heard this loud bang and saw a bright flash below so figured the seat must have fired. Quick, grab and pull the toggles on the MKIII-C. I was pulling them when I heard another loud "crack" and felt a real jolt that yanked my hands off the toggles. Then, darkness.
The remnents had left the angle, rolled left and entered the water inverted. Apparently the seat fired at 90 degrees of bank or so, because no one saw the canopy or seat leave (and there was no PLAT tape to review because that was down too). The jolt was the seat hitting the water, the "crack" was the drogue gun firing. One of the CO2 cartridges had been activated, so one cell of the MKIII inflated. Pretty soon I regained some level of consciousness, and noticed this odd view of the ship, getting smaller and appearing and disappearing behind waves. Then I saw this wing nearby, so I grabbed on to it. Dang, cut my hand in the the gap between the outer wing panel and main panel droops. What's all that yelling about? There's another ship. There's a horse collar. Maybe I'll grab that and let go of this wing. Now they're trying to lift me up but I can't hang on anymore. When I fell back in, I went under for a while, sucking in a lot of sea water and suddenly becoming aware that HEY MAN I'M DROWNING HERE. Shriek a bunch, grab that horsecollar again and go into lock mode. They had been yelling at me to grab the horsecollar, because they could see that the wing was sinking on the chute, which the drogue gun had yanked out. It sank just as they pulled me clear. On the second attempt to hoist me aboard, Ens. Bob Hendricks went over the side to hold my head out of the water, SN Snodgrass (duty swimmer) got me into the horsecollar again, and when nobody could get the chute released, the XO, LCDR Furey, got a knife, climbed down the cargo net (which was hung over the side for just such events) and cut the shroud lines. It still took 5 men to haul me up, because the vent hose to the poopy suit had ripped out instead of disconnecting on ejection, so the poopy suit was full of water.
When I was laid out on a wardroom table and my flight gear was being cut off with knives and scissors, it finally dawned on me what had happened. I got pretty upset, because there were a lot of men - including my Line Division plane captains - on the flight deck where I had strewn flying and flaming debris. I insisted that they radio the carrier to see if anyone on the roof had been injured; when the word came back that no one had, I relaxed... and promptly passed out again.
The scariest part of the whole deal was when the helo guys picked me up from the tincan the next morning. They trussed me up like a turkey in this wire basket stretcher, hoisted me to the hovering helo, and after pulling the thing just halfway into the helo's cabin, went roaring off to the Shang. I was sure I was going to slide out and go "bloop". So,instead of becoming Charlie the Tuna's revenge, I became "Fireball".
At the time, I was sure that my Naval Aviatin' days were over. Stolly Stollenwerck was my Skipper, Pete Easterling XO. Stolly and Pete came to sick bay to hear my side of the tale. I can hear Stolly to this day: "Well, Dave, are you going to stay with us?". I couldn't believe it; I have a choice???. I said "Yes sir, if you'll let me." He said,"Oh, sure, Dave", in that fatherly manner of his.
As a sidebar, after recuperating for about 30 days, my first flite after getting my "up chit" had an inauspicious beginning. First a/c went down on start, resked for next launch, down again with hydraulic leak, resked as spare for next launch, & the spare was made a "go" bird. On the cat, shooter touched the deck & nothing happened; suspended, tried again - and again -and again. It finally fired on the 5th. try. By that time I had developed a morbid curiousity is this thing going to work??? and was mentally prepared to climb out in the water on the pointy end, but I dang sure wasn't going to say "no" and have to go thru those butterflies for yet another launch. Once the cat fired, it was just like old times, no more than usual jitters on the trap. This was my nugget cruise, and I didn't even have 50 total traps. By the time I left VF-13, I had over 300 more traps on the Shang, but didn't enjoy any of the night ones. Not even a little bit. Daytime, tho, was a blast. Something that surprised me was that I even enjoyed day traps more, thought they were great sport. But not nites.
