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That was a great movie.

We had a friend who was a radio gunner in the back seat of a Navy Plane during the battle of Midway.

Coming back, they saw the Yorktown in trouble and landed on another carrier.

He was still amazed at how easy pilots, guys like himself and other Navy guys came from one carrier could come/land on another carrier and step up and do their job on another carrier or ship.

However, he joined the Air Force after WWII and retired as an officer.

He said trying to find your carrier or even a back up after air to air/sea battles was very unnerving. He wanted his runways to be where they left them, not some place else.

Also, he backed up your Dad’s comments about being scared.

However, he said, once the stuff hit the fan, you and your team mates knew what to do and did it until the action was over. He said once he and his pilot took off safely, they were in the moment until they started back to the carrier. He said his worse fears came at night after the battles, when he was trying to sleep. He would get up and go find an outside deck to walk on. Those decks would be crowded with guys wanting to talk and those who didn’t. They were the greatest generation.

Another good story, Dave. Now I've got one for you.

I was a Navy Lt. assigned to the Marines as a Naval Gunfire Liaison Officer back in the late 70s. And I went on a deployment to WestPac aboard the USS Okinawa (a helicopter carrier) where I was operating with a Marine regiment out of Kaneohe, HI.

So I was living aboard ship in a small officer's cabin with 3 other guys, two Marine Captains, a Navy doctor, and myself.

And I had great conversations with one of those Marine Captains and we became friends for 3 months aboard ship, had meals together and so forth.

So 35 years later I'm reading a Free Republic comment about a Marine Corps General who was highly respected and somebody said Trump should hire.

I saw the picture of the guy and instantly recognized it to the face of our soon to be elevated Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis. Never had any contact with Jim since our deployment, and I got out the Navy 3 years later, but I can tell you that you will never meet a better gentleman nor caring/dedicated man.

So it shows you how given average training and desire, a man or woman of great dedication and merit can rise to the highest level in this country.

Another sea story for you, Dave.

My Dad told a few interesting stories. He was a 1st Class gunner's mate aboard LST 520, one of the hundreds of transport ships that land on the shore and carry tanks, trucks, and other heavy equipment.

Now gunner's mate was a more hazardous occupation than you might think. For during a battle, it was necessary to keep the guns operating without fail.

And occasionally the guns would jam and because the barrels were hot you could have a "cook off" situation where the round explodes and destroys the gun and kills everybody near it.

So it was the gunner's mates' job to clear the gun and throw the round overboard before it blew up.

Well one time, he told us kids, he got the round unjammed and then threw it over the side and it exploded before it hit the water... so poconopundit was almost never born :- )

Now fortunately, World War II had its light moments, too. And my Dad was what you'd call an "operator". He had a money making business on the side, which I might add, was deeply appreciated by the crew and even officers (though they might not admit it because it was black market stuff.)

So somehow he got himself assigned to be one of the ship's two postmasters. And that was really useful because it meant he could go ashore in London (waiting for D-Day) even as everyone else was restricted to their ships.

Now sometimes he and the other postmaster would go out and get drunk. But the real mission was get the mail and also go shopping for things like booze, cigarettes -- and surprisingly, bananas were very popular.

Now all this contraband was delivered clandestinely, wrapped in big tarpolin and carefully hoisted aboard ship and sold to the crew.

But one time the crew didn't like the idea of my Dad making money off them, so they decided to boycott his banana supply.

And as you can imagine, bananas being perishable, he was worried that he might lose a lot of money.

But what he did was have a talk with the chief cook in the galley. And sure enough, the next day for breakfast, there was only one meal on the menu. It was corn flakes with cold milk. And alongside the cold milk sat a huge pile of bananas selling at 10 cents a piece.

Well, the bananas completely sold out: the officers even arrived from the wardroom to buy some. So my Dad made a nice profit on that boycott.

So maybe this story is why I trusted that Art of the Deal guy early on :- )