For what its worth, I have never had bad dreams or nightmares or anything like that. I just disliked night traps more intensely. There were a lot of factors in my decision to leave the Navy after one tour, but this was the biggest one. I had too much fun with the airplane, and didn't use my head enough. I could read the handwriting on the wall it said "You've been warned enough times". Asking for shore duty, or VP, or somesuch, just wasn't in the cards. You either have a tailhook, or you're dogmeat. Or a civilian with good memories.
Dave Johnson
Long ago
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Thanks to the Bear
SKY SNIPER
This article was first published in May 1943, American Rifleman.
By Lt. Stuart D. Ludlum, USNR
American Rifleman Archives: Sky Sniper | An Official Journal Of The NRA 10/8/23, 3:04 AM
https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/american-rifleman-archives-sky-sniper/?utm_source=newsletter Page 2 of 9
"Don't shoot at the quail... Shoot where he's going to be when the shot gets there." Though
the shotgun's recoil rattled his teeth and rocked him on his heels. Little Jimmy Thach
learned to swing smoothly and to shoot without flinching. He learned lead and follow
through so that he could put a single .22 bullet out in front "where the rabbit
is going to be" and send it rolling into a pie pan. Whether wing shooting or depending on
one slug to do the work of 2 hatful, Jim Thach put a premium on marksmanship.
Six Grumman Wildcats roar o! the flight deck, wheel into the sky and climb like express
elevators. Lt. Commander John Smith (Jim) Thach, now Skipper of Fighter Three, and his
wingman spot a Jap four engine patrol plane. He starts his run. It's like the last rapid fire
string in the National Match Course ... only the target's shooting back. Smooth speed ...
rhythm ... every maneuver sheer velvet ... no jerking ... no flinching. Working together in
perfect coordination, his hands and feet line up his ringsight on the target and then move it
out front. The "pipper" (the dot in the middle of the ringsight) is leading perfectly. He
presses the trigger and breaks away. A few brief seconds and the smoking Jap plunges
into the sea.
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The Cover: A fighter plane is a super accurate automatic pistol; the
e!ective fighter pilot, a deadly marksman, as true of aim and quick on the
draw as an old time western gunman. With this rather new concept in mind,
we teamed up the cover illustration with our lead story, "Sky Sniper," and
appropriate for the Rifleman, we think. For here, among these fighter pilots,
are men who put a premium on marksmanship. The flier who can't shoot is
as useless as a shooter who can't fly. O"cial U.S. Navy Kodachrome
Thach's fighting teammates were high over the Lexington when she took
this direct hit. Smoke on the water marks the spots where their Jap victims
have crashed.
Minutes later, another two-plane section,
led by Lt. O. B. Stanley, shoots down
another patrol bomber.
Toward mid-afternoon, enemy planes are
reported. Two more fighter patrols hop o!
the carrier into the sky to intercept.
Here's the chance Fighter Three has been
waiting for ... Has Jimmy taught them well?
Are his sky-shooting skills sound? These
airborne marksmen have never been in
combat before .... They believe in Jimmy
Thatch and his shooting ideals, but, after
all, they're only ideas…
At 1630 (Navy for 4:30 p.m.) nine Mitsubishi
bombers streak for the carrier. This is it! All
those hours of attacks, and runs, and
marksmanship practice are now to be put
to the test. The flying shooters of Fighter
Three—like well-trained riflemen in their
first visit to Camp Perry—following the
detailed instructions of their coach,
resisting the excitement that could easily
upset their technique—smoothly swing
their three-ton flying guns into position.
They press the triggers. Five Jap bombers
crash into the sea. The other four release
their bombs far from their target, miss it by
nearly two miles, and head hell-bent for
home. One is blasted by the anti-aircraft
sharpshooters on the carrier. Three are
given "the treatment" and are confirmed. ...
One gets away.
A second flight of Jap bombers is detected coming in from the east. Only two fighters are
in position to intercept. They pile into the nine bombers and in the next few minutes one of
the great fights of all time takes place. It's history now, but there are angles for those who
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are interested in skillful marksmanship.
The guns of one plane jam. He has to leave and quick. The other makes his approach, and
many things race through his mind. Very little ammunition for such a big covey. A bomber
takes a lot of shooting to put it out ... you got to hit it where it hurts ... deep in the heart of
the X-ring. And you can't take too many chances when you are the last man between the
bandits and the carrier .... If they sink the carrier, where you going to land? Ever think of
that? So you've got to make every shot count without "expending" yourself.
Judge your range ... their speed ... start your run … bank smoothly ... everything's got to be
done smoothly ... can't black yourself out with a fast or jerky turn and expect to hold and
squeeze. Lead just right. ... Press! Smoke and flames say, "Pinwheel", and now the next one!
Working from back to front of the Vee, the pipper lines up just where it ought to be ... press
... smoke ... flames ... crazy spin into the sea. Next!! Climb for another run ... a short burst
this time .... Break away ... Next!
" ... Without hesitation, alone and unaided, he repeatedly attacked this enemy formation at
close range in the face of their intense combined machine gun and cannon fire, and ... by
his gallant and courageous action, his extremely skillful marksmanship, making the most of
every shot of his limited amount of ammunition, shot down fire enemy bombers and
severely damaged a sixth before they reached the bomb release point ... "
So reads the citation that went with Butch O'Hare's Congressional Medal of Honor.
Courage, shooting skill ... and sky sniping marksmanship, drilled into him by Jimmy Thach,
made O'Hare one of the world's most skillful flying fighters.
By the time those two patrols of Fighter Three were back on deck, Jim Thach's theories
had become a proven formula for sky killing with fixed guns.
When the score was tallied at the end of the day, the Japs had lost nineteen out of twenty
bombers sent into combat. That twentieth would have been a dead pigeon if they could
have followed it a little longer. But a single-seated fighter doesn't carry gasoline and
ammunition enough to chase the last bully home after cleaning up on the rest of his gang.
We lost two fighter planes and one pilot.
Fighter Three won its first brush with the Japs in the cornfields of Arkansas ... on the rifle
ranges and the hardwood ridges of the Mid-West. Uncle Sam owes a lot to the man who
taught his son to shoot where his target is going to be and not where it is when you pull
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the trigger, Jim Thach's dad did a lot more than give his son a taste for outdoor life … instill
in him a love for guns... and the thrill of hunting. He taught him to respect and aspire to kill
in marksmanship.
Born in Fordyce, Arkansas, in April, 1905, John Smith Thach entered the Naval Academy in
1923. After graduation in 1927—and a few weeks of flight instruction to find out if he took to
the air—he was ordered to the fleet for a tour of duty. He learned fleet operations and this
knowledge served him well in his later air battles. For when he was fighting his squadron
high above the ships,he knew pretty well what they were trying to do below.
In 1929 he was ordered to Pensacola for flight training, and his enthusiasm went into "high"
when it came to aerial gunnery. He hadn't lost his love for cracking moving targets, and
here it was at its best, shooting a flying target with a flying gun.
When a student o"cer is learning to fly, he wants those wings more than anything else on
earth or in the air. But once he wins them and is attached to a fighter squadron, he wants a
little painted "E" on his plane. This is the badge of an expert aerial marksman. Once Jim
was out with the Fleet as a Naval Aviator, it didn't take him long to win his "E". He soon
found that he couldn't flinch a plane and hit his X-ring any more than he could hit it when
he flinched with a rifle. On the other hand, when he swung smoothly, led and followed
through, his scores mounted.
"Skippers" of VF-3 (Jim Thach, foreground and Butch O'Hare) flying a two plane section in their Grumman Wildcats.
After various aviation assignments with fighter allied patrol squadrons, Jim found himself
Gunnery O"cer of Fighter Three ... which immediately won the Championship of the Fleet
in Marksmanship. A year before Pearl Harbor, Jim was made Skipper of the squadron, and
even though his men were the shooting champs, he was dissatisfied.
He wanted more time for training. He was developing fighting tactics that were based on
sound shooting techniques. He believed that a flier who couldn't shoot would be just as
useless to a fighting squadron as a shooter who couldn't fly. He, himself, was expert in both
and was working out a way to coordinate them (to blend them with team flying) and to
come out with a fighting formula that was 4-0, which in the Navy is perfection.
Everything seemed to conspire against him, however. "Bugs" arose in the planes and they
were grounded. When they were rarin' to go, the carrier was diverted to ferrying Army
bombers to the islands of the Pacific. In June, 1941, he did get thirty days at Pearl Harbor
with his squadron, and those thirty days, Saturdays and Sundays included, were spent in
the air, shooting. They got results.
Even before Fighter Three proved the e!ectiveness of Jim's methods by killing Japs
wholesale, the Navy began to take notice. He received a letter of commendation for
excellence in gunnery operations in 1939-1940: "For exceptional skill and technique in
aerial gunnery and bombing, e"cient and meticulous operation of the squadron gunnery
department; marked ability to train other pilots in fighting plane tactics and gunnery." It was
encouraging that the Navy recognized and appreciated the need for fliers who could
shoot. In his Navy Cross and Distinguished Service Medal citations, his skill as a marksman
is emphasized: " ... Through his courage and skill he shot down one enemy bomber and,
with the assistance of his teammates, shot down a second bomber."
" ... Pursuing till.' bold and fearless tactics of a great lighter and skillful airman, Lieutenant
Commander Thach led a division of his squadron on a mission providing protection for our
own attacking torpedo squadron. Facing intense antiaircraft fire, the squadron under his
command e"ciently attacked an overwhelming number of enemy Japanese fighters,
shooting down three of them."
A fighter plane is a super-accurate automatic pistol. It shoots with fixed guns. The air
pressure against the wings, at speeds between 300 and 400 miles an hour, holds the guns
and gives machine rest steadiness. Like a pistol compared with a long arm, it's highly
maneuverable.
You can aim it with one hand. Like the .41 Automatic, its bullets are the punchy kind. A burst
of concentrated fire from a Grumman Wildcat's "fifties" has a most satisfactory way of
messing things up—for the enemy—like slugging a clip of forty-fives into a can of tomatoes
Page 7 of 9
Jim Thach congratulates Butch O'Hare for shooting down five Jap bombers
in first day Thach's theories were put to test
—before point rationing.
If you load a fighting plane down with extra ammunition or fuel, armament or armor, or
other equipment, it's like hanging a big magazine or a heavy sight ramp or curvaceous
grips on a handgun. It loses its ability to gain altitude advantage quickly just as the pistol
loses its quick-draw, fast -pointing attributes. Fortunately, the United States Navy has long
recognized the principles of fighter combat and has given our fighter squadrons some
mighty handy flying guns that have proven themselves highly e!ective in a devastating sort
of way.
The seven Jap flags, painted on Jim Thach's plane, are convincing proof that he has
acquired the knack of knocking Japs out of the sky. But his skills are more far reaching, for
he possesses qualities of leadership and the ability to teach. He has taught his fighter
combat tactics to other Navy squadrons and is now supervising the making of training films
at the Walt Disney studios and at the Navy's gigantic training center in Jacksonville.
These films are being used to make lethal marksmen out of the thousands of pilots the
Navy is training every year. In any kind of shooting it is hard to say how much skill is due to
inherent ability and how much to teaching. O'Hare was a good rifle shot before he learned
to fly. But he and the other pilots of VF-3 (Fighting Squadron Three) give most credit to
Thach's shooting tactics.
Lieutenant Noel Gayler was another one of
Thach's sky snipers who did his Skipper
proud. Thach likes to tell about the time
they escorted dive and torpedo bombers
over the unexplored mountains of New
Guinea, one of the most hazardous flights
in Naval aviation. As they pulled their
heavy planes up into the thin air around
the tops of these amazingly high peaks, it
looked as though they just weren't going to
make it. They began to lose altitude at the
rate of 600 feet a minute. Their
Skipper,however, soon found a green flat
area. He led his planes over it, caught the
warm updrafts he was hoping to find there
and rode them over the passes with less
than ten feet to spare. That's not very
much leeway when you're sitting on top of a ton torpedo that has plenty of whang in its
warhead.
When they finally did get over and were pummeling ships and land installations at Lac and
Salamaua, Gayler was on his way down in a strafing dive when, out of the corner of his eye,
he spotted a Jap seaplane, He nosed up just long enough to center a burst and send the
Jap down in flames. Then he continued his dive. This was a rather deft bit of snapshooting.
Another time a Zero was trying to tease Gayler into a trap. Zeros are very light and can
climb faster than 4000 feet a minute. They try to get you to follow them up. If you do, they
climb out of your range, roll over when you are far below and come tobogganing back at
you when you're hanging on your prop, a "duck soup" target.
But Gayler wasn't tricked. He anticipated the pull-up and gave the Jap a burst just as he
began to climb. He didn't. He burned instead. Gayler pulled another "quick draw" when II
swarm of Zeros had him ducking in and out of a cloud. Every time he poked his nose out,
they were waiting for him.
Back in he went.
"I came out one side'," he explains, "and saw a Jappie below me. He saw me and made that
instinctive pull-up right in front of my guns. I let him have burst. He burned, too."
On the way back to his carrier Gayler shot down two more Zeros. Just to clear his guns
before landing. These two brought his total to eight clean kills. Every marksman in America,
every shooter who knows the future of our country depends on our ability to shoot straight
as individuals—whether we have in our hands a six pound sub-machine gun or a ten
thousand pound flying automatic—will find in the wording of Jim Thach's Distinguished
Service Medal citation, O"cial America's awakening to the priceless value of shooting
"know how".
"For exceptionally meritorious service to the Government of the United States as
Commander of a carrier Fighting Squadron during the first six months of the war. The
remarkable quality of leadership displayed by Lieutenant Commander Thach was
exemplified in the through and comprehensive training of his pilots in both their brilliant
combat tactics and excellent gunnery. The resultant high state of combat e"ciency
attained by his squadron enabled it to play a decisive and major part in the destruction of
nineteen of the twenty enemy Japanese bombers which attacked an aircraft carrier on
February 20, 1942. And to make an essential contribution to the success of the air attack
on Salumaua and Lae. New Guinea on March 10, 1942. The e!ectiveness of his unique
system of fighting plane combat teams, evolved from a detailed study of action reports of
the Coral Sea Battle and taught not only to his pilots but to all of the fighting squadrons in
the Hawaiian area, was demonstrated north of Midway Island on June 4, 1942. In this
engagement, Lieutenant Commander Thach led a four plane division of fighter planes from
his squadron against twenty enemy Zero fighters during the successful attacks by our
carrier-based planes against enemy fighters and destroyed six enemy fighters and
repulsed the others with the loss of only one of his four planes."
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Thanks to Marcus
03 Oct 2009 The Battle of Kamdesh – Lest we forget outnumbered 6-1 in highly indefensible terrain.
One of the highest number of decorations for Valor in the entire Afghanistan conflict including 2 MOH's
Battle of Kamdesh: Vastly Outnumbered, US Army Troops Defeated Over 300 Taliban Insurgents (warhistoryonline.com)
Romesha and Carter received the Medal of Honor for their courage, bravery and leadership during the Battle of Kamdesh. Additionally, 27 Purple Hearts, nine Silver Stars, 37 Army Commendation Medals with "V" and 21 Bronze Stars were presented to others who fought. The Silver Stars awarded to Bundermann and Gallegos (the latter posthumously) were upgraded to Distinguished Service Crosses.
R/H.
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